A Talking Cat!?! (2013)

It's time, dear readers, to take a break from our usual intake of gruesome horror tales, and instead look at something different. Something involving talking felines, and no dignity or common sense.

Director: David DeCoteau (as Mary Crawford)

Starring: Johnny Whitaker, Janis Peebles, Eric Roberts

IMDb

...yeah, I guess that's as good of an intro as I'm going to get. Boy, am I out of steam! It's almost like I'm doing these reviews and consciously mentioning how out of steam I am just to cover up how out of steam I am! And plus I'm reviewing a movie about a fucking talking cat. Which is, frankly, as low as you can go.

Apparently director David DeCoteau is something of a brainchild as he has done many other movies exactly like this. Some titles include A Talking Pony!?! and My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?! because it's apparently impossible to have a good title if you don't include !?! at the end of it. Am I right!?! No. No I'm not. I'm really just ashamed I just did that.

But really the most interesting part of this whole affair is this:

What? Seriously, what?

Oh well. This is mere chump change compared to the movie we're about to see. Are you ready? No? Well, nobody is ever going to be - not for this. We'll just have to get used to it.

The movie begins with our hero, Duffy, a talking cat whose mission is to help people. We get a voice-over in his head about, I dunno, walking around and shitting in peoples' yards or something. The voice-over by Eric Roberts of The Dark Knight and Heroes fame sounds like your drunk stepfather in a bar at 2 p.m.

He isn't the hero we want, but he's the hero we deserve. Also that looks nothing like the cat on the cover, goddamn you! Was it so hard to take a picture of the actual cat in your fucking movie?

He decides to help two separate families in “trouble.” By that I mean one of them has a dad played by a mordibly obese Bill Murray who likes to do soul-crushing things like sit down in the random car-shaped seat they have for some Godforsaken reason in their living room, and go “Vroom! Vroom!” like he's a 10 year old. The son, who is sitting on the couch reading what I am positive is a book of blank pages just intended to make him look smart, sighs exasperatedly and goes “Dad, why do you keep doing that?”

Did they steal that chair from a mall kids' play area display?

The story is told by the dad, Phil, who explains very calmly and actually kind of happily that he lost his job and will now just laze around the house all day. The son doesn't give a shit at all, and I guess that kind of dead-eyed apathy runs in the family – must be a dominant gene. Phil's apparent plan is just to hang around and eat pizza and stuff. I'm so glad he's a positive role model.

The son, Chris, by the way, is a total wimp who gets this really hot girl to come over and “study” with him, which for her means swimming in his pool while he reads her books for her. Kid, I'd tell you to skip this chick and wait for someone better, but to be honest, your totally wimpy reaction to this in which you run away from her like a pussy tells me you don't have it in you. I mean, come on – even the fucking cat is thinking he's terrible. Really; we get a voice over with the cat thinking how lame Chris is. That's pretty bad.

"How am I using a phone when I'm too stupid to even know how to operate one?"

The other family is a “poorer” family, which means they don't have a house that a hipster art college student would design while he was drunk. The daughter is trying to apply for business school, but the mom says they don't have money for that, and actively antagonizes the daughter for...trying to better herself as a human being and having ambition. Meanwhile, her lazy slacker son who just spends all day in his room and acts like a wooden plank, she loves and adores.

Hmm...so mommy has some issues which will likely be projected onto her weak-willed son. Sound familiar?

Nah.

So if you can actually believe it, the cat can talk to these people only once and tell them something they need to do or know to make their lives better. I'd say this is ridiculous and implausible, but frankly the audience for the movie – whoever the fuck they are – is already close enough to believing shit like this is possible. Whether through extremist hippie new-age belief or being dropped on their heads, the audience for A Talking Cat!?! will probably accept this plot without complaint.

Above: the look of all the legitimate movie studios when confronted with the plot for A Talking Cat!?!

