Looper

A blunderbuss is a sawed-off shotgun owned by Loopers, hit men in 2044. It has little to no range and is used only to blow a massive hole in the chest of a confounded enemy of a crime syndicate from the future. The crime syndicate is run by a telekinetic, mommy-issues son-of-a-bitch deemed The Rainmaker. Time travel was discovered around this time and immediately made illegal. The Rainmaker doesn't care apparently and uses time travel to dispose of his enemies. The Rainmaker sent Jeff Daniels back from 2074 to 2044 to run the underground Looping scene of a Kansas City that resembles Gotham. Joseph Gordon-Levit works for Bridges. JGL is paid well for disposing of The Rainmaker's disposables. He is faxed a a time, drives to a field outside the city, sets a tarp on the ground and waits for the trash to appear out of thin air, blunderbusses the victim, who is hooded and carries JGL's cash, blocks of silver. All is well for a bit.

We learn that The Rainmaker, in 2074 is closing loops. This means that he's sending back the aged looper's themselves to be killed by themselves. This is called being 'looped'. Rainmaker attaches gold instead of silver to the soon-to-be blunderbussed loopers. They kill their future selves, live for thirty more years and then--are sent back to be killed by themselves again? Herein lies the hook. Time travel doesn't make sense.

Rian Johnson made a kick ass movie called Brick with JGL a few years back. He also made The Brother's Bloom. These are cool movies and like some of his counterparts--Nicolas Refn--Rian is all about cool. You can't have a cool movie if characters are blabbering on about metaphysics and Wittgenstein. Making good movies hinges on a writer/director's dedication to set parameters. Rian, here, sticks to his blunderbusses and sets his aim on us, most resoundingly, in a diner scene that rivals any other epic diner scene.

Bruce Willis play older JGL. Their name is Joe. Young Joe is sensing that he is about to be looped--about to kill his older self. The fact that he senses that his time is up leads us to believe that shit ain't going to go well. Joe has that sixth sense that makes him into a main character. He's got that grit. Old Joe isn't ready to be looped either. Old Joe has found love. This is Rian riffing on the human condition amongst a good amount of chaos. It's handled well enough inasmuch as I found myself nodding, "Yeah, I get that. He's got to go back but he's not going to go back quietly. He loves that woman enough to disrupt all of the future and the past. Time travel and love. Ok. Got it." Old Joe appears on young Joe's tarp in a field. They both stall. Old Joe avoids being blunderbussed and young Joe gets knocked unconscious.

They catch up with each other in the diner where they always (used to always) take down some steak and eggs after a kill. Imagine, you're in a diner with yourself thirty years from now. An Ivy League educated director would keep us here for a few hours. Rian disposes of the ridiculousness with a few blunderbussed lines and we learn that old Joe is going to kill The Rainmaker before The Rainmaker experiences an off putting childhood, complete with watching his mother die. Young Joe has to kill old Joe or else he'll only be living old Joe's life and not a life of his own--destiny and free will type stuff. Young Joe finds The Rainmaker first, posts up next to Emily Blunt, The Rainmaker's mom. Old Joe lingers getting to the farm where Rainmaker and Blunt live. He lingers long enough to allow Blunt and JGL to 'come together'. The rest is not predictable and worth paying to see. Believe it or not, I've revealed very little if anything about the movie. But there was something lacking.

There was space in this movie for real guts. In the end, it came off as a tame. Rian never really filled that space. Channing Tatum could have made an appearance without much going awry. It was light enough that a choreographed dance scene is already in the works for the Bollywood re-make. Rian Johnson has written and directed a pretty incredible movie but it lacked the grit to make me cringe, or feel much of anything for that matter. I feel that the 'cool' might have supplanted the grime. And that's ok if that's what you're going for. I just needed some real tragedy to take me full tilt.

Argo

A story too good (for Hollywood) to be true gets Afflecked

Argo is a movie about the rescuing of six hostages from an Iran that seemed really scary. The story is a real one in that it's true that there were six U.S. government employees hiding out in the Canadian Ambassador's Tehran home after the embassy was seized by rebels. It is also true that the CIA hatched a plan to extract the six that called for them to pose as movie makers from Hollywood. Furthermore, it's true that the Hollywood plan--Argo--worked. The public didn't know about the heist until Clinton used his POTUS letter opener to unseal the story--he thought Iran was less scary in the 90s. Ben Aflleck took the helm on this one. He also stared in it. Therefore, Argo is a movie about the rescuing of six hostages from an Iran that seemed really scary, but it's ultimately a movie about a story that has been "Afflecked" (to be pronounced in a loud, obnoxious Donald Duck voice ala Aflac commercials).

Ah-flek-t -
v. 1.) The means by which an event or narrative is infused with many moments of seriousness and emotive focusing and/or elaborating on the state of things.
v. 2.) To hijack a script/story for one's personal gain.
v. 3.) To stamp a film or script with the approval of Ben Affleck.
adj. 4) With an aura of sweeping earth shatter

When a story gets Afflecked a few things are going to happen. In the first place, Affleck, himself, has to be on the screen as much as possible. Nothing is truly Afflecked unless the experience of the recently Afflecked narrative hinges on several moments of Ben getting really serious. There will be a moment, undoubtedly, wherein, as a viewer, you need Ben to get the other characters over the hump and engaged with the rising or falling action. This is accomplished by Ben getting down to brass taxes. In this moment, Ben will turn off the charm, he'll forget about how tired he is, how down and out the prospects look. He'll pause, breath deeply, focus like a Zen master, and deliver a seamless summary of the options, no sugar coating. For instance:

Good Will Hunting -

The Town - "We lost our dog the year before and uh...I wanted to make these posters, in case my mother was lost someone could call us. Like the guy who found our dog. To this day my father will tell you he helped me make the posters, but he didn't. Sat in the kitchen drank a case of beer while I went up by myself on school street asking people if they'd seen my mother. Her name was Dorris. My grandmother had a place, it's a restaurant, 'Tangerine  Flower', so I used to imagine maybe that's where she went. Then I came to terms with the fact that it doesn't really matter. You know, where ever she went she had good reason to leave here. She didn't wanna be my mother anymore and she...she wasn't coming back. And now you know a little bit about my family, but I'm still not showing you my apartment."

Boiler Room:

Armageddon:

The Town (OK, just one more):

Pearl Harbor: "Loving you kept me alive."

The Company Men:

Chasing Amy:

As you can see when things are Afflecked they become so less 'bro' and all the more human. The condition that is a human one comes racing to the forefront and all that has been boilling up, with the help of an Afflecked dose of bravery and gall, billows over the top and we're left with an incredulous Ben staring into our soul. He's just so damn honest!

Argo is a really great movie. Thankfully, to be Afflecked no longer equates to rom-com level melo-drama. This movie is professional and hopeful. Undoubtedly Ben wrote in his moments but they're tame and necessary for the plot (unlike The Town). Take it as a feel good Hollywood ending without unnecessary Hollywood angst. Do your best to forget about all the aforementioned moments of movies being Afflecked and focus on the story as a fun, socio-political movie about a time when things were annoyingly serious. No doubt this was a rather horrific experience for many but for us it's a nice little Saturday. That's how Hollywood and Affleck would have it, right?