The Rock vs. John Cena is a Reckoning

On the 2/20/12 episode of WWE Monday Night RAW, John Cena vowed to beat The Rock at WrestleMania XXVIII in his first entertaining promo since, well, the last time he cut an entertaining promo. Which was almost exactly one year ago when he assumed his old Doctor of Thugonomics rap persona and tore The Rock a new one in rhyme. Cena also continued to position himself as the hero in this showdown because, as he hammers home as his one primary point, The Rock left WWE for Hollywood 7 years ago while John Cena has remained in WWE.


Let me try to understand this logic. John Cena should be the babyface in the match because of... why? Because The Rock left the company and became the biggest crossover star in Hollywood the pro wrestling business has ever seen. John Cena should be the babyface despite that for over six years he has been booed - by you more than likely - because the majority of WWE fans over the age of 15 have been consistently tired of his squeaky clean PG image as the leader of company and as the number one star in the business. Those 6 years of hating Cena and booing him and grousing about his workrate or his booking or his pandering, unfunny promos - we should suddenly see all of that has a virtue. Because at least he was around. Boring you and making you angry, sure, but at least he was here. Oh, and John Cena never left to make bad movies, no sir. His movies suck too and he totally admits it, wink wink, but hey, at least he did both: he annoyed you for 6 years and then asked you to watch him act - though c'mon, he's not an actor and his movies suck. 

The Rock left the business and left the majority of us with great memories of being one of the most entertaining stars during the most enjoyable period of watching wrestling ever. The nerve of that Dwayne Johnson for winning every championship and doing everything there is to do in WWE before he was 35 and then deciding he wanted more out of his life. And then despite absolutely not needing to financially or professionally because he has nothing to prove, he saw the sorry state of the business - the business lead by John Cena - and decided he wanted to help and agreed to give us a dream match for WrestleMania, one of the only dream matches left in pro wrestling. And then, get this, he continued to stay in Hollywood and make movies, having the most successful year of his film career at the box office while promoting the fact that he will be main eventing WrestleMania to the audience outside WWE, creating interest that hasn't cared about WWE in the years since Cena has been leading the company.

But The Rock is the bad guy here, says John Cena. Because he left. And John Cena is here every night. John Cena has perfect attendance, which is apparently the fifth demandment of the Cenation along with Hustle, Loyalty, Respect, and Rising Above Hate. And the last six years of Cena as the top guy were the most enjoyable you've ever had as a fan. Weren't they?

Cena's the face, Rock's the heel. Okay, sure, John. Whatever you say.

I see the WrestleMania match between The Rock and John Cena as a reckoning. John Cena, The Rock will return in Miami to fight you and judge you in front of the world. The Rock will finally be holding John Cena accountable for his actions as leader of WWE. The torch was passed from The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin to John Cena - and what did Cena do with it? Is WWE better, more entertaining, more enjoyable? Cena is angry and defensive because he has no defense to the accusation that the era he leads is a pale shadow of the Attitude Era. Every time Cena harps that I AM HERE... don't you see, John? That just makes it worse for you.

The fact that Cena cut an entertaining, disrespectful promo last night makes his position worse - Cena could have been more entertaining than he was but he held back for 6 years. We know he had it in him but he kept pandering instead. Cena changes the subject to every other thing under the sun, mainly: The Rock isn't here, The Rock isn't here, The Rock isn't here. But you are, John Cena. You are. And what have you been doing, and why do half the audiences in every city boo you every night? Why is that, John? 


Cena will win in Miami. Youth must be served. The Rock understands this as Hulk Hogan did at WrestleMania 18 when he lost to and passed the torch to The Rock and his era. It's not really about who wins and who loses the match. What's important is the performance, the emotion, the roller coaster, raising the level of the game. I groused that The Rock shouldn't have returned at Survivor Series last November because the "specialness" of his first match back was lost, but I'm glad now he did, because now the question of whether The Rock "still has it" is not part of the equation. The Rock absolutely does still have it.

