By Debbie Schlussel

Sorry that I don’t love the movie over which everyone’s expecting me to gush, but I really didn’t like anything new at the movies, this weekend.

* American Assassin – Rated R: This is the movie about Mitch Rapp, the CIA assassin protagonist of the series of novels by the late Vince Flynn. I was really looking forward to this and expecting something great. But that’s not what I got. Despite the undue gushing over this by predictable groupies and jock-sniffers like Rush Limbaugh, this movie is absolutely no different than the typical drivel you get from everyone else in politically correct Hollywood. (Limbaugh had multiple orgasms on the air telling listeners about how he met Flynn, about his personal special screening of this movie, and how “great” it is–it isn’t.)

Yes, there are a few Muslim terrorists at the beginning–and even the government of Iran is made to seem like the bad guy, AT FIRST–but in the end, Iran isn’t so bad, and the only real bad guy here is the typical bete noir terrorist in Hollywood movies: a former CIA agent who is crazy and has gone rogue (for reasons that really aren’t explained). Yaaaaawn. How many times have we seen that before? Um, Jason Bourne, anyone?

Also, I was absolutely underwhelmed by actor Dylan O’Brien, the lightweight who plays the title hero. It’s no surprise that “Mitch” rhymes with bitch. The guy looks and sounds like a wuss, even despite the macho fighting scenes (undoubtedly performed by a stunt double). He has a baby face and the feminine voice of a wimpy kid from suburban New York. He should be in a boy band, not in this movie. There’s no macho here. The guy isn’t very manly, even when he sports a beard. His acting is abysmal–not that you’d expect more from a guy who is best known for starring on MTV, which nobody watches anymore. The acting in this is mostly schlocky and amateurish and performed rotely by unknowns. The real star–the only person worth paying attention to here–is Michael Keaton. But I didn’t really enjoy watching him being tortured by having his fingernails pulled out and being electrocuted. Yes, this movie is extremely violent, bloody, and graphic, which would have been fine, if the terrorists doing the torturing were Muslim (as they almost always are in real life). But the “manicurist” here is the aforementioned renegade CIA agent, known as “The Ghost.”

Sure, I loved the fight and action scenes in this movie. Other than Keaton, they are the best thing to watch in this. But please show me one instance in the real world in which “the real terrorist” trying to get a nuclear bomb and attacking American agents is a rogue American agent who isn’t Muslim. If they did a movie about Bradley a/k/a Chelsea Manning betraying America, working with Muslims, and then frolicking in makeup and a red bathing suit with Vogue’s Anna Wintour, fine. But this movie is nothing like that.

The story: Mitch Rapp is some guy (they never tell you anything about him) who makes a cheesy, hokey proposal to his sexy girlfriend on the beach. We see this on shaky footage of his cellphone. But, then, Islamic terrorists attack the beach, and the girlfriend is killed. Note that the terrorists never make an “allahu [FUBAR]” declaration before the attack and the words “Islam” and “jihad” are never mentioned, not even once. This movie is as sanitized as possible. Mitch decides to get revenge on the terrorists, tracks them online, and the CIA is watching as he goes to them somewhere in the Middle East. The CIA is impressed, so it recruits him as the “next big thing” assassin, and he is sent to Michael Keaton’s farm to train. Someone is obtaining parts to put together a nuclear bomb and start the next world war. Ostensibly, it’s supposed to be Iran, but it’s really the rogue CIA guy, “The Ghost.” The rest of the movie is spent trying to track down The Ghost and stop him.

And those Iranians–well, they aren’t so bad. In fact, their intelligence minister and his niece don’t want to attack Israel. Awwww . . . how charitable of them.

Unlike Limbaugh and the rest of the groupies, I judge all Hollywood movies by the same standards. And by my standards, this is yet another exercise in PC hackery, no matter who wrote it or whether or not they gave Limbaugh a private screening to make him feel important, so he’d predictably pay them back by praising their crap.

HALF A MARX

Watch the trailer . . .
mother! – Rated R: More like “Mother—-er! You Wasted Two Hours & One Minute of My Life I’ll Never Get Back!” I hated this pretentious, long, boring exercise in far-left New Age psychobabble gobbledygook. The studio required us to read their many-pages-long BS pimping this movie before we saw it. I read it, and tried miserably to stay awake while doing so. The pages quoted the movie’s insane writer and director, Darren Aronofsky (who is also sleeping with the movie’s star, Jennifer Lawrence), as saying the movie is some sort of allegory about climate change and deniers and people in the Western world fighting over the world’s resources when the world’s population is so large and there isn’t enough. He also seemed to indict voters for Trump and the current political climate. PUH-LEEZE, will you just Shut the F— Up?! By the way, I suppose this accounts for the dumb affectation of the lower-cased movie title–I guess Aronofsky, a typical limousine liberal, didn’t want to waste a capital “M.”

