Movies of Disbelief: Star Wars (1977)

Welcome to another Movies of Disbelief here at Enuffa.com!  It's time to discuss an unnecessarily major beef I have with one of my favorite films.....

Star Wars.  Just saying those two little words conjures up so much imagery, nostalgia, and special effects badassery.  In 1977 George Lucas dropped perhaps the greatest-ever 200-megaton awesome-bomb on the world, in the form of his sci-fi/fantasy swashbuckler, introducing us all to iconic characters Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and of course Darth Vader.  If you didn't grow up with Star Wars in your life, I'm sorry, your childhood was trash.  This film and its two sequels shaped so many lives, and eventually spawned a bona fide pop culture empire (See what I did there?) that keeps churning out new material every year.

So yeah, it's safe to say I'm a Star Wars fan.  No, scratch that, I'm a Star Wars OG.  I've been in Star Wars Heaven since '77.  Well probably more like '79, I was only 18 months old when the first movie came out.  As far as I'm concerned the original film is still the best of the entire franchise.  Empire is a damn close second, but to me A New Hope is one of the most perfect cinematic experiences ever crafted.  And it's Unaltered or nothing by the way, none of that Special Edition bullshit.  I don't need to see cartoon Jabba showing up or a CG-cluttered Mos Eisley, and don't even get me started on Greedo.  If you believe the updated version of that scene is superior to Han preemptively blasting Greedo through the fucking pelvis, you should check directly into a home for the criminally insane, as you are a danger to both yourself and others.

Take this shit right here, put it in a box, and throw it in the fucking ocean.

Anyway, even though Star Wars is one of my absolute favorite films ever made in this or any universe, there are nonetheless a few plot contrivances numerous people have pointed out, and that was even before Lucas completely fucked up the continuity with Special Editions and prequels.  The first and perhaps most frequently cited is when C-3P0 and R2-D2 launch an escape pod from Tantive IV and the Imperial gunners decide not to shoot it down, something which would have prevented the entire film from happening.  Way to cover your bases, assholes.  Another is, why didn't the Death Star just blow up the planet of Yavin, thus destroying the fourth moon and the Rebel Base with it, instead of taking the time to orbit around and allow the Rebels a chance to attack?  But these nitpicks are forgivable considering how fantastic the rest of the movie is.

I hope these two nitwits got Force-choked
and then Vader peed on their dead bodies.

Where I draw the line though is at Luke keeping the surname Skywalker despite being raised in hiding from his now evil father and the more evil Emperor.  Twenty years earlier Luke and his twin sister were separated and reared by different families so as not to pop up on Vader's radar (That almost rhymes).  Leia became Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.  But not only did they send Luke to Vader's home planet of Tatooine, they called him Luke SKYWALKER, after his father.  Real nice subterfuge, dummies.  Wait a second though, Luke grew up with his "uncle" Owen Lars, whom he was raised to believe was Anakin's brother, yes?  So why the hell wasn't he called Luke Lars?  And if Luke thinks Owen is his actual uncle, how did they explain to him why his father's surname wasn't also Lars?  Maybe they shared with him the terribly uninteresting saga of the time Anakin showed up at the Lars homestead and brought his dead mother home, and then left?  Jeezus what a boring bedtime story.  "Uncle Owen, how come my name is Skywalker?"  "Well Luke, your dad's mom married my dad.  I only met him for ten minutes and frankly didn't know him from Adam.  He was exactly nothing to me.  So forget all that stuff I told you about how he went off to war and I resented him for it.  'Twas all pure nonsense that homeless hippie Ben told me to tell you.  Here's what really happened, my stepbrother showed up, asked about his mom, buried her corpse in the backyard over there, and then skipped town with our protocol droid.  Wait, DID I JUST BUY BACK MY OWN FUCKING PROTOCOL DROID??  Son of a two-dollar whore!!!"

God I hate the prequels....


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Movies of Disbelief: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Welcome to another installment of Movies of Disbelief, here at Enuffa.com, where I examine one aspect of an otherwise okay or even a great film and discuss why it sticks in my craw.

