After a slow post-summer week, the fall starts kicking into high gear. The coming weeks have a ton of movies hitting the big screen. This time we’ve got baseball, cops, horrors and Dredd.
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.
Dredd
As a dude who’s fairly tuned into organized labor unions, I would love to see the PBA meetings for the Hall of Justice crew of Judges in Mega-City One. A couple of beers, maybe a cheese platter and a bunch of ruthless Judges discussing health benefit packages and pay raises while suppressing the burning desire to shoot everything and everyone in sight. Imagine when it comes contract negotiation time? I have a feeling they hammer out the details fairly quickly.
And the president of this local? Judge Joseph Dredd of course. He of the menacing visor, permanent five o’clock shadow, and Lawgiver gun that strikes fear into the heart of, well, everyone. Joe Dredd is just the kind of guy you want making the big decisions and dealing with the higher ups.
Director Pete Travis (Endgame-71%, Vantage Point-35%) has taken a character, already screwed up once on the big screen (Sly Stallone’s 1995 Judge Dredd-15%) and done something this writer honestly didn’t think possible. Turn a jokey one-liner killing machine comic book character into an actual good flick that critics love. Through more than fifty reviews this flick is sitting at a cool 90%. Yup, you read that correctly. Frankly, I’m blown away by the number. Critics seem to agree Dredd is a shoot-em-up, violent, old-school action film with just enough character depth to take it past many other movies in the genre.
Action films, especially ones like this, don’t typically crush the Tomatometer which makes Dredd’s early success with critics an exciting prospect. As the next seventy or so reviews come in we’ll see less Comic Con folks ringing in which will make the score dip a bit. But no doubt we’ll be seeing more of old Joe and the rest of his Judge’s 1043 Local. The Rotten Watch for Dredd is 81%
The original premise of this flick was Clint Eastwood traveling throughout the country scouting amateur baseball players and getting into all kinds of crazy hijinks with his best friend, confidant and sidekick, an empty chair. Oh yeah! RIMSHOT!
But now that we’ve cleared that low hanging comedic fruit, let’s marvel at Eastwood the actor and talk about something not politically charged, but rather completely amazing: Clint Eastwood is eighty-freaking-two years old! Are you kidding me? Considering most 82-year-olds are either dead or pretty much dead, Eastwood cranking out starring roles as he closes in on a century’s worth of living years is ridiculous. He was almost a teenager when America jumped into World War II and dude can still bring it, using his own particular form of geriatrics to play an old man navigating the young man’s game of baseball in his latest film.
Long time Eastwood collaborator Robert Lorenz is behind the lens as director for the first time in his career. But this guy and old man Clint go way the hell back. Dude’s produced and/or assistant director’ed something like sixteen Eastwood-related films which probably makes him close to family, and possibly makes directing Clint (before he kicks the bucket) a dream come true. But all that aside, the highlight of Lorentz’s career and complete resume builder is most definitely his second assistant director tag on this American classic . (But we won’t hold it against him.) He’ll direct Eastwood in the actor’s first on screen work since Gran Torino (80%) and his first acting work where he wasn’t also the director since 1993 with In the Line of Fire (95%).
But here’s the thing with this movie. Does anyone else get the sense that Eastwood might be throwing the guy a bone before walking off into the sunset? Couldn’t this flick just be an eighty-two year dude who might be losing it (remember the chair?) getting up on screen too late in the game and helping a friend out? I think it falls short of Eastwood’s other works. My man is getting old. The Rotten Watch for Trouble With the Curve is 52%
It isn’t easy being a police officer. Believe me I know, having just finished watching the first season of The Wire for the third time. If anyone knows a little something about walking the beat, putting yourself in harm’s way night after night and taking down bad guys it’s this writer. Oh, and I guess real cops know about it too. But if you want to know about it ask me first, cops can be a bit moody.
This film deals with shaved-head Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as a couple of young hotshot cops who videotape themselves taking down loser druggies and gangbangers. Directed by David Ayer, these LAPD partners stumble upon something the Mexican drug cartel no-likey and all of a sudden the boys in blue are greenlit (this means you are allowed to kill them. See? I know s@#$ like this.)
One thing Ayer knows is tension: he wrote Training Day, for me a sphincter clencher from almost beginning to end. (S.W.A.T.-48% and The Fast and the Furious-52%? Not so much, but you’re not perfect either so whatever). His other trips into the director chair haven’t been exactly world beaters with Street Kings (37%) and Harsh Times (48%) coming in well short of the mark. But it looks like he’s back on the winning side of things with this latest movie. Early reviews are are going gaga with the flick sitting at 93% after passing across fourteen critics’ eyes. I think it maintains these lofty heights going forward considering the early love. And take it from an expert, these cops look for real. The Rotten Watch for End of Watch is 90%
I don’t have the time to do this, but if one of you out there has a couple extra hours on your hand(s), feel free to start compiling some statistics on how many movies employ the following theme: New people move into town. The house they move into is either the scene of a grisly, mysterious murder/disappearance years ago or is situated right next door to a house that was the scene of a grisly, mysterious murder/disappearance years ago. Then, all of a sudden, like clockwork, the crazy stuff starts happening again and yet cognitive dissonance makes it so the new people won’t just pack up and move on. I would make a guess the number movies that’ve used this premise is easily in the hundreds.
Bringing us to House at the End of the Street. Guess what happens? Stumped? Elisabeth Shue and Jennifer Lawrence buy a house on the block where a little girl ran roughshod with a knife all over mommy and daddy, sparing the creepy brother. Does this mother daughter team bounce out of town lickety-split? Of course not. Instead, Jennifer Lawrence starts dating the creepy kid and it doesn’t appear to work out so well.
Mark Tonderai (Hush-43%) directs this retread horror film. There’s a chance he makes an old theme work, but I’m betting against it. It just feels too “Moved there, killed that,” you know? The Rotten Watch for House at the End of the Street is 41%
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Recapping last week:
Slow week with only Resident Evil: Retribution (Predicted: 20% Actual: 35%) out their for the guessing. It fell just out of range which is maddening because this film is the highest scoring of the entire series. The last three went 24%, 22%, and 21% respectfully. And flicks like this don’t tend to get better with age. But there we are a solid fifteen percent off even with Cinema Blend’s Eric Eisenberg giving it a solid one out of five stars, using words like incoherent, stupid, cacophonous (don’t know what that means but I’ll assume it’s like “sucky”), confusing, tedious, ham-fisted, stupid (again), gaudy, sloppy, and awful. How do I feel? Frustrated.
Next time around we’ve got Dracula, looping and bad teachers. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
