The first time I went to see 127 Hours, I didn't get to finish watching it. There was a couple near the front, talking throughout the film, mostly narrating the on-screen events or clarifying the on-screen events to each other. It's gotten to a point that I've lost enough love for my fellow man that I tend not to put up with that kind of shit anymore. The days of Gandhi-ing these motherfuckers are long lost and gone. I'll either tell them to shut the fuck up or I'll throw M&M's at the offender's head until he or she departs the theater. One day I will carry with me a taser gun, and I will shoot a motherfucker with it to prove a point. Then the motherfucker's friend will pull out his shitty .380 pistol and fill me with the entire magazine to prove his point. I will most likely die, but no longer will I have to put up with the bullshit anymore. There is a peace in death, I believe, unless you write blasphemous-yet-respectful ramblings about Christian movies, then you'll (and by you'll, I mean "I will", because I've done just that) end up in Hell and since Hell is other people, it'll probably be an eternity spent watching your favorite movies with an audience of non-stop talkers. I will be watching Brazil with an audience from The Room.
But this time I couldn't tell them to shut the fuck up, because, well, because they were old. Really old, elderly old. I understand that we got to Eat All The Old People but I'm not really in agreement with that sentiment because I still have some bullshit principle about respecting my elders; even my cunt grandmother gets plenty of respect from me (nobody said you can't talk shit behind their backs, though), but part of it probably comes from having old parents and coming to the sobering realization that their medicine cabinet actually is a medicine cabinet nowadays. So I couldn't tell this old couple to cut the shit or I'd take their dentures away and they'd have to gum their popcorn, I couldn't. I actually felt bad, because it was probably a hearing problem issue (combined with their lack of respect for their juniors, of course). So about 20 minutes into the movie, I could hear the rest of the audience getting uncomfortable and the most someone would muster was a Shhh but that was it, really -- until Laura Linney stepped in.
See, there was a woman in her late 30's/early 40's who would be played by Laura Linney in the movie of her life, but for the sake of my recollection, I'm going to say it was indeed the star of You Can Count On Me who was sitting on the other side of the row from the old couple. Ms. Linney decided she had enough and loudly asked (so we can all hear it) the couple "Are you going to keep talking throughout the movie? That way I can leave right now, if you're going to keep talking". The old woman then turned to the old man and asked him "What did she say?" and at that point I wanted to crawl under my seat and die among the discarded chewing gum and popcorn. The old man then went on to tell his old lady, "I think she's saying we're too loud" and at that point I wanted to dig a hole in the floor and take it as deep as I could take it. Instead, I left the theater and got my money back. No I didn't, I got what they call a "Readmittance Pass".
Anyway, I finally got around to watching Danny Boyle's new joint (co-written by Simon Beaufoy, who also adapted Slumdog Millionaire for the big screen, but more importantly, co-wrote Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day), starring James Franco, a great-looking young actor with a reputation of being an insufferable shit and a genuine eccentric -- a shit eccentric -- and somewhere along the way started doing more fun movies and started giving off the vibe that he might be kind of a cool guy but is probably still a weird douchebag. So he's the new Val Kilmer, basically, only he hasn't gotten into his Fat Kilmer stage yet.
Whatever, no one's asking me to have a conversation with the dude, so whether he's a Good Guy or not shouldn't/doesn't matter to me, not as long as he's not bringing his doucheyness to the screen and inflicting it on the audience, whether or not the role calls for it. Nah son, that's Ashton Kutcher territory, and THAT motherfucker is gonna live for at least a hundred years. Think about that: Ashton Kutcher will live approximately 10 Christina-Taylor Greens, that's 10 nine-year-old girls who will never have a chance to have their first kiss, never fall in love, never drive a car, while Punk'd the Douchebag will always remain to unpleasantly surprise you with his stupid douchebag face on a poster of the newest Natalie Portman movie. I don't know what sweet angel Natalie Portman did to deserve that fate. Oh wait, I know -- she said yes to a fuckin' Ashton Kutcher movie. Enjoy your pregnancy, toots.
God, how I wish I was Ashton Kutcher.
