Grieco is King

You all know that I’m tough-as-nails, but sometimes even I can break down and weep like a small hairless child. Is it the suffering of Man or the realization of the ephemeral nature of existence that brings me to tears? No. It’s blatant acts of heroism and redemption in movies. Not in real life. I don’t give a shit about acts of heroism in real life. Only in movies.

So, here are the Top 5 Movie Scenes that Make Me Cry Like a Baby:

The Departure of Boromir (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
Oh my God. Sweet Jesus. The man has three arrows in his chest and he keeps on fighting to defend those that he had thought to betray. His clutching for his sword as he’s dying and the subsequent Aragorn speech pretty much kill me. Yeah, I’m really cool. I know.

Death of Captain Kirk’s Dad (Star Trek – 2009)
This movie kicks ass from the get-go. The Captain is dead, the ship is under attack, and all is going to shit. Young Kirk’s dad, George, takes command and sacrifices himself for the crew and for his wife who is giving birth to James T. Kirk. He hears his son’s first gasp and says goodbye to his wife before he goes out. That, my friends, is a blatant act of heroism.

Final Play of the Game (Friday Night Lights)
Explosions in the Sky, Texas pride, and a lost sense of youth pretty much have me on the verge for this entire picture, but there is something about Odessa-Permian (a team which I despised as a child in real life) coming so close that is heartbreaking. The last play is ultra bold, and the amount of hustle displayed on the field is unparalleled. Now, the actual game didn’t really come down to the final play, but as far as I’m concerned it did and Permian got screwed. Eat a dick, Carter High School. Sorry, it had to be said.

The Death of Santino “Sonny” Corleone (The Godfather)
Carlo Rizzi is the most horrible honor-less coward fuck in all of movie history. While Fredo’s betrayal is legendary in its weakness (rightfully so), Carlo’s craven act of beating his wife (the young Talia Shire) to draw out Sonny is just the worst. Not to mention, the joy Carlo takes in calling his aforementioned wife a “guinea” leads me to believe that he is a Northern Italian, and is therefore a piece of trash. Nothing brings me greater joy in The Godfather than the scene in which Sonny beats Carlo on the street, and nothing brings me greater sadness than when Sonny acts rashly and then stops to pay a toll.

In the end, Carlo gets garrotted in a fashion befitting his shameful existence, but by then it’s already too late. Sonny is dead, and tears have been spilled.

Uncle Buck
OK, I don’t know what my problem is. The John Candy movie Uncle Buck totally makes me cry. I can’t even tell you what scene it is that does it. For some reason, I cannot keep it together during Uncle Buck. Man, I need to talk to a professional.

Now, for your listening pleasure, the saddest rendition of a song about crying ever recorded:

I am in 8^th grade. In honor of her birthday, a girl I fancy is having a slumber party with several other girls that are also worth fancying. Because there is a God, some lucky young gentlemen have been invited over for the pre-slumber festivities. I am one of these gentlemen.

I splash on a bit of Drakkar Noir and don my middle school letterman’s jacket adorned with several awesome patches, two of which are the winged shoes of Hermes. My prowess in the 800m and the “mile relay” makes me feel as though I am a young Hermes; if Hermes were really short, had patchy facial hair, and harbored a secret love of Sinead O’Connor.

I meet up with some of the other gents, and we walk over to the party together. As we enter, the girls are finishing up a rousing game of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board (Looking back, I am sure that was for our benefit somehow. Anyway, it’s a moment that forever changed my life, but that’s a discussion for another time).

After some awkward flirting and Cheese Puffs, the girls decide it’s time to watch movies. We watch a U2 video for a while (Even then, I think I realized that Bono was a complete douchebag, but I kept my mouth shut as to not ruin the magic of the evening.). U2 is finished. We sit back and prepare ourselves for Witchboard…

I left that party with three thoughts in my head: Malfeitor is terrifying, Tawny Kitaen’s boobs, Tawny Kitaen’s boobs, Tawny Kitaen’s boobs, Tawny Kitaen’s boobs, Witchboard is awesome.

