Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
September 12, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: What are your NFL predictions for the 2012 season?
Jason Barney: The Patriots looked pretty good today. Since I am a Patriots fan, I have to say that I think Brady is on the verge of getting some of the respect he deserves in the "Best QB of All Time" discussion. If he wins one more Superbowl the discussion is over, and the guy is still playing.
Patriots over Falcons in the Superbowl.
Jim Van Nest: Colt fans will be up in arms when Peyton Manning proves to still be an MVP caliber QB. Three years from now when Andrew Luck wins his first MVP and Peyton is retired, they'll feel differently. The Rams, Browns, Cardinals, Seahawks and Dolphins will all still suck. The Eagles, Cowboys, Chargers and Jets will still choke. The Broncos, Bears, Redskins, Bengals and Colts will improve. The Packers, Steelers and Ravens will not.
NFC Championship: Falcons over Giants
AFC Championship: Broncos over Patriots
Super Bowl: Broncos over Falcons 34-19
Reagen Sulewski: I predict that the Denver Broncos will be the most interesting team to watch on the field. I predict that the New York Jets will be the most interesting team to watch off the field. I predict feisty Detroit Lions team will surprise people in the playoffs. I predict the Arizona Cardinals will be drafting Matt Barkley.
Tim Briody: The rookie QB's that are seemingly everywhere will make this a fun one to watch. RGIII won't play like that every game but I hope he and Luck have long careers ahead of them.
David Mumpower: While I like that a couple of folks have correctly picked the Falcons to reach the Super Bowl, I am horrified that you picked against them in the end. I can understand Jim, the Broncos superfan picking with his heart, but Jay has selected a team that seems to prefer losing in the Super Bowl to winning these days.
I bragged for a year that I picked the Super Bowl contests in 2010 but then Green Bay's upset loss to the Giants kept me from duplicating the feat. I mention this now because I understand the mathematical unlikelihood of ever being this close again two years in a row. So what I can say with confidence is that my picks are almost assuredly wrong. As such, I will not be selecting the Atlanta Falcons since I love them the way that a baby loves its mother's milk.
The two teams I believe will meet in the Super Bowl are (again) the Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans.
Kim Hollis: I think that we'll see a lot of the rookie quarterbacks get benched as the season moves on. Brandon Weeden does not deserve to be on the field. He can't find his way out of a flag, let alone lead a team. I also am enjoying watching the game transition to a point where the wide receivers and tight ends are more critical than the running backs. Maybe it's because there are so few elite running backs, but it does seem easier to scheme against the run at this point, while all the creative plays are being done on the passing attack.
I am never good at picking winners, but I think I like San Francisco versus Baltimore. Which I guess means I like Harbaughs.
Please. We're all busy watching football.
Kim Hollis: What movies have you watched lately, and what did you think of them?
Matt Huntley:
1. The Possession: Not bad for a typical Hollywood "child-possessed-by-demon" movie (with some truly effective moments, especially toward the end), but also not good enough.
2. The Words: Blatant storytelling, but engaging drama and good performances make it worthwhile.
3. Night Moves (1975): Terrific film noir with Gene Hackman.
4. The Rules of the Game (1939): Classic from Jean Renoir about the erratic behavior of high society folk in pre-WWII France. Bizarre and unpredictable.
Tim Briody: If someone here didn't take one for the team and see Oogieloves (thus accounting for about 16% of its total box office), I will be severely disappointed.
Max Braden: David already knows that I've been waiting for this moment to tell everyone about my new favorite movie of the year, which nobody has seen (because it didn't actually record any box office). I haven't loved a movie this much since Black Dynamite or maybe Easy A. It may have been partly due to watching the movie at 3 a.m. when I was starting to get loopy from exhaustion... but no, it's great. Detention is part slasher, part high school comedy, part time travel movie. It is as self-aware as Scream, but the slasher aspect is barely seen for the first half of the film, and they don't even get to detention until an hour into the movie. "They" include Shanley Caswell as the outsider high school girl, Josh Hutcherson as the cool guy, and Spencer Locke as the dim blonde. The movie just gets crazier and crazier, and with so many '90s references I was shocked to find myself nostalgic. Highly recommended, and when you see it and don't agree with me, I recommend you keep your lips zipped.
