FRIDAY
AFTER NEXT
I really don't have much to
say about this movie, so instead I will rail against our modern consumerist
society. thanks for your understanding.
I really feel old when I show up to a movie 10 or 15 minutes early. Sure I
like to think I'm young in the heart and all that shit, but I still remember
when moviegoing was a pleasant experience. Sure I am thankful for the innovations
of digital sound and automatic ticket machines. But it's time to dump the
rest of the cineplex baggage. These chains are all going chapter 11 anyway,
why not jettison the extra weight?
So I walk in there, the old man, and I let this CD pretending to be a radio
station introduce me to the latest contemporary R&B products. I'm pretty
sure they have a camp somewhere where they raise these kids to groom them
into soul-less, personality-less test tube warblers with prefabricated sexuality.
They keep them naked in cages until the cameras are ready, then they throw
each of them a plastic bag containing 1 (one) wireless microphone headset
(does not work), 1 (one) pair white leather pants (low riding), one (1) $200
boutique t-shirt (one sleeve only), and 1 (one) rhinestone cowboy hat.
Then they throw them in the studio with whichever mainstream hip hop producer
has had the most #1 hits in this particular business quarter, spend 2 months
of postproduction overdubbing and electronically altering their vocal tracks,
and voila! Suddenly the little curly haired kid from In Sink has a song that
exactly mimicks Michael Jackson. As soon as advertising, promotions, assistant
promotions, corporate advertising, press relations and the payola department
go over it, the single is ready. Quick, get this to the Cinematron Radio
Network Popcorn Jam! We want Vern to have to listen to this garbage while
he waits to see FRIDAY AFTER NEXT!
Sitting waiting for a movie, there used to be some kind of atmosphere
there. They would play classical music, if anything. I'm not a big classical
music fan but it makes for good atmosphere, it makes you feel like you're
in a semi-classy establishment, with some sense of culture or at least a desire
to let you relax. Not anymore. Now you have to get banged on the head with
the Clockwork Orange assault. Coca-Cola rapes you in the eyes with their trivia
questions (impossible to be stumped by, just so nobody feels left out) while
the R&B gets you in the ear. Available now at Sam Goody. It's not just
that this music is absolutely horrible and that I don't want to have to stop
watching movies in order to avoid listening to it. It's also that I have to
sit there and think about American culture's position, hanging from a cliff
with a hook in its ass, being stretched deeper and deeper into the abyss,
forever.
I mean I'm sitting there thinking about little Michael Jackson when he was
in the Jackson 5. So charismatic and talented, so they turned him into a water
skiing squirrel. Come see the waterskiing squirrel, the dancing monkey, the
BMX bear. Hear him sing about relationships, even though he's 9. He got older
and he became such a superstar and he was starting to seem pretty weird but
man that motherfucker could dance and he was still doing good music even if
it wasn't as good as "Off the Wall" was. So he was treated like royalty and
women thought he was a "fox" and wanted to have sex with him even though he
looked increasingly feminine and was always riding on a giraffe or holding
a monkey or some weird shit. But as his music started to slide out of the
public consciousness, as his perfectionism and fear got him spending years
and millions on one mediocre album, as he got increasingly weirder and more
mysterious and sinister, the press and the people got crueler. And now he's
walking around in a man-made albino alien face, watching us through Diana
Ross's eyes, wearing a black velvet surgical mask that protects his delicate
mouth and his tiny nose with its little piece of hip bone protruding through
the tip. I never thought I'd see the headline "Pop star dangles baby from
balcony."
I mean look, this guy is still incredibly talented, and he's one of the only
entertainers out there with a straight face talking about healing the world.
But in exchange the world has left him an insane, baby dangling, dessicated
alien corpse, and replaced him with some average kid with a funny hat and
a bunch of computers. And we still wonder why he tried to buy the Elephant
Man's bones.
Well I was probaly the only one in that theater worrying about Michael Jackson
but I wasn't the only one sick of listening to this god damn music. Every
time a new song started I heard my fellow old men beside and behind me let
out loud, anguished sighs. And then the real advertising began.
There was the Coca-Cola "refreshing film." Then the cell phone company reminding
you to be polite, but still be an asshole with a cell phone. (Sorry about
the brain cancer.) Then there was the obnoxious web sight trying to convince
you, through the medium of bad comedy, that it is actually really difficult
to get a ticket to a movie unless you pay extra to buy it online. (How do
they expect this ad to work when everyone in the theater, by definition, was
able to get into the movie? Well, by showing it before every single movie
you ever see for the rest of your life. Maybe eventually you'll give in and
accept their logic.) Then those lovable characters from MEN IN BLACK PART
2: MIB 2 come on to mention Sony, Loews, enjoythemovie.com, MEN IN BLACK 2
on dvd, and to say, "Sit back, relax, and enjoy this exclusive Men in Black
2 show!" Which turns out to mean about 15 seconds of outtakes where they forget
their line and then start laughing. And that was followed up by another ad,
this one for Volvo, explaining that they finally gave in and made an SUV.
More ads, more anguished sighs.
Then a trailer for some cartoon starts up. Finally, a trailer. But halfway
through the narrator lets you know that also you can get a special Sony-Loews
Coca-Cola KFC Taco Bell Gift Meal Super Pack of popcorn, soft drink and Viacom
Nickelodeon movie ticket, all you have to do is get a receipt and go onto
this web sight, to play some fun exclusive trivia games or some shit... long
story short, this is not a trailer, it is more of an ad, advertising all of
the corporate tie-ins to the movie instead of the movie.
By now, we should be ready for the trailers proper, right? No, first we have
Spider-man selling an electric toothbrush (I am not shitting you) and James
Bond selling an electric razor and computer animated dudes with swords selling
a video game. And when, after being advertised to death for the half hour
since I stepped into the theater, I finally get a real god damn movie trailer,
it gets stuck halfway through and the film melts on screen.
Which is fine. Those are fancy machines, and shit happens. But for 5 minutes,
we sat and watched the surviving edges of the film, bubbling and dripping,
still projected on the screen. Because it took that long for the projectionist
to get there. They're taking in Spider-man electric toothbrush dollars but
they can't afford to hire enough projectionists, or pay or train them well.
They have to have one college kid running 16 projectors, selling popcorn and
doing his homework at the same time. If it takes them that long to get to
the non-moving, melting to death movie, how long does it take them to get
to the one that's out of focus?
The good old days, man. One or two movies in a theater, not necessarily a
mainstream hit, one projectionist keeping an eye out, no more advertising
than "Let's all go to the lobby." They even gave you a free cartoon! And people
didn't talk too much during the movies. If they had had cell phones, they
would've known not to use them in a fucking movie theater. But now that seems
like a thousand years ago, on another planet. And they wonder why people want
to stay home and watch movies on dvd.
That's probaly what you should do with FRIDAY AFTER NEXT, if you're interested.
The first FRIDAY was fresh, it had break out roles for the straight man Ice
Cube and the hilarious Chris Tucker. It started its own genre of hood comedies,
it had a real good soundtrack of funk and gangster rap, it had a good message
and it seems funnier and better made each time you watch it. Well the sequels
don't have Chris Tucker and they're increasingly formulaic and don't seem
all that much better than the FRIDAY imitators.
At first this one seems like it might be reaching for new territory a little,
because of the great UPA style animated credits and christmassy orchestra
score. But it quickly settles into the FRIDAY formula, with Craig and Day
Day (Mike Epps, Craig's cousin, introduced as the Smokey-replacement in part
2) needing a certain amount of money, Craig scoping out a hot chick from afar,
everybody saying "You got knocked the fuck out!" whenever possible, Craig's
dad having to take a shit real bad, etc. This time around they get Craig's
mom from part 1 back, and his Uncle and the record store owner Pinky from
part 2 back. But they can't get Dibo back so they replace Tiny Lister with
another huge, bald muscleman named Damon, who just returned from prison and
still wants to rape men. Fer cryin out loud. And even when they try things
that are new for the series, sometimes it's bad like Mike Epps wearing old
man makeup to play another character. You don't want to be the new Martin
Lawrence, man! Just cool it.
I mean, I enjoyed parts. Mike Epps is probaly funnier than in the last one.
There are a lot of good chuckles. And it's always good to see a movie like
this, about guys who can barely pay their rent, and have to work at a strip
mall, and get no respect, instead of about all those rich fuckers you usually
see in movies. But the series has stretched itself too thin. It's time to
try something else, Ice Cube. We'll see how BARBERSHOP 2 works out, I guess.