I also love the animation for when his mouth moves, and by animation I of course mean they just photoshopped a black hole over the cat's mouth and had it move vaguely in tandem with the dialogue. Didn't I see this kind of stuff in 2002-era Internet animation cartoons? Why am I watching it in a 2014 movie?

Even old Newgrounds.com games had better graphics.

So I guess the cat gives them some really vague, weird advice – he tells Phil to “go take a walk in the woods.” Which honestly sounds kinda creepy, doesn't it? Is this cat some kind of mafia hitman enforcer? I dunno. Unless there's Ryan Gosling and a place beyond the pines involved here, taking a walk in the woods with anyone in this movie sounds like a terrible idea to me.

The only acceptable outcome of this movie for me.

He also tells the girl, Tina, to look at her computer, which has Phil's website on it. I guess Phil's job, which he lost recently, was something involving computer programming. Because this guy really looks and acts like a guy who knows anything about computers, right?

I guess the whole point of all this is when Phil takes his walk in the woods and meets up with Susan, the mom from the other family. They have a conversation about Humphrey Bogart movies, which I'm guessing is because the director didn't have the money to buy the rights to talk about anything else. I love Humphrey Bogart and all, but this whole sequence is hilarious to me. Yes, truly that is the barometer of quality here – Humphrey Bogart movies on one end and A Talking Cat!?! on the other.

Above: The face of the Humphrey Bogart fan club, circa 2013.

There's also a plot point, if you can call it that, about Susan being this caterer for business parties or something, and she's constantly trying to make cheese puffs to take with her. They talk about this a lot, to the point where my friends and I started to wonder if someone just lost a bet and had to shoehorn in the phrase “cheese puffs” in their script as many times as possible. I mean Jesus Christ, what is the big fucking deal with the cheese puffs? Are they really that good? Will they make you orgasm if you eat just one? Will they make you see beyond our puny reality and soar to the cosmos inside your mind while rainbows shoot out of your ass? I mean, you're setting the standards pre-etty fuckin' high here.

Apparently Susan wants Tina to make more cheese puffs instead of doing work to try and get into computer school. She really acts like a bitch to Tina for wanting to do stuff to try and get into a computer school instead of making cheese puffs – yeah, furthering your education and improving life prospects is lame. She should just be a docile house wife!

All women should be forced to stay in kitchens and make food all day with no other career prospects - A Talking Cat!?! says so, so it must be true.

Phil leaves and Tina goes with him to his house to make the cheese puffs while also talking about computers! They mash their fingers on the keyboards while smiling like a Hallmark commercial, so I guess that counts as the plot moving forward:

"Alright! You found my favorite animal porn website!"

The other son comes up and finds Chris trying to swim in the pool – because he apparently doesn't know how to swim when they clearly have a pool right there and the ocean is just a few miles away, too. I mean, I don't know; maybe there's some rational explanation. But given the movie's titanic levels of stupidity I'm guessing it's because Phil shrugged his shoulders, got that doofy look on his face and went “aw shucks, I ain't good at anything except computer science and embarrassing my entire family in public. You just won't be able to swim I guess!”

There's actual dialogue in this scene where Chris complains about being afraid of pool sharks - like, actual fucking sharks in the pool. Did he get dropped on his head?

So logically, the solution here is for the other son to offer to give Chris swimming lessons. Wait a minute, I thought the whole plot point of the other son was that he wasn't good at anything and didn't know what he wanted to do! But now he's really good at teaching people to swim and seems to enjoy that?! It's almost like the writers just didn't give a fucking shit what they were dribbling out onto the page at this point.

And then he was immediately eaten by a pool shark.

Susan comes over and gets mad at her kids for coming over there, even though they made the cheese puffs like she wanted. But that wasn't good enough because, apparently, in that short time span in which Tina left her house and came to Phil's, the mom had a meeting that went HORRIBLY because she didn't have the fucking cheese puffs! The horror! Stop the presses! So she takes it out on everyone else and ruins everyones' lives. Fuckin' A.

