Archive for August, 2007

Interview with director Scotty JX on Actiongirls: Soldiers of the Dead Part 1

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Ladies and gentlemen,

As an individual who tends to write about movies on the internet I get a few emails.

And every now and then those emails are about some low budget undistributed independent movie somebody made, asking if I would check it out. I usually say sure, if you want to send it to me I’ll take a look. But then I say that I can’t guarantee I will review it. And so far I never have. If it doesn’t blow me away there’s no point in reviewing it. I feel bad because these are all nice people and they’ve worked hard on these things, but usually I’m not patient enough to watch. If there are people who are good at watching those things to look for hidden talent then I’m not one of them. I like a good low budget movie, but to me low budget is EL MARIACHI or above. BAD TASTE maybe. Preferably TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I’m not the best guy to appreciate what you shot on video with your friends, no matter how good a job you did.

So when I got an email from a guy called Scotty JX about his movie ACTIONGIRLS: SOLDIERS OF THE DEAD PART 1 I was kind of surprised. Because he included pictures, and it looked like a real action movie. There was a fiery explosion or two. Some sweaty babes with guns. Some evil musclemen and bloody Nazis. And they looked like people that would really be in a movie, not just somebody’s buddy they had to settle for because they had no money. In some dusty closet I have an old VHS tape I bought at Woolworth’s or Fred Meyer or somewhere called THAT’S ACTION!, and it’s nothing but clips of explosions and shootings from low budget 1980s commando movies I never heard of before or since. And this ACTIONGIRLS looked like something that would be on that tape.
When the package arrived there was a disc, some printed information and some glossy promo shots printed off from a computer. I was looking over the stuff and some of the names on the credits sounded familiar. Susanna Spears for example, I think I’d heard that name. And Adriana Zarcova too. There was somebody named Lilian Tiger in it. And a guy named Mr. Haleek, that’s kind of an odd– HOLY SHIT, this is a porno! No wonder the director’s name is Scotty JX! I know people give McG shit for his name, and mink (Steven Seagal’s INTO THE SUN), but I don’t think any director would be called Scotty JX unless there were butts and boobs involved. With that realization it seemed to make a little more sense why I hadn’t heard of this movie. All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together like a bunch of penises sliding into a bunch of vaginas. (more…)

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Spartan

Friday, August 24th, 2007

SPARTAN is named after some quote from Leonidas, so yes it sort of has something to do with 300. Or maybe David Mamet is really into John Spartan, Stallone’s character from DEMOLITION MAN. Either way, this is a gritty thriller where Val Kilmer plays a badass special ops agent from a nameless government organization who investigates the disappearance of a high ranking politician’s daughter. (It seems like it’s the first daughter, but I think they leave it ambiguous.)

The movie feels much less Hollywood and more realistic than any other of its type, but at the same time you have to accept some pretty crazy shit. I’ll just say it: “the girl,” as the agents all call her, is mad at her dad so she whores herself out at a brothel one night and then, coincidentally it seems like, she gets shipped off to a white slavery ring in Dubai. I say coincidentally because they don’t know she’s anybody’s daughter. They just like her because she’s blond.

So that’s pretty far-fetched, in my opinion. But just go with it. (more…)

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The Warriors

Friday, August 24th, 2007

I gotta be honest. As good as THE WARRIORS is it’s not quite the amazing masterpiece I like to remember it as. What makes it good is mostly on the surface: the different gangs and their gimmicks, the bleak rawness of everything from the cinematography to the John Carpenter-ish analog keyboard music, and the dead seriousness of all the characters in the face of this exaggerated world where thugs patrol the streets in baseball uniforms and gangs seem to outnumber law abiding citizens by a thousand to one.

This is all more than enough to make it some kind of minor classic, but my memory was being pretty charitable to the storytelling. I always loved the mythological simplicity of it: Cyrus calls a meeting to try to unite all the gangs, some prick assassinates Cyrus and blames The Warriors, now these 9 guys have to cross New York on foot to get back home before the other gangs kill them. It’s a good old fashioned odyssey or a guantlet or whatever.