THE
FRIDAY THE 13TH SAGA
SYNOPSIS:
Upon the reopening of Camp Crystal Lake - a summer camp with a past so troubled
it's better known as Camp Blood - the new camp counselors (Kevin Bacon, et
al) are murdered in increasingly gruesome ways. The killer turns out to be
Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), a sweater-wearing fruitcake still upset because
her son Jason drowned there years ago and then she had to murder people and
then they closed the camp but now it re-opened so she got confused and thought
the new counselors were the old counselors so she killed them. So one of the
counselors chops her head off. But then a new set of counselors come and it
turns out that Jason is actually alive and grown up and he lives in a weird
shack in the woods with a shrine to his mother and he's pissed off because
her head got chopped off so he kills people for revenge. So an aspiring child
psychologist puts on the dead mother's sweater and pretends to be her to trick
him and then she stabs him, etc. Then all the sudden it's in 3-D and Jason
gets back up and kills some more people. Some more people show up and some
bikers and Jason puts on a hockey mask and then they hang him. But then little
Corey Feldman is there and some other people and there's deaths so Corey gives
himself a terrible hair cut and tries to freak out Jason and stabs him in
the head with a machete and then Jason trips and impales his own head and
dies. Then it skips ahead 15 years, Corey Feldman (played by some other dude)
is grown up and living in a halfway house with some other maniacs and he's
haunted by Jason, who is alive again. But then it turns out it's just some
asshole pretending to be Jason, so they kill him. But just to be sure, Corey
Feldman (now played by yet another guy) digs up Jason's corpse and he's gonna
burn it but it's struck by lightning so it comes back to life and kills some
more people so they chain that fucker up and throw him back into the lake
where he belongs. But then a psychic accidentally uses her powers to bring
him back to life and then fight him and then throw him back into the lake
where an electrical accident brings him back to life again and he gets on
a teen cruise ship where he bores everybody for 90 minutes before going to
New York, fighting some silly punk rockers and turning into a little boy.
But then he's an adult in the woods again and gets killed by a SWAT team so
a guy eats his heart and then he goes from body to body killing people and
a bounty hunter you've never heard of before suddenly knows all this magical
shit for killing Jason so he turns back into Jason and then some big goofy
rubber hands pull him into Hell where he fights Freddy. Then it skips forward
hundreds of years (Kubrick style) and Jason is unfrozen in space where he
kills people and turns into a cyborg, etc. The end. OR IS IT?
FRIDAY THE 13TH
FRIDAY THE 13TH has an unusual place in horror history because it was this
huge breakthrough smash hit, it defined the style of many of the slasher movies
of the '80s (arguably even more than the much better HALLOWEEN) and yet when
people say FRIDAY THE 13TH they're usually forgetting the original and thinking
only of the sequels. In the original SPOILER Jason is not even exactly a character,
he's the motive. We don't really know the backstory of Camp Crystal Lake,
we just know it's called Camp Blood because of some murders in the past and
previous attempts to reopen the camp have failed. In the end of the movie
all the sudden Betsy Palmer shows up as the sweater wearing lunatic Pamela
Voorhees, who starts talking about the little boy who drowned here and eventually
starts ranting and reveals that it was her son, Jason, and she blames the
counselors for not watching him closely enough, and she confuses any poor
motherfucker that crosses her path for those counselors, and she stabs them
with various tools.
Jason does show up briefly at the end. He jumps out of a lake and grabs the
final girl. His hair is in patches and I can't tell if he's supposed to be
dirty, decomposed, deformed or mutated. But he's still a little boy, and this
is years after he drowned. So that would make him either a ghost or a hallucination,
and it seems to imply the latter.
This is a good movie, I like the whole feel of it, and it set the tone for
at least the first couple sequels. It's a good setting, you get a feel for
this small town near this camp and I like the way the townies are suspicious
of the camp but don't really take the curse seriously except for a crazy old
bicyclist doomsayer named Ralph. They treat the whole thing seriously and
they have some nice gruesome effects from Tom Savini.
I think the score by Harry Manfredini is great. It's derivative of Bernard
Hermann but who gives a shit. This type of score classes it up, I think it's
a big reason why slasher movies they try to make now don't work as good as
these ones did.
To me the highlight is the fight between the final girl and Pamela Voorhees.
They really go at it and start wrestling on the ground. It's funny to see
a grandma in a sweater getting down like that. Then she gets her head taken
off with a machete which is a worthwhile addition to any story, in my opinion.
If I was Leonard Matlin I would automatically add 1 star to the rating of
any movie with a head chopped off in this manner.
The weird thing is that in part 2 they make Jason be still alive as an adult,
and it doesn't make any sense, but somehow it makes it way more fun. In the
first one the identity of the killer is a secret, so you never see her. It's
usually from her POV. In part 2 you got a very similar tone but you get to
see this big lug (actually he's a regular sized lug at this point) walking
around killing people and it's more interesting that way.FRIDAY THE 13TH PART
2
In some ways part 2 is my favorite of the series. This is kind of the one
that actually started it all since it's the first one about Jason. The head
counselor tells the story of Jason around the campfire to scare his trainees
and to get that business over with. It turns out he's telling it as a joke
but it establishes the new story of Jason - actually he somehow survived the
drowning (guess his mom owes those counselors an apology) and lives in a cabin
in the woods hunting animals and generally living a Unabomber type lifestyle.
But the only person he really knows is his mom and he somehow saw her get
beheaded (wonder why we didn't notice him there?) and now he kills people
to avenge her death.
There's alot of parts about the story that don't make sense, including but
not limited to mentioning that the girl from the end of part 1 claims to have
seen Jason. Yes, she did, but she saw him as a little boy coming out of the
water, this hardly supports the claim that he is actually an adult living
in the woods. But I guess if you were investigating bigfoots or UFOs you'd
count that as solid evidence, 'cause you're gonna take whatever you can get.
So I guess it is fair to bring it up.
This also stands out as the only one where Jason is in it but doesn't have
the iconic hockey mask. He wears a burlap sack or a pillowcase or something,
with two eyeholes ripped into it. A good look. At the end he's unmasked and
he looks like a monster, he's supposed to be some kind of mongoloid. I've
heard people say that the first one never establishes that he's retarded or
deformed, but I disagree with that. When Mrs. Voorhees is talking about the
drowning she says "They were supposed to be watching him. He was--"
and I think she's going to say that he's retarded, but then she stops herself
and just says he wasn't a good swimmer.
Another weird thing is that in part 1 it's mentioned that they tried to re-open
Camp Crystal Lake at one point but it got closed down again because the water
wasn't safe. So I like to think that lake pollution possibly increased his
deformity and/or gave him his super killing and surviving powers.
Most people think of FRIDAY THE 13TH movies as being dumb, but I think part
2 has alot of clever business in it. For example at the beginning the head
counselor is giving an orientation speech, realistically delivered by the
actor so the ironic parts come across as sly instead of overdoing it. He's
talking about safety, listing knives, axes and lanterns as the top dangers.
And we just know these things (well, except the lantern) are gonna become
dangerous, but not on accident. My favorite part is that he talks about bears
being in the woods and the precautions people need to take to avoid attracting
bears. But of course we know they don't have to worry about bears in the woods
as much as a big ol' retarded dude who also lives in the woods.
(Man, it just occurred to me - there's bears in the woods at Camp Crystal
Lake! Why haven't they used this? A big buildup to Jason killing some poor
girl and then just before he gets to her a fuckin bear jumps out and mauls
him! And Jason would have to fight the bear. If Sonny Chiba can do it then
Jason Voorhees can do it. The bear takes some good chunks out of him but he's
Jason, he survives. And Jason starts choppin the bear up with his machete!
The crowd would go fuckin nuts!)
One thing I never caught until watching it this time is the girl who's getting
dolled up because she has a chance to score, and she puts on some perfume.
This is an understated joke because it was much earlier in the movie when
it was mentioned that women should not wear perfume because it can attract
bears. And right after she put it on she gets killed by Jason. So either Jason
is part bear, Jason heard the part about the perfume and thought it would
be funny to kill her right after she put on the perfume, or Jason wants to
kill her so as to not attract bears. Or it's a coincidence. But I doubt it.
I like that in the campfire scene a guy jumps out wearing pelts, a Halloween
mask and a spear to represent Jason and scare everybody. But later the real
Jason uses the same spear. Something that wasn't really true becomes true.
Also you gotta give Jason credit for passing up the Halloween mask and sticking
with the more classical Elephant Man style bag.
It's mentioned once or twice that the final girl is majoring in child psychology.
So when they go to a bar and talk about Jason (at this point because he's
a local legend, not because they know he's gonna kill them) she drunkenly
profiles him, explains his whole psychology and how he must be so confused
and he misses his mother and he was traumatized by seeing her get beheaded.
And then when she does face him she puts her theory to the test, putting on
the dead mother's sweater and pretending to be her. And I like that she is
a child psychologist, not an adult one, so it shows that Jason has the mind
of a child.
The director is Steve Miner, who was associate producer on LAST HOUSE ON THE
LEFT and FRIDAY THE 13TH and turned out to be a good choice to promote to
director. He does a good job recreating the atmosphere of the first one and
making the chases more thrilling. The opening titles are great because it's
the same as the first one, the cool FRIDAY THE 13TH logo flying toward you,
but then it EXPLODES and reveals the PART II behind it. So that's the sequel
in a nutshell. The same thing as part 1 except it fucking EXPLODES!
FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D
This one is the only one I think I might like better than part 2, but it's
mainly because I've seen it twice in 3-D. FRIDAY THE 13TH movies are best
with an audience, with people oohing at the tension, screaming or laughing
at the deaths, cheering for the lines they like, for the death of characters
they don't like, for the turning point where somebody hits Jason with a log
or stabs him or whatever.
