The 2015 Bang, Marry, Kill Orgy: Rob Cohen, The Wachowski Siblings, George Miller, Tarsem Singh & J.J. Abrams.
To answer your last question, yes, the Dutch eat farts.
I did it last year, so in the spirit of not having anything better to do, here’s the 2015 Bang, Marry, Kill wrap-up.
BB-8 approves!
What? I reviewed 5-ish directors in 2015 for movieMixology’s Bang, Marry, Kill series. Each right before they released new movies into theaters, in a crass attempt to piggy-back site clicks off their hard work. All while I nurtured my alcohol addiction and lazily threw out dick jokes.
The tortured artists: Rob Cohen, The Wachowski Siblings, George Miller, Tarsem Singh and J.J. Abrams.
Their 2015 masterpieces: The Boy Next Door, Jupiter Ascending, Mad Max: Fury Road, Self/less and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.
Movie judgement criteria:
Bang = Its fine, watch it if you want. But afterward you need to get off my couch and find a job already, you freeloading sack of shit.
Marry = I want this movie inside me, no lube.
Kill = This movie needs to have unprotected sex with Charlie Sheen on his period.
Disclaimer justifying my rampant inconsistency: Just because Rob Cohen and The Wachowski’s have more “Bang” ratings than J.J. Abrams, doesn’t mean they’re better filmmakers than Abrams. He’s just made less movies.
Also, every single movie in George Miller’s “Kill” section is better than any of the movies in Rob Cohen’s “Bang” section. It just means that when comparing Cohen-apples to Miller-oranges that’s how the Abrams-cookie crumbles. #CopOutExplaination
Subject #1: Rob Cohen
“How can I inject more contempt for the audience into this shot?”
Some filmmakers will sprinkle in clichés to either cut corners creatively or make the audience feel a certain way about a character. Rob Cohen heaps them on with a shovel because the cheque cleared and he’s all out of fucks to give.
Rating so far:
Bang – 3 (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, The Fast and the Furious, xXx)
Marry – 0
Kill – 7 (A Small Circle of Friends, Dragonheart, Daylight, The Skulls, Stealth, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Alex Cross)
Latest Movie: The Boy Next Door
This image shows up a LOT when you google this movie, but it’s completely misleading. He doesn’t blow one raspberry!
There’s big money in turning socially awkward, middle-aged women’s spank-bank fantasies into movies. Just look at Stephanie Meyers, E.L. James, and James Franco.
Premise: Michael Douglas Diane Lane Jennifer Lopez has a one night stand with Alicia Silverstone Erika Christensen Ryan Guzman. But things get wacky when the sexy new stranger goes nutty-nuts and threatens our heroine’s career and Beyoncé Knowles William Peterson boring doofus kid. Truly a tired concept that gets re-tread every 2 years like trashy romance novels for bored housewives fresh take on a classic obsession tale.
The problem is, they removed all tension in the “teacher bangs her student” movie by making him 20 goddamn years old. You don’t want your protagonist being a statutory rapist? Fine, then don’t set your movie in a high school! Set it in a college or something. Or show some balls and make a gender-swapped Lolita, you cowards.
Either way, it’s not like he should have been a problem to get rid of. He beat a minor half to death on school property! Why the hell didn’t the school call the police? Why is she worried she’ll lose her job anyway? She banged him, completely legally, before he was her student. There’s no tension when the audience is constantly screaming at retarded characters to stop eating pennies and do the obvious.
Rampant homoeroticism: Many, many wet, glistening, glamour shots of the boring, sexy villain’s muscular sexiness. At least they took some pity on the male audience by giving us a good shot of the gal from Zombeavers’ tits too.
Cringe inducing dialogue: “You did nothing wrong, I’m the adult, I made the mistake.” –JLo
Bitch, he’s 20, not 12. Kickass and Kelso’s marriages have way grosser age gaps than this!