Then we get a montage of Phil and Chris scanning their clothes into a computer somehow, which I guess is Tina's newfangled computer system program or whatever. I dunno, since they figured this out and seem to know how it works, what's to stop them from stealing it for themselves and making even more money than they already have? Just trying to keep it real here, movie. Plus these characters being absolute irredeemable dicks to one another would just be funnier for me. And honestly, a fucking montage of this? Are you shitting me?! I've had more fun watching videos of people getting root canals.

Yes, continue to look absolutely baffled and bewildered at everything you're doing. That makes for a good character.

So I guess the cat thinks he can solve this “problem” by going over and talking to Susan, which he hasn't done yet. Unless what comes next is a suicide pact, then I'm not interested.

But unfortunately, the cat never makes it, after being hit by a car. Yes, really – that's now a plot point in this movie. Now, what I'm about to show you is a picture of the cat's injuries, and I understand that may disturb you. So if you're the type of person who is offended by gore and violence, especially against talking felines, I suggest you click the 'Back' button on your browser.

…

…

Have you done it yet? Because I'm serious. You're going to be disturbed by this.

…

…

No, really. You will be. Last warning!

Okay then. Here are the injuries the cat sustains after the car accident:

Yup. Just one bandage on his head and that's all the injury he sustained from being HIT BY A FUCKING CAR.

Yes, my sentiments exactly.

You can't make this up, people! Hell, I can't even make jokes – the movie already is one! I guess either the cat has some aluminum plates in its skull after the war or the car that ran over him looked like this:

So I guess the cat somehow tells them that to save his life, they have to go out and find a buried collar in the woods. They go walking in the woods to a soundtrack of elevator music that sounds like it was made for a clown school, and find the collar above the ground, not buried like the cat said. Because why have anything make sense now? Who really cares about having a coherent script at all, right?

So although I was really hoping when they put the collar back on Duffy, it would magically transform him into his true form as the dark lord Lucifer, spewing hellfire and brimstone from his cracked lips and with the twisted horns atop his head that seem to be able to pierce the heavens...that doesn't happen. Instead it just magically heals him.

This is apparently what it looks like when a magical cat is healed. Also, good editing is when this happens and only one out of all those characters is looking up and appears to see it at all.

Well, that was A Talking Cat!?!. It was about as good as you would've expected from the title. I mean it isn't like you'd see the DVD cover and expect anything that much better. Christ. What was the thought process behind this? Who was the intended audience?

Oh. Well...okay then.

It isn't like Sharknado or something where it's intentionally bad...there was obviously passion in this and some kind of attempt to tell a story. But it's just incredibly backwards. The cat, for whatever fucking reason, is there to “help” people – so, obviously, he picks some really well-off middle class to rich people who have no real problems. Couldn't find a poor single mom on welfare or a high school drop out addicted to meth to help out, hmm? HMMMM?!

Well actually I'm guessing he tried, but really the only people fucking dumb enough to listen to a talking cat ended up being the characters we saw in this movie. That makes sense. And honestly the 'problems' these people have don't even seem that bad – they aren't that lonely, they seem to be doing decently financially...they have it pretty good, aside from the fact that they made some new friends at the end I guess. I guess that cat just wanted to freeload off them and not sleep in the gutter for a night.

Other than that though, this was pretty much okay. I mean, who doesn't want a movie full of long shots of nothing but nature or people driving?

These kinds of time-wasting shots take up a lot of the movie's runtime - it's pretty obvious they were just put there to pad out the rather meager 80 minute (even with these shots in there) runtime.

Who doesn't want a story with zero likable characters and dialogue more fitting of a bad 1980s commercial? Yes. I'm not going back on any of that.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

The Top 13 Movies of 2013

Drum roll, please ...

I remember when I was first starting out 2013 - well, for the first several months, really, I just wasn't finding many really good movies. For big theater releases, that will always be a problem, as they just put out a lot of crap at the beginning of the year with only the occasional indie flick spliced in for good measure. Summertime brings us a bunch of big action movies. Whereas last year had a lot of them I found really great, this year we got a bit short-changed, let's say. I just wasn't finding much to really dig my teeth into.