Because it's that type of movie it is the absolute perfect thing to do in
3-D. 3-D is all about showmanship and getting reactions from the crowd. This
has the good monochromatic 3-D, not the crappy red and blue kind (update:
the new DVD has it in crappy red and blue 3-D, because that's the best you
can do on home video so far), and it also has more than your average
amount of 3-D gimmick shots. You got the yo-yo in the camera. Juggling toward
the camera. A TV antenna being adjusted toward the camera. A snake popping
out. A speargun shooting toward the camera, which is a classic shot even on
DVD but legendary in 3-D. The two shots that get the biggest reaction though
are probaly the 3-D passing of a joint and (my favorite) when Jason squeezes
a dude until his eyeball pops out. IN 3-D!
Seeing one of Jason's dead victims is one thing but when the body is impaled
with a pitchfork and the handle seems to be protruding out of the screen into
the audience,that's good fun.
The director is Steve Miner again and he does arguably even better. I'm not
sure that the script is as good as part 2 but there's some funny shit in here.
I like the long scene of the dude talking as he's pulling on a rope that is
lifting his girlfriend up into the barn. The whole time you think she's gonna
be dead once she gets to the top, and the audience is tittering. But then
it doesn't happen. But later it does.
There are some funny characters. There's a guy called Shelly who looks like
a nerdier Seth Rogan. You feel sorry for him because he doesn't fit in and
is always making self-deprecating comments like "They went skinnydipping,
but I wasn't skinny enough." Maybe he's kind of an Albert Brooks type.
But then when the nice girl politely turns down his advances and goes outside
he waits until she's left and then calls her a bitch. All the sudden he loses
all sympathy and seems to be kind of an asshole.
Anyway Shelly is an important character because it's his hockey mask that
Jason ends up wearing for the rest of the series. So I guess he's Jason's
stylist or something.
This movie also has the introduction of three bikers named Ali, Loco and Fox.
They are the type of bikers you saw in movies in the '80s, who wear sleeveless
denim vests with spiders painted on them and go around bullying people like
they're still on the playground. But they also show that they are not complete
bad guys. They want to get even with Shelly for running over one of their
bikes so they steal the gas from their van, one assuring another that "no
one will get hurt." Of course, they all get killed and later somebody
gets in the van and tries to drive away from Jason and finds there's no gas.
It would've been a hilarious joke. Jason was chasing her, that was the bad
part. Otherwise it went well.
I don't know what kind of music these bikers listen to, but our protagonists
have a "Bruce Springsteen - The Boss" bumper sticker on their van.
So I wonder if there's some kind of extra animosity going on here because
of musical tastes. Maybe those guys hate the Boss. You never know.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER
Well, here we are, the very last one ever. Phew. We've been through so much
with this series, it's a bummer to see it end forever like this. For
me The Final Chapter is fun, but not as good as those first three. Those had
their share of silly characters, but this is the first one with purposely
hatable ones. Crispin Glover plays the Shelly-type insecure nerd character,
which is pretty good casting because that guy's such a weirdo. But then some
other prick who's only slightly less nerdy than Crispin (if that) constantly
teases him about being a virgin, a "dead fuck" and a "lousy
lay." If I gotta spend 90 minutes with some '80s youths I don't see why
one of them has to be a giggling douchebag who can't stop repeating his stupid
catch phrases. Even TEXAS CHAIN SAW's Franklin is more charming than this
fucko. I'd rather push Franklin around in his wheelchair all day than have
to hang out with the "dead fuck" guy.
On the other hand they mix it up a little by getting some non-20-somethings
in there, which is a good idea. Next door to the vacationers is a family of
Crystal Lake natives: a mom, a teen daughter and precocious little Corey Feldman,
who like most boys in '80s genre movies fills his room with monster masks
and horror props (his budding makeup FX skills will play into the finale).
Most of the movie is not all that memorable, but the end of it is. In the
tradition of part 2, Corey Feldman goes psychological on Jason's ass. Using
a newspaper artist's rendition of Jason as a child, Corey cuts up his hair
and makes himself up to look like young Jason, and then he keeps saying "Remember,
Jason?" I'm not sure if it actually gets Jason to consider his deep-seated
childhood trauma or if he just thinks "what the fuck is this little bastard
doing with his hair like that?" but it does distract him and I guess
sort of helps them defeat him.
Jason's death is a classic moment. Corey chops into Jason's head with his
own machete and that doesn't do it, but later he falls face first and his
head is impaled on the machete. His mask is off at this point and they have
a funny animatronic monster face that reacts as he slowly slides down the
blade. I guarantee you will rewind it and watch it again at least twice.
It's a great death, but it does seem kind of weird that "the final chapter"
just involves stabbing his face. You'd think they'd really have to go to town
on him. Cut off all his limbs, mail them all to different countries, cremate
his head, mix the ashes in with glass, make a vase out of the glass, break
the vase, sweep up the glass and then put it in recycling bins in two different
neighborhoods so they end up in different recycling plants. Something like
that. But remember, at this point Jason was apparently still supposed to be
alive, just a retarded dude out in the woods, not a zombie. So face stabbing
should do it. For now.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING
Wow, they must have heard our pleas. They were so insistent on making that
one the final chapter, but the world demanded a new beginning. It's like an
encore. The band is getting all packed up ready to leave but, what's this?
Do you hear that clapping? That chanting? Who is all that racket for? Wait
a minute, for us? They want us to come out again, even though we
were done, and just, I don't know, play a few more songs? Well what the hell
man, I don't see why not. Let's do it!
But, uh, this one's not the best encore. I guess you can't have Christmas
every day. Nobody hits a home run every time. You win some, you lose some.
You gotta know when to hold 'em. This is the first truly sucky FRIDAY THE
13TH. Now, if you are reading this review in the year 1985 and you haven't
seen the movie yet then you'll want to stop reading, because the ending will
be discussed in this review. The ending where it turns out Jason is not the
killer, it's some dude dressed up as Jason.
At the time of this movie, I guess part 4 really was the final chapter. Jason
really was dead. But America needed Jason. The world was crying out for a
dude in a hockey masking killing people in fanciful ways, and the right guy
for the job was dead, so some other guy filled that hole. The actual Jason
does not appear in the movie except in Corey Feldman's dream at the beginning.
All the movie has going for it is "good kills," like when fake Jason
shoves a flare in somebody's mouth and their face lights up. Also there's
a funny part where a little kid runs away and suddenly shows up again in a
bulldozer which he uses to crash into fake Jason and send him flying ten or
fifteen feet through the air.
There's no camping in this one, the characters are all mental patients at
a halfway house. The lead is the grownup version of Corey Feldman's character,
unfortunately played by a boring and bland dude sort of reminiscent of the
guy in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT. He's haunted by having killed Jason and
they make it seem like he's gonna turn out to be the fake Jason. They remind
you of his makeup skills and they even have him disappear when Jason shows
up for the finale. If it was him it would be stupid but it would sort of make
sense, the guy killed Jason so he's gonna remember him. But no, some other
dude it turns out.
The twist ending is part of why the movie is lame, but it's not like everything
was going good until then. I think it's actually influential though, because
two years before NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS here is a FRIDAY
THE 13TH that tries to cash in on teen angst by making the protagonists mental
patients in a halfway house. In the other FRIDAY movies they were good looking
people with lots of friends (with one token nerd). Here they are society's
outcasts, at least one of them legitimately psychotic. By 1985 horror was
beginning to turn into a subculture, there were kids growing up on Fangoria
magazine and worshipping Tom Savini and what not. And those type of horror
fans were more likely to see themselves as put upon by society and they were
gonna relate to the poor fucked up Tommy Jarvis and the girl who does the
robot to her new wave music.
But personally I think that's part of why the story crashes. To turn the characters
into outcasts you gotta have the authority figures, but to make it a FRIDAY
THE 13TH you can't have the authority figures get too involved, because they're
not gonna have a whole movie about the police department chasing Jason around
and shooting at him, running him over with a battering ram tank and spraying
him with tear gas. Although that would be awesome. Instead of that we gotta
waste a bunch of time with the cops suspecting Tommy Jarvis of murders and
not believing him and thinking he's crazy when he talks about Jason and all
that type of boring shit. The early ones were more simple and more primal.
Running through the woods trying not to get stabbed, that's just more horror
than the ol' accused of a crime he didn't commit story.
JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART
VI
This is a big improvement over part 5, but it has a cheesiness the earlier
ones didn't, and like V it feels like the series of 'kills' and quickie boob
shots that detractors and skeptics always accuse these movies of being. But
on the positive side Jason is back. He lives. This is the first one where
he's officially a zombie. Grown up Tommy Jarvis (now played by Thom Matthews
from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) digs up Jason's grave to cremate him for public
safety purposes. And there's Jason, more worms and spider webs than flesh.
So whaddaya know, the ol' mongoloid really was dead! Falling face first on
a machete did what all those other injuries couldn't do, what drowning couldn't
even do. It took Jason out. For a while. Way to go machete and little Corey
Feldman.
Now, since Jason did come back you start to think well, we can't really call
Corey Feldman "the kid who killed Jason," because who cares. He
came back. Nothing to brag about. But if you think about it, many years have
passed here. More than ten. Because when he was Corey Feldman he was 12, then
he was that dude playing him as an adult in A NEW BEGINNING and here he's
older enough to be played by a third actor. So there was a good ten or fifteen
years of peace at Crystal Lake. And if you think about Jason's body count,
that's gotta be alot of lives saved. I would say at least 150, probaly alot
more, depending on how many people would've come to the Crystal Lake area
during that period.