Unintentional laughs: Any time Kristen Chenowin is on screen. Not only is she a consistently terrible actress, but goddamn is she hard to look at. There’s a time for excess and a time for subtly with plastic surgery, and that time is before you opt for the “face slammed into a bee hive” look.
They did the ol’ “throw a cat across the screen to scare the hero” thing. I honestly love when shitty movies do this!
Bang, Marry or Kill?
This movie is the equivalent of the old naked guy in the locker room who tries to talk to you while he’s air-drying his balls.
Kill.
Subject(s) #2: The Wachowski Siblings
“That was pretty good, Eddie. But could you try reading it like you’re a deaf transsexual, tripping on bath-salts? I promise we won’t put it in the final cut.”
Rating so far:
Bang – 3 (The Matrix Reloaded, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas)
Marry – 1 (The Matrix)
Kill – 2 (Bound, The Matrix Revolutions)
Latest Movie: Jupiter Ascending
Dat feels when another one of your movies gets pushed back from a summer release to mid-winter.
To kick off their sci-fi epic, they start on an obnoxious backstory with Jupiter’s parents. If I didn’t have to write this stupid review, I would have tapped out at the 2 minute mark. It’s like starting a fancy wine & cheese tasting with the post-tasting lactose farts.
Premise: “We have a really cool idea for a videogame. But they don’t let us make videogames anymore, so let’s just turn it into a movie.”
“Do we have enough in the budget for a screen writer? Ah, fuck it, no one cares. Not like it’ll be so bad that they push it from a summer release to February, right?”
Wachowski style: A bunch of cool looking, stylized action scenes, mixed in with a spattering of scenes that were just confusing CGI-diarrhea sprayed onto the screen.
And some baaad attempts at comedy.
Fetish gear: They spray blasted stripper-glitter onto Channing Tatum and made him run around shirtless, with tight leather pants, Spock goatee, elf ears, werewolf blood, scarification, wings and space skates.
It’s like they played “pin the goth fetish on Channing Tatum”, and ironically the only fetish they forgot was an actual tail.
Pretentious dialogue: All Wachowski dialogue sounds like the fart mist in a beatnik coffee shop that host poetry jams. You can type this shit, but you sure as hell can’t say it.
Fun fact: The Wachowskis told Eddie Remayne to deliver his lines like Nathan from South Park.
Bang, Marry or Kill?
This movie is that girl that invites you over to “drink wine” with her. After you’re half a bottle deep, you start making out. She keeps throwing out nonsense words like “slow down” and “not a whore” and “my horoscope says that I should be on guard today”.
Seriously…
She wants you to pace yourself, yet work your magic on her at the same time. You power through, thinking there will be some annoying “I’ve come this far, might as well” sex with this eccentric nut-job. You understand the concept of a sunk cost, but you’ve endured a lot of inane bullshit and your balls are getting rapidly bluer.
So you make the dynamite in her lady-parts go ka-boom, congratulations. But instead of progressing to the next natural step, she says “thanks, I needed that” roles over, grabs her journal from beside the bed, and starts reading you her fucking poetry.
Seriously… Again!
Kill.
Subject #3: George Miller
*Symbolism*
Rating so far:
Bang – 5 (Mad Max, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two)
Marry – 1 (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior)
Kill – 2 (Lorenzo’s Oil, Babe: Pig in the City)
Latest Movie: Mad Max: Fury Road
If you’ve seen this image but still haven’t watched the movie yet, there’s no hope for you.
This is the best movie of the year, and I will cut you if you disagree, bitch!
Just go watch it.
Why aren’t you watching it?
Stop reading this dumb article and go watch it!
You don’t need to watch the previous Mad Max movies to understand/appreciate this one. I mean, you really should watch Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, just because it’s 80’s-glorious. But it isn’t required reading for this assignment.
Premise: Make a movie that will rip the audience’s faces off with awesomeness.