Today's subject is one of my favorite movies of all time, ALL TIME.  It's the action film I hold above all other action films, and the one that solidified Harrison Ford as my first childhood hero.  I'm talkin' about Raiders of the Lost Ark!

The brainchild of George Lucas, Raiders was conceived around the same time as the original Star Wars, with Lucas paying homage to the adventure and sci-fi serials he enjoyed as a kid.  Both ideas began to flourish simultaneously but he set aside the earthbound action-adventure one and concentrated on what would become the most enduring sci-fi/fantasy franchise of all time.  Once Star Wars became the phenomenon it did, Lucas then turned to his other big idea, revealing it to his buddy Steven Spielberg after Steve suggested he'd like to direct a James Bond film.  Lucas replied, "I've got something better - The Adventures of Indiana Smith!"  After Lucas finished describing the concept in detail, Spielberg said he was all-in except for the name.  Lucas then suggested "Indiana Jones," and history was made.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was a masterful swashbuckler, chock full of iconic action set pieces and led by an equally iconic lead performance from Ford, whom Lucas initially wasn't even considering for the role, fearing that the actor-director pairing would be the popcorn version of Deniro-Scorsese.  Tom Selleck was eventually chosen as the world-traveling archaeologist, but ran into scheduling issues due to his Magnum PI commitments, and Spielberg again suggested Ford.  Had it not been for Magnum we'd have ended up with a very different movie.

Mustachioed Jones

Movies of Disbelief: Signs (2002)

Welcome to another Movies of Disbelief, where I examine one particular issue with an otherwise good film and why it irritates me so.  Today's subject, the 2002 alien invasion film Signs.

M. Night Shyamalan.  Has there ever been a more divisive film director?  Or more accurately, has there ever been a film director whose output has ranged from "universally lauded" to "fiery garbage on a stick?"  M. Night burst on the scene seemingly out of nowhere with his third film The Sixth Sense (I legit had no idea he'd made two other movies until I looked it up for this article), which proved a smash-hit and popularized the mindfuck ending like no other film had.  He followed it up with the mostly acclaimed but less successful Unbreakable, an intimate twist on the superhero genre (which of course spawned a trilogy nearly twenty years later), and then it was time for Signs.

Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, Signs was another "up close and personal" take on a genre film, this time The Alien Invasion picture.  Gibson is a widowed ex-minister-turned-farmer who finds a crop circle in his field, seemingly left by an alien presence, and soon other signs of an invasion spring up, including strange noises, animals exhibiting abnormal behavior, and lights in the sky.  Eventually news reports surface of alien sightings, leading to one of the great monster reveals, an amateur video taken at a kids' birthday party (This moment is chillingly effective).  The film expertly builds suspense throughout its entire running time, leading to a final showdown between Gibson's family (brother and two kids) and one of the creatures......and then it falls apart totally and completely in the last fifteen minutes, when it turns out the aliens are allergic to water.  Yeah that's right, simple, old fashioned water.

Dude, scary as fuck.

But that's not even what has my goat about this movie.  Don't get me wrong, it's annoying as all hell that an advanced species capable of interstellar travel - one that would've necessarily taken atmospheric readings before landing on any planet, to ensure the air is breathable - couldn't figure out that not only is our planet 70% covered with liquid that will disintegrate them, but its atmosphere is LOADED with it.  Like, how did they walk around a humid climate such as Brazil without inhaling moisture that would've corroded them from the inside?  How did it not happen to rain in any of the locales they invaded?  But okay, let's say for argument's sake, they couldn't figure out Terra Firma has water coming out its ass.  We'll shelve that gripe, as I have bigger goddamn fish to fry with this movie.

Hmmm, what d'ya suppose I could do with ol' Wonder Bat here?

