Archive for November, 2006

Turistas

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

This week’s horror movie is called TURISTAS (Portuguese for ‘Hostel’). It’s another story of young good looking backpackers whose vacations go badly due to bodily mutilation, etc. A crowded bus swerves to miss some asshole kids with surfboards and falls off a cliff. Luckily everybody gets out in time. The next bus won’t be for ten hours so some of the English-speakers band together and find a cool beachfront bar where they dance, make new friends, meet women and have such a good time they decide to ditch the bus.

So the vacation has taken a lucky turn, right? WRONG. We know this bar is too good to be true, not just because we’ve seen movies before, but because the movie lets us hear the bartender calling a local doctor and telling him she has some more gringoes for him. And I don’t think she means for him to give them their annual exam. When they wake up in the morning they’ve been drugged and robbed, and their new Swedish friends are gone. They’re in a foreign land where most of them don’t speak the language. They have no way home, no money, no passports, and some little kids are wearing their clothes. It could be worse though, the doctor could’ve planned better and had them all transported to the remote cabin where he plans to take out their kidneys, instead of leaving them on the beach far from the operating table. But don’t worry, he’ll get them there.

I’ll be honest. I don’t like tourists either. Even here in Seattle we get invaded by the fuckers. Whatever city you’re in, you can probaly relate. Here they got this thing called “Ride the Ducks,” an amphibious tour boat/car thing. If you’re walking peacefully downtown and you hear either “YMCA” or “Brick House” blaring and a bunch of assholes blowing on kazoos, you know they’re coming. I don’t know what exactly they’re getting a tour of, it’s a regular city with people walking down sidewalks. I’m not a zebra, I’m just a dude going to the Adidas Store or whatever. And traditional family values prevents you from flipping them off or yelling “go fuck yourself” cause there’s kids on that thing. (more…)

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11/27/06

Monday, November 27th, 2006

Sorry about the hiatus there. I hope all you Americans had a good Thanksgiving, all you non-Americans had a good Thursday, November 23rd, and all you Native Americans forgive us. What can we say, sweet potatoes are good.

Here are some new reviews. A good one in theaters: SHUT UP AND SING. A bad one coming soon to video: CRANK. An I’m-not-sure one not available at all: MR. NO LEGS.

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Shut Up & Sing

Monday, November 27th, 2006

This is a documentary about the Dixie Chicks. Now, you probaly won’t be surprised to hear that I got no interest in the music of the Dixie Chicks. But you may or may not be surprised to hear that I liked the movie alot.

Of course the title refers to the main subject of the movie, the controversy that came in 2003 after Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines ad-libbed the dangerous sentence, “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States comes from Texas,” during a concert in London. Because of that one sentence (and some mild anti-war, pro-human life comments on the eve of the invasion) right wing web sights organized call-in campaigns to country music stations across the country, causing the corporation that runs the computer that programs every radio station to not play Dixie Chicks songs anymore. Meanwhile, idiots with bad handwriting made signs and stood outside of Dixie Chicks concerts reinforcing all the worst stereotypes about lower class white southerners.

This political context is the hook that makes the movie interesting, it’s obviously what got me in the theater, but thankfully it’s not the whole show. What really makes the movie work is the charisma and humanity of these three woman in the band. We see them doing alot of things: answering criticism in interviews, performing, writing new songs, giving birth, discussing security after death threats, calling Bush a “dumbfuck.” What we don’t see them doing is fighting. Maybe it’s selective editing, I don’t know, but it was refreshing to see a music documentary where the whole band supports each other for the entire running time. They don’t always agree, but they never seem to get mad at each other. Diane Sawyer tries to bait the two backup Chicks to turn on Natalie for having the nerve to say one honest sentence while performing. But they don’t do it. More than anything this is a story about them standing united and not backing down. In the end they have switched out some of their old fans for new ones, they aren’t being played on the same radio stations, and they have had to scale down their tour a little bit. But they have kept their integrity and their dignity. And it doesn’t hurt that they were obviously right about the war, as hinted by occasional appearances by the notorious “Mission Accomplished” banner, vintage statements about weapons of mass destruction, etc. Although I’m sure they’d rather have been wrong about that. (more…)

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Crank

Monday, November 27th, 2006

No, this is not the one where Adam Sandler has a magic remote control that he uses to conquer the world, that’s CLICK. This is CRANK, this is the one where Jason Statham (the Transporter himself) is a hitman who gets injected by high concept poison. It’s gonna kill him, but he figures out that it won’t finish until his adrenaline rate goes down. So he tries to run around, have sex, do coke and get in shootouts until he is able to get revenge on the poisoner. So it’s SPEED in a guy, with a side order of revenge.