Yeah, so the movie. I finally caught up with it and I have to say, I wish I just saw the shit at home. Don't get me wrong, I really ended up liking this movie but it's one of those movies with lots of quiet scenes, and movies with quiet scenes are either best seen at a film festival, a critic's screening or in the privacy of your own home, otherwise you're watching it with a noisy public audience. I didn't have an old couple to deal with this time, I had a father in his 40's or 50's and his wife and kids and believe it or not, the fuckin' kids were the quiet ones. Meanwhile, this basso-profundo-voice-having bald-headed fuck was chiming in with some bullshit every once in a while and if it wasn't for the power of the fuckin' movie, I'd have conjured up a tack hammer with black magic and cave in that giant flesh-colored melon he calls a head with it, right in front of his well-behaved kids and probably-scared-of-her-husband wife. His exposed brains would probably pass for a delicacy in some cultures, the dumb bastard.
It's a true story, this 127 Hours, and you probably already know it so I'm not spoiling it by giving a synopsis, and if you think I'm spoiling it, then stop reading this and go take a flying leap into a fuckin' canyon crevice and I hope a fuckin' boulder meets you on the way down and tries to give you a handshake -- which by the way, that's what happens to this dude in the movie. He goes rock climbing or something in Utah, falls in a big hole, gets his hand stuck between a rock and a hard place, eventually severs his fuckin' arm off because it sucks drinking your own piss. Also, the Titanic sinks in Titanic and the crew of Apollo 13 make it back home in Apollo 13.
So, this James Franco motherfucker plays Aron Ralston, and I figure that some audience members would be all like Fuck This Guy (well, I did anyway), so I think the filmmakers wanted to make sure that we know that Ralston's a charming motherfucker, that he's something more than just some XXXXTRRREEEEEME type of asshole, which he isn't. The dude eats shit early on while riding his bike and he just laughs at what happened and takes a picture of it, he doesn't yell out how Fucking Extreme that was. It sucks that he crashed, now he's gonna take a picture to show friends how dumb he looked at that moment. I don't think he's about bro-ing out with his fellow fratbros and circle-jerking in the Congo and how fuckin' Extreme everything is, he's about doing this shit alone, it's probably a Proving Yourself kinda thing. I'm sure this is further explained by Ralston himself in that book he wrote, but we all know how I roll in this motherfucker, he might as well have written that shit on sky-paper in invisible ink.
He runs into a couple chicks on his solo trip, and after swimming with them and NOT fucking them, one of them remarks something like "I don't think we figured into his day at all", and she might be right. I mean, he helped them find what they were looking for and showed them a fun time, but whereas most dudes in this kind of situation would be more about trying to work out a plan to Luke Skywalker their penis into the Tauntaun that is the chick's vagina, this guy Ralston just wants to show them a cool swimming hole they never would've known about otherwise. He's a sincere dude, so you're with him or at least I was with him, even though you find out later that he committed a massive fuck-up before he left that ends up making his eventual shitty situation even more shitty of a shitty situation. What happens is that the motherfucker never told anyone where he was going, and even if he had fuckin' GPS, he'd probably ditch that shit because he'd probably consider that shit defeating the purpose or something. What an asshole.
But at least Ralston realizes he fucked up badly, and the filmmakers use that moment for what I'm guessing was a Boyle/Beaufoy creation, where Aron interviews himself like he's in a cheesy talk show; watching Ralston pretty much call himself a stupid asshole for making his situation worse would make even the most staunch member of the Fuck This Guy club in the audience reconsider his or her initial thoughts on the dude. Poor Aron, if he only left a fuckin' note or answered his poor mother's phone calls or told his sister where he was going, then maybe he would still have a right arm -- but then the movie would've been called 62 Hours or 80 Hours and you'd end up with pissed-off motherfuckers demanding their money back because they thought they were gonna see Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy wreck shit up again, not watch some asshole get really thirsty.
Speaking of thirsty, I was pretty fuckin' parched watching this movie, I drained my Cherry Coke like it was, well, like it was Cherry Coke. The motherfucker didn't have that much water with him when he got stuck, he had to make that shit last, and that resulted in him having thoughts/dreams/hallucinations of Coca-Cola or Mountain Dew or ice cold beer. Movie theaters must love this fuckin' movie with all of the product shots of delicious beverages, that's some straight-up advertising that should send the audience to the concession stands. I don't think it's some kinda canny corporation/filmmaker alliance to scratch each others back though, it makes perfect sense that a dehydrated motherfucker would think of those things, and it's not like he's gonna think of some generic shit. While Aron Ralston was stuck in the hole, thinking of the party the girls invited him to, the party that's currently going on while he's in his predicament, I doubt he was thinking to himself "Man, I wish I had some fuckin' Generic Brand Cola up in this bitch."
