Cowboy Junk-y.


I highly doubt any compadres and comadres out there need me to tell them at this late date that Jimmy Hayward’s loud, dumb, Hoobastank-ish adaptation of DC’s Jonah Hex is, all things considered, a lousy film. So, to be clear right up front: In no way am I recommending that anyone actually sit through the durned thing, especially if your own money is involved. But, I am forced to admit: While I may have just been in a summer-afternoon, World Cup-enhanced good mood at the time, I actually found Jonah Hex to be a pretty entertaining lousy film, if you set your brain to numb and roll with it.

For, however defiantly stupid Hex is for most of its run, and yes, Hex is extremely, flagrantly stupid — we know that from the horse-mounted howitzers in the first reel — at least the movie is aware enough of its drive-in badness just to let its Weird Western Tales freak flag fly. (Speaking of Hex’s comic book origins, the obligatory source material disclosures: I’ve been aware of the character since he popped up in the Crisis way back when, but never really followed him, even when he got sent into the far-flung future for some reason, and I couldn’t tell you much about Hex beforehand except the scar.)

So basically, I found Jonah Hex to be on the bizarrely-enjoyable, “TNT New Classic at two in the morning” side of terrible, as opposed to the just-plain-irritating-terrible of, say, 1999’s The Wild, Wild West. (Or, to take two recent examples, Alice in Wonderland or Clash of the Titans.) True, gun-for-hire John Malkovich seems really bored as this twisted tale’s Big Bad, Confederate general Quentin Turnbull. (Like Hugo Weaving in The Wolfman, another genre turn I thought would have to be fun no matter what, Malkovich is a letdown. Even in other easy paychecks like Con Air, I’ve never seen him so listless.) But the Malkatraz choosing to phone-it-in notwithstanding, there’s still a lot of goofy fun at the fringes of Jonah Hex.

I mean, we’ve got rising star Michael Fassbender (of Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank and, soon X-Men: First Class — He’s the Magneto to James McAvoy’s Professor X) as a jolly, lilting Irish-immigrant henchman in a bowler hat. There’s Will “Gob Bluth” Arnett playing it straight as a McClellan-esque Union general, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (of Watchmen and The Losers) as a wordy and depressed zombie, Lance Reddick (nee Major Cedric Daniels) slumming it as Hex’s Q, American Beauty‘s since-AWOL Wes Bentley randomly popping up very briefly as Southern Gentleman #2…and that’s not even getting into the random Civil war-era gladiatorial bat-beasts and whatnot.

And then there’s Hex himself: Josh Brolin, who, not unlike Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley in Splice, carries the stoic deadpan — with a glint of laughter in the eyes — of a man who seems to be in on the joke. If nothing else, Brolin — after spending two decades not-really-making-it between 1985’s The Goonies and 2007’s No Country for Old Men — seems to be getting a real kick out of being an A-Lister carrying his own B-level comic book film. For her part, Megan Fox is not much to write home about here, but she’s easy on the eyes and acquits herself well enough. I know she’s often a target of many people’s weirdly vociferous wrath. But I’ll give Fox this: If Hex and Jennifer’s Body are any indication, she seems to have a pretty solid sense of her own limited range.

Now, you’ll notice I’ve gone several paragraphs in now without mentioning anything involving the actual story, and that should give you a sense of its quality. But, basically, Hex wants revenge on the aforementioned Gen. Turnbull, since he’s the man who disfigured him (good work, make-up people), murdered his family before his eyes, and inadvertently gave Hex the power to commune with the dead (although, apparently not with his family, which is where you’d think he’d then spend most of his time.) Turnbull, meanwhile, wants to level the Union on its 100th anniversary, as payback for that whole Civil War thing — you may have read about it. (The engine of his centennial-obliterating master plan are highly dangerous WMD, apparently once engineered by Eli Whitney — In practice, they’re glowing golden orbs not unlike the pinkish bombs Jar Jar et al were flinging around Naboo in The Phantom Menace. And, yes, the fact I just mentioned Episode 1 should again give you a sense of what you’re in for here.

So, yeah, the film is bad, no doubt. But I still definitely enjoyed myself through its schlocky-grisly awfulness. If you’ll allow me to explain by digression: Speaking of John Lee Hancock’s amiable but slightly dull adaptation of The Alamo in 2004, I finished up by saying of Billy Bob Thornton’s Davy Crockett that “Billy Bob is so good here that I spent most of the film contemplating who else I’d cast alongside Thornton for the definitive American History miniseries. Christopher Walken as 1850 Henry Clay? Fred Thompson as James Buchanan? Adrien Brody as Mexican War-era Lincoln? The possibilities are endless.

And, with that in mind, I think the point where Hex sorta sold me as Z-grade entertainment, despite its pretty unmitigated badness otherwise, is when Aidan Quinn (most recently playing a drunk-of-a-different-color in The Eclipse) shows up as President Ulysses S. Grant, a man who needs that outlaw and ex-Confederate rapscallion Jonah Hex on the side of God and country, his dirty deeds be damned, or else. If you’ve been coming ’round these parts and reading the movie reviews for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed I have a weakness for both historical recreations and genre outings. Well, however much of a bomb in the end, Jonah Hex at least has the good sense to frolic happily at that crossroads for awhile.

