LUCY

I took Drugs once. I liked it. I figured out how tinfoil worked, gave advice to my reflection, and felt blessed by the primary colors of my friends' t-shirts. I recommend Drugs to anyone. The best Drugs is called Good Ass Shit, and that's exactly what Asian men put a bag of inside nice Jewish girl Scarlett Johansson's tummy-wummy in Luc Besson's Lucy. Not only can this Drugs turn anyone into Jason Statham, but they're also the pleasing sapphire hue of the Mediterranean. Anyone would be honored to have this Drugs inside them, except apparently for Scrablett Jimhenson, who flips her lid when the Drugs starts leaking into her body. Come on, Scrablett, be easy.

See, the Good Ass Shit is unlocking more and more of Surfbort Jabroni's brain's capacity. As we all know, we only use 10% of our brains, but haven't you always wondered about if instead of breathing automatically, you could do math better? The more of her brain she unlocks, the more special powers Startrek Charlesmanson gains: the power to Shoot A Cabbie For Not Speaking English, the power to Change Her Hair For A Fun, Flirty Fall Look, the power to Use Her Sexuality In Culturally Sanctioned, Marketable Ways, the power to Interact With Everything Like Everything's An iPad, and the power to Be A Confident, Independent Woman, the greatest power of all. Really, at its heart, Lucy is a success story. It's the universal tale of how you don't have to have an inspirational teacher and an indomitable spirit to live up to your full potential. You need only be a beautiful white party girl who takes the right drugs.

Meanwhile, Morgan Freeman plays against type as a quietly astounded scientist who speaks portentous phrases in measured tones and mostly stays in one place. He's got theories about the human brain that sound suspiciously like widely discredited truisms and employs scientific phrasing like "It is estimated." You know, like a professor does, right before a marine punches him. (That marine's name? Albert Einstein.) He's also the inspiration for my new business venture, Movie College, a cinematic fantasy college experience where students attend two minute lectures on subjects conspicuously relevant to an upcoming disaster or global event, and then mill around blandly on the quad while the professor walks through campus with his best friend, discussing his marital troubles. Everyone leaves with a degree and a picture of themselves being called "Ass-Munch" by a guy named Chet in a letterman jacket.

The challenge of any movie like this is how to ultimately re-assert that it's actually a not-so-great thing that SoCal Jumanji's ascended to living godhood, even though over the last two hours we've seen how preposterously cool it's made her as she struts around all vengeful. Sarlacc Jablowme has already evolved past the threshold of consciousness once, in the sadboy fuckromp Her, and soon Morgan Freeman will be talking down notable computer-man Johnny Depp in Transcendence. In every case, it needs to be reiterated that it's better to be human than to be in pretty much every way superior to humans, usually because you no longer have empathy. Conversely, though, empathy is apparently the only thing standing in the way of us having telekinesis. Move over, flight vs. invisibility, there's a new go-to would-you-rather in town for limp discussions between groups of acquaintances at sports bars!

I will say that I like that the movie's called Lucy. I imagine it came down to that or The Cockamamie Exploits Of Mademoiselle Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, and I think they made the right choice.

THREE STARS DUE TO I'M NOT LETTING THESE GO TO WASTE: SLUMLORD JOESTRUMMER, SCARIOKART JANSPORT, SODASTREAM BLUMPUS, SCARFACE JORDACHE, MILLION DOLLAR SQUARTET, SCARTASHA JOMANOFF, SALTLICK JAPANDROIDS, AND, OF COURSE, SCARLET JOHANSON.

UNDER THE SKIN

Ugh, shit, okay, so. Christ, what is this.

Scarlett Johansson's in this – you like her – and she's wearing a fur coat, and she's all over the damn place: in the ocean, in the forest, in a car, way up above someone, where it's white, where it's black, where it's gold, where it's red, in the club, in her skivvies, and it all amounts to some kind of goofed-out creepazoid bugfest. Everything in this trailer screams "spooky-ooky weirdo junk for frightfreaks and boobastanks." It's all upside-down or on fire, and there's eyeballs and elephantmen and black goop that sucks down a whole guy. The whole maroney gives me the jeebie macgreebies, I can't make asses or elbows of it, and Apple Trailers has "no synopsis available." What's a boy to do?

Mostly, all this nutso hoodaloo brings to mind another surreal romp I saw just the other night, Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, which is very roughly about a gaggle of folks trying to get to the top of a holy mountain where wise men live in order to overthrow them and become immortal (I know, aren't we all). Under The Skin has a mountain, too, but Tron is on it. Excelsior, Tron.

Like the two minutes of Under The Skin up there, The Holy Mountain is packed choc-a-bloc with the most heinously left field imagery that'll make you stand up and go, "ah jeez what the." Like Under The Skin, The Holy Mountain's got plenty of eyeballs, goop, deformed individuals, meaningless babbling, and all the copulation and fluids you could ever want.

Where The Holy Mountain distinguishes itself, as big budget bafflements go, is that just about every mind-nuking thing you see actually took place somewhere at some point so someone could film it. In the Under The Skin trailer, all we get is a lot of trick bunko and computer hokum and somebody maybe actually on fire. Pardon me for yawning. Meanwhile, in The Holy Mountain, somebody partially buried like sixteen horses so they could film the part of the movie where there's landscape with a bunch of partially buried horses. Under The Skin is supposedly "a grand statement on what it means to be a human being," but for all its shudder-butter sounds and images, nothing in the trailer suggests that anyone partially buried even one horse to make it. You can just tell.

(Sidebar: does the amount of blatant animal cruelty on display in The Holy Mountain [a lot - like fifty toads and lizards wearing intricate pre-Columbian outfits get full-on blown up by explosives] detract from the experience? Sure, but remember, they euthanized every Air Bud in front of the cast and crew after filming wrapped, and nobody raised a goddamn word of protest, so get down off your high horse and partially bury it.)

