Wknd Box Office: Mirror Mirror, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Goon, In Darkness, October Baby, The Deep Blue Sea
By Debbie Schlussel
So many movies, so little to recommend. Here’s what’s new at movie theaters, this weekend (I did not see “Wrath of the Titans”–sorry):
* “Mirror Mirror“: More like, “Xena Snow White Warrior Princess.” Everything has a political agenda, these days. And that includes what was once a charming fairy tale.
They took the Snow White story and turned Snow White into a feminist she-man warrior and the prince (Armie Hammer) into a wimpy dope. The warrior Snow White who kicks butt is the tiny Lily Collins, daughter of retired Genesis lead singer, Phil Collins and she slays men twice her size. She swashbuckles with and beats the prince, also twice her size. Toward the end, Snow White locks the prince up, telling him that she grew up in the castle “reading so many stories where the prince rescues the princess. And I think it’s time to change that story.” Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan would be proud. Yuck.
Julia Roberts doesn’t have to act. She’s just playing herself as the wicked queen. So, it’s very believable.
Other than the feminist BS, of which you’ll have to deprogram your kids, it was a cute movie. The best part of it was the design. The costumes and sets were both fabulous.
You’d be better off reading your kids–or having them read–the real “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Or showing them one of the many far superior, non-feminism-laden previous movie versions of the real Snow White fair tale.
Oh, and what the heck was with the Bollywood dance ending? Strange and ill-fitting.
FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS
* “Salmon Fishing in Yemen“: This is propaganda, using a cheesy, obvious, long, boring chick flick wrapped in the veneer of Arabian Nights pan-Muslim faux-charm and manufactured Muslim “mysticism.” Tofurkey tastes more real. I wanted to barf when I saw not just one, but both female leads (Emily Blunt and Kristin Scott Thomas) in this movie don keffiyehs–the scarves of Islamic mass murder–as prominent chic fashion accessories.
Because of the war in Afghanistan and a bombing of a mosque (by other Muslims), the British Prime Minister’s press secretary (Thomas) orders her staff to find a positive story about relations between the Brits and the Muslim world. When she learns that a wealthy Arab Muslim Sheikh (Amr Waked) wants to spend millions of his money on transplanting salmon to the Yemen River for fishing (and making sure there is enough water, by building and using a dam), she puts all hands on making it a success. A government fisheries expert, Ewan McGregor, is forced to work on it, even though he thinks it’s ridiculous. But, soon, he falls in love with Emily Blunt, who is in charge of the Sheikh’s investments. She is in love with her boyfriend of three weeks who is in the Army and missing in Afghanistan. He is in the midst of a tired, loveless marriage to a shrewish wife.
As I said, this is a fantasy complete with fake “exotic Arabs are wiser than us mere mortals” baloney. The Sheikh (who looks like he could be Ben Kingsley’s son, but with the addition of a smushed/broken nose) is a charming, wise, kind, decent guy who knows before they do that McGregor and Blunt are destined to be a couple. Riiight. And he is the subject of an assassination attempt by radicals in his country who believe that the dam and the salmon is too Western and anti-Islam. PUH-LEEZE. The fact that the British government spends zillions along with the Sheikh on this silly idea is a gift to jihadists–infidels wasting their money on those who hate them. And the Muslims would be laughing all the way to the mosque, not trying to stop it.
The only good part of this movie was the scene showing all the newspaper headlines and angry Scottish people, when they showed the reaction to the idea of Britain robbing Scotland of its salmon to fly them to Yemen. That scene was great–but not enough (not nearly enough) to make it worth sitting through this propagandist cinematic fable.
Predictable, annoying, and yet another attempt to tell us that Muslims are wise, kind, generous people who would never support Islamic terrorism … if you live on Mars.
Any movie that pimps you on that false notion–while the majority of the Islamic world openly cheers Hezbollah and HAMAS; and any movie that features two women wearing the official scarf of martyrdom videos . . . ain’t worth your time or money.
Al-skipworthy.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN PLUS AN ARAFAT
* “Goon“: I love hockey as much as the next person. And I used to represent pro hockey players as a sports agent. But this movie stank. It’s no “Slapshot.” Not even close. It’s not even as good as the awful, “Youngblood,” as far as hockey movies go. This alleged comedy, about a minor league hockey “enforcer” (a goon), just isn’t funny. But it is filthy and disgusting, vile, and just all-around stupid.