No, what really pisses me off about this film is the other climactic "reveal," where Mel and his family are under siege by one of these lizard men, and only after flashing back to his wife's cryptic dying words "Tell Merrill to swing away" does it occur to Mel, "Say, perhaps I should urge my brother to grab that baseball bat on the wall and Al Capone E.T.'s fucking brains out."  Yeah that's right.  Instead of instinctively going for the first blunt instrument he can get his hands on, he ponders for a moment the last thing Mrs. Gibson said to him after a drunk driver pinned her to a tree, and it just so happened to suggest these Martian motherfuckers could be felled by a Louisville Slugger to their big green faces.  I know when I'm being attacked I try to think of a deceased loved one's final earthly guidance, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.  This one time I got mugged, I reflected on my grandmother's dying advice, "Boy, you show 'em you're good as gold," and I proceeded to take a golden piss all over that mugger, who ran screaming into the night.  What a fucking stupid ending to this movie.  Someone invades your home, you find a weapon and attack them with it.  It's literally one of the first two impulses you'd have, the other being to run/hide.  Why in the FUCK would this scene need an enigmatic flashback that neatly ties into the domestic crisis our heroes find themselves in?

This movie should be called Signs...That Your Director is a Pretentious Asshole.


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Movies of Disbelief: Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Welcome to another edition of Movies of Disbelief, here at Enuffa.com, where I examine a film that is generally either good, even great, or at least competently assembled, and point out one absurd flaw that had me throwing my hands up skyward.

Today's subject is the Walt Disney classic Sleeping Beauty.  Released in 1959, Sleeping Beauty retells the timeless fairy tale about a lovely princess, cursed by an evil sorceress to fall into a sleeping death before the end of her sixteenth birthday (by pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, of all things).  In the Disney version there are three good fairies who vow to protect Princess Aurora from this fate, by keeping her hidden from the wicked Maleficent until the time window of said curse has closed.

**Side note: each fairy bestows a magical gift, the first being Flora's decree that Aurora will grow up to be beautiful, begging the question, does Flora not have any faith in this girl's gene pool?  I'd be insulted if I were her parents.  "Excuse me, I think we're both fairly handsome people, she'll turn out just fine on her own!"  Seems like a waste of a gift if there's even a chance that she'll be a looker anyway.  Come to think of it, so is Fauna's gift of song; how does she know this girl won't naturally have musical ability?  Or at least enough to get by with some practice?  Superficial jerks...**

I'm sorry, these women are morons...

But back on the clock; the fairies quickly whisk her away to a remote cottage in the forest and raise her as a common peasant girl until such time as it's safe for her to return and reclaim her royal heritage.  Solid plan right?  Especially since the fairies have also vowed not to use magic during the girl's upbringing, so as not to rouse the suspicions of passers-by.  Princess Aurora, or Briar Rose as she is now known, has no awareness of her regal bloodline or the fact that she is betrothed to Prince Phillip of a neighboring kingdom.  On her sixteenth birthday, the fateful day in question, she meets a stranger in the woods and falls instantly in love, but the fairies spill all the beans, revealing to her that not only is she a princess, she is already spoken for and must never see this strange man again (of course none of the four is aware said stranger IS Prince Phillip).  Rose is crushed at the news and runs to her room sobbing.

Movies of Disbelief: Alien Covenant (2017)

Welcome to another edition of Movies of Disbelief, where I talk about a film containing plot elements I find simply not credible.  Today it's Ridley Scott's latest entry in the Alien franchise.....

Alright, time to talk about some issues I have with Alien: Covenant.  I'm a diehard fan of the Alien series and-- well wait, I guess I'm a diehard fan of the first two Alien movies and that's it.  Oddly, despite being a huge Alien fan I think the vast majority of these movies suck.  Covenant is sadly one of them; like Prometheus there's a good film in here somewhere but they didn't find it.  There's basically no point to Covenant at all, except as a stopgap between the events of Prometheus and the events that led directly to the original Alien (events which aren't at all necessary to understanding or appreciating the classic first film).  Covenant is basically just a way to get us from the monster introduced in Prometheus to the familiar xenomorph we know and love.  Super, David experimented with these creatures until he got this one.  Did we really need a two-hour Alien's Greatest Hits movie to arrive at the xenomorph?  Covenant relies so heavily on tropes from the other films in the franchise there's nary an original sequence to be found here.  Except maybe the one robot teaching the other robot how to play the flute.  Spiffy.

That's nothing, you should see him play the skin-flute.

So despite being a gorgeous-looking and well-acted film I consider Covenant (and Prometheus) to be a pretty pointless attempt at creating a backstory for a great film that never needed one.  I had my share of nitpicks about this movie to boot, but there's one item in particular that flat-out pissed me off, one piece of information that makes exactly zero sense and undermines the only narrative thread that even remotely justifies the film's existence.

