LAWLESS (2012)

Three "lawless" brothers run moonshine off in the deep woods during the Prohibition.  Being "lawless" they use nothing but child labor to run the stills and only use the tears of the children, instead of water, to make the shine.  They also pass the time by raping everybody...wait, what?  Oh, they're not that "lawless" after all?  Well shit.  The only laws these "lawless" criminals actually do disobey are the manufacturing & selling alcohol and then getting violent when they have to.

Enough  about the misleading title.  The real story is about three good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm, makin' their way the only way they know how but that's just a little bit more than the law will allow.  There's also some stuff about the different women in their lives, but it all goes exactly as you would expect.  Actually the entire film goes pretty much by the numbers.  Mild violence, pretty women, potentially epic story material told with a pathetically average script, good acting by supporting actor Dane DeHaan, pretty scenery and a disappointingly small role by Gary Oldman.

When I heard about this film I was imagining all kinds of exciting gun battles, old timey slang and ultraviolence with a breakneck pace, but instead LAWLESS just putters along and never really goes anywhere.  Worth a watch, but just barely.  I know I'll never watch it ever again.  If you need me, I'll be in my room drinkin' some corn squeezin's.

INCEPTION (2010)

Angus McCootybritches is the world's most highly skilled dream theft. But he can't just get into your dreams using hocus pocus.  No, first he has to, in the real world, get a hold of your body, then put you under and infiltrate your noggin. One day, a super rich dude employs him to implant an idea into somebody's noodle. People say it can't be done, but Leo knows it can, because he once implanted an idea into somebody's mind and, well, it worked a little too well. Fast-forward some and Leo has assembled his top-notch crew of dream warriors to sneak in and go multiple layers down into the target's brain.

I liked the movie alright, but I kept expecting more.  I was also very disappointed in just how boring the dreams were! I dream about all kinda of wacky shit: rats with mechanical legs chasing me down the cereal aisle at HEB; an intellectually disabled samurai taking a shit on a child's birthday cake; a demon-possessed pot hole that chases cars down and kills people; Leatherface chasing me around my kitchen with his chainsaw; Jesus getting beaten to death in the restroom of a Waffle House by an assassin boxing kangaroo; Stanley Kubrick being alive a directing this movie; people filming a big budget zombie movie getting attacked by real zombies, but never just sitting around in the bar of a hotel talking.  Then again, I'm a worthless piece of shit that should have been shot to death with a shotgun as soon as I came out of the womb, so what do I know?

Mildly entertaining, but it definitely could have been better.

BRONSON (2008)

You ever wondered what would happen if Mr. Bean gained a 100 lbs. of muscle and turned into a violent psychopath? Yea, me neither, but BRONSON answers the question anyway.

Human punching machine, Michael Peterson, who, later in life, would call himself Charles Bronson, is a punch-drunk loser who goes around punching everything while screaming "You cunts!!!". Eventually all that punching catches up to him and he's thrown in prison. In prison, he continues punching things until they get tired of his punching and send him to an insane asylum. Finally he runs out of stuff to punch so they let him go. As a free man he punches things like gypsies, humans and dogs for money. Naturally, "the Man" is jealous of Bronson's punching abilities so he's thrown back in prison where the guards continue the mind-boggling habit of allowing him to repeatedly take hostages. They also, for whatever reason, only confront him right in the punching region. You would think they would just tear gas him, but I guess it's more fun getting punched. The End.

You would hope a story about the "most violent prisoner in Britain" would be interesting, but I found the whole thing to be a mess. There was zero character development to this guy. He just ran around nonstop bashing shit like the caveman on Aqua Teen Hunger Force when he sees fire. Even worse is the fight scenes were all really short and completely unconvincing, by that, I mean tons of non-connecting punches and pulled punches. Also, there were times before the main character started calling himself Charlie that people were already calling him Charlie. I found that confusing. Overall, the entire thing looked very low-budget...I don't mind low-budget movies, but I do mind when movies look like shit because of it.

There was material here for a good film, but it didn't happen. The whole thing was weak and nowhere as violent as I had hoped it would be. Outside of the language and multiple shots of the dude's tallywacker, this movie could probably air on network TV. Also, I have absolutely no idea what the quote "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE for the 21 Century" on the poster means. That makes zero sense.

EDIT: Well, I guess I'm going to have to have to backpedal on my review a little. I just read some stuff on Wikipedia about the real life "Charles Bronson" (Michael Peterson) and he's taken hostages at least 6 times. So it appears that some of the stupid shit that happened in the movie actually happened in real life. It also said that he was released from prison not once, but twice! Brilliant!