“Life itself is filled with no reason.”

Watch the film with this as your mantra and it keeps weirdness in check. Mostly. Kind of.

A rubber car tire named Robert erupts from the desert ground as curious onlookers watch through binoculars. Robert rolls over a water bottle, crushing it. Then a living scorpion, crushing it. Then a beer bottle, which he has a bit of trouble crushing but finally succeeds when he builds up momentum and blows up the bottle with … his mind. Yes, Robert has a brain.

Because he knows he can, Robert begins destroying everything in his path with his telepathic head exploding power, including an innocent bunny rabbit and a crow. He then turns his focus to killing humans he doesn’t particularly like, humans who are tire biased. He quickly becomes a full-fledged serial killer on the loose and no one’s safe.

This atypical “horror” movie asks the question, can anything be made into the antagonist of a movie? This tire certainly succeeds in making an unstoppable threat. But the line is blurred between what is reality and what is make believe.

Rubber plays out as if Quentin Dupieux woke up from a very twisted dream and wrote it down in script form. It could be argued as an existentialist film, but honestly it just falls into an unsuccessful attempt to make a weird dream into a movie.

The end scene and song are truly the best part of the entire film.

Rubber is officially released in theaters April 1, 2011 or see it now on iTunes.

Buttery’s Rating:

Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) grew up with the disapproval of his father James (Tom Wilkinson), a shrewd businessman who always put his newspaper, “The Daily Sentinel,” at the top of his priority list. As rebelion to his father’s uncaring, Britt led the party boy lifestyle until one day he learned on the news that his father died of a heart attack and that he now owned the very newspaper his father abandoned him for. His father’s mechanic Kato (Jay Chou) is the only person Britt trusts to make him a good cup of coffee. When Britt bonds with Kato over unhappy memories of his father the two have a drunken night of cut the head off Dad’s memorial statue. While they are finishing the cut they witness a gang rob a couple walking down the street. Britt tries to help the couple but ends up on the ground in a knocked out pile while Kato takes out every member of the gang. From this event Britt decides the pair should become superheroes posing as villains and use the newspaper Britt‘s father left him to publicize their antics and to actually fight the gang crime that seems to be taking over Los Angeles.

Seth Rogen wrote this script with Evan Goldberg so it is far from the original serious villain concept, venturing into slapstick comedy with a martial arts twist. And of course Seth Rogen took the lead role as The Green Hornet for himself, but I did not feel the connection to his character because of it. Seth Rogen is a great funny man, but his attempt to pull off the Green Hornet character was a flop. Jay Chou as Kato stole the show, as did Cameron Diaz who played Britt‘s secretary and both Britt and Kato‘s love interest, Lenore. The special effects were spectacularly awesome and the villainous gang lord Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) was both hilarious and terrifying. It was great to see Edward James Olmos on the big screen (we yelled out “Adama!” when we saw him) as both James‘s and Britt‘s trusted newspaper confidante Axford. David Harbour‘s two faced role as District Attorney Scanlon was predictable at best, and I’m very happy with how the movie left his character.

The local theater where we saw the film only offered this movie in 3D. But it was post-filming 3D so everything looked layered instead of 3-dimensional as it should. I wish we didn’t have to waste our money on the 3D, nothing interesting happens with it, but it’s only available in theaters in 3D. This movie is, however, worth sitting in the dark theater for because it is action packed and does have a lot of inside joke references that are fun to laugh at because you’re in the know.

Purchase your tickets to see The Green Hornet 3D through Fandango.

Buttery’s Rating:

Recommendation

In honor of Chudnofsky renaming himself Bloodnofsky, we feast on Herr’s Heinz Ketchup Flavored Potato Chips.

Let’s drink some IZZE Fortified Sparkling Apple Juice. Why? Because it’s GREEN!

There’s nothing quite like a cat and mouse game in medieval Disneyland.

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are two hitmen sent to Bruges, Belgium after an inexcusable botched hit in a London church. Their instructions are to lie low until their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) contacts them with further instructions. Problem is, Ray doesn’t find Bruges quite as charming as Ken or Harry do and he’s having a very difficult time not stirring up any trouble he can find in the medieval fairy tale land.

Instead of staying in the hotel to wait for Harry‘s phone call, Ray and Ken take in some nighttime sights and meet up with an American dwarf actor named Jimmy (Jordan Prentice) and a Belgian drug dealer named Chloë (Clémence Poésy), both on set of a film being made in the streets of of Bruges. Despite having a good time with Jimmy and Chloë, Ray begins to fall into a suicidal state over the botched church job until he learns that his life is actually in danger because of that job.

Colin Farrell delivers a surprisingly amazing performance in this film. His non-politically-correct dialog about little people, gays, and the mentally challenged is embarrassingly hysterical. (You know you shouldn’t laugh out loud, but you do anyway, and so do the rest of the theater goers, so you’re all going to Hell together!) Also, his character’s crisis of conscience over his actions during the church-job-gone-wrong shows a tender and vulnerable side of him that is very uncharacteristic but brilliantly carried out. One of the running jokes of the movie is that Ray cannot stand being in Bruges, but the city is actually spectacularly beautiful and world famous for its medieval architecture, canals, and artwork, so watching the film take place in Bruges is a visual treat.

Slight spoiler: Two of the scenes near the end of the movie are very gruesome. Brace yourself.

Buttery’s Rating:

Recommendation

French fries with mayonnaise are a definite must while In Bruges.

A nice Belgian Hoegaarden Verboden Vrucht (Forbidden Fruit) will wash down those pommes frites as you watch Colin and Clémence run their yummy selves around the screen.