Seann William Scott (Stifler from the “American Pie” movies) plays Doug Glatt, a stupid guy who is an outcast from his Jewish family because he’s not smart. (Funny, he doesn’t look Jewish or anything like the son of Eugene Levy, who plays his dad.) He’s tough and can punch anyone out, though, and from that, he finally finds his calling.
At a hockey game with his friend, Jay Baruchel, who hosts an online hockey show, he punches out a hockey player. The local coach sees that and recruits him to play for the team, teaching him how to skate and sending him to a minor league hockey team, where his job is to beat people up on the ice. He falls for this goofy-looking girl who is a slut but still with a boyfriend. He falls for this goofy-looking girl who is a slut but still with a boyfriend.
Glatt is a hero and people hold up signs saying, “Glatt is Hebrew for F–k You.” And I guess his tattoos are Hebrew for “not really Jewish.” Watching it, I wondered if this idiotic character was actually based on a Jewish minor league hockey player I once knew, Howie Rosenblatt, who was also something of an enforcer. He’s just one of several Jewish pro hockey enforcers, so it’s not believable that the character’s Jewish parents are embarrassed by their son’s job and beg him not to do it. Generally, Jews want their kids to work and make a living.
Regardless, I cannot tell you how completely stupid this movie is. My review makes the movie sound far better than it is. I laughed once or twice and that’s it. Mostly is was just disgusting and insufferable. It seemed like it was written by someone severely mentally disabled. I absolutely hated it. But it’s great Al-Qaeda recruitment video material.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN
* “In Darkness“: To call this movie, “Holocaust Porn,” would be accurate. I hated this vastly over-rated movie “based on the true story” of a gentile Polish sewer worker who saves some of Lvov, Poland’s Jews during the Holocaust by hiding them in the sewer. Initially, he’s motivated solely by the money, but eventually, he comes to like the Jews.
I’m not exactly sure why he likes them because I could find few people as insufferable and loathsome as the Jews portrayed in this movie. They are crazies, pigs, and ingrates.
One of them keeps having sex with his mistress right in front of his wife and young daughter. And the movies seems obsessed with weird sex scenes between ugly people. This belongs in a Holocaust movie? How about a scene in which a man masturbates on top of his mistress in front of the wife and daughter (and that’s in addition to the actual intercourse he had with her in front of them)? Disgusting. And all of this is by design. It’s beyond sickening that the mistress is the only one who lives out of the three who survives the Holocaust. She also gets pregnant with his kid and smothers it to death. I don’t believe for a second that this story ever happened or that a mistress survived because the husband picked her to live in the sewer over his own daughter and wife.
As I said, the movie is “based on the true story,” which means it’s probably not even close to the truth. I highly doubt all the Jews this man saved were so reprehensible. I also vigorously doubt that any of these people repeatedly had sex with a mistress in front of the rest of his family. But I think the filmmakers had in mind to make people think that all of the six million Jews who perished as no different from these vile creatures on this screen and not feel too bad they are dead. It’s anti-Semitism, plain and simple, but done in a very veiled way. Or maybe not so veiled.
The only decent character looks exactly like Dolph Lundgren and plays a sort of Bielski Brothers type of brave Jewish partisan, but his uncanny resemblance to the Rocky IV star is a distraction. And, of course, the movie has to show him constantly seeking–and finally getting–sex in the sewer. Somehow, I doubt this much sex happened during the Holocaust, especially between sewer dwellers. But even if it had, why is that so prominent in this movie?
Because, like the rest of this movie, it’s just inappropriate and BS. Oh, and by the way, the movie is nearly two-and-a-half hours. It’s long, slow, boring, and not a tight story.
The only moving scene is at the end when the sewer dwellers come out to freedom because the war is over. They are greeted with cake and drinks by the sewer worker’s previously disdainful wife. But that ending wasn’t worth the crap we had to wade through (yes, the movie is a cinematic sewer, too) for almost three hours. And, frankly, I wasn’t sure I wanted most of these people to have lived.
