This movie sucks (and so do you)

Whatever happened to scholarship, whatever happened to standards? Why are

there no good, reliable movie critics these days?

Where have you gone, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris? We miss you Manny

Farber and James Agee.

What in Christ’s name are they showing in college and university courses these

days to inspire emerging film makers, “Citizen Kane” or “Star Wars: The Force

Awakens”?

How did we get to the point where “directors” like JJ Abrams, Zack Snyder,

James Cameron and Joss Whedon are held aloft as role models and auteurs, artistes

worthy of veneration (and, God help us, emulation)?

No one, it seems, is speaking up on behalf of film aesthetics. Most contemporary

reviewers, professional or amateur, wouldn’t know mise-en-scene from a bag of

marshmallows. A significant number haven’t seen a motion picture made prior to 1970.

I have to ask, where do you go for movie reviews, who do you trust with your

hard-earned money?

Please don’t say Rotten Tomatoes.

Really? Really?

As far as I can tell, most of the so-called professional reviewers on RT are a pretty

undistinguished lot. What quality of criticism are you likely to receive from freelancers

who squeeze in the odd article or review to supplement their meager income, individuals

whose only source of expertise is that, well, they like movies? Somehow they manage to
land a gig at a radio or television station, or are assigned a column in the local free

newspaper, and they’re off to the races. Their own personal bully pulpit, allowing them to

champion the latest franchise film, assembled via committee, tailor made for mass

audiences, just stupid and derivative enough to be comprehensible to them.

And the amateurs posting on RT—ay yi yi. Now we’re talking about dim-witted

millennials (“Generation Moron”, as I call them), fan boys and girls with lots of energy

and enthusiasm but, alas, completely lacking any exposure to film history or theory, even

the basic fundamentals involved with creating moving pictures. Their comments and

opinions are, predictably, juvenile; they don’t read anything more wordy than billboards

or graffiti, and consider any offering that doesn’t boast a superhero a foreign movie.

“A cinematic masterpiece!”

“A thrill ride you never want to stop!”

“Best movie you’ll see all year!”

You read the blurbs but can you believe them? Do you trust someone from

WXYZ Radio or monsterflix.com to deliver a fair, impartial, educated appraisal of the

movie in question?

Truthfully, you won’t fare much better if you turn to more legitimate publications

and platforms, reviewers who should have some cred to go along with their national

profiles. I’ve been absolutely stupefied by the glowing reviews Rolling Stone and the

New Yorker frequently lavish on spectacle pictures, idiotic blockbusters, films where the

script was clearly an afterthought. Green-screened, computer-generated, audience-tested

drivel framed around four or five extended action scenes over-loaded with CGI,

accompanied by a thunderous, head-splitting soundtrack.

 Here’s a review I wish they’d print:

“Sphincterman vs. the Blue Meanies is so patently awful I wanted to scrub its

memory from my eyeballs with fistfuls of steel wool. It is so brazenly unoriginal,

imitative and predictable, the denouement is obvious right from the opening credits.

There are no less than five writers responsible for this abomination and each

should have his/her fingers burnt off with a blow torch so they never touch a pen or

keyboard again.

Director I.Q. Sixty, responsible for such doozies as Sexy Fox VI: Return of the

Hotties and the upcoming cinematic reboot of Hogan’s Heroes, apparently apprenticed

under Michael Bay or, perhaps, Ed Wood. He has no grasp of dramatic tension and the

scenes featuring live actors are awkward, stilted, about as convincing as watching

mannequins copulate.

Fred Baldwin as Sphincterman emotes like a turnip but fits the costume and has a

terrific head of hair. His voice drops two octaves when he’s being serious and he once

took an acting class, though had to give it up when he realized his teachers were

cardboard cutouts. I’m not saying the kid comes across as wooden and untalented, I’m

saying he’s even worse than that.

As with most of these silly comic book flicks, serious, legitimate actors have been

grotesquely overpaid to take on supporting roles, greedy thespians who don’t mind

damaging their artistic legacies as long as they’re well-compensated for it. Sir Patrick

McKagan is allowed to chew the furniture and piss on the carpet to his heart’s content; as

Oskar Angst, fanatical leader of the Blue Meanies, he makes us forget he was once
considered the finest Shakespearean actor of his generation. This is a performance he

could’ve faxed in.

And let us not spare the other A-Lister who was coerced into renting her

considerable talents to this insult to the senses. Marlene Merrill, as Sheela, Queen of the

Night People, seems to be channeling either the Statue of Liberty or perhaps a coat rack

whenever she makes an infrequent appearance, reading her lines off conveniently placed

cue cards, eyes shining with tears of shame. I shall pillory her no more.

There is absolutely nothing new here. As Yogi Berra would say, it’s déjà vu all

over again: ordinary man granted extraordinary powers, tries to do good, gets beat up by

bad guys, regains his faith in himself and wipes out the baddies in a tedious, violent finale

lasting longer than a solar day on Pluto.

Buildings are toppled, elevated street cars plunge to the ground, half the city

leveled but, goddamnit, our hero triumphs in the end, the stink of decaying bodies

troubling no one as he strides forward to accept the thanks of the mayor and a smattering

of traumatized, shell-shocked survivors.

It takes a whopping 143 minutes to get to that point and more climaxes than Hugh

Hefner achieved during his long tenure at the Playboy mansion.

I felt genuinely abused by this picture, my brain treated like a public urinal in a

New York City bus station. This is what you, as movie-goers, are looking for? Mental

kitty litter?

