Rush: Ladies and Cars

Rush is a movie of rich ingredients. Fast cars, daring men, beautiful women, a story driven by the fire of competition and designed to inspire--the recipe is powerful. With Ron Howard at the helm, the end product is both flashy and easily digested, but is it good? 3 days later, I'm still having a hard time with that question. It isn't *bad*, it just isn't all that interesting. Watching Rush is to movies as eating at the Cheese Cake is to food.

Cheese Cake. I should maybe not write these before lunch.

I don't mean to imply you won't like this movie. You will, if you have eyes. Howard spins out the story of James Hunt and Nikki LAUDA (I love saying that name. Say it. With emphasis. It's fun.), a pair of Formula One drivers whose rivalry peaked spectacularly during the 1976 season, in a deeply entertaining flurry of race montages and Olivia Wilde doing Olivia Wilde things.

Pictured: Olivia Wilde Things

The source material for Rush was built for the big screen (though it was manipulated slightly). Read up on it if you don't want to see the movie; it's a hell of a story. Howard does a fine job with said material, and he makes it look real, real pretty in the process. It's going to make a lot of money, and it deserves to. I just can't help but feel it's a little over-distilled. 

It's that distilling that makes Rush feel a little hamfisted at times. The rivalry between Hunt and Lauda is set up as a black/white dichotomy; the hard living, ever daring Hunt against the robotic Lauda. The message, that both men could stand to learn from the other in their respective pursuits of greatness, is made ABUNDANTLY clear. If you somehow miss that during the 90 minutes of Hunt slamming brews/Lauda obsession over the mechanical details of his car, don't worry! Lauda and Hunt have a conversation discussing (SPOILERS, sort of) that exact point in the movie's closing minutes. Ron Howard does not trust you to interpret nuance.

A quick warning, because I hate getting pump-faked by trailers: while all the hype for Rush suggest it's the story of James Hunt (which is totally understandable; Hunt is played by Thor, while Lauda is played by this guy), it's really more Nikki Lauda's story. And it should be. Put mildly, Lauda goes through some shit. Just understand you may not get quite as much Hemsworth as you want.

Ugh. Why is it still two weeks until Machete Kills comes out?

Directed By: Ron Howard

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Olivia Wilde, this lovely lady whom I have not heard of previously.

You Should see it if: You like cars, boobs, inspiring drama, or all of the above. 

RIDDICK: Vin Diesel Can See You in the Dark

Richard B. Riddick (escaped convict, murderer) lives in a dangerous, if oddly disconnected, cinemaverse. We first met Riddick in 2000's Pitch Black, in which he relied on massive lats and occasional sexual harassment to survive a pack of deeply light-averse aliens. The sequel, 2004's The Chronicles of Riddick, found him battling the NECROMONGER, an invading empire of brutal religious zealots. It had nothing to do with Pitch Black. It stands to reason Riddick would have (almost) nothing to do with either of the first two.

Riddick is space survival horror in it's simplest form. Man is betrayed and left behind on a remote planet, and must demonstrate that he's more BADASS than said planet to survive. And no one is more badass than Riddick. Not space wolves, not poisonous alien snake-gators (the movie features both), and certainly not a bunch of bounty hunters Riddick draws down using their own beacons. All would like to see our buff anti-hero dead. All will leave the theater unsatisfied (and seriously, that's not a spoiler. Vin Diesel never dies, unless he's trying to save Matt Damon).

What sets Riddick apart from it's predecessors is self-awareness. Where PB and CoR played it dead straight, Riddick seems to think that "yoked dude with shiny eyes that let him see in the dark beats a lot of ass" (and even rule it) could be construed as a silly premise. There's more than a few winknods for fans of the series, and even by his already impressive standards, Riddick draws from a cartoonishly deep well of testosterone. These are decisions I understand, but...I dunno. I'm not sure it works here.

The problem isn't anything Vin Diesel is doing wrong. The tone just doesn't fit. James Bond doesn't get drunk and brag about all the play he gets, because it simply isn't done. There are rules in every cinematic world. If you break those rules, your movie doesn't work. And Riddick breaks the rules. Not severely, not in a way that renders it unwatchable, but enough. Maybe I'm just disappointed it wasn't Pitch Black all over again, but seriously, I never thought I'd see the day that a sci-fi movie featuring bone fights, mercenaries, and sort of topless Kara Thrace could leave me anything but giddy. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT, DAMMIT. And it's only okay, firmly occupying the middle ground between the awesome that was Pitch Black and the clown show that was Chronicles. You let me down, Riddick. Please don't stab me for telling you that.

Directed By: David Twohy 

Starring: Vin Diesel, Starbuck, and Judge Dredd for about 3 minutes.

You Should see it if: You should really see Pitch Black instead.

You're Next: YEAH, YOU

It's horror season! A brief, 2 months-ish window between the block busters and the holiday Oscar grabs where things get real gory at the box office, and I love it. I've talked before here about how and why it's difficult to do horror well, but seriously, I don't care. I just want ghosts and severed limbs and hot ladies running through the woods all up in this bitch. 

And goats when applicable.

You're Next is 2013's first offering in this department (summer horror doesn't count, and no this isn't summer horror even though it came out in August. IT'S MY BLOG; I MAKE THE RULES). It's a great time, if you're into this kinda thing. You're Next is to horror what Brick and Drive  were to film noir, which is to say a movie that is at once a send-up and homage to the genre. It's scares come with a wink and nudge, and it's a lot more fun if you get the joke. 

The plot is as baseline as it gets. A wealthy family goes to their nice house in the sticks, mysterious thugs in animal masks show up to murderize them, family must *survive the night* (BABY SPOILER: Many do not). It's The Strangers, minus Arwen Evenstar. 

Where You're Next walks a tight-rope is bringing the audience in on the joke without letting the characters in, too. There's more than self-awareness here; self-aware has been done before in horror. This is a comedy for horror fans who want to remember the highlights (nods to The Shining and the scariest scene from the Saw series) and low lights (see: all of The Strangers) of the genre they love, all wrapped in a skin of more than decent slasher horror. It's sloppy in spots; this is a hard act to nail without a stumble, but there's more good than bad. The twist works, there's more than a few decent kills, and you get some awesomely WASP-y names for the characters, like "Crispian" and "Drake". 

WASP

You're Next is impressive, but it's probably not for everyone. It's heavy on certain brands of wish fulfilment (ass-kicking survival; watching rich white people get murderized), but at the end of the day, it's a movie by film geeks for film geeks. If you don't put yourself in that category, you might not dig it. If, on the other hand, you think you think watching a murdering sociopath take a meat tenderizer to the crotch sounds rad, this movie is for you. It was certainly for me.

Come Get Some

Directed By: Adam Wingard 

Starring: Sharni Vinson (She was in Blue Crush 2, which apparently exists!), a bunch of other people no one's heard of but all did a pretty good job! Check out the movie's main IMDB page for more facts on 'em.

You Should see it if: You love horror, or spend your days nursing revenge fantasies.