Methinks that was the point of the movie all along: why save the Jews? They aren’t worth it.
And, yet, dumbass Jews all over the U.S. are raving over this crappy movie. They’re too stupid to know better. After all, those Jews who go to see this are mostly the same ones who voted for Obama.
The movie is in Polish with English subtitles. Maybe they should dub it in Arabic, too.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN PLUS AN ARAFAT
* “October Baby“: This is one of the rare Hollywood movies that comes with a pro-life message. And while I appreciate that, I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it, either. But I have no use for overwrought melodramas or weird goofiness. This had too much of both. It was interesting seeing stars of the ’80s, John Schneider and Jasmine Guy (Whitley from the “Cosby Show” spin-off, “A Different World”), though.
Rachel Hendrix plays a conflicted and troubled college freshman who collapses at her debut in a college play. After she is rushed to the hospital, she eventually learns that she is adopted, and it changes everything. Her parents (her dad is played by Schneider who is still blessed with his good looks and has aged well) are religious Christians who sacrificed everything to adopt and care for her. But there’s an even bigger secret.
Hendrix goes on a spring break trip with friends, including a boy in whom she is interested. While on the road trip, she seeks to find her birth mother.
As I said, it’s rare–and refreshing–to see a pro-life movie. And on top of that, it’s a movie in which religious Christians are portrayed as good people and great parents, something you also don’t often see.
Still, it was a little emotional for me, especially for a movie mixed with a lot of forced goofiness and odd characters who don’t seem to match the serious tone and distract from it. And the movie could have been a little tighter.
ONE REAGAN
* “The Deep Blue Sea“: Rachel Weisz plays an emotional wreck in a pointless, overly melodramatic movie about a married English woman who leaves her judge husband to live with a World War II veteran. The veteran doesn’t love her, and it’s merely a sexual affair. She repeatedly writes suicide notes and threatens to kill herself. Plus they are always fighting. Not sure why you’d need to watch this pretentious movie, when you can watch Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook fight over their divorce in real life. But it was mildly entertaining and showed the waste of time that her affair was, while throwing out the husband who truly loved her. Still, guys, you will hate it. It is mired in misery.
HALF A REAGAN
So many movies, so little to recommend. Here’s what’s new at movie theaters, this weekend (I did not see “Wrath of the Titans”–sorry):
* “Mirror Mirror“: More like, “Xena Snow White Warrior Princess.” Everything has a political agenda, these days. And that includes what was once a charming fairy tale.
They took the Snow White story and turned Snow White into a feminist she-man warrior and the prince (Armie Hammer) into a wimpy dope. The warrior Snow White who kicks butt is the tiny Lily Collins, daughter of retired Genesis lead singer, Phil Collins and she slays men twice her size. She swashbuckles with and beats the prince, also twice her size. Toward the end, Snow White locks the prince up, telling him that she grew up in the castle “reading so many stories where the prince rescues the princess. And I think it’s time to change that story.” Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan would be proud. Yuck.
Julia Roberts doesn’t have to act. She’s just playing herself as the wicked queen. So, it’s very believable.
Other than the feminist BS, of which you’ll have to deprogram your kids, it was a cute movie. The best part of it was the design. The costumes and sets were both fabulous.
You’d be better off reading your kids–or having them read–the real “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Or showing them one of the many far superior, non-feminism-laden previous movie versions of the real Snow White fair tale.
Oh, and what the heck was with the Bollywood dance ending? Strange and ill-fitting.
FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS
* “Salmon Fishing in Yemen“: This is propaganda, using a cheesy, obvious, long, boring chick flick wrapped in the veneer of Arabian Nights pan-Muslim faux-charm and manufactured Muslim “mysticism.” Tofurkey tastes more real. I wanted to barf when I saw not just one, but both female leads (Emily Blunt and Kristin Scott Thomas) in this movie don keffiyehs–the scarves of Islamic mass murder–as prominent chic fashion accessories.