Before we get to that though, a few minor gripes:


-In the first scene we see the android David conversing with his creator Peter Weyland.  Weyland lets him choose his own name and he goes with David because Weyland's sitting room has a giant statue of David that's so tall its head goes up through a hole in the ceiling.  Why the hell would you ever put a statue in your living room that you can't see all of?  Legit, unless he's standing right under it, Weyland's only view of this statue is obstructed in such a way that he can't see the head!  Before agreeing to purchase this piece of art he probably should've brought a tape measure.

How'd he even know what statue it was if he couldn't see the head??

Movies of Disbelief: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

Welcome to another edition of Movies of Disbelief, here at Enuffa.com!  If you're unfamiliar, MOD is where I examine a film, good or bad, that's based around a far-fetched premise, but find one aspect or scene that not only stretches or breaks the bonds of credibility, but pisses all over them.

Today's subject is a little different though.  As patently absurd, campy and over-the-top as this film is, the part of it I refuse to believe isn't even something that happened in the story.  It's the idea that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was directed by the same guy as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1.  Yeah that's right, Tobe Hooper, the man who in 1974 created a horror masterwork with no budget, no stars, under the worst imaginable filming conditions, somehow followed it up 12 years later with a sequel that basically sprays moldy diarrhea over everything that was great about the original.  I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that the same director made both of these movies.

Before we get into the crime against cinema that was TCM 2, let's just recap the first one a little.  The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, loosely inspired by the Ed Gein murders (as well as those of Dean Corll - look up that saga, it's revolting), was shot using grainy 16mm film, on a budget of roughly $150,000.  Like Night of the Living Dead it made use of real rural locations (see Herzog, Werner: "the voodoo of location") and was filmed in a cinema vérité style, allowing the horrific tale to come to life in a way that felt totally authentic and heightened the terror.  We as the audience feel like we're experiencing these ghastly events along with the protagonists.  The cast of unknowns is first-rate, playing the scenes in a casual, naturalistic way and largely improvising the loose dialogue.  By the time everything goes to hell in the second act, we've been given a reason to care about the five young adults.  We're given no background about the family of maniacs - they are simply an evil force of nature, with no discernable reason for what they do; making sense of it would undermine the senseless cruelty Sally endures in the final half-hour.  But despite the film's grisly tone and subject matter, almost all the violence and blood is left to the imagination.  Only once for example do we see chainsaw meeting flesh, and it's when Leatherface (one of the great boogeymen of horror cinema) falls down and accidentally gouges his own thigh.  But the film's timbre is so intense and macabre we think we're seeing more gore than we are.  It's brilliantly understated.  The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is far greater than the sum of its parts; all the unconventional elements came together - off-putting locations, genuine performances, innovative cinematography (the closeup montage of Sally's face during the dinner scene is mindbreaking), and unsettling musique concrète-inspired score (courtesy of Wayne Bell and Tobe himself) - to create a fully immersive experience of palpable terror.  It's one of the all-time great horror films.

This guy is terrifying.

Movies of Disbelief: Grease (1978)

I'm back to bitch and moan about a movie that I find simply too ridiculous to believe.....

So this past weekend my wife forced me, very much against my will, to watch the classic musical Grease for the first time from start to finish.  I had seen bits and pieces of it on TV over the years, probably even the entire movie all told.  But never had I sat through the film end-to-end and experienced what so many girls (and probably some dudes too) of my generation were so in love with.

The lighthearted 1950s throwback starring Olivia Newton-John Travolta (like "Bennifer" only waaaaay longer) tells the story of two unlikely high school sweethearts and their star-crossed romance.  Travolta plays Danny Zuko, the bad-assiest greaser dude in the school who wears leather jackets, supes up cars, and can dance almost as good as Tony Manero (....wait....).  Newton-John plays Sandy Olsson, a straight-laced Aussie chick who met Danny on the beach over the summer and they had a real good thing, if ya pick up what I'm puttin' down.  But her parents plan to move the family out back to.....the outback, so she thinks she and Danny are destined to never see each other again.

