GANGS OF NEW YORK + THE 25TH HOUR
For some reason I didn't expect all that much from Martin Scorsese's new picture GANGS OF NEW YORK. I'm not really a big fan of period pieces, I'm just as ignorant of history as anybody else who is ignorant of history and I don't have any opinion one way or the other on "Leo" who plays the protagonist Amsterdam or "Danny" who plays Robert Deniro playing an early gang leader named Bill the Butcher. (You know, the same way Roddy Piper played Kurt Russel in THEY LIVE).
But I guess I forgot about that Scorsese, he knows how to make a fuckin movie. GANGS OF NEW YORK is an archetypal type story of some guy whose dad was killed in a gang battle, he escaped and hid away for many years and then came back for revenge. But you know he's a cowboy or a samurai or a wizard or some shit so he plans for the perfect time to murder Bill in front of everybody at a big celebration of the anniversary of killing his dad. And in the meanwhile he befriends him, to make it all the easier and all the worse.
BUT WAIT! Along the way there is bonding. You know like a John Woo picture or what have you, of course he ends up having a sort of fatherly relationship with this guy, and this guy starts having a sonly relationship with him. So you got the scene where he saves the life of the guy he's gonna kill, and the scene where the guy he's gonna kill finds out he's gonna kill him and thankfully yells something other than "I treated you like a SON and this is what you do to me, you FUCK ME IN THE ASS?"
So that's the story but then the whole thing is set against this sprawling type backdrop of immigration and class and race strife and the beginning of the civil war. This is what really makes the movie interesting because it is huge and detailed, so it's a good setting. And more than that it's full of interesting themes because it's showing you very graphically that this hatred and violence and feeling of impending apocolypse has been in New York since the very beginning.
The feel of the movie is kind of weird. There are just these huge, stylized but probaly fairly historically accurate sets, full of people in these costumes. You got the people getting off the boats, the people passing out literature, trying to sign up troops for the civil war, you got competing fire brigades getting in brawls and beautiful ladies and pickpockets and it's like you're just floating through hearing these overlapping conversations and bits of different songs playing in all different directions and I swear to you for the first half hour or so of the movie I thought I was on the Pirates of the Caribbean.
I thought the movie hit a couple sour notes when it got a little too modern or cartoony. The opening gang battle between The Dead Rabbits and the Whoever the Other Gang Was is mostly great, like some epic History Channel remake of THE WARRIORS. Liam Neeson (DARKMAN) leads his gang of Irish Catholics holding a huge metal cross. The battle is real chaotic so I'm not sure if he bludgeoned anybody with the Lord or not. But then all the sudden this modern electro pop business comes in, I don't know if it's Peter Gabriel or one of those type of dudes, and at about the same time this gal with big sharp teeth like a staple remover goes flying through the air and bites a guy's ear off. She coulda been in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. Also at the very end of the movie it kind of rushes into this terrible U2 song as if to say, "okay people, 3 hours is up. let's get the next batch in here."
But those were my biggest problems with the movie. Other people will tell you that Leo DiCaprio is miscast or complain about Cameron Diaz's amazing disappearing, reappearing Irish accent. But I didn't have a problem with them. I think it's that whole catch-187 of being a big movie star. They'll put you in the movie because you're a movie star, but people will hate you in the movie because you're a movie star, even if you do a good job. I'm not saying somebody else couldn'tve done a better job, I'm sure they could've. But it's mainly your preconceived notions of the actors that hold them back. Maybe that's a good enough argument that they shouldn't be cast. But they do just fine.
Wouldn't that be funny if instead of DiCaprio people on the internet called him DiCRAPrio. That would really show him for being a popular actor. Or hey, maybe DiFAGrio. Ha ha. Let's steal his lunch money.
What really makes this movie standout I think is the way the historical background of the civil war and what not becomes crucial to the story of the gang battle. You slowly learn more and more about the unrest and these draft riots and then everything comes together. It's nice to see a historical picture that doesn't try to paint everything in black and white terms. For example, the beginning of the draft riots is very cathartic. It takes place in this oppulent mansion where powder puff rich fucks are standing around enjoying tea. This scene is very jarring after 2 1/2 hours of every character and setting covered in filth, so you can't help but get a kick out of it when shit comes crashing through the windows.
But then I hope you're not siding with the rioters, because the issue seems to be not as much war as they don't like black people. And they make this pretty clear when they start lynching them. Then the soldiers come in and start stabbing everybody with bayonets, and you're not exactly going to side with those dudes either. So it's high drama without telling you what to think.
I really like the way this movie brings up things that you rarely if ever see in movies. Like we can't keep pretending that the race issue still is and always has been a north vs. south thing. Here we see that many people in the north are just as racist as the ones in the south, they just don't have slaves to prove it. That's why that republican party fella in California can be in the same hot water that Trent Lott was just in. Even in California there are assholes who send out articles about how it would be better if the south had won the civil war and the problems of the time were not racism, but reconstruction. Thanks alot california.
Also, isn't it amazing to think that there used to be a huge prejudice against the Irish? These days you would have no idea somebody was Irish-American unless they started bragging about it around St. Patrick's Day. And then the worst thing you would think would be, "I wonder why that dude is so into being Irish?" It's too bad these other prejudices are taking longer to wipe out.
Also, I like how Bill the Butcher (who by the way is literally a butcher, just like a friend of mine who got a scary reputation because his nickname was not taken literally enough) calls himself a Native American and hates all the new immigrants. In this case Native American does not mean American-Indian, it means your parents immigrated instead of you. This is a good reminder of how ridiculous us white people are pretending we own this place.
If you don't appreciate all this, you will at least appreciate "Danny"'s performance as Bill the Butcher. He's a very memorable and convincing villain. Both feeble and menacing. Good with knives. Very scary and a little charming. I know it's gonna be either him or Jack Nicholson for the oscar, and I'd be happy with either one.
Another ambitious New York story is Spike Lee's new one, THE 25TH HOUR. This falls into the category of the slightly more straightforward Spike Lee movies like CLOCKERS, but it's still clearly his work. It's also kind of a comeback for him after the muddled story and horrifyingly bad digital video of BAMBOOZLED and the funny but TV-like ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY.
Also it's nice to see yet another thorn in the side of that old closet KKK fuckwad argument that pops up on newsgroups and talkbacks once a year about "How come Spike Lee only makes movies about black people?" Like there would be anything wrong with that. Like they never saw SUMMER OF SAM, or even DO THE RIGHT THING which is as much about Sal and his sons as it is about anybody else. In this one all the leads are white except for the beautiful Rosario Dawson. I think the only other black people in the movie are DEA agents.
This one is about a dude named Monty (Edward Norton, from 1999 outlaw award winner for best motherfuckin picture FIGHT CLUB). He's basically a good guy, we know this when he saves the life of a badly injured dog in the opening scene. But he's made his fortune dealing drugs for the Ukrainian mafia, and he kind of intends to go out of business but manages to get pinched first (or "touched" as he calls it).
But like 'R XMAS it's not really a crime movie. Instead it's a slow moving character drama about how he chooses to spend his last day before going off to prison. This lucky rich fuck, he's out on bail I guess, so he gets to have a going away party instead of just sitting it out in a holding cell. He spends the day with his girlfriend who may or may not have turned him in (Rosario Dawson), and his two best childhood friends: an asshole investment banker (Dr. Barry Pepper) and a timid private school teacher (Philip Seymour Hoffman, who jacked off onto a wall in HAPPINESS, so you just know he shouldn't be a teacher). Also there's Anna Paquin (from that weird psychedelic goose movie FLY AWAY HOME) as the student you just know shouldn't have him as a teacher, and Brian Cox as Monty's dad. So these characters get together and they discuss the mistakes they've made, they make more mistakes, and they ponder what to do next (do I kill myself? Do I make a run for it?)
All the leads are great and the characters are very believable. I especially liked the introduction of Barry Pepper in a huge room full of computer screens manned by future heart attack victims in ties. He argues with his boss, throws competetive homophobic insults at other dudes and can't stop squeezing a stress ball. Obviously I would have no clue but I felt like that must be EXACTLY what it feels like to be in a room like that. What a bunch of fuckin assholes.
There's also a memorable performance by a sarcastic DEA officer who enjoys taunting Monty after he's busted him.
What maybe is more interesting though than the characters and the plot is that Mr. Lee, like Mr. Scorsese, is one of these "NEW YORK DIRECTORS" who are so proud of being from New York that most of their movies end up being their statement about New York. So Mr. Lee would be remiss I guess if he didn't take this opportunity to paint a portrait of post 9-11 New York. To me, one of the most memorable scenes is the eventless opening credits. Haunting, epic Terence Blanchard music over shots of two light beams shining up into the night sky where the towers used to be. I couldn't tell you what exactly Mr. Lee intended by this but for me it really worked. And 9-11 definitely hangs over the whole movie, from the fire fighter memorials in Brian Cox's bar to the conversation in Barry Pepper's apartment overseeing the cleanup at Ground Zero.
Definitely the most powerful scene, and the one that really made the multiplex audience I saw it with realize maybe this wasn't a cop thriller, is what you could only call the "FUCK YOU" sequence. In what comes off as both an homage to TAXI DRIVER and a sequel to the racial epithet montage in DO THE RIGHT THING, Edward Norton looks into a mirror and watches his reflection curse just about every possible group in New York and surrounding areas. Everybody from Osama bin Laden to Korean grocers. You gotta sympathize with most of his anger even though he's throwing in terms like "towel head" left and right. Like that book "GET YOUR WAR ON" it's a nice angry antidote to the phoney media picture of lockstep flagwaving unity and everybody loving each other and don't worry it only SEEMS like Enron and Bush and Co. are fucking you and everybody else in the ass with a giant red white and blue splintery telephone pole.
I mean finally somebody besides me points out that even if the NYPD are great heroes they also left 51 bullets in Amidou Diallo. Thank you Mr. Lee.
It might be hard to imagine what all this has to do with the story about Monty going to prison, and for anybody who hates it for reasons besides "it was boring", it will probaly be because they don't see the connection. It's abstract, but I think it works. This guy realizes everything he hates about New York just as he realizes how much he is going to miss it. And just as he realizes that what he's done is his fault, not everybody else's. At this time, when everyone decides that New Yorkers are the toughest and most beautiful bastards in the world, he might have to run away to Texas and never come back. There is also a parallel between the "end of the world as we know it" of 9-11 and the end of his world as he leaves upper class Manhattan for shaving his eyebrows and getting jocked.
It's funny, people say Spike Lee is too preachy but then he doesn't lead you enough to be sure what exactly he's preaching.
I wouldn't put this in the top ranks of Spike Lee movies. Like many of them it is a little meandering and lacking in focus. But like all of them except BAMBOOZLED it's beautifully shot and acted. And like every one of them it has a lot of interesting ideas that it explores in interesting ways, so it's worth seeing and thinking about.
GARFIELD
the asshole cat
Man, what a fuckin week. On Tuesday Bush got either "re"-elected or re-"elected," and I've been stumbling around muttering to myself ever since. Stabbing at my porridge with my spoon, staring blankly out the window, mouthing the word "why" to myself over and over again. One thing I know, there are some things in this world that just cannot be explained. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes people vote for a president that couldn't be trusted to put on his own pants. And sometimes a guy gets the blue state blues, walks around town in a daze, suddenly finds himself at home having rented the movie "GARFIELD," not really knowing how or why. I know for a fact this happens because you're lookin at the guy who it happened to. Me. It was weird.
What this is is a movie based on the popular comic strip from the 1980s called Garfield. Like all comic strips it is not funny and about a talking animal. This is a cat called Garfield who is orange. The thing about Garfield, he is real fucking fat, he eats lasagna. That's funny because real cats eat cat food, but this one also eats lasagna. Also he says "I hate Mondays" at the beginning although this does not turn out to be important. But it is that sort of detailed characterization that makes him, you know, Garfield. I guess.
I mean, think about it. Why the fuck is a cat gonna hate mondays. Especially this particular cat, this Garfield. What he does, he sleeps, he eats, etc. For a cat, even a talking, dancing asshole cat like this, he is not gonna give a fuck if it's Tuesday, Thursday, the 12th of February, anything. It doesn't matter. He doesn't have to work. He doesn't have to get out of bed. Every day of the year is the weekend to him. There is no beginning of the week for a cat with that particular lazy asshole cat type of lifestyle. Even when he is expected to eat a mouse, he just fakes it. There is no fuckin reason this cat even knows what Monday is, let alone hates it. And yet he says it explicitly that he hates Mondays. You see. That is why it is funny. Because why would he hate Mondays. Oh, that Garfield the asshole cat. He hates Mondays.
The weirdest thing about Garfield, he looks like some kind of fucked up Nazi medical experiment or something. Like they took an ordinary cat but painted him bright orange, surgically removed his skeleton, injected him with 15 pounds of human assfat and then gave him a new plastic skeleton with a skull designed to contain a pair of huge, wet, human eyes the size of baseballs. I don't think that's really how they did it for the movie, but that's what it looks like. They might've used a real cat wearing a padded suit or something but I think it was probaly computers. But I think this is a poor and unethical use of computers. You gotta make up your mind if it's real or cartoon, you can't do both. It is real unnatural to see a wacky cartoon cat wearing real fur.
Anyway, Garfield is a cat who lives with his owner John. This is a guy who has no job or activities. His only interests are his pets and the hot veterinarian he's had a crush on since high school. In the opening shot we see a collection of photos of John, and in every single one he is holding Garfield. Now it would be weird enough for a guy to be that obsessed with his cat, but especially this particular cat. Because this cat is a total asshole. He steals John's food, flushes the toilet when he's in the shower, destroys all of the furniture, constantly pushes the puppy off the chair, scratches him, or beats him with a pillow, even bullies the other cats in the neighborhood. He just watches TV all day and never leaves the house. He eats too much, he burps too much, he sleeps too much and insists on having his own bed and even a god damn teddy bear.
And he fucking whines. He is constantly complaining from the first minute of the movie to the last. Nothing is good enough for Garfield. He hates everyone and everything. Except himself. John pampers him so much he even makes home made lasagna for him, and lasagna is a pretty time intensive pasta in my opinion. But even that's not good enough for fucking Garfield. And he makes bad puns too. He makes Elvis jokes and JERRY MAGUIRE references. He says lines like "I think I'm going to blow cat chow chunks" and "maybe I'll get a CAT scan."
