It seems that Hollywood actors and filmmakers just love to tell us how much they’re in favor of people’s rights and equality for all, especially when it comes to women’s rights and gay rights.

And most critics have adored the new American remake of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” heralding Rooney Mara’s performance as the extremely damaged character Lisabeth Salander as an ass-kicking breakthrough for actresses and exciting entertainment for adults.

Sure, the movie’s got plenty going for it, at least for most of its nearly two-hour, 40-minute running time. Adults who can handle bleakness will get to see strong performances, interesting locales and a nicely twisting mystery in return for their time and money. But the film’s most important scene, the one that shows Lisabeth driven to her breaking point, shows that Hollywood filmmaking conventions and the critics who applaud the film wholeheartedly aren’t really on the side of women at all.

In fact, the American film, its literary source material in a trilogy of novels by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson, beg the question of how far art can and should push the envelope. “Dragon” offers up an anal rape scene against Salander that is utterly horrifying, but then takes things even further with Salander’s multi-faceted and despicably torturous response to her attacker.

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In case you haven’t noticed from the endless barrage of TV commercials touting how many Golden Globes various films have won or been nominated for – or boasting about how many more-obscure awards films have won – we’re in the middle of Academy Award season.

That means movie theaters are filled with what are supposed to be the finest films Hollywood has to offer. But what was the worst movie of 2011? Surely Big Hollywood readers, with their hatred of George Clooney and Matt Damon, can name any one of their films for that dubious honor despite the fact that their films are almost always extremely well-made despite their liberal messages.

But surprise – there’s actually a movie so awful and filled with such vile hatred of middle-aged, suburban American life that even critics agreed it was a cinematic stink bomb.

That film is called “I Melt With You,” and it was recently picked as the worst movie of 2011 in the annual comprehensive critics’ poll conducted by the iconic liberal weekly newspaper Village Voice. While I’m often at odds with my fellow film critics over the underlying social messages Hollywood is sending out through its films, and the impact those messages have on viewers and society, this is a rare case in which we actually all agreed.

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Even nearly 20 years later, I can still remember the day my college girlfriend gave me a copy of Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend” on cassette.

Its cover was a gorgeous picture of then-young actress Tuesday Weld gazing into a camera, a vision of beauty that nonetheless appeared too perfect to last.

Indeed, both the cassette and the relationship wore out eventually, as I played its 15-song cycle of love prayed for, won and lost until it snapped in my stereo deck, and as Laura fell for another guy while spending the next semester in Spain. As Sweet ruefully sang in the closing song, nothing lasts.

That lesson and those memories came back to haunt me and a few hundred other people Jan. 13 when Sweet hit the stage of the Echoplex for the final stop of a special tour marking the 20^th anniversary of his best-selling album, a record considered along with the likes of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” as one of the seminal albums of the ‘90s.

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It’s easy to get one view of a foreign nation from our government’s relationship with it, or news coverage that paints a nation as either “good” or “evil.” But sometimes it’s possible to see an entirely different perspective on life abroad through the way a movie shines a light on its people and their everyday lives.

Starting today, America has a chance to see Iran through a simple yet fascinating prism, as the Iranian submission for Best Foreign Film Oscar consideration – “A Separation” – opens in select theaters.

While it is only playing in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, it should prove to be compelling viewing for art-house film lovers as it expands to more theaters nationwide in the weeks to come.

The film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, starts out with the deceptively simple premise of a young couple sitting before a judge and arguing over whether they should be granted a divorce. The wife, named Simin, wants to move with her husband Nader and 11-year-old daughter Tamreh to a foreign land where their daughter can have an unspecified “better life.” The couple is afraid to admit it in front of a judge who represents either the government or Islamic rule or both, but the implication is that they know their daughter will never have a truly free and happy life under the oppressive Iranian system.

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While most movie fans are satisfied building a collection of their favorite DVDs, Shane Scheel has gone miles beyond in his devotion to his favorite cinematic treasures.

As the co-creator and producer with Christopher Lloyd Bratten of the “For The Record” series of live events held at the Barre VT bar in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, he has paid tribute to the films of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. The series features performers re-enacting the most iconic dialogue exchanges of those filmmakers’ features, as well as singing and dancing their way through the greatest tunes of their oeuvre.

