SUPER

Written and directed by James Gunn

Starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, and Nathan Fillion

*** WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD ***

It’s no secret: superhero movies are running out of steam. It was all very exciting to see Sam Raimi’s Spider-man in theatres back in 2002, as graphic imaging technology had progressed to a point where our most beloved masked do-gooders and their heroic tales could finally be given the grandiose scale they deserved.

Ten years later, however, we find film studios scraping the bottom of the barrel with high-budget, low-brow ignominies like The Green Lantern, Iron Man 2, and Thor; the kind of pictures that even a belly full of alcohol couldn’t save. To their credit, the banality of superhero-ness (how oxymoronic, no?) has elicited a response from a small group of thoughtful, indie filmmakers who are spearheading a counter-trend: heroes without powers.

Toronto: national leaders in higher education and taking a kicking

Sure, there are the sleek, big studio pictures like Batman Begins or Watchmen – wherein the heroes may not be superhuman but can still open up a can of Zidane on baddies as required – but let’s not forget Special and Defendor, films that feature protagonists who are delusional, out of shape, and retarded. I’m not kidding folks and that’s not a figure of speech; they sincerely made a movie about a differently-abled superhero and everyone needs to watch it. It’s also filmed in Toronto, so all the retards there will recognize their city and their retardation. Go Leafs!

Super, which plants itself firmly in the latter category, is the chronicle of the Frank D’Arbo/Crimson Bolt (Rainn Wilson) and his crime-fighting exploits. A short order chef whose recovering drug-addict wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) runs off with seedy strip-club owner Jacques (Kevin Bacon), Frank sets into a deep depression in the early stages of the film. Now, I don’t remember this next part of the movie because I’d been drinking but Wikipedia told me it happened and I believe everything I read on Wikipedia: Frank (like recent divorcées do, I guess) watches a lot of daytime TV and gets caught up in a public access superhero saga on the All-Jesus Network. The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) soon transcends the television screen and appears to Frank in a vision, convincing him that his purpose is to fight crime.

If you haven't considered Evangelism, now's the time to start

Okay folks, I fully realize that all of my reviews thus far have been of films that involve reprisal or vigilante-ism but I can assure you that it’s neither intentional nor a cause for concern because all of them are comedies (except for La piel que habito, which is not a comedy so much as concrete evidence that Jesus died in vain). You could argue that any film you watch while drunk is a comedy, but let’s face it: you need to have a pretty good sense of humour to cast Rainn Wilson as a superhero and Kevin Bacon as the drug-baron arch-nemesis.

Of course, it’s tricky for me to see a sparsely attended movie like this one and not end up feeling self-conscious. As I’ve mentioned in a past column, Martyn has a propensity for mid-movie restroom absences and from now on he’s getting the aisle seat every time because this guy knocks over bottles like they’re bowling pins. It’s like he’s doing it on purpose. When you’re in an independent film at a nice cinema in Central London with about 11 other people in the screening and four or six bottles go clanking across the concrete floor it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly who the alckies are. I almost felt compelled to stand up and recite the mission statement from my blog as an explanation but decided against it because I couldn’t remember it verbatim nor access it on my smartphone due to a lack of cell reception, and also because I was probably too drunk to read. Perhaps in future small screenings I’ll read it pre-picture as a disclaimer of sorts. Surely that’ll go over well.

As if Martyn’s glass parade wasn’t enough, at a later point in the film when one of the main characters bites it in a way that is shocking, brutally violent, and patently un-funny I was about five Peronis deep and started guffawing for a profoundly ill-advised length of time and at an absurd volume. Think Nicolas Cage after a director has just told him he has artistic carte-blanche. It was so uncomfortable and just plain psychotic that about 75% of the theatre started giggling 5-10 seconds later because I couldn’t compose myself. I imagined it being like Mel Gibson watching Schindler’s List. Although I’m sure no laughter would have followed his.

Too young to be hot or too hot to be young?

The Crimson Bolt later goes on to pick up a sidekick, Boltie (Ellen Page), and Ellen Page in movies is always risky. Sure, the girl is only two years younger than me, but no matter how old she gets she still looks 16 or 17. You say to yourself, “Yeah, she’s cute, and it’s okay for me to ogle her because she’s 24 and probably not much smaller than Jennifer Love-Hewitt, who was sort of a big deal back in the nineties and has boobs that I’d love to motorboat.” But then there’s a rape scene in this movie and you’re like, “Nah, man, I was wrong and I’m waaay not drunk enough for this.” Still, as far as rape scenes go it’s more cringe-inducing than shocking or offensive. You’d have to see it to get it, though, folks.

Looking back, this review has been fairly serious (or at least compared to my others). The reason for this is I’m actually quite serious about this movie. It was a fun boozy night out and the film, at its heights, is pretty fucking mental, but also unexpectedly touching and artful in its rendering of a down-on-his-luck, unhinged anti-hero. It’s hysterically funny drunk or sober, performances are strong across the board, and it achieves its artistic and atmospheric ambitions more successfully than nearly any other superhero movie you’ll see, albeit unconventionally.

Oh, and in case it wasn’t clear before: I hate Toronto and I hope it gets consumed by a plague of locusts.

Damage: 5/10 (pre-movie: ½ pint Taddy Lager, 5 measures of Sam Smith pub whiskey; during the movie: 5 x 330 ml Peroni bottles)

Boozy rating: 9/10 (Martyn and I both had a good time despite the fact the we could have drawn less unwanted attention by firing off a signal flare)

La piel que habito

Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar 

Starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, and Jan Cornet

Alright folks, Martyn and I seriously took one for the team this time around. Not only did my urine come out brown and cloudy this morning (looking much like unfiltered apple cider) but this movie was worse than most things. Many people may take this with a grain of salt, since my modus operandi for film reviews consists of drinking heavily and seeing mediocre action flicks, but I know my art film and I’ve seen Mulholland Drive and understood it so when I say this movie was not merely worse than most movies but most THINGS, you had better believe it suckers.