Anyway, Tommy is digging up the body and there's an unfortunate accident.
He stabs the corpse with a metal pole, just to make a point I guess, and the
pole happens to be struck by lightning. You know how it goes. And that reanimates
the corpse. In 1986 when this came out scientists still believed that lightning
could reanimate the dead. But in the last couple years studies have indicated
that this might not be true some of the time. So in that sense this movie
is a little dated scientifically but I like to believe that Jason was not
dead, his heart had just stopped, and he didn't wash his face much, that's
why he's covered in meal worms. But the lightning jolts his heart back into
action just like those electrical jiggers they shock you with in the hospital
shows.
This isn't exactly a comedy, but the writer/director does put some jokes here
and there to show he's kind of above this. I guess it's a good move though
because at this point there were all kinds of mystery science assholes going
to horror movies just to laugh "at" them. So you can spin those
guys in a circle by giving them actual jokes. The director, Tom McLoughlin
claims he even intentionally put in pauses for people to yell at the screen.
For example there's a scene where a woman tries to bribe Jason with money
and credit cards, and there's an extra long shot of her American Express card
floating away because he knew somebody would yell "don't leave home without
it!"
Most of the humor is of the lame "I've seen enough horror movies to know
not to mess with a guy in a mask!" variety, but there's one joke in the
opening title that I think is brilliant. Obviously it opens with Jason coming
back to life, then he puts the mask on and turns toward the camera and it
zooms on him and says JASON LIVES. No surprise there. But what I did not expect
was for the camera to zoom into one of his eye holes, which would sort of
become the gun iris from the James Bond opening, so Jason could walk up in
profile, then turn toward the camera and (not having a gun like James Bond)
slash his machete at the audience. Man, that's good shit. That shot alone
brings the whole movie up one notch.
Another good touch in the opening is Jason's first kill: the guy who played
Horshack. Jason punches Horshack and his fist comes out the other side holding
his heart.
FRIDAY THE 13TH VII: THE NEW BLOOD
Well, this is a good idea anyway. It's Carrie vs. Jason. A traumatized girl
with telekinetic powers lives at Crystal Lake. What are the chances that both
a Carrie and a Jason would live at Crystal Lake? I'll tell you what the chances
are: astronomical, unless you subscribe to my theory that the pollution in
Crystal Lake is what gave Jason his powers. Then the chances are high. People
dumpin shit in the water, of course you're gonna get indestructible retarded
killers and traumatized telekinetic avengers. That's just science. Plus, pollution
makes teenagers horny. That's how the whole series happens.
Although this is a cool idea for mixing it up in the FRIDAY series, things
don't really get going until the end when the Carrie girl and Jason finally
face off. The girl starts by knocking Jason into a puddle and causing a power
line to go in there and electrocute him. It seems to almost do the trick which
is ironic since it was electricity that brought him to life in the first place.
I'm not really sure how it works, it seems kind of weird that the dead body
would come back via electricity and yet the live body would die via the same
force. You'd think it would require some kind of anti-electricity. Whatever
is the opposite of electricity, shock him with that. But I guess people with
Crystal Lake pollution powers, such as Jason or the Carrie girl, they have
different biology and that's just how it works, it is given both life and
death by electricity. Hard to explain.
But he doesn't die, he just gets fucked up. Then he gets back up and there
is pretty good knock down drag out wizard battle. She tears his mask off to
reveal that he now looks like some kind of demon monster. Because of the environment.
Also she hangs him from the ceiling, shoots nails into his face, knocks him
through the stairs, into the floor, etc.
JASON TAKES MANHATTAN
In this, probaly the worst FRIDAY THE 13TH ever, you pretty much know what
you're into from the opening frames. Instead of the creepy atmosphere of Camp
Crystal Lake, it starts out with some garbagey shots of fake looking '80s
punk dudes hanging out in alleys in New York while horrible '80s pop rock
horse shit plays on the soundtrack. There are rats crawling around and there
is an open barrel of toxic waste. Because this was made in the '80s by people
without taste. So that's how they show that times are tough. Reaganomics and
what not. Rats in the alleys. Punks.
Then it goes back to Crystal Lake where Jason's body is chained up underwater.
Some teens who for some reason have a boat drop anchor and cause an electrical
accident which again shocks Jason back to life. That's just how he works,
electricity brings him back to life. He doesn't have the mask anymore but
luckily the dude on this boat was playing a prank where he wears a mask identical
to Jason's , so Jason was able to steal the mask after he spears them to death.
So we don't have to see that stupid demon face.
Jason really doesn't take Manhattan until the end of the movie. Most of it
takes place on a boat where the senior class is having their graduation party.
There is a crusty dean type who is also legal guardian of the final girl.
Like some of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels, alot of the kids are one-dimensional
stereotypes given one hobby or interest instead of a personality, which is
then used for their ironic death. For example there's a Lita Ford type rocker
girl who is trying to shoot a rock video in the boat, so Jason bashes her
head in with her flying-V. Also there's a kid with a video camera so when
he's causing trouble that crusty asshole dean uncle guy threatens that he
won't get into film school if he doesn't watch it. etc.
[sorry, I didn't finish this project of reviewing all the Jason movies.]
THE
FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE
So there I was minding my own business, listening to an interview
with Elmore Leonard. Suddenly out of the blue Elmore mentions this book I
didn't know about, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins.
He says it was a revelation to him, showed him that you could use profanity
in a book and that you didn't have to tell a straight forward story. And he
calls it the best crime novel ever written.
So, through the miracle of opening another window, I ordered a used copy of the book before the interview was even over. Much later it arrived, then I read it, then I loaned it to somebody and his car was stolen with it inside and later they found his car and the car thieves didn't take the book with them. Their loss, my gain, because Elmore Leonard was right, it's a hell of a book. Pretty much the first half of the book is all conversations, almost no description. Later some robberies start happening and it turns more into a traditional book. But it doesn't have your normal type of a story here. It's more a portrait of these characters and it kind of shows the complexity of a network of criminals, snitches and cops. And it has a great ear for the dialogue. Higgins I guess was a lawyer before he became a writer, maybe he was around some of these guys.
It didn't occur to me to check for a movie of the book, but conferring with a fellow book reader type individual I learned about it. Paramount never released it on video, but you know what? The streets will find a way. The streets will find a way. (The streets in this case are a metaphor for the internet. They got downloading now, and I don't know how to do it but young people do and sometimes they will burn it for you.) In the movie version Eddie Coyle is played by Robert Mitchum. The director is Peter Yates, director of BULLITT, THE HOT ROCK and MOTHER, JUGGS AND SPEED. Also he did KRULL but that doesn't count. The score is funky fusiony shit by Dave Grusin, sounds kind of like the score for OUT OF SIGHT.
And I'll be damned if this isn't a lost gem. It stays surprisingly faithful to the book, with most of the dialogue lifted right out of there, and not really adding in a bunch of shit to Hollywood it up. I guess it might be unsatisfying to some people, because it's not really what you expect. Eddie is a small timer and he stays a small timer. Robert Mitchum makes him a badass, but that doesn't mean he's gonna do something awesome at the end. There are a bunch of characters and, like in the book, you sort of have to piece together what's going on from the conversations they're having. I guess it's a story about talking: criminals talking to cops about things you're not supposed to tell cops, cops trying to talk criminals into telling them more, criminals talking to other criminals about what they want and how much they're gonna pay and etc. Whatever action comes up (a gun here, a car there) is rare and brief.
But to me it's real fascinating how it all works, there's this whole totem pole. There's some guys who are doing some robberies, they get their guns from Eddie. Eddie gets those guns from Jackie Brown (no relation). Jackie Brown gets them from some kids who steal them from gun stores. Also Jackie is working on this other deal to sell some machine guns. Eddie is working on an appeal to avoid doing 2 years. He wants to snitch on somebody so a cop will put in a good word for him, but he can't snitch on the robbers or he's a dead man, so he wants to snitch on the machine gun people. Also Peter Boyle is in there as Dillon, this bartender who also has his hands in all this business. It's gritty stuff. And it's '73 so you got some good cars and sideburns and shit in there.
In the movie Jackie says, "This life is hard, but it's harder when you're stupid." And you know what, it's stupid that Paramount or somebody hasn't released this on DVD. You want my advice, go get a quote from Tarantino and put it on the cover. I guarantee you he's seen it, and not just because there's a character named Jackie Brown (which was not the name of the character in Rum Punch, the Elmore Leonard book he adapted that from). The book even moreso than the movie really reminded me of RESERVOIR DOGS. There's a robbery where a guy trips an alarm so one of the robber shoots him. In the book there's discussions about how stupid it was to shoot him, because he's already tripped the alarm and all you're doing is bringing the cops down on you harder. There's also alot of conversations unrelated to the plot, like one about how grilled cheese sandwiches aren't very good usually but they can be if you put mayonaise on them. Tell me that's not a Tarantino topic. Maybe it was a an indirect influence, because Higgins influenced Leonard and Leonard influenced Tarantino. But reading this book I got a hunch that Tarantino got some tips from it.