This WrestleMania match is about The Rock helping John Cena raise his game, and I hope in real life that Cena understands this: Rock is here to help him. If WrestleMania XXVIII draws like WWE hopes it does, more eyes will be on Cena as the leader of WWE than ever before, lots of eyes that have never seen him or cared to see him. Everyone already knows The Rock and that he Brings It. Survivor Series cemented he's still who he was before he left for 7 years.


WrestleMania XXVIII is Cena's showcase, his job performance review, his reckoning. Cena's predecessor and, I believe, his better is coming to Miami to make him prove he really is at The Rock's level and deserves to be. It's Cena who has everything to prove and everything to lose at WrestleMania.

I want to see the best performance John Cena has ever given in his life in Miami, nothing less.

Abduction

ABDUCTION

** SPOILERS **

During the opening scenes of Abduction, which involve Taylor Lautner getting drunk at a high school party, the credit "Directed by John Singleton" appears. It's jarring when one suddenly remembers: this is the same John Singleton who directed Boyz n the Hood 20 years ago. And now he's directing Abduction, where in the very next scene he's obligated to show Taylor Lautner shirtless to appease his fans from the Twilight movies who expect to ogle Lautner's pecs and abs. One imagines when Abduction was pitched to the studios, it went something like, "Imagine Jason Bourne, but as a teenager who whines and cries a lot."  

Lautner plays a 17 year old who lives in the rich part of Pittsburgh. He has a MILF for a mom, Maria Bello, and a tender hearted tough guy bully for a dad, Jason Issacs, who beats him up in the backyard in fatherly sparring sessions. Neither of his parents seem to do anything; but a school project involving researching missing persons websites (huh?) allows Lautner to make a startling discovery - they're not his real parents. They're spies of some sort who've been raising him. Moments later, they are dead when Russian agents come calling, and soon, their house is blown up. 

Lautner finds himself on the run along with the hottie next door he loves, Lily Collins, who got caught up in all of this. Luckily, her parents are out of the country, so she doesn't have a curfew. They are chased by the evil agents lead by Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo films, but can Lautner trust seemingly friendly CIA agent Alfred Molina? What do they all want from Lautner? A list of spies who sold state secrets. Yawn. It turns out Lautner is nothing particularly special; he's not a specially trained agent or America's hidden secret weapon or anything like that. The Russians just wanted to kidnap him to draw out his real father who had the list, which was on an old cell phone Lautner comes into possession of. Lautner hardly even does any fighting or any crazy acrobatics for the first hour, saving most of the derring-do for the underwhelming final showdown with Nyqvist. Lautner mostly just poses, clinches his jaw, and makes goo goo eyes at Collins, who cuts him off at first base during their first make out session. Nor does Lautner kill the bad guy; his real daddy Dermot Mulroney saves his ass in the end.

Abduction is a mild tweeny thrill ride of no consequence, with a train sequence that invites comparisons to the infinitely superior From Russia With Love and then suffers greatly for having the gall to invoke classic James Bond. As a babyfaced action hero, Lautner is a stoic piece of plywood, unless called upon to make with the waterworks, which he's more than game for. A couple of funny parts of Abduction, besides all of the unintentionally funny stuff: Lautner and Nyqvist parlay at a Pittsburgh Pirates game and Nyqvist confesses he doesn't understand baseball. Lautner fails to explain baseball to him so maybe he doesn't understand baseball either. The biggest howler when Nyqvist makes a threat that'll reach the target teen audience and promises to kill every single one of Lautner's Facebook friends. If it were me, well, I'd like to see him try. In fact, I'll give him a list to get him started.

Justice League Doom

JUSTICE LEAGUE DOOM

** SPOILERS **

Justice League Doom is the finest DC Animated movie since Justice League: The New Frontier. An all-star modern day Superfriends geekout, Doom features the world's greatest superheroes, Superman (Tim Daly), Batman (Kevin Conroy), Wonder Woman (Susan Eisenberg), The Flash (Michael Rosenbaum), Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Martian Manhunter (Carl Lumbly), and Cyborg (Bumper Robinson) banded together to take on their arch nemeses, Metallo "The Man With The Kryptonite Heart!" (Paul Blackthorne), Bane (Carlos Alazraqui), The Cheetah (Claudia Black), Mirror Master (Alexis Denisof), Star Sapphire (whose revealing costume pushes the boundries of Doom's PG-13 rating, voiced by Olivia D'Abo), and evil Martian Ma'alefa'ak (Carl Lumbly), assembled as The Legion of Doom. Each hero and villain is voiced with gusto, making the most of some hokey, melodramatic comic booky dialogue. This new Legion of Doom is lead by the immortal despot Vandal Savage (Phil Morris), who also hired along the Royal Flush Gang. Plus a slew of fan favorite supporting cast members like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Batman's venerable scene-stealing butler Alfred make appearances. 