Here are some things I’d rather do than watch La piel que habito:

• Get kicked in the junk (perhaps not with cleats or boots but a shoeless foot or a pair of casual shoes or trainers would be acceptable)
• Sit in traffic for two hours
• Shave a really hairy guy’s back
• Witness a robbery or two hookers fighting in the street and spend the whole day in a police station giving a deposition
• Have my back shaved by a really hairy guy



It came out like this, for reals

• Have someone step on my blue suede shoes

For serious people, this movie made me wish that I had one of those red flashing Batphones that I could use upon my return home, only instead of linking me up to Commissioner Gordon it would go straight to Hisashi Owada’s office at the International Court of Justice.

Me: Yo Shishi, what’s the good word brother?

Hisashi Owada: Yeah, yeah, you know, same as ever. Breakin teeth, breakin hearts. This geezer Goran Hadžić was here the other week, getting all up in my grill talking all kinds of smack so I had to set him right, you know, gave him a good coupla slaps so he know Daddy Owady don’t play no shit.

Me: Yea, that’s straight-up yakuza. You gonna give him the chair?

Hisashi Owada: Fucking-A right I’m giving him the chair! The hammer’s gon’ fall on all those death-dealing Serbo roundeyes. Daddy don’t sleep till alla dem is hangin from the business end of a rope, son.

Me: Word.

Hisashi Owada: So what’s the skinny, B-money? I’m kinda busy here you know. Slow justice is no justice.

Me: Dude I need you to look into Pedro Almodóvar for me.

Hisashi Owada: What for?

Me: Crimes against humanity.

Hisashi Owada: For Skin?

Me: 2 right, 2 right.

Hisashi Owada: Yeah, no surprise there. Connery called earlier saying the same damn thing. I’ll make sure the charges stick.

Me: Nice. Big up yourself, brother. Tell your daughter I said what’s up.

Daddy Owady finds your lack of faith disturbing

Only I have no Batphone so instead of that I went home and passed out cold after dry-heaving for a few minutes. Martyn later reported falling asleep on the tube, waking up in Morden, and taking a night bus home at stupid o’clock. Fair to say we paid our share to bring you this review, so you had better read it.

Right, the movie. The audience is essentially parachuted into the middle of an ongoing narrative, with critical plot points unveiled gradually as the film lumbers forward. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) is a prominent surgeon and geneticist who, by conducting clandestine experiments on a beautiful young patient imprisoned in his house (Elena Anaya), has developed completely flame-resistant skin that looks and feels natural. The announcement of his discovery to the scientific community generates a lot of chatter but it may be tricky for him to reveal his results since his only test subject is a hostage in a spandex bodysuit. When Ledgard’s estranged half-brother later shows up to his house dressed like a fat tiger (see the trailer if you don’t believe me!), discovers the girl, and decides to get his rape on, the mess just gets messier.

La piel que habito treads conventional Almodóvar ground, exploring isolation, sexual identity, the significance of blood ties, and by “exploring” I mean he beats you over the head with them until the banging ceases to make sense. These are things everyone has surely thought over at some point, but the narrative and characters are so bat-shit crazy and far-removed from reality that their world becomes a grotesquely indulgent exaggeration of emotions otherwise worth exploring. Even if you manage to overlook the film’s unabashedly and gratuitously lurid turns, it is one of the most manipulative things you’ll ever watch. I must have watched half of this movie with my jaw agape in wonder at how useless and psychotic it becomes, but I still wouldn’t go so far as to say it has “shock value” because to attribute any kind of value to Skin would be heresy.

Nice car ruined

Halfway through the longest two hours of my life and desperate, I tried pummeling through a 6 oz. hip flask of 86-proof Dalwhinnie 15yo. I was incorrect in my assumption that it would make the film easier to digest or forget; I remember every miserable moment of it and getting liquored up only made me wish incessantly that Antonio Banderas would get into a wicked car chase in this pimpin’ BMW M6 with 18” mags he rolls around in but he only ends up driving that thing in an out of his driveway. The only car chase-ish scene (and I say “ish” because Almodóvar directs a car chase like Kubrick directs space travel, YAAAAWWWN) sees Banderas driving a panel van and that’s just a huge waste of time, action/adventure star power, and built-up anticipation. The booze also makes you want to ogle the sublime Elena Anaya, who is paraded shamelessly around the screen nude or in skin-tight outfits for the entire movie, only Almodóvar throws a plot twist halfway into the film that makes you not want to ogle her anymore. Not only can he ruin your evening, this cat can also ruin a hot girl for life, which adds teasing to his ever-expanding list of tricks alongside self-indulgence and pretension.

Nice girl ruined

Sure, you could turn around and say “you’re a fine one to talk, this whole blog is self-indulgent” (which it is) but I’m still right and this movie is still bull’s pizzle and Hisashi Owada is still getting a call from me as soon as I can find his phone number or locate him on Facebook. Because yeah, I was totally kidding before. We’re totally not friends. Yet.

Damage: 8/10 (pre-movie: one measure Talisker 10yo, ½ bottle Cava Brut; during movie: 2 x 500 ml cans of Kronenbourg 1664, 6 oz Dalwhinnie 15yo; post-movie: one measure Talisker)

Boozy rating: 1/10 (the movie made me want to never drink again more than the drinking did)

Next week: Cowboys and Aliens (for real this time)