With all the new free time I have acquired I am catching up on comics unread and movies unwatched. I have watched some duds, a masterpiece, and a one “Yeah that’s fine but Best Picture? C’mon”. That title belongs to mulitple Oscar nominee Moneyball.

I approach Moneyball as a devout hater of baseball since it is obviously the most boring sport in the world. I have no affection for sports in general but baseball is seriously the most boring shit to watch and play. Most sports have a one or the other thing going on. Soccer is a sweat storm. Football cripples people. Tennis is a full body workout with the added threat of mental breakdown. Have you read David Foster Wallace’s piece on tennis? It’s great, and that is coming from a guy who does not give a shit about tennis. I have friends that love baseball and have dragged me to baseball games and attempted to explain the game, the history and legacy of the players and I can’t bring myself to care. I can appreciate that they care and when I took a tour of the Seattle Mariner’s stadium while on vacation I was moved by the tour guide’s emotional recounting of a historic moment that took place at the field. I did not care about the event but I cared that he cared. With all of this baggage I still decided to watch Moneyball.

The gist of Moneyball is that teams with piles of money can buy the good players and teams with less money are stuck with the dregs of society. Brad Pitt’s Billy Beale teams up with Jonah Hill to fight against this terrible system. Jonah Hill has a couple scenes where he sorta kinda explains what his system is but the film isn’t really that interested in how the system works so I had to just go with the flow. The script is by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin but it never buzzes to life. Brad Pitt is fine but unremarkable and Jonah Hill is even less remarkable which got him an Oscar nomination because the Academy will only recognize comedic actors when they learn to stop making fools of themselves and learn that life isn’t just about having a good time. They have to stop making movies full of dick jokes and star in a respectable movie about men and baseball.

There is a really strange scene early on where Brad Pitt goes to pick up his plot contrivance-I mean daughter from ex-wife Robin Wright. Like all movie ex-wives she has taken up with a man who is nothing at all like the hero; in this case a weenie guy who knows nothing about baseball, portrayed by Spike Jonze. I assume the scene is there to let us know that Billy Beane was too much of a man for this woman who requires a nebbish who probably just reads and exercises by going for walks. HE CAN’T EVEN PRONOUNCE THE PLAYER’S NAMES! GOSH!

There are a couple scenes where Beane calls up other team managers and trades players. These scenes have a playful tone but since I never really understood why anyone was doing anything for any reason beyond the fact that the movie has let me know that Billy Beane is a good guy and all the old people are bad guys it all just plays as bouncy rhythms. That was an Up scene. Oh, this a Down scene. And so on and so forth. Would I be wrong in thinking that Zaillian’s austure epic style watered down Sorkin’s punch-punch-punch style? I’m just saying, Aaron Sorkin wrote a very entertaining tv show based entirely at an ESPN knockoff and a very entertaining movie about Facebook. Is baseball that hard to dramatize? Probably. There are a couple moments where Beane explains to Hill’s Peter Brand that he has to learn how to tell players they have been cut from the roster or traded. Hill is apprehensive but he eventually does tell a player they have been traded and everything goes fine and what was the point of that? “In this scene everyone acts like an adult.” Thrills!

Steven Soderbergh had been developing the film with a greater focus on the statistical elements of the source material, but had the film cancelled out from under him which allowed him to making the awesome Haywire so all is well that ends well, right? I don’t know if a all statistics take on this subject would make for a better movie but it certainly would have been less muddled. Since Moneyball isn’t that interested in the stats or the game itself both get a short shrift over Brad Pitt’s angsty sojourns. How much of Moneyball is just Brad Pitt sitting around, mulling shit over? We even get a long take of him pulling off the expressway to turn his car around. It’s a long take. I am not exaggerating. The film takes time early on to introduce various players, coaches and managers played by Chris Pratt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. These characters do nothing except have short terse conversations that have no payoff. Hoffman’s story arc is essentially sad, pissed, smiling. In other words, a waste of time for one of our greatest actors. Pratt is introduced as catcher who can’t catch who is made into a first baseman but then hits a winning home run so ok? Quite an arc you’ve created there.

Moneyball ends with sigh as we learn that other teams have utilized Beane’s statistical strategy to great success, except for Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s. So does Moneyball really work? Maybe, sorta, a little, not really, yes and no. Ultimately, it’s sports so it doesn’t matter anyway.

20) Patrick Stump – Soul Punk

Fall Out Boy stan for lyfe. Stump has his Timberlake moment and he nails it. The lyrics are cheesy but that’s because he has no time for winks and artifice. Dude wants to dance, girl.

19) Wild Flag – Wild Flag

Carrie wanted to rock again so she assembled a wrecking crew and done wrecked some shit.

18) Spank Rock – Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is a Fucking Liar

Spank Rock has important things to say and ideas to relate but thankfully he still makes booty jams. Go with what you know.

17) Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

In the Foo Fighter’s documentary Back and Forth, Dave Grohl points out that it was miraculous that There Is Nothing Left To Lose won a Grammy and it was recorded in his basement. He was equally incredulous when Wasting Light was nominated this year since it was recorded on tape in his garage. For his next one he should put Butch Vig in his pantry and Pat Smear in the laundry room.

16) Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire – Lost In Translation

A really good rapper who loves to rap about being under appreciated and getting head. Well, someone appreciates you, eXquire.

15) Beyoncé - 4 (Deluxe Edition)

The regular version is fine but you need the deluxe version for the song where she convinces her companion (Hov one presumes) to stay home from the club and makes the point that if he stays home he gets to have sex with Beyoncé. Well played, B.

14) Rival Schools – Pedals

Walter still sounds tougher than he looks and Ian is still a casual guitar god.

13) Justice – Audio, Video, Disco

In a way, Justice are taking a piss. But their interviews are so sincere and they say things like “My favorite book is the Bible” and aren’t kidding. They already did their half ass version of Don’t Look Back and now they’re doing a variation on Boston, except their spaceship crashed.

12) Cut Copy – Zonoscope

Divisive, this one. If In Ghost Colours cured cancer than this one took care of scoliosis.

11) Limp Bizkit – Gold Cobra

Wes Borland saved up all his best riffs and didn’t even use them in his own fucking band. It’s like he knew one day he’d want to put on the ol’ body paint and play “Break Stuff” for the millionth time. Fred Durst is now full on hilarious and lacking in apparently any self awareness, naming a song “Douchebag” and taking it’s chorus to homoerotic realms previously unexplored. He also refers to himself by the name “Polar Bear”, as his rhymes are indicative to the native climate of Siberia.

10) DJ Quik – The Book of David

DJ Quik is the kind of guy who will brag about things that no one else brags or even necessarily cares about. But that’s because Quik only deals in tangibles. He really does play piano, write his own rhymes, and once pistol whipped his sister for black mailing him. Also he still has all of his hair.

9) The Rapture – In The Grace Of Your Love

Jesus saves? Alright, just this once. Seeing as you brought all these jams with you.

8) Win Win – Win Win

Banger city, population: these guys. The Glenn Beck parody is on point too and I don’t generally fux with skits.

7) Das Racist – Relax

They’re still funny but most importantly the beats are fire. I’m not mad they put ”Rainbow In The Dark” on it since “Rainbow In The Dark” rules so who gets mad when a good song comes on? Not me, that’s for sure.

6) SebastiAn – Total

SebastiAn took his time putting out his debut album, some might say past the sell by date of this particular sound and style of music, in this case ’07 era blog house filter disco. But that stuff is great! And unlike dubstep you can dance to it. Everybody still likes to dance, right?

5) Lady Gaga – Born This Way

What a thrill to have Lady Gaga finally take her philosophy to making music videos and applying it to her music. That philosophy of course is more, more, more, steal, steal, steal. Love it. Her videos are still shit though.

4) Fred Falke – Part IV

Daft Punk make boring soundtracks now and Mylo won’t come out of his house except to yell at Kylie Minogue so Fred Falke rolled up his sleeves and did the hard work for them. I don’t want to say Fred’s a genius or anything but this thing is front to back bangers so maybe he is. Have him take a test and get back to me.

3) Sloan – The Double Cross

Sloan are great. They made another great album. They’ve taken Diddy’s words to heart.

2) Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne

The first time I listened to this album I thought it was good. Then I listened to it again and I thought it was still good but maybe had some other issues. I went back a third time to check out those issues but also to listen to the three song stretch of “Niggas In Paris”, “Otis”, and “Gotta Have It” which is the best 9 minute stretch of any album this year. I went back a fourth time and really started to enjoy the new lyrics on “That’s My Bitch”. The fifth time through I was in traffic and just kinda vibed with it. The sixth time I listened to it I had taken a break so it was all fresh and new again. Definitely started to appreciate Jay’s fire on “Why I Love You” but had started skipping “Made In America” at this point. On my seventh listen I was more amused than irritated by “Lift Off”, which only exists because Kanye was dying to use that NASA sample. On my eighth listen I pondered why they didn’t figure out some way to work “H.A.M.” into the equation instead of as a bonus track. On my ninth listen I was sure that someone should have told RZA to calm down with the ghostly wails on “New Day” so we could actually hear all of the lyrics. That said, just hearing these guys say “Me and the RZA connect” is treat enough. On my tenth listen I reconciled the fact that even if “Who Gon Stop Me” samples dubstep these guys at least take it’s bludgeoning sound to a logical conclusion and take that shit all the way over the top with Holocaust references, since dubstep is sorta the Holocaust of music scenes.  I just listened to Watch The Throne for fun after that. Good album!

1) Friendly Fires – Pala

Friendly Fires are too pure for this world. Even their sad songs are iridescent dance jams. Ed MacFarlane sings like he might die tonight and we’ve got to make the most of it, right now. “Are you ready, there’s not much time.” “Where are we going?” “I don’t know, but we’re going to dance the whole way!”