No Joke. | The Hawk Locker.

‘No’, says Nolan emphatically and unhesitatingly. He resists elaborating simply because, quite understandably, he says, ‘I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it.’” Christopher Nolan nips talk of recasting the Joker for Batman 3. (There was much fanboy speculation that the Ledger-esque Joseph Gordon-Levitt, now on Team Nolan as of Inception, might take up the war paint for some kind of Silence of the Lambs-y type nod to the character from the depths of Arkham Asylum. No can do, apparently.)

Elsewhere in the comic movie department, Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, 28 Weeks Later, and The Asssassination of Jesse James looks set to join Joss Whedon’s The Avengers as Hawkeye. Which makes you wonder — how deep into Avengers canon are we going here? Ant-Man and Wasp seem likely…what of Vision and Scarlet Witch?

Heroes Among Us.


Most of the U.S. national news about immigration is very sad: bitter political disputes in Arizona, or images of desperate immigrants trying to cross the border. So much pain numbs you. It is easy to overlook the practical contribution of immigrants to American society, as well as the enormous financial contribution they make in sending remittances home. A lot of Latino communities survive on that money…Comic-book superheroes have an alter ego, and so do immigrants in the United States. They may be insignificant or even invisible to much of society, but they are heroes in their homelands.

In Foreign Policy, photojournalist Dulce Pinzon shares her photo collection of Mexican migrant workers dressed as superheroes. (Officially here.) “The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper.

“The Beast” is not contained.

The relationship between the federal government and the oil company has been an awkward collaboration all along — “We have them by the neck,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said of BP in congressional testimony last week — but it reached a turning point Monday when the administration said it no longer wants to share a podium with BP at the daily briefing in Louisiana. Instead, the national incident commander, Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, will give a solo briefing wherever he happens to be.

With “Top Kill” a failure, the way forward murky, the environmental impact likely irrevocable, and oil still flowing into the Gulf at a rate three times what BP tried to spin, the Obama administration begins to move toward a more confrontational footing, including having Attorney General Holder look into a possible criminal investigation. Yeah, I’d say there’s a case there. And it’d be a much better use of Justice’s time than its flat-out reprehensible war on whistleblowers. (Aquaman cover via Graphic Policy. And Spongebob fared little better.)

Update 2: “‘We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, anyone who has violated the law,’ Holder said. ‘This disaster is nothing less than a tragedy.’” I’m all for it — Let’s get some accountability here for once. But, hey, you know what else is a tragedy? Torture. And you know what else? Indefinite detentions. And you know what else? The fraud-fueled Wall St. meltdown. As I noted above, the only folks this Justice Dept. seems to have been cracking down on so far, in full defiance of 2008 campaign promises about transparency, are whistleblowers. Their priorities have seemed awfully screwed-up thus far, to say the least.

The Back of another Bat Day.


“‘I’m very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters,’ said Nolan. ‘My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff.'” The third and final Christopher Nolan Batman film gets a release date: July 20th, 2012. “Unlike the comics, these things don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling.‘” (FWIW, whatever Batman III has in store, Nolan seems to have closed the door on Robin awhile ago.)

(L)East Meets West.

In this week’s trailer bin, M. Night Shyamalan tries to get his groove back with some help from Nicktoons in the new trailer for his live-action version of The Last Airbender, with Noah Ringer, Nicole Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Dev Patel and Aasif Mandvi. Sorry, M. Night, but after Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water, and that Mark Wahlberg Triffids movie (Google reminds me: The Happening), I’m skipping this unless reviews say otherwise.

And, elsewhere on Yahoo…what’s wrong with your FACE? Josh Brolin mounts up for his own third-tier comic book film in the first trailer for Jimmy Hayward’s Jonah Hex, also with Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, and Lance Reddick. Oof…seems pretty clear I’ll have to get my drink on before this bad boy.

Got No Secrets to Conceal.


Let’s get right down to brass tacks: Sylvain White’s The Losers is not very good. Both the second edgy comic adaptation (after Kick-Ass) and the second elite-ops-on-a-suicide-mission movie (after Clash of the Titans) in a summer full of them (The A-Team, The Expendables, arguably Salt), The Losers feels shoddily written, by-the-numbers, and altogether pedestrian. (In fact, notorious hackmeister Akiva Goldsman has a producer cred here – that’s a pretty good tip-off for what you’re in for.)

And yet, even though The Losers is one of those movies where you sit around dutifully ticking off the one-liners, action beats, and omg-‘splosions from the trailer as they happen, just so you can figure out when you get to go home, I’ll say this: The movie’s got charisma to spare. I mean, The Comedian, Stringer Bell, Johnny Storm, Uhura (or, if you liked Avatar more than I did, Neytiri)…all in a B-movie, rock-’em-sock-’em action flick? That should work, right? And that’s not even counting appealing presences like Columbus Short, Oscar Jaenada, and Holt McCallany along for the ride.