But Scheel has topped himself big-time with his current show, “John Hughes: Holiday Road,” which plays Wednesday through Sunday nights before closing Dec. 30.

The two-hour extravaganza features an amazingly talented six-person cast and a five-piece rock band bringing the best of Hughes’ scenes and songs to life from his ‘80s films through “Home Alone.” Whether you’re a fan of Hughes’ high school movies (“Pretty in Pink” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) or the “Vacation” series and “Planes Trains and Automobiles,” the interactive cabaret-style show is one of the most entertaining nights of music and comedy you’ll ever experience.

Scheel spoke with Big Hollywood recently about how the “For The Record” series – which next takes on Baz Luhrmann’s films including “Moulin Rouge” – came about, and why he thinks Hughes’ films continue to resonate with American film fans.

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There are small but key roles in great movies that make a crucial difference in the way a film turns out. Think of Marlon Brando getting the top billing in “Superman” for less than 15 minutes of time as Jor-El, the Man of Steel’s father.

In the new Oscar-buzzed film “The Descendants” by Alexander Payne (“Election,” “Sideways,” “About Schmidt”) George Clooney may be getting all the glory for his terrific lead performance as Matt King, a real estate mogul who has to deal with his comatose wife’s wishes to die at the same time he is forced to become a better father to his two daughters.

But it’s when he learns that his wife had been cheating on him with a smarmy-looking real estate agent named Brian Speer that the film really takes off, as he sets out to find Speer in order to gain closure.

It would be easy to play Speer as a heartless cad, and a lout who callously disrupted the family life and betrayed the marriage of another man. But as Speer, actor Matthew Lillard delivers a powerfully nuanced performance that actually makes viewers feel his pain as he begs for forgiveness from King and also begs King not to tell his own wife what he had done.

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For a guy who’s made mostly conventional movies in his career, Jonah Hill finds himself in a very unusual career position these days.

He’s built his reputation on being an offbeat yet obnoxious slob in such movies as “Superbad” and “Get Him to the Greek,” while occasionally showing a deeper side in the outstanding “Cyrus” (my favorite film of last year) and “Moneyball.”

But for thus far unspecified reasons, Hill has spent the past year on an impressive effort to lose more than 100 pounds. While this will no doubt prolong his life and has transformed him into a surprisingly dapper fellow, it also means that he will have to completely reinvent his performance style.

That might be a good idea after his new movie “The Sitter,” in which he plays Noah, a college-dropout slacker who stumbles into a babysitting gig on the same night the hottest girl he knows makes him a deal: she’ll finally have sex with him, but only if he brings her some cocaine from her drug dealer (Sam Rockwell).

Well, the man’s got needs, so despite being in charge of three young kids – a 13-year-old dreamboat of a boy (Max Records) who turns out to be gay, an 8-year-old girl (Landry Bender) who aspires to be a Kardashian-style club tramp and reality TV star, and an adopted Latino boy named Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), who steals the movie with his nonstop criminal antics – he takes her up on her offer.

But when Rodrigo not only steals a porcelain egg filled with cocaine from the dealer but also sets off cherry bombs in the bathrooms of two luxury restaurants, events spiral out of control and the gang is on the run for their lives from the dealer’s henchmen.

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Adam Sandler has his new movie “Jack and Jill” in theaters this weekend, and man, have the nation’s mainstream media film critics got their knives out for him on this one.

With a stunning 0 percent so far on Rotten Tomatoes the day before it hits theaters one might think Sandler had made a film that was completely, utterly and irredeemably lacking in laughs and entertainment value.

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But – taking into account that this isn’t pretentious art-house, Oscar-aiming fare – “Jack and Jill” is just another sad example of most critics’ single-minded agenda to give Sandler a smack down for daring to make movies that, while engaging in some crude humor, nearly always wind up upholding old-fashioned values like solid families, respect for elders (especially grandmas with meatballs!) and true love.

This time around, he includes a strong anti-bullying angle, and dares to have not one, not two, but three broad-sided smack downs of an atheist character – so be fully aware that while this isn’t a perfect film, it is damn funny. The packed audience I saw it with laughed their heads off while the few critics in attendance groused afterwards about what an atrocity it was.