During the remainder of middle school and high school, I would watch Witchboard at many gatherings with many different people. My friends and I actually got so into it that we rented the multple Withcboard sequels and Witchtrap, which was by the same writer/director and starred the guy who played Malfeitor. It was very disappointing. Despite the Witchtrap debacle, our love of Witchboard remained strong. My friend Kev even penned a bold short story loosely based on Witchboard, The Stand, and the evil that is a graphing calculator.

So it was that as my youth passed, I continued to believe in three things: Malfeitor is terrifying, Witchboard is awesome, and Tawny Kitaen’s boobs.

Now, I am old. Just the thought of running around a track exhausts and frightens me. However, until this week, I still held my Witchboard-centric beliefs. Sadly, those beliefs were dashed this Tuesday night.

It turns out that the guy who played Patch on Days of Our Lives really isn’t a great actor. Although his mullet and lawyer/spiritualist character might be the perfect representation of the 1980s. It also turns out that you only see Malfeitor for like two seconds. Seriously, if you blink you will miss the Malfeitor-beheads-Tawny-with-an-axe-dream-sequence. On top of that, Teacherwife rightfully pointed out that he looks like a Will Ferrel character. Perhaps the greatest tragedy though is that Tawny Kitaen’s boobs really aren’t featured in the way I remember. Either that, or Netflix sent me a DVD with scenes deleted. Or five seconds of boob just isn’t what it used to be. Whatever the case, the movie doesn’t hold up. It’s paced like a wet mop, and I think it might have been written by a guiboard. That said, the Witchboard theme composed by Steel Breeze still kicks some ass.

My 8^th grade self would have given this movie 4-Griecos. Of course, when I was in 8^th grade Grieco was just coming into his own, so I imagine I would have had a different rating system. 4-Hobbits or boners or Super Contras or something. Unfortunately, my aged self can only give it 1 1/2-Griecos. The extra ½ is purely for the scent of bad cologne and the once-held belief that if I said all the right things and ran fast enough at the City Track Meet, I might just have a chance with the girl I fancied.

This weekend, I raised the question “How many bombs does Hollywood allow you to have before they finally stop giving you leads in a movie?” I was thinking about it, because one of my friends was sure that the latest Jennifer Aniston movie The Switch was going to bomb, and that would be just another in a pretty long line of bombs. Well, if I am to believe the headline “Aniston’s ‘Switch’ BOMBS,” it appears my friend was right.

Now, I have nothing against Jennifer Aniston and I don’t really understand why every tabloid wants to portray her as the loneliest person who ever lived. However, I do think it’s weird that people just keep giving her movies. I mean she hasn’t had a hit since Leprechaun (maybe that’s not quite true, but you know what I’m saying).

Of course, she isn’t the only one. There are many actors out there who continually get called upon to “open” movies and continually fail. That’s why I have started the “Grieco Bomb Watch.” It will allow us to keep track of those stars who may be dangerously close to making one bomb too many (if that’s even possible).

Moving forward, I just want you to know that I don’t count ensemble romantic dramadies or enromcomdrams as they shall henceforth be known. If you’re playing one-half of one of like nine couples that a movie follows, that movie’s success or failure doesn’t rest on your shoulders.

So, here we go with our first edition of “Grieco Bomb Watch.” Sorry it took me so long to get here:

Jennifer Aniston

The Switch (2010)
I love Jason Bateman, so I kind of hoped this one would make it, but you could tell it just didn’t have it. The previews smacked of desperation and not even Goldblum could spark my interest. That said, I could totally see myself watching this on cable.

The Bounty Hunter (2010)
This is the one where “This is Sparta” plays a bounty hunter tasked with bringing in his ex-wife played by Aniston. What? You don’t remember this movie?

Love Happens (2009)
Speaking of movies you don’t remember…Love Happens starred Aniston as a hotel worker who falls in love with a writer/widower (Aaron Eckhart) who penned a hit book on coping with loss. I’m not sure there is enough money and/or chicken fried steak in the world to make me see this movie. However, I can only assume that Eckhart learns to love again and Aniston smile-cries a lot.

Management (2008)
When we saw the preview for this Aniston/Steve Zahn vehicle, Teacherwife and I were pretty sure it looked like one of the worst movies ever. Honestly, this preview made us question every decision humanity and Steve Zahn had ever made. Then like two minutes later, we totally forgot what the movie was even about.