Loosely adapted by the late Dwayne McDuffie from Mark Waid's "Towel of Babel" comic book story, Justice League Doom revolves around the Legion of Doom stealing Batman's secret protocols regarding how to combat and contain his fellow Leaguers should they turn evil. Batman plotted some "brilliant" (says the movie) scenarios, such as tricking Superman into foiling a suicide attempt so that he can be shot with a Kryptonite bullet, forcing a delusional Wonder Woman to fight until her heart explodes, or immolating Martian Manhunter. Batman claimed his protocols were merely for containment and were not designed to be lethal. I don't know, Bats, shooting Superman in the chest with Kryptonite or inducing Wonder Woman to have a heart attack sound pretty lethal to me. Plus for a guy who hates guns because of, you know, mommy and daddy KABLAMMO, weird that Batman's plan to stop Superman revolves around a gunshot.

Batman really dropped the ball with his strategy for Green Lantern: make him think he got some innocent people killed (including a lookalike of his girlfriend Carol Ferris) so he quits wearing the ring and sobs in a cave like a buffoon. (And the woman was an android, Batman hilariously reveals! Hal Jordan was blubbering over an android and cradling it in his arms unwittingly.) Seems to me, Batman got the idea by reading "The Cosmic Odyssey" where Green Lantern John Stewart's blunder destroyed a whole planet and he couldn't deal with it. Batman himself finds the grave of his beloved parents exhumed and he gets beaten and buried alive by Bane. It took Batman forever to  attack Bane's glaringly obvious weakness and cut the tube that supplies him with his super steroid juice. Chris O'Donnell's Robin and Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl figured it out in seconds in Batman and Robin.

The Legion of Doom has bigger fish to fry than just taking out the Justice League. Vandal Savage, who has been alive for over 50,000 years would like to see half of the planet's population wiped out so he can rule the other half. To wit, his nefarious plan is to launch a missile into the sun to ignite a solar flare that would roast half the Earth in eight minutes. Can the League overcome the calamities one of their own masterminded against them and rally in time to stop the forces of evil and save the Earth? Of course they can, by the wackiest ways possible: Superman chases the missile into the sun itself, Green Lantern uses his Power Ring to block the solar flare, and the rest of the League use the technology of the Legion of Doom's headquarters (which Cyborg took it upon himself to coin "The Hall of Doom") to render the Earth and everyone on it intangible so that the solar flare passes straight through the planet, no harm, no foul. 

The entertainment value of Justice League Doom overpowers all the stuff that doesn't make sense. Mirror Master becomes a hologram and hides in the Batmobile, infiltrates the Batcave, and steals Batman's protocols. Yet, he is unable to learn Batman's secret identity despite Alfred referring to Batman as "Master Bruce" in conversation. When Superman is shot and plummets into a Metropolis street, the Justice League performs emergency surgery on him right there in the street in front of dozens of onlookers. No privacy for dying, shirtless Superman? When Martian Manhunter gets the Kryptonite bullet out, we see the bullet is pristine. One pristine bullet! Oliver Stone would lose his mind in conspiracy theory. Doom also has a questionable understanding of how far the sun is from the Earth; Vandal Savage's rocket had no warp drive, just standard propulsion, but made it to the sun in minutes. The ethics of Batman's "betrayal" of the League is handed with more depth and righteous anger in the comics; in Doom, Batman dramatically quits in a huff before anyone can yell at him, then Superman offers him the pristine K-bullet, should Batman ever need it for real to stop Superman if he turns evil. Then Batman departs. Uh, did he quit or not?  On the other hand, there are some flat-out funny moments peppered, such as Superman and Batman trying to decide on a plan to save Earth from the solar flare:

Superman: "Maybe I could move the Earth out of the way!"

