All Men Are Not Created Equalizer

Nighthawks at the Diner: Denzel Washington & Chloe Moretz in The Equalizer.

"A man can be an artist at anything," Christopher Walken said in Man on Fire, speaking of Denzel Washington's burnt-out assassin character, Joyhn (!) Creasy. "Creasy's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece."

Ten years later, Washington is playing another regret-haunted killer who returns to the warpath when a young girl to whom he feels a protective attachment is hurt. But the regret-haunted killer he plays in The Equalizer is a more personable and approachable guy, one who drinks special tea instead of booze. Are you not entertained? My NPR review is here.

Risible Business: Believe Me, reviewed.

Alex Russell summons his best Young Tom Cruise in Believe Me. So does everyone else.

I reviewed cowriter/director Will Bakke's uneven phony-evangelicals comedy Believe Me for The Dissolve. 

Miss Sogyny by Any Other Name: No Good Deed, reviewed.

No Good Deed stars Idris Elba & Taraji P. Henson are also credited producers, so they should know better.

The thrice-delayed, not-screened-for-critics thriller No Good Deed opened at No. 1 this weekend. Box Office Mojo reports its audience was 60 percent female and 59 percent over age 30. I'm an over-30 straight white dude, so WTF do I know, but to me the film -- which was written by a white woman and directed by a white guy -- felt incredibly insulting to its target audience of black women. In my Village Voice review, I tried to unpack the cynical, unkind assumptions it makes about the primary demographic paying to see it. Without making the piece as much of a drag to read as the movie was to watch.

Cruel to Be Kind: The Homestretch, reviewed.

Roque (center), one of the three young Chicagoans profiled in The Homestretch, is a bad poster child for homeless youth.

Here's my review of the disappointing Kartemquin Films' documentary The Homestretch for The Dissolve. I made a boneheaded mistake in the version of this where I filed wherein I ascribed the phrase "cruel to kind" to Nick Lowe, not to Hamlet -- even though I'd already referenced Hamlet earlier in the review, and in fact, the other piece I filed the day I filed this one was a review of King Lear. Embarrassing. Editors sometimes save your neck.

The Lion in Winter: The November Man, reviewed.

Ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan and ex-Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko in The November Man.

Did you happen to notice that the 12-year interval between The November Man, which I review for NPR today, and Brosnan's final appearance as James Bond, 2002's (lousy) Die Another Day, matches the span of time that elapsed between Sean Connery's final "official" Bond performance, in 1971's (lousy) Diamonds  Are Forever, and his return in 1983's out-of-canon Never Say Never Again?

Well, I did. I also note that it was during the Brosnan era (1995-2002) that the Bond flicks ceased to be early summer releases and started coming out in November. That's got nothing at all to do why this thing is called The November Man, but it's a better rationale than the one character actor Bill Smitrovich, whom I recall so fondly from Michael Mann's 1960s-set 1980s cop show Crime Story, gets to articulate in the movie.

The Spirit of 77: To Be Takei, reviewed.

Hikaru Sulu and George Takei at Midtown Comics in Manhattan.

I am acquainted through mutual friends in DC theatre with Marc Okrand, the man who developed the Klingon language to for Paramount Pictures. I was surprised to seem him make a very brief appearance in Jennifer M. Kroot's documentary To Be Takei, which I reviewed for The Dissolve.

Bulgarian Holiday: The Expendables 3, reviewed.

No idea who those two guys in the back row at left are, but next to them are MMA champ Rhonda Rousey and welterweight boxer Victor Ortiz. Maybe they should've called this film The Availables.

I reviewed The Expendables 3 for NPR, because their audience demanded it.

This movie made me weirdly nostalgic for the days when martial artists or athletes like current MMA champ Ronda Rousey or retired MMA fighter Randy Couture might be deemed worthy of their own low-budget action flicks. No, I can't explain, really.

Pop Culture Happy Hour #203: Guardians of the Galaxy and So-Bad-It's-Good

Even this movie was good this summer. 2014 has been a great year for popcorn flicks.

I was thrilled as always to fill the fourth chair on this week's Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein we discuss the latest -- and funniest, and unlikeliest -- Marvel Studios blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy. Even I had no idea who any of these characters were when I sat down to watch this thing.

We also discussed the curious, evergreen phenomenon of Things So Bad They Are Good, a complex topic that did not in this case stray too far from the TV movie that inspired this latest iteration of it, Sharknado 2. 

DISCLOSURE: I have not seen Sharknado 2. Nor, indeed, have I seen Sharknado. I have, however, seen the movie wherein Steven Seagal pledges to take the crooked U.S. Senator who killed his wife and put him in a coma for seven years... to the bank.

...to the U.S. Savings and Loan Bank.

Wait, I think I messed up the line. In any case, I'm sorry our discussion did not proceed in a direction that would've allowed me to play this clip from Seagal's 1990 hit Hard to Kill.

If we all sound unusually somber, it's because this episode was recorded on my birthday! Stream it or download it here.

FURTHER READING: My NPR review of Lucy from two weeks earlier. And my Dissolve review of Jinn and my Village Voice review of Brick Mansions, both from back in April.

Logan Hill's great story about the new expectation that male film stars sport gym-buffed bodies is here, but it was published in Men's Journal, not Men's Health as I fear I said on the show; my apologies.

Tickets to What's Making Me Happy This Week --  the smart stage sex comedy The Campsite Rule, by Alexandra Petri and starring my best gal Rachel Manteuffel -- are available here for a mere $20. If you're in or near Washington, DC or will be before the show closes on Aug. 16, you'll be doing yourself a big favor if you go.