I had to go see The Expendables 2. It's an '80s guy's moral imperative to see an expanded dream team of action stars. I didn't mind the slow pace of the first one too much, but the paint-by-numbers story of this one annoyed me. The new guy should have been wearing a red shirt when he announced his dreams of retiring from mercenary life to live with his girlfriend in their modest dream home in Paris.
Premium Rush reminded me of bike movies Rad and BMX Bandits from the '80s, as well as Better Off Dead and Ferris Beuller's Day Off because of the cop chasing Joseph Gordon Levitt and constantly yelling "Stop, NYPD." A little too Keystone Cops while taking itself seriously, and Michael Shannon has been much better in all his other movies.
I went to see Lawless because I'm a huge fan of Tom Hardy (moreso Warrior than Dark Knight), but he was trying too hard to be understated in this movie. It was all right, but I'd pick The Untouchables and Legends of the Fall over it.
On DVD:
American Reunion was only enjoyable to see the full cast reunited.
Wanderlust cracked me up a lot, largely because of the supporting characters. If you liked Role Models I expect you'd enjoy this. "Cut to..."
Casa di mi Padre - Will Ferrell's Spanish novella was mildly funny because he was more toned down than usual. A narrator's interruption detailing an accident with the animals on set got the biggest laugh from me.
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an example of how filming for 3D might work once in theaters but it falls flat in 2D.
The Three Stooges - I had no interest coming into this, but Sean Hayes actually got to me. The act of naively shooting an arrow straight into the air and walking away is very Mr. Bean and my kind of humor.
Breathless is a straight-to-DVD heist movie you know was written by a guy steeped in stage work because it's all talk in one location. I had to see it because Val Kilmer's in it. I know, I know...
Meeting Evil is a straight-to-DVD thriller with Samuel L. Jackson harassing Luke Wilson. Leslie Bibb, Luke's wife, has a great bit of dialogue telling off a female cop.
Being Flynn is about a writer son (Paul Dano) of a writer homeless man (De Niro). I continue to hate indulgent movies about writers.
Silent House has a moderately intriguing premise because home invasion is always scary...until you add a Big Psychological Twist! Lousy. (But I'm still crushing on Elizabeth Olsen.)
The Raid: Redemption is an Indonesian martial arts movie with the best hand-to-hand combat since Ong Bak, and apparently the direct inspiration for the upcoming Dredd movie's plot.
The Dictator was not as funny as his double. I did enjoy his insults to Anna Faris, though.
Get the Gringo is a straight-to-DVD prison movie starring Mel Gibson (remember him?!) in the tone of Payback. I liked it.
Piranha DD is pretty much the over the top exploitation you'd expect. I think that's the right approach, but the Final Destination series is better at it.
Bernie's acting was good but the real life townspeople in their interviews were the best part.
High School is a boring, convoluted high school stoner comedy. Adrien Brody was interesting as always, but it's not really worth it to see him.
Age of the Dragons looks like a SyFy movie (Moby Dick as told on land with dragons, and Danny Glover as Ahab) but has better production value and decent dialogue since most of it is taken from the literature. The result is, as anyone who's read the book will tell you, it drags.
4.3.2.1 looks like it should be an exciting heist movie starring sexy girls, but wow is it boring and repetitive. I felt like the movie should be wrapping up when it was barely an hour in.
I also caught one of the showcases at the DC Shorts Film Festival this past weekend. If you ever get a chance to see Deleting Emily from director Zak Klein, you won't be disappointed.
Tim Briody: In all seriousness, I haven't seen much in the way of films lately, but I wanted to comment on something that happened a few days ago on (go ahead and laugh), WWE's Monday Night Raw. If you haven't heard, long time commentator Jerry "The King" Lawler had a heart attack and collapsed on live television. It happened in the middle of a match he was calling, and I'm thankful that he was not on camera when it occurred and that his broadcast partner and others at ringside quickly noticed something was wrong and he was helped to the back where CPR was performed and he was taken to a local hospital and he is expected to pull through.
