Movie Review Haiku: What the Hell I've Been Watching Lately While Neglecting this Blog

I will chalk up my disloyalty to the precise Haiku form to... creativity! Yeah, creativity, that's it. These are listed from worst to best. Also, I am maybe going to spoil some things.


eXistenZ (1999):

Lots of biological materials,
gutted wildlife, and a routine series of mindfucks
equivalent to an unpleasantly aggressive jerkoff.

The only good thing
was Jude Law's US (and occasionally Canadian) accent.
At least he got the continent right?

[Sidebar Haiku, for Jude Law:

Jude Law, handsome
like a portrait of a WWII hero
who never came home.

Seriously, the guy's not even white;
he's sepia.]


The Grey (2012):
The only women
in the whole damn film
were the hallucinations

as, one by one,
the men against nature
were released into death;

woman = nature's silencer.
PS: Dear movie, some idiot
gave away the last 45 sec. in the trailer.


[Also: I'm fairly certain
Liam Neeson's next movie
is just going to be

120 min close-up
of Liam Neeson's cock.]

God Bless America (2011):

Best and worst trait was its preachiness.
Very articulate, and pathologically clever.
Good vigilante fantasy fun for Godless Liberals.



Enter Nowhere (2011):

Lovingly framed as a slasher
only to become No Exit
among the trees;

drinking an open bottle of 1925 wine
like it hadn't turned to vinegar.
Even though I had it figured out

before the 45 minute mark,
compelling, refreshing for its genre,
(even if it is a film

predicated on saving a Nazi from an airstrike).


Tucker and Dale Vs.Evil (2010)

A little bit Texas Chainsaw,
a little bit beauty and the beast;
reverses stereotypes, mild gore,

light on T&A,
not explicitly feminist,
but a nice nod

to the impracticality of camping
in "stripper shoes."


Fright Night (2010):

Colin Farrell plays vampire,
and I quote, "PURE SEX." Ebullient
fear and humor scene-to-scene.

Probably the best movie
about Anton Yelchin
losing his virginity

(of which there are approximately two dozen).

Birth Control Tips with The Terminator (1984)

Hey, it's a great day to ignore March 3rd's protest of state-sanctioned rape! It's a bad year to have a uterus in most of the United states, but that is for one reason, and one reason alone. No, I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader, and the issue is not federal cuts to women's health providers like Planned Parenthood. It's not backward, hypocritical compromises in the government regarding health insurance coverage. Nor is it the recent congressional sausage party panel of "experts on women's health," none of whom have ever had vaginas. And it sure ain't the Republican campaign of misinformation, slut-shaming, and general promotion of sexual and gender-related ignorance at every opportunity.

The real problem here is that most women are forgetting is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is our most under-utilized form of birth control.

Let's go back in time, shall we?

It's 1984. You are a person of the female persuasion, single, perhaps working for shitty tips as a waitress in an off-brand Red Robin. I have good news for you! You do not have to worry about safe sex because a cybernetic organism in the form of an Austrian bodybuilder will appear naked in an alley, swathed in blue electricity, ready to address all of your birth control needs! In fact, you might say he's there to perform a pre-first-term abortion. Who needs the morning after pill? Arnold Schwarzenegger is the morning BEFORE pill.

Now I know what you're thinking: "But Jellybean, I've seen this movie. By the end of the movie, Sarah Connor is so pregnant that it looks like she has a watermelon under her dress! In fact, she has her kid BECAUSE the Governator went back in time to perform his innovative new form of birth control! The relationship between the Terminator and Sarah Connor's preganacy is practically CAUSAL!"

Well, Dear Reader, Sarah Connor may have had a kid, but the two Sarah Connors that the Governator visited before he got to her--THEY certainly won't be having any children. He was more than happy to sterilize them out of existence.

Which leads us to Birth Control with the Governator Tip #1: Try to have a common name, a land line, and make sure your listing is one of the first ones in the phone book. Trust me, your health concerns related to your lady-parts will be a distant dream.

Why use an IUD when a hail of bullets will do just fine? 

Birth Control with the Governator Tip #2: Choose your stalker wisely. The first half-hour of The Terminator is essentially a competition between two men trying to find, identify, and follow Sarah Connor. One of these, Kyle Reese, will become the love of Sarah Connor's life. And nothing enhances that tingly feeling of love-at-first-sight quite like these words: "Come with me if you want to live." Best. Pick-up line. Ever.

At the end of The Terminator, Sarah Connor is happy to explain of her dead tryst-mate that, "In the few hours we had together, we loved a lifetime's worth." Why was this relationship so fulfilling to Ms. Connor? The answer is communication. After she obeys her new boyfriend and gets in his stolen car, he seduces her with tender dialog: "Do exactly what I say. Exactly," he says, obviously paraphrasing Shakespeare's Sonnet #110, "Don't move unless I say. Don't make a sound unless I say."

Now ladies, don't be fooled by professions of love such as these.  Even when he follows them up by shouting, "Do you understand? Do you understand?" at you as if you are a deaf dog who just shit on the floor. If you fall for such proclamations of love, it will be all your fault when computers become sentient, initiating a future where human skulls will crack under the wheels of tanks and no one can wear colors other than gray and army green. I don't care how wet you get for, "Come with me if you want to live," ladies, keep that aspirin between your knees. Sarah Connor obviously chose the wrong stalker. If she had simply presented herself to Bachelor from the Future #2, her pesky Women's Health Issues would have been taken care of. Completely.