Anyway, check it out if you can. The one somebody loaned me was from an old print, the colors were faded and there were lots of scratches on it. But it looked clear and was very watchable.
FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3: THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER
Well ever since Scream 3 I have been trying to see bad sequels to movies I haven't seen in the first place. And this one holds a particular specialness to me because it is a part 3 and I am a scholar of part 3s.
Actually, this one isn't all that bad, for one thing it can get away with not being in 3-D. Unlike Scream 3 it has an excuse because it's straight to video, and I mean who the fuck wants to sit at home by yourself wearing 3-D glasses. I mean give me a fuckin break.
Anyway this western doesn't really "hang together" as the famous shoplifting critic Rex Reed might say but it does have its moments which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for most straight to video part 3s in my opinion. The opening to be specific is very strong, with an obvious Sergio Leone influence. It's in the desert with bright, bleached out photographication and lots of heightened sound effects. You hear the wind and the rattlesnakes and the incessant clicking of guns like you just hooked your hearing aid up to a car battery.
This sequence introduces all of the characters in a crowd where the outlaw Madrid is about to be hung. Pretty much all of the execution fans in the area have shown up for this one and they are very excited - little nod to Mr. Sam Peckinpah a famous film poet who liked to aim his camera at man's thirst for blood. The hangman of course is also a bloodthirsty motherfucker and he's so comfortable wearing an executioner's hood that when Madrid spits on it, he wipes it off as if it were on his skin. Then his daughter, a pretty young gal named Esmeralda tries to watch the hanging and he says, "You disobey me to my face?" and then, trying to hype up the crowd I guess, he yanks her on stage and starts lashing her with a whip. I mean, Jesus. I'm as much for spanking a kid as the next child abuser but this guy is going too far in my opinion. Figures, though - just like a fucking hangman.
Of course, Madrid escapes from being hanged and takes Esmeralda with him, and there is a pretty nice shootout with funny gimmicks like knives that pop out of Madrid's boots, and a horse that gets shot, and there are just dozens of people trying to shoot this Madrid and they all end up shooting each other and there are little chunks of meat that fly off when they get hit. Just like old times.
Unfortunately it loses its energy and inventiveness after that opening and most of the rest is PRETTY fucking bland except for the occasional disembowelment or impalement or explodamation. There are some unexpected twists that I thought were clever, for example you assume hangman is a bad guy but it turns out there's a pretty good reason why he whips his daughter. I mean, about as good of a reason as you could have for something like that.
The best part though involves this annoying preacher character. If you're gonna rent the movie don't keep reading because this is the only real moment of greatness in the picture and I'm about to ruin it for you. This guy is a tightass in front of his wife, he is easily offended and when a bartender asks him what he wants to drink he asks for water. So I mean I wasn't born yesterday, I'm not surprised when he later wanders off and starts pounding shots of tequila and drooling over a variety of extramarital titties. We've seen all that before both in films and in bars.
But what is surprising is when this pansy suddenly asks the bartender "What's your policy on fighting in this establishment?", the bartender hands him a big stick and he starts whoopin the living shit out of a big thug from earlier in the movie. Then thug #2 comes in with a knife to the throat of the preacher's wife. "Let him go, or I'll fix your little bitch, cabron!"
Without a moment's hesitation the preacher pulls a big hunting knife out of his boot, rams it down thug #1's throat, out the back of his head and into the table. Then he points at the thug holding his wife and yells, "You're next, asshole!"
That, my friends, is what the art of Badass Cinema is all about and it is a shame that the rest of the picture does not match this level of achievement. I do admire their attempts to go real out there and freaky assed with the twists, like I don't want to give anything away but for some reason this turns from a cowboy movie to a vampire movie about halfway through. I mean that is pretty fucking weird in my opinion but you gotta admire a part 3 that takes risks like that, I think a lot of fans of the other two will be disappointed because they only like cowboy movies and not vampire movies, but the filmmakers know there are some of us out here who like both and you know if life hands you eggs, you gotta break a few if you want to make omelettes.
Anyway,
it will be interesting to see what will happen in part 4. The hangman's daughter
turns into this character Santanico the vampire princess, and the hangman
said that he tried to kill her when she was a little girl but she just kept
coming back. So this is definitely a more powerful vampire than the others
and I really don't know HOW the fuck they are gonna be able to kill her, if
at all. It will be tough so I look forward to seeing how they pull it off
in part 4, even though this one wasn't that great.
Maybe I mentioned that I've been on a documentary kick. I mean I've been watching the works of documentationists left and right. Not just BIGGIE AND TUPAC, but all the Maysles brothers direct cinema shit, Pumping Iron, Hoop Dreams, you name it. If it's a documentary, and I've seen it, then I've seen it lately. But as great as some of these movies are, only some of them are greater than 2000's Outlaw Award Winning picture AMERICAN PIMP by the Hughes Brothers. This is the definitive pimpumentary, I don't care what you say about PIMPS UP, HOES DOWN it's no AMERICAN PIMP.
The Hughes brothers are identical twin brothers who look the same. Because they are identical twins. Other than that, they seem very down to earth. They got alot of attention very fast with the huge success of their first picture, MENACE II SOCIETY which basically started the whole "young black director makes first low budget movie about life in the hood" thing back in the '90s. They followed that up with the underrated heist/Vietnam movie DEAD PRESIDENTS, which got bad reviews and which they disavow on every subsequent dvd release.
So let me set the record straight on that one. I admire these young twins for realizing, and admitting, that it's a bad idea for a couple of youngsters to try to make an epic movie about a war from before their time. However I think they did a pretty fuckin good job. At the very least it must be admired for the following reasons:
1. Focusing an entire movie on the black vietnam experience. Not just the reasons they went there and what happened but how it affected their community afterwards. In a bad way, in my opinion.
2. A top notch Badass performance by Keith David as a one-legged gangster. At one point he even uses his artificial leg to whoop a man's ass. One last great performance before settling into a hugely successful career selling out by doing voiceovers for commercials and cartoon shows.
3. Also a great dramatic performance by Chris Tucker. Before he became a big box office star, before he knew Jackie Chan, and preceding his great dramatic cameo in JACKIE BROWN. Here he is playing a heroin addicted vietnam vet. I think he's funny because he's a good actor, when he says some bullshit line his face convinces you that he means it. Because of acting. Here he's funny too but he gets to make you sad. It's his equivalent to Richard Pryor in BLUE COLLAR.
Well despite those three facts the Hughes twins always talk about DEAD PRESIDENTS like it's a piece of crap. And they refused to do commentary tracks until FROM HELL because they felt they were too young and stupid to do them. The one they did for FROM HELL starts out with one of them saying how they really didn't want to do it, because they would seem like "egotistical assholes." I mean they are very humble.
And I'm afraid this movie finally gives them a reason to be. It's real nice to look at - amazing sets, period costumes, what not. It's based on a comic book based on the true story of Jack the Ripper, a dude who horribly mutilated prostitutes. Which I guess is why the Hughes Brothers did it, prostitutes. American Pimp. Get the connection? Anyway even though London is a real place it kind of looks like Gotham in the Batman movie, or Dicktracyland (I don't know what it's called, the city from the movie DICK TRACY). Real stylized lookin, bright red skies, etc. Not bad.
And Johnny Depp's not bad, nice to see him back to playing an actual role after they made him into a guitar playin romance novel cover boy in that formulaic piece of Miramax crap CHOCOLATE. So you got nice lookin sets, Johnny Depp, period costumes - basically what you got is Sleepy Hollow without the laughs, and with vaginas being cut out instead of heads. Which in my opinion is not as fun.
It is a sad comment on our society when even our children's comic books are about serial killings. What's next, Jeffrey Dahmer cereal? The Green River Killer playset?
No, I'm just fuckin with you. I know FROM HELL is really a "graphic novel", which is the same thing as a comic book, only called something else to make it sound not as bad. Anyway it's for adults. I asked around about it in some of those trenchcoat 'n ponytail circles. At first they thought I was snoopin around, bein culturally insensitive and what not. But I earned their trust by telling them my theory on the politics of Episode 2. So they gave me the lowdown, later backed up by the supplementary material on the dvd. Damn it, I could've avoided more than one conversation about whether Spiderman or Yoda "owns the summer" if I woulda just checked the dvd extras beforehand.
Apparently the comic book is really nothing like the movie. It uses the same conspiracy theory as the movie to explain who did the murders and why. But instead of following the investigation it follows Jack the Ripper himself, with a heavy background on the freemasons, the royal family, the occult reasons for his mutilations, etc. You see the Queen freak out when she realizes her hitman turned out to be a fuckin maniac sicko. And I guess there is this whole deal about the occult meaning of London architecture, and with the media's obsession with grisly murders, and there is sort of a surreal time travel/magic aspect to his killings, and etc.
Also they say that it used a fairly well known theory among "ripperologists" who study jack the ripper, but adds realism missing in other fictional accounts by graphically depicting the prostitution and the murders, showing you the ugly shit that goes hand in hand with prostitution and serial mutilation. Not the glamorous side you get in other comic books like Superman or Richie Rich. I guess the last murder takes up a whole issue and is shown in graphic, overly researched detail.