Nerd alert

(Warning: spoilers)

Basically the hipster DaVinci Code, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is David Fincher covering himself, delivering limp rehashes of Zodiac, Seven, and The Social Network, without any of the energy, flair or originality of those films. The plot is boring, the thrills nonexistent. The one chase scene is two vehicles on an empty road that lasts about a minute. Then the car flips over and explodes and everyone goes home. Daniel Craig is insanely miscast as a mega-nerd who bumbles around and says things like “Yeah, I’m a bit out of shape” while displaying a washboard stomach and looking like Daniel Craig. He also has multiple sex partners in the film who are all, “C’mon and fuck me, Daniel Craig!” which of course. The character of Lisbeth Salander is more interesting but the film doesn’t trust the viewer to believe that she would have any interest in solving a mystery even though she is introduced as someone who sleuths for a living so she has a lurid rape scene that is supposed to function as the tie between Salander’s interest in Daniel Craig’s research into a missing girl. Salander’s natural intuitive sense and foresight displayed at the very beginning  of the film when dealing with other plot points that occur at the end are ignored because you gots to have that rape scene apparently. Salander and Daniel Craig spend a lot of time staring at their computers and, unlike The Social Network, this bored me. A killer is eventually revealed and he talks forever before being dispatched because he couldn’t just kill somebody, could he? No, he has to explain himself. Then Lisbeth buys Daniel Craig a jacket and the clerk is all, “Nice jacket” and Lisbeth says, “It’s for a friend.” Sadly, Daniel Craig is back with his girlfriend who is actually married to someone else so Lisbeth throws the jacket in the trash and rides off on her bike AND THAT IS THE END OF THE MOVIE. Does anyone know if he finds the jacket in the trash at the beginning of part 2 and realizes what a jerk he’s been?

I’ve seen some reviews that praise the rape scene which is fucked up, right? If you must have a rape scene in your movie(must you? I doubt it) then don’t mess around with how terrible rape is. Irreversible is pretty much the last word on movie rape scenes because it just sits the camera down for between five to ninety minutes(give or take) and just watches a horrible event unfold. The style is the lack of style but it never takes away from the awful power of the event. Irreversible forces the viewer to reconcile with this terrible act. After sitting through that, the rape no longer functions as just another plot point but a damaging, awful life event that scars the characters forever. In Dragon Tattoo it’s just the impetus to get to the cool revenge scene. Salander before and after is unchanged. The scene is pointless. I rest my case.

20. Cher Lloyd – “Swagger Jagger“

Apparently a celebrity in the U.K., Cher Lloyd is repeatedly stalked by critics, haters and sycophants. To combat them, she made this song where she cutely raps about how they can’t get enough of her because they be jealous and are simply jocking her steez(Or swagger jagging) and then she sings the chorus over a pulsing electro beat that rocks so hard the ground shakes in the video. This dumb thing stole my heart.

19. Rihanna – “Where Have You Been“

No Rihanna, where has this song been? I know it’s made up of other songs and it’s not really all that original but it’s a fucking banger and anyone who knows me knows I love fucking bangers. She’s screaming “Where! Have! You! Been! All my liffffffeeeee!” and synth lazers are firing under her and then the world explodes. Oh, production by Calvin Harris? That makes sense.

18. Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire – “The Last Huzzah!” feat. Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown & El-P

The beat to “Huzzah” is hot as fuck so Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire invited all his bestest friends over to rap on it. And rap they do. El-P spits fire, Danny Brown makes me reconsider everything I’ve ever said about him, Das Racist kill it as usual and this Despot guy is pretty good too. eXquire gets the last word because hey, it’s his song. Necro produced this? Thrilled I can enjoy something he has created that isn’t sad or disgusting.

17. Rival Schools – “69 Guns“

United By Fate was my shit in 2002. This was unsurprisingly my shit in March.

16. Justice – “Helix“

My favorite song on that new Justice album everybody didn’t like. I don’t fux with 70′s radio rock but I enjoy Justice’s decision to smash and chop it into danceable guitar solos. Y’know, like Daft Punk used to do. Remember them?

15. Young L – “Bottle of Rose’“

Sifting through the myriad of hip hop mixtapes that come out every two days is worth it for those moments when some marginally talented misogynist gets ahold of a wrecking ball beat and kills that shit dead. Really, what would you say over a beat this sick? Nice things? No you wouldn’t.

14. Foo Fighters – “Rope“

This band has three guitarists now. Three! I think they all get to do something fun here.

13. Limp Bizkit – “Why Try“

In which Fred Durst spends the entire first verse and chorus literally killing you only to have you come back to life in the second verse just to get killed all over again. Nothing if not thorough. Wes Borland approximates an actual buzzsaw guitar, everyone else does their job and I pretend I’m in 11th grade again.

12. Beyoncé – “Love On Top“

Listen, I like “Countdown” just fine. More than fine actually. But when it comes down to it, I will always pick the songs that choose Off The Wall as their inspiration.

11. Lady Gaga – “Bad Kids“

I have to say that the bad behavior displayed in the track is pretty benign. Much like Lady Gaga in general, best to just move on and not dwell on it. But the Hi-NRG meets hair metal tableau works, despite the horror that is hair metal. I won’t call it magic. Maybe luck?

10. SebastiAn – “Kindercut“

For everyone who was disappointed that the new Justice album didn’t sound like the old Justice album, SebastiAn has a banger for you.