In order to enjoy these puerile comic book adaptations it is essential that you

possess the attention span of a trepanned lab rat and the reasoning skills of the Canadian

Shield. It’s hard to believe the same species that produced a Michelangelo or Einstein
could also be responsible for something as godawful as Sphincterman vs. the Blue

Meanies.

In the name of ‘entertainment’ we disconnect our higher order thinking, lop off a

quarter million years of evolution.

For the sake of ‘diversion’ we embrace dull banality and comforting familiarity.

We tell ourselves we retain the mindset of children, open to the enticements of

wonder and magic…but even youngsters sense when someone’s trying to fool them and

resent, above all else, the slightest hint of condescension.

They’d much rather be treated like grown-ups.

I wish the same could be said for the rest of us.”

Man to Man

There’s a lot of man-bashing going around of late, have you noticed? Guys are

taking it on the chin for the sorry state of the world which is, apparently, the tragic,

inevitable result of a patriarchal system dating back thousands of years, a gender-based,

oppressive, cruel hegemony that is antithetical to all things fair and wise and beautiful.

In short, men are the problem and if we want to experience a brighter, happier

future, we have to cut them out of the equation completely and, instead, forge a society

built around a peaceful, feminized, nurturing mentality, where consensus-building and

equal opportunity are the order of the day.

Well, first of all, if such a civilization ever existed outside of Atlantis, could

someone please show it to me? I’ve got an entire wall of books devoted to history and I

have yet to find mention of it there.

To those who insist a matriarchy, a world governed solely by women, would be

considerably less brutish, violent and repressive, could I point to Mary Tudor (aka

“Bloody Mary”), Ilse Koch, Catherine de Medici, Aileen Wuornos, Elizabeth Bathory,

Queen Isabella I, Agrippina the Younger, Margaret Thatcher, etc. etc.

Power does funny things to people, regardless of their gender.

Virtue and vice are evenly distributed among us and play no favorites.

What I find most annoying about the rampant misandry in the air is that some of

the biggest man-haters out there are men.

 And they are invariably Lefties and liberals, anxious to express solidarity with

their downtrodden sisters, feeling positively penitential because of the special status they

enjoy due to the fact that they have a willy dangling between their legs. They’re

chagrined and disgusted by their masculinity, eager to prove they’ve liberated themselves

from the stereotypes and attitudes that have rendered women second-class citizens, loudly

proclaiming their disavowal and contempt of all things guy-oriented.

Down with butch!

Ban contact sports!

Ban male pronouns!

Ban males from holding high office or positions of influence!

Yes, indeed, let’s lump all the smelly, testosterone-laden bastards together, good

and bad, and treat them like the potential rapists, killers, abusers and torturers we know

them to be. Round ’em up.

You mean, every single one of them?

Yes!

Men like Christ, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Thich Nhat Hanh,

Frederick Douglas, Jonas Salk, Jean Vanier, Frederick Banting, Karl Marx, Nelson

Mandela, Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, Dietrich Bonhoeffer…?

Don’t get me wrong, the male species includes many, many evil fucks, no

question, but it also counts among its fraternity a good number of saints and mensches,

individuals who inspire us to resist dogmatic and inhumane power structures and

hierarchies, courageously confronting the pervasive, insidious specter of authoritarianism

on behalf of all humankind.

 I have news for you: capitalism doesn’t discriminate between men and women. It

exploits everyone, a perpetual motion machine that lives off flesh and blood and sweat,

commodifying us right down to our genome. Yes, women earn considerably less than

their male counterparts and aren’t offered the same opportunities for advancement and

social mobility. But it is also undeniable that many men, due to their circumstances and

station, are often paid a mere pittance to work in extremely dangerous, hostile

environments like mines and factory floors. And men are far more likely to be killed in

their workplaces, the disparity quite shocking.*

So do us all a favor, everybody, and lay off men, seek your culprits and villains

further up the food chain.

When you think about it, the vast majority of males must be decent, honorable

types, otherwise there would be no safety for women and children, our streets teeming

with machete-wielding maniacs, looking for someone to rob and rape. Families would be

barricaded in their homes from dusk ’til dawn, huddled together while gangs of looters

and hoodlums lurked outside, howling for blood.

Does that sound like your neighborhood?

To all the dudes out there feeling down in the mouth because of their accursed Y

chromosome, give it a rest. Enough already.

“Sometimes I’m ashamed to identify as male…”

Oh, go fuck yourself. It’s high time you jumped off that particular over-crowded

bandwagon and quit acting like masculinity is but another byword for domination, and

possessing a penis a license to bully and oppress.

* According to a 2017 article in Forbes, men are ten times more likely to die on the job.
 Hey, buddy, if you’re so fired up about the sins and misdemeanors of your

allotted gender, why don’t you cut your dick off and join the sisterhood? Sure, all you

have to do is work for one-third less pay, excrete the occasional baby, suffer monthly

cramps and other joys of menstruation, put up with catcalls and harassment on the street,

endure constant objectification, feeling inadequate, homely and fat in a hyper-sexualized

mass culture, while, at the same time, tottering around in heels, hogtied in underwear and

hosiery and somehow managing to balance your home life and a demanding career.

I thought so.

Pull your pants back on, mister, I’ve got bad news for you.

You aren’t strong or brave enough to be a woman and you never will be.

I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for continuing to pretend you’re a man.

-excerpted from Mouth: Rants & Routines by Cliff Burns