13 ‘Flops’ of 2008 worth Netflixing

Tireless reader RRA dares to watch the worst so we don’t have to — and sometimes discovers movies we missed that are worth catching up to. Movies he feels got unfairly slurred and slammed on release because they fell outside the fringes of what critics normally deem “worthy.” He’s chosen 13 titles from 2008 that might deserve a second look, and gives us his well-argued reasons for saying so.

[NOTE: RRA wrote most of this the last week of 2008, and his worries that Valkyrie might be ignored have proven unwarranted — since it’s earned a solid $75 mil since Christmas. RRA’s interest in unsung movies is partly motivated by his wish that we don’t miss a decent movie. So he decided it was “better to risk looking foolish in jumping the gun than having Valkyrie die on the vine and be proven right.” The best thing about the heads up for Valkyrie is that we can’t miss it if hasn’t gone away. No need to wait for the DVD to catch up.]

WORTH WATCHING
Thirteen Flops of 2008 You Should Go See
by RRA

Unless it’s a rare exception like say THE INSIDER a decade ago, most pictures that are honored and win awards usually are hits. No really, Think about it. I mean look at 2008 where THE DARK KNIGHT is this decade’s TITANIC, Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is the pretty profitable annual Independent contender, the political biopic MILK will squeak by green, and probably the same ultimately with THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.

But even if the Internet has opened up the movie community, with knowledge shared and wisdom grown, there still persists a certain stupid maxim. If a movie flops, it must surely because it was terrible. Now some reds are lousy films that deserved to die, like the recent THE SPIRIT, but otherwise financial failures occur for a myriad reasons, with examples of good movies provided. You have inadequate studio marketing and backbone (CITIZEN KANE), wrong release date with crowded competition (BLADE RUNNER), lack of serious support from mainstream critics (WONDER BOYS) or not enough (PRINCE OF THE CITY), guilt by star association (EYES WIDE SHUT) or just outright misunderstood. (FIGHT CLUB) Especially with bad release buzz, when the dreaded groupthink comes into play in shouting down and silencing dissenters (FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS)

Logic dictates that box-office is irrelevant if a movie is good or not, right? Wrong. Box-office duds carry a stigma of failure this side of a homeless Vietnam veteran that prevent folks from checking out many really good movies, with exceptions like CITIZEN KANE and BLADE RUNNER, which happened only after many years of critical rehabilitation. Most are remembered by limited cultdoms on the Internet, and the rest just disappear into obscurity.

At this time of year, the cinema blogosphere is busy with their Top Ten Best listings. Well, I’ll the same but a unique twist. In 2008 I saw thirteen movies that bombed in theatres that I truely think people should truly check out on DVD. So basically this Worth Watching list is my perhaps feeble attempt to recommend underseen quality from art house to popcorn. A few titles you’ll immediately remember, others only as a blur, and some you probably never even heard of. I’m not saying you’ll dig them all, for hell you might in fact hate a few of them, but I’m willing to risk tarnishing my (already shaky) reputation out on a limb to personally pimp these pictures out. Plus, look at the number I‚Äôm using. I‚Äôm just asking to be cursed, just for you all.

Now before we begin, two quick notes. First, This list is alphabetical, and in no way a ranking system. Some titles are better than others, but they’re all equal today. Second, when talking of box-office flopping, I’m speaking only about America, Hollywood’s chief economic market. A handful of films mentioned have subsequently recouped their costs in foreign territories or on DVD, but nobody celebrates or cares about such things. Anyway, flying out of the flames of defeat comes…

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APPALOOSA

I like AwardsDaily and crew, but otherwise I fucking hate Oscar season. Many smart adults go retarded and end up using bullshit to defend/dismiss would-be contenders, dumb logic they wouldn’t practice with movies usually. Like the current GOP, no logical center exists for which to celebrate movies that aren’t award-winners, but still boogie.

Take star/director Ed Harris’ APPALOOSA, a pretty good western that died quietly at the Toronto International Film Festival with words like “too light” and “too pedestrian.” I guess compared to recent great westerns like THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES, it would welt. But you still have a terrific cast in Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellwegger, Lance Henriksen, and Jeremy Irons who is playing deliciously DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE fun villainy again.

APPALOOSA starts out as your basic story of good guys fighting baddie over a girl, but with some critical plot developments, becomes something else all together that is slightly off-base, much like the horse it’s named after. Go ahead look at a snapshot. One scene I loved was when Harris courts Zellwegger, and he awkwardly asks Viggo which wallpaper is best for their new house. For these gun-slinging nomads, when domesticated they are quite hopeless.