9. The Rapture – “How Deep Is Your Love“

Five years gone The Rapture pop back in with a straight up disco floor filler, acting like they haven’t been gone a millisecond. Good work, gentlemen.

8. DJ Quik – “Ghetto Rendezvous“

Only DJ Quik would air out his grievances with his sister on a beat this funky.  Enjoy the groove while DJ Quik tells his sister she has a yeasty vagina.

7. Das Racist – “Michael Jackson“

I feel you. Holla.

6. Sloan – “The Answer Was You“

Picking a standout from an album of standouts is a challenge (a delightful challenge) but hey, Jay is on fire here. His best song since “Don’t You Believe A Word”.

5. Spank Rock – “Race Riot“

XXXChange is my dawg 4 lyfe. I’ve been eagerly awaiting an actual recording of this song since seeing Spank Rock perform it live four years ago. Worth the wait, Spank Rock and XXXChange channel the Yoyoyoyoyo era with blaring horns and cowbell. Of course the centerpiece is the “Shake it till my dick turns racist” instruction. Yeah, this is a song about cumming.

4. WIN WIN – “Interleave With You” feat. Alexis of Hot Chip

Hey, it’s XXXChange again. The guy is great. Alexis has a great, sad vocal here but the MVP is that distorted bass synth line that creates a subtle background melody. You know the one. This is the song you play at your cyborg wedding AFTER you play “All Is Full Of Love“. Respect.

3. The-Dream – “Body Work/Fuck My Brains Out“

Originally a teaser for the now set for release in 2012 new The-Dream album, “Body Work/Fuck My Brains Out” is a nine and half minute career high. The first half all midtempo slow grind, The-Dream yowling and moaning out his desire, stopping and starting the beat at his discretion for emphasis and to do one his trademark “Ohhhh”‘s. So intense is his obsession for this woman at one point he admits he can’t even defecate if she isn’t around. Damn. “Fuck My Brains Out” is the raunchiest earworm this side of Prince’s “P-Control” and it’s “Listen to me baby” line has become a personal lyric meme between my wife and I.

2. Friendly Fires – “Hurting“

Is it going to hurt some feelings if I say that “Hurting” is Friendly Fires best song? The truth hurts.

1. Jay-Z & Kanye West – “Niggas In Paris“

They did this song five times when they played Pittsburgh but I certainly could have heard it a few more times. Basically, Jay-Z starts off killing it, Kanye comments that Jay just killed it so hard that it’s kinda crazy, then Kanye kills it, more affirmation of said craziness, then the world explodes. Let’s do that again! My wife played this in the car about five or six times in the last two days, and it was the first song that played on random when she drove to work this morning. THIS MEANS SOMETHING. What it means is that this song is great and we listen to it all the time.

The problem with Take Care is that Drake’s honesty is boring. Love or hate his decision to write songs about drunk dialing ex-girlfriends and this self involved “fame is hard” narrative, he fails to be interesting lyrically and musically. Take Care‘s 17 tracks of maudlin pity parties feature the kind of bland pronouncements just about anyone could convey. The act of a great artist is to make the mundane interesting, to present the human condition from an angle not always considered. The Drake on Take Care appears lucky instead of talented. Drake presents his scenarios in a unadorned and straightforward manner with little word play and a confessional style reminiscent of over hearing someone else’s conversation involving people you’ve never met. Unlike Kanye West, who is a mess of doubt and hubris and quite obviously a little crazy, Drake is pretty simple, a rich guy who fucks a lot of women. “Marvin’s Room” might be based on a real ill-advised drunk dial but is Drake any different on this track than any other where he’s telling women “they can do better”. There is a cloying sexism to Drake with his “Take care” and “Make me proud” sentiments that feel jerky and condescending. Drake’s party line would be ”Had a lot of sex, made plenty of money, not bragging just saying, feels empty”, delivered in that same plain spoken style, artless and often tone deaf. Drake’s lyrics on his first album  and his mixtapes were kinda corny but that corniness was endearing (Heck, I made sure “Best I Ever Had” got played at my wedding) and to abandon those attempts at lyricism for dull statements is a strange decision. Also, what is this; “Don’t listen to those lies/I swear they’re all lies“. This is Drake 2.0 so he’s not trying to be funny.

The beats on Take Care rarely ascend above a plodding midtempo so you can’t even dance to this shit. Just Blaze shows up at one point and straight up kills it but Drake doesn’t help by literally rapping about going through a girls phone and turns what should be a swagged out jam into another pity party. Oh well, I’m just glad to see Blaze back in the game. That dude has still got it. Finally, I don’t know what to make of the choice of turning “Back That Ass Up” into a ballad, but rest assured it was a bad one.

What must it be like when an artist or creative type realizes that their glory days are behind them?  Pusha T solo stuff remains a mixed bag of decent spitting on top of whatever beats that is solidly OK, which for anyone would be fine but this is one half of The Clipse, the guys who did this and this and THIS. The beats are never out and out bad but like I said, just OK. The best tracks are the Juicy J feature “Body Work” and the Neptunes production “Raid”. “Body Work” is your standard “we kill people” track and those are usually pretty good and hey so is this. “Raid” has a great beat and inspired verses from Pusha and 50 Cent of all people but strikes out with a particularly grating Pharrell hook which, y’know, hey, they can’t all be winners. The most exciting moment on the album is when Pusha promises a new Clipse record during the outro. Don’t forget to call the Neptunes when you’re making that one, Push.