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Many people harbor dark secrets from their past, memories that eat at their souls and cause them to live in fear of ever being discovered. And in the terrific new film “The Son of No One,” a New York City cop named Jonathan White has an even darker one than most.

Jonathan grew up in a Queens housing project where he earned the nickname “Milk” for being the only white kid surrounded by minorities. He was stuck living there with his impoverished grandmother because his cop father was killed in the line of duty. Surrounded by broken lives and with a black child named Vinny as his only true friend, Jonathan dreamed of getting out fast – particularly because a crack addict named Hanky is constantly terrorizing the kids in the building.

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Milk and Vinny find a gun and never really intend to use it other than to scare Hanky away, but in a moment of panic Milk shoots and kills the junkie. When he and Vinny move the body to cover up the killing, another drug dealer finds out and, in an ensuing tussle, the dealer tumbles down a flight of stairs to his death.

Detective Charles Stanford (Al Pacino), the former partner of Milk’s father, figures out these were innocent accidents that took out the worst human trash in the projects so Milk is never charged. The deaths are left officially unsolved.

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This weekend offered a more dramatic example than usual of how Hollywood is running out of ideas. There are actually two new remakes in theaters now – updates on ’80s favorites ‘Footloose’ and ‘The Thing.’

The main difference between the two ‘Footloose’ features lies in the fact that one has Kevin Bacon and one, well, doesn’t. And there is a surprising similarity between ‘Footloose’ and ‘The Thing’: both have jaw-dropping visuals, with ‘The Thing’ offering up an impressive monster and “Footloose” offering up Julianne Hough. Both are guaranteed to make men ogle the screen like characters in a Tex Avery cartoon.

The new ‘Thing’ features a female scientist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as its star instead of Kurt Russell and is directed by a Norwegian with an unpronounceable name (for the record, it’s Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.) rather than horror maestro John Carpenter. It’s still set in Antarctica, and the filmmakers do score some impressive snowy visuals from Canadian locations without lecturing viewers about the demise of the polar ice caps.

I don’t remember a whole lot from the Carpenter version, other than that a dog wound up a gory mess and that Russell looked like he could handle the freezing temperatures a lot better than Winstead, who in one scene here actually runs outside to wave down a helicopter without putting on gloves or a scarf. If you think that’s silly, then consider the fact that the monster here is an alien that looks like a cross between a crab and an ostrich and that the film isn’t so much scary as it is goofy.

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Movie buffs freaked when word leaked that Paramount Pictures was remaking its 1984 youth classic ‘Footloose,’ as if the studio was tampering with a sacred text. Or remaking ‘The Ten Commandments,’ God forbid. (Oh, wait. ‘The Ten Commandments’ with Charlton Heston was itself a remake – done over by the same director, Cecil B. DeMille).

Sure, the first ‘Footloose’ was fun, but it really was magic for two reasons: a terrific soundtrack built around Kenny Loggins’ title song that sounds every bit as slamming today as it did 27 years ago, and the star-making turn by Kevin Bacon, one of the most enduring actors of the modern era. But aside from that (and OK, Chris Penn’s performance – particularly while learning how to dance – was endearing as well), the movie was MTV-style cheese.

So why make a new one? Frankly, why not? With its tale of a teenage outsider rallying his peers to stand up for their fundamental right to the joyous free expression of dance, the core story has an undeniable appeal that should hold up for generations. Unfortunately, the young audiences that should still embrace the original don’t seem to keep anything from the ‘80s alive outside of John Hughes’ movies.

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Think of Sarah Jessica Parker, and her performance as Carrie Bradshaw in the “Sex and the City” TV show and movies likely comes to mind. After all, she became a pop culture icon playing a high-living New York City single gal who made a pact with her three best friends to sleep around just like men without addressing the emotional or physical consequences.

Oddly, by the time the series ended its six-year run on HBO, three of the four women had either gotten married or engaged, and the fourth had settled into a happy, monogamous relationship. The first “SATC” movie continued these nesting themes, though I (like most movie goers) didn’t bother to check out the second film.

