The Avengers

Directed by Joss Whedon

Starring Fuckin everybody

A long time had been spent in anticipation of this film. I had waited for the DVD releases of Captain A, the Hulk, Thor, and did not drink my way through either of the Ironmans, much to my chagrin. When Downey and I hang out he still shakes his head at me in disappointment. And I try to tell it from my side, like:

Ben: No, but seriously it was a matinee and there were kids there and stuff.

Bob: So? Did having kids around ever stop Michael Jackson?

Ben: Yeah, fair point.

Hugely saddened was I to learn that movieboozer Martyn would not be attending this week’s session. I was happy to have guest moviegoer Cedric joining me, but he does not drink at the movies. He eats popcorn like a normal person.

I remained relatively sober for the screening of this film. Good thing too: not only did I still derive pleasure from the action sequences and appreciate how huge all of the actors looked, but I also understood The Avengers as the racist parable it clearly is.

Hollywood racism has essentially existed forever, in varying degrees of covertness. That is, until about 10 years ago when a couple of Kiwis decided to go pretty balls-out, Klantastic with the moviemaking. LOTR was a mess, back-to-front. Gandalf the White? Huh, what? All the orcs and Uruk-hai are dark-skinned, aren’t they? C’mon people, look at the elves. Just look at the fucking ELVES.

Where are the black elves at, eh? Hebrew Hammer and Bad Santa both had black elves with only about 5% the budget. Just give Will Smith, Danny Glover, and Tiny Lister some wigs and let them go to work. Best elf posse ever, I say.

Anyway, since 2001 it’s pretty much been open season for big studios to do whatever they want at the expense of whatever minority (except for the Jews, who nobody can fuck with anymore because we have Jon Stewart AND Krav Maga and we’ll break your shit off; seriously, test us). Because Joss Whedon is behind The Avengers and he’s a clever bigot a lot of the stuff in here is subtle and he figures it’ll just go below the radar and seep into moviegoer subconscious. Of course, he didn’t consider that I would be sober and when I’m sober I have superpowers too. Like seeing straight through all your racist bullshit, Joss Whedon.

Let me start by saying there’s only 1 (one) black person in this movie and he’s handicapped. That’s just rubbing salt in the wound. It’s a clear jab since Nick Fury is meant to be white but clearly some Marvel Studio exec was like: “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we added a black guy who had useless superpowers like having watermelons for hands??!!” And Joss Whedon was like: “No. You’re an idiot. But I’ll think of something else.” And then Joss Whedon decided “Ok, let’s just make that useless crippled guy black for no reason and, to add insult to injury, let’s force the most virile, respected, hard-working, and highest-grossing black actor in Hollywood to play him.” And behold, Sam Jackson was blind and useless. Seriously, if you remove him from the film: same outcome. That’s racist.

Has every reason to be an angry douche.

Loki is the villain in this film and you could make the argument that because he’s Asgardian it’s fair play. Only he isn’t Asgardian; he’s a Frost Giant. Folks discover this in Thor and guess what happens. Yeah, he gets exiled. This guy Loki is just standing around, minding his own business, when suddenly his own people are all up in his grill like: “Um, well, we know you’ve been here since infancy but as it turns out you’re not a white dude like the rest of us so we’re gonna have to deport your sorry blue ass.” And yeah, they actually FUCKING DEPORT HIM. That’s racist. No wonder he’s angry.

And then, really, this entire Avengers movie is about Loki crossing into Earth’s realm without a visa or any kind of official papers, reaping the fruits of American labour, and then getting all his buddies over the fence until we’re outnumbered. If Joss Whedon wants to make a 2-and-a-half-hour allegorical film about border issues he should at least have had the balls to cast Danny Trejo as Loki. Or that guy Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite.

Scar-Jo is Natasha Romanoff, a former Russian spy who has about six lines in the movie, three of which are: “I have red in my ledger. I need to get it out.” Get the Red out?! Duh, Soviets. Racist.

Those space creatures that try to destroy NYC at the end of the movie are clearly the fucking Chinese. They swoop down from the sky Red Dawn-style in huge numbers. They have superior technology, all look the same, and their boss monster… c’mon folks.

That’s racist.

The clincher, for me, is when Captain America gets worried that his star-spangled suit will be “a little old-fashioned” and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson reassures him that “people might just need a little old-fashioned.” Nice one. You know what else was old-fashioned? Slavery.

 SHAZZING! Schooled you, Whedon.

So what have we learned, in a nutshell, from The Avengers? Fuck immigrants, we deport them. Fuck the Soviets; we know the Cold War is over but they can eat shit. Fuck the Chinese too, for that matter. There’s too many of them and they have bad teeth. Fuck all blue people like Frost Giants and Smurfs and those tall dudes from Avatar. Because America needs to be protected from the forces of evil. Fuck yeah.

I feel like I saw this movie eight years ago. Only with puppets. Pretty sure Sam Jackson was in that one too, actually.

Damage: 1/10 (70 ml babička wormwood vodka)

Boozy rating: 1/10 (WTF Joss seriously)

Hobo With a Shotgun

Directed by Jason Eisener

Starring Rutger Hauer, Gregory Smith, Molly Dunsworth, Brian Downey, Nick Bateman, and Jeremy Akerman.