When Garfield disappears for a while, you'd think John would breathe a sigh of relief. But he's like one of those common law wives you see on COPS all the time, he thinks he loves his abusive cat because he says, "I can't live without Garfield."
Another thing that is weird, Garfield never shuts up (he has the voice of academy award nominee Bill Murray) but John has no idea that he talks. Only animals can hear animals talk, not humans. But paradoxically, animals can hear humans talk. Whooooah. It's not explained if the humans can see that Garfield's mouth is moving or that he is always gesturing and dancing around and crap.
At first I couldn't tell if John could hear Garfield or not, so when I realized he couldn't, I started thinking maybe there was some twist where John is actually a ghost, or Garfield is actually a ghost. I'm not sure which way it would work.
Anyway, since this is a movie about pet animals, that means a bad guy is gonna steal a dog. It happened in AIR BUD and it happens here. And it's Garfield's fault, so the one positive thing he does in the movie is go clean up his own mess. For the first 45 minutes nothing really happens, he just sits around the house, sort of a slice of life kind of deal. I almost thought it was supposed to be like FRIDAY but with a freaky looking obese asshole talking cat. Then the puppy gets stolen, and this Garfield finally gets up off his fat cat ass and makes the courageous move of leaving the god damn house. Then he goes on an epic adventure that involves going to a building where the dog is, etc.
Alot of the comedy in this movie is Garfield runs around, he falls, there is screaming. At one point he runs up a lady's dress. And then he'll say something about an HMO or a primary care provider or something like that. Because what would a cat know about health care? That's why it's funny. Ha ha, the cat said HMO. It's like in those cartoons where they put in jokes that the adults will understand and the kids won't. But here it's not jokes, it's just words.
In a way this is the perfect movie for the 2004 election. Garfield is a horrible, useless asshole bully. But the music tells us he's some kind of charmer and I guess the movie made a bunch of money. So apparently everybody loves this asshole. There is nobody on earth that could explain why Garfield is supposed to be a lovable character, but there he is. Just like Bush with his 51% mandate. Hooray. God bless America. I think that's what it's supposed to be about, isn't it?
No, probaly not. But the key to the meaning of GARFIELD may lie in presidential history. President James A. Garfield was only president for 200 days before he died. He was shot by a lawyer who thought God told him to do it. The bullet itself didn't do much damage, but the doctors couldn't find it in there. They had Alexander Graham Bell make them a metal detector to find it, but he mistakenly detected the springs in the matress beneath the president. The doctors dug around so much they created a huge infected wound which caused the heart attack that killed Garfield. Which, hmmm, I'm not sure if that has any parallels to the story in this movie.
Man, I gotta be honest, I don't think I really get this movie GARFIELD. I'm not sure what the deal is. I listened to some of the director and producer commentary track but they never really get into explaining what the deal is. I mean, I guess they sort of do. In one part the producer says, "Now, this is a really fun sequence in the picture, because Garfield is about to destroy the lasagna." That pretty much explains this movie, I guess.
GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN'
50 Cent, aka Curtis "Mumbles" Jackson, is not a rapper. I mean technically you might think he was one because he's released rap albums. Pretty popular, too - the one this movie's named after went six times platinum. But in a profile in Forbes magazine he talked about his albums and all his other products (a record label with all his buddies on it, a line of clothes, a line of Reebok sneakers, a flavor of VitaminWater, a video game, a ghost-written autobiography) as a continuation of the drug dealing he did starting at the age of 11. Just another hustle, another product.
When I read about his deal with Apple to sponsor a line of low-cost computers aimed at the inner city, I wondered if maybe he was smarter than he was letting on in all his music and interviews. Had he used his fame to give back to the community, strategically getting Apple to help the poor catch up technologically with the rest of American society and build a better future? Maybe, but he never mentions anything like that in the article. It ends with the quote, "I never got into it for the music. I got into it for the business."
I wonder how it would go over if he put a sticker on the front of all his albums explaining that. "Dear consumer, I don't give a shit about music, I don't give a shit about hip hop, please buy my product because I want to be even richer. That is my whole thing, being rich. Thanks for your help in this important cause. I also own part of VitaminWater."
Of course, coming up from the ghetto is a common theme in hip hop, and this movie does an okay job of explaining why growing up poor in a family of criminals could make you obsess over money. The movie tries to recreate the 8 MILE formula (acclaimed director [Jim Sheridan this time] + semi-autobiographical tale of Detroit rapper = surprisingly good movie, they hope). It actually starts out as a pretty decent crime movie, starting with 50 - playing an alternate universe version of himself named Marcus aka Little Caesar - and Terence D. Howard falling out during a robbery. Then Marcus gets shot and his life flashes before him in the form of him narrating his life story.
The actor playing young Marcus is a good likeness and a better actor than 50. He also has the exact same level of rapping talent (not much) and there are some cute scenes where he sits in his room with a little microphone and tape recorder making sex raps, talking about things he doesn't really understand. His mom is a drug dealer and he likes that because she buys him nice shoes. When his mom is murdered and he has to go live in a crowded house with his grandparents it's very upsetting to him because 1) his mom was murdered and 2) he has to wear old shoes. In fact he has to wear beat up old hand-me-downs with a hole in the sole (I'm not sure why he can't just keep wearing the ones he has.) There's a scene where he stares in a window at some $30 sneakers he can't afford and this is offered as the explanation for why he starts selling coke on the corner.
After a while of course they have one of those CONAN THE BARBARIAN style transitions from child to man and we get 2005 50 Cent playing mid-to-late '90s Marcus, leading a small crew working for Bill Duke. I was happy for Bill Duke because he got to play a drug lord instead of a commanding officer and because he got to do a froggy voice, which might have been fun for him, I don't know.
There's dialogue in the movie about how Marcus keeps all his emotions inside, which is supposed to explain the fact that he can't emote with his face any more than he can with his rapping. There are a couple hilariously emotionless line deliveries like when he's laying face down in a prison shower wondering why Terence Howard saved him from getting shivved and he says, "Why." But I'll give it to him, he's not that bad most of the time. He's at least on the level of Michael Jordan in SPACE JAM as far as non-actors go, although way less charismatic. Honestly he didn't bother me that much in the movie, definitely not as much as I was expecting. Looking at the cover of the DVD, where he holds a baby and has a completely expressionless face, I was convinced he was too bad of an actor to even pull off a still photo.
Most of the movie is competent and some of it is very well executed. But I gotta mention a couple unintentionally funny parts. I couldn't get over the narrated line, "We were dedicated to one thing and one thing only: gettin paid, and gettin laid." Dude, that's two things. Couldn't you just say, "We were dedicated to two things: gettin paid, and gettin laid?" I am not good at math but I felt that was a glaring error.
The most ridiculous error though is in the subject of history. When the movie skips forward to adulthood, Marcus narrates that everybody wanted to be a rapper after Tupac, and if Tupac wasn't already dead then his cousin's rapping would've killed him. A while later in the movie, he realizes that the cocaine business, if you calculate how much time you spend waiting on a corner and in prison, adds up to less than minimum wage. BUT THEN! A revolution hits the cocaine trade and changes their fortunes. They find out about crack and even get a cooking show style demonstration of its creation.
I can think of many different ways to interpret this but none of them make any sense. Tupac died in 1996, so this seems to be saying that crack was invented in the late '90s. I thought maybe it was an alternate history type deal, like that old TV show SLIDERS, where the '80s crack epidemic never happened. But there's another scene where Marcus's girlfriend is watching a documentary about the Iran-Contra scandal (shorthand for "this movie has depth and substance") so I think the '80s did happen. Let's be forgiving and say that the "after Tupac" just means after his popularity and the narration about him dying was looking into the future. Tupac's first solo album came out in 1991. So maybe it's saying that crack already existed but somehow the backwards coke dealers of Detroit never found out about it until, say, 1992.
I mean come on man, I understand changing history around for dramatic purposes but however you slice this timeline it seems like kind of an insult to the intelligence of the audience. Oh well. I'll live. I'm not gonna try to start a feud or "beef" with the movie like 50 Cent would do with a rapper that insulted him.
There are some good touches in the movie. Marcus thinks the "Rick James lookin motherfucker" he once saw his mom fighting with is the one who killed her, so for years he has a picture of Rick James hanging on his wall. There's a really original prison shower fight scene with a bunch of dudes sliding all over the place instead of the usual carefully choreographed stuff. The scene where Marcus is in solitary and ends up carving lyrics into the wall is pretty cool (although you don't really get to read the lyrics so who knows if they're good or not). My favorite scene from a filmatic standpoint is when a rival rapper named Dangerous is in the studio and gangsters storm in and kill his entourage. We see the attack from Dangerous's point of view inside the booth, gunshots muffled by the soundproof windows. And we see him just sitting there like a deer in headlights as this all goes down. This is a great non-verbal way of showing that despite his gang affiliation, his image and his lyrics, Dangerous is not "real" when it comes down to it.
But then Marcus has to make that same point verbally and unfortunately he's not as good of a rapper as Jim Sheridan is a director. His lyrical takedown of Dangerous is a less clever rehash of the way Eminem's character took down his rival in 8 MILE, by attacking the lack of "real" in the guy's background. The movie gives a convincing argument for why 50 Cent is more "real" than other rappers but the problem is, it doesn't convince me that he's a good rapper.
Okay, I'm no expert, and if people like listening to 50 Cent's music I can't argue with that. But let's just say that I don't get it. I get why people like Biggie Smalls - he told these amazing stories full of details and images, he played cleverly with words and he had a great rhythm or "flow." I get why people like Tupac - he had so much charisma and these interesting contradictions, contrasting ignorant sexist lyrics with emotional odes to his mama, the Black Panther. It's like the juxtaposition of the "Thug Life" tattoo on his belly and the big, sad looking feminine eyes on his face. DMX has kind of a similar appeal, he's this tough guy barking about dogs and Hell and then he gets emotional and prays and cries on stage. I get the appeal of alot of these so called gangster rappers, going back to Ice-T and Ice Cube, I'm not even gonna play that "but there are so many positive rappers, didn't you see DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY" card. There are all kinds of talented people just in this one subgenre of rap music. But I still can't understand how 50 rose to the top, even after he made a whole movie explaining it.
Well, except that he got shot 9 times. (or shot at 9 times and hit 3 times, depending on who's telling the tale.) I never knew that he got shot in the face and has a piece of shrapnel in his tongue, and that's why his microphone skills are so bad. In the movie he has his jaw wired shut for a while and when he starts rapping again he's worried because he's slurring his words, and for a second I started feeling bad about all the times I thought he was a terrible rapper. I started to think maybe it was like making fun of that guy in Def Leppard for having one arm. This guy got shot in the face so the fact that he can sort of pronounce some words, even if it sounds bad, means he's courageous, like a special olympics type of deal.But come on man, if a guy tried to play basketball with one leg they wouldn't put him in the NBA unless he could pull it off. I think you're supposed to like this amateurish marble mouth flow, not just feel sorry for him and pat him on the head. I don't get it.
The movie really falls apart when it catches up to the opening robbery scene. Since the movie opens with Terence Howard going too far (he shoots innocent people) and Marcus standing up to him (he points a gun at him, forcing him to stop the robbery for an emotional speech about their relationship) we assume that this is what the movie is about, the rift between these two friends. And you assume that the guy who shot Marcus is either Terence Howard or somebody he hired. But it's not, and in fact that opening scene isn't important at all. After he gets shot Terence Howard is his best buddy again and none of that is ever mentioned again. And the shooting had nothing to do with the robbery either. I really don't get why the robbery is important at all.
The shooting is important though, because after that 1) his voice supposedly has "more pain in it" (i.e. the dude cannot fucking rap) and 2) he decides to leave crime and focus on his rap career. This doesn't seem like a change in his morals or anything, it just seems kind of arbitrary. He's not Malcolm X starting out as a thug and evolving into a prophet. He's not Scarface getting to the top and dying. He's just a dude who sells drugs and then raps. "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" is not an ironic title, he really means that. And the worst part is that he doesn't even do much with his riches. He buys a car early on, which impresses the guy he gives his demo to (the incident was based on how he got his demo tape to Run DMC's iconic DJ Jam Master Jay, who later was murdered possibly due to his association with 50 Cent. Thanks alot, asshole). And he buys shoes. He doesn't get a big awesome mansion with a globe and a giant pile of cocaine like Scarface. I mean obviously in SCARFACE, the movie knows that you shouldn't be like Scarface. But at least you can recognize that he's having fun with all this excess. 50 Cent is sincerely telling you that you should waste your life doing stupid shit to get money, and then he doesn't even bother to do anything fun with his money. He's fuckin Ebenezer Scrooge or one of those nerds who buys collectable action figure dolls on ebay and keeps them in the package so they're more valuable. Not cool.
What I'm saying is, this movie is completely empty, because 50 Cent is completely empty. In the scene where Marcus becomes an adult we see that he has a Public Enemy poster in his room, which is supposed to represent that during the period of time skipped over in the movie the guy has, like, thought about things before, or something. But I don't buy it. Do you honestly believe that 50 Cent grew up listening to songs talking about J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro, Elijah Muhammed? Do you think he even knows what those words mean? Before you answer let me give you a couple quotes:
50 thinks the president is "incredible ... a gangsta." "I wanna meet George Bush, just shake his hand and tell him how much of me I see in him," 50 told GQ. If the rapper's felony conviction didn't prevent him from voting, 50 said he would have voted for Bush.
Okay, so the guy is a fuckin moron idiot who shouldn't be allowed to even use the word 'rebel' if it's the answer to his morning crossword puzzle. But maybe after Hurricane Katrina, seeing all those black people stuck on rooftops, maybe then he saw the light, started to think maybe this "incredible gangsta" is bad for the neighborhood? Nope.
"The New Orleans disaster was meant to happen. It was an act of God... I think people responded to it the best way they can... What Kanye West was saying, I don't know where that came from."