I was about four tracks into Camp when I realized that I didn’t like any of the Childish Gambino mixtapes and that Camp is just more of the same, frantic rapping with pop culture references but no strong hooks. Obviously Donald Glover wants to be taken seriously as a rapper which means no funny business but Childish Gambino just gives me a “Party All The Time” vibe, Glover playing against his strengths to deliver “serious” hip hop that no one would ever put on at a party or dance to yet is the essence of what type of music he is clearly trying to make. There is no arrogant foolishness or wild eyed frenzy because Glover is so intent on being taken seriously that there is no room to breathe. Watch the video for “Freaks and Geeks“, where Glover raps his heart out with rhyme after rhyme of references and word play but it isn’t exhilarating, only exhausting. It’s a shame that the album title refers to this instead of this.

Talk That Talk has the most good songs by Rihanna in one place at least until her inevitable Greatest Hits album. The ballads are still dull and the sex talk awkward and unconvincing but there are some bangers which I didn’t really expect. Loud did a bait and switch with “Only Girl In The World” and with Talk That Talk‘s lead single “We Found Love” I figured that would be the album’s peak, much like how “Rude Boy” was the shining moment of glory amongst Rated R‘s crappy rock songs and dubstep. Imagine my joy and surprise upon hearing “Where Have You Been”. A straight up monster, “Where Have You Been” is a future Hall of Famer which is surprising since part of the vocal steals it’s melody from a Johnny Cash classic that I wouldn’t think to nick from when crafting a dancefloor jam. The hook is pure butter and proves that Rihanna is at her best when she abandons the ice queen style that she tends to fall back on and embraces being a human being. Most importantly, the beat is fucking sick as hell. Elsewhere, Talk That Talk is about what one could hope for from a Rihanna album with an obligatory Jay-Z verse on the title track that I enjoy in spite of the fact that I find Hov unconvincing in his pose as a man who is still actively pursued by groupies. Over 40 and about to be a father I can’t believe Jay-Z would spend any time interacting with anyone he talks about on the track. The-Dream and Tricky Stewart contribute of course but for some reason their track “Birthday Cake” fades out before it even becomes anything. The dubstep track is relegated to the deluxe version so small favors there. At this pace, Rihanna will make a half way decent album by the time she’s thirty. Just keep making those club bangers, girl.

Another new podcast! This week my good friend Lauren and I discuss DJ Quik and all that he has done for the world(hot beats, sick rhymes).

Four Brothers isn’t actually all that bad. It can be extremely hokey at times but it is sincere. It exists in a world of little police presence where Mark Wahlberg can brandish a gun at an entire high school gymnasium and not face a single moment of jail time. It’s a movie where the heroes murder the villains execution style. It’s the kind of movie where Mark Wahlberg will repeatedly tease and harass Tyrese about Tyrese’s penchant for having a lot of sex with an attractive woman. I interpreted Wahlberg’s character as either shy around women or more than likely a closeted homosexual. His character is quick with a lie and a punch. Perhaps this will be addressed in the actually might happen sequel, Five Brothers. Hopefully the new brother will be Wahlberg’s lover.(Fingers crossed!)

Four Brothers has a few action sequences that are ok. One involves a shootout at a house where the villains realize that bullets CAN break through brick, but these villains are no good at finding cover and anyone can basically shoot them in the open. This sequence features the hilarious death of Garrett Hedlund’s character, who can be seen actually crunching the blood capsule in his mouth.  The remaining three brothers don’t spend any time mourning this character’s death and move on with the plot. A car chase earlier in the film is mainly cars sliding around on the road until one of them flips allowing Tyrese and Wahlberg the opportunity to casually murder the (evil) drivers. Hedlund’s reaction to these murders is to be shocked and horrified but he’s fine in the very next scene which is a bit of jokey misdirection as Wahlberg wears a woman’s robe to hide his wounds from investigating officer Terrence Howard. Man, remember when Terrence Howard was in everything? Why was that? Little known fact: Hustle and Flow is terrible.

"Don't you die on me, brother!"

Howard’s cop character is either pretty lazy or slow on the pickup. How do you miss the fact that your longtime partner is a dirty cop? He plays pool at the bar owned by the bad guy! He answers your questions with the tone of a petulant child who’s been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Do something before he shoots you in the chest and face six times and blames it on a group of black youths. Oh, too late. RIP Terrence Howard’s character.

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance as Victor Sweet is the gem of the film and the only obvious indicator that director John Singleton was trying to make a homage to 70′s crime and exploitation films. Victor Sweet is a villain in the Nino Brown class forcing a underling and the underling’s wife to eat pasta off the floor. In another scene he makes a dirty politician wait for him at the children’s table at a party. I kinda liked Victor Sweet.