And it's so hard to see everything you want to see when it actually comes out. That's why I spend January watching movies I missed over the last year. And lo and behold - what I thought was a fairly weak year for films turned out to be a year full of amazing movies. I still didn't even see everything I wanted to. I'll be catching up on this year as much as I have on any past year in terms of films.

But I did find a lot of gems I'd missed throughout 2013, and so I decided to make this list. Let's start from the bottom!

13. Prince Avalanche

Two guys, pretty much polar opposites, work on a desolate road in the late 80s. While doing that, they run into women problems and learn some things about each other. It’s fun and charming. Great acting from Emile Hirsch and Paul Rudd is icing on the bromance cake. If there were a TV show with these two, I’d probably watch it – that’s enough for me to say this is a good, good flick.

12. Fruitvale Station

The real life account of Oscar Grant, a black male who was assaulted and killed by police on New Year’s Eve 2008 – a case which resulted in an overhaul of the police department. This is well acted and really does a good job of showing a real life account of this guy before the tragedy happened. While it’s a good account of police brutality and modern-day racism already (though it could have stood to include some more scenes after the event happened and been better for it), the real reason this deserves a spot is its between-the-lines commentary: your reaction to Grant’s death will gauge where you fit in terms of your opinions on those very complex issues. Whether you think the film was too sympathetic to Grant or did a good job presenting things idealistically, it just means the film had an impact on you. The only way this wouldn’t be a good film is if you didn’t care enough to think about it even a little.

11. Gravity

The deepest recesses of space provides the scariest movie all year. While this isn’t a horror movie by any standard, the sheer terror you feel looking at the vast black canvass of stars puts it up there anyway. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are great as two astronauts in this, but their characters aren’t the real focal point. The focal point is when you see Bullock spiraling uncontrollably away from everything she’s ever known into a dark abyss from which there is no guarantee of return. My heart stopped when I saw this in the theater. The sheer scope and magnitude of the events is just great and the film’s strong point is its adventurous feel and the danger it puts the characters in. A great survival film.

10. The Butler

Another real-life account, this time of White House butler Cecil Grant, who served under eight presidents from the 50s to the modern day. Forest Whitaker puts on an Oscar-worthy performance in this, and David Oyelowo as his son Louis is just as good. While parts of this get a bit Hollywood-schmaltzy, the best parts of the film, and the meat of it, are the interactions between the father and son – when set out over this vast historical backdrop, it really makes the film a genuine epic. Bonus points for the great choices of who’s playing the various presidential figures!

9. Pacific Rim

The best action movie of the year hands down. People will tell you this has no substance, that it’s just mindless action, but really it’s very well done action. The battle scenes are the best all year, the fights are incredibly well crafted and gripping and the special effects are amazingly good. The characters are serviceable; they’re not going to wow you, but they do the job they were supposed to – they keep the story fast paced and they allow the action scenes to roll over you like a fucking war tank. Pacific Rim rules.

8. Don Jon

A very down to Earth romance about a kinda Jersey Shoreish dude named Jon who can purportedly get any girl he wants and yet loves masturbating more than anything else. Through the course of the film he discovers true love, blah blah blah – sounds cliché, right?

Absolutely not. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s directorial debut is a splendid take on a tired genre, mixing clever, funny dialogue, some very memorable and snappy scenes and genuinely good characters into a delightful brew. It’s just very real, and shows off some great insight into the average human relationship. I like that the characters aren’t idealized; they are presented in a very natural, low-key fashion and not treated like they’re better than your everyday people. They are kind of unlikable, and that makes it all the better when, like real people, they have their individual moments of goodness.

Even when the film occasionally does get Hollywood on us, Levitt’s mastery of the style makes the moment feel realistic enough that we believe it. Don Jon is a top notch romantic comedy.