Does all that automatically make The Holy Mountain a better movie than Under The Skin's gonna be? Nah, but dollars to doughnuts, nothing ScarJorough Country does all dead-eyed in her perky fur coat will be in and of itself more interesting than a green-haired middle-aged woman cradling a python wearing a knit rainbow python cozy, because somebody put in a lot of time knitting that cozy for the python and then the python wore it. I know I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but the apple's all wrinkled and throbbing and hissing somehow, this apple's really freaking me out, whereas the orange has LSD in it, which might be why the apple's doing what it's doing.

Look: when I got done watching Holy Mountain, I misread the credit for a sound guy named "C. ROBERT FINE," as "CROBERT FINE," and so thoroughly zonked was I by what I'd just seen that it made perfect sense to me that a guy would be named Crobert, like he would write "CROBERT" on his nametag so it would say "MY NAME IS CROBERT" and people would say to him, "Hey, Crobert, how's the wife?" Can Under The Skin make me think that Crobert is a regular name for a normal guy? Somehow I doubt it.

TWO STARS DUE TO I GOOGLED IT AND I GUESS SHE'S AN ALIEN BUT THAT CLARIFIES PRETTY MUCH NOTHING.

DIVERGENT

These days, young adult literature is the best literature there is, because if it's good enough to be worth reading you can just wait and a movie of it happens. Sometimes even four of them! The best one is The Hunger Games, but the second best one is apparently Divergent. You might think that they're similar, but they're not, because they're different. Divergent is a multichromatic spectacular about a different dystopian society built after a different war that pigeonholes and oppresses people differently along different criteria, overthrown (probably) by a different blonde moonfaced actress whose name this time is Shailene Woodley, who is famous enough that when you Google her, it auto-suggests "feet." Good on her, and good on the foot fetish community for continuing to recognize rising talent.

Shayleen Wouldleigh plays Tris (short for either Tristopher or Kattriss) Tristofferson, a young franchise whose character traits are about to be determined by the society-wide test of Which One Are You. Which one you are is a big deal, because it determines your fashion palette, and a drained skin tone is the ultimate sartorial no-no. Winters are put into Dauntless, so called because they lack daunt. Autumns are put into Candor, a bottled city presided over by Superman. Summers are put into Bunk 22, with the cool counselors. Springs are made into a nutrient-rich gruel. No one wears pink ever.

Protagonists, though, are Divergent, which means that they're the protagonist. Tris finds out that's Which One She Is after shooting back blue curacao and busting up out of an aquatic lie-cube. In another trailer she has to tackle a dog or something but I don't think that's canon. It's all a little heavy-handed with the Christ imagery, if you ask me. Divergent is what you are when the test doesn't work on you, and it's the worst thing you can be in this world, because Kate Winslet said so. In Myers-Briggs terms, Tris would be a TCBY. I identify with Tris, as I once took a career aptitude test and it told me I should be spayed. Um, hello? I'm a boy!

To survive, Tris has to join the Black Leather Big Boys Shoulderpad Club, lead by Gale, a hot guy she met when she jumped off a building into a bigass pit, the traditional gathering place of hot guys. He puts her through a rigorous two-stage training sequence where she learns to keep tension in her vagina and conquers her irrational fear of having knives thrown at her. With time, Gale opens up to her and reveals his character traits/righteous ink. "I don't want to be just one thing," he says, "I want to be brave, and selfless, and intelligent, and honest, and kind." Oh boo hoo, buddy, we all want to be five things, but at the end of the day, there can only be one Captain Planet.

You can tell that Sheilean Wudlie plays a powerful female protagonist because once her love interest enters the trailer she says fewer than ten words to his all-of-the-rest-of-them. The truly powerful need not use speech. It's unclear from the trailer, though, why being Divergent is so dangerous, especially since Tris mostly just goggles about, wide-eyed and slack-of-jaw. It might be that Divergents have an inborn aptitude for heinous mischief, like the infamous dybbuk of Jewish folklore. It might be that they have the all-too-uncommon common sense to invest in gold and vote for Rand Paul and that frightens the establishment as it damn well should. It might be that they just think they're too cool for the variety of icebreaker games and team-building activities that Kate Winslet has planned. Unfortunately, we'll just never know.

THREE STARS DUE TO BASICALLY NO CHILD MURDER, WHICH COULD BE A PRO OR IT COULD BE A CON, IT'S REALLY UP TO YOU.

THE PURGE: ANARCHY

Back in 2008 or whenever – psych, it was less than a year ago! – The Purge took the world by storm with its schlocky, stalk-y, Hawke-y twist on the "one crazy night" genre pioneered by The Hangover, The Hangover II and Project X: Teen Hangover. Trapped in a futurific cyber-house on the night where all crime is legally legal for twelve hours, Ethan "Hawkeye" Allen was forced to rig up a bunch of wacky, elaborate contraptions to repel a cavalcade of murderous masked intruders, in a schlocky etc. twist on the "Home Alone" genre pioneered by real-life home invasions, and America ate it up just barely enough to get a sequel greenlit.

The Purge: Anarchy takes its setting from the original and its subtitle from the number one fear of the late 1800's. Driving home after a long day of stock photo modeling, a pair of pretty white non-entities abruptly find themselves in a living nightmare when their car breaks down right in the middle of their favorite Neon Trees song (who, by the way, are currently suing Spotify for failing to accurately list their genre as "Old Navy commercial"). "We're gonna be okay, just like always," The Guy assures The Girl, utterly failing to check his privilege. And then, impossibly, things gets worse.

