The Rotten Watch is coming at you live from a remote vacation spot deep on the beach watching the sun rising over the ocean while I dream of an air conditioned movie theater with digital surround sound, dimmed lights and gum sticking to my shoes. Can’t wait for this vacation to be over so I can get back to an insular existence. This week, the summer movie starts its slow decent into oblivion with a hitlady, a horror and an idiot.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at what This Rotten Week has to offer.
Colombiana
Action movies have taught us a fair amount of lessons over the years. Most guns have an infinite amount of bullets. Bad guys usually like to disclose their entire evil plot before unsuccessfully killing the hero. And orphaned children will always grow up to become a superhero like assassin hell bent on avenging their parents’ deaths. So take note evildoers: when exterminating a family, never, ever leave any little ones behind. They’ll inevitably garner assassin training from an unlikely source and spend the next couple of decades working up to a level of murderistic competency that’ll put a major crimp in your illegal enterprises. Just better to salt the earth and take out everyone from the family all at once. It’ll just make life much easier.
** Just one more quick note about these types of revenge movies. I always love how the protagonist assassin systematically works their way up the criminal hierarchy starting with lowest level street thug and ending with the person most responsible for the initial murder. No one ever gets killed out of order. It’s like the assassin has the criminal organization’s managerial flow chart. Watch your back, Bob from Accounting, because the intern just took a bullet to the brain. You’re next!
Zoe Saldana stars in Colombiana and reminds us over and over again about how tough her life is because of her parents getting murdered. Cry me a river. We all know how it’ll turn out in the end. Director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3 - 37%) seems to have created a movie with a coolness factor inversely proportional to that of his name. Megaton! Amazing. From the looks of the trailer, this is old, tired ground we’re treading. Tired ground writer Luc Besson has walked many, many times before with the likes of Hitman (14%), From Paris With Love (38%), and Taken (55%). Do you think he sits down at his computer intent on writing an epic love story and by the end of the creative session everyone on the page is lying in a pool of blood and old Luc is wondering where it all went wrong?
Not to fear, it’ll go wrong again in this film. The Rotten Watch for Colombiana is 25%.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Top three things that scare the sh$% out of me:
1. Sinister whispering
Kids
3. A Tom Cruise-ified Katie Holmes
So needless to say I won’t be sitting down to see this movie. It’s the crap-my-pants trifecta.
Those who do decide to make a few deposits into their underwear will see a movie about a little girl, a haunted house, and an army of hell’s minions unleashed on an unsuspecting family (who should have probably expected it because they were warned multiple times just in the trailer to get the hell out of Dodge).
Director Troy Nixey makes his feature film debut here with a remake of a made-for-television movie from the seventies. But the real story is he’s working off Matthew Robbins and Guillermo del Toro’s (Pan’s Labyrinth - 95%, Hellboy - 80%) script. del Toro’s track record is impressive enough to feel fairly confident about the movie’s chances for critical success. And though he’s not directing, it’s hard to imagine he didn’t have a fair amount of influence over the production. Dude just makes good movies. The Rotten Watch for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is 70%.
Our Idiot Brother
Paul Rudd could probably come into my living room, pop open a beer, stare at the television and I’d just start cracking up nonstop. He can literally do anything and I’ll chuckle. I’d actually like to put that theory to the test. Paul, if you’re reading this, email me so we can set up a football watching Sunday or something. I’m free.
Our Idiot Brother was well received at Sundance and the Weinsteins grabbed the flick for a wide release. Really no surprise there considering Rudd is peaking in the “Everything He Does Pretty Much Makes Money” category.
Jesse Peretz’s directed critical meh’s like The Ex (19%) and The Chateau (50%) but I’m willing to ignore those because clearly his career highlight is helming videos for The Lemonheads It’s a Shame About Ray album. In my book that makes him a super duper dude.
Nine reviews are in already with only one underwhelmed by the movie. I don’t think it keeps up a close to ninety percent rate once the non-hipster critical crowd lays eyes on it, but don’t expect much of a drop. And remember Paul, anytime you want to come hang out is cool. The Rotten Watch for Our Idiot Brother is 79%.
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Recapping last week...
Not a bad week for the critical prediction machine (my brain) with one notable exception. We’ll start with the wins first of course. Conan the Barbarian (Predicted: 23% Actual: 27%) and Spy Kids 4 (Predicted: 26% Actual: 20%) were pretty much right on the money. Very happy with these predictions as both movies looked like bombs from the start. You might have fooled some other people Conan, but not this guy. I saw through the fight scenes and pectoral muscles to a piss poor flick.
Fright Night (Predicted: 59% Actual: 73%) snuck in under the 15% disparity that keeps me happy, but not overjoyed.
Finally, One Day (Predicted: 77% Actual: 27%) was an epic disaster. It’s worth it to note that in my write up last week I devoted the entire section on One Day to Anne Hathaway’s fairly underwhelming critical success rate and then went right ahead and gave this flick a high score. Makes no sense really.
Next week the the Rotten Watch pays some debts, takes a trip to the moon and swims with the sharks. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