Well for the movie they said why don't we take this character of "Jack the Ripper", but make it about the guy who is investigating him instead of about him, and make the guy investigating be a psychic, and an opium addict, and take out all the gore and sex, and make it a mystery so you don't find out that William Gull the royal family's personal physician played by Ian Holm from Alien and Lord of the Rings is Jack the Ripper until the very end.
So basically you just have another generic Jack the Ripper story that looks nice but doesn't have anything particularly new to add to justify its existence. Except for this one really cool shot that is like time lapse but with a moving camera.
The dude who Wrote the final script knew better. For four years the Hughes brothers had a different script, and they hired this dude to rewrite it. He said he would do it but ONLY if he could change it back to the comical book version, where it centers on Jack the Ripper. They said no. And he said, okay.
And I knew I was in trouble before the first shot of the fuckin movie, because it opens with a quote. But not a real quote, a quote from Jack the Ripper, something he'll say later in the movie. So you end up wondering what, he said that in Interview magazine or something? Shit.
Sorry Hughes brothers, but you were workin on this one too long. I admire you for not taking every project you can, for example you said no to CON AIR and that is something you can be proud of for the rest of your twin lives. But sometimes when you sit on something for four years you lose sight of what it was you were tryin to do in the first place, and you make a movie based on a nothing script like this.
Nice try but let's do a better one next time thanks.
seriously though good job on dead presidents.
p.s. how do you tell you guys apart, I don't get it.
FROST/NIXON
FROST/NIXON is the most highly anticipated battle since the first ALIEN VS.
PREDATOR. But I gotta be honest, I only went to see it because it was the
last "best picture" nominee I hadn't seen. I mean it looked pretty
interesting, but I'm not the biggest Ron Howard fan, so I probaly wouldn't
have bothered otherwise. The good news is I didn't hate it like I did THE
READER.
Frank Langella (MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE) plays Richard Nixon, who was apparently
some sort of president. Michael Sheen (UNDERWORLD, UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION, UNDERWORLD:
RISE OF THE LYCANS, THE QUEEN) plays David Frost, who I guess interviewed
Nixon one time. This is the story of them negotiating and then filming an
interview over a couple days and a couple other conversations they had in
between and afterward and what not. Explosive!
I don't want to be too harsh. I don't think this movie or Ron Howard are terrible.
But I think this is another case of deciding to nominate the movie based on
what it's about and who made it and not based on having actually watched and
been moved by the movie after it existed. Howard is completely competent,
I just don't detect any of the ol' vision in the poor guy. He never showed
any interest in politics before, and I don't think anybody (including him)
ever wondered what his feelings were on Watergate or the media or presidential
privilege. And it's a good thing because he doesn't really have much to say
about it, I think he just thinks these are two interesting characters. Which
is true I guess.
But it's hard to go in just wanting to see interesting characters when in
these times there's such an undeniable relevance to the subject. We have another
scumbag ex-president who we never really got closure with, although it was
awesome when that guy threw a shoe at him. It's still up in the air whether
or not the Justice Department under Obama will pursue prosecution of the many
criminal activities that took place in government over the last 8 years, but
we know Bush will get away clean. Most people seem to think "ah, let's
move on, I'm sick of hearing about that shit anyway." Understandable,
except maybe if a precedent had been set by having Nixon actually held accountable,
or nailed by a hip British guy in an interview, maybe it would work as a deterrent
for later scumbag presidents. I don't know. The movie seems to indicate that,
but I guess it didn't work.
The best thing about the movie is Frank Langella, who not surprisingly does
a great job of playing Nixon. He already starred in the play, so he had practice,
but I'm sure he could've done it anyway. While he's seen as the enemy, his
off camera meetings with Frost make him out to be a nice and likable guy.
Based on what I've read about his complete awkwardness with regular people
I'm not sure this is very accurate, but I like it anyway because it makes
the story more compelling than if he was just a bad guy. You kind of feel
sorry for the bastard. He should've brought more humanity like this to his
character "Skeletor" in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, maybe that type
of vulnerability and unexpected warmth is what was missing in that one.
The worst thing about the movie as far as I'm concerned - but this is a pet
peeve of mine so maybe it's just me - is the fake documentary interviews.
There are certainly worse examples of this (like Jim Van Bebber's MANSON FAMILY,
which has probaly never been mentioned in anyone else's review of FROST/NIXON)
but I cannot understand for the life of me why anybody thinks it is a good
idea to make a fake documentary about an actual historical event. A fake documentary
about Spinal Tap or Cloverfield I get, a fake documentary where actors do
interviews pretending to be actual people who might as well have done the
interviews instead is the work of crazy people. Why would you do this? If
documentary interviews would be more interesting than making a movie where
a story unfolds, then why aren't you doing a documentary? Make up your mind.
Fake documentary is not the correct answer. You have been disqualified.
Seriously, isn't there something wrong with this movie if the main point it
makes about the media does not come through until Sam Rockwell looks into
the camera and explains what it is? He tells Ron Howard that it didn't matter
what Nixon did or didn't say in the interview because the close up of his
tired face said it all. But the fact that he's explaining this means that
the close up did not say it all in the movie. He
talks about "the reductive power of television" and I know it was
intentionally making a comment about the movie itself, since it has a shot
of an actor playing young Nixon biographer Diane Sawyer as he says something
about a short TV clip representing an entire career. But I think this is pointing
out the movie's weakness. The movie is telling us that people won't remember
the real story, they'll remember images from the "reduced" version.
In the case of the story of the movie it's a TV interview of the real guy,
but in the case of the movie it's actors playing a fictionalized version of
that interview. A reduction of a reduction.
The story of a guy setting up a big interview and struggling with it is interesting,
but since they base it all around this idea that he has to get a confession
out of Nixon it kind of ruins the whole thing when you find out that he actually
didn't get one. If they had to make up the part of the story they thought
was interesting, then that means the story actually was not interesting.
You know going in that this is the kind of movie that has text at the end
to explain to you what happened to all of the characters. But I don't know
if I was prepared for it to think I needed to be told what happened to Richard
Nixon. I thought that was pretty widely available information that wouldn't
necessarily have to be included. Oh well, good to be thorough I suppose.
It's not constantly dumb enough to make me cringe, but Howard's not exactly
subtle either. It's a pretty obvious story. In this telling Frost was blowing
the interview sessions until he got a (fictional) late night drunken phone
call from Nixon that inspired him to really dig in deep like an investigative
reporter. Cut to montage of going through pages and pages of transcripts,
circling and underlining, listening to tapes, and then VOILA! HE DISCOVERS
THE SMOKING GUN! It's that kind of movie.
I would forgive the lazy montage if it also had a training montage and then
in the last interview Frost is wearing a tank top and he's unbelievably ripped.
And maybe a headband would be good.
I wonder if the slash in the title is supposed to be like FACE/OFF? That was
a pretty cool movie, huh? I'm glad Ron Howard liked FACE/OFF too. What happened
to John Woo, man? If I ever interviewed Ron Howard that's what I would ask
about. I wonder if he's seen BLACKJACK? Did you know kids today aren't really
aware of HARD BOILED? It's a god damn shame. Man, I'm totally gonna nail Ron
Howard in this interview, he's not gonna see it coming. And finally we as
a nation can get closure.
Well, I already spoilered that Frost gets his confession, so you would think
he won FROST VS. NIXON. But then he goes and talks to Nixon afterwards and
Nixon is really nice to him. Frost gives Nixon some Italian loafers and I
think it's supposed to be some kind of fuck you, but I didn't really get it.
Either way Nixon got a free pair of shoes out of it so I think you could definitely
argue that Nixon is the winner of this one. I guess it's kind of an ambiguous
ending left to the audience's interpretation, like the end of FREDDY VS. JASON
where Jason is holding Freddy's severed head, but then Freddy winks.
FULL CLIP
NOTE: I sent this one into The Ain't It Cool News, but they never ran it. Almost as if they didn't give a fuck about a new straight to video movie starring Busta Rhymes. I don't know what the deal is.
Howdy fellas,
Vern over here on the direct to video beat again, looking for flecks of gold in a mountain of crap. Well that's my excuse most of the time but this time I'm doing a little bit of research. My last review on here was OUT OF REACH starring Steven Seagal, and I found out that some of the individuals over on steven-seagal.net were pretty upset at me for saying Seagal "looks like Bigfoot wearing a bad Dracula wig." So to make it up to them I'm doing some footwork for them, looking into this director called "Mink" who is supposed to be directing Seagal in an allegedly theatrical Yakuza themed movie called INTO THE SUN. (Note the three word title again.)
Before that "Mink" did this little DTV rapper vehicle FULL CLIP which puts Busta Rhymes into a very basic blaxploitation kind of story. That sounds pretty bad but this one actually has a decent pedigree for DTV, because it's written by this guy Kantz who directed LOVE AND A BULLET, one of the more surprisingly watchable straight to video movies I've reviewed on here.
When it hit the opening credits, I thought this one might be on the LOVE AND A BULLET level of not that badness. The opening has Busta walking through a building with two guns, massacring everybody in sight like some video game that would be popular with the people who read this sight but that I wouldn't know about until they made it into a movie. It just seems mindless but then the first line in the movie is a voiceover where Busta says, "In case y'all wonderin, I didn't start this shit. But I'm sure as hell gonna finish it." Then it goes to the credits and to the story leading up to the massacre. Seems promising.