Good thing the film moved the setting from Chicago to California,
otherwise I'd be saying "Where the fuck is this beach??"

But wait, Sandy's parents change their minds and she ends up at Danny's high school.  And then each of them informs their respective group of friends about their summer fling, but with VERY conflicting stories.  She describes Danny as a perfectly romantic gentleman, while Danny describes her as a filthy slut (BONG!).  Uh oh.  The rest of the movie is just essentially the "will they or won't they" schtick, with the obvious outcome, a buncha song & dance numbers, and a twist where at the end Danny starts dressing like the respectable jock douchebags and Sandy starts dressing like a, well, filthy slut (BONG!), complete with leather jacket, skin-tight chaps and a newfound smoking habit (I wonder if she's ever tried reefer).  So I guess the moral of the story is, "Just be whatever your insensitive prick of a boyfriend wants you to be and your relationship will be great!"

"Oh wait, I don't need the letterman jacket, she went all trashy just for me!"

Movies of Disbelief: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Before I get started, let me preface this by saying I love It's a Wonderful Life.  Absolutely love it.  It's one of my top ten all-time favorite films, I've loved it since I was about nine years old, my wife and I watch it every year at Christmastime without fail.  I adore this film.

Released in 1946, It's a Wonderful Life was Frank Capra's favorite of all his movies.  The story of the downtrodden everyman George Bailey (in THE performance of Jimmy Stewart's career), who is visited in his most desperate hour by a guardian angel, was based on a short story called The Greatest Gift, written on a Christmas card by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1939 and published in 1944.  RKO Pictures optioned the film rights and went through three screeplay drafts before deciding not to move forward with the project, and sold the whole kit n' kaboodle (plus the three drafts) to Frank Capra's Liberty Pictures for a cool ten grand, exactly what they paid for it in the first place.

Capra fleshed out this simple fantasy parable into a 130-minute dramedic masterpiece, about a small-town fellow who is unselfish to a fault, having spent so much of his life helping everyone around him he has become disillusioned and discouraged, ultimately neglecting his own dreams.  George Bailey had planned from an early age on becoming a successful architect and builder, hoping to design skyscrapers and bridges, travel the world, and be someone of great importance.  But circumstances being what they are, George never leaves his hometown, instead inheriting his father's Building & Loan business and spending decades trying to save the townspeople from financial ruin at the hands of Bedford Falls' evil tycoon Mr. Potter.  When George's business faces collapse itself, George contemplates suicide, but is visited by his guardian angel Clarence, who shows George just how important he's been to everyone in his life.  Realizing his desperation was a shortsighted mistake, George rushes home to his family and friends, and all is well.

George Bailey is a greater man than most of us will ever be....

Movies of Disbelief: Rounders (1998)

I love poker.  It's one of the greatest games ever invented; a unique mix of skill, lying, reading people, and just plain luck.  No other game meshes these aspects together like poker, and no poker variation is as pure and elegant as Texas Hold 'Em.  And no movie is as responsible for popularizing Texas Hold 'Em as Rounders.

Released in 1998 and starring Matt Damon, Edward Norton and John Malkovich, Rounders tells the story of a prodigious poker player named Mike McDermott who loses his entire bankroll one night and vows never to return to the table.  That is until his best friend Worm gets out of jail and essentially drags him back into the seedy New York poker underworld.  Mike and Worm then find themselves desperately trying to win $15,000 in just a few days to avoid being killed by loan sharks, and Mike rediscovers what made him fall in love with the game to begin with.

Rounders is a riveting, taut thriller but also a darkly comic, eminently quotable cult film about following our passions and staying true to what we are.  It also features one of the least plausible scenes of all goddamn time.

About halfway through the film Mike's live-in girlfriend and fellow law student Jo discovers that Mike has broken his promise to stay away from gambling, and while he's out, she packs up all her shit and moves out of their apartment.  Mike comes home to find Jo's things gone, and is quite frankly neither surprised nor all that visibly upset.  He and Worm then drive to Atlantic City for a night of poker shenanigans and it's just like old times.

"Rolled up Aces over Kings....."