But watching it this time I don’t think Walter Hill keeps the momentum of that journey from point A to point B. Or the simplicity. He splits up the group. They don’t even realize at first that everyone’s after them. And half of them keeping getting distracted by the eternal search for pussy. This is pretty funny when they try to hook up with the girl gang called the Lizzies and they don’t seem to notice the obvious fact that the Lizzies are not, you know, into guys. If only that homophobic prick Ajax was there, he calls everybody “faggot” all the time so maybe he would’ve picked up on it. Anyway, there’s some meandering, it doesn’t really build like it could, when they get to the beach on Coney Island to face off with their enemies maybe you should feel more like they’ve been through Hell and back.

But I’m kind of nitpicking. I like the whole tone of this movie. Everybody looks so serious all the time. Warriors rarely smile. They’re macho like Spartans, they have a code they stick to stubbornly. Like the scene where they have to go through Orphan turf but there’s a whole political negotiation first. And it’s decided that all they have to do is take off their vests, they can’t go through in uniform. But they refuse. They’d rather fight and maybe die than take off their colors. It’s not clear if they’d be allowed to just turn them inside out like they made kids do with their Spuds Mackenzie shirts in the ’80s. And if it had been the Baseball Furies or the mime gang would they have had to clean off their face paint? (more…)

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Superbad

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

My friends I am here to tell you about a new comedy called SUPERBAD. What this is about is two young gentlemen named Seth and Evan. Seth is a fat guy with curly hair. Evan is taller and skinnier and wears a hoodie. The story begins with a phone call. Evan answers while opening the refrig– ah, fuck it, you guys already know what it is. I just want to agree with the whole world that it’s on the top shelf of comedies in recent years.

I like the down-to-earthness of this movie. It takes place over two days. Nobody’s trying to save the world or prove their innocence or even get married. They’re just trying to buy booze to impress some girls. There’s not a villain. There is a bully but he enters and exits in a grand total of two short scenes. Most of the movie is about two friends yelling at each other, and they do have a bit of a falling out, but there’s no phony misunderstanding or big blowup that separates them so they later have to make a speech to explain themselves and prove their sincerity and make up. They steer clear of most of the usual bullshit.

The movie this will be compared to most is DAZED AND CONFUSED, because both are slice of life/coming of age/underage drinking movies. DAZED is a well made movie and if you grew up in Texas in the ’70s I’m sure it would mean more to you than SUPERBAD would. But to me personally this one is better because it has about thirty-five to forty times more laughs. It’s one of those movies where you miss alot of the dialogue because people are laughing so hard. The personalities of the characters are funny in themselves and you can tell they must’ve done multiple takes of just about everything and put together all the stuff that made them laugh the hardest. But made it feel right, it doesn’t have that random stitched-together-skits feel of ANCHOR MAN and those type of movies. Nobody’s gonna get attacked by a bear in this style of comedy, they stay roughly somewhat fairly true to life.

For me the biggest obstacle the movie had was that I’d seen that same trailer ten thousand times in the past couple months. So you know alot of the scenes that are coming and they gave away one of the more emotional parts. I wish I hadn’t seen that thing so many times but the good news is it doesn’t give away all the best jokes, because there are way too many jokes to give away. (more…)

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The Invasion

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. First there was the book. Then the movie by Don Siegel. Then the ’70s version by Philip Kaufman. Then the ’90s one that everybody hated if they heard of it but personally I thought it was okay by Abel Ferrara. Now we got yet another version, this one directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, a German guy known here for DAS EXPERIMENT and DOWNFALL. But then after he was done they, uh, snatched it from him, and producer Joel Silver had the Wachowskis write some new scenes which were apparently shot by the V FOR VENDETTA dude.

So you kind of know right away that this is not gonna be a masterpiece. Either Hirschbeigel’s movie sucked – in which case they’re not gonna be able to fix it just by adding some Wachowski here and there – or maybe the movie was good and Joel Silver just didn’t get it, in which case, fuck. I guess the best thing you can wish for is an ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU where it’s completely crazy anyway and the turmoil probaly added to the magic. (But even in that case the director was replaced after a few days, not after the movie was already done.)

