REVIEW: Fantastic Four

I think the marketing department decided that this movie's key demographic was more interested in the Terrific Two.

I never read comic books very much, but I’ve definitely always been aware of the major superheroes, and even if I didn’t pay much attention to them, I’m always kind of excited to see iconic characters brought to the big screen. As a comics outsider, the Fantastic Four didn’t excite me all that much because I didn’t know as much about them as Batman, Spider-Man, or the X-Men, but still…


Oh, who are we kidding. Screw the self-indulgent introduction. This movie sucks. Its sequel sucks even more, and maybe I’ll cover it later, but for now, I’ll just deal with the first movie.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cousin, Denny Ahmadinejad

From what I can gather, most of the background story has been severely truncated from the comics to have it make more sense in a 90-minute movie. Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffud) is a brilliant, but timid scientist who wants to organize a space expedition to study cosmic rays. Apparently he’s not so brilliant that NASA wants to work with him (or does that mean he’s too brilliant?), so his pilot friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis, the object of Eagle Eye’s affection) gets him to pitch his little expedition to the CEO of Von Doom Industries, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon). Now, I know this is based on a tongue-in-cheek comic book, so I’m not going to rip the movie for having a character a with the unfortunate surname of “Von Doom” not naming his company “Optimax” or “DynaTech” or something. As you might expect, Von Doom’s a bit of a snob, rubbing it in Richards’ face that he’s boinking his ex-girlfriend, geneticist Susan Storm (Jessica Alba, who prepared for her role by learning to pronounce a handful of really big words, like “microscope“). But still, he agrees to finance the study, organizing a jaunt up to his own private space station (as he calls it, the Me-r; oh, do I crack myself up) with himself, Reed, Ben, Susan, and Susan’s hotshot pilot brother, Johnny (Chris Evans).

And now, the one scene in the movie where it's not Jessica Alba with the stiff acting.

Up at the space station, the Fabulous Five are waiting for the cloud of cosmic radiation to come by so they can… study it. Which would be really boring to watch. So instead, the focus is on Johnny irritating grumpy Ben by being a brash smartass (definitely a quality you want in an astronaut), and on Von Doom asking Susan for her hand in holy doomship, which she answers with a confidence-inspiring, “Eh, we’ll give you a call if anything opens up.” Reed, meanwhile, is the only one who gives a rat’s ass about space exploration or scientific discovery, and is therefore too boring to pay attention to.

These Scientology weddings are weird.

Until it turns out he forgot to carry the one in his calculations or something, and the cloud of cosmic radiation comes up on them faster than expected! Damn those rays taking gaseous form in a vacuum! They’re so unpredictable! Suffice to say they’re royally screwed. The cloud comes upon them before they can get their shields up or get Ben in from his spacewalk, so the whole station gets blasted with glowing orange light stuff, penetrating the station’s hull and frying the astronauts directly. This is very traumatic, but fortunately, a violent attack by cosmic energy doesn’t damage anything whatsoever except to knock everybody out for a little while. That’s a relief. I’ve heard that space is generally considered a bad place in which to have mechanical problems.

Introducing Revlon's Fury of Hell collection

The team is rescued, and they’re taken to some kind of spa in the mountains to recuperate. Hey, Von Doom’s so rich that a devastating space accident is just another excuse for a ski holiday. But as they’re recovering, the quintet discovers that the radiation had a strange effect on them. No, not cancer, silly. Rather, as you’d expect from the same energy hitting five people at the same time, their DNA is mutated in five utterly unrelated ways:


Reed Richards, AKA Mr. Fantastic
POWER: Can stretch out his body like rubber, much like that woman from The Incredibles.
TEAM ROLE: Leader. Brilliant scientist who spends the entire movie working on a device to undo all the characters’ powers, a mission that we know will end with great success.
REJECTED SUPERHERO NAMES: Stretch Armslong, Condoman, Mr. Epic-Fail-at-Calculating-Cosmic-Thingy-Velocity.

Um, I'm hoping I didn't just accidentally rent the gay porn parody (Fantastic Fornication?) by mistake.

Susan Storm, AKA The Invisible Woman
POWER: Can turn invisible and generate force fields, much like that girl from The Incredibles. Hey, wait a minute! Somebody’s clearly ripping somebody off here! I can just hear the Fantastic Four fanboys claiming that their precious comic book preceded the Pixar movie by several decades, but I fail to see the logic of that argument.
TEAM ROLE: Naughty bits, which turn invisible just as they’re about to face the camera. Stealth (she’s detectable only by the diminishing box office potential of any film she comes near).
REJECTED SUPERHEROINE NAMES: The Unnatural Blonde, The “Talent.”

"Oh. Sorry, ma'am. It's just part of the mutation. That wasn't a reaction to you or anything."

Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing
POWER: Is a big friggin’ rock. But he’s the only one of the group who wasn’t too good looking to begin with, so not a big deal.
TEAM ROLE: Representative of “Before” on the Revlon commercials in which Jessica Alba plays, “After.”
REJECTED SUPERHERO NAMES: Inhuman Horror, Putridman, Worthless Mutant Garbage, Abomination (major contender, but taken).


Johnny Storm, AKA The Human Torch
POWER: Can surround himself in flame and fly like a rocket. Curiously enough, this means he’ll have scenes on a snowboard and a motorcycle, because flying while on fire is not eXtReMe!!! enough.
TEAM ROLE: Good-natured tormenter of the man whose accident has destroyed any chance he’ll ever have of intimate human contact.
REJECTED SUPERHERO NAMES: Hindenburg, Crusader Rabbit (you’d have to have been there), The Torch (deemed potentially confusing after test audiences remarked, “I needed a frame of reference for his original species.”).

"Incredibly hot? Obnoxious? Appeals only to brain-dead high-school dropouts? I've just become the perfect spokesman for Taco Bell!"

Doom also gets some powers, but he initially seems fine, and keeps his transformation a secret for the time being.


As you might expect, the reactions to these superpowers are mixed. Reed and Susan are moderately alarmed. Ben declares “I am not an animal! I am… more of a mineral! Nineteen questions left!”, sneaks off in the night under the brilliant disguise of a hat and long coat, and has his heart broken when his fiancee decides she can’t make her relationship with a walking hunk of limestone work. Racist! Johnny, meanwhile, is in seventh heaven*. He’s incredibly confident in his abilities, and apparently all the ladies are equally confident that he won’t lose control for a split second and incinerate them. To be honest, though, it’s nice to have a character who immediately recognizes that having superpowers is AWESOME, rather than immediately getting all hissy about it. Although naming his hideous, loveless co-pilot The Thing might be in slightly poor taste.

This really is a science fiction movie if A-Rod isn't on the cover of the Post.

The four of them bicker over the fact that they’re now publicly outed as freaks until, about six hours into the movie, we finally get a superhero action scene. Ben’s getting all emo, sitting like a gargoyle on the Brooklyn Bridge (because all the best bridges have gargoyles) when he inadvertently frightens a would-be jumper back onto the street. Which means he has to smash a truck to keep it from running him over, which causes more traffic accidents, and before you know it, fire trucks are teetering over the East River. But all four fantastic people rally and they all save the day in their own super-special ways! Johnny shields someone from a fireball, Susan contains an explosion with a force field, Ben uses his super-strength to pull the firetruck back on the bridge, and Reed stretches to catch some people mid-fall. It’s a scene ripped straight out of Spider-Man. By which, I of course mean the ‘70s live-action TV show.