An inventive thrill ride full of imagination and wit that keeps you constantly involved as it builds to an unbelievable climax… would be a good way to do this movie. Instead they went the DOMINO route of “if you throw every stupid show-offy technique you ever saw in a commercial at the screen, technically it counts as entertainment.” I think I know what they were thinking: he has to keep his adrenaline up, so the movie has to keep its adrenaline up too. But it’s flawed logic. THE JERK is about a moron, but the movie doesn’t have to be moronic. I don’t think SPEED had cameras flying around constantly to convince you that it’s about speed. If you show a guy in hospital gown zooming around on a motorcycle pursued by police, that is by definition somewhat exciting. But when you throw in unnecessary zooms and split screen and do a jokey flashback on one side and then freeze on a guy’s goofy expression and then switch it to black and white and then zoom into Statham’s chest to show an x-ray of his heart beating (a nod to the Furious Movement) AND you gotta throw in “exciting” guitar music made by a guy who used to be in Tangerine Dream who is now trying to rock out, it seems like you’re overcompensating. It isn’t exciting anymore, it’s just annoying. To me it’s another movie that has no build or rhythm at all, just the same frantic shit for 87 minutes straight.

The responsible parties are two rookie directors who are small time actors and did effects on BIKER BOYZ. My guess is that one directed the movie and then the other one directed it again and then they edited the two versions together using a coin toss or dice to figure out which shot to use where. It’s not nearly as bad as DOMINO, that’s one nice thing I can say. I guess the difference is that it has that cool premise and it sticks to it. It’s a simple, fairly streamlined story. I guess I can see how somebody might be interested to see him get his revenge if they could watch the movie without their mind wandering off to somewhere more peaceful. (more…)

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Mr. No Legs

Monday, November 27th, 2006

This is a movie that’s not on video as far as I know. In order to see it you either gotta travel through time, or you gotta deal with those seemy individuals who sail the seven seas putting the stuntmen out of work. Or at least the non-copyright holding movie transferers at 5minutestolive.com.

MR. NO LEGS is a badly acted low budget movie about two cops (one with mustache) investigating the death of one cop (the one with the mustache)’s sister. They don’t know what we the audience know, that she was accidentally killed by her no-good-drug-dealing boyfriend who they will not be able to bring to justice because his sloppiness earned his face an intimate date with a shotgun shell, chaperoned by the gang’s toughest enforcer, Lou.

That does not sound exciting, but what if I were to tell you that Lou HAS NO LEGS? And in fact, I had to check IMDb to find out his name was Lou because he is mostly referred to as “No Legs”? What would you do then, smart guy? You would watch the movie is what you would do.

So he has no legs, but how does he get around, you’re wondering. Well he has a wheelchair just like any other guy with no legs, but it is a pretty good wheelchair because it has shotguns built into the armrests. It also has good places to keep his throwing stars. Now, at first I thought the whole power of No Legs was confined to the wheelchair. I mean anybody is tougher with two shotguns at their disposal, no matter how many legs they got. So while his awesome wheelchair may be empowering to some disabled arms enthusiasts, it is not enough to make this guy remarkable. He just has good taste in wheelchairs. Without the chair who is he? He gets driven around by his right hand man, Rance “without my sperm there would be no live action Grinch movie” Howard. I figured that was his weakness, if Rance is driving him around and they get stopped by some rivals, he can’t get to his chair from the backseat and he’s fucked. (more…)

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Casino Royale

Friday, November 17th, 2006

Fellas -

I liked CASINO ROYALE too. (review ends here if you’re one of those dicks who always complains that my reviews are too long)

This is coming from the perspective of a non-James Bond fan. People are always trying to get me to watch them, especially my buds Paul and Tom at Her Majesty’s Secret Servant, who got me to review a couple for them a while back. I can understand the appeal, I like jetpacks as much as the next guy, but these movies are not really my thing. And to me the Pierce Brosnans quickly turn into snoozefests where you only perk up to groan at the worse-than-Schwarzenegger punmanship. The ridiculous action scenes I can get into (gotta love that GOLDENEYE opening) and the character names (how could Denise Richards playing a scientist named Dr. Christmas Jones not be fun? well, they pulled it off). But to me it’s mostly the same old shit over and over again with an indestructible super stud doing magical deeds and screwing beautiful women and they lust after him so much they put up with his painful sense of humor. And we’re supposed to like this guy. Well, I don’t.