 Aside from his first effort, Pi, I’ve never been very enthusiastic about Darren Aronofsky’s films. Sure, he’s got a few award nominations under his belt, a share of healthy reviews, and a pervy ‘tache (those are “in” these days, right?), but the bottom line: I’m not a fan of movies that exist merely as stylistic exercises without delivering substance (and no, people doing boatloads of heroin and having limbs amputated is not substance, it’s just misery pornography).

Style, however, wins the battle against substance when the movie revolves around Rutger Hauer ruining people’s shit with a 12-gauge.

The only problem with this movie, really, was that I was not drunk enough during it. I made the critical error of walking into the theatre sober and sticking to 5.5% beers throughout the films, which only delivered mild inebriation when, really, about halfway through the movie I ought to have been shouting obnoxiously at the screen: “Yes! YES Batty! Shoot him in the face!” It’s that kind of movie. The only good way for it to end is with you being dragged out howling and belligerent, telling the ushers repeatedly how amazing shotguns are and how you’re surely going to go out and buy one now. Just make sure to wear trainers to the theatre in case they call the cops and you have to leg it out of there double-quick style.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez made a collaborative action-horror double-feature named Grindhouse (2007) after the B-movie theatres of their youths (recommended for a boozy rental). In order to fully immerse viewers in the grotty, exploitation aesthetic the picture is meant to evoke, they commissioned four fake, like-genre trailers from fellow directors and held a contest at the South by Southwest Festival challenging aspiring young filmmakers to provide a fifth for the flick’s release. Dartmouth, Nova Scotia natives Jason Eisener, John Davies, and Rob Cotterill produced two minutes of Hobo With a Shotgun for the win.

Following in the footsteps of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete (also turned into a full-length feature and also an outstanding candidate for a boozy weeknight), HWAS was brought to life by the same crew responsible for the trailer, with the addition of B-movie superhero Rutger Hauer as the lead.

The plot is simple: there is no plot. Just Rutger delivering his brand of vigilante street justice to the gangsters, low-lifes, and pederasts of “Hope Town.” There’s this bit about Rutger saving up his spare change to buy this coveted pawn shop lawnmower, which is in itself AMAZING because a) there’s no grass in this entire film and; b) even if there were, none of it would be his to mow because he’s homeless as fuck in this movie. For serious, you could have put Rutger in a homeless contest with real homeless people and he would have made the podium for sure. In fact, Rutger Hauer should give up acting and just teach homeless people how it’s done. Give lessons at the YMCA and stuff.

There’s about 10-20 minutes of him observing injustice, getting heckled and spat at, him mumbling some stuff about bears, and from that point on it’s just straight-up wreckage for the rest of the movie.

By the time the movie gets going I was about two beer cans deep and mostly worried about the tall black gentleman sitting next to me. Parts of this movie verge on blaxploitation and, while we both know it’s all in good fun, I don’t want to be caught laughing too loud. Because that could get a bit fucked up for me if I’m out there splitting my sides and he’s looking over at me, like: “Dude… not cool.” It happened to me when I was watching Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Double Team and got caught out laughing too hard at D-Rod’s unnecessary basketball references and general ridiculousness.

So minutes 30-45 of the movie consisted of me gauging his level of laughter (and drunkenness) and ensuring that mine never exceeded his. For a moment I contemplated offering him a beer or two to ingratiate myself with him but I was running dangerously low and figured it was worth the risk of being publicly decried a racist. It wouldn’t be the first time (but that’s a story for another posting).

After a few more beers, the range of means and weapons used to ruin people becomes downright impressive. Citizens of Hope Town are getting owned six ways from Sunday by way of cane, toaster, ice hockey skates, manhole cover, chicken wire, and grappling gun, to name a few. The titular shotgun steals the show, of course, blowing off heads and tearing holes in peoples’ chests with such uncompromisingly gritty, low-fi style that it almost becomes a character of its own. I caught myself hoping for a line in the credits that read something like: “And introducing Shotgun as ‘The Shotgun.’” That would have ruled so hard.

The general destruction and slaughter only gets more satisfying as the movie rolls on, which I honestly don’t know whether to attribute to the filmmaker’s love for action exploitation or my level of drunkenness. I don’t remember ever being the only one in the auditorium laughing (this happens plenty on Boozy Wednesday), a pretty strong indicator that the movie stands up to the sobriety test, or that everyone else in the theatre was also ripped. Neither would surprise me.

HWAS boasts enough violence, black humour, retarded cocaine usage, and Canuck cameos that you’ll want to bring your big game into the screening room. Come packing a two-day-old sandwich wrapped in cling-film (or pizza you found in a trashcan) and the dirtiest beer cans you can buy. By the end of the flick you’ll have become hobo by osmosis. Hobosmosis. Fuck I’m clever.

Damage: 4/10 (4 x 500ml cans of Stella Artois; insufficient for thorough enjoyment)

Boozy rating: 8/10 (filled with classic one-liners and wreckage, but so brutally violent that it could upset your drunk)

Up next week: Horrible Bosses