The story is this guy Pope (Busta) comes into town for his dad's funeral. He didn't like his dad much and is surprised to inherit a hotel, a bunch of money and an old Cadillac with fuzzy dice on the mirror. He sticks around long enough to hang out with his dad's friend Sleepy (Bubba Smith, from the POLICE ACADEMY septrology) and find out that everybody in town is being fleeced by the cops and the corrupt sheriff, Mark Boone Jr. (from TREE'S LOUNGE and John Carpenter's VAMPIRES). There is an entertaining fight scene in a barber shop where Busta beats down two cops, throws one through a window and then sits back down to finish his shave. And there are a couple eccentric little touches, like an old white dude in a top hat that comes out of nowhere to tell Pope "if he needs anything, anything at all..."
Later Pope decides to call up his old buddy from the Gulf War (not sure if it's part 1 or part 2: Attack of the Butt Pyramid). This guy Duncan (Xzibit) brings a couple other guys with him, I guess two of them must be rappers and the other one is the great Tommy "Tiny" Lister. Always a plus. But this is where the movie dies. Instead of turning into an all out bloodbath at this point, like when Desperado's friends showed up in DESPERADO, the movie just sits around for a while. Duncan and company sit around at a table smoking cigars and looking at a map for what seems like days. At one point one of them even complains that they aren't doing anything. But Duncan yells at them and then they continue sitting around for a while doing nothing. The long they sit there and try to look tough, the less tough they look and the phonier the movie seems. They never have a big action scene to establish what these guys can do (or to take advantage of their much discussed military background) but then they murder the sheriff and immediately take over the town themselves, making things worse.
So eventually this Pope guy has to go kill his friends, and that part's okay. But there's nothing very clever and the execution isn't good enough to make up for that. And they don't even have the top hat guy come in and give them weapons or something, you just never see him again. The movie even starts to turn dumber. There is this kid in the movie named Stokely, and after the name's been mentioned a bunch of times suddenly Pope asks where it comes from. Man, if I figured out it's Stokely Carmichael then this guy oughta, if he's gonna be a badass blaxploitation style hero. Come on, Pope.
The story is just too simple. It's not nearly as funny or as complex as LOVE AND A BULLET (but to be fair it seems like it's a much lower budget).
The best thing about the movie is Mr. Rhymes. My favorite movie I've seen this guy in is the remake of SHAFT. I liked that movie but I thought his part as the wacky comic relief sidekick was uncalled for. I also saw him in the despicable HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION and I think he was in NARC but I didn't think he was all that great in either one. But he was likable enough that I was saying if they HAVE to remake DOLEMITE starring a rapper they should use him instead of LL Cool J, because he's less smooth and has the gravelly voice.
In this movie though I seriously thought he was good. He seems like a better actor than before, he's real charming and he has an impressive tough guy presence. I don't know about the fight scene (with sped up kicks and punches) but he has potential.
The worst thing about the movie is Wyclef Jean, who plays the narrator. His part is embarassing. What it is is every once in a while they cut to him playing cards and drinking and talking in a fake Jamaican accent. What he says never adds anything to the story and he obviously shot his whole part in like 15 minutes. It seems like they just did it to add another rapper name to the DVD cover, but ironically they didn't put his name on the DVD cover. So they should've cut that shit out of the movie.
And the second worst part, that brings me to the verdict on this Mink, who I'm guessing is some kind of music video director. I don't know what gave it away. But I'm afraid this is one of those guys who is degrading our filmgoing experience by BASHING US OVER THE FUCKING HEAD with his show off filmatism. Instead of using his techniquery to serve the story, he just makes a list of every dumb gimmick there is and then tries to shoot through all of them in the opening scene. It's like there's a button marked "INTRUSIVE SHOW OFFY GIMMICK" and he's just sitting there giggling, pushing it over and over again until his fingers get sore. If I could coin a word I would like to call these type of guys "whooshy", because they have to add a stupid "whoooosh" sound effect to every movement of the camera. Every wipe. Every flash. Every live-action-shot-turns-into-comic-book-panel-for-no-reason. Every wacky digital transition or when words come on the screen. WHOOOSHH. ZZZIP. CLANG. SHHHHOOOOOP. That is the sound of the camera work and editing on this movie.
HEY, LOOK AT ME, I'M THE CAMERA AND I'M MOVING. WWWHHHHHOOOOOSSSSHHH! OVER HERE! FOLLOW THE SOUND! AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW OF WHOOSH IS A BIG POT OF EXCITEMENT!
Dude, Mink, that shit doesn't work. You can't trick us into thinking something is exciting if it's not. You first have to just make something that is exciting. At the very least, you have to give us enough credit that a fucking whoosh is not going to make us excited. The right music might work. A whoosh will not work. Give up the whoosing, Mink.
This is also a movie that freeze frames each character introduced and writes their name on the screen. This was already old when Kantz did it in LOVE AND A BULLET, so this time the way they change it up is by making it not just regular letters, but SHINY METALLIC LETTERS! Like on the movie poster for a bad Hollywood Jackie Chan movie.
I hate all that shit. Fortunately Mink gets tired of it after a while, or his finger does get sore, so he stops doing it. His photography is good (using high definition video that doesn't look like crap) and he finds lots of nice colors. And honestly there are some music video type jumpcuts and sped up footage that verge on whooshy but work anyway. I wouldn't completely write him off, but I would mostly write him off. Sorry Mink.
Anyway, bottom line is, Busta Rhymes probaly has a good movie in his future somewhere and I'm willing to give Kantz another chance, but I won't pretend anybody else is gonna enjoy this one. You can only watch so many movies that are almost there. I'll let you guys sit this one out and let you know when there's a better one.
thanks boys
Vern
http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern
First of all you gotta realize, this is one of them movies where a well known director decides to do a loose, low budget experimental quickie type picture. For example, while making his "real" movie, the chinese water torture of an animated feature that is WAKING LIFE, Richard Linklater also spent like a day or two doing a minimalistic three-character-play-on-digital-video called TAPE that was a little easier to stomach.
In this case the director is Steven Soderbergh, and in my book he's earned the right to do whatever the fuck he wants with a digital camera and Julia Roberts on the weekends. Not because he made two movies in the same year and was nominated best director for both (although that's probaly something worth bragging about) but because before that he was on even more of a roll, doing OUT OF SIGHT and the 1999 Outlaw Award winner THE LIMEY right in a row. This year Soderbergh is doing a remake of SOLARIS, that russian space movie that is famous for being really long, boring and good. But first to cleanse his pallet he whipped out this little fucker that is kind of an homage (french word) to the DOGMA of '95 movement and the new wave that the french had a while back.
The movie stars Catherine Keener and the gay dude from Frasier, but also has Julia Roberts in there and some other star cameos. A word of caution: you are in for the ol' movie within a movie within a movie deal. There is the story of Julia Roberts, wearing an excellent Jane-Fonda-in-KLUTE wig, as a magazine reporter interviewing Blair Underwood (the guy from KRUSH GROOVE) who is playing a movie star who is more famous than Blair Underwood. But most of the movie is the story of various people tangentally connected to the making of the movie about Julia interviewing the movie star. This part is shot on the digital video with natural lighting and improvised acting. Don't worry, there is no split screen garbage going on here and Catherine Zeta Jones is not involved.
The elements that make up this picture have all been done before. We've seen examinations of what is phoney about hollywood. We've seen dogma 95 movies and pornography shot on video, and movies that have titles that make it sound like there's nudity even though there's not. We've seen lots of self referential business and star cameos and jokes about people doing tasteless plays about Hitler. But somehow this young bald man, Soderbergh, made it all real interesting as far as I'm concerned. I think this is not only because he has good taste and skill and what not, but also because he is just a likable type of dude. You never get the feeling that he takes himself as seriously as other people do. That's why he does shit like that movie SCHIZOPOLIS or gets Neil Labute to talk on the commentary for SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE since he doesn't have much to say about it, or riles up the writer of THE LIMEY by saying on the commentary track that his script is "really just a sketch."
So what surprised me about this movie was how funny it was. Yeah there is the dogma style pseudo-realism, and some raw emotional type crap, but there are also all kinds of laughs. At one point he said this was a followup to SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE which kinda makes sense, but it reminds me more of SCHIZOPOLIS, that weird home movie where he was the star and it's all funny but makes no damn sense. The best part is Nicky Katt (from THE LIMEY) playing an egomaniacal actor playing Hitler who self righteously tells the director "Anyone who has a problem with drinking blood obviously has never drank blood before." And Catherine Keener, who is about to turn 41 and leave her husband, is going nuts throughout the movie. This makes for some wacky moments, etc. It's an entertaining crowd pleaser as far as this type of movie goes. The BLADE II of self indulgent self referential improvised experimental exercises.
And I gotta admit I liked all the references and ironies and what not. It's not like JAY AND SILENT BOB where if you don't think it's hilarious that Ben Affleck is playing a character who hates Ben Affleck, then the whole scene drops dead. They're not so much punchlines or jokes as little asides that you can notice or not. Like when Blair Underwood's character within a character says that black men never are shown kissing in movies, then you notice that you never get to see him kiss in this movie, or the movie within the movie, and also that he is referring to Denzel Washington not kissing Julia Roberts in whichever crappy John Grisham garbage that was.