Future rip-offs homages: I really need to stop putting categories like this in my Bang, Marry, Kill reviews. It completely screws me over when I use the same criteria for my year end wrap-ups.
So, uh, let’s say… My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2? Sure, moving on…
Drunker Deeper questions: Why do words like “guzzoline” and “smeg who eats schlanger” drag me out of the movie, but I’m just immediately cool with names like Immortan Joe, Imperator Furiosa and Rictus Erectus?
Quote that sums up the whole movie: “You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome!” – Toecutter Joe
Bang, Marry or Kill?
So you’re in a small town for your friend’s bachelor party. The group is about 3 jars of picklebacks deep, when the bar starts up the mechanical bull. The groom’s brother gets on, but after he throws his shirt into the crowd and starts flexing (it happens), the operator makes sure to toss him off as painfully as possible. The girls he hit with his shirt come over and talk to the group. Turns out they’re having a bachelorette party.
Truly the dark lord, Satan, has smiled upon us today.
After making out with one of them for a while (and after she drunkenly mouths off a bartender, causing you to be ejected from the bar), you go back with her and her friend to the cabin they rented. Her friend says “you should probably get to it before the others get back.” You fist bump her friend and get to it.
When it’s over you’re lying in bed talking, when someone walks into the room, screams, then leaves the room. Apparently she was sharing this room, and the only bed in it, with another friend. After hearing a lot of screaming outside the door, the other girl bursts back into the room, turns on the light and yells “I can’t believe you fucked a rando in my bed!” She then proceeds to trash the room. She’s throwing shit everywhere and screaming at you to get out. Normally this would be pretty funny, but you’re completely naked and she just smashed a very large mirror with her suitcase in a fit of rage.
Later you almost get pepper-sprayed by a 300 pound female security guard while looking for a phone (long story). The next morning your friends rightfully call you a little bitch for not being suave enough to convince the drunken maniac, who threw a suitcase at your head, to join you in a 3-way. But all in all, a successful journey.
Marry!
Subject #4: Tarsem Singh
I’m just gonna leave this picture here without context. Enjoy!
Rating so far:
Bang – 1 (The Fall)
Marry – 0
Kill – 2 (The Cell, Mirror Mirror)
Walk of Shame – 1 (Immortals)
Latest Movie: Self/less
Kinda weird that this medical facility just has flame throwers lying around.
Kinda reminded me of The 6th Day mixed with Face/Off, but more boring-er.
What the hell? If they’re stealing people’s lives, but don’t want anyone to notice, why wouldn’t they just use hobos instead of war heroes with families? There were two perfectly good hobos hanging outside of the evil warehouse that they could have easily snagged!
Or round up a few boat loads of desperate immigrants. I know more than one Russian mail-order bride who’s sending money back to her family in the homeland. Surely you could get heaps of a destitute Eastern Europeans, who look like super models by American standards, at a premium rate. Gorgeous people are Poland’s main export after potato vodka, illiteracy and losing wars hilariously.
Artsy fartsy? Tarsem has a thing for ultra-stylized mind trips. Of all his films, this was the least, let’s say, “stylistically invasive” or “eyeball rapey”. The problem is that he doesn’t really know how to keep a story interesting without grabbing the spice weasel and blasting surrealism all over each frame.
And the only thing worse than being weird and boring, is being generic and boring.
Drink pairing: Fire ball whiskey and heavy cream. Stir and garnish with a dill pickle. I call it, the walk of shame.
Fun Facts: In my review of his career, I noticed that Tarsem Singh has a thing for bizarre horse murders. I think this might be the first of his movies with zero horse deaths. He teased the hell out of it too! There were multiple assholes with guns and flame throwers shooting wildly near a horse, but they never so much as grazed it.
It’s like he was horse-cock-teasing his fans. If he had any fans, that is…
OK, I’m being a dick. The Fall was really good, go watch that.
Bang, Marry or Kill?