7. The Place Beyond the Pines

Grand, sweeping epic masterpiece. This chronicle of three different intersecting lives over many years spans a bank robber looking out for his estranged family, the cop who kills him and both of their troubled sons. At times this is a bit too baggy and long, but only in parts. The sheer weight of the film is massive and the acting and storytelling put together something very compelling about the effect one’s actions have on anyone on the receiving end. It’s very much the Butterfly effect, as each segment bleeds tangentially into the next one as the characters each try to get ahead and look for ways out of the darkness brought upon them by their ancestors and their circumstances in this life. They all dance on the edge of the place beyond the pines, which is a place none of them really wants to go.

6. In a World…

This was a delight. A quirky, off-beat comedy about a woman trying to get into the voice-acting field that doesn’t want her – as her father says, there isn’t a demand for a feminine voice in a movie trailer. But she goes at it anyway and actually gets the jobs despite her father’s misogynistic old-world views and the challenges from another arrogant asshole of a voice actor. This could have easily turned into a cliché ‘inspirational’ picture, but it plays things pretty mellow and doesn’t focus too much on the “little train that could” mindset. Instead it’s just a high-energy, kick ass comedy spliced with romance and just the right social feministic themes – it really is a very empowering movie for women, saying more with less. Nothing here is cliché, there are tons of funny moments and it’s got a lot of complex things to say and yet does it in a laid-back way like it was the easiest thing in the world. There is a lot to love with this. I’d be selling it short if I spoiled it. Just go see it.

5. Prisoners

The best crime film in years. This takes me back to a time when this genre was about good storytelling rather than stupid gimmicks, redundant cliché and gore-filled garbage. Reminding me very much of films like The Pledge and Mystic River, Prisoners will knock you on your ass with its palpable suspense and mounting tension. The film, about two families and a detective trying to find two missing daughters, is legitimately terrifying, and I found myself just forgetting everything else and sitting there with my jaw on the fucking floor at how good this movie was. Every time it seemed like there had been some kind of emotional high water mark of pure blackened screaming terror, something else happened to raise the bar.

Everything that happens is horrific to watch, but you can’t peel your eyes away because it’s also incredibly engrossing, and you have to see what happens next – the hallmark of any great crime film. The movie’s pacing is excellent and just rolls over you like a wave. The directing really works to create an atmosphere – this misty Pennsylvania with its high reaching trees and dark shadowy buildings – and add emphasis to the film’s best moments. I couldn’t stop watching this. At 153 minutes it was still too short.

4. Short Term 12

A bunch of 20-somethings working at a home for troubled teens discover some things about themselves – most notably Grace and Mason, whose relationship is about to enter turbulent waters. I can’t say very much else without spoiling this wonderful film, but it really is just a peach of a movie. Strong, funny dialogue and good dramatic scenes play off one another brilliantly, each knowing its place and not forgetting that the other is also needed for levity.

The characters are brilliantly done and the story unfolds gently but sturdily, not treating the audience like children or obscuring the point too much either. The story just is, and the bare honesty it has is just a breath of fresh air. It has something it wants to say and just says it in a way that is frank, honest, tragic, funny and heartbreaking all at the same time – yet ultimately rewarding at the end. Like any troubling time in real life, the tide breaks and the characters come through to the light again, and the feeling is very, very satisfying.

There’s no bullshit with this. I can talk about the technical reasons the writing is good all I want, but it speaks for itself. I loved the characters, loved the story – just a wonderful movie.

3. The World’s End

The worst thing about the final installment in the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright trilogy is that it’s over now. This stands up strong with its predecessors, and was well worth the wait. Like the other movies before it, The World’s End is full of great jokes crammed in at light speed, making for a very complex take on comedy. The story, about a bunch of old friends reuniting to try a pub crawl again after something like twenty years, is funny, heartfelt and thoughtful all at the same time, packing in a message about not living in the past and coping with the present day and future rather than fighting them. This might be the best I’ve seen Pegg yet, and the characters are all generally good, starting off a bit bland but really growing as you go through the film.