Batman: "If we had a week, I couldn't list all the reasons why that won't work."

Well, if the League F-ed up, Superman can always fly around the Earth and turn back time. That plan hasn't failed yet.

In Time

IN TIME

** SPOILERS **

"Don't Waste My Time."

In Time posits a bizarre alternate reality/future where human beings are now genetically engineered to live only 25 years. Once they hit 25, they are given one more year of life but must now work, bargain or steal for additional seconds, minutes, hours, years to prolong their lives, to infinity if they can. Time appears as glowing green digital readouts on each person's wrists; every human in In Time is genetically engineered with an LED nightlight. The wealthy possess seemingly unlimited time and are essentially immortal, as long as they "don't do anything foolish" and die by violent means. The poor in the "ghettos" are left scrambling day in and day out for borrowed time. There is no more money; the only currency is time. Taking a ten minute bus ride can cost hours, staying in one night in a high class hotel costs two months. (Two months for one night? That's a crap deal.) In Time's stylized world of attractive 25 year olds who press wrist flesh to trade time with each other is a weird sci-fi bent that's never truly convincing.

Scrambling for as much time as he can in the ghetto is Justin Timberlake, who one day meets a suicidal Matt Bomer from White Collar in a bar. Bomer gives him a hundred years and "times himself out". Timberlake immediately suffers a tragedy when he's unable to reach his hot mom Olivia Wilde (talk about a MILF) before she times out on her birthday. In his grief, Timberlake uses the time given to him to live it up in the rich part of town, "New Greenwich", where he lives out his James Bond fantasies of staying in luxury suites, gambling in casinos while wearing a tuxedo, and getting invited to the palatial home of the villain, Vincent Kartheiser of Mad Men. Kartheiser, much older than he looks, seems to control all the time in the world. Of course, Kartheiser has a hot, rebellious daughter, Amanda Seyfried. Of course, Seyfried is conveniently the same age as Timberlake, both actually in their mid-20s. And of course, Seyfried falls for Timberlake, after he kidnaps her and hides her in the ghetto when he's discovered by Cillian Murphy, a timekeeper who hunts down those who commit time crimes. 

Once on the lam, Seyfried gets her huge eyes full of the injustices her father's corporation perpetrates, keeping the poor people constantly desperate for time, lining up for "time loans". Meanwhile, they're chased not just by Murphy and his time cops but by swaggering dandy time bandit Alex Pettyfer from I Am Number Four, the local crime lord. Timberlake and Seyfried decide to become the Bonnie and Clyde of time, breaking into her father's local time banks to steal time, and then give the time to the poor. Finally, Timberlake and Seyfried decide to take down the biggest time vault of all and head back to New Greenwich to steal a million years from Kartheiser. Kartheiser argues that giving a million people in the ghetto a year each won't make much difference, and you know what? He's right. But by this point in time, In Time is in it too deep as a goofy action movie to bend to any rational logic.

Besides swiping ideas freely from The Matrix, Bonnie and Clyde, Robin Hood, and Metropolis, In Time even riffs from Over The Top; there's a form of "prize fighting" involving clasping wrists to take each other's time, and the one who bends his wrist over the top gets all the time the other has. Timberlake's dead father was a "time fighter". Wait, people pay time to watch these "fights"? It has all the dramatic tension of a really awkward handshake. In Time also cheats with how much time Timberlake and Seyfried actually have; at first the audience is seemingly encouraged to keep count as Timberlake scrambles for time, but then as he and Seyfried gain time and have time stolen from them repeatedly, the movie fudges the numbers and prefers you just go with whatever the plot says. And that's about all the time I have to discuss In Time.