What we get is not a best or worst case scenario, it’s in between. The movie is not good. But it’s pretty fun. They get some mileage from all the things that make the body snatcher concept so creepy: emotionless people walking around like zombies, mindless hordes that you can’t hide from, not always knowing at a glance who’s on your team, knowing you or your loved ones could be next. This version of the story centers on a psychiatrist played by Nicole Kidman, her best friend/doctor played by Daniel Craig, and her son, played by some kid with a bowl cut. Also the great Jeffrey Wright is in there in a generic role as a scientist friend. Unless he is really that CIA agent he played in CASINO ROYALE and he is trailing Bond who is undercover as a doctor while investigating this invasion. If that is the case they should’ve spelled it out more clearly, I didn’t get it. (more…)

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Uncommon Valor

Monday, August 13th, 2007

I don’t remember this one, but it was in a book about action movies I’m reading (Action Speaks Louder by Erich Lichtenfeld) and sounded pretty good. It’s one of those “Vietnam vets go back to rescue POWs” movies, but according to the book it’s the first one. And the weirdest part is that it’s from Ted Kotcheff, director of FIRST BLOOD, and made two years before George P. Cosmatos’s RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. Maybe that’s why Kotcheff didn’t come back for part 2, he’d already done that movie.

Of course, the feel is pretty different from RAMBO. And there are three major differences in the type of story we’re dealing with here. Number one, it’s a team movie, it’s not focused on one dude. Number two, these are normal vets who have gone back to civilian life, they are not maniacs who have gone on a rampage and must get a pardon to go on the mission due to their skills with explosive tipped arrows. Number three, they are privately funded, they are not working for the government. In fact, the government is trying to stop them from doing it (you know how those fuckin bureaucrats are, with their red tape and what not. It makes you so mad BRING OUR BOYS HOME! etc.)

Not surprisingly, the movie is produced by John Milius (although if he worked on the script he was not credited). You probaly know who Milius is but if not here is a brief primer. He worked on an early unused script of DIRTY HARRY and later on MAGNUM FORCE. He wrote the famous USS Indianapolis speech in JAWS. He wrote APOCALYPSE NOW. He wrote and directed CONAN THE BARBARIAN. And RED DAWN. And John Goodman’s character in THE BIG LEBOWSKI is based on him. Except unlike that character he was not in Vietnam. He was never in the military, he’s just obsessed with it anyway. I wonder if he has flashbacks?

I’m pretty sure our politics are as opposite as oil and water, but I love the guy. He’s a great writer and there’s not alot of people who can write that macho. So his name was part of what got me to watch this movie. (more…)

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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

BEYOND THUNDERDOME has always been the red-headed stepchild of the MAD MAX series. Everybody loves ROAD WARRIOR, on account of it being one of the best movies everybody has ever seen. So if Miller just rehashed it but added a new Joe Pesci character or something then everybody probaly woulda been happy. Instead he expanded on the universe, he took the story in another entirely new direction and alot of people still aren’t ready to follow.

I haven’t seen this movie in years and I actually remembered it being more different than it really is. In fact, I was thinking there weren’t even cars in this one. I just remembered planes and pig shit and that song by Tina Turner. I thought it wasn’t as good as the other two but that it got a bum rap. Seeing it again – well, okay, it’s my third favorite, and there is a section in the middle that I had a problem with, but it needs to be said that this is a great fucking movie.

When you think of Mad Max you think of fast cars. Max lost his Interceptor in part 2 but you know he’s gotta get himself a new ride, right? In the opening scene he is traveling through the desert but either his engine doesn’t work or he’s out of gas because his customized truck is being pulled by camels. Before we even know it’s him though a pilot (Bruce Spence, not playing the gyro pilot from ROAD WARRIOR as far as I can tell, that’s just what pilots always look like in the desert) flies down low, knocks him off the car, then jumps in and steals it from him. So we’re just a couple shots into the new movie and Mad Max is a pedestrian. And he’s gonna stay that way until the climax.