This movie is that girl you meet at a war protest who is trying to promote her own anti-globalization cause. You used to go to protests to hear arguments first hand, but quickly realized that this was pointless. The “parasite cause” protesters are very common at these events, as most protesters don’t actually know/care about the main cause and use it to promote their own little fringe conspiracies.
Try going to a large protest some time, you’ll find out very quickly why nobody takes them, or the people attending them, seriously.
Anyway, her argument consisted pretty much of “the government is spying on you, maaan! Check out my anti-globalization page on Facebook and follow my tweets on how to live off the grid.” You point out the obvious contradiction to her, which flies right over her head. You’re starting to get bored, but despite being retarded, she’s still cute. So you tell her that she should ditch the protest with you and grab a cheap burger and a drink at the strip club a few blocks away.
Bizarrely, she declines, but gives you her number anyway to meet up after the protest. She may be an idiot, but she still has principles, damn it!
Just like the protest itself, this movie is a Walk of Shame.
Subject #5: J.J. Abrams
“Think of the ocean of tears that Han Solo’s death will trigger from fanboys. Use that as your motivation. Let the hate flow through you, Harrison!”
Rating so far:
Bang – 2 (Mission: Impossible III, Super 8)
Marry – 1 (Star Trek)
Kill – 1 (Star Trek Into Darkness)
Latest Movie: Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
“Sooo… Another Death Star, right?”
“Yeah, screw it. Why not?”
Those who read my Top 10 Highest Grossing Movies of all time (and why humanity is doomed because of them) Part 2 article know that I’ve been a pathetic Star Wars nerd my entire life.
To prep for The Force Awakens release, I threw a Star Wars party where a bunch of friends came over, had Star Wars themed snacks, drank Star Wars themed booze, and watched Episodes 4-6. During the movies, my brother had the Star Wars encyclopedia out and was quizzing everyone on background characters. I got every single one correct, plus their backstories, and expanded universe escapades.
Except for 4-Lom. I forgot his stupid, unmemorable name! Fucking 4-Lom…
And because one of the girls at the party had never seen any Star Wars movie before, we turned on the prequels at her request. But she could only tolerate the boredom of the prequels, combined with us bitching about them, for about a movie and a half before she tapped out.
That was a looong day!
I’ll put my nerd bitching at the END of this review. If you’re curious, you can read it there.
Drink paring: Blue milk and meth. So Christmassy!
Underutilized villain: In A New Hope, Leia let her home planet die rather than give up the rebellion. In The Force Awakens, Captain Phasma immediately turned the shield generator off after a mild taunting by Finn, then got her ass dumped in the trash compactor like a punk bitch. Shiiit, if Chewie had ripped one of her arms off and started beating her to death with it, then I could maaaybe see her turning off the shield. But as it stands, Captain Phasma can put a quarter in her ass, because she played herself.
This character returns in Episode 8. Which I can only assume will be for her trial and execution for treason. Anything else would just be ridiculous. Though not more ridiculous than her actually escaping the trash compactor and then escaping Star Killer Base before it exploded.
The internet is having a lot of fun calling Kylo Ren an emo twat, but he was by far the most interesting new character. Even with that scene of him getting his first period in the Hot Topic change room. Between that and Domhnall Gleeson’s Triumph of the Will speech, I can’t wait to see those two finally kiss in Episode 8!
Hope that Episode 7 8 won’t suck: J.J. Abrams isn’t writing or directing Episode 8.
Porkins Jr said that Abrams loved the Episode 8 script, so that’s something, I guess… If you need more reassurance, pick any scene from director Rian Johnson’s last movie, Looper, and it’ll make you hopeful for Episode 8. Looper was amaze-balls!
If anything it will be interesting to see both Rey and Ren being trained by different masters at the same time. Ya know, before they meet again on Cloud City for the rip-off The Empire Strikes Back.