That's right 50, God wanted that shit to happen. He calls it PUSH YOUR SICK ELDERLY FATHER IN A WHEELCHAIR THROUGH SIX FEET OF POISON WATER OR DIE TRYIN'. I'm sorry Jim Sheridan, but I'm not buyin it. This motherfucker did not grow up listening to Public Enemy. They didn't have instrumental albums back then. This guy is a fucking idiot. I don't think you're supposed to say that about a somewhat respected artist who is a grown adult, but a guy who says he likes Bush because he's a "gangsta" is a fuckin grade-A dipshit. There is no getting around it, the guy is very, very, very fucking dumb. Any of you kids who think 50 Cent is cool, you're wasting your time. Go to a veteran's hospital, I'm sure you could find plenty of dudes who have been shot 9 or more times as well as been blown up. And some of these guys might like Bush too but I guarantee you they will have something more intelligent to say about it than "incredible... a gangsta."
It pisses me off that a guy like that, a guy who is as stupid as fucking Paris Hilton, can be treated as a serious artist with something to say. Okay so maybe he didn't have to go to the hospital because he got bit by an exotic animal while partying at 4 am. And maybe he didn't report a tiny prop dog missing and later find it stuck in his boot. But he is the male equivalent of that type of airhead. The fact that he said that retarded shit about George Bush should be scandalous in the world of hip hop. Eazy E never lived down going to a republican fundraiser, and I think he did that as a joke. Now days these retards don't even care, they're too busy shopping for jewelry to think about things, so I have to do it for them. And I say fuck this guy.
Near the end of the movie Marcus/50 has a song called "Window Shopper" that accuses somebody else of "window shopping" by being jealous of his material items that he has purchased using drug money. You feel a little bit proud of him because the rapping and singing are improved from all the other horrible performances throughout the movie. You kind of want to give him a gold star for his sticker chart. But I'm not so sure about the content of the song because remember I mentioned at the beginning of the movie there is actually a scene where young Marcus is literally window shopping, looking at the sneakers he can't afford anymore now that his drug dealer mom is dead. So now I guess grown up Marcus is mad at young people for being jealous of him for actually having the shoes now. Why can't they stop window shopping and sell some drugs in order to buy fancy shoes and cars and then almost die and become a rapper so they're redeemed like he did?
The problem is I don't sense any irony or awareness at all in 50 Cent. I don't think he knows. He really does believe that you need to Get Rich or Die Tryin. I mean, what else would you do, be poor and be a dancer like his girlfriend would've been if they didn't meet up again? No, it's better to be rich and get shot in the ass a bunch of times. I think alot of rappers don't get enough credit for the substance and the art behind their songs, but as far as I can tell 50 Cent is not one of those rappers. It's fitting that in the movie a near-death Avid-fart montage not only shows flashbacks to his life, but quick shots of the MTV logo and a Big Mac. That about sums it up.
I'm nobody to be lecturing today's generation of rappers about materialism and stupidity. But I am one to quote somebody else doing it. Ice Cube has a song called "Child Support" that's on his most recent album Laugh Now, Cry Later:
"All y'all rappers should kiss and make up / Take your bullshit jewelry back to Jacob / Get your mind right nigga and start to wake up / Cause the whole rap industry needs a shake up / You got million dollar niggaz killin' million dollar niggaz / Bustin' outta Bentleys, wearin' chinchillas / There you go again rollin' in your limo / Comin' from the Grammies, shootin out the window / I know the scripture, but there's something wrong with this picture / What you mad about, diamonds all in your mouth? / No car, no niggaz house paid off / I never heard of a rapper gettin' laid off..."
I don't know if Cube would include 50 Cent in the anonymous group of rappers he's addressing there, but the shoe sure fits. Here's this millionaire businessman who owns a share of the VitaminWater company getting in more feuds with other rappers than wrestlers do with other wrestlers. What is he so mad about? Not Katrina, not Bush, not poverty.
If GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' was a story of redemption it might be good. Or of it was the dark tale of an amoral bastard who also happens to be an artistic genius. Or if it showed the humanity of a criminal, made you understand that he's a human being and there's more to him than you realized. Or if he gets too big for his britches and done in by hubris. But none of those are true. Nice try on Jim Sheridan's part, but this movie is phony. If you're gonna base a serious movie around a rapper's life you better find a rapper with a brain and a soul.
Now this is what I call a fuckin MOVIE. I forgot about it until seeing it on Bravo today but it is even better now that I'm older and now that I've done my own bid. First though, a word about Bravo. This is the "film and arts network" they CLAIM, but they don't have the balls to live up to that slogan. You know how Sam Peckinpah movies always have the real slick opening credits with the freeze frames and the atmosphere and what not? They show these in widescreen and your thinking, "Look at that! Look at that rectangular screen! That atmosphere! THIS is a fuckin MOVIE."
And then it says "directed by Sam Peckinpah" and BAM, no more widescreen. No, that's just so the words will fit, we don't need it anymore. The picture is square and cramped and the film is all faded and dark and you're thinkin, "What is this crap, Hunter?"
But worse, at the end of the movie, the credits come up and BLOOOOOP, the screen shrinks down to unreadable size and the rest of the screen is giving trivia about Carter Burwell. And I'm sure I'd like that dude as much as the next guy if I knew what movies he was in but jesus man, this is the film and arts network, you gotta understand some of us Cinema appreciaters such as myself and some of these other motherfuckers, they want to read the damn credits.
Anyway the Getaway. This is the story of Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy, an armed robber who just got out of the joint. Which I think alot of us can relate to. Doc goes on a job that goes a little sour. For one thing, his partner Rudy tries to kill him. So he and his wife Ali McGraw take the money and run for the Mexican border. Along the way they have to deal with cops, Rudy and others chasing after them. And they have a lot of problems and they go through alot of cars and at one point some fucking pickpocket scum even swipes their bag at the train station. What a pain in the ass.
There are alot of movies with this type of story but this is the more Artistic kind where the directorial techniquery elevates it to an epic. It is also important to note that Steve McQueen is one of the best Badasses of all time. I don't think I need to tell some of you but you young kids, you gotta realize this is a bad motherfucker. This is the guy I would've wanted to play me in a movie. We don't have many left of this school of Badass, I think Clint may be the only one left who's doing lead roles. I'm not talking about these wisecracking pretty boys we have now, I'm talking about the quiet older guys with the wrinkled foreheads, the guys with the narrow eyes, maybe a few scars. Guys like Steve, Clint, Chuck Connors, maybe throw in Charles Bronson, who has a good mustache by the way. Steve is clean shaven but whatever happened to mustaches in Badass films, man? The Getaway is Texas in the '70s so there are alot of supporting mustaches in this one and I feel that is important to the success of the picture.
But the real reason why The Getaway is so great is because of the director Mr. Sam Peckinpah who has an undeniable sense for the filmatic language as well as this guy is a poet. And by poet I mean a guy who drinks alot and can't help but have all of his problems and attitudes pour onto his works even if they are a for-hire job like this one. I do not mean he rhymes, there are no rhymes in this picture as far as I noticed although I will pay attention to that if I see it again.
Now this is gonna be a controversial statement, but hear me out. I have a theory that Sam Peckinpah, he had a problem with women. The ladies in his pictures are always terrorized. They get hit, they get raped, they cry alot. In The Getaway, this slob Rudy takes a couple hostage and the wife instantly falls for Rudy. The husband soon hangs himself (Peckinpah hates wimps) and the wife doesn't seem to even notice, but she cries hysterically for Rudy.
Still, I think Peckinpah is at least trying to treat a woman right, and this movie is really about a relationship in my opinion and maybe should be called The Relationship not The Getaway. Ali McGraw gets Doc out of the can by sleeping with a fat dude on the parole board. In exchange Doc has to help out with a job, and this parole fuck also makes a deal with Ali to turn on Doc. She chooses Doc and kills the parole dude but the jealousy lingers.
Even before that, though, there is tension in the relationship. As Ali takes her shirt off the day Doc gets out, Doc doesn't know what to do. He says, "It does somethin to ya. It does somethin to ya. It does somethin to ya in there."
As they face more problems in their run for the border, they seem to get farther apart. You know they're gonna get back together by the end but hell man, I think it works because it seems honest. I don't think Doc is the best husband for Ali to be frankly honest, but the story is still touching in my opinion because Peckinpah means it.
That's cause this Peckinpah really was all about contradictions and what not. He knew he was a true Artist but he worked for hire and called himself a whore. He said he hated battling with executives but he couldn't stop doing it. And he had a spectacular talent for filming violence, but seemed to be appalled by the whole idea of it. The Wild Bunch was meant to be so gruesome that it would show violence for its ugly self. The Getaway isn't the same type of picture but it follows on those themes - practically every gunfight has several shots of innocent little kids peeking around corners to watch. When Rudy jumps out of a car, a kid pokes at his body, and when Doc is on a train a kid threatens him with a squirt gun.
What I like best about the Peckinpah pictures though is not only the feel, but the little touches that you haven't seen in another movie. Like when Rudy is flirting with the wife by throwing barbecued ribs at her in the car. They're all giggling and throwing ribs at each other and the husband is driving and he can barely stand it. And eventually Rudy starts to lose the rib fight and even though he started it he gets pissed and starts yelling. What a fucking baby. And that is really the type of dude you deal with half the time in this business, in my opinion.
But my favorite scene in the movie, like in many Badass pictures, is just one of those Badass touches where the Badass does something so god damned Badass you can't believe it. In this one, Doc leaves Ali in the car and walks into a store: "I need a radio, portable." Doc starts to walk away without collecting his change just as the clerk turns and sees a sketch of Doc on all the TVs in the store.
But Doc doesn't panic, or even run. He leans into the car, says, "We got trouble, you better clear out the car," walks directly into a gunshop next door and says, "I need a shotgun." And THAT type of thing is what this movie, and all Peckinpah movies, is about. Plus relationships.
GHOST DOG - THE WAY OF THE SAMURAIThe other day my bud Jeff wrote and told me that this Ghost Dog is the most badass movie since The Limey. Well that's a MIGHTY fucking high recommendation in my opinion and it is NOT something I take lightly. Fortunately for all involved, Jeff's opinion is, in my opinion, an opinion I agree with.
What this is about is Ghost Dog, a big, quiet black guy obsessed with the Hakagure samurai book and all its teachings. Ghost Dog turns out to be a master hitman working for the mob, and when things go sour the mob decides to track him down and kill him.
But it's not as basic as all that sounds. You see Ghost Dog is really into the samurai ways. He only communicates through pigeons and nobody knows where he lives. He is completely loyal to his "master" and the code of the samurai. And also he's a bad motherfucker who will kill anybody he has to (i.e. all of the mob guys besides his master). He sees himself and his foes as the last of dying tribes. While he is one of the only samurai in this part of town, the mobsters are all old and out of shape and business isn't doing too well. They live in a tiny place and can't even afford the rent.
Like The Limey the movie is slow paced and dry but then suddenly explodes into action or unexpected, weird humor. In fact The Limey is the closest comparison I can think of for this picture but they're still totally different. I mean there is nothing like Ghost Dog and unless they make a sequel like I hope then I don't think there ever will be.
What the movie is really about in my opinion is multiple culturalism. Ghost Dog excels at what he does because he is open to ideas from different cultures, including the teachings of ancient Japanese warriors. Ghost Dog sees right through cultural lines - he can admire the traditions of the samurai, the mafia, the rappers in the park, or his best friend, an ice cream man whose words he can't understand because they're in french. And I mean let's face it, who knows french anyway? Not Ghost Dog.
The good guys are all like Ghost Dog in this sense, like the little girl Pearline who is black but appreciates European literature like Wind in the Willows and Frankenstein as well as Japanese stuff like Rashomon. Or even his master, who is mostly a traditional mobster but who does not look down on Ghost Dog's strange ways.
The bad guys are less open, though, and with one exception they make fun of rappers and indians and their encounters with different cultures always end up with somebody shot or swearing. What a bunch of fucking numbnuts in my opinion I mean get with it, this is the year 2000 pal. fuck off.
Ghost Dog the Wayward Samurai is a truly great picture, a very unique one that will live on with the ages or whatever but it is important to note that ALOT of motherfuckers will hate this picture. It is what I would call an "arthouse" badass picture, even more than The Limey is. It is slow and ponderous and poetic and if you want an explosion or a neck slicing every five minutes, even every 25 minutes, this is not for you. It is about mood an atmosphere, because it is not an action movie, it is an urban samurai picture. And in my opinion the slow paced, quiet feel of the movie is a perfect reflection of Ghost Dog's personality.
One thing that is really special about this picture is that it is designed in such a way that to motherfuckers who are into it, it is fucking beautiful. But to anyone else, it is the stupidest fucking thing you ever saw in your life. I mean, if you're not up for it you are not going to like this big black guy playing with pigeons, reading passages from a samurai book and pulling his gun out like it's a sword. And there are loooooong shots of just driving or pigeons flying timed to the music which to me is hypnotic but to some is probaly torturous. I mean I can just imagine what some of the motherfuckers in the joint would've said about this one. Or the guy in the back of the Neptune where I saw it, who at the beginning yelled, "ZIG ZAG ZIGALOG!" and at the end yelled "RE! FUND! THAT! MOVIE! WAS! FUCKING! BULL! SHIT!"
Well that's your opinion jack but Ghost Dog is my favorite picture of 2000 so far, way to go Ghost Dog good work bud.
GHOST RIDERGHOST RIDER is the story of an Evil Knievel type motorcycle jumper named Johnny Blaze who accidentally drips blood on a contract with the devil so his dad is cured of cancer but then dies in a motorcycle accident the next day so he leaves his girlfriend and then about 15 or 20 years later the devil turns him into a burning magic skeleton so he has to fight some gothy monster dudes and hang out with a cowboy (Sam Elliot, obviously). If you're into bullshit like that, you might like this movie, but probaly not. I have too much respect for you to assume that.
Now, I gotta admit I went into this movie knowing I would not like it, and actually hoping it would be hilariously bad. It's not like this is a surprise - the last movie by this director is DAREDEVIL, an absolutely fucking horrible comic book movie about a chubby blind lawyer in a red gimp outfit who fights a villain whose power is that he can kill people by flicking peanuts at them. (I'm not joking.) This is basically the same type of bullshit with more uncomfortable failed attempts at humor and a bigger budget for lots of cheesy video game style effects. (Apparently this movie cost $120 million, which almost makes me cry.)I should've known what I was in for but unfortunately the trailer was so gleefully asinine and embarassingly stupid looking that I got excited to see it. Or at least, that CGI shot of "ghost rider" swinging through the buildings like Spider-man WHILE RIDING A MOTORCYCLE made me laugh every time. I can't remember if that shot is even in the movie, if it is they don't expand on it much. Too bad.