But I bet you there are still some motherfuckers out there who saw the movie and went Hey Maaannnn, What's With This Corporate Bullshit, Maaannn! because everything to them is a goddamn conspiracy to turn us into mindless zombie sheep consumers or something. You gotta calm down every once in a while with that shit, man -- and quit acting like you're better than me just because you buy your shit at Whole Foods. Oh wow, you know what the fuck is up because you only eat organic food, oh you're the man now, dog. If you really want to do something good for the world, dig a big hole, jump inside, kill yourself, have someone cover you with all the dug-up dirt, and do your best to decompose quickly. That's some organic shit right the fuck there, good for the planet and the soul of your fellow carbon-based lifeforms.
My buddy brought up Danny Boyle's visual style as a director (as opposed to his visual style as a gardener) and yeah, it's true that he can be a flashy motherfucker sometimes, and yet I've never had a problem with it and I've never found his style intrusive to the story he's trying to tell in any of his films. This guy, he's so good he knows when to dial it down, when to ladle it on, and when to find a happy medium. This guy, he won Best Director at the Oscars a couple years back, and you know what? He fuckin' deserved it -- not just for that movie, but for all of them, even the ones that weren't as hot as the others. He's fuckin' solid, man. What's interesting is that I think the guy is in his 50's now, but he's got a young style -- young but not desperate. It never feels like he's trying to keep up with the cool kids, kinda like what Tony Scott's been doing since the new millennium.
Boyle's able to adapt his style depending on the kind of story he's trying to tell, it's never just one speed, and that's why I feel that while his movies definitely have the Flashy factor in common, I never feel like they're movies from the same director (in that it's the same ol' tricks from the same ol' fuckin' trick bag). It's gotten to a point that every fuckin' Michael Bay movie is gonna operate at the same speed/same style, whether he's telling a story about a bunch of fuckin' oil drillers trying to blow up a giant asteroid the size of Texas or a story about a love triangle set in 1940's Pearl Harbor. I used to love M. Bay and I used to love T. Scott and hopefully I will never have to "used to" anything involving D. Boyle. As far as I'm concerned, Danny Boyle is always welcome to my Scooby Doo party anytime, while Bay & Scott will have to bring some booze, weed or chips to even be considered entrance to the motherfucker. I will say this, though: Boyle's got a thing for contrails because I think he's done it in at least 2 movies now, this movie and 28 Days Later. If he makes a movie with the number 26 in the title, I bet you'll see contrails in that shit too.
There have been reports of people fainting, freaking out, and probably losing control of their bowels/bladder towards the end, when Ralston decides to lose some weight the hard way. In the grand cinematic scheme of things, it's not that bad. Sure it's gory, but compared to your standard zombie movie, visually it ain't no thing -- and yet, it feels pretty fucking horrible, shit, it feels a lot fuckin' worse than watching the undead chow down on a motherfucker. I think it's because you've been with this dude for the past hour and fifteen minutes, you've been watching all the shit he's gone through, and you've gotten to really know him by watching him reminisce about those close to him, like his family (his dad is played by Treat Williams and his mom is played by Kate Burton from Big Trouble in Little China (which was based on the real-life story about her truck driving brother)). It's one thing when it happens after you've been in his shoes (or shoe, actually) and been along for the ride, so when he does what he does, it fuckin' hurts.
Also, the fact that this really happened probably adds a lot to it. While this motherfucker starts cutting into his arm as if it were the driest, rubbery, burnt sirloin steak ever (a woman screamed in the audience at this), hundreds of miles away he has a mom, dad and sister wondering and worried about where he is, and hoping that he's OK. I teared up and had a lump in my throat by the end of this movie -- didn't think I was going to feel that way over someone I dismissed as some thrill-seeking douche in the trailers. But I doubt I'll ever have moistened eyes over the victims in Saw. Why? Because they never fuckin' existed. So go suck a dick, Jigsaw.
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