Too good for Hot Tub 2, not too good for Drive Hard

John Cusack may be in every straight-to-video movie this side of the 99 cent bin at your local Big Lots, but he's also dying to show you he still has standards.

How else to explain his rapid decline into B-movie ubiquitousness, yet his apparent unwillingness to appear in the sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine?

There are probably other ways -- and I've tried to find out the actual truth why he's not in it, only I can't seem to locate it on the interwebs. But knowing that he's a total prick, I prefer to think of this as a case of misplaced snobbishness.

"A sequel to some dumb comedy? Puh-leeze."

Knowing how indiscriminate he's been with his film choices in the past five years, I found myself genuinely surprised not to see him in the (godawful) trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine 2 the other night. (And considering how godawful it looks, perhaps he was on the right track in avoiding it.)

How indiscriminate has he been? Why, I'm glad you asked. I mean, he's basically the second coming of sometimes costar Nicolas Cage.

Consider some of these titles, compiled only from the period since the original Hot Tub Time Machine came out:

Shanghai (2010)
The Factory (2011)
The Numbers Station (2013)
Adult World (2013)
The Frozen Ground (2013)
The Bag Man (2014)
Drive Hard (2014)
The Prince (2014)
Reclaim (2014)

Heard of any of these, other than them showing up suspiciously quickly on your VOD? Didn't think so.

Yet the idea of associating himself with an actually popular product ... now that's just crazy.

Some of these certainly seemed to have been conceived as better films than the market ultimately deemed them to be ... I mean, not every straight-to-video film knows it will be that from the start. And some of the above did have limited theatrical releases, and during that time Cusack also appeared in such legitimate films as The Butler (2013), The Paperboy (2012), The Raven (2012) and (the barely legitimate) Grand Piano (2013).

So maybe instead of no longer being a popular casting choice, Cusack is just throwing himself into his work to keep himself busy. Better actors have done the same before him, including, arguably, Cage.

I mean, perhaps you make a ton of movies just so you don't have to take Hot Tub Time Machine 2. The original made me chuckle a couple times, but overall I think it's a bit of a mess. And the sequel looks like even more of one. Adam Scott has gamely stepped in for Cusack, joining Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry and Clark Duke from the original. None of those three looks especially pleased to be back, to be honest.

Or maybe Cusack just doesn't view himself as a comic actor anymore. Maybe he wants to focus on dramas or action movies or thrillers.

All of these are possible, so here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to turn this post on its head and consider why all the movies above may have been better choices than Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

Shanghai (2010) - World War II movie directly by legit director Mikael Hafstrom. Bankrolled by the Weinstein Company. Permits to shoot in China revoked a week before filming due to sensitive subjective matter, so shifted to Bangkok at the last minute. Never released in the U.S., but certainly promising enough credentials.

The Factory (2011) - An overly familiar story about a cop chasing a serial killer of women, but at least it was produced by Joel Silver.

The Numbers Station (2013) - Spy thriller set in England, where Cusack works for the CIA. But at least Malin Akerman is a legit co-star.

Adult World (2013) - Cusack plays a poet named Rat Billings. That should be enough. Indie about a girl (the popular Emma Roberts) working in an adult book store. Scott Coffey directed another movie I like (Ellie Parker).

The Frozen Ground (2013) - Alaskan serial killer movie co-starring Cage. Maybe this is the most straight-to-video in nature of the group. But hey, it does also star and was produced by 50 Cent.

The Bag Man (2014) - Thriller. Hey, De Niro's in this! Talk about actors fallen on hard times.

Drive Hard (2014) - Action comedy filmed and set in Australia! That alone should give it a pass. Thomas Jane is a legit co-star.

The Prince (2014) - Gangster movie. Bruce Willis is also in it. Talk about actors fallen on hard times. And again, 50 Cent!

Reclaim (2014) - Thriller about an American couple traveling to Puerto Rico to adopt a child who become embroiled in a deadly scam. Actually sounds moderately high concept and socially relevant ... but then I learn that Ryan Phillippe is one of the stars.

Okay, so they aren't all better choices than Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

It's fascinating how difficult it can be to make the right choices, even if you aren't snootily turning your nose up at comedies that you believe to be beneath you. The first portion of last year's terrific The Congress deals with the famously bad choices made by Robin Wright, playing herself in Ari Folman's film. Yeah, Wright took The Princess Bride and Forrest Gump, but she also turned down Jurassic Park, Batman Forever, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Born on the Fourth of July and The Firm. Sometimes you just never know ... or you do know, and you decide you don't want it.