The skeleton is played by Oscar winner and poor crazy bastard Nicolas Cage. That sucker has been trying to make a comic book movie for what seems like 50 years, now he finally gets one and it's this silly piece of garbage. And he doesn't even get to play Superman, he's only Clark Kent because whenever it's super hero time his character switches to a Freddy Krueger voice and computer animation that would've been state of the art 6 or 7 years ago. It doesn't really seem like the same guy anymore.
You know that joke about you get a fortune cookie and the fortune says "help, I'm trapped inside a fortune cookie factory?" Sometimes I get the feeling I'm getting those type of messages in movies. In this case, Nic Cage is trying to tell us what's up with his career. He must've been involved in some faustian bargain type shit because ever since he got that Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS he's been cursed to roam the earth starring in horrible movies like CON AIR, 8MM, GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS, WINDTALKERS, NATIONAL TREASURE, THE ANT BULLY, THE WICKER MAN, etc. Slowly he is learning to use his powers for good, so every once in a while he pulls off a FACE/OFF or an ADAPTATION. But his main super power is a burst of explosive overacting, something he used best as Castor Troy in FACE/OFF but he even gets to use it to get laughs in trash like in 8MM when he watches a snuff movie and gets upset so he bites his fist. (I hear he uses that power in THE WICKER MAN too, but I haven't seen that yet.)
In the case of GHOST RIDER, Cage only uses his super power in the most appropriate place: the scenes where he uses his super powers. When his head catches on fire, before heading back to the trailer so the video game creators can take over, Nic explodes into full-on Castor Troy mode, his eyes popping out and the pain of the fire causing him to cackle hysterically. This little bit of craziness is the only sign of personality for any character in the movie.
The main emphasis is on the love story, which seems like it's written by a little boy who hasn't kissed a girl yet. In the early scenes a young Johnny Blaze agrees to meet his girlfriend at noon the next day so they can run away together. That night he finds out that his dad has cancer (we already knew because there was a scene where he smoked a cigarette and then coughed) and then a weird pervy dude (Peter Fonda, poor bastard) who is obviously the devil comes in and offers to cure dad's cancer if he signs a magic scroll. He doesn't sign it but looks at it and accidentally cuts himself and drips blood on it. (This might've been done in post production because, Seagal DTV style, they later talke about it as if he intentionally signed it.)
The next day the dad is completely cured, and he can't believe it. That night, he goes to see his dad's motorcycle stunt, but his dad is killed. Then he has a confrontation with Peter Fonda out on a road. THEN, after it's dark and raining, he drives by where he was supposed to meet his girl at NOON and instead of saying anything, he just drives past her.
Okay, so he's dealing with alot between cancer, the devil, and the accident. But at no point did I understand why the fuck he forgot that he was running away with his girlfriend at noon. I mean that is a pretty big decision, you would think it would be weighing on his mind too. He had plenty of time to swing by or to call her to give her a head's up if he was getting cold feet. "Sorry sugar, my dad got cancer and got cured by the devil and died, gonna have to postpone a couple days." Or whatever. The guy is set up as a complete chump from the very beginning. Then later, after he's grown into Nic Cage, he runs into her and sets up a date with her and (surprise surprise) AGAIN doesn't show up. And it's played for laughs (I think?). It's like an episode of Silver Spoons where Ricky has two dates at the same time or some shit like that. Why did they think anybody would care about this shit?
The movie also makes the same fatal mistake Nic Cage's NATIONAL TREASURE made. They have this ridiculous premise - a burning skeleton rides around on a motorcycle - and then they spend half the movie apologizing for it. So they have all these scenes played for laughs (I think, although very few laughs actually materialized in the showing I went to) where they talk about the burning skeleton and try to show how stupid it is. Like, a chubby goth girl sees the Ghost Rider and gets interviewed by the news and describes the burning skeleton, ha ha. And then Johnny Blaze tries to tell his girlfriend/stood up victim about the curse and there is more "laughs" about how stupid the whole idea is. The movie is saying isn't this stupid? Who would make a movie about this shit? Who would want to see this? Ha ha ha you are an idiot for paying and we are idiots for giving you what you want! Ha ha!
What I'm saying is you have to have the courage of your convictions. There are nerds all around the world, apparently, who like this comic strip, they take the burning skeleton stunt jumper guy with a spikey jacket seriously, and if they're gonna be filling your bank account you shouldn't make fun of them. And at the same time there are people like me who are going to the movie exactly because it looks so stupid, and we would rather see you take it seriously too because then it would be alot funnier than this bullshit. Treat it seriously and everybody wins. If you think the premise is too stupid to do with a straight face then for God's sake don't make the fucking movie, you assholes.
I can't think of anything that seemed clever or cool in the movie. The only thing that stood out as something I hadn't seen before was that the hero had a couple weird personality quirks: he likes to laugh at monkeys, and he is obsessed with jellybeans, which he eats out of champagne glasses because he doesn't drink. I mean God knows, you lose your dad at a young age and you're indebted to the devil, you're gonna come down hard on something, whether it's booze, pills, pussy, or jellybeans and monkeys. That's life. I assume Nic Cage added these touches, because he's into that type of shit, but it really did not help to make the movie seem, you know, good.
If you're wondering, the action is not very good either. There's not really much fighting, he just has powers like "look into my eye sockets and you will feel bad about being mean" or "I have a chain that swings around." Also he has magic scroll grip, so when the bad guy (Wes Bentley) has him hand over a magic scroll, he is surprised to find that Ghost Rider HOLDS ONTO IT REALLY TIGHT! Awesome.
The mcmuffin of this scenario is a scroll that is worth 1,000 souls. The whole time I kept wondering why it was such a big deal, since it took about 30 seconds to trick Johnny Blaze into signing over his soul, and I'm sure they coulda saved up way more than a thousand in the years since that happened. And sure enough when the bad guy gets the scroll it doesn't make him more powerful, it only makes him vulnerable to Ghost Rider's magic eye socket power. I definitely didn't get the impression that thought of any kind was put into the writing of this movie.
I mean, compare this movie to BLADE. That was also a Marvel Comics character, one that is more obscure than Ghost Rider I think, so it doesn't have a built in audience. And that was another movie that I went into thinking "ha ha, this will be funny." It even has a connection because both movies have Donal Logue in a supporting role and the writer and director of BLADE were gonna do this character years ago before they got dumped for this chump.
BLADE was able to take a cynic like me and convince me that not only is this Wesley-Snipes-as-leather-jacket-wearing-half-vampire-super-hero not stupid, it is in fact awesome. It was able to make me love that character and his world and even some of the secondary characters (like Whistler). It treats the whole world with dead seriousness ("The world you live in is a sugar coated topping") but finds humor in the personalities ("motherfuckers always tryin to ice skate uphill") and also finds room for several classic action scenes (the dance club massacre, the subway chase, the redonning of the sunglasses, etc.). You come away knowing exactly who that character Blade is, what he is about, and you would love to see him again. It turned me from scoffing finger pointer to 100% devotee within the span of one movie. So I don't see how there's any justification for doing such a horrible job on this one. I don't care if it's a burning skeleton on a motorcycle, make it work or don't do it. Come on people whatever happened to god damn EFFORT?
APPENDIX I: Comic strip movie ranking chart
Not as good as BLADE 1-3, BARBARELLA, BATMAN BEGINS, X-MEN 1-3, HULK, PUNISHER.
Arguably slightly less asinine than DAREDEVIL.
Longer than ELEKTRA and therefore more painful.
Not as bad as SPAWN, BATMAN AND ROBIN.
Music not as good as POPEYE.
Humor on par with GARFIELD 1.APPENDIX II: Ghost ranking chart
1. GHOST DOG
4. GHOST DOG RESURRECTION (hypothetical DTV sequel starring RZA)
12. GHOSTS OF MARS
13. GHOST DAD
75. GHOST RIDER
GHOSTS OF MARSJohn Carpenter is one of the most controversial directors of our time. Not because he gets into touchy subjects, like he goes and does some movie about jesus doing somebody in the ass or whatever it is that offends people these days. But because of his actual work. Because no one can really seem to agree whether he sucks with a few brilliant exceptions, whether he used to be brilliant and now he sucks, or whether he is really one of the great masters of the horror and Badass Cinema and that some of these new ones are just an off day.
The correct answer is c.
This new one follows many of the great John Carpenter stylistic motifs and thematic type themes. For example, if you ever read an interview or listened to his dvd commentary tracks, you know that practically every movie he ever did he claims is "really a western." So he always has some stranger walking into town, or has some prisoner being transferred from a jail or a new sherriff in town or what not. In Assault On Precinct 13 he has the gangsters doing blood rituals like evil movie indians in a John Wayne picture. In They Live Roddy Piper strolls into town, walking down the middle of the street even though it's LA. In Escape From LA he does the old jumping from horse to horse routine, except with motorcycles. Vampires takes place in a sunny Mexican ghost town even though it's about fuckin vampires. Even Big Trouble In Little China and if I remember right the Elvis TV movie started as western scripts but were re-written to modern settings.
Ghosts of Mars takes this updated western routine to new heights by doing a science fiction movie on Mars that has 1. a train! 2. A prisoner being transferred from a jail by the sherriff, and on a train 3. A ghost town 4. primitive martian ghosts who act like the movie indians of John Wayne movies and/or the gangsters in Assault On Precinct 13, but with piercings.
And that's what you have to admire about this picture is that nobody else but John Carpenter would ever do it. Who in fuck wants to do a train movie on mars anyway. And is it martians or is it ghosts, make up your mind they would say. But not John Carpenter. He knows that if there's ghosts, there's ghosts on mars too. Fucking colonists, get out of their way. It's like if you made a cowboy movie with an indian burial ground, only on mars.
And I mean this starts out promising, with a classic john carpenter electrical type keyboard and guitars score, creating that unique john carpenter mood.
Unfortunately, this has gotta be Mr. Carpenter's worst movie. And as I said earlier, I KNOW the answer is C. John Carpenter didn't lose it, otherwise how do you explain Escape From LA and Mr. John Carpenter's Vampires, two very special testoterone filled b-pictures. So this is a surprise and disappointment to old Vern.
One problem you got here is the structure. Mr. Carpenter is best when he's telling a simple story, building a mood. He tends to lose it as the story gets crazier - like in Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness. (One exception is The Thing which keeps its powerful sense of isolation and what not even as the monster starts sprouting dogs and human faces.) But he at least builds that primitive rhythm for a while before he gets too complicated on you. This one doesn't really give him the chance because every time you start to get involved it goes back to the narrator, Natasha Henstridge, sitting in a court room telling the story.
And I'm afraid Ms. Henstridge does not have the acting chops to be a new Kurt Russell or Roddy Piper. The poor gal looks good but she sounds like she's reading off a card. You can't sound tough if you sound like you don't know what the words you're saying mean. And the character loses all credibility when, after being sexually harassed by one of her men for the whole movie, she gives into him. I mean if she put on a strap-on and had her way with him or one of those type of things, that would be fine. Or even go for the cunnilingus, and then roll over and go to sleep when he's done. I don't care, just show that she's in command here. But no. This guy uses that old sci-fi/horror pickup line about we're all gonna die so "Let's dance" and she says, "Okay" and kisses him.
They got Pam Grier in here too, but next thing you know she's decapitated and what's worse, you don't even see her GET decapitated. Is that the type of respect you show Coffy? Hell no.
And then there's Mr. Ice Cube who plays the Snake Plissken character. Only his name is even worse - Desolation Williams.
I mean I guess that says it all, doesn't it? Mr. Carpenter, you fucking knew that name didn't work when you first typed it. You decided to let it go though. You can't just call somebody Isolation Armstrong or Hopelessness Pearlman and expect it to sound right, and you know it. I liked Ice Cube in the Friday pictures as well as The Three Kings, but the poor bastard has nothing to work with here. Roddy Piper and Snake Plissken get funny one-liners to say, and that's why they are popular characters. I guess James Woods in Vampires improvised alot of his dialogue, so maybe you've lost it in that department. But you can't just have poor Desolation doing this garbage about, "You would make a good criminal if you wanted to," "Yeah, you'd make a good cop."
WHAT IN FUCK'S NAME? Is this Nash Bridges? No, this is John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, a movie in which the fans of Mr. John Carpenter hope to be entertained and delighted. We don't need these generic words coming out of their mouth, even if they're on mars fighting ghosts. It makes it feel like your typical on mars fighting ghosts movie.
And just one complaint about the computery effects now days. It has gotten to the point where even the director of landmark effects pictures like The Thing is using a fucking computer to show sand blowing in the wind.
Jack, you should've just used sand. It would look more real if it was sand.
I'm sorry to tell you, my friends, that this picture is pretty much garbage. There are some touches here and there to enjoy. For example Desolation Williams wears camoflage pants, only they're red. Because it's on mars! Green camoflage doesn't work on mars, see. It has to be red. I liked that.
But this does not offer the bang for your buck that a Vampires or a Halloween does. Mr. Carpenter will need to make a comeback after this and please don't make it be Starman 2 or Return of the Invisible Man Diaries.
THE GINGERDEAD MAN
get it, gingerDEAD instead of gingerBREAD
For hundreds of years, gingerbread has been a delicious and vibrant European treat. It was used to make soft cakes that would be drenched in hot lemon sauce and whipped cream, or for ornate candy-covered houses like the "witch's house" from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, or to form the shape of a small man, a reflection of its creator. As man is to God, gingerbread man is to man. And therefore also to God.
No one knows the origin of gingerbread, because how do you pin down something like that? I'm sure they could figure out who invented the McRib Sandwich, but not gingerbread. Some believe it came from the Eastern Mediterranean, and spread across Europe as soldiers came home from the Crusades. At least something good would've come out of the Crusades then. Wherever it came from, its ginger packs a powerful punch, so much so that throughout the 17th century you needed a license to bake gingerbread except at Christmas and Easter.