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THE BANK JOB

I’m a big unashamed Jason Statham fan. With his cockney tongue, baldhead, and martial arts background, he is our epoch’s Charles Bronson, a good actor who oozes with pure badass charisma but mostly relegated to B-action fare like the TRANSPORTER series. THE BANK JOB is a step in the right direction for Statham’s career, even if got jailed in USA. Don’t worry it’ll get paroled.

Allegedly based on a true story of an unsolved real-life British bank robbery in 1971, you have minor-league criminal Statham and his hack crew hired to rob a London bank, which they pull off. The problem is their loot, which they realize too late include compromising blackmail on everyone (including scandalous naked pictures of a British Royal) which makes them targets of MI6, gangsters, corrupt cops, and black militants.

Roger Donaldson has shot some satisfying thrillers from NO WAY OUT to THIRTEEN DAYS, and his limey-flavored BANK JOB is a solid exciting heist tale, which also incorporated an awesome line uttered by the gang’s lookout to his cohorts, which inadvertently was recorded by a local radio ham operator: “Money may be your god, but it’s not mine, and I’m fucking off.”

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BE KIND REWIND

Many scoffed at this as too whimsical, with video store clerks Mos Def and Jack Black reshooting in zero-budget/low tech “swedes” an entire erased VHS movie library, but I think director Michael Gondry snatched upon at least three touching themes:

(1) A dying urban community coming together and be revitalized
(2) How pop culture, from neighborhood mythology to cinema, socially connects people
(3) how sterile uninspired international corporations like Blockbuster snuffed out the local innovative mom & pop businesses which served local needs.

Indeed, BE KIND REWIND maybe challenges the ole Auteur Theory, which argued that the sole responsible professional author for a movie is the director. But what if an amateur re-cuts said film on YouTube, or like REWIND remake Disney’s animated blockbuster THE LION KING as a low-tech puppet show? Yes they used industry licensed-footage and ideas, but wouldn’t these new mutated alternate versions in spirit no longer belong to Hollywood? What belongs to who?

Blockbuster with its anti-NC-17 policy and blacklisting independent studios like Troma, is dying at the hands of Netflix. The video store didn’t die, but instead evolved into something else, like that Star Child in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

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BODY OF LIES

My parents had the Cold War, and I’ve got the War on Terror. That generation saw mushroom clouds, and we witness planes crashing into skyscrapers. They never got over Vietnam, and unfortunately my disgruntled age group might not either with Iraq. The difference is, the only recent successful Hollywood release involving such politics was IRON MAN.

The Middle East is the focus of American intelligence, and Sir Ridley Scott’s BODY OF LIES argues that we’re losing that conflict not due to lacking technology or firepower, but because how we do our “ground,” (human) Intel-gathering. The increasingly-impressive Leonardo DiCaprio is the well-meaning bastard CIA agent who learns better methods from Jordanian spies for as their chief sneers: “You Americans are incapable of secrets because of your democracy.” Contrasting Leo is his fatass boss Russell Crowe, who as proxy-Dubya pisses off our crucial regional allies who are there on the ground, and not watching it on television from the Pentagon.

BODY is slick that if you don’t want politics, they get a satisfying streamlined BOURNE-inspired action-thriller scripted by William Monahan. But if you hunger for topical commentary, Leo learns too late that as THE QUIET AMERICAN warned decades ago, what goes around comes around.

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DOOMSDAY

A deadly virus ravishes Scotland, and Britain quarantines that whole region by walling it off from the world. Years later, survivors are found within that dead zone as the disease returns in London. Military squad led by Rhona Mitra venture into anarchistic Scotland to find a vaccine.

DOOMSDAY from Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT) was a love letter to the post-apocalyptical trend from the late 1970s and early 1980s like MAD MAX and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, which means cannibalistic Mohawk/mascara-wearing punks who somehow still have enough gasoline to raise asphalt hell. Most female action leads struggle with credibility, but Mitra is a believable tough gal. Nice genre touches include Malcolm McDowell ruling a bizarre retro-medieval society from a Scottish castle, Gift Shop sign still standing, and a highway climax where the villain straps his woman, decapitated earlier by Mitra, to his passenger seat. Now that’s love.