When Hot Tub Time Machine 2 scores its 23 on Metacritic, maybe Cusack will read this post and laugh.

A hot mess

I don't know when I first heard the phrase "a hot mess," but I think it wasn't that long ago -- almost definitely within the past five years. It could just be that "a hot mess" had been eluding me all these years, or it could be that some clever wordsmith strung these three common words together for the first time only recently.

In any case, I find it a very accurate descriptor for a person or thing in a particular state of chaos. Someone or something that is a hot mess is disjointed, disheveled and disorganized, and if this person or thing has hair, the hair is almost certainly sticking out in all directions. A literal element of heat often applies as well.

But the phrase is not entirely derogatory. There's an element of love to it -- a sense that the current state of this person or thing is an aberration, and that in most circumstances he, she or it is a lot cooler and cleaner. And there's also the implication that there's something interesting in this "mess" -- that it's "hot" in some way, perhaps in the way Paris Hilton famously said "That's hot."

The definition seems to apply in almost every way for Lee Daniels' The Paperboy. It's hot, but it's definitely a bit of a mess.

I saw The Paperboy yesterday as the last of my Monday matinees. You may remember in this post that I discussed my plan to go into work at 5 a.m. on Mondays for a period of about six weeks, to help with the East Coast rollout of my company's new rental software. And since I'd get out at 1:30 but didn't need to pick up my son from daycare until 5, I'd have a perfect opportunity to squeeze in a movie. It turned out to be only five weeks, only four of which was I actually the guy who came in at 5, and only three of which featured a Monday matinee. After Celeste & Jesse Forever, I saw Lawless the following Monday. Then missed two in a row before catching The Paperboy yesterday. The software is now rolled out, so I'm back to my usual 7 a.m. start next Monday.

I was drawn to The Paperboy for two reasons: 1) It was directed by Lee Daniels, whose first film (Shadowboxer) was definitely a mess, but not a very hot one, and whose second film (Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire) was a masterpiece; 2) It featured Nicole Kidman, one of my favorite actresses, serving as the embodiment of the phrase "a hot mess."

If you haven't seen an image of Kidman in The Paperboy, here's one:

While her hair is generally in order, that's about the only thing you could describe that way. Even if you saw no moving images of the things she's doing in this movie, you'd probably know just from this one shot that Kidman's character does not have her shit together. Not only is she dressed slutty, but she's also got a bra strap creeping its way down her right arm. She's been through the ringer and back.

If you did see some moving images of this film, you'd see that the film stock is practically sweating. The Paperboy is shot in a dingy, grubby style in which particles of dirt seem to hang in the air, and you can practically hear a chorus of cicadas in the background, adding extra dimension to the swampy Floridian summer in which the movie is set. In fact, the environment depicted here shares something in common with Beasts of the Southern Wild, which teems with images of swampy animals up close in all their wriggling beauty and ugliness. (I'm sure part of why I think that is that you see an alligator being gutted in The Paperboy, with its hot mess of guts spilling out all over the place.)

But Kidman isn't the only hot mess in this movie. How about John Cusack?

He plays an accused murderer so vile that he the sweat dripping off him is like malfeasance oozing out of every pore. If you don't think Cusack could play this role, check it out -- the hatred and ignorance simply emanate from him.

Even Matthew McConaughey, deep into the independent phase of his career that movies like Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days seem to have financed, is falling apart at the seams in this movie:

He's got scars on both sides of his mouth, one of which you can see here, and in one scene he's covered with some kind of pox that gives him the appearance of a truly unwell individual.

Zac Efron still looks pretty much like a Tiger Beat pinup, but he appears in only tighty-whities about four different times in this movie. And if you recall this post from years ago (in a discussion of another film starring Nicole Kidman), tighty-whities are the favored undergarment for hot messes everywhere.

Of course, the biggest mess here is what we expect to be going on, emotionally, among the characters. Not only is Kidman sleeping with any number of them, which creates plenty of problems, but this being Lee Daniels, you know that there's a simmering racial element underneath it all. In fact, the movie is narrated by one of the film's two black actors, Macy Gray -- an actress/singer who has been a hot mess in almost every role she's played.