Perhaps the all time greatest gingerbread was found in Nuremberg in the early 1600s, where it was baked exclusively by an elite guild of master bakers known as the Lebkuchler. But even these highly trained artisans could never have foreseen THE GINGERDEAD MAN starring Gary Busey as the voice of the Gingerdead Man. The Lebkuchler knew that in fairy tales, the gingerbread man is a little guy who runs fast, always on the move to prevent being devoured by man or beast. But there is one gingerbread man who refuses to run. This is his story.
Charles Band, who directed THE GINGERDEAD MAN, is the son of Albert Band, who directed ZOLTAN, THE HOUND OF DRACULA. So B (or lower) movies run in the family, but Charles has his own spin on it: he is a perverted tinyphiliac. He's been making shitty horror movies about tiny little fuckers since GHOULIES in 1985. If there was a low budget movie about killer dolls or miniature vampires or some type of little guy like that then 9 out of 10 this weirdo had a hand in it at least as a producer. This includes but is not limited to the GHOULIES series, the TROLL series, DOLLS, the PUPPETMASTER series, the SUBSPECIES series, DOLLMAN, DEMONIC TOYS, DOLLMAN VS. DEMONIC TOYS, the PREHYSTERIA! series (tiny dinosaurs), SHRUNKEN HEADS, LEAPIN' LEPRECHAUNS and its sequel, THE CREEPS (midget Dracula, mummy and wolfman), THE SHRUNKEN CITY, BLOOD DOLLS, RAGDOLL, DOLL GRAVEYARD and EVIL BONG.
He didn't do the LEPRECHAUN series though, or JACK FROST, or ELVES. Until now he has stayed out of the holiday oriented little guys. THE GINGERDEAD MAN doesn't take place during the holiday season, but like its pastry namesake it is the perfect holiday treat for you and your family or church group. If they like crappy movies with funny premises.
The movie begins in turmoil as Gary Busey (not yet a cookie) is in the midst of an armed robbery at one of those charming old fashioned diners they have in small towns because they're so backwards and unsophisticated. (or it might be a themed chain restaurant such as Johnny Rockets, who knows). Busey kills some guy, tries to kill a girl but misses, then he hears sirens, says "Oh, shit," and runs off camera in a way that makes you think he should've left a little puff of smoke.
Next we find out that he got caught and executed off camera. The girl he didn't kill, Sarah(Robin Sydney), now runs the independent Betty's Bakery, across the street from one of those Wal-Mart style corporate bakery monoliths that we all fear. A couple days after the execution a mysterious cloaked figure leaves a box that says "Grandma's Gingerbread Spices" at the back door of the bakery. This seems like an ordinary every day mysterious occurrence but actually it is an ingenious plan by Gary Busey's mother to avenge Sarah for testifying in court against her boy. The mother has surmised that if she leaves these spices, Sarah will mix them into dough, then her co-worker will accidentally cut himself and spill a bunch of blood into the dough, then she will still use the dough to make one two-foot tall gingerbread man and then while she bakes it there will be a power surge which will (as all scientists know) bring life to the bloody, ashy, gingery dough.
So the gingerdead man comes out of the oven, gets a knife, tries to kill them. It is basically a siege movie where they are trapped in this one bakery. Imagine ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, except instead of some cops and criminals trapped in a jail, it's some L.A. actors doing bad southern accents trapped in a bakery. And instead of a faceless army of gangsters attacking, it's one puppet (sometimes a guy in makeup) of a gingerbread man that occasionally shows up and burps or mumbles to himself in Gary Busey's voice. And then somebody makes a pun like "the Killsbury Doughboy."
There's really not much of a movie here. It's only an hour long, and that's including the long opening credits that I fast forwarded through. Gary Busey kills two people while in flesh, only one while in gingerbread. He does cover a girl in frosting (with cherries for nipples) but otherwise doesn't do much of note.
That might not matter if it felt like a real movie. Sometimes a movie with a premise this ridiculous can be fun just by treating it with (ginger)dead seriousness. But this is Full Moon Video. It seems more like an episode of some horrible children's TV show than a genuine independent horror movie. It's supposed to be in Waco but they don't even have any stock exteriors of anything that looks outside of L.A. The score is one of those awful non-stop circus music type keyboard deals they do on alot of worthless DTV horror garbage. The characters are all annoying cliches made deadly through bad acting, the stuck up mean girl being especially difficult to watch. The one exception is actually Ms. Sydney, who seems to take the role of the heroine very seriously. She actually does a pretty good job in the scenes where her character is emotional, and when she's flirting with the 30 year-old twentysomething with the eyebrow ring her eyes look like she's truly infatuated with him. She will probaly go on to success on some TV show or something. You heard it here first.
The premise of the movie really makes no sense, and I'll tell you why. There's no such thing as "gingerbread seasoning." If you're Betty of Betty's Bakery then you fuckin know how to mix ginger and cinnamon, you don't just use some mysterious package that shows up claiming to be "gingerbread seasoning." In fact, if you type "gingerbread seasoning" into google you won't get a bunch of gingerbread recipes, you'll get a bunch of reviews of this movie.
Other than that it's very plausible.
The funniest thing that happens is when a guy kills the gingerbread man in the most obvious way: he eats him. Or his head anyway. He really has to chew at it, and raspberry jelly gore comes out. The Gingerdead Man is surely the most delicious of all the horror movie slashers and monsters, although werewolves might not taste that bad, I'm not sure. Maybe leprechauns are good too, if they have some kind of minty shamrock milkshake type flavor.
But of course, just eating his sweet, sweet evil is not going to solve everything. The eater then becomes possessed by the Gingerdead Man. You would think okay, this killer Gary Busey has had his soul transferred into a cookie much like the serial killer Charles Lee Ray was transferred into the Chucky doll. Now a guy eats the cookie so the Gary Busey soul is transferred into the guy, right? The whole Gingerdead thing is over and the soul moves on to a new body, right? Nope, that's not how it works. This guy's face turns all evil and his skin turns a gingerbread brown. He's possessed by a cookie! This is possibly one of the first three or four times this has happened on film so I at least give the movie credit for that.
I don't regret seeing the movie, it's short and it's funny to see them try to pass this off as a movie. But with some elbow grease it could've been alot more fun. I would not be against a sequel, but they gotta get a better director and better production values for this to work. Even Charles Band movies, like PUPPETMASTER and shit, used to look like real movies back in the day. They were actually trying to make it work, none of this TV style POWER RANGERS bullshit. I want to see a group of soldiers on leave run into the Gingerdead Man. Or a cult of Gingerdead Men are living in the sewers of New York City. Or of course there's always the Gingerdead Man in space possibility. Just get a professional cinematographer, a composer who does not own any keyboards, and pretend you're really trying to scare me. And then we'll talk.
p.s. Thanks to Tony Tibbetts for recommending this movie multiple times. And Charles Band, you have my permission to use the first 3 paragraphs of this review as the opening crawl or back of the DVD box for part 2. thanks bud.
GINGERDEAD MAN 2: THE PASSION OF THE CRUST
The concept of THE GINGERDEAD MAN is basically "Chucky, but a gingerbread man instead of a doll." It takes part 2 about three minutes worth of recapping and rhyming narration to explain that in the sequel. But to be fair the goal is not so much to catch the audience up to speed as to pad it out to be longer than an hour so it seems like a real movie almost.
With an ingeniously stupid premise like this, there are a million hilarious ways to do a sequel. Instead they chose to do the old "monster attacks people making a horror movie" route already done much better in SEED OF CHUCKY. If you got the same premise for part 2 as another series had for part 5 then you should probaly do it better, right? Well, that wouldn't be the Full Moon way.
I know, I know. What do I expect out of part 2 of THE GINGERDEAD MAN? The premise is ridiculous, the first one is barely even a movie, and this is part 2. But you're forgetting, this is me you're talking to. I love this kind of shit. I know in my heart that this can and should be a hilarious movie. But the best way to do it is more serious. The humor is already there in the premise. In order to make it funny you have to swallow your pride and pretend you think you are making a serious horror movie. But they don't have the balls to do that, they gotta keep pointing out that they're in on the joke. Hey guys, hey nudge nudge remember this is all jokes, right? Ha ha we're laughing too you're not laughing at us.
They also try to pull one of those pansy maneuvers where they're supposed to be immune to criticism because the movie pre-emptively attacks anyone who would criticize it. The villain of the piece is not so much the killer cookie (who doesn't appear often enough and is no longer voiced by Gary Busey, but at least has a higher body count than in part 1) but a guy from a websight with a name similar to Bloody Disgusting. This guy doesn't like what the fictional Full Moon-like company has done with their fictional PUPPETMASTER-like series so he stalks them. The movie shows that he's really just jealous because he wants to be a screenwriter but they don't accept his unsolicited scripts. Also they show that he lives in his mom's basement (very original). You have to wonder why, if critics like this are such losers, they bother to make an entire movie rebutting them. Doesn't that make you an even bigger loser? And how exactly is it possible that the company behind a movie called THE GINGERDEAD MAN would be humorless enough to pull the same petty bitch move that M. Night Shymalan pulled in LADY IN THE WATER, or the late Michael Crichton when he named a child rapist in a book after a guy who didn't like one of his other books? God rest his soul and all that shit but seriously, grow up, fellas.
The movie does make a slightly more original point, in kind of a forced SOUTH PARK kind of way, when the douchebag director character (who I think you're supposed to like) explains that he just likes to make movies with his friends to have fun and doesn't care about making them better. It's a legitimate argument for Charles Band's career, but kind of a shitty thing to say to those of us who, you know, just paid money to rent this movie. See, we had hoped you were trying to make a good movie. Now we know, but you should've told us before. Put a sticker on it that says "product only, not made for enjoyment." Or just make the movie to show to your friends and available for free on the internet for anybody who needs to test their software to make sure it works or whatever use somebody might have for a movie that was not intended to withstand the test of somebody watching it.
The movie definitely doesn't have a high opinion of its audience. For example, they use that old joke "Scorsese must be rolling in his grave!" and then, after a pause, have to explain to the audience that when they say "Scorsese" what they mean is the director Martin Scorsese, and that in fact he is not dead and that's why it's funny to say rolling in his grave. Get it? To be fair, they might be operating under the assumption that PASSION OF THE CRUST will be a classic 100 years from now and they want people to still understand that "joke." That's possible, but I think it's more likely that they just think me and you are stupid.
There are a couple amusing self-parody moments though. The PUPPETMASTER-like puppets are not that far off from real Full Moon characters, but a little stupider - they include Nobgoblin, Shit-For-Brains, and The Haunted Dildo. The best part is David DeCoteau appearing as himself, directing a sci-fi movie where a bunch of buff dudes have to paddle an Asian gal's ass because it's the only way to remove the alien embryo. His style of directing is to read the newspaper and ask if it was in focus afterwards.
Earlier this year Charles Band came through Seattle with the Full Moon Road Show. It's a tour he's done a couple times where they show clips from Full Moon videos, auction off puppets (mostly reproductions), and try to hock their crappy DVDs. The show was semi-entertaining and worth the cost of my ticket (free). The funniest part was the uncomfortable audience interaction portion where Band kept trying to get "chicks" (as he kept calling them) to take their shirts off not realizing that the people from the club were trying to prevent that from happening in order to protect their liquor license in puritanical Seattle. Somebody bought a stunt Gingerdead Man puppet that was used in this sequel. It was one of the few things people were actually bidding on, and Band seemed bummed that it only went up to like $150 or something. I'm still kind of jealous of the dude who got it because that would be a hell of a thing to have on display in your kitchen.
But the main impression I got from that show is that Band, in an increasingly difficult home video market, has found the solution of trying to become a brand name like Troma. He definitely seemed like the douchey west coast version of Lloyd Kaufman. But the problem with being the Cracked to Troma's Mad Magazine is that the original's not all that hot in the first place. Every TOXIC AVENGER fan has learned the hard way that the vast majority of movies with the Troma name on them are not actually watchable. Just trust me, FAT GUY GOES NUTZOID is not a funny movie.
Well, if that's what he has to do to stay in business I guess I can't judge him too much, and besides, I am on the internet so I'm probaly just jealous and live in a mom's basement and what not. But it seems to me like Troma already gives us more than enough forced wacky b-movies, so I wish Full Moon could continue just being Full Moon. They were better when they were actually serious (PUPPETMASTER) or at least trying to keep a straight face (SHRUNKEN HEADS).But of course I'll watch part 3 when it comes out, because it's about a killer gingerbread man. Charles Band wins.
12/28/08
THE GLOVELike I mentioned in my review of WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? that should be running on The Ain't It Cool News soon, I'm on the mailing list for this Dark Sky DVD label. So I get all these nicely packaged Italian horror obscurities and what not, and to be honest I haven't watched most of them yet. I loan them to my horror watcher friends and hope they'll tell me I got a must-see there. But that doesn't usually happen.
For the batch that comes out this week though I found time to watch them and I was impressed. The one I had the highest hopes for was WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? which is a creepy sun-drenched Spanish horror movie in the vein of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. But I already heard that one was good before, so a more impressive find is THE GLOVE, the b-picture in their latest "DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE" along with SEARCH AND DESTROY.
They've been doing this series for a while with basically the same concept as G'HOUSE, they put two old drive-in appropriate movies together as a double feature and they include vintage theater promos and trailers. SEARCH AND DESTROY seemed pretty cool, I didn't really get into it but I'll have to go back and pay more attention next time. THE GLOVE, though - this one is a winner.
The movie opens with a black on red graphic of the titular glove, accompanied by a theme song all about this glove and how fearsome it is. Then we see a sleazy prison guard leaving work with his mistress. Suddenly he's ambushed by THE GLOVE, which happens to be worn by Rosey Grier.
I'd never talked to anybody who knew of this movie before, but I'd admired the VHS cover. If you've seen that you sort of know what the Glove looks like, but the cover exaggerates it. On there he looks like some comic book super villain, a guy who could beat Darth Vader in a bar brawl. And he's got two gloves - in the movie he only has one, like Michael. In that painting it has spikes on it, his chest guard looks like samurai armour and the helmet makes him look like a robot. In the movie it's riot gear, it's not from outer space. But it is Rosey Grier wearing it, so it's pretty menacing.