That’s where we stand: four legit bombs in two years. Despite that, according to the Jennifer Aniston imdb page, she has 12 movies either in development, production, or post-production.

Didn’t catch Transformers? Don’t worry, you can start streaming Transmorphers right now!

Some of my favorite bad movies are direct-to-dvd rip-offs of summer blockbusters and the like, or at least movies that basically steal titles from major motion pictures as a marketing ploy. Who are the people behind these pictures? Are they merely puckish tricksters luring unsuspecting viewers, or are they the greatest and smartest people on Earth? Those are your only two options, so you have to pick one.

Here are a few of the latest rip-off pictures. I included their actual Netflix descriptions, so you can see how awesome and original they truly are.

Transmorphers

“Three hundred years ago, alien machines landed on Earth, wiping out civilization and driving mankind underground. Now, after three centuries of oppression, a small band of hardened resistance fighters leads the charge to the surface, where the final battle against the giant robots will decide the fate of the world. Amy Weber, Matthew Wolf, Eliza Swenson, Shaley Scott and Griff Furst star in this postapocalyptic techno-thriller.”

I love anything that has to do with the post-apocalypse. I also love the sound of Griff Furst. I will see this picture.

Transmorphers 2: Fall of Man

Do not confuse this with Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, because I am pretty sure this one is way better. After all, it is a prequel and fucking Tron is in it.

“In this prequel to Transmorphers — a sci-fi thriller that borrows heavily from the plot of Transformers — planet Earth is in peril thanks to a rogue army of alien robots, and it’s up to a small group of humans to mount a crippling counterattack. Can Sheriff Hadley Ryan (Bruce Boxleitner), a doctor (Jennifer Rubin) and an ex-Marine (Shane Van Dyke) find the automatons’ Achilles’ heel before they succeed in annihilating civilization?”

2012: Supernova

“Professor Kelvin (Brian Krause) is an astrophysicist working for the government who must recognize and confront a violent cosmic threat: a huge burst of radiation hurtling toward the Earth following the cataclysmic explosion of a star in a nearby galaxy. To deal with the approaching menace, the professor devises a bold and risky plan — a planet-sized gamble, in fact — to shield civilization from the approaching deep-space danger.”

Man, this has elements of 2012, Supernova, Armageddon and Dante’s Peak (at least I hope it has elements of Dante’s Peak. Every movie should have elements of Dante’s Peak).

2012: Doomsday

Not a sequel to 2012: Supernova or 2012 or Doomsday. Or maybe it’s a sequel to all of them. I’m not really sure.

“Four strangers are drawn to an ancient temple in Mexico on Dec. 21, 2012, to witness a global catastrophe of epic proportions. Based on actual Mayan prophecy, the story melds folklore and Christian beliefs with science, exploring themes of climate change and spiritual renewal. Ami Dolenz, Dale Midkiff, Cliff De Young and Collin Brock star in this apocalyptic thriller directed by Nick Everhart.”

I had a huge crush on Ami Dolenz as a kid after seeing her in She’s Out of Control and Witchboard 2: The Devil’s Doorway. Also, her dad is Mickey Dolenz, so you know she has to be pretty cool. I say this one is a must-stream.

S. Darko

Wait. This is an actual sequel to Donnie Darko. Thank God, because we really needed a sequel to Donnie Darko.

I love Kilmer. We should all love Kilmer. Here are my five favorite Kilmer moments of all time:

Dramatic Sniff in Top Gun
Iceman: I’m sorry about Goose. (long, serious inhale through nose, then look up) Everybody liked him.

Most awesome moment in film history? Maybe.

Anything in Tombstone
“I have not yet begun to defile myself,” “I’m your huckleberry,” and so on. At the end of the day, Doc Holliday might be Kilmer’s greatest cinematic achievement (and yes, that is saying something). Everything he does in this movie is pure gold. Seriously, pure fucking gold.

I was weeping and I slipped – The Saint
From the moment Kilmer dons the mask of Sir Thomas More (his greatest Saint personae as far as I’m concerned, though the Spaniard is a close second) everything just becomes amazing. While courting brilliant, beautiful, idiot, heart-trouble prone scientist Elizabeth Shue he pulls wads of cash out of his leather pants, mysteriously bolts the scene when things get too real, cuts his head to make it look like he fell, and then mumbles the most glorious mini-monologue you will ever here:

“I was weeping and I slipped. I was thinking of you…”

That scene gives me a boner.