I’m still surprised that most Internet Nerds (especially Aint It Cool News) didn’t get behind this one, for it’s made for us. I guess if Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino had directed, they would overhype it immediately like they did with GRINDHOUSE. Instead we get last year’s great action trash matinee spectacle.

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LEATHERHEADS

Poor Renee Zellwegger, she’s on this list twice.

Unlike today, professional American football in the 1920s was a joke, while college football was popular. From a screenplay penned by Sports Illustrated columnists, LEATHERHEADS is well knowledgeable and accurate about this rarely covered period. Pro player George Clooney convinces college star John Krazinski to join his failing team. They win, make money, and split over journalist Zellwegger.

Director Clooney shoots a nice Hawks-esque screwball comedy you would expect him from him and the Coens, but since they weren’t involved, perhaps that got LEATHERHEADS sacked. Clooney is his usual dastardly-but-charming, though his chemistry with Zellwegger isn’t as fun as it should be. We didn’t really need that whole World War I subplot with Krazinski, but I laughed at how he got some Germans to surrender. Also, Jonathan Pryce is always a plus.

LEATHERHEADS may be a touchdown or fumble, but like another title down this list, Clooney was obviously sincere about what he wanted, enough to trade most of his salary for box-office points (which never materialized) to get it produced. He can be a pompous Hollywood liberal, but otherwise I dig him, a guy most movie stars should aspire to be like.

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PUNISHER: WAR ZONE

OK, maybe I enjoyed this one more than I should have, so sue me. No don’t really I need the money.

I loved the PUNISHER comics as a kid simply because unlike other superheroes, he: (1) Had no powers, (2) Used Guns, and (3) When he defeats criminals, they usually don’t come back because he kills them dead. In high school I read Garth Ennis’ PUNISHER run, which expanded the character’s pulp action exploitation roots to include macabre black comedy, like kicking a totally maimed mafia matriarch into her burning house. Sadistic yes, but Ennis made it hilarious.

WAR ZONE tries to follow Ennis’ writings, with overt influence from Brian DePalma’s excessive classic SCARFACE. With vigilante Ray Stevenson (Pullo from ROME), this WAR ZONE has enough giant guns, ridiculous action sequences, gory violence, campy baddies, and f-bombs to possibly make you say damn. If not, then the scene alone where mutilated villain Dominic West, a.k.a. “Jigsaw” (must be a SAW fan) aims a gun at a 9-year old girl and calls her jailbait.

That asshole deserves to die just for that statement. Thankfully, the Punisher agrees with me.

BTW, did you know that a woman directed this?

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REDBELT

Playwright-turned-filmmaker David Mamet has turned more politically conservative in recent years, and at the same time has possibly made his best stuff. SPARTAN with Val Kilmer was a great smart action-drama, his THE SEARCHERS for our time, and tried dramatically as a honest conservative to make the Clinton and Dubya governments more accountable.

His REDBELT, a future cult classic among Mixed Martial Arts fans, is about a noble Jiu-Jitsu instructor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who tries to live by a simple honor code, until he’s deceived and disgraced by fight promoters. Such a plot is mostly reserved for mindless B-actioneers, but Mamet wanted REDBELT to be a Kurosawa-esque samurai flick, yet in America and without swords. He strings together a low-down serious intelligent but complicated story about what Ejiofor does to regain honor not just for himself, but also for his corrupt sport. Hell, even friggin Tim Allen gets allowed to display some decent dramatic chops.

I must admit, I was moved by Ejiofor’s climatic confrontation, and I cheered this side of ROCKY. Critics dismissed the last shot as under whelming, but I argue it’s more an organic feel-good ending, or THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION for the macho guys at your local gym.

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SPEED RACER

Those pissed off by THE MATRIX sequels found an outlet to backlash at the Wachowski Brothers.

The marketing campaign for family-friendly SPEED RACER didn’t appeal to kids, and alienated adults who fondly remember the television series, which was one of the earliest successful anime-imports. But in watching it, I realized that with $120 million and CGI up the ass, the Wachowskis sought to create in spirit a honest to God live-action campy Saturday morning adventure cartoon, mixed with an involving Man-defies-Society sports story this side of Norman Jewison’s ROLLERBALL. Unlike most such TV-adaptations, they resist the temptation to mock the original material in sarcasm.

Such sincere ambition that I can respect, and I think they pretty much pull it off.

