AHHHHHHHHHH! THE HUNGER GAAAAAAMESSSSSS! I haven’t actually seen it yet, but apparently everyone else has. It took in more than 155 million dollars, which is SO MANY MILLIONS of dollars, making it the third biggest opening weekend ever, and the biggest opening weekend on a spring weekenzzzzzzzzzzz. That stuff is boring, but the point is that everyone loves The Hunger Games. Sure! Your mom texted you this weekend and was like “DO U THINK GALE WILL EVER FORGIVE CATNESS?” followed by a string of sadface emoji. I’ll see it eventually, although I’m never really that clear on why movie adaptations of wildly successful books make people so excited. You already read the book, right? So you know what’s going to happen. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s costume parade through The Capital, I’m just saying it’s a little odd to go in with a head that is FALLING OFF but also FULL OF SPOILERS. As an adult man, I haven’t have read all three of the books, so I can’t, wait, what? How did that happen? Not important. Don’t worry about it. Adult stuff. Shhh. But so, I can speak to one thing, at least, about the out-of-control success of this movie, which is that just 11 years ago a movie came out called Battle Royale that was pretty similar in a bunch of ways, but that movie was BANNED. It just goes to show you how quickly our communal attitudes towards Forced Child Slaughter can change. And also how much it helps the Box Office Revenue for the people to be doing the killing/dying to be white. How big of a help? Banned vs. 155 million dollars difference.

BUT, SO, GUYS, OMG, WHAT DID U THINK? WHAT DID YR MOM THINK?

The new Whit Stillman movie, Damsels in Distress, comes out today! It would be very foolish of us NOT to go out and see it together like a family, and then discuss it on Monday. Don’t be a fool!

Well, that almost hit the spot! Kind of! Even when just talking about the movie with friends after seeing it, I’m finding it a little difficult to be too hard on Damsels In Distress. As a fan of Whit Stillman since a professor showed Metropolitan in a “Wealth and Power” class I took in college, because of course, none of that is the most annoying thing that anyone has ever read, ALL very good, it’s hard not to take his first film since 1998′s Last Days of Disco and enjoy it just because it’s, if nothing else, new and Whit Stillman-y. (To be fair, the wait in-between films obviously hasn’t been that long for me, having only been introduced to them a few years ago when I was in college, like I said.) (I was 11 in 1998.) (SUE ME ABOUT IT, WHY DON’T YOU.) The main characters were just as charmingly self-deceiving and garrulous as we remembered them when they were played by Chris Eigeman and Chloë Sevigny, and Greta Gerwig and Adam Brody (also the rest of them, but mainly Greta Gerwig and Adam Brody) did a good job of stepping into the roles. But the way that Damsels in Distress seems forcefully modernized — the Mean Girls element of goofy humor, for example — along with how difficult it is to get an idea of who these characters really are and the world in which they exist, made the film, overall, disappointing. (Also how there was no Chris Eigeman cameo.) (Where was Chris Eigeman?!)

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Hey everybody, let’s go see Snow White and the Huntsman this weekend! It looks great! Then let’s all come back here on Monday and talk about which character we thought was the prettiest. (Chris Hemsworth, probably.) (But it might be close!)

When the Snow White and the Huntsman trailer was released in November of 2011 it seemed to surprise a lot of people, including me, because, my goodness, that trailer was so good! So fresh, so beautiful, so exciting! And all from a Kristen Stewart action adventure version of Snow White? C’mon. C’MON. The last time I remember being that surprised by a movie trailer I had previously thought was just going to be another boring, old movie trailer was when I saw The Social Network trailer before a screening of Inception. (Remember how good THAT trailer was?) (What a great trailer!) But the difference between The Social Network and Snow White and the Huntsman — the one tiny difference, I’m not sure if you guys spotted this or not — is that The Social Network then actually turned out to be a good movie and Snow White and the Huntsman didn’t so much turn out to be a good movie. Oops. Which kind of makes sense! It’s honestly a little hard to feel too surprised or upset to find out that the Kristen Stewart-helmed action movie adaptation of Snow White wasn’t great. We did this to ourselves. We chose this. But one thing that we can be upset about it the widely jumped-to conclusion that the movie failed due to poor casting choices. Yes, Charlize is for sure more beautiful than Kristen Stewart. And yes, Kristen Stewart is 100% Kristen Stewart the whole time. But that wasn’t where the movie failed — the move failed in how it refused to acknowledge either of those things. 