Andre 3000 is one of the four titular brothers and he’s fine you guys. But it is hilarious(Hilarious!) that Three Stacks plays a character named Jerry. I only know of one other Jerry and he looks like this.

Jerry

The finale of Four Brothers takes place on a frozen lake bed where Victor Sweet and Mark Wahlberg have a fist fight and after getting punched a couple times Sweet just gives up and lets his now former underlings pitch him into a hole in the ice. No muss, no fuss, just a frozen, watery grave for the formerly great Victor Sweet. I’ve never seen a villain resign himself to death and defeat so easily. “That Wahlberg sure can hit. I guess I should just die now.”

Four Brothers is set in Detroit which is given some establishing shots and is bad mouthed by just about every character, which explains why the film was mainly shot in Ontario. At one point a character references Ben Wallace and then says “Ah yes, Pistons!”

Why do my coworkers love this film so much? A few guesses: the scene where Mark Wahlberg takes a shit and argues with Tyrese; the fact that Mark Wahlberg clearly improvised all his lines; Fionnula Flanagan superfans.

Damn, girl.

More likely, they love a film that is called Four Brothers that spends the first 40 minutes having the characters repeatedly refer to each other brothers and explain to other characters that they are in fact brothers.

This guy gets it.

What a shitty piece of garbage. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is actually worse than you’ve heard and also fucking boring. It has zero narrative connecting events in the first half of the movie to the latter, and it literally ends because there is no one left to brutally murder. Oh and the action sucks. You might have heard that Dark of the Moon is better than the second Transformers movie that everyone involved agreed was terrible(after the fact). I’m sure they’ll say the same thing about this one too in a couple years.

Believe it or not, the moon landing was spurred on because a Autobot ship crashed there and the U.S. government wanted first crack at it before the Soviets so an animatronic/stock footage JFK sent NASA into action to retrieve the ship first. Michael Bay tries to get creative in presenting a convincing CGI Kennedy but fails miserably and instead gives us something out of Disney’s Hall of Presidents. He also has some shots of CGI Kennedy that have the same film texture as the Zapruder films because why not. There is a very lazy shot of a Fake Nixon on the phone with the Apollo 11 astronauts. Fake Nixon sits slighty out of focus in the background while the foreground has a monitor showing actual footage of the real Nixon on the phone, except real Nixon is moving his lips while the fake Nixon is clearly just sitting there.

All of the 60′s flashback stuff is delivered with the utmost seriousness and I paid attention since I assumed that this information would relate to events later on in the film. NOPE. Like so many things that occur in these movies, this is just a thing that happened to the Transformers and we don’t need to think about it anymore. There is a shot late in the film where a bunch of Decepticons rise out of the surface of the moon, but no indication of how they got there is ever given. I guess they crashed another time but we didn’t go back up to check because Patrick Dempsey’s dad cut NASA’s funding. Everything you know is a lie.

Shia LaBeouf’s character Sam is an asshole in this film. He’s a prick to everyone; his parents, his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s boss, Bumblebee, random government personel, and job interviewers. His sense of entitlement is unbearable and frankly unearned.

Sam’s plot at the beginning of the film is some lame horseshit about not being able to find a job out of college even though he went to an Ivy League school. Super sympathetic plot, yo. Before we meet Sam again though we meet his girlfriend’s ass, which Bay lovingly shoots as she ascends the stairs, sans pants. The only attractive shots in the entire film are of women and cars, Michael Bay’s true passions. He also loves boats(The Island).  Megan Fox has been replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who accomplishes the impossible by making me miss Megan Fox. Fox’s character Mikaela was a gearhead and automobile enthusiast. She was a woman with a story(of sorts) and genuinely interested in Sam. Huntington-Whiteley’s Carly is a lazy fill-in, introduced as a White House intern who then goes to work for Patrick Dempsey’s classic car restoration business because they used to race cars together? What? Wikipedia states:

Initially cast to play Mikaela’s boss, Dempsey’s role was reassigned when Mikaela was written out of the film.

Reassigned in the sense that the scriptwriter did word replace with “Mikaela” and put in “Carly” instead.

Miss you, girl.

Sam goes to a series of interviews where he’s a douche and doesn’t get any offers before meeting with John Malkovich. This entire sequence serves no purpose but to pad out the running time because Michael Bay wants you leaving that theater with those pants done pissed, boy. Ken Jeong shows up for ten or so minutes of gay panic and “funny” behavior before a Decepticon pushes him out of a window to his death. Malkovich tells everyone to get back to work because “you all know what happens when someone falls out of building”. Casually brushing off the death of a human being is a Bay trademark. You could say the death of Jeong’s character is Transformers: Dark of the Moon‘s “That is how you shoot” moment.

MEANWHILE, various ancillary characters, ‘Bot, ‘Con, and ‘man discussed the discovery of an autobot engine part found in Chernobyl. Turns out the U.S. government never told ol’ Optimus Prime about the how’s and why’s of the space program and the spaceship that is done lodged itself into the crust of the moon. Optimus Prime is pretty pissed about this but then they introduce him to Buzz Aldrin. Buzz Aldrin says it is “an honor” to meet Optimus Prime and Optimus is all no, no, it’s an honor to meet you, Buzz Aldrin. This scene is kinda funny and sad, you guys. Also, it fucking exists forever.