An emergency broadcast system announces the commencement of the annual Purge. "This is your emergency broadcast system, announcing the commencement of the annual Purge," it says. "All crime, including murder, will be legal for 12 hours." Whoa, I think we know what someone's favorite crime is! Somehow it also becomes dark and stays that way the whole time (eclipse?). Then, with a whoop and a holler and a burst of government-mandated ironic choral trailer music, the Purge starts. Quick, no time for a plot, just run!

You can do ANYTHING during the Purge. You can blow up a building. You can ride a dirtbike looking real frightful. You can drink a beer on a school bus with your shirt off, like you did in the good ol' days before your court order. You can put a lady's makeup on your creepazoid mask for extra panache, or roll backwards with your stank face on, or label yourself "GOD," whatever urges your Purge. You can even do whatever's going on here:

The Guy and The Girl use this freedom solely to run away and look scared, when they could be committing tax fraud, or mail fraud, or insurance fraud, or sodomy. This strains an already-tenuous premise. Based on their total lack of characterization and apparent impotence, I just can't see them surviving to the post-Purge pancake and bottomless Bellini brunch. Maybe they'll wind up in jail. Wouldn't that be wild?

Hey, fictional government, here's an idea: How about take all the money you're probably spending on Purge clean-up and just buy everyone a pillow to scream into? No more dirtbike psychos, just good, common sense. Consider it for the inevitable threequel.

The trailer leaves a lot to the viewer's imagination, which is a great strategy for if you're making a movie without an imagination of your own. All I can say for sure is that the film will be predominantly orange-brown and feature lawless behavior of a reprehensible sort. No Christian should have to watch this.

TWO STARS DUE TO NOW I KNOW THAT SONG IS ACTUALLY BY NEON TREES AND WASN'T JUST SKIMMED OFF OF THE IMAGINE DRAGONS BIRTHING POOL.

THE BEAVER

Let's play a game of pretend. You are an actor. You're a pretty damn good actor. Let's say your name is Smell Gibson. You've made some truly classic movies. When people think Smell Gibson, they think epic scale without reliance on CGI, unforgettable climactic moments, and thunderdomes. You are on top of the world, buddy. But then your career starts to hit snags. You say a few things about the Jewish people that among some circles might be considered totally fucking awful, and as a follow-up, you put out an unbelievably huge film which pretty much depicts those same things. You suggest that your ex-wife be raped by some black gentlemen, but not before she gives you a much deserved MOCHJ (mouth-on-cock handjob), because come on, priorities, people. Smell Gibson starts to get a rep as an erratic, hateful alcoholic, and nobody likes erratic, hateful alcoholics unless they are sexy and wealthy and appear on magazine covers. You need something that will save your Smelly bacon.  What should you do???

A.) Make an all-too-allegorical movie about a man whose life and family are falling apart getting his life back on track. B.) Do the above, but make the means by which your character gets his life back on track a stuffed beaver puppet that he finds in the trash that he manipulates with piss-poor ventriloquism. C.) Do the above, but present it in the trailer with a completely straight face and not even a hint of irony. D.) Do the above, but pepper in completely irrelevant subplots that will just serve to distract from the magnificent spectacle of you talking to own hand in a thick Australian accent. E.) Come on. Are you even trying to keep your lips still? Come on. F.) Do the above, but sleepwalk through the movie with the sort of dead-eyed stare that suggests that you are so out of your gourd on liquor and pills that you are not just phoning it in, but text messaging. G.) Do the above, but make the title a kind of weird but also sort of outdated sexual term, like something a big burly construction worker stereotype would use, just to make everyone a little bit uncomfortable asking for a ticket at the theater.

The answer, of course, is no, you goddamn idiot, what in God's name do you think you are doing, and also, this multiple choice test wouldn't pass any standard of academic rigor.

So here we are with The Beaver, which is basically a complete ripoff of R.L. Stine's classic, Night of the Living Dummy, except that that one featured actual ventriloquism, except that the only way to make ventriloquism less exciting is to present it in writing. Like, here's how you would write out ventriloquism:

Also, in Night of the Living Dummy, the dummy tried to murder people, sort of. The beaver in The Beaver just doles out tough love and is completely horrifying.

Don't even get this trailer started on what happens when Smell Gibson comes into work with his beaver buddy. We're looking at not one, not two, not three, but two whole collective gasps. This black woman up front? She absolutely cannot believe her eyes! Whereas this Asian coolster off to the side couldn't give less of a shit. He's seen it all. Whitey on the right looks a little surprised, but he's actually gone deaf from all of the Vicodin he stole from his parents' house, so he doesn't actually know what's going on, and is just trying to play along.

Here's a better idea for a movie than this terrible idea for a movie: Smell Gibson plays a man who's stricken with depression. His wife's pulling away from him and his kids can't respect him. Then he finds a puppet in a dumpster with some fantastic bangs that teaches him a valuable lesson: Never say never. It would be called The Bieber and, in being a one-note pun, it's got about as much depth as this movie does.

ONE STAR DUE TO SMELL GIBSON? MORE LIKE SMELL GIBSUCKS.

I AM NUMBER FOUR

Somebody's killing aliens all around the world. Why? Why should you even care?, rebuts the trailer for I Am Number Four. You're not going to find out in the trailer. You probably aren't going to find out in the movie, either. They did not figure out that part of the script. They probably greenlit this movie on the name alone. I Am Number Four! How cool is that? “Can it have explosions in it?” asked producer Michael Bay, “Can it be all sizzle and no steak? Can it have a flat lead couple and a bloated central conceit? Can we hand out electrodes in the movie theater so that viewers can self-administer current directly to the pleasure centers of their brain, eventually neglecting all of their responsibilities, relationships, and basic hygiene to deliver shock after shock after shock until they die, having ignored their most basic survival drives?” Yes, Michael! Of course!