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When I saw Prometheus this weekend, I went to this new-ish movie theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (which, for those of you who haven’t been there, is basically a Girls Theme Park) called Nitehawk, of course. Like, if you are going to open a movie theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it better be called Nitehawk. The thing about Nitehawk, the catch, because kids these days need a catch, is that it has smaller screening rooms, but with big, comfortable chairs, and there are tables in between every pair of seats, and menus, and a waitstaff, and golf pencils, and a bartender in the lobby and a BRUNCH SPECIAL. I went with some friends and we ATE BRUNCH while we watched Prometheus. What a world this is that we live in. Questlove was in the lobby. It was all v. v. cool. Admittedly, the waitstaff spilled an entire drink on my friend because the thing about movie theaters is that they’re dark. And people kept dropping silverware. And maybe the waitress could have picked a better moment to give us all our bills than during the climactic fight sequence between the SPOILER ALERT and the SPOILER ALERT. So, you’re more than welcome to take everything I say in this “review” with a grain of salt, much like I took my breakfast tacos with a grain of side bacon. There were obviously distractions. My friend Jon said that it was like turning a movie theater into a comedy club. But I think I got the gist of it. In space, no one can hear you LOL.

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In the weeks before The Dark Knight Rises came out, I rewatched the first two Christopher Nolan batman movies. It wasn’t specifically on purpose. I’m not one of those fans who worries that he’ll miss some reference or call back or restatement of a visual theme, it just happened that way. I had only seen Batman Begins once, in the theater, and felt like seeing it again. Once I’d done that, it just made sense to rewatch The Dark Knight. Right? It makes sense! Batman Begins is really good, by the way. It’s quick and fun and there’s Batman and a monorail and while it does do what every origin story does and spend a little too long worrying about HOW THEY GOT THEIR COSTUME, at least in this case the story has a mildly interesting para-military element and isn’t just Bruce Wayne up all night at a sewing machine by the light of his dead dad’s office lamp or whatever. But for as fun as Batman Begins is, it’s practically nothing in comparison to The Dark Knight, which stands out from all other superhero movies for being such a straight up GOOD MOVIE, superhero stuff aside. The acting is real good, the plot is clever and convoluted, and there are brief but plentiful moments of artistic beauty. Sure, the commuter ferry stuff is kind of boring, and the Harvey Dent plotline is rather thin soup, but for the most part it’s just great great great. All of this is to say that I was kind of prepared to be at least mildly disappointed by the new batman movie. And I was! But only mildly! Let’s talk about it.

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If you haven’t seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master yet, you should definitely see it, but first try and figure out a way to own a home with a personal theater and have a 70mm print delivered directly to you, or watch it on your phone. (Just kidding, don’t watch it on your phone! I was kidding! Don’t watch anything on your phone. Throw your phone away!) What I’m saying is that this is the type of movie that draws a very particular kind of crowd, and you might want to avoid that crowd. To give you an example, while waiting in line for tickets a man behind me shouted “It is true, I am the master, now clear the way for me!” and then turned to his friend and said in that fatigued voice one assumes when a joke has not gone your way but you feel the need to commit to it through the very end, “Well, that didn’t work. I really thought maybe that would work.” His friend said, “I don’t know either,” and then they proceeded to have a discussion of whether or not you should hire someone to stand in line for you at the movie, “if time truly is our precious resource,” without ever discussing who it is that would be applying for or accepting a job like that. But inside it was even worse, because the movie started playing, and that is when people laughed or gasped and it was like what are you laughing at? Did that require a gasp? Are YOU ok? “Oh that is rich, I see what this movie is saying in this scene, ahem ahem ahem.” It can all be a bit much, this human zoo. OH, BUT, SO THE MOVIE WAS PRETTY GOOD!