We learn later that The Glove was designed to replace billy clubs for mean riot squad cops in the '60s, but later it was outlawed. It's "5 pounds of lead and steel" but I guess there must be something else in there because the hero jokes that it takes two people to lift it. Whatever the deal is, the combined forces of The Glove and big tough Rosey Grier equals something like super powers. He not only beats the hell out of this prison guard, he literally tears his fuckin car apart, knocking dents into it and pulling pieces off of it. You don't want to fuck with The Glove.
Next we meet our hero, down on his luck bounty hunter Sam Kellog, played by John Saxon. This is exciting because I've always liked John Saxon when I see him in movies like ENTER THE DRAGON, BLACK CHRISTMAS and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen him as the lead. The movie is actually much more about his bad luck than it's about The Glove, which is only one of the bounties he's after. It's kind of like an old private eye story so he even gets to do voiceover narration. The guy is divorced and broke. He's only happy when his daughter visits, but he's behind on his child support so that could come to an end if he doesn't dig up some cash quick.
You don't see too many guys like John Saxon in movies anymore. He's a tough guy but more of an everyday tough guy than Steve McQueen or somebody. You can see why he plays cops all the time. He looks like a real life cop or a football coach or maybe a fire fighter. Even at this time (he was in his mid '40s) he had a combover, but because of the way he carries himself he can still be kind of a ladies man, and he almost manages to steal Joanna Cassidy away from her rich husband. But she's scared off by his dangerous life. On one hand, he lost the girl, on the other hand he's dangerous. So it's not too bad a loss.
Sam finds out about this Glove case. Turns out the guy is called Victor Hale, he's an ex-con who's been beating down a series of prison guards. And he stole The Glove and the riot gear from the first guard he went after. There's a $20,000 bounty put on the guy by the prison guard union. Kellog needs that money and that feather in his cap, so he investigates. When he talks to Hale's grandmother it sounds like Victor's not all that bad - the reason he went to prison was for getting revenge on the pimp who mutilated his little sister. And then the sadistic screws in the prison tortured him with The Glove. So there's more revenge in the works.
Meanwhile Sam goes after other smaller bounties to keep afloat moneywise, gets involved in some gambling and in Joanna Cassidy. There are several major scuffles, all worthwhile. The fights are a little slow and stiff but they make up for it with clever moves like when he hooks a guy's head with a swimming pool net, or when he swings on a meat hook to kick a guy in a meat packing plant, or in the same fight when he and the other guy are beating each other with cow bones. The occasional Glove attacks are good too. When Victor beats up a screw in his bathroom he ends up smashing the toilet, the sink, the shower, and the guy.
The other thing that makes the movie a surprise is the human touches. Kellog is a tough guy and he does some bad things, but his main goal is to be able to visit his daughter (theory of badass juxtaposition). His first bounty turns out to be a gay man, but he doesn't seem too put off by that and barely comments on it. Later he has to go after an old lady who stole petty cash from her boss. He feels sorry for her so he takes the money and lets her go, then tells the boss she "escaped." Right after we've seen this soft side the movie gives us our first look at Victor Hale's life outside of attacking prison guards. Up until this point he might as well be a monster. He's had no dialogue, he's worn this menacing outfit and he's been going on a rampage. Most movies of this era would be happy to leave him as that type of villain. But THE GLOVE surprises us by revealing that this guy's a genuine sweetheart, and not just because he killed that pimp. He finds a little kid vandalizing the stairwell in his apartments. He wants to give the kid a positive influence so he brings him in and gives him a lesson at playing blues guitar. You see that? Not only does he care about kids, he plays pretty music! (theory of badass juxtaposition again)
So now we as viewers have a problem. We love both these guys. We want them both to win. We sure as hell don't want Victor to get caught, but we also need Sam to get the money. Victor is a no-nonsene guy so when he finds out this bounty hunter has been tracking him he just calls him up and tells him to back off. Sam explains that he needs to do it for the money. "It's nothing personal. You understand that?"
So when they finally do come face-to-face it's that perfect intersection between action climax and emotional climax. Earlier Sam got to test out one of those Gloves and seemed to like it. Now Victor actually lets him borrow his to make up for the size difference and have a fair fight. You get alot of fighting in this scene but an equal amount of bonding.
This is a real entertaining and unusual movie. Lots of funny lines, weird uses of music and quirky touches. I like how Kellog bets his friend ten bucks he can smash through a table with the glove in one swing. So when he wins his buddy not only has to give him ten bucks, but he has a broken table and all his shit scattered everywhere. And he just kind of frowns like, fuck, shoulda thought this one through.
The director was a rookie named Ross Hagen. Before directing this he had acted in TV westerns and written a cockfighting movie called SUPERCOCK, aka A FISTFUL OF FEATHERS. His other directorial efforts after this have mostly been savaged on IMDb. He's directed as recently as 2005 but he seems to spend most of his time as a character actor in low budget movies like ALIENATOR, MIDNIGHT TEASE II, ILLICIT DREAMS 2 and THE ESCORT III.
Anyway, THE GLOVE will grab hold of you. It's a perfect fit. Five fingers of quality cinema. You gotta hand it to THE GLOVE. If the glove don't smash, John Saxon got his cash. etc.
THE GODFATHERThat's right, the god damn GODFATHER. I mean, what is there even left to say about THE GODFATHER? Well, I'll tell you.
Bear with me though, I'm about to mention Steven Seagal again. Yesterday I was reading Seagal's entry on wikipedia when I came across a section talking about the field of Seagalogy, mentioning me as the inventor and linking to a separate entry just about me. I couldn't believe it. After all I've been through - getting rejected from the Online Film Critics Society, being hated by the newsies on Ain't It Cool for years, failing to stop the Iraq war and even, as you can see above, watching GARFIELD - after all that struggle, here I am, acknowledged in reference material, and described as a "noted internet film critic."
Can you believe that? Noted.
Obviously I was proud but I also felt something nagging at me. A little hole inside that I fooled myself into believing would go away on its own. A deep dark secret. When you are a noted internet film critic, you have certain standards to live up to that you don't worry about as much before you're noted. But I was noted. So I knew I had to do something, something I should've done a long time ago. Watch the fucking GODFATHER.
You heard it. That's no joke. I never saw THE GODFATHER until last night. Not even once. How did this happen? It's hard to say. I do live in America which, in my opinion, is on the planet Earth. Which pretty much means for sure I should've seen this movie before. Where was I? What cave was I living in? Well the truth is, even people living in caves have seen THE GODFATHER. Are you telling me bin Laden doesn't have THE GODFATHER and SCARFACE on his shelf? Of course he does.
There are just some things that cannot be explained. Why do men have nipples. What is the sound of one tree clapping in the forest. Who would win between Superman and Freddy. X-Men and Capote. Dr. Dolittle and Lawrence of Arabia. Oh, I haven't seen LAWRENCE OF ARABIA either by the way. I probaly shouldn't have brought that up though.
But you know what, a man is allowed to make mistakes and as we travel on this great journey called life we will, I don't know... we will do some kind of metaphorical journey thing. And in this case that metaphorical journey thing is watching THE GODFATHER last night. So get over it man, I've seen it now. Leave me alone.
Today is a new beginning. I feel like I finally learned how to read or something. I finally get it. I know what they're talking about with this [SPOILER] horse head business. And this [SPOILER] "made him an offer he couldn't refuse." I didn't know they were gonna keep saying it over and over again like "may the force be with you" or "I'm getting too old for this shit." But I finally know what the big deal is about this Francis Ford Coppola. It seemed kind of weird before because I saw part of that movie JACK on cable and it didn't seem that good. But now I get it.
I probaly don't need to tell you why this movie is [SPOILER] a masterpiece. Obviously Brando is incredible with that voice and everything. And when he [SPOILER] gets shot and ends up all sick and has that crazy James-Brown's-mugshot-hair that was cool, I didn't know about that because you just see people imitating him in his office. You don't see the crazy hair.
And James Caan and Robert Duvall of course. And Al Pacino. I seen SCARFACE and CARLITO'S WAY but it never really occurred to me that he already did a movie where he makes the journey to the top of a criminal empire. I don't know how believable of a transformation it is but he does a great job of going from innocent college boy war hero explaining his family to Diane Keaton to cold-hearted criminal mastermind lying to Diane Keaton about his family and shutting her out of his office. Earlier he's calling his own brother "sir" and trying to distance himself from the family business. But then his father gets shot and he starts coming up with these ideas and there's that shot where he sits down and states his plan and the way he's sitting in that chair you know he's turning into his dad.
Also, maybe you noticed, the cinematography is pretty good. anybody noticed that? I liked that.
One thing that's great for an ignoramus like me, the most famous stuff of the movie happens in the first half hour, so after that I really didn't know what was gonna happen. And even the horse head business, I knew what was coming obviously but that was a great sequence. I love the upbeat music and oppulent mansions in Hollywood, and how all the studio head's servants are black. And I like how Duvall is mostly played as a lawyer who keeps his hands clean but as far as we can tell he must've snuck into the stable at night, sawed a horse's head off, carried the bloody thing into the mansion, tip-toed into the guy's room without waking him up and snuggled it into bed with him. How's that for getting tucked in, motherfucker? I wonder if he was giggling as he snuck out of the mansion? Probaly not, he seems like a pretty serious guy.
A little trivia about that scene, by the way: it was not in the original script. It was actually how Marlon Brando got the part, by threatening the head of the studio. So Coppolla and Robert Duvall improvised those scenes as an S.O.S. to the outside world. Help, this crazy man is forcing his way into our movie, and he's got some weird thing in his mouth to make him mumble. But then Brando's performance turned out so good that they just decided to let bygones be bygones. I think that's what happened, I saw it on E! True Hollywood Stories or something. I might be remember something wrong, or making up the whole thing, but it is probaly somewhat true, in a sense.
One thing I didn't expect was how lovable the Corleone family are. I mean they do some bad things obviously but the way the movie presents it you automatically side with them in everything. Most of the bad stuff happens from people coming at them, and they're just striking back. Plus, that opening at the wedding with the Don listening to everybody's requests, he seems like a pretty decent guy doing a pain in the ass job. I mean all he wants to do is go enjoy his daughter's wedding, but he has to sit here in this office and promise favors to everybody.
And when he tells the first guy that "the day may never come" but he might ask a favor of him some day, obviously you assume that's trouble. A Faust type deal. So it's a big surprise later on when we learn that this guy is a mortician and the favor is for him to do a good job on Sonny's body. He doesn't have to lose his soul, he just has to do his job. In movies and in real life, mafia people are trouble. But here they're pretty good people to know.
The people who are not lovable in the movie, though, are the women. I gotta say, most of the women characters in the movie are obnoxious. Diane Keaton's not that bad, but she's kind of dumb, and a sucker for coming back to Michael Corleone all these years later if she doesn't want any part in a criminal empire. Appolonia (is this the same gal Prince used to hang out with?) is annoying and although she's kind of cute I don't really buy that she "could tempt the Devil himself." If the Devil said "you know, it's tempting," he was probaly just being polite. Especially since the lady has no nipples! Did you see that? She takes her clothes off and she looks like a damn Barbie doll. That freaked me out.
It's kind of funny how Michael leaves Diane Keaton, gets married, his new wife gets blown up, then he comes back to Diane Keaton and as far as we know he never even mentioned the other wife to her. She's blown up now, what's the point in discussing it. Anyway much worse than Diane and Appolonia is Talia Shire as Sister Corleone. Obviously you feel bad for her getting roughed up, and the scene where Sonny beats the holy living shit out of her husband is pure delight. But in the beginning of the movie Vito mentions how he spoiled his kids, and this applies to Sister too. She's a fucking brat. Most of her screen time is spent pouting or crying or throwing dishes or defending her dirtbag husband. So you don't have a whole lot of connection to her other than feeling sorry for her.
Also, I gotta call out the babies. The babies in this movie are always fucking crying. Come on, babies. Learn some god damn manners.
But despite weak characters for the women and babies, this is a great fuckin movie that managed to live up to decades of hype. And I think it's funny how there are these movies that are universally acknowledged masterpieces, but then nobody ever wants to make or watch movies like that anymore. People don't want to watch 3 hour movies. They don't want cameras to move slowly. And they gotta get some techno in there. You call this movie exciting? Where is the fucking techno? Too slow. Booooooring. I got places to be. shoulda been an hour shorter then it woulda been good. I mean, I understand that it's a great movie but what if I have to pee.
Of couse, a million movies imitate all the superficial aspects, the mafia stuff that's become cliche, but they don't really try to make a movie like THE GODFATHER. Maybe they're just being realistic - not many people could pull off a movie that good. But still. Let's see some striving, people. True greatness has been proven possible. You'll never get it unless you try. Take it from a noted internet film critic. I believe in you.
THE GODFATHER PART II
aka GODFATHER: RESURRECTION
When last we saw The Godfather part II (Al Pacino, DICK TRACY), he was in a room, closing a door. Nobody knows what happened inside that room, probaly some gangster shit. But THE GODFATHER PART II picks up years later with Michael Corleone now living in Las Vegas. Remember, he sent poor Robert Duvall there to stake out some territory, well apparently that went well. It seems there is some mafia roots in modern day Las Vegas. Huh, go figure.Now, part 2 is even more epic than part 1. This one actually has time travel in it. It skips back and forth between The New Adventures of Michael Corleone and The Young Vito Corleone Chronicles. Hell it goes all the way back to the motherland. Remember that villa where Michael hid out in part one, then he married a girl with no nipples and watched her get blown up? Turns out that's Vito's childhood hood, and that place Michael lived is where the OG Godfather lived, and killed Vito's mom.
Obviously Copolla knew that although THE GODFATHER was a classic gangster movie, and probaly the greatest of all time, it was still missing something. He had Al Pacino in there, before SCARFACE and CARLITO's WAY and, I don't know, DEVIL'S ADVOCATE or something. But he didn't have Robert Deniro. Copolla could sense that Deniro would be in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, GOODFELLAS and CASINO, and almost in GANGS OF NEW YORK if you count Daniel Day Lewis acting like Robert Deniro as actually being Robert Deniro. So Copolla beat those chumps to the punch, he threw out that dead weight, Marlon Brando, and replaced him with Deniro as the young Vito Corleone.