“SATC” wound up contradicting its founding premise by showing that these women found happiness when they decided to settle down with a man and possibly start a family. And now, Parker has surprised us once again with “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” which puts her in a similar role but with some key twists. She’s still a high-flying, big city gal (Boston, not the Big Apple), but she’s happily married to an architect with two kids.

While the couple does rely on a part-time nanny, the film still paints a believable picture of the extra struggles women like Parker’s Kate character face in the workforce, most humorously depicted by a smug co-worker (“SNL” veteran Seth Meyers) eager to steal credit for Kate’s ideas. But the movie is a Hollywood rarity in that it depicts banking and finance as a noble and positive field to be in, detailing how Kate’s work can help restore the retirement savings of millions of Americans wiped out by the recession.

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It’s rare that a movie can come along and sweep away viewers into its world without the benefit of major stars and a whirlwind of hype. But this weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to see an absolutely mesmerizing film that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Its name is “Girlfriend,” and before I get caught up in rapturously praising the film, I want to let our Los Angeles readers know that they have one shot to see the film in a theater and help give it a broader life. It screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Downtown Independent Theater, the same free-thinking venue that earlier this year earned my praises for having the guts to screen the amazing anti-North Korean documentary “The Red Chapel” for a week.

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In its own ways, “Girlfriend” is even more of a must-see, and I urge anyone who appreciates great acting and writing in the vein of William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor’s darkly meaningful tales to go. It’s a thoughtful, quiet film that builds slowly but surely to a compelling series of events that should leave viewers happy that their intelligence was respected like so few films bother to do, as well as a uniquely satisfying conclusion that will leave you seeing the world in a different way.

While it tells its own very personal, compelling and unpredictable tale, it bears a resemblance to another great film that came out of nowhere back in 1996: Billy Bob Thornton’s masterpiece, “Sling Blade.” Like that film, “Girlfriend” centers on a mentally challenged man named Evan in a small rural town who suddenly has big decisions to make with even bigger consequences hanging in the balance.

But while Thornton was a relatively unknown character actor who drew critics and audiences in with a stunning performance pretending to be mentally challenged, “Girlfriend” stars a man named Evan Sneider, who actually lives with the condition of Downs Syndrome. His performance here is a stunner, because he not only holds his own against an excellent cast, but alternates perfectly between moments of subtle sadness and explosive emotion in a way that would make most so-called normal actors jealous.

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Vera Farmiga has lit up the screen in supporting roles for the past few years, first drawing viewers’ and critics’ attention by playing a police psychologist caught between Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in 2006’s “The Departed” before landing an Oscar nomination as the mysterious flipside and lover of George Clooney’s commitment-phobic, constantly traveling businessman in 2009’s “Up in the Air.”

But her almost ethereal calm onscreen also hides a deep Christian faith, and that inspired her to go all the way as the director as well as star of the new film “Higher Ground.” While she’s following in the footsteps of icons like Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Robert DeNiro to make that creative leap, “Higher Ground” is a quietly personal film – a fictionalized take on the memoir “This Dark World” by Carolyn Bridges, about a woman’s struggle to balance her faith with her awareness of the nascent feminist movement of the early ‘70s – can she insist on having a voice in the small rural church she attends, or does she have to stay silent just because the men traditionally tell the women they need to be silent?

“Higher Ground” was a Sundance favorite in January, landing distribution with Sony Pictures Classics and started playing in New York and LA last week, with cities nationwide to come. Farmiga sat down recently with Big Hollywood to discuss the film and her profoundly personal reasons for directing it. (more…)

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years about Hollywood, it’s that actors love being part of disaster movies. Whether it’s “The Towering Inferno” or “The Poseidon Adventure,” or any one of the insane “Airport” movies from the ‘70s, they were jam-packed with ridiculous combinations of stars whom no one would ever consider placing together onscreen otherwise.

That tradition comes back strong this Friday with “Contagion,” a film that boasts a cast featuring such Oscar nominees and winners as Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet and Jude Law in addition to longtime TV and movie favorite Laurence Fishburne and three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston. Hell, Cranston took a part in this epidemic epic even though he does two brief scenes buried amid all the mayhem.

