Wknd Box Office: Closed Circuit, Getaway, The Spectacular Now

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 choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Closed Circuit, Getaway, The Spectacular Now


By Debbie Schlussel

This Labor Day holiday weekend features a selection of new movies at theaters chock full of 9/11 conspiracy theories, over-hyped liberal BS, and a lot of waste of your time. It does not include any good movies, however. Note that I did not see “The Grandmaster,” which has gotten good reviews and probably warrants them. I will try to see that over the weekend and add my review. Here’s what I did see:

* “Closed Circuit“: An absurd 9/11 conspiracy theory fantasy thriller that is neither thrilling nor believable. But I’m sure the Ron Paulistinians and the one-third of dummies across America who are 9/11 Truthers will just love it (so will the Edward Snowden groupies). It’s kind of their wet dream, and it’s incredibly slow and boring.









The story: there is a terrorist bombing in a downtown London market that is on the scale of the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks in terms of deaths and destruction. It leaves a large hole in downtown London similar to the hole left by the 9/11 attacks in New York City. The bombing is apparently committed by Islamic terrorists, and the Arab Muslim who is arrested as the leader of the cell and planner of the attacks is represented by a British defense attorney played by Rebecca Hall. She and her new boss, Eric Bana, are former lovers.

Soon Hall and Bana discover that the terror cell leader, Hall’s client, is actually an MI5 agent and that the British government was in on the whole terrorist attack. Because the government knows they are on to this, it pursues and tries to murder Hall, Bana, and their witnesses and destroy evidence. The British government also murders the New York Times London bureau chief, who is looking into the case. Right, as if that happens. Or as if Western governments are that crafty and competent (see Edward Snowden, who is now living happily in Mother Russia–and, unfortunately, no one from the West is trying to assassinate him).

Another absurdity: the key witness against the Islamic terrorist/MI5 agent is his Arab Muslim son. Like that ever happens. Like Arab Muslim sons actually turn over their Islamic terrorist fathers to Western governments. Show me just one example of that.

Like I said, I found this ludicrous movie to be long, slow, and boring. And a waste of time.

It should be noted that star Eric Bana has a thing for making movies sympathizing with Islamic terrorists and denouncing Western governments who go after them. He starred in “Munich” (read my review), Steven Spielberg’s tribute for wimpitude and capitulation, in which Bana plays a Mossad agent who is upset that he’s made a career of killing the Munich Olympic terrorists who slaughtered the Israeli Olympic Team in 1972. The message is that this begets more terrorism and that it’s simply bloodshed that is morally equivalent with the Islamic terrorists. When that movie, not surprisingly, bombed at the box office, the bitter, left-wing Aussie Bana attacked myself and the few other critics who attacked the movie as “hijackers”. That should tell you a lot about who he is, where he stands, and the kind of crappy movies he makes.

Skip this.

FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR BIN LADENS





* “Getaway: More like, Stay Away. The purposes of this movie are to 1) reward Selena Gomez for sleeping with Justin Bieber and show the world what a talentless hack (whose “acting” is even worse than her “singing”) can get for performing that “service,” and 2) to give Ethan Hawke a paycheck. Yes, Jon Voight is in this, too, mostly as a voice. There is one glimpse of his face at the end. But I’ll forgive the guy–who is a mensch and mostly does good work–for this “endeavor,” clearly just a paycheck for him, too.

I’ve never seen a movie so chock full of action and car chases that was this boring. It’s basically a repetitive, way too long car chase for the entire movie, literally from even before the starting credits roll. The story is dumb, especially when you find out the “motive” of the evildoer at the end.

The story: Ethan Hawke is a washed up, burned out race car driver. He is living in Sofia, Bulgaria, where his wife is from. She’s been kidnapped by someone, and he doesn’t know who the kidnapper is, why his wife has been kidnapped, or anything at all about the motives here. Hawke is forced by the kidnapper (the voice of Jon Voight) to drive a high powered sports car throughout Sofia and to crash into Christmas displays, revelers on the street, and police cars, while evading the police in high-speed chases throughout the movie. Gomez tries to carjack the car, which turns out to be hers. She is also the daughter of an American president of an investment bank, and she has a ton of knowledge about cars and is a high tech genius (yeah, that’s believable . . . not). Together, they go on the high speed car chases so that the kidnapper won’t kill Hawke’s wife.

Spoiler alert (though, it’s hard to see how you can “spoil” a movie that’s already rotten to the core): in the end, we learn that the whole reason the kidnapper–who is some sort of European mob kingpin–did this is because he’s a fan of Hawke and wants to energize him to restart his racing career. Huh?

Don’t waste your time with this.

TWO MARXES





* “The Spectacular Now“: Spectacularly annoying and a spectacular waste of time. Mainstream liberal movie critics are all raving and gushing over this. And yet, the celluloid emperor wears no clothes. I found this movie to be long, boring, and incredibly pointless. On top of that, it glorifies popular kids who are losers and creeps. And this is great because . . . ?

This movie, billed as THE “teen angst” movie of 2013, stars Miles Teller, possibly the most over-rated, arrogant, and singularly talentless young male star out there. The movie is being billed as one that shows a popular kid becoming a nice guy after he dates an unpopular girl and changes his tune. But that doesn’t actually happen in this movie.

Teller plays himself–an obnoxious kid–in every movie in which he’s featured. In this, he plays the popular kid in school. He does drugs, drinks a lot, is a horrible student who is failing, and he’s having a lot of sex with his blonde girlfriend, who eventually breaks up with him and hooks up with the star Black football player. So Teller meets and starts hitting on a nice, less attractive, unpopular girl who is the daughter of a single mother. The girl, Shailene Woodley, is poor (she and her mother deliver newspapers to help pay the bills) and a virgin. So Tell sleeps with her, then tells all of his friends he’s not “dating” her because he doesn’t want to be seen as being with the unpopular girl. He treats her like crap after that. And they both end up at the same college. The end.

Wow, the movie of the year.

FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS