Brewster McCloud

Characters in films/TV programmes (often cops or authority figures) saying "I need you to..." I don't know exactly when it started, but it seems to be in everything I watch now. The Rock says it in Skyscraper when he's instructing his wife how to stop the lift from hitting the ground: "I need you to push this button..." Why not just say, "Push this button"? It's such a whiny little phrase.

Thing is, he's largely kept his promises. Lefties can wring their hands all they want but the American economy is healthy, he hasn't dragged them into any wars, he's reduced unemployment and he's not made any noises about taking away their guns. Oh, and he's credited, rightly or wrongly, with defeating ISIS. He's had so much negative media coverage that it only galvanizes his supporters, rather than changing their minds. 

As for wrestlers liking him, he speaks their language. Wrestling is a capitalist enterprise that is traditionally based on the ethos of might is right, and keeping foreigners and minorities in their place by and large. Trump and wrestling are 2 peas in a pod.

Hardly surprising that pro wrestlers would relate to Trump - he's every bit the promo cutting carny they are, generating Cena-like heat from the polarised electorate. Vince taught him well. 

Is he, though? Since he lurched onto the scene with the Cronenberg/Carpenter-aping Cabin Fever in 2002, he's directed a grand total of 4 horror films, 2 of them being Hostel and Hostel 2, which I can happily live without ever watching again. He recently had the bright idea of remaking Death Wish and revealed he had not a single original thing to add to the increasingly tedious slough of NRA-approved vigilante revenge flicks (Revenge itself being a notable exception). For me, good horror should have wit, subtelty and create a sense of dread by undercutting the audience's expectations. Roths films have the wit and subtelty of Marmite and there's an ugliness to his characters I find offputting. It's like he thinks by making them bovine then so much the better when they get sliced and diced - they're just grist to his mill. 

He talks a good game, but never quite seems to grasp what makes the films he pays homage to successful. I suspect he admires Cannibal Holocaust so much because "Dude, it's like, so fucked up". and probably didn't notice how lovely the soundtrack is. What exactly was he trying to say in the Green Inferno, anyway? That do-gooding students deserve to be murdered? For all its flaws, at least Cannibal Holocaust showed its protagonists being slaughtered for committing atrocities against the jungle dwellers. But LOL,millennial snowflakes are just as bad, right Eli? He's never been more than the sum of his parts.