Anonymous

ANONYMOUS

** SPOILERS **

Anonymous is a dreary slog preaching a message most people don't want to hear: that William Shakespeare is not the author of any of the plays, poems and sonnets attributed to him. Having destroyed the world in Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, director Roland Emmerich set his sights on taking that fraud Shakespeare down. Uh, thanks? Anonymous makes no bones about who the true author of Shakespeare's work is: Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. Beginning in present day, when Derek Jacobi enthralls a packed playhouse by standing still on stage and narrating the story of that slimy con artist Will Shakespeare, Anonymous flashes back to an impressively computer-generated 1600's England, when de Vere (Rhys Ifans) is an old man and Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) is in her old crone years, before flashing back again 40 years to when de Vere was a young boy writing plays ("A Midsummer Night's Dream") for Elizabeth when she was in her young bloom of hotness (played by Redgrave's daughter Joely Richardson). Then Anonymous flashes forward 20 years to de Vere as a young stud (played by Jamie Campbell Bower), writing his forbidden plays while under the charge of Robert Cecil, the Earl of Canterbury (David Thewlis). As a person of noble birth in Protestant England, being a playwright is an unseemly vocation, but de Vere can't resist seeing his plays performed for "the mob" at the Globe theatre. Thus he hatches a scheme for his plays to be "written by" his handpicked playwright Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto). And they would have gotten away with it too, if not for some illiterate, philandering, low-rent, charlatan actor from Stratford-on-Avon named William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall) who rushed up on stage and hogged the credit for the plays (before he crowd surfed the Groundlings in the Globe in what has to be England's inaugural mosh pit). Spall plays Shakespeare as if Emmerich instructed him to watch Mozart in Amadeus and then play him just like that, only not a genius. Anonymous upstages its own scandal about Shakespeare by delving into Queen Elizabeth's youthful promiscuity and spinning a yarn of royal incest that would make Buster and Lucille Bluth blush: de Vere and Elizabeth had the hots for each other and sired a bastard son, who was hidden away unsuspectingly as the Earl of Southhampton. But de Vere is himself a bastard born of a young Elizabeth and was hidden away as the Earl of Oxford! Oh schnap! De Vere did the nasty in the past-y with his mom! Their son is also her grandson! I bet old Bill Shakespeare could have written a hell of a play about that.

Chronicle

CHRONICLE

** SPOILERS **

In Chronicle, three teenage boys are gifted by a radioactive orb of some sort with the power of telekinesis and learn with great power comes great capacity for death and destruction. A "found footage" movie in the style of Cloverfield, Chronicle's stripped down, low budget, HD camera documentary approach belies its most remarkable power: jolting audiences with a realistic and thrilling depiction of what superpowered teens of today would actually be like flying through the air and heaving massive objects like cars and helicopters at each other with wanton abandon. You will believe the boys in Chronicle can fly! (And you'll wish you could too.)

Meanwhile, Chronicle ably tells the stories of the three high schoolers, charismatic Big Man on Campus Steve (Michael B. Jordan), square-jawed and thoughtful good guy Matt (Alex Russell), and troubled powderkeg Andrew (Dane DeHaan), with a shaky-cam verisimilitude* that invokes Friday Night Lights (which Jordan starred in during its final two seasons). Matt's last name is Garrety, perhaps an ode to Minka Kelly's FNL heartbreaker Lyla? Indeed, much tragedy could have been averted if only Coach Taylor could have been there to guide these kids and instill the virtues of "clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." 

After discovering the orb and gaining the ability to move objects with their minds, the three boys bond while exploring the parameters and dangers of their new abilities. The fun of being able to play pranks on the unsuspecting around town soon gives way to terror when Andrew callously causes a car accident that nearly kills a man. Matt insists on the three adhering to rules to keep people from getting hurt. Steve attempts to get Andrew, who is continually bullied by the knuckleheads at school and abused by his cartoonishly alcoholic father at home, to open up and share in his popularity, maybe even get him laid. As Andrew's power develops and his situation at home worsens, his psyche - already prone to sociopathic tendencies - starts to unravel. To Matt's increasing horror, Andrew twistedly begins to fancy himself an "apex predator" among humans. 