I hope you enjoyed that action scene, because it’s going to have to tide you over for a while. In fact, it’s going to be a while before we have an actual villain interacting with our heroes in any threatening way. Most of the movie’s remainder focuses on Reed and Susan building a machine that can reverse the effects of the cosmic radiation and strip themselves of their powers. And he actually succeeds, sort of. His task is made easier by the conspicuous absence of any predatory military-industrial complex representative trying to replicate their powers and create an army of super-soldiers. But although Ben has spent his time getting to know the lovely Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington)--a blind artist, which of course means she is wise and accepting of the ugly freak--he still wants to go back to his old life as an only moderately-ugly, profoundly weaker man.

Yes, I definitely rented the wrong movie.

While all of this is happening, Vic is having his own transformation, despite initially appearing to have been unaffected by the cosmic radiation. His skin starts peeling away to reveal metal, and he can shoot electricity from his hands. With his board of executives punting him from his company after the space mission fiasco, Doom consults with the Green Goblin, who had the exact same friggin’ thing happen in his movie, and decides the only rational thing to do is start killing off the people who wronged him. When electrocuting generic executives in parking garages can’t fill the void in his heart, he decides one night to get revenge on the Fantastic Four.

"Damn the risks! I will get my bagel out if it's the last thing I do!"

His plan is kind of all over the place. He starts by tricking Ben into using Reed’s machine to de-power himself, taking all of Ben’s cosmic radioactive goodness for himself and making him stronger than ever. Tossing aside the now-human Ben, he immediately takes Reed prisoner and freezes him, preventing him from stretching to escape. Doom then fires a heat-seeking missile at the F4’s base, the Baxter Building, and Johnny of course saves the day by covering himself in flame and flying away, drawing the missile away from the nearly-empty building and through the densely-populated city streets. What a guy! While Johnny’s out there spending the movie’s scant special effects budget like it’s bailout money, Susan confronts Doom--now clad in a robe and metallic mask for no particular reason except to look like the “Dr. Doom” character from the comics this one’s extremely vaguely based on--at his office. And let me tell you, the interrogation room scene between Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight just wishes it could match the gravitas of Jessica Alba trading harsh words with Julian McMahon. If it were in black and white, I would think this were a cologne ad; it’s that intense.

Well, there's definitely four of them. The movie gets that much right.

When Doom overpowers Susan, it’s none other than a newly re-rockified Ben who smashes through the wall to save the day. I guess that despite Doom having supposedly absorbed Ben’s powers into himself, that hasn’t prevented Ben from doing the heroic thing and flipping the “Reverse” switch to give himself his powers back. When he announces, “It’s clobbering time!” my response is, “It’s almost credits time, jerk!” He rassles with Doom and their fight spills out onto the streets below, where Doom’s too much for old Ben, who’s clearly led too much of a sedentary lifestyle. Hardy-har-har. I’ve been waiting all review to make that joke, and let me tell you, it was worth it.

"Aw, man. We're going to need a LOT of carbon offsets after this."

But a recovered Susan, thawed Reed, and maybe-sorta-more mature Johnny join him in the fight, and a whole ten minutes before the movie’s end, we finally have the Fantastic Four fighting together against their iconic arch-nemesis. The four have to work together to disable him. Susan creates a force field around Doom. Johnny gets inside the force field and heats it up. Ben knocks over a fire hydrant, and Reed shapes himself to direct the rushing water at Doom, which rapidly cools him after Johnny breaks off, hardening his metal body into a statue. And that’s that. And I’m glad it’s over, because I hate all those other superhero movies that have multiple scenes of superheroes fighting super villains. This one gets back to basics, alternating wacky sitcom humor and scientific study/experimentation straight out of Family Matters. Which is, uh, a sitcom.

This is JESSICA ALBA, people. They should have made her into the Unhearable Woman instead.

In the epilogue, the Fantastic Four all decide to keep their powers and continue living as super-powered celebrities. Reed and Susan get engaged, Ben and Alicia continue to be cozy (remember, if you can’t see him, you can’t be repulsed by the rock-skinned monster man with the, ahem, gravelly voice), and Johnny continues to flirt with hot babes. I think his character learned responsibility or something. Which amounts to him continuing to show off and pull crazy stunts, but with a more determined expression on his face as he does it. For the big finish, he closes the film by flying into the sky and forming the ‘4’ logo with his fire trail, apparently relying on the high concentration of extremely still nitrogen in the atmosphere to keep the burning air visible long enough before the whole thing is just a smoky ’#’ and everyone on the ground wonders what the hell he’s trying to do.


Obviously, this isn’t supposed to be a particularly serious film. It’s trying to be schlocky, but stylish and funny the way Spider-Man is. But really, it feels like a mega-budget pilot for a Fantastic Four TV series, not a complete movie that’s supposed to work all by itself. I’ll give it some credit: for all my joking, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis are pretty good in their roles, and their banter would be decent comic relief if there was more of a villainous plot they needed to relieve us from. The rest of the cast and characters? Not so great. Ioan Gruffud is capable of being better than this, but playing the brilliant scientist leader of the group as the guy with the perpetual deer-in-the-headlights look was not a good showing. Jessica Alba’s a good enough actress to play someone who dances or strips and has no lines; if she really studies the role, maybe she could pull off Nova in any future Planet of the Apes remake. Julian McMahon should work as an Armani model, not an oppressive lord of evil. And finally, director Tim Story has obviously demonstrated that his surname was a cruel mistake of fate, and he’s better off applying his technical skills at making really nice wedding videos, or perhaps being the guy who films people on roller coasters and then sells them $10 tapes as souvenirs.

@?

Be Four-warned: the sequel doesn’t get any better. After its failure, it looks like the Fantastic Four series is going to go where all failed superhero franchises do: straight into a reboot with a different director and cast. What a world.


*Speaking of which, it must be good to be an actor where the one movie he makes without Jessica Biel stars Jessica Alba.

REVIEW: Crash

It's too small to see here, but I love how the actors' names on the poster are in alphabetical order, except that Michael Pena is last. Because it's not like he's an A-list Hollywood force in the vein of Jennifer Esposito or Larenz Tate.

Wait, you’re telling me this isn’t the movie with Jason Statham trying to keep this adrenaline up or else he dies? Damn you Netflix and your completion match searching!

I heard a rumor that after Lions Gate releases Saw XVIII, they're finally going to go ahead with the long-awaited "Saw vs. Crash."

Instead, this is movie that inspired Babel, the film that would have truly lived up to its name if it were spelled slightly differently. To its benefit--or not--writer/director Paul Haggis’s movie won the Best Picture Oscar in 2005, beating out popular favorite Brokeback Mountain. I guess racism beats out homophobia when Hollywood can only make one statement per award. Of course, it’s also possible that Crash was just a good movie, but we'll see to that.


Knowing that this movie was going to have even more barely-related parallel stories going on than Babel, I decided to watch this movie for the first time with a notepad so I could semi-live blog it. Uh, don’t get the impression, though, that I was watching this movie with the expectation that it would rile me up enough to put a negative review online. Nah, just a precaution.

"...but the evil alien Xenu detonated hydrogen bombs in a volcano. And what does that mean for our thetans? Hey, wait, I haven't finished!"

I’ll say this up-front: racism, the subject of this movie, is no joke. Don’t confuse my disrespect for a preachy, stilted, cloying film for dismissal of the basic underlying topic. But then, who knows? Maybe this movie deserves all the praise it got. Let’s begin.


0:01: Opening credits. Sandra Bullock? Brendan Fraser? Wow, I didn’t know this was going to be a cute romantic comedy. With Ludacris as Fraser’s jive-talkin’ best bud.

They've taken a few liberties with this "It's a Wonderful Life" remake.

0:04: Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito are detectives who rear-end a Korean woman. In a CAR, you sick freak. Jennifer Esposito gets out to berate the woman for her driving. Cuz Asians are bad drivers, you know.


It’s amazing how much Jennifer looks like Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order SVU “fame” here. She’s got the same “furrow your eyebrows really hard to make it look like you’re intense” look to her.


