Midweek Box Office: Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Parental Guidance

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Midweek Box Office: Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Parental Guidance


By Debbie Schlussel



Sorry I didn’t post my reviews of the new movies out Christmas Day, but I wasn’t feeling well and needed a brief break. This is supposed to be the time of year when Hollywood puts out its best stuff. No such luck. Not even close. It’s just dreck. I can’t recommend any of the new movies that debuted in theaters yesterday, and here’s why:



* “Django Unchained“: This movie is a three-hour-long anti-White racism-fest. Yes, slavery happened in America, and the slaves were Blacks who were enslaved by Whites (and some other Blacks). But there were also some good White people, abolitionists who worked for the freedom of slaves. And, yet, not a single White American in this movie is a good person. All of them, with the exception of a German immigrant dentist/bounty hunter, are evil (and stupid). And you know why director Quentin Tarantino made the one good guy a German, don’t you? Because four score (the movie takes place in 1858) years later, the Germans were the Nazis we fought, the Nazis who enslaved the Jews. You’ve probably heard about Jamie Foxx bragging on “Saturday Night Live” that he gets to kill White people in this movie and gets paid for it. But that’s not news, since he utters the same line in the movie and that line is in many of the trailers promoting it.



And, since this is a Tarantino flick, it goes without saying that the movie is extremely bloody, gory, and violent–perhaps more than the other Tarantino movies. If Tarantino really wanted to do a good western, he wouldn’t have done this. Instead, he wanted to do a tribute to the Obama fans of the world and pile on everyone else, somehow justifying the non-stop affirmative action, minority set-asides, and other race-based favoritism in America. He also wanted to give the hip-hop, single-mother, welfare-addicted, drug-using segment of our society something to feel good about . . . that they are better than the White “crackers,” who “did this” to them. But, in fact, most Whites in America today, don’t come from that stock. For example, my ancestors were busy being raped and tortured in pogroms by anti-Semitic Poles in Europe at the time. They had nothing to do with slavery or what happened then. So, this movie, as a justification for all the Black racism against White people and all the legs up the government gives minorities, just doesn’t work for me. The “Get Whitey” ethos of this movie isn’t what we need more of. We need far less. And, as you may have read, it’s full of the N-word, though I expected that, since it does take place at the time of slavery in the South.



The story: a German immigrant dentist/bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) travels the country rounding up criminals, dead or alive, for the bounty. In the course of that, he looks for, finds, and frees a Black slave known as Django (Jamie Foxx). Together, they partner up in the bounty hunter business, while they look for Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a German-speaking slave who was once owned by a German family. They find and try to buy her freedom from a haughty but not-too-wise plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio a/k/a DiCrapio). Along the way, they also meet another plantation owner, who is also haughty but not-too-wise, played by Don Johnson (yup, that Don Johnson of “Miami Vice” fame; Tom Wopat from “The Dukes of Hazzard” also co-stars). They also meet up with many small town residents and cowboys, all of whom are racist. Oh, and did I mention that White people are racist? In case you didn’t get that, there are scenes, such as DiCaprio and his other slave-owning friends and associates holding and watching a private mandingo death match between slaves as entertainment. Yeah, you see what those crackaz did in 1858? So, we deserve our Obamaphone and then some!



I would be lying if I didn’t say that there are some mildly entertaining and funny moments amid the race-baiting. But that doesn’t justify it, and mostly the movie is long, slow, and boring, between brutal, graphic killings, that is. Like I said, the movie is extremely bloody and violent, and extremely racist. And it’s not necessary at this time, unless of course, it’s to provide more justification for the re-election of Barack Obama, the ever growing ranks of American food stamp and welfare recipients, and the disintegration of urban America. You know datz right.



If you do go to see this race-baiting cinematic screed, don’t drink anything beforehand. It’s nearly three hours, and you’ll need a pretty strong bladder (and a lot of patience). I like a good spaghetti Western. This ain’t it.



FOUR MARXES PLUS AN AL SHARPTON PLUS A JESSE JACKSON


* “Les Miserables“: Miserable definitely describes my mood sitting through this nearly three-hour exercise in bad singing and an even more atrocious story. For years, I’ve heard every female relative I know and many of my friends rave over the Broadway musical upon which this is based. And, now, that I’ve seen it, I wonder, is that all there is? I have to say the fans of Les Mis vastly overrate utter garbage. What’s to rave about? An abandoned mother (Anne Hatha-neigh, er . . . Hathaway) toils in a factory to pay for her daughter who is being kept by evil, sleazy inn owners (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter). When she’s fired from the factory, the mother becomes a prostitute and gets sick and dies. Then, the man who fired her, a former prisoner and lawbreaker (Hugh Jackman)–he was imprisoned for 17 years for stealing a piece of bread for his sister to eat–feels bad, so he gets her young daughter and raises her. But he is forever in hiding and escaping from a lawman (Russell Crowe). Oh, and he dies on the daughter’s wedding day. And this horrid tragedy is somehow a “great” musical? Oy.



I found this to be long, slow, and very boring. I couldn’t wait to go to the bathroom, as it’s waaaaay tooooo looooong. Also, while Hathaway has a great singing voice, the same cannot be said for the men, who sound horrible. It sounded like someone was beheading sheep. Not only can’t Russell Crowe sing, it’s almost as painful to hear Hugh Jackman, who supposedly was a great singer on Broadway and in his native Australia. Maybe something happened to his vocal cords since he began playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies?



I’m also shocked at all the parents who would take their kids to see such tragic, lascivious stuff with scenes of prostitutes and sex for money and so on. But maybe I shouldn’t be, since a porn star (Kim Kardashian) is the heroine for kids these days. Sad.



Don’t believe the hype over this flick. It’s a pointless bore, set to music and songs most memorable when they are the butt of “Seinfeld” jokes (“Master of the House”).



TWO MARXES




* “Parental Guidance“: this extremely stupid, utterly cliched, unfunny “comedy” makes it official: Billy Crystal and Bette Midler are soooo over. This is the best they could do? Sadly, yes. Sorry, but dumb bathroom humor “jokes,” such as a kid calling his grandfather, “Fartie,” fall flat. Not funny.



The story: Marisa Tomei and Tom Everett Scott play pretentious, left-wing, New Age parents. When, at the last minute, Tomei gets a chance to go on a vacation with her husband, they reluctantly call her parents (Crystal and Midler) to babysit. Tomei doesn’t like them much or want to entrust them with her kids because Crystal and Midler are traditional, normal grandparents who don’t engage in the New Age silliness. That was the good part of this movie–showing how ridiculous the “never say no,” “no winners, no losers” and “no good, no bad” childcare philosophies of left-wingers are (but that wasn’t enough to save the movie or make it worth seeing). Crystal is aghast when, attending his grandson’s Little League baseball game, he learns that there are “no strike-outs” because kids are allowed to swing until they score a hit. And there are no scores either, as there are no “winners” and “losers.” He is not allowed to discipline his grandkids or criticize them, and is told, instead, to tell them to “think about your words.” Ridiculous, along with the kids’ ridiculous names, “Harper,” “Turner,” and “Barker.”



You can probably guess what happens, because this movie is all too predictable. Not worth 2 hours or ten bucks. Sorry. A great statement on the BS of today’s upper middle class American parents, just not a great movie. Not even remotely so.



HALF A REAGAN