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In college I took a film class and at one point we watched Terminator 2, because that is the kind of thing that you do in college. You watch a big budget Hollywood movie about robot assassins that you’ve already seen a bunch of times, and then you sit in an over-heated classroom and listen to an old man explain how the robot assassins are actually metaphors for colonialist imperialism, or something, and how the part where Edward Furlong hacks an ATM machine is a signal of the director’s Marxist interpretation of Gilles Deleuze’s insistence on the flaneur as spectacle or I DON’T EVEN KNOW. All I know is that we watched Terminator 2 and got one juice glass of each kind of drink in the cafeteria and college and it was awesome. But in the discussion group after the movie, I remember getting in a very heated argument with another student. His position was that the movie was perfect, and my position was that time travel sucks in movies and that it never makes any sense if you stop to think about it for even two seconds. This is not to say that I don’t like Terminator 2, because I do. I like it just fine. But if you are in college, and your job is to think about things, then some of the movie’s internal logic does not exactly hold up to close or really ANY inspection. No movie about time travel does. Including this one. But it is still pretty fun!

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Before we even get into James Bond 007 Skyfall, we have a BREAKING EDITION of Hey, What’s Up With Topher Grace: he was at my screening last night. He looked great! Very healthy, with a nice full beard. All of his friends seemed really nice. Unfortunately, Topher did NOT enjoy the movie very much. Before this actually becomes genuinely creepy, I would like assure both Topher Grace and the police that I was not following him around or trying to eavesdrop on his conversation. I am an adult, and I have my own things to do. A friend went to use the bathroom and I happened to be standing next to a load-bearing pillar in the theater lobby waiting for my friend to return, and Topher Grace happened to be standing nearby and it is not my fault if he was critiquing the movie aacute; la Americaine (see: loudly) for everyone to hear. I didn’t hear all of it, I just heard him ask a young woman if she liked it with an incredulous tone of voice and then add “It was kind of boring,” and then he said something about “missed opportunities,” which, I don’t even know. That is between him and his God. But, so, there you go. Celebrities really are like us! They go to the movies one pants at a time and they even have opinions and everything! And now: James Bond 007 Skyfall!

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I saw Spring Breakers on a snowy Saturday afternoon about a week ago and there were only a few people in attendance at my screening. It was a very odd way to see a movie like this! There were a lot of quiet laughs scattered throughout the movie’s 90 minutes that seemed to say, “We should be laughing. Right?!” The energy in the room before the movie began was complete anticipatory excitement, but afterwards it shifted to an uncomfortable and odd nervous excitement during which many could only make bug-eyed half happy/half scared faces at each other in an attempt to express how they felt. Leaving a movie theater always puts me in sort of a daze,but the post-Breakers daze was something else entirely — readjusting to non-neons, trying to figure out what you’re going to say to your friends on the way home about what you all just experienced, piecing together what you’re going to be taking from it. Honestly, the first thing I said after I saw it was “I hated watching that.” Which is the truth! I really did! But I definitely didn’t hate it. I think I liked it? Clearly, a week later, I’m still reeling a bit. So let’s talk about it! FOREVERRRRRR.

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My prediction for my review of Pain & Gain was that it would be one sentence long, and that sentence would be: “This movie is perfect.” At dinner with a friend before the movie, he said that he was going in with very low expectations. I said that I was going in with very high expectations, and that I was pretty sure they were going to be met. From the trailers and the promotional materials and the occasional interview, it seemed like Pain & Gain was going to be to Michael Bay as a filmmaker what The Wrestler was to Mickey Rourke as an actor. Like Amistad standing on the shoulders of his ancestors to win a court case, everything in his life had led up to this one, perfect moment. Had I done even the most cursory of research about the movie ahead of time, I might have had some inkling of the problems to come. For example, the fact that it was based on a true story about a group of MURDERERS but was now being portrayed as a lightly comedic romp full of hunks. Just as an example. Needless to say, my movie review of Pain & Gain is going to be a little longer than one sentence, and none of them will include the word “perfect,” although they might include the words: “homophobic,” “misogynistic,” “anti-semitic,” “disgusting,” and “nightmare.”

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Superman was my favorite when I was growing up. Also the Hulk. The two of them had to share the crown. In retrospect, they both probably say a lot about where my little head was at. All superheroes have secret identities, but mostly those identities are in service of protecting the heroes’ girlfriends and adoptive families and/or evading detection by the numbskull police forces who don’t approve of vigilante justice. In the cases of Superman and the Hulk, it was literally that people could not know who they truly were or it would destroy them. Admittedly, the weird face blindness that everyone suffered in Metropolis never sat particularly well with me, even as a child. His only disguise is a pair of glasses? And a slightly unruly cowlick? Maybe on the street, but in a room full of NEWSPAPER MEN? Yikes. The other thing I never liked was that Superman never used the bathroom. Whatever, kids get concerned about the darndest things. It wasn’t that he even needed to use the bathroom necessarily, but if he wasn’t going to ever go to the bathroom then I felt they should at least explain it. Does he not need to, because of the sun? Show don’t tell but sometimes tell. For the most part though, Superman was just so great. He is so powerful! And fun! He literally gets his strength from the sun! Or at least, he used to.