Because of the war in Afghanistan and a bombing of a mosque (by other Muslims), the British Prime Minister’s press secretary (Thomas) orders her staff to find a positive story about relations between the Brits and the Muslim world. When she learns that a wealthy Arab Muslim Sheikh (Amr Waked) wants to spend millions of his money on transplanting salmon to the Yemen River for fishing (and making sure there is enough water, by building and using a dam), she puts all hands on making it a success. A government fisheries expert, Ewan McGregor, is forced to work on it, even though he thinks it’s ridiculous. But, soon, he falls in love with Emily Blunt, who is in charge of the Sheikh’s investments. She is in love with her boyfriend of three weeks who is in the Army and missing in Afghanistan. He is in the midst of a tired, loveless marriage to a shrewish wife.
As I said, this is a fantasy complete with fake “exotic Arabs are wiser than us mere mortals” baloney. The Sheikh (who looks like he could be Ben Kingsley’s son, but with the addition of a smushed/broken nose) is a charming, wise, kind, decent guy who knows before they do that McGregor and Blunt are destined to be a couple. Riiight. And he is the subject of an assassination attempt by radicals in his country who believe that the dam and the salmon is too Western and anti-Islam. PUH-LEEZE. The fact that the British government spends zillions along with the Sheikh on this silly idea is a gift to jihadists–infidels wasting their money on those who hate them. And the Muslims would be laughing all the way to the mosque, not trying to stop it.
The only good part of this movie was the scene showing all the newspaper headlines and angry Scottish people, when they showed the reaction to the idea of Britain robbing Scotland of its salmon to fly them to Yemen. That scene was great–but not enough (not nearly enough) to make it worth sitting through this propagandist cinematic fable.
Predictable, annoying, and yet another attempt to tell us that Muslims are wise, kind, generous people who would never support Islamic terrorism … if you live on Mars.
Any movie that pimps you on that false notion–while the majority of the Islamic world openly cheers Hezbollah and HAMAS; and any movie that features two women wearing the official scarf of martyrdom videos . . . ain’t worth your time or money.
Al-skipworthy.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN PLUS AN ARAFAT
* “Goon“: I love hockey as much as the next person. And I used to represent pro hockey players as a sports agent. But this movie stank. It’s no “Slapshot.” Not even close. It’s not even as good as the awful, “Youngblood,” as far as hockey movies go. This alleged comedy, about a minor league hockey “enforcer” (a goon), just isn’t funny. But it is filthy and disgusting, vile, and just all-around stupid.
Seann William Scott (Stifler from the “American Pie” movies) plays Doug Glatt, a stupid guy who is an outcast from his Jewish family because he’s not smart. (Funny, he doesn’t look Jewish or anything like the son of Eugene Levy, who plays his dad.) He’s tough and can punch anyone out, though, and from that, he finally finds his calling.
At a hockey game with his friend, Jay Baruchel, who hosts an online hockey show, he punches out a hockey player. The local coach sees that and recruits him to play for the team, teaching him how to skate and sending him to a minor league hockey team, where his job is to beat people up on the ice. He falls for this goofy-looking girl who is a slut but still with a boyfriend. He falls for this goofy-looking girl who is a slut but still with a boyfriend.
Glatt is a hero and people hold up signs saying, “Glatt is Hebrew for F–k You.” And I guess his tattoos are Hebrew for “not really Jewish.” Watching it, I wondered if this idiotic character was actually based on a Jewish minor league hockey player I once knew, Howie Rosenblatt, who was also something of an enforcer. He’s just one of several Jewish pro hockey enforcers, so it’s not believable that the character’s Jewish parents are embarrassed by their son’s job and beg him not to do it. Generally, Jews want their kids to work and make a living.
Regardless, I cannot tell you how completely stupid this movie is. My review makes the movie sound far better than it is. I laughed once or twice and that’s it. Mostly is was just disgusting and insufferable. It seemed like it was written by someone severely mentally disabled. I absolutely hated it. But it’s great Al-Qaeda recruitment video material.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN
* “In Darkness“: To call this movie, “Holocaust Porn,” would be accurate. I hated this vastly over-rated movie “based on the true story” of a gentile Polish sewer worker who saves some of Lvov, Poland’s Jews during the Holocaust by hiding them in the sewer. Initially, he’s motivated solely by the money, but eventually, he comes to like the Jews.
I’m not exactly sure why he likes them because I could find few people as insufferable and loathsome as the Jews portrayed in this movie. They are crazies, pigs, and ingrates.