Also Max has a pet monkey. And long hair like Braveheart. (more…)

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Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

YOJIMBO
and
FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
and – why the hell not -
LAST MAN STANDING

I’ve been doing alot of themed movie-watching lately and I don’t want that to grow stale, so I decided to mix things up a little. Three movies starring my favorite badasses, but from different years and different countries. Just a real variety of material here. YOJIMBO is about this bad motherfucker who wanders into a small town torn apart by two warring gangs, and he goes back and forth working for them, plays them against each other, rescues a woman from them then gets beaten up real bad but escapes and hides out and then tricks them some more and also I forgot to mention there’s alot of good jokes about the town coffin maker getting business from his activities. FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, on the other hand, is about this bad motherfucker who wa– hey, wait a minute!

Nah, I’m just fucking with you. Actually I thought it would be a good experiment to watch YOJIMBO and its two remakes all in the same day. See what happens. This is kind of a miracle of badass cinema we have right here. Three of the greatest badass icons – Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis – all starring in the same story. Plus you got the directors: Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and Walter Hill ain’t in their league but he’s no slouch either.

You know, I’ve seen YOJIMBO before and I liked it, but it wasn’t until watching it this time that I really realized what was right in front of my nose: this is WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE MOST BADASS MOVIES OF ALL TIME (or WADOOTMBMOAT). And definitely one of the most badass characters. I mean I always think of Clint Eastwood as the very top of the badass totem pole, but you gotta take into account that the role that started that persona was based on Mifune in this movie. So he’s the grandaddy of it all. (more…)

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8/7/07

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

There’s this rumor that George Miller might be directing a nerd/comic strip type movie and I was appalled to learn that some of the nerds of the talkback community didn’t think he was good enough! George god damn Miller not good enough for them! So I had no choice but to pull out the big guns. I had to review ROAD MOTHERFUCKING WARRIOR (that’s MAD MOTHERFUCKING MAX 2 for the rest of the world).

But if you’re more interested in reading about a movie less than 25 years old I also reviewed SUNSHINE, Danny Boyle’s new entry in the small sci-fi for smarties genre.

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The Road Warrior

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

(or MAD MAX 2)

Man, I love MAD MAX. So raw with its low budget, so fierce with its ridiculous car stunts and harsh view of humanity. There’s something about that one that nobody has really captured again. Still, in a way this amazing sequel takes it to a new level.

The world is further down the shitter now. Society is not just crumbling, it’s in crumbs. Max is still hauling ass down Australia’s highways in his Interceptor (the last one left), battling high speed maniacs and stealing any gas he can find. The opening scene is the most reminiscent of the first movie, a classic chase scene. It also introduces the gang that will be the villains in this one. Vernon Wells plays Wez, the dude with the mowhawk and shoulder pads, riding a motorcycle with his blond punk (or bitch, or desert life partner) on his back. On the other side a dude in a car tries to shoot Max with a crossbow, but Max hits the brakes and the arrow hits Wez in the arm.

Although this chase is full of all kinds of great violence and vehicles catapulting through the air, my favorite part is the little exchange at the end, after the engines have all been turned off. As Max examines an abandoned truck he found Wez and his bitch pull up and stare him down. Wez still has the arrow in his arm. He screams and at first it seems like a battle cry but then you realize it’s because he’s pulling the arrow out. And then he puts it in a sheath with his other arrows and drives off.

This one is much more mythical than the first one. It’s not a cop movie anymore because there’s no police force left – in fact, the gangs drive stolen police cars and like playing with the sirens. So it’s more influenced by spaghetti westerns and samurai movies. Max barely talks and there are long sections with no dialogue. Not only the two extended chase scenes, but the part where he spies on the oil refinery through binoculars. There are all these far away shots of this place with its machines pumping and all these crazy souped up jeeps and motorcycles and dune buggies rolling around, and you realize that this was before the days of CGI, they actually had to do all that at the same time, for real. These days nobody would do a shot that complicated, they’d leave it up to the computer nerds to rig later. (more…)

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