Optimus Prime and some other Autobots go to the moon and retrieve Sentinel Prime from the crashed space ship. Turns out he was Optimus Prime’s old boss and that when he disappeared Optimus Prime got promoted. Optimus is a standup dude and after he revives Sentinel Prime they go sight seeing in Africa and Sentinel Prime makes some in hindsight ominous statements about how great Earth is.

Well, turns out ol’ Sentinel Prime is a jerky turncoat. When he flew away from  the battle of Cybertron(don’t ask) it wasn’t to get help or whatever, it was to join the Decepticons. I know.

Optimus Prime feels bad about trusting Sentinel Prime and that that trust lead to the death of a fellow autobot and a bunch of people on the freeway. Sentinel Prime teams up with Megatron(voiced by Agent Smith!) and they tell the United Nations to ban all of the Autobots from the Earth. The U.N. folds like fucking oragami and says sure, shoot those fuckers into space, you guys seem like ok people.

Patrick Dempsey is in Dark of the Moon because Michael Bay only works with *stars*.

MEANWHILE again, Sam learns that Patrick Dempsey is actually Evil Patrick Dempsey, in cahoots with the Decepticons due to the fact that his father was also in cahoots with Decepticons and one can only assume that Evil Patrick Dempsey’s children will also be forced into an alliance with the Decepticons as well. Dempsey forces Sam to wear an evil Decepticon watch(sorry, I couldn’t see what brand. A rare product placement miss for T:DOTM) that will allow the Decepticons to eavesdrop on Sam’s conversations with Optimus Prime and also force Sam to act like he is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. I would hate to have the job of listening in on conversations with Optimus Prime because Optimus Prime is boring. Seriously, he gives about five to ten speeches during Transformers: Dark of the Moon and they’re all about trust and legacy and whatever you know all of the other autobots tune that shit out too. If only it’d been Optimus with the vocal cord issues instead of Bumblebee.

Sam asks Optimus Prime what his plan is after they get shot into space and Optimus Prime says, “No plan, Sam. We’re just going to sit around in space. Whatev’s. See you, be brave, the power of greyskull, silverhawks, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Then the Autobots are launched into space and a Decepticon flys over and blows up the spaceshuttle, visually evoking the horror and sadness of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. Does Michael Bay have a tattoo of the word “classy” on his body because if not he should totally get one. Everyone is sad about the autobots dyin- Wait. No, I’m sorry. No one is really that upset about the autobots. No one reacts in any way that would indicate that the robotic characters who have inhabited the last two films of this series have horrifically perished in a space shuttle explosion. I guess that is what I should expect from a film that also doesn’t acknowledge the fact that in the last film the Decepticons revealed their existence to the planet and then demanded the world turn over Sam and yet every new person Sam meets in this movie has no idea who he is. HIS FACE AND NAME WAS BEAMED AROUND THE WORLD DURING AN ALIEN INVASION! C’mon, somebody must remember that.

Screen shot from a movie made for children.

The Decepticons promptly set up base in the center of the world, Chicago, and begin their plan of blowing it to pieces. Sentinel Prime sets up some bars or some shit to begin the process of remaking Earth like Cybertron, even though Earth’s climate is pretty hospitable to Autobots and Decepticons. Based on the damage they do to our architecture, perhaps they just hate our design sense. Evil Patrick Dempsey explains to Not Megan Fox (as he drags her from room to room in Trump Tower) that the Decepticons are going to need humans as slave labor to recreate Cybertron on Earth and Evil Patrick Dempsey just needs to squeak out forty more years of life, even if it is as a slave of Decepticons. Now, considering that the only skill set displayed by Decepticons(and Autobots) is changing their appearance and destroying anything and everything they encounter, I would have been genuinely interested in the Decepticon’s plans for construction of a New Cybertron. Are there blueprints and specs? Training videos for your new slave labor so that your Decepticon Split Level is built to the correct specifications? I must express some doubt on how much rebuilding the Decepticons planned this human slave labor to do since they spend most of their time murdering people. Some are crushed, others vaporized into bones. This goes on for awhile. No additional demands are ever issued by the Decepticons for the human population to surrender and begin work on the Decepticons Only cyber golf course.

Sam teams up with Tyrese(Hey! Tyrese! Good to see you. Fast Five was great!) and his friends and they decide to storm Chicago and save Sam’s girlfriend? Yes, save Sam’s girlfriend. Not defeat the Decepticons, just save the girlfriend. They get about a mile into city limits and Tyrese admits that it is just too hard and that they should go back home and get ready to work for Cybertron McDonald’s. But then Optimus Prime shows up! Holy shit! I thought that guy was dead! “No,” says Optimus Prime, clearing up that confusion. Turns out the Autobots snuck out of the Space Shuttle right before it exploded. This is not shown and no one asks any other questions.

HOUR LONG ACTION SEQUENCE!