By the way, are we really going to have to listen to this new agey music the whole movie?


0:05: An Iranian immigrant (Shaun Toub) and his daughter buy a gun from a racist, fat slob of a shopkeeper who calls him “Osama.” Congratulations, Crash: you’ve just won your Oscar. You could introduce John Travolta in Battlefield Earth garb as your next character and you’d still win it on the strength of this scene. Racist fat white guy gun shop owner who calls the Iranian Osama? Check. A guy buying a gun to defend himself in a tough city being depicted as a hothead? Check. Daughter level-headed while the father’s freaking out? Check. She winds up buying the gun and ammo for him when he’s ejected from the store. Oh, and you’ll love where this subplot goes. More later.

Though a top seller after the film's surprise Oscar win, the XBox Crash first-person shooter game was most popular for one mission--"Assassinate the Monkeybone guy."

0:09: Yes, Ludacris is actually in this movie, as a low-life criminal who wanders the streets with his friend, Larenz Tate, discussing the subtle and unsubtle ways that racism reveals itself in everyday life. You need to hear these guys to believe them. It’s like Paul Haggis was using passages from his Sociology textbook for their dialogue, but tossed in the word “dawg” once in a while to get an urban vibe going. The two of them, but in particular Luda, provide the running ironic commentary throughout the movie. Now, as some of the later scenes will attest, this movie isn’t going for total realism, but did we really need Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in here?


0:12: Don and Jen arrive at the scene of a shooting, where a white cop who looks like a shipwrecked Nick Nolte has just shot a black cop. This guy’s already shot two other black guys before, so is he a murderous bigot, or was the black cop corrupt as he claims?

"...and if you do that, and he calls you that, the president will inevitably say something unpopular and have no choice but to invite us over to the White House for beers. And that will give us the perfect opportunity to steal the Lincoln gold! It's a perfect plan!"

0:14: Fraser is the district attorney, Bullock is his wife, and they’d earlier gotten carjacked by Luda and Larenz. She’s a bitchy racist, and he’s equally insensitive, but he’s got a political career to keep in mind. So he tries to figure out how to spin this to the press, afraid that whether he’s too verbally tough or too verbally soft on the thieves, he’ll catch hell from one half of the city or the other.


“What we need is a picture of me pinning a medal on a black man,” he says to his campaign staff. How much longer is this movie? It won the Best Short Film category, right?

0:16: Matt Dillon is a racist cop with a sick father who has crappy health insurance or something (Michael Moore just looked up from his sandwich long enough to yell, “You go, girl!”). His noobie partner is Ryan Phillipe, and he soon after pulls over affluent, black married couple Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton because she was giving him a BJ while driving. Dillon takes the opportunity to force her out of the car and molest her in a pretty disturbing scene. Ryan Phillipe is sickened by his partner’s actions.

"...and it's 'yap, yap, yap' 24/7 about how they gave your role to Don Cheadle in the Iron Man sequel. Well, you don't hear me crying about how there's never going to be a Chroncles of Riddick sequel, do you?"

0:27: Michael Pena is a locksmith who was berated by an agitated Sandra Bullock earlier because she thought he was going to rob her house after he changed her locks. But here we see that he’s just a sweet family guy who tucks his adorable daughter in. The daughter’s still afraid of gunfire, because they used to live in a bad neighborhood, but Michael gives her a “magic invisible cloak” that deflects bullets. And it also gives +4 Dexterity, +18 Hit Points, and can cast Magic Missile 3x/day.


This little father/daughter scene is so sweet, I’m sure there’s no chance the movie will eventually threaten these two with violence. It just wouldn’t be appropriate.

"Newt, I think we're in trouble."

0:32: Luda and Larenz are driving the van they stole from Brendan and Sandra, and they run over a Korean guy (whom they think is Chinese; ‘cause they’re racially insensitive, get it?) and drag him halfway down the block before they realize what’s going on. When they stop, they fully realize that they could get arrested for reckless driving or manslaughter if the guy dies, but still discuss whether or not to take him to the hospital, using the tone of voice usually reserved for discussing whether to get the roast beef or chicken at Arby’s. I’m really not sure these two were supposed to be in this movie. I think they acted in a wacky urban pothead comedy and got digitally spliced into this “serious” movie. Anyway, they dump the Korean guy at the hospital, proving that despite all the carjacking, they’re pretty decent people.


0:33: Keith David! That guy’s awesome! And he’s awesome here! For one whole scene! Now if they just throw in Kurt Russell and a shape-shifting alien, we’ll have an awesome movie going here! Hell, I’d even take Roddy Piper and some sunglasses! Anyway, David’s the police captain, and despite a long speech about racial politics, he agrees to let Ryan Phillipe drive a patrol car by himself, while Dillon gets a new partner.


0:37: “Why do you keep everyone a certain distance away?” Actual dialogue from an actual motion picture. Oh, and Don and Jen are having sex. He calls her a Mexican, but she reminds him that she’s actually Puerto Rican. Which means that in the course of a single evening (yes, that’s how far we’ve gotten so far), the only characters who haven’t said or done anything racist are Michael Pena and Guy on Street #3.

"Hey, yoo! Turn arownd! Leesten to meee! On da wahl! Cahleefohrnya's all outta monee! Get to da choppa! Runnn!"

0:44: Next morning. Holy crap, Tony Danza is in the movie! And he’s a racist too! Now, if they introduce Regis Philbin as Hitler's bastard child, Skip, this might be the greatest movie ever.


Turns out Terrence Howard not only wears the kinds of sweaters you see on guys selling Time Life books, but he’s a TV director, which is a great way to make him sympathetic. Thandie’s still pissed at him for not standing up to Matt Dillon the other night. Terrence decides he’s got to be more of a man. Dude, here’s a tip. Stop wearing those damn sweaters.

"There's a wild Fandango... loose... in the theater! Rowr!"

0:51: Don talks to his mother. Wow, another depressing talk between a cop and his decrepit widowed parent. Haven’t seen one of those since Matt Dillon had one about… oh, a minute ago.


0:52: Really, what’s wrong with this music? They should call the soundtrack, “Music to Start Up Windows By.” It’s like they hired a new age band to perform Keyboard Demo #5. It’s like this is the arty side project of the guy who does the crappy synthesizer music from dirt-cheap early-‘90s horror movies.


0:56: Michael Pena had earlier refused to install a lock in Shaun Toub’s shop because he really needed to get an entirely new door. Now, Toub’s store has been robbed, and he’s frakking mad. Insurance won’t pay up because Michael was right and he should have gotten his door replaced entirely. So Toub prepares to do the only thing that a man who owns a gun will do in a movie like this: use it to get bloody, bloody, irrational revenge.


1:02: And now that we’ve gone through our utterly depressing phase of the movie, we’ve reached our inspirational/reconciliatory phase of the movie! Hooray! And it starts with Thandie Newton getting in a horrible car accident on the highway, while Matt Dillon just happens to be the one to show up to try to pull her out of the car before the gas tank explodes. Yeah, Los Angeles is a pretty small city. Since he’d molested her about 12 hours earlier, it’s a bit awkward when he has to reach into a confined space and wrestle her body from the car just ahead of the explosion, but the giddily chanting music ensures us that this is supposed to be inspirational. Come on, let‘s sing the Crash theme music together! Ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah -ah!

"Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world? AHHHHHHHH!"

1:06: Fraser sends one of his underlings (William Fichtner) to convince Don to say he believes that the white cop from earlier in the movie murdered his black cop partner, even though Don has evidence to suggest that the black cop really was crooked and the white cop might have been acting in self-defense. The underling wants the white cop framed so that his boss can prosecute him and look good in the eyes of the black voters. Don wants to hear nothing of it until the underling mentions that there’s a warrant out for Don’s brother’s arrest. If Don forgets about the evidence exonerating the white cop, DA Fraser will forget about the evidence.


You know, this movie takes place over 24 hours and its plot involves widespread political corruption and cover-ups. You know what TV show this reminds me of? That’s right. C-SPAN.


1:14: Meanwhile, Terrence gets carjacked by Luda, who’s split up with Larenz, but he refuses to give up his car, because he’s got to prove himself to be macho (Dude, you might want to get a surgical voice deepening to start with; no offense.). Much reckless driving ensues. Terrence goes so berzerk that Phillipe has to talk him down to keep the other cops on the scene from blowing him away. Phillipe recognizes that the driver is the guy his partner did a number on the other night, so he helps Terrence get away by calling in a favor from a couple of cops who owe him nothing (I think they just wanted to avoid the paperwork), and Terrence helps Luda get away. Action scene narrowly averted.

Mexican standoff. You're doing it wrong.

1:20: Toub confronts Michael at his house, ready to blow the guy away for refusing to fix his door lock. Adorable daughter jumps in front of her dad just ahead of the gunshot. “NOOOOOOOO!!!” But wait… she’s okay! There’s no bullet wound on here. Damn, that magic cloak is effective. Michael and daughter run inside their house. Toub wanders away confused. Action scene narrowly averted. Toub thinks it’s an angel that saved him from killing that kid. But his daughter knows better; she bought him blanks for ammunition at the shop, and he apparently knows enough written English to run a store, but not to read a six-letter word on a box. Oh, and thanks movie for reminding us that there’s absolutely no reason for a guy who runs a small shop in a bad part of LA to have a pistol, and that it’s better off for everyone if he’s actually defenseless. I mean, he’s not black, so all he has to do is blow a whistle and the LAPD will ride in like the Rohirrim and save him. Right?


Oh, and since there’s just such a general air of goodwill going around, Michael Pena’s presumably going to forgive and forget the murder attempted upon him, even though he knows Toub and where he works. And I completely support an dramatic license taken to end the movie faster.


1:24: Sandra Bullock slips and falls down the stairs in her home. Which is a more entertaining three seconds than all of Speed 2.


1:26: Ryan Phillipe picks up Larenz hitchhiking on a lonely road at night. They start to bicker for some odd reason, and Phillipe shoots him when he thinks he’s pulling a gun on him. So while bigot Matt Dillon found redemption earlier on, knight in shining armor Ryan Phillipe dumps the body on the side of the highway and drives off. So the idea is that Ryan Phillipe is holier-than-thou, but really no better than anyone else deep down, while Matt Dillon is an asshole on the outside, but his racism doesn’t extend so far as to leave women he’s abused to die a fiery death.


Furthermore, it turns out that Larenz was actually Don Cheadle’s ne’r-do-well brother. Which is sad and ironic, because there’s flashback to when the two were boys, and Young Larenz told Young Don that he thinks Don is going to grow up to get shot by Ryan Phillipe while reaching for a St. Christopher figurine. Furthermore, his mother blames him for this death, reminding him that he was too busy with his career to go out and help his brother. Fortunately for Don, Jennifer Esposito is still hot.

"Batman will pay for this!"

1:34: Luda discovers that the van he just carjacked (vanjacked?) is full of slave laborers smuggled in from Asia. Although he’s offered $500 apiece for them by the chop shop owner he deals with, he’s such an awesome guy that he instead lets them loose in the middle of Los Angeles and gives them a few bucks each. They’re free to make new lives for themselves in opportunity-ridden LA, where car chases and car crashes go on left and right, where the politicians frame innocent people for racially-tinged photo ops, and where bad cops molest women and good cops murder people. Fortunately for us, the movie ends before we can see the immigrants gunned down by cracked-up gangsters who harvest their organs on the spot, because the movie would probably have to put a halt to the easy listening soundtrack if something dark like that happened.


1:40: Sandra Bullock calls Brendan Fraser to tell him that she fell down the stairs. He promises to drive there immediately, never slowing below 55 miles an hour, but she’s okay because their Hispanic maid drove her to the emergency room. This despite all of Sandra’s friends turning her down when she called them on her cell phone for help. Only Maria cared enough to help.


Congratulations, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. You just gave the Best Picture award to a live-action version of The Little Engine That Could.


1:42: It’s snowing, in Los Angeles! And that makes Terrence Howard feel good. He’s just generally in a good mood, knowing that he lives in a world where everybody does something idiotic and illegal, and nobody gets punished for it. He calls his wife and tells her he loves her. AND THAT MATT DILLON’S GOING TO F***ING DIE!!! Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s going to be the sequel.

Major Tom probably has an AWESOME ringtone.

1:47: As Luda smirks with self-adulation about his good deed and rides off into the sunset in his stolen van, two nearby cars get in a fender bender. The people who get out and argue about it are of different races. The camera pans away. What follows is not so much a crash as it is a STOP and an EJECT.

REVIEW: Dungeons and Dragons

Incidentally, the guy on YouTube who posts 19-minute videos of himself giving Nickelback album reviews into a webcam also has a Platinum Series line.

Dungeon Master: Welcome, mortals, to my epic fantasy adventure. Prepare for an evening of adventure. Of danger! Of tricks and traps and magic and heroism!

Bugmar the Half-Orc: Yes! Let’s get read to pound some skulls!

Titania the Elf: Our wisdom shall guide us to victory.

Me: (looks at character sheet) What exactly is the difference between the ‘Spot’ skill and the ‘Search’ skill? How is it possible that I can build a character who is incredibly talented in one and not the other?

From the people who will really hope you forget all about this movie by the time Lord of the Rings comes out...

DM: Silence! We must make final preparations for our journey. Tonight’s adventure is based on the epic 2000 film, Dungeons & Dragons, starring Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch, Justin Whalin, Zoe McLellan, and Marlon Wayans.

Me: Wait, I missed some of that. Can you repeat the parts between Jeremy Irons and Marlon Wayans?

DM: The film was an epic fantasy adventure based on the epic pen-and-paper roleplaying game that we are playing right now. And now, we are honoring that glorious and revered film by translating its epic story back to the tabletop, so that we might experience the same journey that captivated audiences and made Justin Whalin a household name. First, players, you must create your characters!

"Friends, Romans, countrymen... PREPARE TO DIE, PATHETIC MORTALS!"

Titania: I am Titania, elven druid of the Neverwinter Forest. With my dire wolf companion, Barkenheart, I journey the forests, hunting those who would disrupt the balance of nature. With my magic, I can empower my allies, humanoid and animal alike, and when I must fight hand-to-hand, I can transform into a great bear and maul those who underestimate my dedication.

Bugmar: And I am Bugmar, a half-orc barbarian. My father was an orcish marauder who impregnated my mother forcibly. She abandoned me to die in the land of Rashemen, but I thrived as a nomad and savage. Now, I bear my great axe and seek to redeem my horrid life by slashing the throats of evildoers, but my dream is to one day take down my own father, who is responsible for agony I suffer every day!

Me: Wow, you guys are really into this. Sounds like a really fun game, but I’m used to playing MMORPGs, so I think I’m going to play this game that way. I am 50 Cent the… (browses through Player‘s Handbook to find the race that gives the most plusses) … Drow! And my profession is… (scours printed-out web pages to find which class most gamers think is overpowered)… cleric! Yes, I am a Drow cleric. And I’m a female Drow so that I can have boobs. Now, before we start out on our quest to find me a +12 war hammer, just give me about three hours so I can plan out the best way to level up my character. I want to make a character who has level 9 divine and arcane spells without sacrificing any attack power or defense whatsoever.

