Random Movie Club

Your July Random Movie Club Results Are In!

Tagline: You will never forget.

Pizza: Pepe's New York Pizza

PRESHOW ENTERTAINMENT: LOUIS CK LIVE AT THE BEACON

WHO NEEDS WATERBOARDING
WHEN WE HAVE 2004'S THE ALAMO?

I don't know why I have this movie. I don't remember recording it. I don't even remember it even being a movie; ironic, considering that famous Alamo battle cry/saying.

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Before I go further, let me mention this tidbit - THE ALAMO is the second biggest box office bomb in the history of Hollywood. In case you don't know (we didn't), the first is CUTTHROAT ISLAND, but at least that one had Geena Davis as a pirate. This one had Billy Bob's large and greasy face yammering about how he won't eat potaters. That said, if your dream is to see Billy Bob Thornton play a violin, this is the movie for you. Oh, and you're weird.

Part of THE ALAMO'S problem may be this; all three credited writers (it's said John Sayles was a fourth) have written movies that, in my not-so-humble opinion, stink. Leslie Bohem wrote DAYLIGHT, which made me laugh out loud even though it wasn't a comedy. I've only seen two movies Stephen Gaghan's written, and hated them both - RULES OF ENGAGEMENT and SYRIANA. And director/writer John Lee Hancock wrote SNORE WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND BORING.

With all these writers on board you'd expect a compelling story about one of the most famous battles in America's history, where 100+ men staved off (for a while, anyway) thousands. Battles are filled with courage, might, emotion and passion, yet there are History Channel documentaries that have more life than this movie. Hell, there are Swiffer commercials that are more entertaining. This ALAMO is the dullest battle since the war on Chick-fil-A.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Davy Crockett, already a known figure (he attends a play about himself). With his aforementioned big face framed in scraggly hair, it looks like, with proper forced perspective, his head can fit right onto Mount Rushmore. Dennis Quaid is Sam Houston, who invites Crockett to fight for the nationalization of Texas (actually, a provisional government, thank you Wikipedia for helping with my shitty knowledge of history, and while we're at it, did you know Texas was its own country for nine years?), rewarding him with land if he does. Both characters are played the same - life of the party, devil may care, confident, amusing. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn't know which one was speaking. Maybe that's how everyone was back in 1835. So, like, whatever, dude. Anyway...

William Travis (Patrick Wilson), fresh off his divorce from the chick from BONES, is assigned to be in charge of the Alamo. "As goes the Alamo, so goes Texas," it's said, meaning, the mission-cum-fort is the only thing separating Santa Anna (Mexico's president who was also leading the army) from the Texas settlers. Why he doesn't go by his given name of Antonio de Padua Maria Severino Lopez de Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron is beyond me.

Also at the Alamo, Jim Bowie (Jason Patric) and his big knife, which they waste no time showing us, whipping it out within fifteen seconds of his entrance. So now Travis, Crockett and Bowie are all hanging out at the Alamo, which can only mean one thing - Davy Crockett will play LISTEN TO THE MOCKINGBIRD on his violin at a party. Meanwhile, Bowie and Travis are at odds with each other about who's running the place. Uch. Men and their egos! Bowie's men, a ragtag bunch of F TROOPers, are told to shape up by Travis, and Bowie doesn't like that. Actually, the way it's portrayed, it almost seems like the butting of their heads is the reason Santa Anna is attacking the Alamo. Worse, Sam Houston isn't sending reinforcements, because he doesn't have any yet.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson. Let's talk more about how fucking awful this movie is. At a running time of two hours and seventeen minutes, THE ALAMO is loaded with scenes that take forever and say little. Maybe that's the point. Maybe the whole idea is for us to sit and wait, the way the Alamo-ites did, waiting for impending attack(s). But in the meantime, we're subjected to lengthy speeches and dragged out scenes. And then there's that three minute monologue of Crockett's about a massacre and why he won't eat potaters, obviously their JAWS Indianapolis scene. "Since then, you pass me the potaters, I pass them right back." And no, I'm not joking. Quaid gets his own two minute soliloquy later, a story of Napoleon and Wellington. Not only that, but if you act now, we'll also throw in a ham-handed scene where Crockett plays his violin along with the Mexican Army's band, complete with self-important slow zoom-ins and camera sweeps on silent faces of fake awe. This would have been a good time for Geena Davis to show up as a pirate. Anyway, by the time the Alamo's battle scene arrives at an hour and forty five minutes in, we're as beaten as the people in the Alamo. The battle, which took about a month to shoot and lasts about ten minutes on screen, is, sadly, a less than spectacular sequence. The actual battle was a few hours long, and mucho exciting, I'm guessing. And if you're like me and you suck at history; a few weeks after Santa Anna killed nearly every combatant at the Alamo, Sam Houston pulverized Santa Anna and his army. Good thing, huh? Cause if he didn't, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders may have never existed.

One thing this movie does do, though with a great inequity of story minutes, is give a peek into the Mexican side of these battles. But again, it's all so dead that it doesn't matter. It doesn't make us feel special that we're privy to their strategies. It doesn't make us feel anything at all (more on this in a moment). On that note, whatever happened to acting? Why is everybody walking to their marks and reciting words? I thought I was watching an elaborate rehearsal, and half expected them to be walking around with scripts in their hands.

Originally meant to be a Ron Howard movie (I bet he's been gloating for years), THE ALAMO was directed by John Lee Hancock. Now, I'm no studio green-lighter, but it seems to me you'd want to give your 145 million dollar budget to someone who's made more than two movies (THE ROOKIE in 2002 and something called HARD TIME ROMANCE in 1991).

I try to find something good in every film, but this film is such an all-around piece of shit, I can't. The only merit from this experience is that it's impossible for the Random Movie Generator to pick this movie again.

So okay, I mentioned a couple of things that don't work in THE ALAMO, and why THE ALAMO is so bad, and why THE ALAMO is so boring. But I saved the biggest reason for all these things for last - we care about no one in this movie. Not...one....person. No one. Repeat. No one.

So THE ALAMO fails all around at its attempt to be a sprawling epic. It has all the markings - seemingly thousands of extras, amazing and laudable attention to facts of the story and set/prop/wardrobe detail, supposedly the largest set ever built in North America, epic length,...but...it's bland. It's like ordering a Texas Longhorn Steak and getting a burger from the corner Shell station.

Preshow Entertainment: LOUIS CK LIVE AT THE BEACON

It's said that there is nothing funnier than a smoking monkey. But I think, maybe, that Louis CK is funnier. This show, taped live at the Beacon theater in NYC, was sold on the internet by Louis himself, skipping all middlemen. CK, an asshole that is better than us (his words), talks about lots of things; dolphins with hats of litter, sexual perversions, his hatred for a particular six year old boy. And his revisionist take on CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG.

I love that Louis is self-aware, and aware of the world.

Posted by Rich on July 05, 2012 at 10:30 AM | Permalink