Closer

I was at a complete and total loss as to what to think when I walked out of the theater after seeing Closer. It’s the latest film starring beautiful people lying to and cheating on each other, while examining the human condition.

Julia Roberts is a photographer who shoots the author photo for Jude Law’s book about his relationship with Natalie Portman. The ugly guy who played King Arthur in the crappy, Bruckheimerized King Arthur movie from last summer is in it too. I think he was Julia Roberts’ boyfriend. I don’t know.

The whole movie gave me that feeling when you’re with someone and you know you should split up, but don’t for convenience’s sake. My feelings switched gears later in the movie when I was overwhelmed with the feeling you get when you want to dump somebody, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Then I started thinking about how five years of retail has killed and eviscerated any Christmas spirit I may have had left. How red and green make brown when you mix them together and brown is the color of shit. How putting so many Jude Law movies out in a row is like eating pizza for three weeks in a row and that gets really boring. How Julia Roberts doesn’t seem as skanky anymore. I mean, she still looks like a fish sort of, but she’s not as bad as she used to be.

Seeing Natalie Portman made me remember that the last Star Wars prequel is coming out in less than six months. Lucas better get his ass in gear for this one. He’s a proficient director from a technical standpoint, but the man can’t write dialogue and he sure as shit doesn’t know how to get a decent performance out of an actor. I mean, Natalie Portman is great, but she’s pretty boring in those movies.

Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe I still don’t know what to think about Closer. It was well made, very well acted, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care about anyone in it. I think this may be one of those movies that is made to try and snatch up some Oscars, and it just might. But don’t let Closer snatch up your money. Unless Patty at the office liked it. Then again, she likes anything that Julia Roberts is in, so maybe she’s not the best one to go by on this one.

Alexander

I’ve often wondered what Chinese water torture would be like. Very annoying and maddening would be phrases I’d use to describe it, but because I’ve never endured it, I can’t truly say.

Every once in a while, I go through an experience that I can compare it to. A trip to the DMV, filling out paperwork of any kind, and doing my laundry have been the closest experiences I’ve been privy to that could possibly compare. The time between “I don’t think we should see each other anymore” and the time when you actually leave the table at a crowded restaurant to avoid a scene is another one that’s top of that list.

Then I saw Alexander, Oliver Stone’s grand epic about the life of one of the greatest men the world has ever known. The man conquered most of the known world at the time, so you know two things. 1) There should be some great battles and, 2) It’s going to be pretty long.

The first didn’t really happen. Alexander the Great won about fifty battles in order to claim his empire and the movie showcased two. The man was a master strategist. He could’ve probably won World War II with three kegs of beer, a Sherman tank, forty Hell’s Angels and a yardstick. The first battle was covered in dust and not particularly great in this post-Lord of the Rings world we live in. The next hour and a half is filled with unnecessary and even less engaging scenes, destroying any interest in the story to the point that the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan couldn’t have saved it.

But Alexander was pretty long. About an hour and a half too long. The first hour was interesting, then the next thirty minutes picked it up. Stone beautifully orchestrated this part of the movie coaxing great performances out of his cast. Colin Farrell was really good as Alexander, projecting authority with every word. Angelina Jolie plays his mother, Olympias, who made me think of the Baroness from the old G.I. Joe cartoon. Val Kilmer was really good as the one-eyed Philip, Alexander’s father. He reminded me a little too much of everyone’s favorite South Buffalo Irish drunk, but he was fun to watch.

Then we get into the painful part of the movie. I have nothing against anyone who’s gay. God love ‘em, let them do what they want in the privacy of their own homes. Stone didn’t show any backyard drilling, but for as much insinuation about the whole thing as there was, he may as well have shown it. It was nice to see Rosario Dawson naked, but not at the expense of having to look at Colin Farrell’s sac dangling between his hairy ass cheeks.

Ultimately, Alexander was painful. It ran way too long and it got to the point where Angelina Jolie should’ve had a Newport 100 hanging out of her mouth while reciting her lines. It didn’t seem to have a focus. It’s like listening to Ornette Coleman whacked out of his mind on acid playing saxaphone for three days straight.

In watching Alexander, you get the feeling that Oliver Stone really admires Alexander. Maybe a little too much, to the point where he had to put even the tiniest goddamned detail into the movie. If you get anybody talking about something they really love, they start rambling with a certain incoherence and long-windedness that can quickly suck the meat off of even the most interesting of carcasses, leaving only a sugary core that eventually sends you into a sleepy coma. Or in the case of Alexander, a waking death.

There’s a point in Alexander where his men are griping about how hey haven’t been home in seven years and they’re sick of this shit. I felt their pain.

Christmas With the Kranks (0 stars)

If you don’t hate Christmas yet, your date with destiny is only a trip to the theater and ninety-eight minutes away. And the final nail in the coffin comes in the form of Christmas With the Kranks. It’s an absolutely terrible movie about a family who decides to blow off the traditional Christmas and go on a cruise instead.

The Kranks are met with the kind of adversity that Frankenstein’s monster was met with after throwing a little girl in the lake. All that’s missing are the torches and the Burgomaster. Just because they’re not decorating their houses like a bunch of assholes.

Accompanying the cast of has-beens is a barrage of jokes that are the true antithesis of humor. It’s tragic on every level. Not Romeo and Juliet tragic, but newborn baby falling down three flights of stairs tragic.

You know how there are some movies that allegedly make you feel like you’re falling in love all over again? Christmas With the Kranks will teach you how to hate again. It’s for the first time hater all the way up to your 95 year-old grandpa Irving who completely forgot how to hate because the Alzheimer’s even robbed him of emotion.

I know some people who like certain levels of anger in their lives because it makes them feel alive, and without it they’re lost. I know that Christmas With the Kranks is supposed to make people rediscover the magic of Christmas or some shit like that, but it completely backfires. It makes people who actually have a clue as to what’s going on in the real world pissed off. Really pissed off.

Before I saw Christmas With the Kranks, I wanted a copy of Star Wars: Battlefront for Christmas. Now I just want a shiny, nickel-plated .45 and hollow point bullets in my stocking.