DM: Silence! This is not how Dungeons & Dragons the movie was played out! No, I will choose your characters for you. Titania, you are Marina Pretense, the human wizardess played in the film by Zoe McLellan. You are naïve and quirky, but a very promising young spell caster. Your most powerful spell is to cast a magical rope that can lasso your enemies.

Marina: Uh…

DM: Bugmar, you are Elwood Gutworthy the cantankerous, neon orange-bearded dwarven warrior, played by Lee Arenberg.

Elwood: Who?

DM: Pft! Silly question. You reveal your ignorance!

Elwood: Oh, I’m sorry. Whom?

DM: Gah! And Matt, you are Ridley Freeborn, the wise-cracking, but good-hearted thief played by Justin Whalin, who is forever accompanied by his wacky, fast-talking friend, Snails, played by Marlon Wayans.

Me: That’s wonderful. (rolls 20-sided die) Oh, look. I just failed a ‘Breathe’ skill check, and my character died. Well, I might as well head home.

DM: Sit thy ass down! I shall control the other characters, such as Snails the rogue and Norda the elven ranger. Now, the journey begins in the nation of Izmer, where Mages rule over the commoners. There, a wizard named Profion is secretly plotting to overthrow the progressive Empress Savina. How, you might ask? Why, he only needs to find a lost wand that will allow him to control red dragons. By controlling all the world’s red dragons, he can conquer all of Izmer!

Me: Well, then why don’t the red dragons just do that on their own?

Acting or Photoshop? You be the judge.

DM: Silence! Fortunately, a wizard faithful to the Empress is aware of this plot and believes that a scroll in the Mages’ library can lead them to it. He and Marina, a beautiful and promising young wizard, search for it. Marina, roll a Spellcraft check to find the scroll!

Marina: (rolls d20) 5!

DM: Oh, you failed your skill check, and were unable to find the scroll! (Waits 30 seconds) All right, try again.

Marina: (rolls d20) 7! Did I pass?

DM: Er, no, not quite. (Waits) All right, try again.

Marina: (rolls d20) 2!

DM: Excellent! You found the scroll!

Elwood: Wait a minute! I’m no master of numbers, but…

Me: Shut the hell up, Dwarf.

DM: Excellent suggestion! But while the wizards are at work, so are the thieves. Ridley gets the idea to rob the Magic School, imagining the incredible treasures that the Mages have in the high tower. Remember the film, and imagine the incredible beauty and majesty of the Magic School’s high spires!

"Yes, prepare the age-reversing potion now. Together, we shall rule the world, Governor Palin!"

Me: Yeah, I remember it. And it definitely puts me in the mood for a role-playing game, because the whole thing looked like a Quicktime cut-scene in a mid-’90s computer game. This movie clearly couldn’t afford great computer-generated special effects, but they must have at least saved money by buying in bulk, because there’s certainly a lot of them. The water looks like it’s from Lawnmower Man, the buildings look like they’re still under development in AutoCAD, and the dragons make the one in Shrek look photorealistic.

DM: Are you done?

Me: Temporarily.

DM: Good. Your friend Snails is very nervous about a daring heist like this, but he is a man of complex motivations: he is often torn between his love of money, his love of hot women that match his racial complexion (as in being black, not necessarily being human), and his love of not dying. But he is also incredibly loyal to you, Ridley, so long as he can loudly complain about everything you do with him. Now, you scale the walls of the 20-plus story building…

Elwood: Wait a minute, shouldn’t he have to roll a skill check for something like that?

DM: Well, it was treated as something very easy in the movie, so I guess I can just assume it would be easy for you to do. You begin robbing the place, but Marina hears you, and comes in to catch you with a Rope spell! However, this happens just as Profion’s chief thug, Damodar, arrives with the Crimon Guards and kills the head wizard just after he throws the scroll to Marina in a desperate attempt to keep it from Profion’s hands!

Me: Ah yes, Damodar. That terrifying minion who projects fear with the help of his blue lip gloss and a speaking pace that’s so slow, it’s easier to just read the DVD subtitle and skip forward a few seconds until the next one comes up.

"Tell me, where is Tobias Funke? He and I have some unfinished business."

DM: Marina, you are confronted by Damodar! What do you do?

Marina: I throw a Fireball spell at him! Because I’m a magic-user and Damodar and his soldiers aren’t!

DM: Perhaps, but I think you should consider just throwing a purple stunning spell at him instead, then teleporting out of there, because Damodar is much too terrifying. You escape with Ridley and Snails in tow, but Damodar and his men follow you through the portal, into the city! There, you run into the vagrant Dwarf named Elwood…

Elwood: Yarrr! I’m a Dwarf!

DM: …and escape into the sewers. But Profion has framed you for the murder of the old wizard, and accused you of stealing the scroll for your own ends, so it now rests on you alone to find the wand that controls red dragons! But beware, for Profion has given his minion, Damodar, extra incentive to find you: he has placed a magical parasite between Damodar’s ears, one that will continue to corrupt him until he retrieves the scroll!

Me: Well, based on the last few scenes, there was definitely a vacancy up there. So now that his brain has been overrun by a monster, does this mean he’s going to talk even more slowly now?

(sniff, sniff) "Wizard needs hugs badly!"

DM: Ridley, you prove yourself to have surprising magical aptitude by scrying the scroll and determining that to open the vault that contains the red dragon wand, you need a gigantic ruby that is being held by a powerful thieves’ guild. Eager to complete the mission, because of both your attraction to Marina and the promise of a gigantic ruby, you journey there, only to find that the guild master won’t give up the enormous ruby just because you ask for it!

Me: I’d like to go on record that you were the one who told me that my character expected that the guild master would give it to us for free. Can I just roll a ‘Bluff’ check for it?

DM: No, he will give you the ruby, but only if you complete an enormous, trap-filled maze!

Me: Well, Takeshi’s Castle would be a huge upgrade over this movie/game, so why not.

DM: You must pass three deadly trap rooms in order to reach the ruby! I hope you’re up for it, Ridley! Now, roll a Climb check to see if you can climb atop the swinging pendulums and cross them without being sliced apart!

Me: (rolls d20) It’s a 1! Critical failure! I’m dead, story over, anyone for Smash Bros?

DM: Dammit! Well, fortunately, there’s a cleric in the audience who’s sympathetic to your cause. He casts Raise Dead, letting you try again.

Me: Dammit! All right, here goes…

Rising young leading man in Hollywood, or a young Jennifer Coolidge?

(20 minutes later)

DM: Congratulations! You have passed all the tests and retrieved the ruby, Ridley! However, the fiend Damodar arrives! Caught in the middle of a battle between his men and the thieves, Ridley, Snails, and Elwood escape with the ruby, but Marina is taken prisoner!

Me: Isn’t she supposed to be able to cast spells and stuff?

Marina: Indeed! I cast Sleep on my captors, then Expeditious Retreat to get out of there and return to my party!

DM: Well… Profion has cast… (skims through rulebook) Spell Mantle! Yes, he cast Spell Mantle on all of his henchmen, so they’re immune. And anyways, they take her away to a fortress, and the rest of you are ambushed and taken prisoner by the elven ranger Norda. However, she’s working for Empress Savina, so you’re all on the same side. Snails in particular is very eager to get close to Norda, who enchants him by sheer virtue of being female, attractive, and African-Izmerian. However, being an elf, Norda rebukes Snails’ advances by appearing bored and irritated.

Elwood: ‘Tis a quality not limited to elf-kind, I can assure you.

"Come on, Mr. Director. Forget the PG-13 rating just for one scene! We'll make a Special Unrated DVD out of it!"

DM: Now, you decide that it’s essential to rescue Marina, so you head off to the fortress…

Me: After hiding the ruby somewhere so that Profion won’t find it if we get caught.