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The line between cynicism and art is pretty thin. Ultimately it all comes down to motivation, or the perception of motivation. If Michael Bay made a movie about robots punching Godzillas in the face, it would have been greeted with open hostility (and it would have made way more money than Pacific Rim actually made). But you put a fanboy nerd filmmaker like Guillermo Del Toro in charge, and regardless of the fact that we are still talking about a $190 MILLION Hollywood summer blockbuster, and the critics go quiet. Momentarily. Like, once they see the actual movie they are not as quiet. But the build up to Pacific Rim seemed to float along on an ocean of good will. I’m not complaining. I’m not saying Guillermo Del Toro shouldn’t be given a fair amount of leeway or respect or whatever you want to give him. I’m merely observing that Pacific Rim was always going to be a movie about giant robots punching Godzillas in the face, and no amount of genre-homage or Charlie Day comic relief was ever going to change that. You can’t make fun of Real Steel one year and then two years later pretend that the same movie is suddenly going to be a masterpiece. Not that you would, straw man, because even you know, straw man, that it wasn’t.

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I had almost impossibly low expectations going into The Wolverine this weekend. Between the faint rumblings I had picked up that the movie was “slow” and “too long,” and the fact that I distinctly remembered disliking the last stand-alone Wolverine movie immensely, it just seemed like this one stood a chance. Admittedly, I was charmed by the man outside of my theater dressed in an elaborate Wolverine costume, asking people to “enjoy the movie” in a faint Spanish accent, but could he be trusted? What is his taste in movies like? Besides Wolverine movies, I mean? It also didn’t help that this summer seems to have been particularly disappointing when it comes to fun and exciting escapist fair, although I am starting to get the sense that it feels like that every summer, not just that it has been disappointing but that it has been particularly disappointing. So maybe this is more of a Gabe problem and less of a “The Movies” problem.

All of this is to say that I was delightfully surprised by The Wolverine! Oh, it’s a stupid piece of garbage to be sure, but it’s a FUN ENOUGH stupid piece of garbage, all things considered.

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I had brunch with a friend who hadn’t seen any part of the Cornetto trilogy (that’s something only nerds call it, right?) (I’ve never said it out loud because I am NOT a nerd) before seeing The World’s End this weekend. He asked, “What should I know before going in to see the movie?” I said, “You don’t have to know anything.” Then I went back to shoving food into my face and drinking my mimosa really fast so I could get another one before we had to go. Then he said, “But, what should I expect style-wise? Are there any running themes?” ?! Can you believe the nerve of this person? Trying to get me to have a conversation about the movie we’re going to see while I’m trying to eat my brunch in silence?! So I told him to expect music in scenes, and he said, “Oh, like music that tells you more about what’s going on?” And I said, “No, just music.” Hahah. Then I said, “Also comedic violence and quick cuts.” Then he stopped asking me questions, finally. I wish I could have said something that I could use to enlighten one of the themes of the movie, or at least something I could use to segue into a review, but I AM RUDE AT BRUNCH. C’est la vie. I was right about all of those, though! They were all in there! Let’s talk about what else was!

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It was a warm September afternoon and one young blogger and a few friends headed to the movie theater to see One Direction: This Is Us in 3D. “Hey, I’m going to get some popcorn, you guys go ahead and get seats” said the blogger, waving her friends away. Just an average trip to the movies. As she was paying for the popcorn and wondering why movie theaters don’t serve alcohol, she heard a beautiful voice behind her — “Ello, Kelly!” Whaaat? Who was it? “Ello mate, it’s me, Harry Styles from One Direction.” OMG. It was Harry Styles. Kelly– I mean, the blogger knew it was Harry Styles because he was wearing his signature “suit jacket with a t-shirt underneath” and his hair was perfect. Harry Styles knew it was Kelly, ugh, the blogger, because he was a secret big fan of hers. “I knew you were perfect at blogging,” Harry said, “but I didn’t know you were the most beautiful woman I would ever see in my life.” What?! OMG. “You can blog from anywhere, right?” he asked. “Pretty much yes, as long as there is a steady Internet connection — which rules out my apartment! Hahah. Just kidding, but I have a lot of problems with my Internet at home. Time Warner is the worst, you have no idea I bet” said the blogger. Harry liked how weird and not fun she was to talk to. “Would you like to come on tour with me and the lads?” Uh, YES SHE WOULD! “Yes!! — Wait” The blogger quickly googled “Harry Styles age.” Ugh. 19. “You’re 19,” she said. “So? Aren’t you 19?” he asked. “No, I’m 26.” “Oh…” Dang. Maybe he didn’t think she was so perfect at blogging after all– Wait, what? Ahh-hah! Whooooops! Wrong window! Eeeeek. This is embarrassing. That one should have gone here. This one’s for the review! LOL. Whoops. Anyway, let’s talk about the movie!