Before they got replaced on AT THE MOVIES by the current morons, Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips in positive unity remarked that “it will be loved by the art directors of tomorrow.” And they’re goddamn right, for RACER has a very colorful if ADD-threatening pop-bubblegum FX visualization that is for today what TRON was back in 1982. Ahead of the curve, but noted until years after the fact. SPEED RACER should be a strong technical Oscar contender, but it won’t.

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SWING VOTE

I don’t care for Frank Capra, but many Americans including those in Hollywood sure do. I guess there is appeal to his sappy-but-genuine sentimentality in cynical times.

SWING VOTE has a Presidential election much like we had in 2000 and 2004, where the nation is bitterly divided between lame uninspiring nominees, and the winner squeaked by barely. Except this time, it’s down to one single ballot, an unemployed drunk loser dad in star/producer Kevin Costner who’s such a fuck-up that his brainiac kid daughter has to be the adult of that household. He’s proudly ignorant, especially of civics. Both candidates in Kelsey Grammer (R) and Dennis Hopper (D) do everything to bribe for his sole vote, including outright selling out their core political beliefs. What’s weird is how both guys in real-life are Republicans, though Hopper broke ranks this year by supporting Obama.

Anyway, Costner as major dumbass embarrasses his town, and becomes a national punch line. But ultimately the dude sobers and cleans up his act, becomes a spokesmen for millions of Americans shut out of the electoral process, and gets a final candid debate between the contenders.

Corny yes, but even I like cream corn when it’s warm.

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TRAITOR

Like BODY OF LIES this War on Terror thriller was designed to appeal to both brains and balls, but TRAITOR is different as a unique double agent saga, in that until the finale we never truely know where Muslim American Don Cheadle’s true allegiances lie. Playing and manipulating both the Al Qaeda terrorist cell he’s join, and his supposed CIA handlers, the mystery is intensified by the fact that as a boy, Cheadle witnessed his father’s murder by a car bomb. TRAITOR wisely never tells us who were responsible, and thus Cheadle credibly could go either way.

He thinks the terrorists are bastardizing the Qur’an for their purposes, but doesn’t dig at all America’s role in the Middle East. Plus they busted him out of that hellish Yemen jail, and who knows maybe if he convinces a member or two to not pull the trigger, the world will be better for it. The U.S. government botches Cheadle’s faux-explosion that accidentally ends up killing civilians, and they’re racial-profiling his people back home, but he doesn’t leave them.

One of Cheadle’s more complex, interesting, and compelling performances, in any other year he would score an Oscar nomination.

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VALKYRIE

Man, this movie is getting way too much shit. If anybody else but Tom Cruise had been casted, like say Johnny Depp, I guarantee half of the negative reviews for VALKYRIE would reverse course. But since it’s Cruise, it sucks.

Yeah, Cruise acted daffy and insane years ago with the couch jumping, but don’t kill a pretty good movie because of his involvement. I usually despise his stupid TOP GUN persona myself, but at times (i.e. MAGNOLIA) he can take a project seriously and actually bother to act. His problem in VALKYRIE is that his excellent British supporting cast from Branagh to Stamp to Wilkinson who don’t have to try to be great. Still he does one scene well when he struggles to activate a bomb with only 3 fingers on his lone hand.

Bryan Singer’s VALKYRIE worked for me like those fantastical WW2-era adventure/thriller novels we used to get from Alistair MacLean or Jack Higgins, except this July 20 Plot led by Cruise and other good Germans to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 actually happened. Some critics whined that VALKYRIE doesn’t explain enough character motivations, but fuck man it’s Hitler. You don’t have to try hard to convince me.

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THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE

I reviewed this over the summer for AwardsDaily, and I know only four folks who liked this one, whom are Roger Ebert, Bill Hunt, myself, and someone who commented that she agreed with me. We’re lonely, for even most X-FILES fans seem to hate it, but then they like me probably expected a creature feature. Instead we surprisingly get a down to Earth theological drama that asks tough questions with no easy answers, and also somehow brilliantly argue that faith has always been the central theme of THE X-FILES, whatever it be in the existence of God or UFOs. As I wrote, “we got a summertime BAD LIEUTENANT.”

How can a righteous God give prophetic eyes to Billy Connolly the pedophile priest, while giving innocent kids terminal cancer? A quote from WAR ZONE could have been applied to I WANT TO BELIEVE: “Sometimes I would like to get my hands on God.”

This is the most difficult title for me to sell to you personally, for I truly don’t know if you would like it or not. But I want to believe that you could, which was the point behind this list in the first place.