I watched the Owen Hart incident live back in 1999 and I was absolutely terrified that something similar was about to occur. While this was not an in-ring accident (and was never on camera, though you can tell the fans and even the wrestlers in the match taking place were distracted as medical professionals were assisting Lawler)., Monday was one of the scariest moments I've ever witnessed since then. The remaining 45 minutes of the program continued as scheduled/scripted, sans further commentary except for updates on Lawler's condition, which made for one of the most strangest experiences I've ever had as a wrestling fan (the product is so commentary driven that it was rather surreal watching a match happen and storylines being furthered without any assistance).
While in hindsight I can watch highlights knowing that he's okay, I sat there for nearly an hour trying to be entertained while simultaneously wondering if a man had died in front of a few thousand people in attendance and couple million viewers on television.
Kim Hollis: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was pretty blah. I enjoyed the first film despite myself (I think it's a good family film) and I'm kind of sad that the new, improved Rock version wasn't better. The pec pops were the only thing worthwhile, really.
Silent House is awful. I generally don't like horror films much anyway, but this one was just aggravating and the twist was obnoxious. The non-Olsen twin deserves better.
Despite not really liking horror films, I did like The Woman in Black. It's kind of a quiet, thoughtful film and Daniel Radcliffe did a really fine job as not-Harry Potter. I'm really looking forward to seeing him as Ig in Horns (which I guess will technically be another horror-ish movie).
The Dictator was bereft of laughs and mercifully, it was pretty short in terms of length. I think I've mentioned before that I prefer to see Sacha Baron Cohen in supporting roles (Talladega Nights, Hugo, Sweeney Todd), and The Dictator did absolutely nothing to change my mind.
Although it's not a perfect Seuss adaptation (I don't know if we'll ever get one in the modern era), The Lorax was pretty enjoyable. It's colorful and has a lot of laughs. People complain that is mixes its messages, but I don't really find that as troublesome as I did with The Grinch.
Big Miracle was a little manipulative (though since it's based on a true story, I guess I have to be okay with that). I sort of have a hard time watching "animals in danger" movies. My soul is too sensitive, I guess.
I enjoyed John Carter overall. It had great effects and even though I think I understand why people might not have enjoyed it (it drags in spots), I feel like it deserved a better fate than it received. It was just a hard film to sell.
The Lucky One is awful. Terrible. Horrible. I, um, really like Zac Efron, but I swear that if I never see another Nicholas Sparks adaptation again, I won't mind. It felt like it would never end.
Apparently, I really like Tim Story as long as he's not directing Fantastic Four movies. Or Taxi. Okay, I really like Tim Story when he's directing Barbershop and Think Like a Man. I laughed a *lot* and it seemed like everyone involved was having a really good time. No one knows who Gary Owen is, but I hope he gets a lot more work because of his role in this film.
Safe was too noisy and violent for me. I realize that I'm probably not the target audience for a Jason Statham film, but it was hard for me to get past the constant blood. I do believe there was a pretty good story hidden in there, though.
I watched The Game for the first time ever, and it was a truly enjoyable experience. David Fincher can be a little cold and distant in his films, but I think that's less evident here.
Lockout is a surprisingly fun sci-fi flick. I think David referred to it as Taken in Space, and I guess that works, but Guy Pearce doesn't shoulder all the awesomeness like Liam Neeson does in Taken. Maggie Grace at least is allowed to be tough, too (whereas in Taken, she is pretty much the helpless victim). I liked the dynamic of the two villains quite a bit.
David Mumpower: I have watched 21 films since the previous conversation. So I will pick ten to discuss and save the rest for next time.
Movies almost never earn the rarest of rare F Cinemascore. Over the past couple of weeks, I watched two that did. I would preface my remarks by stating another movie that qualifies under this umbrella, Solaris, was a BOP fave that proved competitive during The Calvins that year. So just because the average consumer hates these movies does not mean I automatically will. It just so happens that I did. The Devil Inside is the worst sort of lazy storytelling and its ending is every bit as obnoxious as you have heard. The movie literally ends in the middle of a key sequence. It's like they ran out of film or something. The scary part (and not because we are discussing horror films) is that The Devil Inside is better than Silent House. Longtime BOP readers may recall that Haute Tension was one of my most hated movies of 2005. Silent House somehow tells a similar story in more repugnant fashion. This is the rare instance where I advise people not to watch the film because the subject matter is so reprehensible that it deserves none of your attention.