Bang, Marry or Kill? This movie is that gal who’s gotten a just few too many surgical enhancements, and a just a tad too mentally retarded. You’ve been there, done that, all back when she was younger, tighter, and in better shape. You don’t really want to re-tread the same territory, because the end result will definitely disappoint you and cannot possibly match what you’ve built up in your head…
But daymn, look at that booty! Your powers are weak, old man.
Bang.
So that was the 2015 Bang, Marry, Kill wrap-up. I have no idea which director I’m going to look at next, so Tweet me if you have a suggestion. Or if you just want to tell me that I’m handsome, whatever.
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***Warning, if you’re a woman who plans to sleep with me in the future, turn away now! Reading this will forever destroy any image you may have of me as a viable sexual candidate.***
Bonus nerd bitching about The Force Awakens
I knew my hopes were way too high going into this movie. That’s why I BMK’d J.J. Abrams last month, to keep my expectations grounded. Unfortunately, there were just too many “whaaaaat thaaaa faaaaaawk” moments for me to truly enjoy this movie. Here’s some of them:
- Why wasn’t Finn killed immediately by Kylo Ren in their lightsaber battle? It wasn’t like Ren was holding back or toying with him for fun. Ren is a descendant of Vader, trained by Luke Skywalker, who supposedly killed a butt-load of Jedi students. Yet he had trouble with the stormtrooper-janitor with no force sensitivity. Finn even got a hit in!
Yes, Ren was injured because Chewie shot him in the dick, but so what? The day before that, Finn got his ass handed to him by a random stormtrooper in riot gear. So even an injured Kylo Ren should have been able to kill Finn before he could take out Luke’s lightsaber.
If you have the power to force-shove Rey 30 feet into a tree, knocking her ass out, then you definitely have the power to force-yank Luke’s lightsaber from Finn and shove it up his ass without smearing your guy-liner. - Rey picked up the force too fast and too easily for someone who just learned that all this crap was real. I could go into detail but that adorable scamp, Max Landis and his stupid haircut said it better than I can.
- What was with the Flying Spaghetti Monsters on Han Solo’s freighter? That whole ridiculous scene could have been cut completely. It felt like a campy episode of a bad TV show. Complete with a monster that immediately eats everyone it sees, except the hero, because it now wants to play with its food instead.
Do you want space-ants? Because that’s how you get space-ants!
Was it to distract the audience from the amazing coincidence that Han Solo found them randomly? If so, congrats, I was so annoyed by that stupid scene, I completely forgot the dumb luck that they ran into Han outside Jakku, when he was supposed to be delivering the dumb eye-ball monsters somewhere.
Was the buyer on Jakku? If so, why didn’t he land on Jakku anyway and deal with Rey and Finn later? Surely the space pirates that magically appeared would have been cool waiting a couple hours to rob Han and Chewie after payment.
If the delivery point wasn’t on Jakku, then why the fuck weren’t they en route in hyper-space?
Most things on this list just annoyed me, but I despised this whole section of the movie!
- Another goddamn death star… But a stupider, immobile and much harder to believe version. Did they turn the planet to aim it? How do you changed the direction of a planet, or stop it from rotating to aim it, without violently killing all the inhabitants?
What the hell were they going to do once the star was drained? Can they fly a planet to another solar system? Can a planet survive that without ripping apart? We get devastating earthquakes whenever a butterfly flaps it’s wings and makes Godzilla sneeze.
They borrowed a few things from the Expanded Universe books. But if they wanted another super weapon, they could have gone with the Sun Crusher or Dark Saber as a much more practical, and obvious evolution of the Death Star. - The politics make no sense. The First Order is an off-shoot of the collapsed Empire, but the Rebellion became the New Republic. Sooo, the Resistance is, what exactly? They’re not the Republic’s military, or they’d be called the Republic. But they still appear to have the Republic’s consent. Are they a guerrilla off-shoot? Secretly funded Contras? What the shit? Explain yourself, movie!
