why bother

5. The Theory of Everything

You know what? I was too nice to this movie last year, and I was too nice to it last paragraph. Sure, I gave a bad review, but it deserves worse; it deserves to be wiped from existence. Erased from history. It deserves to suffer. It’s boring, meandering, mismarketed, mistitled. A movie based on Hawking’s wife’s* memoir could have been interesting, if it had the nerve to admit that’s what it was. What, they couldn’t find a woman in all of fucking California to adapt or direct this? There wasn’t a woman available to tell a woman’s story? Fuck Hollywood. Fuck Oscar bait. Fuck capitalism.

is this rly what i sound like. is thsi ali am

You know what else I was too nice about? Enemy. Fuck that fucking garbage. That shit is everything that’s wrong outside Hollywood. That movie did 9/11.

Oh, it has a subtle sociopolitical message? So. fucking. what. No one can ever know that about it without reading a fucking article. Up-its-own-ass, pseudo-intellectual garbage like that — with nothing of actual substance to say — is intrinsically worse than the biggest, dumbest, emptiest blockbuster, which is at least honest. And now this asshole has Blade Runner 2?

The only things Enemy is not worse than, in descending order of moral indefensibility, are:

president of what

Fucking Donnie Darko. If you like that shit and didn’t see it for the first time at age sixteen, I fucking hate you. You have no excuse. That guy is so bad, such a special kind of bad, that you can’t help thinking of how bad Donnie Darko is during his other crap — without even fucking knowing it’s him.

Back to Carruth. Primer has some interesting ideas, but watching it made me regret being born. I feel bad that I gave it such a vicious review after it was recommended to me by a good friend, but I probably should have been nicer to that girl I dated for like three weeks when I was eighteen

ru fuckin kidding me

6. Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler was kind of okay and that’s it. It got your blood pumping, but for what? Look at this earnest bullshit; the movie doesn’t criticize our voyeurism, it exploits it. I let it off easy on how misogynistic it is, to boot.

whast goin on w me toda

Jesus. Did I get anything right this year? I was way too nice to Chappie, which was a depressing letdown, because I once believed I had a spirit-bond with Ninja from Die Antwoord. I met them after a Halloween show, while my ex and I were dressed up as them. People thought she was Yo-Landi. She gave them a care package: lollipops, a thank-you note, and my rap album. Christ. I fucked that one up worst of all.

where is the past?e go

John Wick is infanticide. All my friends loved it. Am I a fucking alien? Many reviewers, who get paid money to do once a week what I do daily because I can’t not, loved it too. Am I the only one alive who can see this for the cheap candy it is, a symptom of the Marvel-ization of the film industry — in turn a symptom of cultural gentrification, of trickle-up economics? It’s not even good candy, like Tarantino, or the chocolates I gave your dad for Christmas. No, no, no — don’t think about that

destory it all

You’d have to be fucking euthanized to not see how bad Fury is. Its Wikipedia page had a “Themes” section, LOL…between that and the inexplicably decent reviews it must have bought, I half-suspected it was put there by the director. Left a scathing comment to that effect when I logged in and fucking deleted it — maybe the only edit I’ve made since I was a teen discovering David Lynch and had to correct something on his page.

feel good 2 hurt Bad guys

Back to fucking John Wick. I love shitting on Frank Miller. He’s a racist, misogynistic, anti-human fascist. It sucks that he used to be pretty good sometimes, because it feels so good to be able to totally hate scum like him.

We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t see the inherent fascistic streak in all the superhero mythology conquering pop culture: even the good stories, even the ones I grew up seeing as religion, usually boil down to “intrisically good man defeats intrinsically bad man via violence, fucks girl.” Even RoboCop, a movie I adore, was described by its own producer as “fascism for liberals.”

why can ti do any thin tight

Man…ironically, I reviewed that one too harshly at first — yet its cheesy sequels so wanly that I want to fucking wretch. I did treat RoboCop 2 with a firm hand, but only because I read its Wikipedia page right away and got brought down to Earth. I do that for a lot of films now, in case I’m wrong.

I still can’t tell if I was too hard on The Exorcist; it’s supposed to be a perfect masterpiece like The Shining is. My friend who’s a horror fanatic read that Exorcist tweet and was like, “What technical flaws?!” I felt like I was insane.

I wanted to believe Pixar was back on their A game, so I didn’t admit that Inside Out felt a little small and inconsequential, like Brave — which I fucked up too — even though it did have a lot going for it. I guess nothing lasts.

no thing any thi

Sometimes I have this funny feeling, like the world is upside-down — like there was another direction to go but it’s too late now, and everything good is falling apart, on fire, and over; sometimes when one thing goes wrong, my body reacts instinctively with this sensation, an empty pit in my chest that I can only describe as feeling like I am, at any moment and without warning, about to die.

At least I got The Shining right. It’s funny — I think of that tweet often.