And so there’s a strange, vaguely entertaining tension playing out at the heart of The Losers, almost despite itself. Are the amiable actors on display here enough to compensate for a film that is so lazy and perfunctory in pretty much every other aspect of its production? And, the answer is…no, not really. With one notable exception, all the players here eventually check out and succumb to the lethargy of the proceedings. (Losers, indeed.) Still, unlike Clash or Alice in Wonderland, Losers is never an irritatingly, in-your-face terrible experience. It’s just a ho-hum 100-minutes of blah that I’m sure will end up feeling perfectly harmless when TNT runs it into the ground a few years hence.

Anyway…The Losers, you say? Based on a Vertigo comic by Andy Diggle and Jock (I haven’t read it. The only DC Losers I’m familiar with are the WWII tank outfit that died in the Crisis), The Losers are basically your standard-issue coterie of black-ops, get-any-job-done paramilitary badasses, as per most every other film in this genre. Oh, and, as you might expect, they’ve been betrayed and left for dead by their handler, the mysterious and very well-connected Max (Jason Patric, way over the top but it’s not really his fault. Whatcha gonna do when the part is, for all intent and purposes, Dr. Evil?)

So, yes, this is basically the exact same story as The A-Team, or, for that matter Machete (once of Grindhouse, now, somewhat depressingly, its own full-length flick, coming to a theater near you this fall.) Only this time, somebody’s “f**ked with the wrong Mexican” — that would be laconic, eagle-eyed sharpshooter Cougar (Jaenada) — and his four friends: Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the hard-livin’ leader with woman troubles; Roque (Idris Elba), the grouchy #2 and knife specialist; Jensen (Chris Evans), the motor-mouthed hacker and comic relief; and Pooch (Short), the pilot and family man.

The X-Factor in this all-too-predictable tale is the lovely Aisha (Zoe Saldana), an alluring assassin who recruits the Losers in Bolivia, as they lick their wounds post-double-cross, and who makes the team a Godfather offer: She’ll get them back in the US if the Losers promise to take out Max for good. That sounds like a win-win for everybody…but what is Aisha’s game, exactly? Well, do you really want me to tell you? There aren’t too many surprises to be had here, so best keep that one quiet for now. (I will give away this: poor Saldana doesn’t get much to do but look great, drop some exposition now and again, and occasionally blow stuff up.)

Then again, she’s not alone in that regard. Anyone who’s ever watched The Wire knows that Elba is a charisma-bomb on most occasions. As Stringer Bell, he always commanded one’s full attention. But, here, he just seems bored and in a funk. Same goes for Morgan, who made a decent impression as the Comedian in Watchmen but, again, doesn’t have either the wherewithal or the ambition to spin gold from lead here. Somehow, someway (and just like Clash of the Titan‘s “power of Medusa”), this movie just seems to suck the life right out of people — It’s as if everyone realized at some point they were in a second-rate action movie and recalibrated their behavior accordingly.

The one notable exception I mentioned earlier, tho’, is the future Captain America, Chris Evans. Perhaps, thanks to his quality turn as the Human Torch in the otherwise atrocious Fantastic Four films, Evans has already had some practice in how to be the best thing in a bad movie. (He’s also quite good in the promising but maddeningly uneven Sunshine.) Or perhaps it’s just because his character, Jensen, is given the meatiest stuff to work with. Nonetheless, Evans sells it — The Losers is a zippier, vervier film whenever he’s onscreen. Which I guess makes him the winner of The Losers [rimshot]…Mama didn’t raise no fool.

Who Watches the Mr. Men?

“The idea basically sparked from the realisation that Mr Happy from the Mr Men, looks a lot like the Comedians badge from Watchmen… and a quick doodle of this lead to the question ‘Who Watches the Mr Men?’ and assigning various Mr Men personalities to their Alan Moore counterparts…” By way of my sis and as you may have already seen in my twitter feed, various Marvel and DC superheroes done up as Mr. Men (a staple of my early years).

The Dark Knight Returns.

Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story, and in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story. We have a great ensemble, that’s one of the attractions of doing another film, since we’ve been having a great time for years.Christopher Nolan discusses Batman and Superman (but no World’s Finest)

In brightest day, in blackest night…

I’ve been watching the casting fly-by on this without commenting, and I still kinda wish they’d gone with Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm for Hal Jordan over the getting-overexposed Ryan Reynolds (who already has two other comic properties to his name in Deadpool and Blade III.) Nonetheless, Mark Strong has joined the cast of Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern as Sinestro, the Lantern’s arch-nemesis. He joins Reynolds, Blake Lively (Carol Ferris), Peter Sarsgaard (Hector Hammond), and Tim Robbins (Sen. Hammond, Hector’s pa.)

Well, that’s a pretty solid cast on the villain side. But I fear this is just going to feel like an attempt to cash in on DC’s second-tier (a la Iron Man on the Marvel side)…unless they go really big and space-age with it. Like Green Lantern Corps, Oans, etc.