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Now, I know that for most BH readers, seeing the name “Matt Damon” at the bare minimum has them cracking their fingers as they ready a diatribe about how proud they are for never seeing one of his movies, despite the fact that he’s now among Clint Eastwood’s most frequent collaborators. I catch a lot of flak for liking these films like “Invictus” and “Hereafter,” but then again, I’m reviewing how well a movie is made rather than casting eternal judgment upon Matt’s soul.

I’ll point out when he puts a sucker punch – or at least I try. I’m not quite as hawkeyed as some of our dear readers. But this movie has a few ideological surprises in store, and I’ll spell them out right off the bat so that everyone can either cool down and read the rest of the review or perhaps on the other hand, to fuel the fire even more as people say “OK, those ARE good points, but it’s STILL Matt Damon! And he can never redeem himself!”

So, first off, Matt doesn’t come up with a  government conspiracy behind the epidemic, which is caused by a nasty intermingling of bat and pig that I’ll keep a secret since it makes for an awesome ending to the movie. In fact, the rare characters who imply that there’s a government epidemic causing the problem are all shot down.

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There were a few images from movies that left an indelible impression on my mind when I first saw them in childhood. One was laughing hysterically upon seeing Woody Allen getting his arm stuck in a gumball machine while running from the cops in “Take the Money and Run.” Another is Darth Vader taking his mask off in “Empire Strikes Back,” revealing the horrifically scarred mound of goo that passed for his face.  And a third would have to be seeing Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes,” first because at age six I was stunned that they allowed him to stand naked on TV and then because of the more iconic terrifying image of the collapsed Statue of Liberty at the end of the film. However, that final shot, which helped spark my passion for movies, was ruined by the lame-o series of sequels to “Apes” and especially by Tim Burton’s disastrous remake.

And so it was that I regarded seeing the new “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” about as much as I look forward to seeing torture-porn or Merchant-Ivory costume dramas. Meaning, I thought I’d rather have my eyeballs plucked out.

But every once in a long while, Hollywood still harbors the capacity to surprise me. And it’s with an utterly stunned sense of joy that I am happy to declare “Rise” the most entertaining movie of the summer, a film that is jam-packed with moments that will awe and inspire both young and old alike.  It will have you thinking, “how’d they do that?” over and over.

The film stars Oscar nominee James Franco (“127 Hours”) as Will Rodman, a young science whiz who’s at the forefront of testing a new Alzheimer’s-fighting drug, AZ-112, on apes at a genetic research firm called GenSys. Franco’s presence serves notice that this film is going to be smarter than usual. While he occasionally misfires, like he did in “Your Highness,” his choice of films is usually tied to great writing. (more…)

Last weekend, your choices of new movies at the box office came down to watching apes try to act human in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and watching grown human men try to act like apes in “The Change-Up.” Actually, some of the behavior these guys wallow in would be an insult to apes, as “The Change-Up” traffics in some of the grossest, laziest, most self-indulgent bad behavior and horrid tastelessness of just about any mainstream film I’ve ever seen – and I’m no prude: “There’s Something About Mary” and “Animal House” are among my top five favorite movies.

The premise of “The Change-Up” alone seems like a copycat of the slew of body-switching comedies that flooded theaters in the late 1980s (“Big,” “Like Father Like Son,” “18 Again,” “Dream a Little Dream,” and “Vice Versa,” to name a few). And to add to the sense of laziness, it stars Jason Bateman in what’s starting to appear to be his Movie of the Month Club, playing an uptight corporate lawyer who can’t seem to get a promotion — virtually the same character he played just a month ago in “Horrible Bosses.”

Meanwhile, Ryan Reynolds reverts to the crude shenanigans of his breakthrough film “Van Wilder” in playing a constantly stoned slacker whose idea of a big break is landing a role in a soft-core porn flick. One wishes immediately that both they and the filmmakers – who are talented in the R-rated comedy genre, as Jon Lucas and Scott Moore created the first “Hangover” and David Dobkin directed “Wedding Crashers” – had followed their own title and attempted to create a film that relied more on clever writing and reinventing the body-switching subgenre than just attempting to push the envelope until it’s torn wide open and shredded to pieces. (more…)

Think back to your summer vacations growing up. You probably took a few trips with your family, then moved on to a lame summer job working in a mall or flipping burgers. Some of those memories are probably preserved in home movies that no one – not even you – would want to watch again.

