The Jacket

Am I dead? Am I alive? Are these the movies of the future? THE LORDS OF DOGTOWN—If you didn’t see Dogtown And Z Boys, this is the movie for you. If you DID manage to see that documentary, then you got the real story and you probably don’t need it fed to you by Heat Ledger and Emile Hirsch. I like both of those guys, but since David Fincher is no longer attached to direct, I’m in doubt of the movie itself. But Catherine Hardwicke did well with Thirteen, so we’ll see.

Basically, this movie is about the birth of skateboarding as a counter-culture phenomenon. I’ll see it at some point, but I don’t have really high hopes for it.

FEVER PITCH—And speaking of movies that I don’t have much hope for…This is the one that the World Series ruined the ending for because the Sox won.

Now, Jimmy Fallon used to be funny. But ever since the first preview for Taxi came out, I have lost ALL faith in him. But I still love Drew Barrymore. I’ll see her in just about anything. So I’ll see this one, too. If only for the scene where she gets beaned in the face by a foul ball.

HOUSE OF WAX—Why, Dark Castle? WHY!?!?! They’re on their way to remaking every single Vincent Price movie ever made. (Can we look forward to an Edward Scissorhands remake?) But now they’re really done it. Paris Hilton is in this one. I think I need to avoid this one just because that stupid bitch is in it. It doesn’t even matter that Elisha Cuthbert is in it.

Well, maybe if they kill her in a really slow and painful way (while she’s naked) I’ll check it out. And her stupid little dog, too.

UNLEASHED—This is the first preview I’ve seen of this that almost makes it look like it won’t be totally stupid. Jet Li is a man who has been brought up like a dog and trained to kill when his collar is taken off. Yeah, it always looked just that stupid. But now that there’s a full trailer and I know that Morgan Freeman is in it I think it might actually be kinda cool.

And at least it’s no longer called Danny The Dog.

Now, let’s find out what the fuck is going on with this jacket.

As luck would have it, this movie is NOT about a possessed jacket that makes Adrien Brody kill everyone who comes in contact with him. It’s actually about a veteran of the first Gulf War who is sent to a mental institution.

You see, Jack Starks (Brody) was shot in the head back in Iraq. Now, a year later, he has been wrongfully accused (we think) of killing a cop in a small town. They send him to the institution where he is “treated” by Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson). He and the orderlies put him in a straight jacket (yes, the one of the title) and stick him into a morgue drawer where he is made to think about his crime. What they don’t know is that the drugs and isolation, when combined with his broken mind, send him to the future where he meets Jackie (Keira Knightly looking REALLY good as a raging alcoholic—even one of my viewing buddies who has never really found her attractive said that she looked good—he’s insane). The two future lovers now have to figure out how he died.

So, this is kind of like Jacob’s Ladder (the poster even looks like the cover art for the earlier movie) meets Donnie Darko meets The Butterfly Effect. Except it’s not as creepy as Jacob’s Ladder, not as good as Donnie Darko and has MUCH better acting than Butterfly Effect.

Actually, the acting is really good. Adrien and Keira are great as the nearly doomed couple who meet under really weird-ass circumstances. Kris is very good as the semi-evil doctor who may just really think that he’s helping his “patients.” And Jennifer Jason Leigh is…um…well, she’s actually kind of wasted as the good doctor who actually kind of believes Jack.

Hollywood seems obsessed with this kind of movie lately. Ever since they found out that a weird movie like Donnie Darko can find an audience (even if it was well after its DVD release) they have been trying to do it again. So far, they really haven’t succeeded. Now they have an Oscar winner and a recent geek-boy fantasy playing lovers. (And, for all you geek boys out there (myself included), yes we get to see more of Keira than we, as an American audience, have before.) Maybe that will bring the crowds in for a theatrical release!

Well, if you keep plugging it as a straight-on horror movie and booking it into tiny theatres you’re not going to make your money back. (The theatre I saw it in was the smallest in the multi-plex and there were only about 20 or so people there. And this was Saturday night!) One of my friends said that, based on the preview, she was NOT going to see it. She already hated it.

Too bad for her because the movie’s not bad. (Glowing praise, indeed!) Just don’t think about it too much like I did.

And here’s my main beef with it: the whole premise is based on the fact that a cop was stupid and didn’t do his job. When a cop pulls a car over they immediately call it in to the station. So he should have told the station that he was pulling a CAR over. When they got to the scene of the cop killing, they would have found no car. Even if the cop hadn’t said that there were two people in the car (the other one was Brad Renfro) SOMEONE had to have driven the car off. And, since Jack didn’t have gloves on his prints would have been all over the gun, which they weren’t because he never held it. And, even if the cop didn’t call it in at all, wouldn’t there be tire tracks or something that said that there was a car there?

That’s a pretty dumb plot hole that, unfortunately, gets the whole movie going. Without that bit of stupidity there would have been no movie. I hate that.

So, yeah, don’t think about that. (Heh heh.) It’s kind of a cool movie.