flick picks: Extract and Gamer
September 17, 2009 by The Red and Black Archives
Filed under Out & About
EXTRACT
From writer and producer Mike Judge, the man responsible for the cult classic “Office Space,” comes “Extract.” Instead of a menial, cubicle-confined employee searching for something better, the main character is a blue-collar boss named Joel Reynolds (Jason Bateman), managing both his oddball employees and his chaotic personal life.
While many Americans dream of owning their own successful business, Joel Reynolds is trapped in a hell of his own making. With a wife who refuses his sexual advances after 8 p.m., a worker who is injured in a very inappropriate place, and a very attractive temp named Cindy who is actually a con-woman, Joel is barely able to keep his head above water.
After the harmed employee’s injury causes him to lose part of his manhood, he decides to sue Joel. While dealing with the lawsuit, Joel is also plotting to get out of his marriage.
Joel’s friend, Dean, devises a scheme to get his wife to cheat on him so he can, in turn, sleep with the hot new temp. Juggling so many balls at once, Joel is bound to drop a few, which provides plenty of laughs and material for comedy.
While this movie isn’t short on humor, it is slightly short on a good plot line. After seeing a few trailers, the funniest parts of the movie are given away. However, Mike Judge does continue to keep the humor flowing throughout the movie.
VERDICT: While not an instant classic like “Office Space,” this movie is almost as funny. It captures the comical aspects of everyday life in the workplace. Most audience members can relate to and laugh along with this movie. The combination of dry humor and outrageous antics should appeal to many different people, making this move hard to hate.
- Ruthie Elmore
GAMER
Written and directed by Neveldine/Taylor (separately known as Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor), “Gamer” is slick, incomprehensible trash.
Gerard Butler, as Kable, a death row inmate who’s signed up for the chance to fight his way to freedom, shoots a lot, and explodes stuff – buildings, cars and people.
But in the latest from the professional filmmaking duo who made “Crank” and “Crank: High Voltage,” there isn’t much to make sense of in the way of story. Events and characters, after about 30 minutes, start to collide and refract off one another until the screen goes black. Game over.
Beneath its “plot,” there are some things that “Gamer” tries to teach us: Virtual reality keeps you from the real reality, which is, like, bad; women who wear tight clothing spend more time in front of the camera (and frequently die more often); fetishizing every action (making a sandwich, eating a waffle) in minute close-up is creepier in the “Dexter” title sequence; stuffing good actors in weird roles doesn’t make those characters more interesting; and just because you can shoot every other scene like the stoned punk protégé of Paul Greengrass doesn’t mean you should.
But what does “Gamer” really teach us? That low-budget action films, no matter how pretty, are still terribly low-budget; preaching social responsibility from a pulpit built on gore seems hypocritical; Jason Statham makes a better one-man killing machine than Butler (it’s easier to miss the bad dialogue due to his accent); and Ludacris should hire a new agent.
VERDICT: No, the only real game being played is between Neveldine/Taylor and audiences: They keep amping up the craziness hoping for a reaction. The only one worth giving is getting your money back.
- Adam Carlson