It's fun to see Deniro playing young Brando and even doing an imitation at times. Meanwhile, in a completely different era, Pacino continues with the hard ass performance as Michael, and it reminds you of how great he used to be, in a totally different way, before SCARFACE. I love him in Scarface because he's so over-the-top, he's like a cartoon character. He's constantly yelling and he has that ridiculous accent. That's the guy I usually think of when I think of Al Pacino. But here he's usually quiet, it's all in the cold stare and the confident presence. The way he sits there with his legs crossed very gentlemanly, but you know this guy is not a gentleman. His scariest moments are when he obviously knows something but doesn't say it, like in the scenes where he's figured out that his brother Fredo had something to do with the assassination attempt. Don't get me wrong, I like over-the-top Al Pacino as much as the next guy, but it's nice to be reminded of the more subtle actor he once was.
Robert Duvall is maybe a little smaller of a character this time around, but he does get to be the substitute godfather for a while. Congratulations Robert Duvall, you've earned it. Also he gets to use his lawyering skills big time, at a congressional hearing. I hope in part 3 they get to have a landmark Supreme Court case.
The jealous and untrustworthy Fredo is a huge part of the story here. The actor is John Cazale. Watching him in this made me think "That guy was in a bunch of good shit in the '70s, whatever happened to him?" Well it's a sad story my friends. I assumed he probaly had been in all kinds of shit since then but he actually died of bone cancer in '78. This is his entire filmography: A short called THE AMERICAN WAY, then THE GODFATHER, THE CONVERSATION, THE GODFATHER PART II, DOG DAY AFTERNOON and DEER HUNTER. How's that for a track record? Damn, a short career in movies but he sure made his mark.
Alot of people consider GODFATHER 2 to be the best sequel ever made, even better than BLADE II. Some even consider it better than the original. Best sequel? I can see that. But better than the original, I don't think I agree. Don't get me wrong, this is a great fuckin movie. And I like the epic feel. But I think it's so ambitious it can't really click as perfectly as the first one. You got these two storylines, jumping back and forth in time, showing two entirely different eras and generations. You got the o.g. mafia in Sicily and immigration, arriving at Ellis Island and getting started in crime. You got Las Vegas in the early days and the old house in New York two owners later and Cuba on the eve of the revolution and the Corleones testifying before the US Congress. I mean jesus they might as well throw in the Trojan War and the invention of the printing press. Maybe skip ahead a thousand years and show the Corleones on Mars. It's all interesting, it's all great, but it's alot to swallow. And as far as I can tell, the two time periods don't really have a strong thematic connection. Maybe if I watch the movie a couple more times I'll realize I was missing it, but at least right now it doesn't seem like the two storylines say much about each other. They're just two separate stories about the same family.
THE GODFATHER PART I was an epic too but by comparison it seems streamlined and sleek. You got the don getting shot, getting sick, and eventually dying, and at the same time you got his goody-goody son discovering his destiny is in the family business and transforming from WWII vet to the motherfucking godfather part II. That's what it boils down to so it's more mythic.
Plus the first one has Marlon Brando. I didn't mean what I said earlier about him being dead weight. That was a test to see if some of you fucks would nod your heads in agreement. You better not have. It was a trick. Marlon Brando rules.
Anyway the part of PART II that seems most mythic to me is the story that starts it off, the murder of young Vito's family by the OG godfather and his escape to America. It's so great in so many ways. In one sense, it shows how all this violence we saw in part 1 is a direct consequence of violence that happened decades ago on another continent. How the ways of Sicilian criminals were spread across the world. The Corleones wouldn't even be in the US if Vito didn't have to hide out to save his life. But the really exciting part is that as soon as they kill his father, you know that there will be revenge. The godfather even says it himself, he means to kill young Vito because if he doesn't, he will grow up and some day want to avenge his father. So even though Vito escapes to America and has to grow up and turn into Marlon Brando, you know at some point, some way, he's gonna come back and find that motherfucker and tie up some loose ends. So there is this great anticipation. And when it finally happens, the guy is so old and pathetic that it's kind of sad.
You know, the more I write about what happened in the movie the more I think about how great it is. Better than the original or not, it sure is something. I don't know man, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that THE GODFATHER PART II is a truly great movie. take that, suckers. TRULY GREAT.
IN YOUR FACE, NOT AS GOOD MOVIES.
THE GOOD GIRLThis is the latest from the director Miguel Arteta and the Writer Mike White, who did CHUCK AND BUCK together. Mr. White also used to write for some tv shows, one supposedly really good and the rest called DAWSON'S CREEK and PASADENA. More recently he wrote the only okay ORANGE COUNTY and had a funny cameo in it. He has a small role here where he gets some laughs. He was the star of CHUCK AND BUCK and he's a real goofball so when he appears in his movies you always want him to have a bigger part.
Before we move on I gotta ask, is this or is this not the same Mike White who does the zine Cashiers Du Cinemart that I used to always get spam for until dejanews shut down and I changed my e-mail? [UPDATE: I e-mailed the Cinemart Mike White, and he said he was not the GOOD GIRL Mike White.]If so that would also make him the same Mike White who makes the videos trying to point out which parts of Tarantino movies are similar to other people's movies, which would make him kind of an ass. Somebody told me it was the same dude and I tried to verify it but the closest thing I could find for verification was that the Cinemart guy says he doesn't have a new issue because he spent all of 2001 finding a new house, and then an interview with Miguel mentions that they auditioned Jake Gyllenhall in Mike White's brand new house and he threw a chair and put a hole in the wall. That's a pretty good clue I think but I don't know if it would hold up in a court of law. I mean I wouldn't want to besmirch Mike White's name if there were two of them, like how there's one George Miller who did MAD MAX and the other one who did the Steve Guttenberg movie where a dog rides on a dolphin's back.
Anyway regardless of whether or not Mike White is an ass, this is a pretty good one and mostly due to his Writing. In this story Jennifer Aniston (the gal from OFFICE SPACE) is in a small town in Texas, working at a K-Mart like store called Retail Rodeo, married to John C. Reilly who is a housepainter, who comes home with Tim Blake Nelson, paint all over their pants, smokes pot and watches TV. Jennifer is real fuckin bored with this life, real depressed, and then she meets the new cashier, a teenager played by Jake Gyllenhall, the independent Tobey Maguire.
Jake's character is named Holden, and when she meets him he's reading 'Catcher in the Rye.' Now, I can understand if the 'Catcher in the Rye' reference makes you skeptical. Every fuckin movie that has a book in it has to have 'Catcher in the Rye.' Will Smith did some movie where he couldn't stop talking about 'Catcher in the Rye.' In CONSPIRACY THEORY with Mel Gibson, all conspiracies revolve around the book. In PLEASANTVILLE, the first two books to appear in a magical sitcom world turn out to be 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Catcher in the Rye' so you see Tobey Maguire, the mainstream Jake Gyllenhall, talking about Holden Caulfield. Put 'Catcher in the Rye' in your movie and it's supposed to prove you know how to read.
But as far as I know this is the first movie to use it sarcastically. Holden relates to the book because he feels Holden Caulfield is "put upon by society and hypocrisy" and he dreams of some day writing "Catcher in the Rye, but by me." He shares two different stories of a depressed teenager that are the same except that he commits suicide differently in each. Jennifer lays in bed sleepless every night and it doesn't seem like her days are any more exciting. So you can see why she ends up fuckin this kid. And he assumes since she likes him that she "gets" him. It's real fuckin sad, actually.
There are alot of movies about being unsatisfied with life, and this is one of the ones that paints it real well. I mean she really doesn't have much to say to her husband or her co-workers, her job doesn't offer any excitement and she doesn't really have any dreams, goals or hobbies. And her tv isn't working. It made me think of 1999 Outlaw Award Winner for Best Fuckin Picture FIGHT CLUB - we were raised to think we would all be rock stars, but instead we're selling nail polish at the Retail Rodeo.
And it's a pretty subtle movie. It doesn't over explain things or underline things (with the exception of one unneeded flashback to remind you who a character was). Let me give you an example. One of Jennifer's co-workers dies from a virus that she may have gotten from food, and Jennifer assumes it was some blackberries she was eating at work - blackberries that were offered to Jennifer, but she turned them down. In a crappy movie, Jennifer would point out that if she had eaten one she would've died, and would then start rethinking her life. In THE GOOD GIRL the you know that's what she's thinking, but you're glad she didn't have to explain it to you.
Even better, the characters around Jennifer are all unsatisfied in the same way she is, but she never notices it, and they never try to point it out to her. In her and Holden's minds, they're the two misfits who just can't be satisfied by this smalltown living. Her husband John C. Reilly is a doofus but he's actually very kind, doing things to make her happy, which she doesn't notice. And when he wishes that it would rain every day so he wouldn't have to paint, she doesn't notice that he has the same problem she has. There are alot of laughs in this movie, but most of them you laugh because you recognize these things from some lowpoint in your own life. And that's not something that is easy to capture in a movie.
p.s. Also you see Tim Blake Nelson's dick after he has sex with his dog in the room
For those of you out there who enjoy smart, politically relevant, historically based black and white newsroom dramas directed by charming movie stars who used to be on Roseanne, today's your lucky day motherfucker. Mr. George Clooney is about to climb down your chimney.
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK is the short and simple story of Edward R. Murrow getting disgusted with Senator McCarthy's hearings and deciding to use his show to expose them. Some guy called David Straitharn is great playing Murrow, expressing pretty much everything through either facial expressions or the comments he makes on the air. The story is confined almost entirely to the newroom and the bar. It's not a biography. The only home life is a subplot about a couple who have to hide the fact that they're married because its not allowed in the workplace.
That actually made the movie more suspenseful for me because for some reason I was too stupid to pick up on the fact that they were hiding their marriage at work. In retrospect it is made completely clear, but I am thick. That's lucky for me though because the whole time they kept making meaningful glances and dramatic swallows at each other, and I thought they were hiding some other secret, like they were communists or one of them used to be a communist or one of them knew a guy whose name was similar to another guy who once considered himself a communist, but only because he thought communist meant he took communion at church. If they were a good target for commie-baiters it would add more drama to the situation. Their co-workers are taking a principled stand against McCarthy, saying people deserve the right to see the evidence presented against them and that kind of thing. They might feel a little more awkward if they were protecting a real honest to god for sure communist. You know, like Ivan Drago or somebody.
But that's what makes this movie this movie. They don't add extra drama to it. You know how some people will shake salt all over their food before they even taste it? That's what most directors do with this type of story but Clooney keeps a strictly low-sodium recipe. I'm no historian but as far as I could tell they seem to stick pretty close to the known facts. McCarthy and the hearings are only seen in actual footage, no actors. So you can't say they mucked it up too bad. Clooney said he based the style of the movie on D.A. Pennebaker movies like PRIMARY (come on Clooney, Robert Drew directed PRIMARY. You need to get your fuckin facts straight, like Murrow would've). By following those cinema verite classics he gets a very realistic feel.
I liked Clooney's filmatism on CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND. That one was a little more showoffy but he maybe does even better on this one because it's more like he's developing his own style different from his pals Steve Soderbergh and whatsisdick Coenbrothers. The new Clooney style is very quiet and moody without some condescending score to poke you in the ass and tell you how to feel. In fact I don't think there is a score, just a nice collection of mellow jazz tunes being performed at the bar in the CBS building. Black and white makes you think more of old movies and TV than of real life but the feel is very real because the actors play it real, they talk over each other and they don't make big speeches unless they're scripted and on live television. It's also one of those movies full of real life sounds, clinking glasses, feet shuffling.
If you like either TWELVE ANGRY MEN or NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD you will probaly like this one because it is another black and white movie where guys in white shirts and ties argue with each other.
Also I wanted to mention that the title is the little saying Murrow said at the end of all his broadcasts, kind of like how Jerry Springer used to say "Take care of yourselves, and each other" or Tom Brokaw said, "and that's the bottom line, you suckers." There's really no reason on God's green earth why that needs to be explained in a review, but since EVERY SINGLE review or article I've read on the movie has explained it, I guess that's what you're supposed to do. So that requirement's filled, I can cross that one off the list.
Clooney also co-wrote the movie with Grant Heslov, an actor from REVENGE OF THE NERDS III: NERD'S REVENGE. You might worry these two would make it to preachy because of the obvious relevant-to-our-times subject matter, but that would be a bum rap. The movie brings up a whole shit load of 2005 type issues: fear mongering, blacklisting, self censorship, timid media cowering in fear of politicians, secret testimony, witch hunts, objectivity/bias in news, and of course asshole senators who go around talking shit and then turn out to be more corrupt than a rapper other than Ja Rule who co-stars with Steven Seagal in HALF PAST DEAD.
(note: the rapper's name is Kurupt, that was not a good reference, sorry. I been drinkin alot of Lightning Bolt today.)
But it never tries to rub your nose in it. They let you draw your own conclusions.
One of the most interesting questions the movie asks that does not have a clear answer is about the idea of opinion in news. You could argue that Murrow's comments during his newcasts are the same basic thing that Bill O'Reilly does. Of course, Murrow used actual clips, allowed his opposition to speak uninterupted, didn't shut off people's mics, wasn't completely full of shit and most likely never called up one of his producers while jacking off and talking about having falafel in the shower. In fact the two have almost nothing in common at all but they did both interject opinion into their, uh, news shows. In my opinion.
Anyway the point is that the conventional wisdom is that news should try to be objective, and yet almost anyone who is not an idiot is going to respect what Murrow did here. So how do we reconcile that I wonder. hmmm. Maybe the dvd will explain.
I don't know, maybe this is a crowd pleaser of a movie. There was actually applause at one point when I saw it. Still for me I think there's exactly one problem, even if it's an unavoidable one. At least on my one viewing, it feels a little light. Like not as much happens as you usually want in a movie. This is not the whole history of McCarthyism. It starts when the hearings are already underway and ends when the motherfucker's getting investigated himself. And most of the action takes place purely through Murrow sitting at a desk showing actual archival footage. You already know what's gonna happen and then with this minimalistic or intimate or whatever exactly type of approach this is, it feels a little bit anticlimactic. A little bit. But if you were gonna solve this problem you would have to spoil the movie. The way Clooney plays it, you can't take too much dramatic license without throwing the whole thing off. I mean I would not complain if it ended in a big sword fight, but frankly that might not have been as good of an ending as you get here. Even though swords are cool.