Now again, Dear Reader, you may have some questions. "But Jellybean, surely Sarah Connor's situation was unique; how can I apply to get my own Governator-style Health Care?" Well, just remember what Kyle Reese says: "They are living human tissue. They look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot." Don't you worry, Reader, because according to the timeline in The Terminator, there are cybernetic "birth control solutions" everywhere by now. And if you are currently pregnant, cheer up! According to the US Department of Justice, "pregnant women are more likely to be the victims of homicide than to die from any other cause." So if you are experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, the odds are really in your favor.

Birth Control with the Governator Tip #3: If you are biologically female, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TREAT THE BULLET WOUNDS OF A MALE. Regardless of your or his sexual orientation, this will inevitably lead to remarks about his neat scars, which, as we all know, is the #1 cause of unprotected sex. Which is why lady doctors and nurses are always so damn pregnant!

It's time that we insist our legislators keep first aid kits behind the counter, given how they inevitably lead to pregnancy. Band-Aids are dangerous. Cotton gauze? Might as well be selling rufies!

In fact, given this current birth control crisis, perhaps women should refrain from providing any sort of medical help to males, period.

Walk Tall (2004): Speak Softly and Beat up a Casino with a Big Stick

Because Wrestling is a kind of acting.

There are movies out there that reach me to my very core, and then there are movies who fumble for the pleasure center of my brain like a teenage boy with a bra strap. The former are more often known as films, and we will not be discussing them here. Films have their awards, their prestige, their place in the pantheon of critics and top 100 lists. They are dissected in film schools, they are cherished, they are High Art; they have their place in the world.

I am not here to talk about films.

I am here to talk about The Rock.

Dwayne Johnson, God bless him, does have his own prestige, mostly among young male rural Southern WWE fans. The entire plot of the movie Walk Tall can be summarized by the pithy Teddy Roosevelt saying, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Actually, I don't know that Dwayne (aka "The People's Champion^" aka "The Brahma Bull" aka "The Corporate Champion" aka "The Great One" aka "The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment")'s character speaks softly, but the stick part, that's pretty much the film in a nutshell.

"Hold on to my bullet-stopping man-boob!"

So a Special Forces sergeant returns from his tour of duty to his rural Washington state town, to find that the Great Symbol of Industry, the old mill, has been shut down and replaced by a casino, effectively turning the workforce from millers to blackjack dealers, drug dealers, and strippers-with-hearts-of-gold. At some point, casino thugs torture The Rock with a knife, but neither labor issues, nor, you know, being tortured, is enough to move him to civil action.

Civil action, by the way, means beating up a casino with a big stick. And joyfully dismantling a villainous truck.

At this point I'm bored with describing the plot. You can guess for yourself how many times men grimace at one another, claiming, "This is my town." Or how many homophobic jokes Our Heroes make (Hint: nothing is funnier than ending a movie on a prison rape joke!). You can guess whether The Rock confronts the evil casino owner in a fight to the death, and if his shirt gets torn in sed fight. I won't insult your B movie intelligence.


Instead, let's play fun with genetics.

Raven-Symone's child will, of course, be albino.

I recall a theory introduced to me by my friend Isaac in Texas. A rerun of The Cosby Show was on, and without prompt, he launched into a genetics analysis as to why Denise and Vanessa are so much paler than any of their relatives: his theory was that Clair Huxtable had an affair with a white man dropped a few of his kids, and Cliff Huxtable forgave her. Isaac offered no theory as to the progressive whitening of the Huxtables by generation. (Aggressive vitilago?)

My friend bypassed any thought about the racism inherent in casting, in which paler African-American actors are considered more desirable, less threatening, more "accessible." In other words, whiteness is privileged over any appearance of ethnicity, at least when we're talking about the, uh, 'good guys.' (Good news, dark-skinned black actors! You can always get a non-speaking role as a cutthroat Nigerian rebel, a Sudanese arms dealer, or a Haitian criminal/refugee on Law and Order.)

Now, we come to Dwayne, The People's Champion, whose adult parents in Walk Tall are played by John Beasley and Barbara Tarbuck, an African-American and a white actor, respectively. Dwayne is biracial, but apparently the casting department failed to do a quick internet search to learn that the US-born actor is not of Caucasian descent at all; he is both African-Canadian and DISTINCTIVELY SAMOAN.



So according to the laws of Hollywood genetics,

This guy

PLUS

This woman

 EQUALS

 THIS GUY

This would not seem so preposterous if Dwayne, at 6 ft. 3 in. didn't tower over his costar-parents generously, making any scene with him and one or both of them look like the forced-perspective tricks Peter Jackson used to make hobbits sit down to tea with a big gay pothead wizard (I love you, Ian McKellen!)

Maybe Barbara Tarbuck had an affair with a Sudanese-Samoan guy and her husband was just happy to be a dad to a 15lb baby?

"Wait, is this more baffling than it is racist, or vise versa?"

Tune in next week, when I tackle Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll probably want to explain why it's sexist or something.