Chronicle takes surprising twists in its storytelling - one daring stunner in particular - while pushing for realistic, logical conclusions to the boys' actions as it dabbles with the established tropes of superhero origin stories. Chronicle borrows its themes heavily from X-Men and Spider-Man with a touch of M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable. Its ultraviolent climactic battle, with the kids causing millions of dollars of damage as they smash each other through downtown Seattle, recalls the seminal conflagration between Superman and General Zod, Ursa and Non in Superman II. When the boys discover their telekinesis allows them to fly, the aerial acrobatics are thrilling and amazing, taking the immediacy and perspectives seen in Hancock's flying scenes to even greater heights. The "you are there with them" POVs of the flying scenes are breathtaking. The superpowered action feels far more visceral and authentic than recent superhero tentpoles like Green Lantern or Captain America.

Chronicle's Kryptonite comes in the trappings of its found footage documentary style - the movie labors to justify how and why Andrew and other characters film every moment, well past the point of it making sense how and why a camera happens to be operating at certain inopportune times. ("I'm just filming things now," is often the throwaway explanation.) The conceit unravels when one wonders who edited this "found footage" into a movie anyway? Upon closer inspection, Chronicle also isn't really about anything; there is no greater theme to the tale, no life lessons to be learned, and no secrets revealed regarding where that orb that granted the boys their powers came from - just the terrible tragedy of too much power in the hands of young people who aren't emotionally equipped to handle it. Chronicle also cheats in the final conflict between Matt and Andrew where they hurl each other through buildings repeatedly, the impact of which should have killed them. 

And yet, like the wink-wink pseudo-magic show Steve and Andrew put on in their school talent show to applause and acclaim, Chronicle is filled to the brim with jaw-dropping "how'd they do that?" moments. Chronicle boasts some of the coolest, most convincing superhero action ever seen in the movies, made for a tiny fraction of what Hollywood spends on its summer blockbuster spectacles. It is a rare movie beast that builds and builds throughout and then actually over delivers in spectacular fashion in its third act. An immersive and impressive superhero achievement by director Josh Trank and writer Max Landis, Chronicle is a marvel.

* A word to the wise: The shaky cam can cause motion sickness. Don't sit too close to the screen. I found this out the hard way.

The Grey

THE GREY

** SPOILERS **

"Once more into the frey..."

International terrorists have proven no match for Liam Neeson in Taken, nor have shadowy assassins in Unknown. In The Grey, Neeson battles Mother Nature herself, and her agents, killer Alaskan wolves. A somber, suicidal paid assassin for an Alaskan oil drilling company, Neeson's primary function in life is to shoot  the wolves that threaten their digs while silently yearning in heartbreak for his lost wife. When a horrific plane crash strands him and several other oil riggers in the frozen northern Alaskan wilderness, Neeson's (limited) survival knowledge is the only thing keeping the survivors alive as wolves pick them off one by one. The plane crash sequence in The Grey is as white-knuckle inducing as it gets, though the odds of so many men walking away from such a crash relatively intact is the first of many pulls against the fierce verisimilitude The Grey belabors. (Most of the survivors are bitten by wolves but manage to shake off the pain for as long as the screenplay requires.) Besides Neeson, Dermot Mulroney is the only other name actor in the cast, but the standout is Frank Grillo (who was Joel Edgerton's trainer in the equally manly Warrior). Grillo starts off as an arrogant antagonist feigning bravery where there is none but undergoes an emotional transformation in the crucible of their dilemma. His final moments of surrender to the hopelessness of their predicament are heartbreaking. The wolves, fearsome opponents that they are for the survivors, are real pros -- they read the screenplay and knew exactly when to attack for maximum shock and carnage and when to hang back to give Neeson and the cast ample time for male bonding and brief but effective character studies. The wolves also deserve credit for eschewing movie cliches and not killing the lone black guy first. Neeson is in top form, admirably holding it all together despite being "scared shitless" and doing his best to find a way to lead his shrinking party to some kind of safety. Particularly fascinating is the fact that Neeson's decision-making is faulty; his strategy of leading the men towards the forest in hopes of avoiding the wolves' den ended up accomplishing the exact opposite result. Director Joe Carnanhan (The A-Team) paints a bleak, harrowing portrait of Man enduring against the insurmountable fury of both Mother Nature and Man's inner nature. The Grey's effect lingers long after the final, iconic image of Neeson, armed with  a blade and a fist of glass shards ready to face the Alpha Wolf mano e wolfo for all the marbles, fades to black.