Knight v. Hathaway – Real Genius
OK, I take back what I said about Tombstone. Real Genius might be Kilmer’s greatest performance of all time. Or maybe it really is Top Gun. Hell, I don’t know. But I do know that every time Kilmer battles it out with Professor Jerry Hathaway (played by the inimitable William Atherton) it is like a beautiful dream.

Professor Hathaway: When you first started at Pacific Tech you were well on your way to becoming another Einstein and then you know what happened?

Chris Knight: I got a haircut?

That’s comedy people.

“Why Me?” – Ten Commandments the Musical
I have nothing to say about this. Watch and learn:

A friend of mine sent this video clip to me the other day, and thank God he did.

It’s pretty obvious from the trailer that this will be the single greatest thing ever. Eric Roberts, people. The man was in Best of the Best.

I know what you’re thinking: Why am I reviewing a Martin Scorsese picture when I have generally committed myself to B-Movies, the SyFy channel, and society’s refusal to accept Richard Grieco as a legitimate Ambassador du Cinema? Either that, or you’re thinking that things will be a lot better when Mad Men is back on.

Anyway, as a wise friend of mine named BTS once said, Shutter Island is a B-movie with a huge budget. He said something like that anyway, but with bigger words. As is often the case, he was right. Shutter Island is, on the page, utterly ridiculous. To be honest, it’s utterly ridiculous on the screen, too, but it’s also kind of awesome.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Leo DiCaprio plays a U.S. Marshall who comes to a mental hospital to solve a missing persons case. An inmate (or “patient” as Sir Ben Kingsley says) seems to have disappeared into thin air. With his partner Mark Ruffalo, Leo stumbles into a world where, wait for it, nothing is what it seems. Eventually, Leo also stumbles into a Shyamalan-style twist that’s a little more absurd than the Sixth Sense twist but not nearly as stupid as The Village twist. Have I mentioned how much I hate The Village? Seriously, if The Village and The Happening had a baby it would be called Avatar 2: The Search for Jeremy Sisto’s Balls and it would eat the world. Sorry, I lost track there.

Michelle Williams shows up making me long for a Dawson’s Creek reunion and using the accent of an orphan hooker in a 1930s movie. Her line, “I’m just a bag-a-bones, Teddy” is by far my favorite line of the film. Speaking of strange vocal choices: Scorsese, stop making DiCaprio do a Boston accent. In fact, from now on, let’s agree that only people from Boston will be allowed to do Boston accents in non-comedic roles. Please. Everyone sucks at it.

OK, so Shutter Island looks pretty amazing and its completely over-the-top score adds to the experience. Throw in a bold showing by Sir Ben Kingsley and the great Max von Sydow and you have yourself a 4-Grieco picture. I loved it, but don’t kid yourselves people, it’s pure Grieco. Pure Grieco.

It’s summer movie season. A season of time-honored traditions like white kids playing Asian roles, Tom Cruise smirking as things explode, and a seemingly never-ending stream of movie clichés. I for one am comforted by the movie cliché. They remind me of simpler times when my greatest summer concerns were getting home from Camelot Records in time to see if “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was still #1 on the MTV Video Countdown and figuring out how I might grab a boob. Yes, those were the salad days.

In honor of summers past and summers yet to come, I offer you my three favorite movie cliches:

The Hunter Has Become the Hunted
Man, this one is still going strong. Have you seen the trailer for Predators? Other classic examples of the hunter (or hunters) becoming the hunted can be found in Aliens, Jaws 4: The Revenge, and Die Hard (take that, Hans Gruber!).

However, I don’t feel like this cliché has to be relegated only to action movies. It can be used freely in films like Revenge of the Nerds, Hannibal (no, Hannibal is not an action movie, because not a goddamn thing happens in it.) and of course, The Runaway Bride.

Street Smart Geniuses are All Around Us
Look, I’m not saying that there aren’t super smart people out there who simply don’t have the means or the chance to break into the world of physics or whatever. However, if Hollywood is to be believed, these charming scamps are all around us just waiting for the love of a pure woman or a chance from a CEO with a heart of gold to set their gifts free.