The Woman in Black is a much better title as well as a breath of fresh air on the heels of the dual atrocities above. While there will never be a time that I will watch Daniel Radcliffe without thinking of Harry Potter, he is quite impressive in this role as a lonesome widower trying to do right by his young son. The character is forced to redeem himself as a lawyer by performing some paperwork at a small town manor. In the process, he encounters supernatural events that include some of the creepiest imagery in recent memory. I had chills more than once. This is not a perfect movie but it is a satisfying thriller. I wish I'd saved it until Halloween.
I am one of those people who had a brief love for Sacha Baron Cohen between Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Borat. Since then, I have slowly grown to hate him. There was one brief moment where his work in Hugo reminded me that he can be great in small doses. When he carries a movie, however, there are problems. Cohen is a boundary pusher who needs a great deal of restraint from his director to save the comedian from himself. He did not get this from Larry Charles in The Dictator. Forty-five minutes into the movie, I was enjoying myself and thought that his career was back on the right track. Only 20 minutes later, I found myself wondering how I could be so stupid. If I judged only the second half of The Dictator, it would be the worst movie I have seen since Uwe Boll was run out of Hollywood. Since the first 45 minutes is entertaining, I guess that means the movie gets a passing grade of a C- or so. Still, my advice to you is to quit watching halfway through The Dictator. Otherwise, you will regret your choice.
Red Tails is a well known story regarding the Tuskegee Airmen; the Lucasfilm version does not attempt to bring a lot of new ideas to the table. All we get here is a big screen adaptation of a story HBO told better in 1995. This is not to say that Red Tails is unworthy of your time. To the contrary, if you have never watched the Laurence Fishburne version, I strongly endorse this update. The films take slightly different approaches to tell the same story as the 2012 title spends more time in the cockpit attempting to recreate the air battles. The performances are also quite solid with David Oyelowo of Rise of the Planet of the Apes again standing out with his acting ability.
I laughed a grand total of six times during the entirety of The Three Stooges. That's roughly once every 14 minutes. The movie is almost all noise, no signal. I will say that the thoughtful director's notice at the end is a clever finish but the overall proceedings are lousy. Also, I'm pretty sure that one nun is a dude.
I inadvertently caught a double feature of The Vow and The Lucky One as I was cleaning out my unwatched Vudu titles. Suffice to say that if you are a man forced to watch a romantic comedy this weekend, pick The Vow. No, it isn't great but it is Four Weddings and a Funeral in comparison to The Lucky One, quite possibly the laziest romance ever written. There is one character in the film that I'm pretty sure is named "Poorly Written Jerk" in the script. Also, the romance fails. Zac Efron's heart is not in the film at all. And the actress, Taylor Schilling, gives a performance so robotic that it doubles as an excellent audition for Terminator 5. While The Vow is flawed, Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum have enough chemistry to overcome the story's weaknesses, almost all of which involve the family of McAdams' character.
I am not offering a huge compliment when I say this but A Thousand Words is not as bad as you've heard. Yes, this is an oftentimes unbearable Liar Liar knockoff that feels an hour longer than it is. Yes, it is still 0% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes almost six months after release. And no, I am not recommending it as a good movie. If you do sit through the entire film as I did, however, I suspect you will discover what I did. The last ten minutes is almost enough to swing your opinion of the movie itself. The denouement of A Thousand Words involves the final acts of redemption of a dislikable character with crippling personality flaws. In performing these tasks, I suddenly understand the point of the movie, leaving me with the lasting impression that with better producers, this could have been a powerful film. Rather than hating the film as so many critics have, I believe A Thousand Words to be an understandable swing and a miss.
Battleship is disappointingly not awful. I really, really, reaaaaaaally wanted to hate this movie. I don't often feel that way as the fact that I gave A Thousand Words a chance should demonstrate. Everything about Battleship as a movie production offends me, though. There are so many brilliant ideas that remain un-filmed that deserved a chance yet this woefully outdated board game gets a $200 million budget. That makes me sick. Keeping this in mind, I must admit that on the whole I enjoyed the movie. It's not great but it features enough personality to stand out. Had this been a generic naval movie rather than one tied to the concept of Battleship, I strongly suspect it would have been received quite differently by North American audiences. The idea of a Battleship movie fails to pass the laugh test, so the film itself never received a fair shake. If nothing else, Battleship will always claim the title of funniest burrito purchase in the history of cinema.