Various Transformers crap happens. A professor autobot gives Sam a weapon and later is murdered, execution style. Have I mentioned that this movie for children is very callous and blasé about murder and death? Anyway, this whole sequence isn’t very good. In fact, it is very bad. Events and encounters occur with no indication given towards geography and locations. Characters fly in and blow up shit at random and disappear and reappear as they are required for the action sequence itself to “work”. Since having any autobots during the 9/11 sequence would diminish the danger, they are all curiously M.I.A. I call it the 9/11 sequence since Sam, Tyrese and gang are inside a toppling building, falling out of windows and screaming. Seriously Michael, think about that tattoo.

Optimus Prime flys around and after destroying a random Decepticon he becomes tangled in some wire. I’m pretty sure he was stuck there for about twenty minutes of screen time before some other Autobots cut him down. I wonder what he thought about when he was strung up there. Do you think he pondered the strange twists and turns his life had taken? Did he perhaps find a dark humor in his situation, hanging upside down under a bridge while others fought for humanity’s future? Y’know what, let’s never ask him because I’m sure the answer is nothing that interesting.

Eventually, Optimus Prime faces off against Sentinel Prime. Sentinel Prime tears off Optimus’s arm, but then Megatron appears and sucker punchs Sentinel Prime because Not Megan Fox called Megatron a pussy. How did that happen, you wonder? Oh, Not Megan Fox found Megatron sitting in an alley and said, “You know, Sentinel Prime thinks you’re a Megapussy, Megatron.”

Optimus Prime thanks Megatron by ripping out his spinal cord(that’s what it looked like) and chopping off Sentinel Prime’s head. Then Optimus Prime started on with another speech and I think but I’m not sure that they cut him off and went to the Directed by Michael Bay card.

As the credits rolled on Transformers: Dark of the Moon a Linkin Park song began playing and a man sitting behind me loudly sang along. This was unexpected to say the least and unbelievable as it continued while his seatmates calmly discussed the film and then departed the theater, singer in tow.

There is an article in GQ this month that offers a oral history of Michael Bay. It’s a fun read but it’s existence is Bay and his defenders doth protesting too much. For all the talk of Bay’s skill at “awesome” it would be self evident. But over and over again this has proven to not be the case. The Transformers movies have crammed in romance, drama, comedy and action and failed at all of them. The best you can say about the rest of Bay’s career is consistent mediocrity. Everyone who has followed in Bay’s footsteps(McG!) have not achieved similar box office clout and thus lack the defenders that Bay has acquired. Michael Bay is the movie industry’s Goldman Sach’s, too big to fail. If Michael Bay wanted to answer his critics he’d make a good movie. Simple as that. That he hasn’t is either a testament to his stubborness or more likely, a lack of ability.

A couple years ago my good friend Justin Muschong lent me the film Samurai Rebellion and insisted I watch it because it was a “great movie”. It sat on my shelf for a long while because I just wasn’t in the mood to watch a great movie and instead I read comic books and watched Demolition Man. My mistake. When I finally did get around to watching Samurai Rebellion I was pleased to find that it was indeed a “great movie” and that I was a better person for watching it. Samurai Rebellion is great for it’s themes of honor and loyalty, but what makes it also enjoyable is the slow buildup of tension that finally explodes when there is a fucking samurai rebellion. 13 Assassins follows this same template but does give you more bits of action before the grand finale because audiences would get impatient if all these guys with swords just kept talking all the time. 13 Assassins also owes a debt to Seven Samurai but of course it does.

For a Takashi Miike film 13 Assassins is subdued and polished. It says something about Miike’s other films that 13 Assassins contains numerous acts of harakiri and decapitation and yet still counts as a more subtle work from him. The plot is that the now retired samurai Shinzaemon is pulled back into active service by the shogun to assemble of secret team of assassins to kill Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira, who is a fucking asshole. This is the only accurate description of this character after we see him rape a woman, murder her husband and use another family for archery practice. Oh, and he cut a woman’s arms and legs off and left her in the rain. Yup, we got it Miike. Naritsugu is a grade-A jerk.

Shinzaemon is thrilled to have the work because it means he gets to die in battle. Whatever floats your boat, Shinzaemon. Shinzaemon gets to work recruiting his team of assassins including a sloppy old dude with a spear, a badass with a dirtstache, and Shinzaemon’s nephew who has taken to gambling because it’s the only thing that makes him feel alive.

Shinzaemon: Wanna feel alive? Lets go kill some people.

Nephew: Aight. (to wife) Light a torch.

Dirtstache has one of best moments in the film when he comes to the aid of another samurai but not before introducing himself as a ronin and then KILLING EVERYBODY.

The best feature of 13 Assassins is the light touch given to what could be weighty, pretentious material. Just because a film takes place in the past and deals with outmoded social strata and rituals does not mean we have to be glum and po-faced all the time. Shinzaemon has an easy smile and the character of Kiga is what the old showbiz fatsos would call a “crowdpleaser”. The final 45 minutes of 13 Assassins is devoted to a fullout samurai war between some two hundred warriors against the titular thirteen. Lives are lost, lessons are learned, and severed heads are kicked like soccer balls.