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By now, Neil deGrasse Tyson has already tweeted about the many inaccurate elements of Gravity‘s plot, and Alfonso Cuarón has already responded to those who might be critical of those less-than-truthful elements with — to paraphrase — “uh yeah, I know about those things and I don’t care; it’s a movie.” Yet no one has openly criticized the person who loudly complained that the television in the bar area was “so gauche” at the restaurant I went to before seeing the movie! Will no one take this man to task? If not for the television complaints, at least for how he loudly wished that his girlfriend would offer more praise for the elements of his personality he prizes the most, i.e. his insight! And if not for that, he should be taken to task at the VERY least for his loudly talking about the movie Gravity when that movie JUST CAME OUT AND MAYBE SOME PEOPLE SEATED RIGHT NEXT TO YOU HADN’T SEEN IT YET AND WERE GOING TO SEE IT IN ONE HOUR, LOWER YOUR INTENSELY LOUD VOICE! So gauche indeed, sir. Anyway, why didn’t Sandra Bullock barf? Let’s talk about it!

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Well, no one saw The Fifth Estate this weekend. It had the worst debut of 2013, making only $1.7 million from 1,769 theaters. (It cost $26 million to produce.) (Eek!) There was only one other person at my screening, even though my movie theater recently replaced its bed buggy cloth seats with seemingly non-bed buggy plastic seats. You’d think that would really draw in some butts! But not even a combination of Benedict Cumberbatch the idea of a bed bug free environment could bring butts and eyes to The Fifth Estate. And all of this brings me to the fairly large elephant in the room: DOES NO ONE FOLLOW THE RULES OF VIDEOGUM MOVIE CLUB ANYMORE? $1.7 million?! What is that divided by all of you guys? I paid $14 for my screening IN A BED BUG THEATER, (all theaters are bed bug theaters), which is ridiculous, but at least I did my part. Where were you guys? Seeing 12 Years A Slave? Uh, that’s not the movie that I agreed with myself to make you guys see because of how difficult it would be for me to write a joke review of 12 Years A Slave! Ridiculous. Just completely ridiculous. You guys are all a bunch of Daniel Bergs at the end of the movie. (Making me Julian Assange.) (WE’LL LET HISTORY DECIDE WHO WAS CORRECT.) Speaking of the movie, it was bad! Let’s talk about it!

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How do costume designers find clothes that make Natalie Portman seem normal-sized? I know Thor has a boomerang hammer and a solid chest or whatever, but Natalie Portman and I are the same height, according to the Internet, and somehow she comes across as being adult-sized in this and every movie, and for that she is the real superhero. I think it has something to do with making the buttons on her shirts smaller? I don’t know, but it was exciting and fun to watch! Two thumbs up for Natalie Portman’s wardrobe — lighthearted, sexy, and action-packed! I couldn’t look away! But anyway, about Thor: The Dark World: I almost fell asleep while watching Thor: The Dark World. Full disclosure: I did not see the first Thor movie and I don’t particularly enjoy superhero movies, especially boring ones. This was not a movie for me! I am aware that there were probably a lot of things that could have been explained if only I had read some comic books seen the first Thor and understood who his character was or had even a loose grasp on what was going on, but I didn’t. Oh well. SUE ME. I’m not a nerd and I’m not going to devote my time to NERD SHIT. Hahah. Just kidding. Kind of. Do what you love, don’t do what you don’t love. Is anyone still reading this? My apologies if you are! Thor: The Dark World was boring and I pretty much hated it, let’s talk about it!

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