- The new X-Wing design bugged the crap out of me. Why did they design the wings to be sectioned in half like that? Why do circular turbines that split in half? How the shit do they work like that? I know it’s based on the original Ralph McQuarrie design, but there was a straight forward air intake there, not a circular turbine. (Yes, I know there’s no air in space. That’s probably why they changed it originally.) I couldn’t focus on the dogfights without sneering at those weird looking changes.
- And where the hell were the other Rebel fighters? No A-Wings, B-Wings or Y-Wings, like in the original trilogy. You’d think having bombers for a bombing run would make sense. But then again, we wouldn’t have had that shoe-horned stormtrooper-janitor plot device to sneak the main characters into the shield generator, so we could rip off Return of the Jedi.
- The new Tie Fighter design with a rear gunner actually looks pretty good. No issues with that update. And the color scheme also looks pretty badass.
But as with the Resistance, where the hell were the other fighters? No Tie Interceptors, Tie Bombers, Tie Advanceds, nothing. Just a Shuttle Tyderian upgrade with weirdly collapsing wings for Kylo Ren to cruise around in. - Why does Rey have a staff that looks like a double-ended lightsaber, if it’s not a goddamn lightsaber? Yes, Daisy Ridley could be just hiding a future reveal and/or screwing with us. Sure, it looks cool, but it’s just kinda weird that she’s got a clumsy looking whoppin’ stick on her at all times, when there are far more practical self-defense weapons for a young gal living amongst desert space-monsters to have.
- Why does Kylo Ren have a mask? Yes, it looks cool, but what is the purpose? Vader had a mask as part of a life-support system. Ren… Who the hell knows? Bad enough that his lightsaber cross guard has such a glaring and obvious design flaw. Seems like the entire thought process for his design started and ended with “looks sweet, bruh!”
- Every J.J. Abrams movie is pretty much just a slick reboot of another, better movie. But it was hard to not be frustrated that this was just a cut/paste Episode 4 with elements of Episode 6 tossed in for fan service.
- Snoke looked awful. That was some bad CGI and it took me out of the movie. At least with Yoda I didn’t notice that Frank Oz’s hand was up his ass the whole time, regardless of how much sexier that would have made the Dagobah training scenes.
- And most frustrating of all (besides the pointless tentacle monster scene), Luke did not train Leia to become a Jedi!
Yes, Leia was a Rebellion leader with a shitload of responsibility and blah, blah, blah. But she could definitely see the benefits Jedi training. Jedi premonitions would give her a distinct tactical advantage. She often wound up in battle herself, surely learning Jedi fighting and/or defense techniques would have exponential benefit.
I can’t imagine that none of the senior Rebellion leaders wouldn’t order her to take the training based on the incredible benefits that would come from having another Jedi on their side. Those old dinks saw firsthand how crucial the Jedi were to the Old Republic. Like goddamn, woman, you’re missing the forest for the trees!
The Expanded Universe novels also pulled this crap to an extent, but at least Luke gave Leia some training, even though rebuilding the Republic was her first priority. She even had her own lightsaber. It was frustrating as shit to see her piss away her potential as a General in a second-rate Rebellion knockoff. Way to aim for empowerment and completely miss the big picture, assholes.
End rant…
I’m sure I’ve forgotten more things that made me antsy in the pantsy, but overall there was more good than bad in this movie.
I guess.
Maybe.
Probably.
Look, I haven’t had any desire to see it again, and I’m such a big Star Wars tool that I paid to watch all three prequels, three times each, in theater. Maybe I had a higher pain tolerance when I was younger? But just like with Spectre and Interstellar, the more I think about it Episode 7, the more it makes my balls itch.
However, despite being a bit underdeveloped, Rey, Finn and Poe were likable characters portrayed by great actors. I loved most scenes that featured Kylo Ren, Han Solo and Chewbacca, and the action scenes were great. The obvious exception to both being the pointless Reptar chase. Fuck that scene! Fuck it right in its stupid, puss covered, meatball shaped ass!
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