THE ENDING OF SUPER 8 MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!

By Barry Dutter

The movie SUPER 8 bears remarkable similarities to E.T. Both movies are about an alien who just wants to go home. (I half-expected to hear Neil Dimaond singing "Turn on your heart light...")

The big difference is that the alien in ET is friendly and lovable, but the alien in SUPER 8 is sometimes good, sometimes evil, depending on his mood.

SUPER 8 presents its monster as an underdog. He’s been imprisoned for decades by the US government, and all he wants to do is rebuild his spaceship and get the heck off of Earth. At the beginning of the film, a scientist sets the alien free by crashing his truck into the train that is carrying it (The scientist's actions presumably kill all the people who were on board the train at the time, but this is kind of glossed over in the name of science.)

At this point, the alien begins a several day terror spree. He goes into hiding, coming out only at night to 1) kidnap random people and 2) steal car engines and other metal objects. We later find out he is stealing the car engines so he can acquire enough metallic objects to build his own makeshift space ship.

And he is kidnapping the people because… why exactly? I’m not sure. The film never makes that clear. In one scene, the alien is shown killing and eating a human. In another scene, the alien is shown being talked out of killing a young boy by the boy’s persuasive speech.

So I guess the alien is evil if it finds you threatening, but if you are friendly to it and talk to it in a calm voice, it will let you go free. That makes some kind of sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the alien was kidnapping random people in the first place.

What did it hope to gain by doing so? Snacks for the long ride home?

Just like in ET, the alien finds the means to escape just as the army is closing in. In SUPER 8, the alien uses its telekinetic powers to summon all the metal in the area to build his spaceship and get away.

But if the alien has the power to do this, why didn’t it do this on the night of the train crash? Surely there was enough metal in the train wreck to provide the alien with enough metal to build its ship.

I enjoyed SUPER 8 overall, until the ending, which didn’t make any sense to me. It reminded me of the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Like Dorothy in that movie, the alien apparently had the power to go home all along. It chose not to, because doing so would have ended the movie an hour earlier.

I’ve heard JJ Abrams admit in interviews that he is not that great of a writer. I have to agree with him. As a director, he’s an excellent imitator of young Stephen Spielberg. As a writer, he has yet to impress me.

As my brother pointed out, SUPER 8 is basically ET meets CLOVERFIELD. And it's a bit soon for Abrams to be doing homages to his own movies.

X-MEN FIRST CLASS REVIEW

X-MEN FIRST CLASS REVIEW

By Barry Dutter
As always, instead of doing a straight review of the movie, I’m just going to list some random thoughts/observations…

1) So it was Magneto’s idea for Mystique to walk around naked all the time, eh? Erik, you dirty dog!

2) The movie has two surprise cameos, one of which was ruined for me by the L.A. Times and has popped up elsewhere online. The other is more of a secret, so I won’t say who it is, but she was a big surprise.

3) Michael Fassbinder is so good as Magneto, he blows away every other actor on the screen. This may be the best performance by any actor in any X-Men movie. The actor who plays Prof. X is pretty good, but his part is more whiney. He spends most of the second half of the movie trying to convince Magneto not to do things that you know Mags is gonna do anyway, so Prof. X comes across as pretty ineffectual for a guy who can read minds and control people’s thoughts.

4) The new origin for how Prof. X got in the wheelchair is pretty good, much better than the one that was shown in the comics back in the 60s.

5) If they were going to introduce a new character who has wings like a dragonfly, wouldn’t it have made more sense to call her Dragonfly, instead of Angel? (I mean, the X-Men movie Universe already has a male hero called Angel, and the Marvel Universe does have a female villain called Dragonfly!)

6) Usually whenever I see a movie based on a comic book, I gripe about all the changes they made for the movie. With this movie, my only gripe is that the Beast is supposed to have big hands and big feet, and in this movie, he only had big feet. I know, pretty minor gripe, right?

7) Of course, my other little gripe is that I still want to see a movie with the REAL First Class of X-Men: Beast, Angel, Iceman, Cyclops and Marvel Girl. I guess I will have to wait a while for that one.

8) In the first X-MEN movie, there was a scene where Wolverine referred to Sabretooth as a “pussy.” I get that he was making a cat joke, but still, it was jarring to see a Marvel Comics super-hero use a dirty word. In this movie, one of the heroes uses the “F” word, and it feels so out of place, I wish they had gone with a different line. (The character could have said “Get lost!” or “Beat it!” and the scene would have been just as effective.) In over 50 years of X-Men comics, none of the characters has ever cursed. Why do it here? Just to be cool?

9) Jennifer Lawrence has really grown into quite a cutie. Her Rogue even outshines January Jones as Emma Frost in the hotness dept, and that is not an easy thing to do!

10) I liked the 60s setting. It reminded me of a James Bond movie. Makes me think that all future James Bond movies should be set in the 60s! And they should get the director of X-MEN FIRST CLASS to direct them!

11) I had heard that this movie is set in an alternate universe, apart from all the other X-MEN movies. But it seems to dovetail nicely into the other movies. I didn't notice any glaring discrepancies.

12) This was easily the best film of the series. Clearly producer/co-writer Bryan Singer needs to stay far away from SUPERMAN and just focus on the X-MEN instead!

FUNNIEST EDITED FOR TV MOVIE LINES

FUNNIEST EDITED FOR TV MOVIE LINES



Compiled by Barry Dutter

Don't you love how they edit out the curse words when an R-rated movie is shown on network TV? Here are some of my favorite edits.


1) SAMUEL L. JACKSON's classic line from SNAKES ON A PLANE: "I have had it with these MOTHER-FUCKING SNAKES on this MOTHER-FUCKING PLANE!” becomes “I have had it with these MONKEY-FIGHTING SNAKES on this MONDAY TO FRIDAY PLANE!”


2) JOHN GOODMAN in THE BIG LEBOWSKI: "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" The TV version says "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!"


3) In FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, the words “fucking jerk” are replaced with “Fuzzy nerd” and “He’s been STONED since the third grade” becomes “He’s been STRANGE since the third grade.”)


4) DIE HARD 2: “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker” becomes “Yippee ki-yay, Mr. Falcon,” which is funny because nobody in the movie is named “Mr. Falcon”


5) From THE USUAL SUSPECTS: “Hand me the keys, you fucking cocksucker” becomes “Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother.”


6) Al Pacino in SCARFACE “This town is like a great big pussy, just waiting to get fucked.” becomes ““This town is like a great big chicken, just waiting to get plucked.”


7) Also from SCARFACE: “Where’d you get that beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pussy?” becomes ““Where’d you get that beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pineapple?”


8) SAM JACKSON in PULP FICTION: “My eyes are wide fucking open” becomes “My eyes are wide focused open”


9) From LETHAL WEAPON: "That's a real badge, I'm a real cop and this is a real FUCKING Gun" becomes "That's a real badge, I'm a real cop and this is a real FIRING Gun!"


10) From SMOKEY & THE BANDIT: Jackie Gleason’s favorite curse word, “sumbitch” becomes “scum bum’ in the TV version.


11) In DIE HARD 3, SAMUEL L. JACKSON (him again!) calls BRUCE WILLIS “a racist MOTHERFUCKER" in the movie, but on network TV it becomes “a racist MELON FARMER!” Right. Because most melon farmers are racist!


12) THE ALL-TIME CLASSIC: From THE EXORCIST: “Your mother sucks cocks in hell” becomes, “Your mother sews socks that smell!”