I mean there is a ton of this stuff. In the credits, Brad Pitt is credited for playing two characters: himself, and Brad Pitt. And Soderbergh almost gives himself a Hitchcock cameo when he is briefly seen as the director, but he puts a black block over his face. The part that had me practically whooping in the theater was a shot that connected the movie-within-a-movie to a certain Outlaw Award winning film also by Soderbergh. Which in itself is a comment on the phoniness of Soderbergh's own best film.
Come to think of it this type of delightfully surprising reference business is becoming a Soderbergh trademark. In OUT OF SIGHT he had a surprise appearance by a character from another Elmore Leonard movie. In OCEAN'S 11 he had a bunch of actors playing themselves, and then being mobbed while Brad Pitt and George Clooney walk through a crowd unnoticed. Keep em comin, Soddy. Clever us to death.
I also liked the references in the movie-within to things from the movie-without. Blair Underwood says that he lives next to a man who dresses as Dracula. Earlier, we saw a neighbor dressed as Dracula, but it was David Hyde Pierce's neighbor - because he wrote the script to the movie where Blair Underwood said that. In the movie, a woman writes a romantic love letter on red stationary, but in the "real life" the note he got was his wife saying she wanted a divorce.
This may be a double standard, I don't know, but here's a director that knows how to take advantage of digital video. What is digital video's most noticeable quality? It looks like shit. So Soderbergh made it look as shitty as possible. I complained that BAMBOOZLED looked like a bootleg. This one looks worse, so much worse that it looks better. It looks like a movie from the '70s, shot on super 8, faded and never restored, that you found for rent in a mom and pop store, in one of those porn sized boxes that means it's been out of print since the mid '80s. Steve Spielberg told some magazine that the reason film is better than video is because video is made of uniform squares, but film is made up of chaos, of bouncing and popping grains, like molecules. Well, here's a video that bounces and pops all over the place. It's so fucked up that at one point Soderbergh has a square lightening part of the frame, directing your attention to an important item that otherwise you wouldn't be able to make out in the shot. So even in the shittiness of the picture, you know you are dealing with a master here.
But what is it supposed to be about? What is it saying that is new? There is nothing revolutionary here, but I think one thing it's saying is that there's really no such thing as realism in a movie, no matter how dogmestyle you get. It is interesting to see a big movie star like Julia Roberts with a bad hair do, but a real bad hair do, not one created by a hairdresser on purpose. And she's just talkin, in a documentary style, pretending it's all real, and doin a good job. But you're still thinking this is interesting, because she's Julia Roberts. You're not thinking this is a real documentary. And in case you think this is an accident, the video part of the movie ends up pulling out to show a camera crew, like the end of Jodorowsky's HOLY MOUNTAIN or Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl."
SPOILER. David Duchovny is only in two scenes, one where he has a huge boner and the other one he is dead from autoerotic stimulation. Enjoy, ladies!
Now obviously this is not a movie that is blowin the lid off of hollywood, and it's not going to belong on everybody's dvd shelf, like with THE LIMEY. And also you're not an asshole if you don't like it, like with THE LIMEY. But I got a kick out of it. It was a good inbetweener for this young man.
FUNNY GAMES
Not funny ha-ha, though.
This is a very simple, solid, unsettling Austrian picture from 1997. The director
is Michael Haneke, who has since become real respected due to movies like
CACHE. In this one a couple and their son arrive at their vacation home. We
know they're well-to-do not only because of the vacation home, but because
they listen to opera music in the car and have a boat. Right after they get
there father and son are putting the boat in the water, mom is talking on
the phone, cooking some steaks, and a young man shows up at the door to borrow
some eggs. He dicks around for a bit but before too long there are two young
visitors, eight broken eggs, one broken leg and the family held hostage.
So most of the movie is spent in the house with the family sitting helplessly
as their smug home invaders talk about games and bets and pretend that they're
being friendly. It is not graphically violent or shock value oriented like
CHAOS or something. The cruelty to the characters and audience is mostly psychological.
The most horrible stuff happens off camera. One scene focuses on one of the
tormentors walking into the kitchen and calmly making a sandwich while the
horror goes on in the other room.
There's no music except during the credits. Alot of the filmatism is show-off-edly
minimalistic, like the shot that lasts about 10 minutes, mostly motionless,
its first couple minutes looking like a still photo. I think the creepiness
comes from this stark simplicity and from the Leopold-and-Loeb superior attitude
of the villains. They have no motive, no backstory, and somehow that makes
them seem more real. They're just some pricks that like to do this. You hate
them and you can feel that in this movie they have a good chance of winning.
The weirdest part of the movie, the part that shouldn't work, is the way these
pricks start to address the viewer. Me. You. During one sadistic "funny
game" one of the guys turns and winks into the camera. But you're not
sure, the camera could be the POV of the other guy, maybe he's not winking
at us. Then later he turns to the camera again and is clearly talking to us
when he asks what we think will happen, and if we're siding with the family.
It's pretty uncomfortable, like when you're at a bus stop and some dude with
a ferret in his coat mumbles something to you and laughs, and you give him
a courtesy laugh before you realize that he was nodding toward those black
dudes over there and was probaly making some racial comment. Yeah, me
and you, a couple of peers, white dudes, joking together. That's kind
of what it's like, this guy is smiling at you and putting on the charm and
you have no way of telling him no, dude, I'm not your pal. It's not okay
for you to joke around with me. Don't involve me in this.
It's pretty weird to have a serious, disturbing movie where a character "breaks the fourth wall." You don't get that too much outside of comedies. Don't worry though, he doesn't come out during the credits like Ferris Bueller and tell us to go home.
The movie's ultimate self-reflective stunt - BIG ASS SPOILER ALERT - is right after the mom manages to grab the gun and blow away one of the dudes. The other guy freaks out and searches frantically for the TV remote. When he finds it he uses it to rewind himself, his reality, the movie itself. He backs it up so he can grab the gun before she does and his partner doesn't get shot.
Okay, this is ludicrous, how can this work? The movie has gone too far. It's magic now. It's a joke. An Adam Sandler movie. That's what I thought for a second. Then I realized that for some reason it actually worked. Haneke gave the audience a release, a hope, and then he rescinded it, retroactively removed it from the story. Okay, here's what you've been hoping for, enjoy. Oh, wait. It seems there has been some sort of mistake. You don't get to keep that release. Please give it back. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
It works because it manipulates you, and it goes so far in manipulating you that it calls attention to itself. Hello, director Michael Haneke here with a friendly reminder that I have complete power over this story. I can have her blow the guy away, I can have her not blow him away. I choose the one that will be less satisfying to you. But please know that this is not an accident. This is my choice. And my decision is final. Fuck you and your mother. Love, Michael Haneke. P.S. eat a dick
And you know, as weird as the remote control thing is, it would be worse if he had a time machine that he used to stop her from getting the gun. So I am happy with the remote control.
I like the gimmick, but I believe I do have a disagreement with Haneke, and with many of the fans of this movie. If you listen to Haneke (including on the interview that was on the DVD I watched) and if you read what people write about the movie, it's all about violence in the media, and it is indicting the audience for watching violence and all that type of horse shit. In that interview Haneke talks about the remote control scene, about how people at film festivals cheered when he got shot, and then when it rewound they went dead silent, because they realized they had just cheered a murder.
But I think maybe because he's trying to be cynical he misunderstands how scare movies work, including his own. He has this carefully constructed tension and suspense here. He has designed it for us to root for the family to get away. He puts a weapon somewhere knowing we will wait for the family to find it and use it. He even has the bad guys looking directly at us and discussing with us that we are rooting for the family to survive.
And that's exactly what we're doing. I'm not saying there aren't sadistic people out there, but that's not the only thing film violence is about, or even the primary thing. The whole point of a movie like this is for the audience to not want to see violence. We root for the family to get away and honestly when she shot him I was not thrilled because ha ha, the bastard deserves it, I was thrilled because I thought she was gonna get away. So I think I speak on behalf of all those people clapping at the film festival when I say no, stupid, I was not clapping to prove your point about how dude, the media is sooooo violent I just noticed, but because you made a hell of an effective thriller. Dumbass.
He's good at making this type of movie, so what's wrong with somebody else being good at it too, and with people enjoying watching it? Does he know that the characters in these movies are fictional, and are no more hurt by a fictional bullet than they would be by the cancer they'd have if they were in a Susan Sarandon movie? Are his motives really so much more pure than anybody else making a thriller?
Also does he know that they did the same type of thing in JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI where the guy sees that Jason's grave has been dug up, looks directly into the camera at the audience and says "Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment"? Does that mean that FUNNY GAMES and JASON LIVES are both morally better than other violent movies?
Haneke may be against watching
movies where violence happens, but I am for it, so I recommend his movie FUNNY
GAMES. But be sure to watch some violent American action movie afterwards
and mail him a creepy videotape of you watching it and tell him that you loved
FUNNY GAMES so much that it encouraged you and all of your friends to watch
more violent movies and you would like to thank him and could he do a cop
movie next that would be awesome.