For Your Consideration - "Gran Torino"

Over the past few weeks, there have been many movies released to great pomp and circumstance by the powers that be in film. As it happens, however, every one of them was a limited release. Luckily for us, that means nobody has seen them. Over the next few weeks, we present the following reviews for your consideration of movies that have been submitted "For Your Consideration."

Even God himself probably has little notion of how excited I am at this very moment. I am a button push away from watching Clint Eastwood's latest. My brain is on the verge of orgasming sloppily all over my apartment. Clint Eastwood directs himself as a character who resembles the man we all expect Clint Eastwood to be: a grumpy old man who isn't about to take shit from anybody, let alone some gang members. What more could I ask from the man? "Changeling 2?"

But let's be serious. I don't care who you are, you should probably want to see this movie. Men, with no questions asked, you should want to see this movie. Only girls would maybe say "No, I don't think that interests me much." And for them, you can drag out the touching storyline of an old man befriending his immigrant neighbor through their efforts to restore and old muscle car. That's right: a manly Clint Eastwood movie that even chicks can like. None of that "Bridges of Madison County" crap, here.

Do I really need to keep myself waiting any longer just to tell you how perfect this movie is? Or, at least on paper? This is like my own personal "Snakes on a Plane." The rest of the world waited for Samuel L. to curse at some CGI cobras. I'm waiting for Eastwood in pants up to his belly button growling "Get off my lawn!"

Twilight

For those of you not in the know, I spent a significant amount of time working for a book retailer this year. I am not a hormone-addled pubescent girl, I am not Goth, and I am not a Mormon. For all of the preceding reasons, I had been completely unaware of what Twilight was and how huge it is. Working at a book store changed that, and has set off many alarms. Sure, Twilight is the next Harry Potter they'll tell you. Beware, though: the enormousness of this craze belies the enormity of its subtext...

For those unaware, let me brief you on Twilight as I have come to understand it. This series of books is about vampires. Totally wussy emo vampires. The vampires, in their own world are still kind of cool, but are incredibly strong, and if one was to, for (very specific) example, have sex with a human girl, she'd be completely overpowered and killed. The thing is, one of these totally wussy emo vampires has fallen in love with a human. They decide to stay in love, but in a totally chaste, abstinent relationship.

So here we have a whole Christian-values allegory based on the premise of vampires not being vampires. Does any of that make sense? Are we seriously this deranged as a society that people can like this stuff, let alone totally obsess over it?

Did I mention that they were wussy emo vampires? And did you see the picture of the cast above? Whatever, man. They used to play videos of behind the scenes on the set of "Twilight" at the bookstore. Even the parts that you think might kind of be cool, the action scenes, looked bad.

I wanted to make fun of this movie, but just look at the freaking picture! Any joke would just be redundant. Well, any joke except a penis joke, I guess, but making penis jokes in front of teenage girls is not recommended.

Changeling

If there was such a thing as manliest man ever, it'd probably go to Clint Eastwood. He's pretty much the sweetest thing to ever happen to film ever. Think about it: the three brilliant spaghetti westerns that culminate in "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"; the Dirty Harry movies (all five of 'em, but with special mention for "Sudden Impact", which he also directed); "Unforgiven". Not only is he one of the greatest film personae of all time, but he's an incredibly talented director. Like many of Eastwood's characters might, I'm unable to put into words how I excited I was to watch the trailer for his latest, "Changeling".

But then I watched it.

It stars Angelina Jolie, but it's a super-serious period piece drama, so she won't be hot in this movie. Making Angelina Jolie not hot is a shockingly unmanly thing to do. Frankly, though, that's not this movie's biggest problem. Instead, it's this movie's compulsion to be a super-serious period piece drama that really makes it lame.

For what it's worth, Jolie is a very talented actress. Watching this movie, however, will probably feel like a super-long, super-serious promotional video for just how talented she is. Eastwood himself is a minimalist actor, which makes it so surprising that the actors in his movies tend to be a little over the top. Let's look at this handy reference guide.


On the left, at zero, we have Clint Eastwood. I've seen almost all of his movies and I can say definitively that Mr. Eastwood has never shown any emotion once in his entire career. Showing slightly more expression is Gene Hackman in "Unforgiven"; I'll give him a 2.5. Sean Penn, who won the Academy Award for "Mystic River", pretty much landed it just right, achieving a 7. Ms. Jolie almost surely pushes it all the way to a 10 in "Changeling". If she was any more expressive, she'd be El Greco. You can just tell that once this movie gets going, it will feature Ms. Jolie shrieking in horror, weeping in despair, or bursting with nervous energy. Every frame will emphasize the super-seriousness of the period piece drama unfolding before us.

The basic plot of the movie centers around a terrible true story, in which Jolie takes on the LAPD because they returned the wrong kidnapped boy to her and covered it up or something. I didn't really notice the plot because I was too busy trying to figure out why we needed another movie in which Angelina Jolie ends up stuck in a mental ward or copes with the harsh realities of patriarchal oppression.

It's hard to believe I'm saying this, but this is a film probably worth skipping. Save your $10 for when Eastwood releases in January the Japanese-language version told from the perspective of the LAPD detective in conflict with Jolie