But actually: Somebody's killing aliens. The good news is that the nine of them can only be killed in sequence. The bad news is, what the fuck? Why? The other bad news is that Alex Pettyfer Am Number Four. At the beginning of the trailer, he finds out this shocking news. “What number am I. Seven? Five?” In the trailer, he figures it out after that, but I'd like to think they cut out the rest of the scene. “Six? Eight? Nine? One? No, One's dead. Two? Oh, shit, no, Two is also dead. Three. Am I Three? I bet I Am Number Three. Oh, jeez, you're right, Three is dead. Do you have a legal pad so I can sort this out?” Wasn't it fun just then to use our imaginations???

No worries, though, because Alex Pettyfer knows exactly how to blend in: By enrolling in a high school and not even coming up with a fake name. Listen, buddy, they found Number Three hiding in Jerry Bruckheimer's logo. Ain't no way you're going to do better than that.

According to the trailer, “He looks like us.” He looks like us? Alex Pettyfer looks like us? Alex Pettyfer looks like he steals cheekbones for a living. I look like somebody stole my cheekbones. Alex Pettyfer looks like he was designed in a collaboration between an Italian Formula 1 R&D department and Alexander McQueen. I look like somebody took that dough they give to children to play with at Bertucci's and shaped it into a crude approximation of a man. Alex Pettyfer looks like a slightly worse Robert Pattinson. I look like a much worse Zach Galifianakis. Who could this “us” possibly refer to? Is this movie planned for a limited release in das Vaterland? Should we be throwing Blu-Ray disks of the movie up Mount Olympus?

“You have no idea how many have made sacrifices so you could live!” Dude: Three.

In conclusion, The Covenant.

TWO STARS DUE TO GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON WHY THIS COULDN'T HAVE BEEN A LIVE ACTION CODENAME: KIDS NEXT DOOR MOVIE.

TRON: LEGACY

The original Tron was a movie about a gentleman who got sucked into a magical computer world on account of some kind of computer virus or something. He played this bullshit frisbee game and zipped around on a magical bicycle, all the while making friends with the magical computer elves that make the computer go. Everything was blue, and it hurt my eyes. Thirty or so years later, Disney's cramming Tron: Legacy down our gullets, and America's not going to take it. Maybe in the 80's people were dumb enough to think that a computer is full of elves, but these days, even a school child knows exactly what's inside a computer: a wizard.

The trailer begins with Jeff Bridges telling his son about the shitty first Tron movie and being obnoxiously coy about the whole thing, which wouldn't be so bad if he didn't walk out of the room to never return. Can you imagine your dad telling you half of a story (let's say, for example, the plot of the shitty first Tron movie), and then disappearing for like twenty years? You'd actually probably lose interest in the second half of the story, realistically!

BUT MAYBE HE'S NOT REALLY GONE AT ALL, on account of some guy who looks like Michael Douglas telling Jeff Bridges' now grown-up and even more bland son that he got a page from Jeff Bridges' arcade. “That number's been disconnected for twenty years!” Yeah, Michael Douglas Guy, that's almost as weird as the fact that you're still using a pager.

So now Jeff Bridges' bland son also gets sucked into the magical computer world! Only now instead of being full of shitty CGI effects, now it's full of unnecessary CGI effects! The most exciting unnecessary CGI effect is the digitally younger and also perhaps evil Jeff Bridges, whose digitally younger face is revealed in one of the most dramatic moments of the trailer. Except it's not, because we've already seen digitally younger Jeff Bridges, digitally age regressed to the exact same age, in a much less dramatic reveal, basically ruining the whole thing. This would be like if I showed you my penis right there in the restaurant on our first date. It would totally destroy the surprise of seeing it in the car on the way home!

Spoiler alert: Daft Punk are doing the music for the picture. I don't think they did the music for the trailer, though, because the music for the trailer is from Inception. How many Daft Punk song title puns can I make in one sentence of this review? Let's find out. Proving false the assertion that “Television Rules The Nation,” “Around The World,” audiences are going to feel “Alive” and “Human After All” while watching Tron: Legacy, which promises to be an all around “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” sequel, featuring “Aerodynamic” redesigns of classic Tron imagery while maintaining “High Fidelity” to the original, along with the “Robot Rock” of Daft Punk that will have audiences “Rolllin' & Scratchin'” along with it, prompting them to see the film not just once, but “One More Time” after that, assuming the projector doesn't “Short Circuit” after “Revolution 909” of the reel. “Da Funk.” Thirteeeeeeeen!

The rest of the trailer is CGI bullshit that a wizard did. Please go back to making movies with actual characters, Hollywood.

THREE STARS DUE TO THE “LEGACY” IN THE TITLE IS ACTUALLY A HILARIOUS PUN, BECAUSE SEE, IF A PIECE OF HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE IS “LEGACY,” IT MEANS THAT IT'S OUTDATED BUT STILL FUNCTIONAL AND USEFUL IN THE CURRENT SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE, E.G. OLDER DATABASE PROGRAMMING PRESENT IN MANY MAINFRAMES, WHICH IS FRANKLY A REAL SIDE-SPLITTER.

UNSTOPPABLE

Unstoppable is nothing like the movie where the bus can't be stopped, or the movie where the boat can't be stopped, or the Geto Boys album where they can't be stopped. It is nothing like that movie where the grizzled older dude just days away from retirement is paired up with a wet-behind-the-ears hotshot rookie who's gonna give him a heart attack if he doesn't get him killed first, and they have to set aside their differences and learn to work together to deal with a crisis. Unstoppable is nothing like any of these. In this one, it's a train what can't be stopped.