On the other hand, Lincoln Heights resident Chris Strompolos spent his teen summers being shot at, dragged under a truck, and chased by a giant boulder. He had his first kiss, fought off Arabs and Indians, and eventually saved the planet from Nazi domination. The best part is, he captured it all on video and for the past five years, people all over the planet have been clamoring to see the footage.

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If his adventures sound familiar, that’s because Strompolos was starring in a remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” reenacting the adventures of Indiana Jones. The difference is “Raiders” was directed by the biggest director on the planet, Steven Spielberg, while Strompolos was taking orders from his best friend, Eric Zala, who is only a year older than he is. They were also hindered by the difference in their budgets ($18 million for Spielberg’s, $5000 for the boys’), and having to shoot their entire movie on the fly over seven summers in the backwoods of Mississippi.

On May 14, 2008,  nearly 20 years after they finished production in 1989, Strompolos and Zala reunited with their friend Jayson Lamb, who served as editor/cinematographer and effects whiz on the film, to present the Los Angeles debut of “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” on Hollywood’s ultimate big screen at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. The event was a benefit for the Festival of Children Foundation, but it followed five years of whirlwind screenings at film festivals all over the planet and a personal letter raving about the film from Spielberg himself. (more…)

Man, has it been one rough summer for Tom Hanks. As the writer-director and star of the colossal flop “Larry Crowne,” he no doubt has found plenty of time to wonder why audiences stayed away in droves from his tale of an average Joe (well, Larry) and how he shakes his life up when he loses his job amid the recession. 

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He may want to look over his shoulder at Steve Carell to figure it all out, for Carell appears to have taken over the title of America’s Favorite Everyman from Hanks. It’s not just that Carell shares Hanks’ genuine relatability and genial everyday charm, but likely also the fact that one is hard-pressed to find Carell forcing his political opinions on movie fans and telling them how to vote. He just shows up and does a great job, often weaving tales of sympathetic characters who ultimately try to do the right thing even amid a world that seems to reward doing the wrong thing – and making us laugh like crazy in the process. 

And so it is that “Crazy Stupid Love” marks the latest Carell film to hit the multiplex, this time backed by a stellar ensemble cast with Oscar nominees Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore, Oscar winner Marisa Tomei, fast-rising star Emma Stone and the perennially popular Kevin Bacon – all of whom are intertwined in surprising ways as they each search for their own form of true love. The difference between this film and utter dreck like “Valentine’s Day” and “He’s Just Not That Into You” is that “Crazy” is genuinely funny and touching with well-drawn and acted portrayals of people who seem real, rather than merely looking like it’s weaving stories just to hit all the marketing demographics in existence. 

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Even in a world where most movie heroes have to take on superpowers before they can fight properly and often find themselves toeing the PC line while saving the world, it’s good to know that some movie concepts are just good, clean, ridiculous fun. And riding onto the nation’s movie screens this weekend is a perfect example of just that kind of film: the new Western/sci-fi hybrid genre mash-up “Cowboys & Aliens.”

The “plot” couldn’t be more basic, yet it took nine people to assemble the script, which opens on tough-guy cowboy Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) waking up in the desert with a nasty gash in his belly and a mysterious iron bracelet on one arm.

As he struggles to remember what led to his desert awakening, Jake is confronted by three horsemen who threaten to turn him in for a bounty.  He still can’t remember his name or where he came from, but he does know how to open a can of whupass on the interlopers and proceeds to kill them before riding into the nearest town wearing their clothes and riding their horses.

When he finds that the town is ruled by the terroristic clan of corrupt cattle rancher Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), he proceeds to stir things up by humorously beating Woodrow’s son and henchmen. Just as he’s about to have to run for his life or fight to the death with Woodrow, however, a fleet of alien spaceships comes swooping in out of nowhere to blow a bunch of stuff up for no immediately apparent reason – and Jake and Woodrow have to team up and bring their respective posses together to fight back against the aliens with one cohesive force. (more…)