Matt Damon has made a career out of playing these types of roles in such films as Good Will Hunting, Rounders, the upcoming Rounders 2, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Rainmaker, and of course, Team America: World Police. While Damon is clearly the most prolific streetwise genius out there, don’t discount others such as Will Smith in the unfortunately spelled Pursuit of Happyness or Shia LaBeouf in anything he’s in. Seriously, that kid is streetwise. Did you see Eagle Eye? Fuck.

American Teens are Better than Foreign Armies
Sadly, this cliché doesn’t get the play that it used to get in the Reagan ’80s. That was a decade when a kid with a good heart and a bad attitude could bring down the whole of Communist Russia or some punk made-up Middle Eastern country.

Of course, Red Dawn is the definitive work in this cliché. I heard they’re remaking Red Dawn and that makes me want to transform into a teenager and blow-up shit, but not in a good way. Despite Red Dawn‘s perfection, we must not forget the beauty that is Iron Eagle, in which young Doug Masters and Col. Chappy Sinclair outwit the Air Force and destroy some walking stereotypes in order to rescue Doug’s father. I watched Iron Eagle over the weekend, and it still kicks ass.

I’m sure I’m missing some worthwhile movie clichés, so please feel free to share your own. Wolverines!

I have this recurring dream in which I am being hunted for a crime I didn’t commit. Usually, a vast government conspiracy is involved, and more often than not Tom Cruise serves as the only human left on Earth willing to believe me…and more importantly, believe in me. It’s usually the future in my dream and there are some generic future elements to it – flying cars, giant TV screens everywhere, and some form of Mind Cop Patrol bent on controlling us all with their quasi-mystic methods of policing.

Because of this dream and my need to understand it, I get overly excited about futuristic Sci-Fi movies. From the moment I see the trailer, I convince myself that this movie is destined to be one of the single greatest things anyone anywhere will ever see. On rare occasion I am right. That was not the case with Surrogates.

In the future, we are all plugged in almost all the time, sending our human-like synthetic surrogates to work, play, fuck, and do just about everything for us, while we control them from afar. Because of this, there is almost no crime, people are more attractive, and Bruce Willis gets to wear a horrendous hairpiece for a solid part of the movie.

Of course, not all the world is OK with how things are going. A group of humans has split off and begun to live in a surrogate-free colony led by Ving Rhames in a horrible dreadlocks hairpiece. In fact, his hairpiece is so overpowering that the colony of rebel humans is referred to as the Dreads.

Alright, so a weapon has been developed that not only kills surrogates, but kills their users (note: no one yells “Oh, my User!” as they die like in Tron. If they did, that would have been way cool). After Bruce Willis’ hair-pieced cop surrogate is captured and crucified by the rebel humans and he is almost killed while plugged-in, he’s forced to step away from the machine and do some real policing on his own. He’s also forced to deal with his estranged wife and the loss of his kid and some other bullshit that really has no bearing on anything.

It turns out that the creator of the surrogates, James Cromwell, has turned anti-surrogate and he wants to bring down what he created. It also turns out that (wait for it) he is controlling dreadlocked Ving Rhames. Boom! The most anti-surrogate person out there is actually a surrogate for the guy who created surrogates. Wrap your mind around that level of fucking genius.

In the end, bald real-life Bruce Willis saves everybody as bald real-life Bruce Willis always does, but the same cannot be said for the surrogates. It’s a new dawn, people. Time to step away from the computer and live your lives and experience Truth and all that other overrated stuff.

OK, so this is a 2-Grieco movie. However, there are a couple of things worth highlighting: Willis has a line that rivals Dafoe’s best line in Daybreakers. After realizing that not all surrogates are near replications of their users like his, real-life Willis turns to the female surrogate who has been his partner on the force and says without a smile, “Honey, I don’t know who you are. For all I know, you could be some big fat dude sitting in a stim chair with his dick hanging out.” Also, as the Wife pointed out, the weapon used to kill the users through their surrogates looked like a flashlight scrub-brush. That is now the name of the jam band that will open for Boogeyman Wormhole.