But is The Paperboy a hot mess you should check out?

A day later, I'm still undecided. My initial reaction to it was quite positive, as most of the performances and all of the filmmaking were executed at a very high level. However, I soon started wondering what it all added up to. In the end I couldn't figure out exactly what message Daniels was trying to leave us with. Or if he was only trying to leave us with a mess.

But I think the very nature of a hot mess is that you have to take the good with the bad. In the end, you're there because you know it's going to be interesting.

And since I didn't start to nod off once, even after my day began at 4 a.m., I'd say it definitely was.

Eerie similarities

If you've read me much before, you know that funny patterns in movie watching interest me greatly. And so here I am to present another one.

On Friday morning at the gym, I began watching the John Cusack movie Martian Child. A classic case of a "gym movie," which is also the kind of movie I regularly find available for me to review. So I'd picked up Martian Child at the library the day before, having already gotten approval to review it last week. There was just something about that title that made me think this movie would be fun to lay into.

When the young child of the title finally comes out from under the over-sized cardboard box where he spends most of his time, it's to the tune of "Don't Be Shy" by Cat Stevens.

On my way into work, my wife told me to make sure to tune into Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW in the 11 o'clock hour, when Jason Bentley's guest would be Yusuf. Otherwise known as Yusuf Islam. Otherwise known as Cat Stevens. We love Yusuf, who's put out two excellent albums since 2006, the most recent of which we've just been listening to quite a bit. I knew I'd have the chance to listen, because pretty much everyone would be out of the office for the holiday. (Meanwhile, I'm taking my day off on Monday, which works out great -- not only was it dead on Friday, but I even got to leave early and clock out from home, in addition to having all of Monday off. Sweet.)

But Yusuf didn't want to limit himself to his Yusuf Years in his live set, and sure enough, he played the Cat Stevens classic "Don't Be Shy" somewhere around 11:25.

Of course, by this point I already knew that I'd be hearing it a third time later that night. Having had the DVD in my possession for about three weeks, I'd finally gotten Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby's 1971 classic, on the schedule for our Friday evening viewing. It took a little convincing to prioritize it with my wife -- though we'd both already seen it, it would be only the second time for me, while she described herself as seeing it about ten times when she was a kid. But a couple days earlier she'd relented, and so sure enough, I heard the song that third time somewhere around 8:30. Cat Stevens does the film's entire soundtrack.

The hearing of "Don't Be Shy" three times in one day, twice in movies and once elsewhere, might not in itself have been enough for me to post about. But then a weird thing happened while I was watching Harold and Maude. I decided that Bud Cort's Harold actually reminded me of John Cusack in a weird way. I suppose, since Cort is older, it would be more appropriate to say that Cusack reminds me of Cort, but since I'm much more accustomed to watching Cusack than Cort, the reverse was true. Something about their eccentric intensity seemed similar, as well as something about their actual physical appearance -- even if Cort's eyes are rounder and wider, while Cusack's are more beady.

I googled their two names to see if anyone else had made this comparison, and I didn't come up with much, though I did find one writer likening the half-hearted suicide attempts of Cusack's Lane Myer in Better Off Dead to those of Cort's Harold -- even if Harold is only trying to freak out his square mother.

And then, digging deeper as a person must in situations like this, I noted a similarity between Harold and Maude and Martian Child themselves. Each movie features an eccentric boy (separated by a good ten years in age) who doesn't fit in with others his age, and acts out in unusual ways to get attention. Of course, Harold and Maude is a classic, buoyed by the performances of Cort and the terrific Ruth Gordon, which promotes living life to its fullest, while Martian Child is just a forgettable inspirational drama that verges on the saccharine. However, I will say I liked Martian Child better than I might have because of Cusack's performance -- an especially strange thing for me to say, because I've let my knowledge of Cusack the man affect how I view him on film. (What's wrong with Cusack the man? Well, he's got a reputation as an asshole, which his public jealousy-based spat with lifelong friend Jeremy Piven confirms. But also, the only time I've ever seen him in person -- when I was walking down a sidewalk in New York, and he was taking a break on set -- he glared such acid back at me when we made eye contact that it was though he was accusing me of stalking him. Hey man, I didn't even break stride. Get out of your own head.)

Anyway.