The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Five-Word Synopsis: Shanghai Noon Meets American Treasure.

Alternate Five-Word Synopsis: The Above Synopsis Is Retarded.

Rising from the grave comes the second, or maybe the fifth, movie in The Mummy non-series. I know that the original movie’s DVD was in a lot of people’s bookshelves in High School, but that doesn’t mean that anyone remembers it or wants to see it. This is also why Multiplicity 2 barely made it out of pre-production.

I half-watched the beginning of The Mummy about fifty times while I was making out with various feminist icons/comely librarians(?), so I can’t tell you what the movie was really about past something about mummies, sand, and cats. But I don’t think I’m over-stepping my bounds by saying it was relatively forgettable, which would explain why I haven’t heard anyone mention it in about seven years.

So the series is ethically deplorable in its existence, there was apparently a second movie that I don’t even remember coming out, the trailer depicts a movie both tepid and hackneyed, and “Tomb of The Dragon Emperor” is, in its capacity as a movie title, not even trying.

With all that having been said, though, there were what appeared to be lava-horses in there, and Jet Li will probably shoot Brendon Frasier with lightning bolts at some point during the film. That doesn’t exactly save the film, but it might help soften its sad tumble into obscurity just a bit.

F+

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American Teen

Five-Word Synopsis: Don’t you, forget about me.
Alternate Four-Word Synopsis: Don’t, don’t, don’t don’t.

“A modern day ‘Breakfast Club’ that will make you stand up and cheer,” gushes some reviewer chap from E! Online. It’s a throwaway line that looks good on a poster because a familiar movie title catches the eye. So, fine. Fair enough.
Except, the trailer itself starts off by showing us the high school kids starring in the movie, and flashing placards before each of them labelling them as “The Jock” and “The Princess.”
“Oh no,” I thought, “They’re re-making the Breakfast Club, and they don’t even have the good grace to update it with new stereotypes.”

But don’t worry, Emilio Estevez purists— it’s not a Breakfast Club sequel. It’s actually a documentary, which makes the Breakfast Club reference even more awkward. It’s not the best idea to smack a big old “Fictional Nostalgia Wankfest” sticker on the front of your supposedly non-fiction opus, especially when you’re making a Joe Average day-in-the-life documentary— you want to at least PRETEND there’s something organic about it. Although with teenagers insisting they’re not Looking For Love right now, followed by them falling instantly in love with the movie’s other main characters sort of erases any chance at pretending this wasn’t heavily scripted. Also, I really don’t care who wins that basketball game. At all.

F+

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Hancock

Five-Word Synopsis: Will Smith: Scientologist, scientist, thespian.

Point

Alex: If there’s one thing Will Smith’s been good at the last four or five years, it’s making perfectly agreeable movies. I, Robot was fun, and I Am Legend looked pretty okay. And up next in that list of excellent airplane movies is Hancock, a movie that signals the coming of the Summer Blockbuster tide more accurately than the Farmer’s Almanac could ever dream of.

The superhero dichotomy usually swings perilously back and forth between campy and angsty, with Batman playing for the Harlem Globetrotters one decade and shooting heroin in a Denny’s bathroom the next. I hope Hancock will usher in a third option (trichotomy?): the poor, drunk, apathetic superhero. With any luck, within the year we’ll have a Spiderman sequel where he just stays home and smokes weed with his idiot roommate.

B+

Counterpoint

Jim: But it comes out on July 4th, by which time Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Speed Racer, Kung Fu Panda, The Incredible Hulk, Get Smart, AND Kit Kittredge: American Girl will have already been released. Do you mean that it signals the ebbing of the Summer Blockbuster tide more accurately than the Farmer’s Almanac? Because after Hancock there is basically only The Dark Knight and That X-Files Movie. Unless you count Tropic Thunder, in which case Kluck on, you Klazy Klavalier!

Alex: I refuse to believe there is another X-Files Movie coming out. Even the first one was probably some kind of vivid, physically manifesting hallucination on your part.

B+/F

What We Have Learned

Alex: Maybe they’ll ruin it in the actual movie, and Hancock will have only started drinking after his powers failed to save the woman he loved from being eaten by a velociraptor*. But with any luck, he’ll just be a drunk jerk who happens to be able to fly.

Jim: The B+ is for when he threw a whale at a boat and capsized it. The F is for oF course they are going to cop out and make him get his shit together (and stop throwing whales at boats).

*The Dinosaur Diaries #445 and #551. -Ed.

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Baghead

Film School Technique: Handheld camera.

Jim: A handheld camera held by nobodies; a fat guy likes a girl who is way out of his league (but then there is a guy with a bag on his head).

Shot on location in the margins of the actors’ diary (but with a guy with a bag on his head).

F

Alex: Seems pleasantly tense, and I appreciate that I didn’t see everyone die in the trailer, and that I don’t know exactly what’s up. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have seen it coming if they hadn’t just given away the first 50 minutes of the movie.

C+

The Take

Film School Technique: A handheld camera jitters along a desaturated palette.

Jim: Populated by the almost stars of yesteryear. Another Training Day/Collateral/Lakeview Terrace entry in the burgeoning genre of Verisimilar Male (On Male) Dom/Sub Fantasy.

Q: Is Vangelis scoring films again?

A: Rosie Perez Side Titty.

F

Alex: Not poorly done inherently, but god damn if I am not sick to death of cop movies. At least they mixed it up by having the cop be from Los Angeles and having to bend the law to enforce the law. Oh Wait.

Also starring a mustache that probably belongs in a Will Ferrell movie.

F-

Quarantine

Film-School Technique: Nightvision & the Conceit of Found Footage

Jim: At least Cloverfield had the sense to play its figurative cards close to its gigantic bug monster chest.

Seriously, who are you kidding? Your movie is just the color part of your trailer happening for 87 minutes.

F-

Alex: Seconded. Lacking the larger-than-life epicness of Cloverfield and the subtle, minimalistic terror of The Blair Witch Project, the makers of Quarantine opted, apparently, for a second-rate zombie movie set entirely in an apartment building. So it’s a handicam found footage movie where the cameraman knows exactly what’s going on, taking away the necessity of a big reveal or any kind of suspense. Also, a zombie attack that we know is confined to a single building. Awesome.

Right?

F-

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