DM: Er, well, no. There’s no time for that! You must rescue the… um… cute wizard who almost never is able to cast valuable spells. It’s, er, essential. So you head to the keep and find that it’s heavily guarded by soldiers and Beholders, massive one-eyed, classic D&D monsters that command powerful magic.

Me: All right! We get to fight Beholders! It’s about time!

DM: Well, I wouldn’t say you’re going to fight them, or even interact with them, but you will very briefly see them. Pretty cool, huh? Now, Norda decides that it’s very important for Ridley and Snails to complete this mission on their own, so she waits outside with you, Elwood, while the thieves sneak into the fortress.

Elwood: Damn it all! Why in the hells would half our people just wait behind? And may I remind you that I am a Dwarf carrying an enormous ax, yet I haven’t killed a damn thing yet? And if we’re in a fantasy movie, why haven’t we fought anyone except generic human soldiers and a bald guy with blue lip gloss? Now we’ve finally got monsters lurking about, and we’re not even going to fight them?

DM: No, you ungrateful oaf! Ridley and Snails are going to sneak around them. (rolls d20) 18! There, you’ve passed your Hide skill check, congratulations. (rolls d20) 14! And there, Elwood, you’ve passed your Spot skill check, so you’ll be able to see what happens in the fortress. Satisfied?

Elwood: Ooh, I passed a skill check!

"Capital One??? That's what's in your wallet???"

DM: Now, while Ridley is busy freeing Marina, Snails gets to work stealing back the scroll, which is still valuable for a reason I’m not 100% sure of considering that they already have the ruby. However, Snails’ foolishness--which I believe 21st century mortals refer to as “mugging for the camera”--results in his getting captured by Damodar. Atop the keep, Damodar threatens to kill Snails if Ridley does not relinquish the ruby…

Me: I vote that we let Snails die.

Elwood: Second!

Marina: I quit if we don’t.

DM: D’oh! Well, yes he’s going to die, but it’s a very sad moment in the story, because he bravely tosses them the scroll just before he is stabbed. Marina, you pick up a fallen bag of magic powder and cast a spell to stun Damodar before you teleport yourself and Ridley away.

Me: You know, with all the times we’ve stunned Damodar, maybe we should try sometime to stab him while he’s down. I think that even Barbara Boxer would approve of that at this point.

"I like Turkish baths, but I think this will be my last visit to an Afghani bath."

DM: Recovering at an elven village, your party manages to put aside its grief, and decides to continue with the mission. But while you are resting, Profion has led the Council of Mages into open rebellion against the Empress, fortifying themselves in a tower in the center of Izmer while the Empress dispatches her gold dragons to defeat them. It is truly a massive battle, with wizards hurling fireballs at the dragons and dragons breathing fireballs upon the tower!

Me: Yeah, I liked this movie better when it was a video game called Panzer Dragoon and had better graphics.

DM: But your party, meanwhile, must retrieve the red dragon-controlling wand to prevent Profion from getting it…

Me: Or, if I’ve learned anything from all the movies I’ve ever watched, to inadvertently assure that he does get it.

Ol' Blue Lips is back.

DM: You journey to an underground dungeon, protected by a magical barrier that only Ridley can pass through for a reason that is probably in a deleted scene or something. In there, he finds incredible riches, but being a great hero now, he leaves all of that in favor of retrieving the wand, which a mural reveals as having incredible powers. Exiting the dungeon, Ridley, you find that your friends have been captured by Damodar and his men, and if you don’t give up the wand, he will kill them! He promises, however, that if you hand him the wand, he will let them all go.

Me: I don’t suppose that any number of points I have in the ‘Sense Motive’ skill will convince you to let me act with the knowledge that he’s obviously lying.

DM: Whatever your ‘Sense Motive’ skill is, I’m sure his ‘Bluff’ skill is higher. You give him the wand, and he disappears through a portal he creates, but the soldiers he leaves behind threaten to kill your friends anyway, although admittedly, they do not do so the moment Damodar gives the irrefutable order, “Kill them all,” even though the soldiers have swords at your friends’ throats. Norda and Elwood break free, and they start beating up on the soldiers! See, Elwood! You’re fighting people! With an ax! Aren’t you excited?

"Sorry Thora, but the nerdy wizard chick is much fairer than you."

Elwood: No, not really. We’re going to lose. After all this time, we must be fighting enemies of at least level 14 or 15. But we’ve done so little fighting that we can’t be more than level 2 right now. It’s over.

DM: Ah, but be not troubled, for I can assure you that the soldiers are every bit as incompetent as they have been for the past ninety minutes! This allows you, Ridley, to chase Damodar through the portal, and confront him and Profion at the wizards’ tower. Profion has summoned a swarm of red dragons and they are battling the gold dragons for the fate of the kingdom! Now, you have the initiative, Ridley, so what’s your first move? Do you attack Damodar directly, or do you use a special attack?

Me: Really? You mean you’re actually inviting me to engage in combat with a somewhat challenging enemy?

DM: Indeed I am.

"Hey, Bob. I think Sparky wants to play fetch with his auxiliary eyeball."

Me: Wow. I’m beside myself. This game based on the movie based on the game is actually involving something that sometimes happens in a real Dungeons & Dragons game! Or a real movie for that matter! All right, let’s do this! (rolls d20) I rolled an 11! Pretty good! Now, let’s see. My base attack bonus is 4, my bonus from my Strength attribute is 1, I have proficiency with a long sword, my sword has a +2 bonus, I’m smaller than Damodar so I get a +1 size bonus to hit, I’m using Power Attack +3, I’m facing west, it’s a Tuesday, humidity’s at 52%, and so my final attack bonus is… wait a minute, I have proficiency with short swords, not long swords. I have to start all over again.

DM: D’oh! All right, I’ll get the calculator. Marina, start work on figuring out Damodar’s armor class.

Marina: I’ll be done in a flash!

"Damn you, Damodar! You probably killed my father! Or you are my father! Either way, I'm going to get you!"

(80 minutes later)

DM: Congratulations! After three rounds of combat, you have defeated Damodar and thrown him off the tower! But Profion himself is much too powerful for you to defeat. However, Ridley amazes him by snatching the red dragon wand and appearing to be able to wield it. But you only overcome Profion when the Empress arrives and defeats Profion in battle, summoning a gold dragon to eat him.

Me: I know I want my epic fantasy movie to end with the villain vanquished by the emo girl from American Beauty.

Although Jennifer Connelly pulled out from the role of the elf at the last minute, there was no time to get the costume refitted for Kristen Wilson.

DM: Your party has completed its quest. You have defeated Profion and his rebellion, and the Empress can now complete her sweeping reforms and make everyone in Izmer equal, in a completely ambiguous way. You, Ridley, are made a knight, and say goodbye to your friend Snails at his grave, where you place the ruby in order to finally give Snails his “big score.”

Me: Which is really just about the most insulting thing I could have possibly done as I seek to define what he meant to me. That’s like going to Michael Jackson’s grave and resting a naked Ken doll atop it.

DM: And as for the rest of you, you’re… happy, I guess.

Marina: All right, then.

Elwood: I guess so.

"Trust me, guys. There's definitely no way that dragons are resistant to fire."

DM: So, to wrap up our story…

Me: Allow me. Dungeons & Dragons is just about the most embarrassing movie I’ve ever seen. Jeremy Irons’ performance is so ludicrous and over-the-top that I get the feeling he gave it out of sheer contempt for the production, something born out by the behind-the-scenes footage on the DVD. Marlon Wayans just does his hood version of Jar-Jar Binks the whole movie, Thora Birch looks perpetually shellshocked by her awareness of the movie she’s in, and the rest of the actors just don’t know what the hell’s going on. The special effects would have looked ridiculous in Ghostbusters. And except for the fleeting shot of Beholders, fearsome and iconic enemies from the game who are now interpreted as mere watchdogs, this film could have been nearly identical without the game license and no one would have known any better. It’s just a completely generic family fantasy movie. Ironically, this thing somehow got a sequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God. And despite being a Sci-Fi Channel movie of all things, it was actually a vast improvement, both as an interpretation of the game and as an exciting movie, not that I’m saying much there.

