What It’s About: A rich dick convinces a college full of squares to loosen up by tricking them into drinking and having sex.
Who It’s For: Rich dicks.
I never saw Van Wilder or Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, so it is perhaps unfair, or even immoral, for me to be reviewing the third installment in the series, called Van Wilder: Freshman Year. I meant to see the first two, but one night I caught a few minutes of the original on cable, and I was horrified to hear other characters calling Ryan Reynolds’s character “Van." Van? His name is Van? Then, and now, I can’t get over that Van Wilder is not his last name but his full name. I had just assumed that his first name was Josh or Cody or something, and that Van Wilder was what everyone called him, because it is cool when guys call each other by their last names, like they are in the military or something. “Van Wilder” sounded like an appropriately grandiose last name for an epically big man on campus. “My name is Baron Charles Van Wilder and I am the Duke of Partying!” Is Van Wilder a baron or a duke? What’s the difference? Is the right to call oneself that related to land ownership, or is the title passed down by blood? These are all questions I hoped to get answered in this Ryan Reynolds–less prequel, Van Wilder: Freshman Year.
What It’s About: Nine obnoxious Wall Street party-goers stuck on an elevator must work together to find the most boring way possible to be scared by a bomb.
Who It’s For: Elevator repairmen.
I have not seen Devil, but I don’t think we can talk about Elevator without talking about Devil. Devil is about how sometimes you take the elevator and you should be careful because one person might be a devil, or the Devil. I’m not exactly sure in what ways you should be careful. You should probably always take the stairs, or get off the elevator if one person seems particularly devilish. In fact, you should listen to the tagline on Elevator’s poster, which is “Take the Stairs.” It’s essentially saying, “Do avoid everything about this movie.”
What It’s About: A lax bro (Kellan Lutz) must stay out of both the literal and figurative crease in order to attack the net of his own heart.
Who It’s For: People who are curious what Kellan Lutz looks like with his shirt off at different times of day, paired with different types of pants.
I shouldn’t be reviewing this movie, not for this column. This column is meant for weird straight-to-video garbage and films produced exclusively for the purpose of dodging taxes in Germany, and in a just world A Warrior’s Heart would have made $400 million. The Oscars would have already been renamed The Warrior’s Hearts. “And the Lutzie goes to … Kellan Lutz!” Alas, these things didn’t come to pass. I tried to see A Warrior’s Heart when it came out and it played in one Manhattan movie theater for about three days. I don't know what went wrong. On paper, it seems perfect. Twilight beefcake Kellan Lutz stars as a troubled high school lacrosse star trying to get his life back on track after a family tragedy. He’s so sick at lacrosse it’s crazy. The movie deals with universal themes with which we can all empathize: themes like switching from a West Coast to East Coast style of lacrosse play, losing your position as right-side attack, one arm’s shot play being weaker than the other, etc. I could go on. These are universal themes.
What It’s About: Kel Mitchell is a dancer who can only do karate when music is playing, and he must use his awkward powers to win back his uncle’s club.
Who It’s For: Kenan Thompson.
Fans of comedy, art, auteurship, independent filmmaking, and sad masturbation jokes continually hold up FX’s Louie as the new paradigm under which future visionaries can operate, distributing their work to the masses on their own terms. I think it’s great that Louis C.K. gets to make his show just the way he wants to, and it’s clear that a lot of TV viewers and critics feel the same way. He’s making unpredictable television, which is increasingly rare, and comedy fans really enjoy rooting for the rich, wildly successful underdog with a record-breaking number of Emmy nominations. I hope he gets to do it forever. I hope he dies doing what he loves, during the show's 50th season, and that in his will he has instructions on how to edit the last episode just so, the final shot lingering on his own face a few seconds too long. God bless you, Louis. See you at the crossroads.
What It’s About: Here I quote Netflix: “Five horny high school students in detention decide to get even with the popular girl who squealed on them and landed them on trouble.”
Who It’s For: Super horny horndogs just trying to get rid of their painful major boners.
I have to tread carefully here, because though I’d never heard of it, Screwballs is something of a video cult classic. Usually this column tries to avoid cult classics, but the use of the word “horny” in Netflix’s description of the film swayed me to make an exception to my normal policy. “Horny” is an outrageous word, and there must be some Latin term for the rhetorical device where the sound of a word accomplishes the exact opposite of a word’s meaning. Nothing could make anyone less “horny” than hearing the word “horny.” It’s like a nonomatopoeia.
Every so often, Max Silvestri plunges into the depths of his Netflix queue, resurfacing with reports of the strange things he's found there. These movies are usually terrible, but he writes about them anyway.
What It’s About: The legendary Hercules, son of Zeus, wrestles and flexes better than anybody at Warrior Camp, but Hera has other plans, though those plans do not interfere with the wrestling and the flexing.
Who It’s For: Young children interested in learning about myths, classics scholars at small New England private schools, members of the Sigma Nu fraternity, and fans of pools.
Every so often, Max Silvestri plunges into the depths of his Netflix queue, resurfacing with reports of the strange things he's found there. These movies are usually terrible, but he writes about them anyway.
What It’s About: A recently paroled ex-con (Tim Allen) moves back in with his family and has to adjust to how sometimes life is crazy on the outside of jail, not just on the inside of jail, which is where we’d all assumed was the only place that was crazy.