It's Chris Pine's first day on the job as a train conductor, and all he wants is some training (If you get Chris Pine and Chris Evans mixed up, don't worry: They're the same person). But it ain't gonna be easy, on account of in training they just give you an F, but out here you get killed, according to Denzel Washington, a grizzled older train conductor just days away frOH NO! There's a runaway train! Not only that, it's full of chemicals! What kind? Who cares! Furthermore, there's a train full of children (probably orphan children) coming right at it! Apparently this is based on a true story! I find that hard to believe!!!

“I need to know where that train is,” barks Denzel Washington into the radio. “We're not sure,” says the voice at the other end. You're not sure?! Motherfucker, do you remember when you were in high school, and you cracked wise about how nobody was ever going to hold a gun to your head and make you calculate where a train leaving Cleveland at 8 AM going at 50 miles per hour was going to be at 12 noon? This is that goddamn situation, only instead of a gun, it's a train that's going to murder school children! Solve for X, jerkoff!

I think my favorite thing in the trailer is that it keeps showing the train smashing into things. “Look,” it seems to be saying, “It's unstoppable. See? This didn't stop it. I know you're sitting there all smug, thinking that eventually the train will run out of momentum. You stupid idiot, this train is unstoppable. Look.”

I think my second favorite thing in the trailer is the blustery fat-cat executive-type yelling in his big swanky boardroom. “I'm not risking this company just because some engineer wants to play 'hero'!” he sneers. Dude, in this situation, your options are limited.

I think my third favorite thing in the trailer is when the hispanic lady carrying donuts lays out the entire premise of the movie in an upwards inflection, and then Randy from My Name Is Earl goes, “Yeah.” This is in my top three favorite things because I like to imagine that this is exactly how the studio pitch for Unstoppable went.

Listen, I love a good scare as much as the next guy, but we know exactly how this one's gonna play out right off the bat. Denzel Washington's grizzled and full of hard-won wisdom. He's got two beautiful daughters. Dude's deader than disco. His sacrifice won't be in vain, of course, because Chris Pine's gonna realize what's important in life and put things right with his wife, setting his marriage back on track. Train puns!

TWO STARS DUE TO CHOO CHOO CHOOSE A BETTER PREMISE NEXT TIME.

JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER

“They said it would never happen. They said he would never make it.” Who? Who did? Faceless Media Producing Corporation, you're the only big faceless entity here. Faceless Media Producing Corporation, do you know that when most people say “they,” they're either talking about the scientific community or you? Did you know that? But please, Faceless Media Producing Corporation, tell us what we want. Tell us how we are all a part of the Bieber revolution. Continue to co-opt mass participation in the information age as a means of inculcating brand loyalty.

“I've been a fan of him from when he posted his first video, and I'll be his fan till he posts his last video,” chirps some pretty but unthreateningly desexualized pre-teen girl interviewed for no clear reason. Ignoring the god-awful parallel structure there, what does this tell us? Justin Bieber exists as a product. He exists almost exclusively in YouTube footage and tweets. He's like some kind of terrible sentience that's emerged in the internet that gains power through social networking sites, some kind of horrid botnet that takes a chunk of the bandwidth of each computer it's infected to create a leviathan with bangs. Justin Bieber is a virus. This 3D documentary is going to be the most 3D Justin Bieber has ever been.

“I think to myself, I was once chilling in my room, just in a regular place, and now I'm in this big world. It's just crazy how it all came around,” Justin Bieber says. This is about as complex as you can reasonably expect this movie to be. This quote, of course, comes in voice-over over footage of the 60,000-person stadiums he plays, his $250 shoes, his adorable home videos, and him surrounded by a clique of music producers and handlers and a group of kids dressed exactly like him. Do you know how they illustrate how real Justin Bieber is? They have him wear a hat that says “REAL.”

What Justin Bieber doesn't understand, and will probably never understand, is that nobody will ever sit you down and tell you that you cannot live your dreams. Nobody is going to storm into your room and smash your guitar or break your pencil in half and ship you off to the military academy. That's not what happens. Here's what happens: You write, and you perform, and you convince yourself that you are living your dream, while every day you become increasingly aware that no matter how earnestly you believe that people need to be infused with the uniqueness inside of you and no matter how much you believe you deserve to express yourself and be heard, that you can't ever reasonably expect to catch that lucky break, that the market is over-saturated with talent and perspective exactly like yours, that maybe you weren't that creative to begin with. And then you go, “Oh no, I'm thirty, and I'm single, and I can't pay my utility bills.” And that's it. You never said never, and instead of giving up, you just slowly deflated. Do you know why Justin Bieber doesn't know this? Because nobody's ever said no to him. Nobody has ever rejected him. Justin Bieber truly believes that if you want something you will have it, because every time he's wanted something, he's gotten it. That's fucking terrible.

Do you know what I truly believe? I truly believe that somebody needs to punch Justin Bieber in the goddamn face. Let me be clear that this is not a malice thing. This would be for his sake. Think about it. Has Justin Bieber once experienced physical pain in his entire life? I'm pretty sure the only forms of physical contact he's experienced are being patted on his little coiffed head and getting sucked off. For him to not become the worst possible person, some brave soul has to step up and break his fucking nose before he turns eighteen.

“He's living an extraordinary life, but he's just like you or me,” we are told by a British-sounding voice attached to nobody. This, a faceless, calculated selling of a nondescript and utterly interchangeable product that we are told is we have asked for and what we wanted, essentially sums up the entire fucking thing

I wrote this in literally twenty minutes because I am so fucking mad.

ZERO STARS DUE TO JUSTIN BIEBER NEGATING THIRTY FIVE YEARS OF PUNK ROCK WITH A SINGLE SINGLE.