Irons froze, realizing what was behind him. It was Oscar himself, and he had come to reclaim his award.

DM: You know, I think I’ve had enough of your callous disdain for this fine film! It was a story of courage and valor, and if you disparage it one more time, you’ve got a fight coming to ya!

Me: Hey, I think it was every bit what I’d expect from an action movie directed by a man named Courtney.

DM: That’s it! Let’s fight!

Me: You got it! (rolls d20)

DM: Ha! A lowly 6! That’s probably a pitiful blow, but I’ll know for sure once I consult several chapters of the Player’s Handbook and finish compiling this spreadsheet!

REVIEW: There Will Be Blood

"Go ahead. Make my milkshake."

Let me save you 158 minutes: Daniel Day-Lewis plays a horse’s ass. The End.

Now, for the long version. There Will Be Blood is Paul Anderson’s (not that one) much-acclaimed 2007 drama based on noted capitalist Upton Sinclair’s novel, Oil!, which he wrote shortly before his classics, Airplane! and Police Squad! I haven’t read the novel, so I don’t know how this movie compares, but I suspect I could have read the book faster. I have nothing against long movies, and in fact, I love movies that take their time to develop stories I enjoy, but about halfway through this epic, I asked myself the following question: Would I rather watch a badly-made movie in which stuff happens, or a well-made movie where hardly anything happens? The fact that I preface the film with this question might give some clue to my final answer.

This must be where Plainview gets his name.

The film opens in 1898 as Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) goes about the solitary task of prospecting out in the desert. It doesn’t look like fun. He falls into the little hole he dug for himself and breaks his leg. He crawls his way back to town and sleeps on the hard floor of a public building. All of this is pretty much to show that the guy came from nothing and was dirt poor when he was young, so that it’ll be very ironic later on when he’s fabulously rich and still miserable. I’ve got your number, movie.

"This is a horrible room, but the commercials do promise that I'll be much smarter in the morning."

Flash forward a few years, and now Plainview’s suddenly got his own business, drilling for oil. I guess the movie wanted to show him with nothing to start the movie, but didn’t want to do the legwork of showing him actually starting up his business. It’s a bit of a cop-out when your rags-to-riches when you skip the part where your character goes from penniless to employing a dozen or so men. Regardless, Plainview’s suddenly gone from hermit to savvy, unscrupulous businessman; raw wealth is his objective and screwing people less clever than him is his hobby. That said, he’s pretty good at his job, inventing some kind of Pumpjack, and later, the oil pipeline and slant drilling. Yeah, pretty much all of that’s his. Three humongous advances in oil drilling technology came from this guy. I’m looking forward to the film version of Upton Sinclair’s Isotope!, where an unscrupulous nuclear scientist invents the A-bomb, chemotherapy, and Godzilla.

"This will make me a fortune. I call it... American Gladiators!"

He goes around giving sales pitches to potential investors, bringing along his adopted son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), whose real father died working for Plainview. H.W.’s a blank-eyed, nearly speechless, dark-haired munchkin who appears to have been ripped from an American adaptation of a Japanese horror movie. Plainview brings him along everywhere because he apparently has the self-awareness to recognize that, looking like sleazier Borat, he needs a little something to humanize him in the eyes of his investors, and Damien can do just that. Although this is Plainview’s overt purpose for taking H.W. everywhere, you definitely get the sense that as greedy and spiteful as he is, he is pining for a little love from his Matryoska doll of a child.

"I'm sorry, Baby Jessica, but my extraction fee of $4,000 plus 10% of your lifetime earnings is non-negotiable. Well, I'm afraid I have to go. It was a pleasure doing Capitalism with you!"

The main “plot” starts with a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) trying to get $500 out of Plainview in exchange for telling him the location of his family’s ranch, which he’s running away from, and which has oil bubbling up to the surface everywhere. I guess we’re supposed to see how much of a miser Plainview is for haggling at the $500 price, which was a big deal back then, slightly more than the cost of the average government stimulus package. But he relents and gets the location of the ranch, in Little Boston, California. He heads out there with H.W., pretending to be just a quail hunter, and is treated extremely kindly by Paul‘s ultra-religious family, including twin brother Eli, a charismatic preacher. (Yes, a charismatic preacher named Eli Sunday. It‘s easier for both of us if I just let this slide.) When Plainview scouts around and discovers that there is, clearly a ton of oil waiting underground, he tries to convince the Sundays that he’d just kind of like to buy their dirt-poor ranch because it’s a nice place to hunt quail. But Eli, aggravatingly polite as he is, calmly asks if he wants the ranch because of the oil, which ruffles Plainview a bit, who still gets the Sunday patriarch, Abel (David Willis), to agree to a deal: $5,000 down, and $5,000 when drilling succeeds in striking oil.

Stalin's audition tape for The Office

(Incidentally, because Eli and Paul look identical, I thought there was going to be a plot twist whereby we eventually learn that they’re the same people, and that Eli was manipulating Plainview. But like all plot twists I actually see coming in movies, it doesn’t actually happen.)


Plainview sets up a well, and Eli Sunday, suddenly rich, greatly expands the size of his church. Although they have mutual interest in seeing the well succeed, Eli’s very, very, very religious, and Plainview is very, very, very not religious. And very, very, very not fond of Eli. When Eli asks to deliver a not-at-all ostentatious blessing at the ground-breaking ceremony, Plainview agrees, but then winds up delivering a mocking version of it himself. When a worker dies shortly after drilling starts, Eli makes sure, in his hatefully soft-spoken way, that Plainview realizes the tragedy is his fault for not letting Eli do the blessing. I guess it never occurred to Eli that he could have done the blessing himself, anyway, without being introduced by Plainview. Or maybe God’s not so important, and he just don’t want his homies disrespecting him, dawg, which I think was more the intent of the scene.

"And now, everyone, I'd like you to meet my little friend, Peanut. Say hello to the nice people, Peanut."

When the well does strike oil, it strikes the crap out of the oil. Everyone’s just chilling out near the well when, all of a sudden, natural gas explodes from the well, knocking back H.W. just ahead of a massive fountain of oil. Plainview hurries his dazed and frightened son to safety, but is most concerned with getting the well under control. And that was probably a good idea, although a little late, because the well catches fire and goes up in flames. And it keeps burning for a while, then stops. And, uh, that’s it. Apparently it’s fine, and they still have oil. Really, the whole well-catching-fire scene looked a lot more important in the trailer.

"And once we break through the lines here, we'll have a straight path to Berlin!" "Vladimir, you eediot! This is a map of Iowa!"

Unfortunately, H.W. is now completely deaf, which both saddens and frustrates Plainview, who really hates closed captioning. When Eli approaches Plainview about getting the $5,000 that’s owed him, he instead gets a smack-down, with Plainview putting his Tom Selleck moustache to good use and pummeling him for not being able to faith heal his son, or even interested in trying. Eli is obviously impressed with Plainview’s fighting moves, because he tries them out on his father for agreeing to a deal on which they’re going to get screwed. In a better movie, the financial dispute would escalate until you‘ve got people pulling Tommy guns out of guitar cases. In this movie, this is the last serious mention of it we’ll hear in a while, because it’s time to move onto the next inconsequential story arc.

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. What? ... Eight and a half."