One of them keeps having sex with his mistress right in front of his wife and young daughter. And the movies seems obsessed with weird sex scenes between ugly people. This belongs in a Holocaust movie? How about a scene in which a man masturbates on top of his mistress in front of the wife and daughter (and that’s in addition to the actual intercourse he had with her in front of them)? Disgusting. And all of this is by design. It’s beyond sickening that the mistress is the only one who lives out of the three who survives the Holocaust. She also gets pregnant with his kid and smothers it to death. I don’t believe for a second that this story ever happened or that a mistress survived because the husband picked her to live in the sewer over his own daughter and wife.
As I said, the movie is “based on the true story,” which means it’s probably not even close to the truth. I highly doubt all the Jews this man saved were so reprehensible. I also vigorously doubt that any of these people repeatedly had sex with a mistress in front of the rest of his family. But I think the filmmakers had in mind to make people think that all of the six million Jews who perished as no different from these vile creatures on this screen and not feel too bad they are dead. It’s anti-Semitism, plain and simple, but done in a very veiled way. Or maybe not so veiled.
The only decent character looks exactly like Dolph Lundgren and plays a sort of Bielski Brothers type of brave Jewish partisan, but his uncanny resemblance to the Rocky IV star is a distraction. And, of course, the movie has to show him constantly seeking–and finally getting–sex in the sewer. Somehow, I doubt this much sex happened during the Holocaust, especially between sewer dwellers. But even if it had, why is that so prominent in this movie?
Because, like the rest of this movie, it’s just inappropriate and BS. Oh, and by the way, the movie is nearly two-and-a-half hours. It’s long, slow, boring, and not a tight story.
The only moving scene is at the end when the sewer dwellers come out to freedom because the war is over. They are greeted with cake and drinks by the sewer worker’s previously disdainful wife. But that ending wasn’t worth the crap we had to wade through (yes, the movie is a cinematic sewer, too) for almost three hours. And, frankly, I wasn’t sure I wanted most of these people to have lived.
Methinks that was the point of the movie all along: why save the Jews? They aren’t worth it.
And, yet, dumbass Jews all over the U.S. are raving over this crappy movie. They’re too stupid to know better. After all, those Jews who go to see this are mostly the same ones who voted for Obama.
The movie is in Polish with English subtitles. Maybe they should dub it in Arabic, too.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN PLUS AN ARAFAT
* “October Baby“: This is one of the rare Hollywood movies that comes with a pro-life message. And while I appreciate that, I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it, either. But I have no use for overwrought melodramas or weird goofiness. This had too much of both. It was interesting seeing stars of the ’80s, John Schneider and Jasmine Guy (Whitley from the “Cosby Show” spin-off, “A Different World”), though.
Rachel Hendrix plays a conflicted and troubled college freshman who collapses at her debut in a college play. After she is rushed to the hospital, she eventually learns that she is adopted, and it changes everything. Her parents (her dad is played by Schneider who is still blessed with his good looks and has aged well) are religious Christians who sacrificed everything to adopt and care for her. But there’s an even bigger secret.
Hendrix goes on a spring break trip with friends, including a boy in whom she is interested. While on the road trip, she seeks to find her birth mother.
As I said, it’s rare–and refreshing–to see a pro-life movie. And on top of that, it’s a movie in which religious Christians are portrayed as good people and great parents, something you also don’t often see.
Still, it was a little emotional for me, especially for a movie mixed with a lot of forced goofiness and odd characters who don’t seem to match the serious tone and distract from it. And the movie could have been a little tighter.
ONE REAGAN
* “The Deep Blue Sea“: Rachel Weisz plays an emotional wreck in a pointless, overly melodramatic movie about a married English woman who leaves her judge husband to live with a World War II veteran. The veteran doesn’t love her, and it’s merely a sexual affair. She repeatedly writes suicide notes and threatens to kill herself. Plus they are always fighting. Not sure why you’d need to watch this pretentious movie, when you can watch Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook fight over their divorce in real life. But it was mildly entertaining and showed the waste of time that her affair was, while throwing out the husband who truly loved her. Still, guys, you will hate it. It is mired in misery.
HALF A REAGAN
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