This isn’t gut-bustingly funny like the other two, but a more complex and calculated work. The jokes are even more based in repetition than before, with every scene a call-back or foreshadowing to something else in the movie and lots of little sight gags and wordplay crammed in. The whole thing unfolds like an origami. The maturing of Edgar Wright since Shaun of the Dead is notable – and we shouldn’t stop short of noticing the parallels between the evolution of these movies and the message of The World’s End: things change, and we should roll with it.

2. The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese is the devil himself, and we’re just along for the ride. This is the best I’ve seen Scorsese in years, and also the best DiCaprio performance maybe of his whole career thus far. The Wolf of Wall Street … is not like other movies. It’s just not. This is a three-hour megalith of sex, drugs and insanity. It’s also a wonderfully, perversely deviant work that smashes boundaries and expectations like a wreckingball coming straight for your childhood home. You wanted a moral? A redeeming social value? Any kind of character development? Well, the movie has none of those things. And it revels in that.

I’m just so tired of Hollywood schmaltz like several of the films on my Worst Of list – I’m tired of movies that have to shove a moral down your throat out of some primordial Christian fear of being reprimanded or shunned – because that is what so many lesser movies are. They have to underline and bold-face their morals to fit into some kind of vague notion of what a movie should be. In doing so they don’t really have much of an artistic ground to stand on, because they are pandering to some sense of social normativity. They compromise themselves. This is something else.

If The Wolf of Wall Street was poorly made or acted, it would merely be a curiosity, but the production values are through the roof and the acting is outstanding. Jonah Hill performs at 110% as do all the other supporting cast members. And as I said, Leo is mint in this. Scorsese’s directing is master-class too, not that I expected anything else – but the rampant energy that courses through every minute of this three-hour film is something to be wowed by. Most movies this long slow down and get caught up in their own weight – this is full fuckin’ speed all the way.

Frankly this is a godsend for movies in the modern day. It will be polarizing, but I for one cherish it.

1. Catching Fire

With all the great movies already on this list, I can’t say this one is really sky-high above the rest, but it is a whole and complete work of art and really, stayed with me more than anything else. I was wondering why that was – and there are a lot of reasons.

The thing is, movies are escapism – whether it’s escaping into a realistic story and losing yourself in someone else’s problems, or escaping into a fantasy story and finding a whole new world. No other movie this year quite sucked me in like this one. The atmosphere in this is so thick, and the settings so good, that I felt like I really was there – some of the scenes in this are heartbreaking and haunting. I liked the jarring directing style of the first movie, felt it added to the effect, but the directing in this is just astounding in its scope, clarity and memorability.

As a book-to-movie transition it is an absolute triumph, as it successfully does pretty much everything that needed to be seen with the story while also remaining an artistic, very well done film on its own. I can’t imagine anyone complaining about stuff from the book left out in this one. The acting is just stellar, too, with Jennifer Lawrence getting my personal Best Actor/Actress in general all year – the fact that she was nominated for American Hustle instead of this really outlines how little respect there is for movies deemed “too young-adult.” Which is pretty deserved in a lot of cases, but not this one.

Overall this is a film about rebellion. It is an aching, angry heart in the middle of the film’s oppressive dystopian regime – every scene just bleeds resentment and rebellion. It is a movie about strength in the face of innumerable odds, about Katniss and her ongoing struggle. Above all there is strength in this movie. And that’s why this is the movie of the year.

----

And that's my top 13 of 2013. I was so prepared for this list to be full of simply good movies - not stuff I was really passionate about. But I did find so many films to love when I was going back to see what I had missed. There were a lot of really amazing films this year. And there are every year. This is not some kind of lone-standing incident, but a lesson to be learned. Never simply be content with whatever's right in front of you. You never know when something else you may love even more is lying just a little bit left-of-center.

All images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.