Soon after this, Mike is seen alone in his apartment watching an old World Series of Poker VHS tape, when his friend and fellow gambler Petra (an unreal sexy Famke Janssen) shows up to talk to him about Worm.  Petra works at one of their regular poker clubs, and she informs Mike that Worm has run up thousands in debt, in Mike's name.  Then this exotic, statuesque Eastern European bombshell, who gushes like a school girl whenever Mike is around, begins kissing Mike and asks to stay.  Ya know, so they can touch each other in a very impure manner.  Probably multiple times.  Whichever way Mike fancies.  Instead, Mike awkwardly pulls away and says he'll see her soon, and she leaves.

"So uh, Mike? You gonna just sit there moping or are we gonna do a good piece a-bidness?"

Now look, assholes, I can buy all the over-the-top poker showdowns, I can buy the montage where Mike and Worm play high-stakes games at places like country clubs, cigar bars and even what appears to be a Greek sandwich shop, I can buy Worm totally fucking up Mike's shit at the State Troopers' game with super-obvious deck stacking that anyone who's ever laid eyes on a playing card could spot, hell, I can even buy John Malkovich's outRAGEous Russian accent.  What I can't, and WON'T swallow is a handsome young fella whose girlfriend has just hit the bricks turning down a wild night of horizontal mattress bingo with Famke fucking Janssen.  It would never happen.  In any realistic universe the second she starts kissing him, that apartment is pure bedlam.  What few possessions he has left would be strewn about the floor, out the window, probably shoved up his ace-hole (Heh, get it?).  There's zero chance he'd let her do any less to him than ANYTHING SHE WANTS.  I'm sorry Michael, you're simply not a believable character anymore.  Quite frankly I hope Teddy KGB takes every red cent you own.


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Movies of Disbelief: Superman Returns (2006)

Our new feature Movies of Disbelief will focus on one unforgivable aspect of a movie that already has a lotta problems.  Because why not?

Ah, the much-maligned Superman Returns.  Bryan Singer's 2006 attempt to relaunch the Richard Donner Superman franchise was the amalgamated end-result of multiple aborted projects (including the infamously unfilmed Nicolas Cage version) and ended up costing an absurd $250 million all told.  Starring Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane, and newcomer Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel himself (in an admirable performance that more or less channels Christopher Reeve's), Superman Returns takes place five years after Superman II, when Kal-El, umm......comes back to Earth after investigating a supposed Krypton sighting.  The sighting turned out to be nothing, making Supes' entire disappearance no more than a half-assed, unimaginative plot device (Jeezus guys, come up with SOME valid reason for him to be missing, will ya?), and Superman gets back to saving people and thwarting Lex Luthor's evil schemes. The film opened to much fanfare, but left audiences and critics pretty cold.  The bloated 154-minute running time, the rather languid pace, and an excruciating subplot involving Lois's son who may or may not be the product of Kal's SuperSeed (Spoiler alert: He's Superman's kid. We all know from the start he's Superman's kid. That this film is at all coy about it is one of its biggest and stupidest issues.) all contributed to Superman Returns' lackluster box office performance, and the intended sequel was scrapped.

But look, regardless whether Superman Returns was a sprawling mess (It was), or whether it was a cheap, soft reboot of the Christopher Reeve series (Again, it was), or whether it was still light years better than Man of Steel (Yup, it was), there's one thing we can all agree on, and it's what I'm here today to talk about....

Lex setting up shop on Mordor...

Superman Returns ultimately centers around yet another real estate-based plot hatched by Lex Luthor, to grow a new continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, declare himself the owner of said landmass, and charge people truckloads of money to buy property on Lexarctica or LexAmerica or Lexstralia or whatever the hell he planned to call it.  To that end he makes a trip to Superman's Fortress of Solitude, steals a bunch of Kal's magical Kryptonian crystals (the ones that power his big alien computer console), and launches one crystal wrapped in Kryptonite (Real nice, a "humans only" rental policy - fuckin' racist...) into the ocean.  This film establishes (from something that I guess was implied in the 1978 movie) that these Kryptonian crystals grow like a Chia Pet on PCP when submerged in water, and one crystal shot into the ocean floor sprouts a massive, arid, gray continent.