TINY FURNITURE

I am going to catalogue every goddamn last quirky thing in the trailer for Tiny Furniture and you are going to absolutely lose your shit. Brace yourself for the thrill ride of a lifetime (Faster, starring Dwayne Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton, in theaters this Thanksgiving season):

I SAID BRACE YOURSELF.  THIS AIN'T NO CHRISTMAS CRUISE.

READY?!

LET'S GET QUIRKY:

The movie is called Tiny Furniture! We're off to a stellar start!

Shalom?! That's Hebrew! That's not how people usually greet people!  Not unless they're Jews!

She came up with a long rambling humorous simile on the spot!

She's got a mouse!

She's got a glow in the dark skull ring!

She's not wearing her seatbelt!

She can't drive!

Look at that kooky TriBeCa apartment!

What a crazy assortment of things on the shelf!  Sub-list!!!

Her sister is wearing Buddy Holly glasses and a flannel shirt!

Post-graduation depression!

Her mother's just focusing the camera while she talks! Mise en scene (it's French for quirky cinematography!)!

Another rambling humorous simile slammed down in the very thick of the moment!

That kid's in a Spider-Man costume! That's not usual clothing for a child!

HOLY FUCKING LORD ARE YOU SEEING HOW TINY THIS FURNITURE IS! GATHER THE KIDS AND HIDE THE NEIGHBORS BECAUSE YOUR MIND WILL BE BLOWN TO PIECES AND YOU DON'T WANT THOSE NOSY-ASS NEIGHBORS WATCHING WHEN THAT HAPPENS!

She's moving it around on the floor! Not even looking at it! She doesn't even caaaaare!

Her ex-boyfriend is implied to be just as quirky, if not more quirky, than she is!

Sweet mother Mary, I just noticed that she's wearing a raincoat! Inside! Where it never rains!

Are you wearing a red messenger bag with your yellow raincoat?! Bold solid colors?! Shit ain't never been this quirky since Stone Henge!

That's a twofer from little sis on the off-the-cuff similes, and a hat-trick for the trailer!

She's at a bar by herself! And not even drinking anything! That's not a normal thing!

This fucking thing! It deserves a sub-list!

Check out them goofy-ass fridge ornaments!

“Where are you staying in the city?” “I am staying... in Hell.” That's not a real answer to that question! Unless you mean Hell's Kitchen! That's a real place and a TV show that drives people to suicide!

What's this?! A crazy tattoo?!

Guys it cannot get any quirkier than this, because she comes into her room, and there he is, naked! NOT ONLY THAT BUT HE IS READING WOODY ALLEN, WIDELY CONSIDERED TO BE THE SINGLE QUIRKIEST WRITER OF ALL TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!!!!!!

Her friend's wearing a big long red velvet coat and a leopard print scarf and a jaunty fedora (p.s. Is “jaunty” ever used to describe anything but hats and their angles?!)! That's the golden triad! That means she wins one million points, to be donated to her charity of choice!

Both of them are pretty but neither of them are conventionally pretty!

Her friend's got a goddamn accent! That ain't normal-talking!

Not to mention that she's got a tattoo, too!

Seems like every scene has to have a fanciful assortment of objects strewn around the background, which over-saturates the shots and makes noticing any one of them impossible and taking them in all together so muddled that it's essentially worthless!

Main character girl has a job doing menial labor, but cynically, under a boss who hilariously doesn't care! 100% fresh, 100% not a total fucking trope.

Apparently it's a coming-of-age comedy! It's too bad we don't have an actor named Michael Cera to make all the coming-of-age comedies we'd ever need or want! Oh, wait!

She's making a video with her shitty-ass Macbook webcam! Doing quirky things like reading a book and moving a towel! For the internet! I can't believe my eyes!

Can you believe that her mom is just standing there talking to her best friend while her best friend is just standing there in a bra! Not only that, she's summing up her daughter's fundamental problems in a single sentence! You know, like everybody does! That's called telling and not showing, and it's a mark of lazy writing!

This music sort of sounds like the Dirty Projectors, widely considered to be A PRETTY STELLAR BAAAAAAAAAAND!!!!

“Relationships are, you know... It's not rocket science. If you find yourself really having to think about it a lot, it's over.” What an astute and off-the-cuff observation utilizing an apt and off-the-cuff simile! That's a four-hat-trick!

Bitch, that's not how you take a shower!

Being candid with your mom! That's a crazy thing!

“You are not even having sex with that person!” MOOOOOOOOM!

Does she only ever talk to her mom from vertical angles?!

She color-coordinates her outfits to match the shot she's in!

She talks without moving her head or body at all!

It's a movie about emotionally stunted young adults wrestling with depression and loneliness and trying to navigate a world without structure while living in New York!

Lena Dunham wrote, directed, and starred in the movie! That's a rare thing indeed!

ONE STAR DUE TO IT'S SO FUCKING QUIRKY I PRACTIALLY VOMITED UP THAT HAMBURGER PHONE FROM JUNO ALL OVER MY LEGGINGS WHILE LISTENING TO THE NEW DAS RACIST ALBUM.

DEVIL

Like a solitary wounded African elephant staggering across the savannah, M. Night Shyamalan's career continues to lumber heedlessly onward, now and again pausing to take a tremendous dump, euphemistically called a “movie,” on the desiccated and dusty ground, before eventually dying unceremoniously in a colossal heap. The latest such enormous turd dropped on the road to the grave is called Devil. To get a sense of what we're working with here, this is what the official website says about the plot: “In the film, a group of people is trapped in the elevator, and one of them is the devil.”

Well. Let's unpack that a little bit.