Plainview, still in a bit of a bad mood about not being able to communicate with his son, is approached by a man who claims to be his long-lost half-brother, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor, playing this as an irony-free version of Benny from The Mummy). Although Plainview isn’t one to warm up to people, he does have fond childhood memories of his brother, and seems to have a bit of a weakness for people who are supposed to love him unconditionally. And Henry’s a creaky-voiced, aimless loser, so it’s not like Plainview would have to worry about sibling rivalry, which I suspect he wouldn’t take kindly to. So Henry comes aboard as some kind of junior business partner/lackey/Igor, right around the time that Plainview tricks H.W. into boarding a train that will take him to a San Francisco boarding school for the deaf, all by himself. Awww, H.W. is being separated from his father. And that’s… sad.

"Oh, stop whining, son. I was married when I was your age, and now your mother, the rest of the commune, and I are very happy together."

Daniel Plainview’s prone to crankiness. When Standard Oil offers to buy up his business, their representative suggesting that it’ll give him more time to spend with his son, Plainview instead offers to cut the guy’s throat for telling him how to run his family. But he’s seemingly in a bind because he needs to transport his oil by train, which Standard Oil monopolizes and can jack up the rates for. Not to be outdone, Plainview plans to build a pipeline to California and sell to Union Oil instead. However, to build the pipeline, he needs to buy the property of an old man named William Brandy, who had held out selling to Plainview a while earlier because he was refused a personal audience. Whoops. Plainview rides out there and waits for Brandy to return.

"I don't know how to quit you."

While waiting, he goes swimming with his brother, and seems to generally enjoy the guy’s company. Daniel confesses that he generally hates people, and is consumed with competitiveness. Seeing as how World of Warcraft won’t be invented for nearly another century, he doesn’t have a productive outlet for these emotions. But in the course of spending time with Henry, he comes to suspect that he isn’t who he says he is. As they’re camping in the woods alone, Plainview wakes him up with a gun pointed to his face and says, “Name three presidents!” Wait, wrong movie. He asks the name of a farm from their childhood, which forces faux-Henry to admit that he’s not really Plainview’s lost brother, but just a friend of said brother, who took on his identity to get close to rich oilman Daniel shortly after real Henry died of tuberculosis.

"NOW it's an accurate phallic representation! Look at her go!"

Plainview realizes that although this man isn’t really his brother, he’s been a loyal friend whom he’s been able to open up to. Just kidding. He blows his head off and buries him in the woods.


Waking up, Plainview comes face-to-face with Brandy (Hans Howes), who isn’t so displeased at Plainview’s unkempt appearance, or the awareness that he had murdered a man the other night and was sleeping on his grave, that isn’t willing to sell his property. He just wants Daniel to get baptized is all. Hey, they stole this from Ed Wood! I knew Upton Sinclair was lifting all his ideas from somewhere!

"I don't know how to quit... Dammit! That Sunday bastard already used my joke! And this is a much better context!"

Worst of all, Brandy belongs to Eli’s church, which makes the ceremony a bit awkward. Baptism in the Old West was a bit rougher than mine was. I’m pretty sure it was implicit that I was a sinner, but I don’t think it was rubbed in my face so much, and I didn’t have to proclaim out loud that I had abandoned my child. Must be Lutherans or something. As Plainview goes through confessing, then getting congratulated by all the parishioners, you kind of wonder for a bit if he was sincerely moved or not. Maybe he’s a changed man.

"Zounds! When I said, 'Well, I'll be damned! I didn't mean it literally!"

THAT doesn’t last long. When H.W. is returned from boarding school, now knowing how to speak sign language (Although Daniel himself still can’t. Whoops.), Plainview sits down to a nice meal with his son. Until he realizes that some of the Standard Oil people are at the next table. Uh-oh. Plainview throws a napkin on his head so he can shout insults at them without giving his son the idea that he’s a less-than upstanding citizen. Classy. Quite a bit nicer is H.W.’s relationship with Mary Sunday, a nice little girl that H.W. has befriended despite the fact that his father has the morals of Pol Pot and the looks of the Master from Manos the Hands of Fate. Unlike Daniel, she learns sign language so she can communicate with H.W., and when they both reach adulthood, they get married.

Borat. By Calvin Klein.

Flash forward to 1927. Plainview lives in a huge mansion with a butler and everything. No secret superhero identity, near as I can tell, although this movie was apparently based on only the first half of the Upton Sinclair novel, so you never know. He’s more pleasant than ever. When H.W. comes by to tell him (through an interpreter on behalf of sign language-ignorant Daniel; Dad will do anything for his child that doesn’t involve spending time) that he wants to end his partnership with his father and move to Mexico to start up his own company with Mary, Plainview congratulates his son’s initiative by telling him he’s both a traitor and an orphan, a “bastard from a basket.” Which is a real relief to H.W., who’s turned out all right for himself.

"Tell me where the stash is." "It's on your upper lip, boss. Ha, ha! I make joke! Just like you!" (click)

While sleeping on the bowling lanes in his mansion--among his many character quirks is that he’s accustomed to sleeping on hard surfaces--Plainview’s visited by Eli. Whom he still owes $5,000, but who’s not coming to collect. Instead, he’s offering to sell some more land of his to Plainview, believing it to have oil underneath. And with the recent stock market crash (recent 1927 stock market crash), Eli’s desperate for money, although he puts on a brave face and insists he wants the money to expand his church operation. Is it time for the Dickensian reawakening of the old miser’s heart? Or is it time for one last Plainview hissy fit before the ending credits?

"Now, Daniel, say five Hail Marys and wear this enormous hat for a week, and I think you'll be forgiven."

I’m going with B, Regis. To agree to a land deal, Plainview forces Eli to boldly proclaim, as if before a congregation, that he’s a charlatan and that God’s a delusion. He then promptly answers that he’s already slant-drilling into the land that Eli’s talking about, meaning that Eli’s got nothing to offer him. If you’ve waited the entire movie for the “milkshake” line, here it is. There’s a lot of verbal abuse, then a lot of physical abuse, then a lot of psychological abuse as Plainview further mocks Eli’s god, then some more physical abuse with a bowling pin to cap off the visit. Sitting there beside the dead body of his long-time non-rival, Plainview calmly calls out to his butler, “I’m finished.” Roll credits. Uh-huh. That’s the longest episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm I’ve ever watched.

"Get this, son: Ohhhh! Jacob Marley! I am the ghost of Ebeneezer Scrooge! Mwa-ha-ha!"

If I could suggest one thing that would have helped this movie, it would have been this: a point. Seriously, what exactly was I watching this for? I realize that this isn’t supposed to be some fast-paced crime drama or anything, but some kind of basic conflict that progressed along with the movie would have been nice. Was the conflict supposed to be Daniel trying to be loved? There were certainly parts where he was trying to bond with his kid or his fake brother, but it’s a story that really only develops at all at the every end, when Daniel and H.W. disown each other. Was the movie supposed to be about Plainview and Standard Oil competing with each other? That could have been interesting, but Plainview’s success was never really in doubt, and it would be a real reach to call Standard Oil his “nemesis.” If I had to describe what the conflict of the story is, I’d have to say that it’s just generally about a greedy guy who keeps succeeding and keeps not getting loved anyway. It’s merely a character study, a $25 million one-man show where Daniel Day-Lewis gets to play off people, showing off every little nuance he’s imagined for his character. We’re supposed to be so enthralled by the crumminess of this guy that we don’t notice that he doesn’t have anyone interesting to play off of, or any particular goal he’s in danger of not accomplishing. Plainview’s little outbursts of bad behavior are often pretty amusing on their own, but without any serious suspense, they don’t amount to much of a story.

"There's no escape, Eli. I have you... pinned! Ha, ha, ha! Oh, I'm just on a roll tonight!"

Uh, sorry. This movie is essentially a 158-minute prequel to a Disney Channel TV movie, where Daniel Plainview is taught the true meaning of Christmas by Amanda Bynes.