Who It’s For:Anyone who’s ever had a sitcom based on his autobiographical stand-up act and then lucratively sold its syndication rights.
What It’s About: A sheriff (Shaggy 2 Dope) and a crime lord (Violent J) battle for control of the Wild West town of Mud Bug. Also, many characters wear clown makeup.
Who It’s For: Fans of normal, classic Westerns, and also fans of people who wear clown makeup.
Big Money Rustlas is a comedy Western starring Insane Clown Posse’s Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, and their label Psychopathic Records produced the film. Beyond laughing along with the rest of the Internet over viral ads for the Gathering, I was not especially familiar with the genre of clown music before I watched this film. It certainly seems weird on paper. An interest in looking like a mean clown is a pretty crazy unifying quality for a type of music, but maybe just crazy enough to work. (It doesn’t work.)
What It's About: A couple of humorless dicks face many boring obstacles in the course of building a slightly faster and safer light-rail system.
Who It's For: Assholes and metallurgy buffs.
Hold up. This is what Atlas Shrugged is about? So many people tried to sell me on this book in college, and I avoided it because my busy schedule of drinking beers and eating sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches (my, how things have changed) did not allow time for reading a 900-page novel about how it's good to work hard at your job or whatever. (I also avoided it because the people selling me on it tended to be the sort of people who would start sentences with "I'm not racist, but ...") I never did get around to reading it, but I thought watching the recent definitive movie adaptation of the first half would turn me on to Ayn Rand's -ism. If a novel can inspire an entire movement based around something with as boring a name as Objectivism, it must be pretty good, right? When I was a kid and saw ads for Dianetics, I thought it was a book about lava, and that seemed very exciting. If only it were that simple.
What It’s About: Twenty years after graduation, an emotionally crippled writer is still hung up on Winona Ryder, a girl who was nice to him once. He returns to his hometown to give a commencement address and tries to put it in her.
Who It’s For: Emotionally crippled writers.
High school was not the easiest. Sometimes people were mean, sometimes I was mean, and I hadn’t yet figured out who I was or what I wanted. I did not have the best time in high school. Do you know who else didn’t have the best time in high school? Everyone. It's true for everyone, the end.
What It’s About: Stone Cold Steve Austin and his daughter are kidnapped by crooks, so he uses his knowledge of the woods and rocks and things to kill the crooks.
Who It’s For: Fans of nature videos who want slightly more grunting, slow-punching, and arthritic joint-bending between their pictures of leaves.
There was a time when I was a serious wrestling fan. The most exciting Christmas present of my young life was a pair of tickets to a Survivor Series, and I also got to see, in person, Bret Hart and Lex Luger co-win the 1994 Royal Rumble. My fandom flamed out sometime around Stone Cold’s era, though. I liked Mr. Austin well enough. What young child wouldn’t be enchanted by a hairless gorilla in a leather vest and jean shorts chugging (and spilling most of) American beers? But as injuries hampered his wrestling career and the Rock surpassed him in popularity, he slowly faded out of the pop culture (if not wrestling) consciousness.
What It’s About: a series of professional and romantic setbacks almost causes a talentless LA. Artist (Mark Ruffalo) to face his own worthlessness
Who It’s For: talentless L.A. artists
This review may be hard to take for those of you who think Mark Ruffalo is perfect. He’s pretty great, I agree. He picks good scripts, he says smart things in interviews, and he’s the sort of male actor whose casting gets people with Tumblr blogs very excited. I enjoy that in movies he seems simultaneously tortured and extremely relaxed, clever but also possibly a little slow. I read a long time ago that he had a brain tumor and got surgery for it and then went back to making movies. That’s impressive, but is it possible that his brain surgery made him better at movies? I think Apartment 12 was made before the surgery.
What It’s About: Your friend Billy Zane plays a composer in a wig falling victim to the manipulative charms of a young girl who can’t sing and doesn’t take off her bra.
Who It’s For: Music industry professionals. This is the most accurate on-screen portrayal of the recording industry since Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
Sometimes Netflix has no faith in me. “Best Prediction For You: One Star.” Why would you even think that, Netflix? Blue Seduction stars Billy Zane and it’s called Blue Seduction! It sounds like four-star material to me.
What It’s About: An Abercrombie model with the ability to time travel tries to solve his ex-girlfriend’s murder, killing scores more on the way.
Who It’s For: Mothheads, which is the name for Butterfly Effect superfans that I just made up.
Don’t you hate it when you keep forgetting to watch a movie, for 416 straight weeks? I’m such a bonehead sometimes. I have totally and consistently flaked on ever seeing the first Butterfly Effect, released a little over eight years ago. It’s a horrendous oversight, I know.
What It’s About: A team of Navy SEALs must escape from an Iranian sub and free a captured chemical weapons expert.
Who It’s For: Billy Warlock.
I was drawn to this week’s Queue Review selection by its cast (Gary Busey, Billy Dee Williams, and Billy Warlock; two Billies!) and its title: Steel Sharks. To what could that title refer: perhaps submarines, or bullets, or the unrelenting drive of American Special Forces, or Gary Busey’s teeth? I would have to watch to find out. Little did I realize how topical the film I’d selected was. Yes, Netflix says this movie was made in 1997, but it just as easily could have been made tomorrow.