We're presented with five (5) characters. They are, in order of appearance, Sexy Scarf Lady, Black-Attack, Young Besuited Gentleman, Red Herring, and Older Lady Who Would Be Very Scary Possessed. From this, we know some things right off the bat:

Or there's the other option, probably the most plausible, which is that the evil one is the goddamn mummy.

Here are some potential twists: It is actually 9/11 and the elevator is in the twin towers. Everyone is the devil. Someone's arm is the devil, but the rest of them is normal. Devil is a critical and commercial success. There is no fourth floor... in fact, there hasn't been one for over forty (40) years! It's really actually pretty hard to come up with a twist for this. Either it concerns the characters, in which case good luck getting me to care, M. Night, or it concerns the elevator, in which case, what?, or it concerns the entire situation, in which case you can almost guarantee left field is going to come into play. Whoever wins, we lose!

True story: When I was in first grade, I told a friend of mine about a Goosebumps book I claimed to have read where a boy is stuck in a bathroom stall. In the book, I said, the boy pulls and pushes and kicks the door and screams for help. There is nobody nearby, though, for some reason, and nobody came to help him. Finally, when he was about to give up and die, there, on the toilet, he notices that the door is locked. He unlocks it and walks out. I set the bar for Devil a few notches below my story.

ZERO STARS DUE TO GREAT JOB, DIRECTOR, YOU FINALLY GET TO MAKE A MOVIE WITH SHOTS WHERE SOME CHARACTERS ARE IN THE FOREGROUND AND OTHERS ARE SHOWN IN A MIRROR, THEREBY ALLOWING YOU TO FINISH YOUR FIRST YEAR OF FILM SCHOOL.

CHAIN LETTER

You cannot imagine how elated I was the first time chains flashed across the screen in the trailer for Chain Letter. Oh my god, I thought, They think we don't know what a chain is. Then it turns out that the killer actually kills people using chains, which is even better, because in a movie where a psychopath sends chain letters and then kills people with chains, anything is possible! Maybe he escaped from a chain gang! Maybe he's actually the calculus teacher, and is teaching them about the chain rule, or perhaps the psychology teacher, and is teaching them about chaining, or maybe even the biology teacher, and is teaching them about the electron transport chain! Maybe he wears chain mail all the time! Maybe the entire soundtrack is composed by Alice in Chains! Could he even be played by Lon Chaney? Of course not! Lon Chaney is dead! Anything is possible!

At one point, some woman looks at some chains and says, “These chains don't belong here!” I cannot think of many places that someone would look at and say, “These chains belong here.” Factories, like those featured in the Terminator films. The slave holds of Spanish galleons. Tires, but only some of the time. Swinging above the head of a surly motorcycling gentleman. Really, that's all I could think of, but let's not forget, anything is possible!

The trailer overflows with the heady promise of modern technology. Cell phones! Computers! Actors pretending to play Wii! Will the film be a scathing satire of our growing societal addiction to constant communication and connection afforded by the ubiquity of iPhones and blanket Wi-Fi, to the point that we become distinctly uncomfortable going even an hour without access to Facebook or text messages? Of course not! Lon Chaney is dead! Anything is possible!

Thank God there are black people and nerds in the trailer, so we can rest easy with the knowledge that they will die and the earnestly attractive female lead will survive. That said, I am fairly confident of this outcome!

TWO STARS DUE TO ONE MISSED CALL, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, PULSE, AND THE RING CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR PLOT BACK, BUT ALSO YOU ARE GOING TO DIE FAIRLY SOON, ON ACCOUNT OF THAT PHONE CALL.

RED

Finally tapping into the coveted “Action Movie-Goers Ages 55-64” demographic is RED, the first movie to fully recognize that the bad-ass old guy is the most bad-ass bad-ass possible. For that matter, I think I am not exaggerating when I say that, by and large, the older the practitioner, the more raw the feat. I dare you to name one thing that's not raw as hell when done by a dude or lady of years. Doing push-ups. Chopping firewood. Yelling at Koreans. Speaking to a nation. Chugging a beer. Even things like posing nude, because while it may not jingle your jangle to see wisdom in the buff, you've got to admit that it takes some enormous balls, so to speak.

Speaking of posing nude, Helen Mirren's in this movie (the irony of her four SAG awards is lost on her, I think), alongside Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and John Malkovich, all reti(RED) CIA operatives. So they spend the whole movie in retirement? That sounds pretty boring! No, you goddamn idiot, they've got to get the team back together for one last job. Even rehashing ti(RED) movie clichés is more bad-ass when old people do it.

Expect:

No fronting, I'm pretty on board with RED. There are two key reasons for this. The first is the exchange at the end of the trailer, where Bruce Willis has Karl Urban in a leg-lock. Bruce is all, “Cordeski (sp) trained you?” and Karl's all, “Yeah,” and he clearly doesn't know what's up, and then Bruce is all, “I trained Kordesky (sp),” right before he breaks Karl's goddamn neck with his goddamn legs. This is some Mr. Miyagi shit right here. This is like Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond level bad-ass. We're looking at John Locke, Dumbledore, and Edward James Olmos epitomized in this single onomatopoeic moment. Christ alive, I'm getting testosterone poisoning. Seriously, please, somebody help me.

The second reason is this scene, which looks to possibly be the greatest thing ever committed to film:

THREE STARS DUE TO I MEAN, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE GOING ON THERE???!!

THE EXPENDABLES

The title screen of The Expendables shows a raven flying away from a crystal skull on top of an attache case. If this doesn't tell you right off the bat how balls-to-the-wall this movie is, maybe the fact that it features every dang guy who's ever fired a gun in a movie and had it actually hit another dude would tip you off. We're talking about a movie where Rambo, John McClane, and Chev “Fuck You, Chelios” Chelios shoot guns together. For those who get Total Recall and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind confused, this would be like if John Lennon, President Lincoln, the cast of The Godfather, and Mark Twain wrote a rock opera about the birth of Christ. The only possible response is baffled awe coupled with the solemn knowledge that you are absolutely going to see it when it comes out.