Then, I screened the movie, and the first half of it is actually entertaining and mysterious . . . until the movie devolves into a senseless, crazy mess and become the “Feel Good Baby Cannibalism Movie of the Year!” Comedic actress Kristen Wiig makes an appearance and summarily executes a bunch of human beings, after which a baby is murdered and a bunch of people rip it apart and eat it. If that’s what you want to spend ten-bucks-plus on, for entertainment, you’re deranged. The movie is just nuts and a complete waste of two hours (and one minute) of your life you’ll never get back.

This piece of garbage “film” tells the story of a young woman (Lawrence) married to an older man (Jew-hater Javier Bardem) who is some sort of relatively famous poet/novelist. He has writer’s block, and they are holed up in an old mansion in the middle of the country, where he is trying to write his next best-seller. She is restoring the house, though she is haunted by it and feels the “life” living within its walls. She also wants to have a baby.

One night, an older man (Ed Harris)–a stranger–shows up at their home, claiming he thought it was a bed-and-breakfast. He inveigles his way into their home and their life, against Lawrence’s wishes. He ends up staying the night, then his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up, then his family, and soon they are taking over the house as if it’s their own. Suddenly, the house is overwhelmed by people, and Lawrence is shocked and angry that no one will listen to her. They are taking apart her house. I laughed at the chutzpah of all of these people, but the movie soon becomes stupid and unbelievable with no discernible plot or point. It just gets completely ridiculous and makes the whole first half–no, the whole movie!–pointless.

Mother——!, indeed.

FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON HUSSEIN OBAMA IDI AMIN DADAS PLUS TWO ISIS BEHEADINGS

Watch the trailer . . .

Rebel in the Rye – Rated PG-13: As I’ve noted on this site before, I think that J.D. Salinger is the most overrated writer in American history. And his novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” is the most overrated novel in America. It’s crap, picked by liberal “educators” and forced on high school students across America every year, so it continues to make the Salinger family and estate zillions of dollars. It seems the whole idea of the book–the reason the uber-liberal Salinger wrote it–was to start this trend (which is now status quo) in which there is no respect for authority and parents and adults are idiots. If the novel came out today, it would sound like every other pointless, angsty, overwrought Young Adult novel. And it should have been dismissed as such back in 1951. Instead, the book was the literary emperor-with-no-clothing of the century. I was one of those high school students forced to read it, and what a waste of time. I thought then as I think now: what’s the big deal? Is that all there is? There’s no “there” there.

So, on top of all that hype, we’re supposed to care as much about this movie as we’re supposed to care about the author and his pointless drivel of a novel. And since I didn’t care about either of the latter two, I was as enthusiastic about the former. I didn’t expect much, and this movie lived down to my expectations. It was boring and slow and served no purpose. Nicholas Hoult, who plays Salinger, is not a bad actor. He’s just way better looking than the actual guy here, and doesn’t really seem to have the angst that supposedly plagued Salinger.

I’m thankful for the half-Jewish Jerome David Salinger’s service and bravery while serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He participated in the storming of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge (among other battles) and helped liberate and feed concentration camp victims and survivors. The movie shows that. But it does not show what is probably the most interesting part of his World War II experience: he served in counter-intelligence and used his fluency in German and French to interrogate prisoners. That would have been interesting, a word which does not describe this movie. The movie also doesn’t delve into Salinger’s friendship with Ernest Hemingway.

The movie begins with Salinger’s affection for Oona O’Neill, daughter of Eugene O’Neill who cruelly dumps Salinger for the much older Charlie Chaplin, when Salinger is away serving in the war. Salinger fails at everything he does and fails at school, but he longs to be a writer. Despite his father’s insistence that he go into the family food business, Salinger insists on becoming a writer and enrolls at Columbia. There he meets a writing professor (Kevin Spacey) who nurtures and shepherds his writing career. Eventually, after World War II and a stint in a military hospital, Salinger has what we would now call PTSD and can’t get anything done, due to his flashbacks. He meets an Indian guru who teaches him to meditate to avoid reliving the death and violence of the war. And Salinger begins to write again. His semi-autobiographical short stories about Holden Caulfield are repeatedly published in the New Yorker Magazine, and he ultimately publishes his famous novel about the character.

But after selling 65 million copies and becoming a huge success, he decides that he must only write for himself, so he never against publishes anything and spends his days writing only for himself and meditating. Huh?

Other than Salinger’s military service and initial hard work to follow and achieve his dream, I can only thank G-d this guy a isn’t the model for America’s kids.

ONE MARX

Watch the trailer . . .