We're guessing you're not supposed to stay tuned to one particular HBO channel all night long....since unlike the Big 3 networks, they don't have to worry about programming one entire night for 18 to 35 year old males living in their parents' basements or the 18 to 35 year old females who think those 18 to 35 year old males are taking longer to mature than fine wine......
So....stretched out on the couch and too lazy to hit the remote, we absorbed, from 8 pm to Midnight, back to back movies on one single HBO channel....and what a gloriously insane combination they were! The pairing of these two cinematic tub-o-butter popcorn confections reminded the BQ of the kind of insanely odd double features you could scarf up at neighborhood theatres long before they were twinned, multiplexed and Imaxed into corporate entities. Back then....we're talkin' l930's to l960's....you could take in a western and a sci-fi epic, or a weepy romance paired with a horror film, or a biblical tale on the same bill with a....well, you get the idea......so God bless you for an eclectic unforgettable evening, HBO....when you slapped together.....
GODS OF EGYPT The old epic-meister Cecil B.DeMille must drool in envy as he looks down from heaven at the way they make costume spectacles nowadays. No more shlepping thousands of extras, camels and horses into an actual desert. These overheated myths now get made with a few gym-hardened actors working in a downtown warehouse draped in green screens....everything else (crowds, pyramids, monsters, earthquakes, tsunamis, abs) gets digitally drawn in by 1,479 computer artists in college sweatshirts, Bermuda shorts and flip flops....and whose names make the film's credit crawl longer than the uncut 'Heaven's Gate'.
This movie's nutball premise depicts an ancient Egypt where the teeming mortal hordes are actively governed by their deities,,,,you can tell the gods apart from the mere humans cause they've been digitally enlarged so they all look like XXL-sized NFL linebackers when standing next to the regular folk. And also, they're almost all played by Brits....since gods should always sound classy and important. I'll make no foolhardy attempt to belabor the plot, which involves a scrawny human and his cute girlfriend running afoul of a badass god (Gerard Butler) who has just staged a divine coup by fatally stabbing his own brother (so much for godlike immortality) . If you like this sort of stuff, GOE does not disappoint.....there's trips to the underworld,(you go down there by screwing downward into the sand, like a Phillips--head nail) gods turning into shiny metal birds, and the BQ's personal favorite, two smokin' hot god-babes bronco-busting some giant worm dragons....yowza. BQ walks like an Egyptian and gives it 2 1/2 pyramids.....
Of course, all god things must come to an end and after taking a delightful nap while the flip-flopped digital artists names inched upward on the TV, it was time for the next HBO goodie, as far away from Gods Of Egypt as the earth is to Jupiter....and we settled in to view...
HOW TO BE SINGLE....which was this year's New York City rom-com traditionally dumped into theatres on the weekend closest to Valentine's Day (the only other approved date for films like this is Super Bowl weekend, giving girls ample reason to flee the man-caves and head for the multiplex) Not much to say about HTBS....other than it could be alternately titled "She's Just Not That Into Anybody." You know the drill....attractive yuppie girls fall in and out of love with a variety of guys, some of whom are touchy-feely sensitive souls, while others remain unrepentant douchebags or somewhere between the two extremes. Dakota Johnson, of "50 Shades" does winsome to perfection and at least here nobody ties her up. Rebel Wilson,at regularly scheduled intervals, fullfills her required task of energizing the film with her "Pitch Perfect" Fat Amy party animal persona. The guys? Other than Damon Wayons Jr's single dad character (designed to make you cry), I can't remember anyone memorable.....except the one guy awarded the screenplay's only standout moment....in which he does a lengthy, borderline psychotic version of that tiresome scriptwriter's gag..."....I'm just kidding with you....no, I'm not kidding.....no, I was just messin' with ya...no, I'm really not kidding..." Sporadically funny, once and awhile romantic....we'll blow it 2 kisses only....
Stroke of midnight ended our mash-up double feature and the BQ happily went to bed dreaming a combination of the two films.....in which Dakota Johnson yelled 'Yeehaa' while astride the huge dragon-worm thing and Rebel Wilson turned into a silver bird and swooped down on the annoying "just kidding with you" guy....we abruptly woke up at the point where Gerard Butler was rotating us downward into the sand.......Keep 'em comin', HBO.....
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