Every member of this cast only has one facial expression (barely contained rage) and two tones of voice (barely contained rage and rage). This made even just watching the trailer too exhausting to try to figure out the plot.

Bruce Willis looks like he's been drawing new lines on his face because at this point his body won't provide any more. Sylvester Stallone looks like he ate another Sylvester Stallone and is wearing his skin, Buffalo Bill style. Mickey Rourke seems to be sticking with his look from Iron Man 2, “Johnny Depp and Jack Nicholson run through a woodchipper together and then reconstituted.”

Watch out, though, because The Expendables is trying to pull the wool over our eyes and play us like cheap fiddles. Sure, Sly, Bruce, Arnold, Jason, Jet, the Russian guy from Rocky IV, and McRourke is such an all-star cast you'd need one of those shoebox pinhole cameras to look directly at them, but Terry Crews? Randy Couture? Stone Cold Goddamn Steve Austin? Who the hell are you trying to fool, Hollywood? Even Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson's got more film credits under his belt than Stone Cold Goddamn Steve Austin Three Sixteen. Don't shit in a hat box and call it a hat, because where did you get a hat box, anyway, and why do hats keep coming up in my articles?

To try to combat this sort of deceit, here's my proposed revised cast list of The Expendables: Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Denzel Washington, The Grimace, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, Nic Cage, Bruce Lee (cameo), Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, John Cussack (because being spectacularly miscast gives him a sick thrill like nothing else), Chow-Yun Fat, two Danny Trejos (achieved by utilizing Parent Trap technology), Steven Seagal, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, Ice-T, a tiger made out of machine guns (CGI, voiced by Michael Ironside), and a girl, maybe.

My movie would start with a chin-up contest and then just devolve into everybody punching everybody else and shooting guns into the sky while screaming and bleeding and biting things and shooting steroids into their tear ducts while extras get knocked into the air by explosions and fall over railings.  All of this culminates in a showdown in the White House, of course. It would be widely lauded as the best movie ever, and, as a promotional stunt, every movie ticket would come with a side of beef and a savage blow to the jaw.

THREE STARS DUE TO HELL YES A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEW SHINEDOWN SINGLE.

STEP UP 3D

I learned a lot from the trailer for Step Up Three Dee The Streets. I learned that people dance because dance can change things. I learned that one move can bring people together. I learned that one move can make you believe like there's something more. I learned that one move can set a whole generation free. I learned that you don't have to cite any examples to make vast, sweeping, profound-sounding statements that ultimately have no grounding in reality.

I learned that there's an entire world of underground dance crews where people just dance all the damn time, wherever, wearing extravagantly fashionable clothing and kicks that they cannot reasonably pay for if they are just dancing all the damn time. I learned that the world of underground dance takes place in warehouses featuring ads for Playstation and Sprite. I learned that the underground dance world is apparently funded by revenue from selling advertising space.

I learned that it turns out you don't need a plot to make a multi-million dollar movie. I learned that it turns out you don't need any sense of aesthetics or particular skill with design software or not be color blind to be on the graphic design team for a multi-million dollar movie.

I learned that, from now on, every time a threequel is made, someone in the production studio will be barely clever and release it as “_______ 3D.” I learned that some dance movies don't even have community centers in them. I learned that I get really uncomfortable when someone is dancing directly at me, and that I would probably be way more uncomfortable watching it in 3-D.

I learned that, briefly, I was actually watching the trailer for Tron: Legacy.

ONE STAR DUE TO SPOILER: THEY WIN.

BEASTLY

Kyle Hardbody thought he had it all: money, looks, popularity, enormous pictures of his face, a guitar, white. Uh oh, though, because he's also sort of a dick. Then again, when you go to school with people apparently named Sloan Alberts and Trey Madison, you have to sort of grade on a curve in the douche department.

In his arrogance, Kyle Biceps pisses off Seven of Nine, who curses him to be “as aggressively unattractive outside as [he is] inside.” Thing is, he's pretty bad-ass looking, with hella tattoos and, like, metal all up in there, all in all kind of a Guillermo Del Toro style not-to-be-fucked-with-looking gentleman. Aggressively unattractive is more like when your back hair sticks out through your sweater, just forcing its way out into the world to instil horror. Also, does anyone else find it weird that Mary-Kate Olsen is getting on someone's case for being superficial? Regardless, the lesson of here is clear: Do not be mean to goth people, because they are secret wizards.

Luckily, Kyle “Abs” Abdominals isn't alone on his quest to reclaim his humanity. He's got his blind tutor, Mary Poppins, played by Neil Patrick Harris in a stunning reprise of his role as the slick, wisecracking supporting character, a Black housekeeper who doles out wholesome, homespun Negro wisdom, and a magical talking teakettle that sings and dances. Also, he kidnaps Vanessa Hudgens, which is totally okay, because true love!

Everybody was totally clamoring for a modern-day take on Beauty and the Beast because we need to address all sorts of modern themes like Facebook, goths, Vanessa Hudgens, and motorcycles. The essentiality of this film's creation is best encapsulated in this stirring and eloquent quote from Kyle Gunblaster Cheekbones Firmpackage: “I thought I'd take the ugly thing and turn it into something not.”

TWO STARS DUE TO WHEN ALEX PETTYFER GETS OUT OF MAKE-UP AND STEPS OFF THE SET HE'LL STILL BE GOOD LOOKING RICH, AND WHITE, SO DON'T YOU WORRY.