So when they had that controversy going about the casting of Daniel Craig I had to laugh. Was that a made up story or were there really James Bond fans pissing their pants over the color of his hair? It’s not like it’s pink or nothin, blond is a perfectly reasonable color of hair for a secret agent. I don’t have any inside info but according to my research it is very possible that a blond man could be a secret agent in some countries. Well shit, even if it WAS pink, I had no interest in another god damn James Bond movie. I wasn’t gonna see another Pierce Brosnan with another clunky title to mix up with the other ones (I can only keep them straight as The One With Michelle Yeoh, The One With Halle Berry, etc.). They supposedly wanted a fresh start but they got the writers of the last couple, the director of GOLDENEYE, they actually turned down Tarantino wanting to adapt this particular book and then gave it to their usual guys so that bridge would be permanently burned. (more…)

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Bobby

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

Question for you fellas:

Why is Emilio Estevez famous again? I can’t think of many legitimately good movies he’s in besides REPO MAN. People love their BREAKFAST CLUB, I think I liked STAKEOUT at the time, can’t remember. I think now he mostly just directs TV shows, but that’s not enough Gatorade to quench the artistic thirst for this guy. With his new all star ensemble BOBBY he’s going serious. He’s wearing two hearts, one on each sleeve, maybe even has his targets set on the Academy’s notorious weakness for actors turned directors. Who knows what those chumps will fall for these days?

BOBBY is not exactly the story of Bobby Kennedy – he only appears in file footage (lots of it) and a few times played by a back-of-the-head double. Instead it’s the story of the people who were in the Ambassador Hotel the night he was assassinated, including some of the other people who were shot in that kitchen. Of course, none of them are based on the actual historical figures, let alone actual recognizable human beings you might relate to. So I guess what it is is the story of a dozen or two lightly sketched stereotypes. You know, one of those day-in-the-life interweaving story type deals, but not convincing enough to make you feel like you’re spending a day with anything but a bad movie.

The topic is different but this movie definitely wants to be CRASH. Not the pervy one where they have sex with flesh wounds and re-enact celebrity car crash deaths and then Deborah Kara Unger asks James Spader what Elias Koteas’s anus looks like – I’m talking about the more ridiculous one by Paul Haggis. There’s no getting around it, BOBBY is downright Haggish. You got the all-star cast of people representing different walks of life through broad cliche or hollow gimmick. You got the varied storylines of people all facing some Important Issue or Personal Struggle that’s coming to its peak at the same time and place where Bobby is about to get shot. They even got the climactic musical montage where all the characters silently meet their fate or come to some kind of understanding or something. This time it’s set to “The Sounds of Silence.” They have a conversation about THE GRADUATE in the movie as if to admit “Yeah, I know, this song was already in THE GRADUATE.” Maybe we should be grateful though – the one original song in the movie is an end credits gospel tune written by fucking Bryan Adams. (more…)

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11/7/06

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

The house, maybe the senate? Is it too early to summon the ewoks? Well don’t start drumming on the storm trooper helmets quite yet. The first bad news of the new Democratic era: that new BOBBY movie sucks if you ask me.

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Tool Time with George Bush

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

If you grew up in America like I did, you probaly grew up fearing some dictator or despot from somewhere trampling on freedom. You had your nightmares of Hitler and Mussolini if you grew up during World War 2, the spread of communism during the Vietnam era or what Reagan called the Evil Empire during the ’80s. Or our younger folks are growing up hearing about Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and all the various oppressive Islamic regimes. Maybe you read 1984, Animal Farm, V For Vendetta, the Handmaid’s Tale, Star Wars the official novelization. For life-long Americans, living under an oppressive regime is the stuff of cautionary tales. Thank God it’s hard for us to imagine living in a country or a planet where you have to fear the police coming and taking you away at night for your political beliefs, for a misunderstanding, for a vendetta, because your neighbor accused you of being a traitor, or for no reason at all.

But with the continually snowballing monumental incompetence and belligerence of the Bush administration, with the Patriot Act parts 1 and 2 still on the books, with the Iraq war still spiraling out of control, Afghanistan still falling from our grip, Osama bin Laden still on the loose, bodies still rotting in the streets of New Orleans, North Korea going nuclear thanks to our Conan the Barbarian approach to diplomacy, and the republicans facing the task of convincingly rigging the mid-term election when the whole world expects them to be crushed into oblivion by the angry populace, it’s easy to get paranoid about what these assholes might want to pull next.

What if, during all this craziness, the president decided he had the right to just lock up anybody he chose, for any reason, without a charge or a jury, and have them tortured while he sits in the corner jerking off? And what if Congress, in all their befuddling lack of wisdom, decided to pass that into law?

Well, there’s no point worrying about WHAT IF because this actually happened last month. In case you missed it, the MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT was actually debated and passed in Congress, and Bush signed it into law two weeks later. It’s for real. The part about him jerking off is not specified in the legislation, but is implied. (more…)

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