I'm going to make one of my famous wrong predictions here, and I'm gonna predict that George Clooney will get a best director oscar nomination. I think he did a great job, but it is not a question of deserving it or not. Those people love to follow all over themselves any time an actor directs and does a halfway decent job. I'm not just talking about Clint Eastwood, who obviously deserves it and is thought of more as a director than an actor these days. I'm talking about Mel Gibson. I'm talking about Kevin Costner. That guy has a best director Oscar. Ron Howard from Happy Days has one. Warren Beatty was nominated. I think Don Johnson was nominated one time, don't quote me on that. And maybe Ted Danson or one of those guys. So let's give a nomination to Clooney.
I don't think he'll quite win though, for the same reason David Strathairn will be nominated but not win. Sure, it's amazingly relevant to our times without pushing the issue, but where is the god damn YELLING AND SPITTING? I mean you know, "KING KONG AIN'T GOT SHIT ON ME!" The movie is too subtle. What the fuck clip are they gonna show? He doesn't yell at his wife. He doesn't cry. He's not even in a hospital. Oscar voters wear special glasses where acting is invisible until somebody starts blubbering or throwing a glass against a wall. Sometimes if a retard or invalid crawls onto the screen they can make it out, or if it's world war 2. But just some guys talking in a newsroom, that's not acting as far as they can tell. Plus, if it was acting the music would probaly tell them how triumphant and heartwrenching everything was. So clearly this is not acting or directing. Sorry.
I thought it was pretty good though. So if he wants, Clooney can print off this review and put it on the empty trophy shelf in his Italian villa.
GOODBYE, 20TH CENTURYWell what do you know there are alot of individuals out there who think Vern is an ignorant fuck. He doesn't know the films of World Cinema, only the latest hollywood crap or at best, the art house darlings. And I mean yeah, most of those individuals are right.
HOWEVER, I must point out that this is my second review IN A ROW of a movie that's not in English. And this time, most of you motherfuckers probaly haven't even HEARD of this movie. I mean how many of you could even NAME a movie from Macedonia, let alone review one?
Ha! I scoff at you, because RIGHT THIS SECOND I am in the process of reviewing the Macedonian film GOODBYE, 20TH CENTURY. For your information Macedonia is a country in the Balkans, which, I mean I couldn' tell you exactly where that is. But there's war and shit. It's not pretty.
Here are the words that people would use to describe the style of this picture:
1. dark
2. arty
3. apocalyptic
4. surreal
I see a little bit of Jodorowsky in this picture, and a little bit of City of Lost Children. What it is about is an Antonia Banderas lookin fella in the year 2019, which is sort of your typical Mad Max style post-apocalyptic wasteland type place. You know - desert, weirdly dressed punk savages, people crying because there are no trees.
And what happens is the Antonio Banderas character, they are going to execute him. And they just fill him full of holes. But he's still alive.
So he leaves and talks to a magical post-apocalyptic barber. And he explains that what happened, he was supposed to have sex with the women, but he couldn't get it up. Then he saw this portrait of a saint, and it gave him a hard on. So he fucked the portrait of the saint, and shortly thereafter the saint started to cry, and the children started to die. So they blamed him.
I mean, all he did was fuck a holy painting!
The first half of the movie is about the journey that Banderas goes on after fucking the portrait of the saint and being not executed. Then suddenly we jump back to New Year's Eve 1999, and the story of a man dressed as Santa Claus attending his landlord's brother's funeral. You know, that kind of movie.
This movie is about the apalling brutality and lack of morality among us humans on the eve of the millennium. I feel sorry for the two directors who made this picture because if they were this upset in 1999 I can only imagine how they are feeling now that it is 2002. Sorry boys.
Anyway it is very entertaining. If you've run out of Jodorowsky pictures to watch, I mean, I'm not saying this one is as good. But I enjoyed it. On the label it says www.b-movie.com, so maybe you can order it from there. (No dvd unfortunately.)
thanks
GRAN TORINO
Holy shit, I think I knew this before, but Clint Eastwood is the greatest movie star of all time. How is it possible that a guy who 40 years ago starred in some of the best westerns ever, and 30 years ago starred in some of the best cop movies ever, and 15 years ago directed and starred in the (deserving) winner of the best picture Oscar (another one of the best westerns ever), and in this decade is still going strong as a unique and sometimes great director of serious movies, and yet ALSO chose to direct and star in this humble little slice of moving dramedy with a side of good old fashioned ass kicking? Answer: it is not possible. But Clint doesn't believe in impossible so he did those things anyway. Also he was mayor once. And plays piano. And sang the theme song for this one.
I think probaly most people want Clint to keep doing those Oscar bait movies. I liked MILLION DOLLAR BABY (another best picture, not even the one I referred to before) and I get why people like MYSTIC RIVER, and I thought LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA was great. But as good of a director as he is I think Clint Eastwood the movie star is an even more valuable treasure to the world, so I'm happy he's still willing to throw us one of these. The older and gruffer he gets the cooler he gets, so he should stay on camera.
It's amazing to think that Clint's old-man-looking-back phase has been able to last 15 years already, starting with UNFORGIVEN and including IN THE LINE OF FIRE and BLOODWORK. And this one might be his most direct old man statement. This movie is entirely about him being a grumpy old bastard grimacing at the state of the world and trying to write the last chapter of his life, possibly with twist ending. He actually says "Get off my lawn" in this movie, and not to be funny.
Clint plays Walt Kowalski, an old grouch who we first meet at his wife's funeral. He and everyone in attendance seem casual and accepting of the death, but Walt is pretty disgusted by his sons and the way they let their kids dress and behave. He makes no attempt to hide the loathing on his face as he sees his granddaughter's bellybutton ring or watches her text somebody during the service. There's alot of humor in just watching how he reacts to the world around him, especially since he literally growls like a bulldog when he sees things he doesn't like. He can be so negative he even causes a priest to say "Jesus Christ!" This is a guy I can relate to.
But I must acknowledge that Walt is a huge asshole. He's a total racist and not just because he was in Korea. He never says the N word but pretty much makes derogatory comments about all races and nationalities throughout the movie. And although the main story is about him bonding with his Hmong neighbors he never does learn to stop saying "gook." Even when he's trying to be nice he talks about their "good gook food."
This movie is not for everybody, and it's not quite what I expected. But man, I loved it. I don't want to say too many details, because it's a small story you just need to watch unfold. But basically it's about circumstances causing him to spend time with the two teenage kids in the immigrant family next door. Although "racist Korean vet bonds with immigrant neighbor" sounds pretty high concept, the whole thing feels very believable to me. He's in this period of change where his wife is gone, he's alone for the first time, he's pretty much the only white person left living in the old neighborhood, and he's pissed off at his family. He's basically alone drinking beer on his porch when this teenage girl invites him to a barbecue. Of course he doesn't want to but then on a whim does it anyway. It makes sense that at this point in his life he might say "Shit, why not try something I never would've done before?" And it changes everything.
Also it leads to strange situations such as 78 year old Clint Eastwood in a basement full of Asian teenagers, drinking a beer and trying not to be awkward. Then he notices the dryer is wobbly and fixes it.
It's a weird take on racism that's sort of reminiscent of DIRTY HARRY. Like in that one he's an equal opportunity hater. And we start to see that his hateful words don't mean that much to him when we learn he has friends that he communicates with purely through insults. The neighbor kids, Thao and Sue, gain his respect by talking shit to his face. That's another reason to take a grain of salt with all those drummed up quotes of Clint and Spike Lee insulting each other back and forth.
Thao's family thinks he's a sissy and makes fun of him for doing women's work (gardening), and Walt definitely agrees. But he teaches him to be manly not through violence, but through fixing things. He even loans him tools. He tries to mold Thao into the useful person he thinks his grandchildren are not.
That's how it avoids being some kind of BOYZ N THE HOOD "hey kids, stay out of gangs" type of movie even while the threat looms of Thao's gangster cousin trying to influence him. The movie handles it just right, introducing the gang so you root for them at first because they save Thao from some other assholes. They affectionately call him "dog" and beg for his company and you can see how it would be tempting. He's smart enough to turn them down, but it's the relationship he has with Walt later on that gives him a better path to go down. They learn from each other.
But trust me, this is not CRASH. You could definitely say that Walt learns a lesson about racism judging by the crazy/noble choices he makes to help these people he still calls "swamp rats," but I don't think it's really specifically about that. It's just about him finding a little redemption as a human being by finding somebody he can do a good deed for. He's still an asshole but he could've spent his last years by himself hating everybody, instead he broadened his horizons a little, made some friends and (thankfully, for our sake) got to kick in a few faces for the greater good.Some people might think it condones a little racism, since it treats his ranting as almost a cute character quirk. Other people might think it's great because he's "politically incorrect" which is automatically worthwhile and what about the first amendment, why won't you liberals let me watch Song of the South, etc.
But I think either of those views would be too simplistic. Walt is a good character because he's not quite either one of those. I think the BAD SANTA theory is in effect here - not having him completely cured of his assholeness makes the gesture seem much more sincere. I would like if he stopped calling Asians names, but if the choice was between that and making a deep connection with an Asian family and helping them out, I think he chose the better one. Besides, like I said this is not CRASH, you can't be magically cured of racism by falling on your ass. It would not be believable for him to be cured without some serious retraining by Paul Winfield's character from WHITE DOG.
The one and only thing holding the movie back for me is some stiff acting on the part of the first-time actors playing the neighbor kids, Thao and Sue. Mostly I don't mind, but there are a couple scenes that could've been much more powerful if they were more natural - one where Sue tells off some dudes who are harassing her (it doesn't seem like the quips are really coming from her) and at least one really emotional yelling scene with Thao. I would honestly take these weak performances over having slick Hollywood actors in the parts, but of course the best would be more natural performances by rookies. The gang members and thugs in the movie are all non-actors too but they do a much better job.
Maybe the weirdest choice in the movie is to end with a song actually sung by Clint... in character. Can't say I've seen that before, or that I understand why, but it works for me.
I read that GRAN TORINO was a script by an unknown writer. He shopped it around and all the studios rejected it, but when Clint read it he liked it and shot it as-is. Apparently other than changing the setting to Detroit Clint "didn't change a word." That's weird because it seems so much like a script tailored just for him. You can almost imagine it rewritten as a last Dirty Harry movie (except Harry wouldn't have grandkids). It has some great tough guy moments, it has his sense of humor and most of all it has his deceptive simplicity. It seems so minimalistic but there's complexity hidden beneath the surface. There's alot going on with his character that he doesn't come out and say, or if he does he says it in very few words.In a way it was a relief to read that Clint didn't develop the script himself, because the story has such a preparing-for-death theme to it that it makes me worry about how many more Clint Eastwood movies we will be able to get. We don't want to be too greedy. But if it's okay with you God I think a 300 year old Clint Eastwood would be worth considering. Whatever happens I am thankful for all the great movies Clint has been able to do, and I hope other people will enjoy this one as much as I did.
GRIDIRON GANG
GRIDIRON GANG is the latest in this year's new wave of inspirational high concept true story football movies. This one is THE LONGEST YARD meets STAND AND DELIVER: Dwayne T.R. Johnson plays an officer at a juvenile detention center who decides to start a football team to instill self esteem, discipline and teamwork in young criminals. I didn't see INVINCIBLE and McG's WE ARE MARSHALL hasn't come out yet, but I'm guessing this one is the most generic of the bunch. There's almost no point in me describing the movie. Try this: close your eyes. Now read that premise I just described, and picture a movie about that. There it is, what you just pictured is exactly what the movie is.
Holy shit, how are you reading this with your eyes closed? I didn't say you could open them. This is weird. Well, I'm not sure exactly what to say about these amazing powers of yours, so instead I will ignore them and just go ahead and review the movie. Even if you don't close your eyes, if you make a list of everything you expect to happen in a movie like this, you'd probaly get to cross off everything on the list.
You got the visionary coach who talks The Man into supporting his program. The higher-ups who don't believe in him at first but are ultimately won over. The disastrous first game where they lose and want to give up. The lovable fat kid who needs to learn to believe in himself. The guy who is too much of a fuckup so they don't let him on the team but he shows up anyway and proves himself. The part where the coach is too much of an asshole and disillusions the team. The parts where the program gets shut down and the coach has to figure out how to bring it back from the dead. The fights with loved ones who at the end silently show that they've changed their minds by showing up to watch the game. And it goes without saying that you have the tense clock-beating come-from-behind-at-the-last-possible-second victory against a bitter rival. And the explanations at the end of what happened to each character (although in this case The Rock narrates it instead of it being written on the screen). And there's an insipid score that redundantly tells you how triumphant and heartwarming this all is. Now THIS is a movie that could've used a soundtrack by RZA.
But one unexpected thing does happen during the end credits: they start showing footage of the 1993 TV documentary that the movie is based on, and you realize that they weren't lying about this being a true story. Maybe they just chose the clips well, but you see these scenes and exact dialogue that seemed corny and cliche in the movie, and it turns out that they really happened in real life, and there's footage to prove it. Even the boy-faced token white kid who I assumed was a Hollywood invention turns out to be a real guy, who really looks like that, and really gets emotional talking about how the football team improved his relationship with his mom. The real coach doesn't look much like The Rock (he's a white dude with a mustache) but he has a similar tough-guy motivational speaker vibe and makes the exact same speeches that The Rock made.
So why the fuck make a movie based on a movie? This documentary already exists, apparently, put it out on DVD and I'm sure we'll all enjoy it more than the fake re-enactment. Well, there's exactly one reason to make this movie: The Rock. To showcase The Rock, and to inspire The Rock.
Apparently they've been trying to make this movie for years, at various times starring Bruce Willis, Nic Cage or Sylvester Stallone. And I like all those guys but I can't imagine any of them pulling it of like The Rock. This is a guy who sweats positivity. Now days most of our heroes are cynical tough guys with a pessimistic view of the world. And I'm not complaining. But here is a good old fashioned "believe in yourself" cornball hero, the Mr. T type of hero who is gonna come in and save the community center and get the kids off the street and help an old lady carry her groceries home. It used to be that was expected of heroes, so you saw it too much and it was phony. But now it's kind of a risk to play a character like that. Luckily, The Rock is exactly the guy to make it believable. I have read that the movie is very personal to The Rock because he got into alot of trouble with the law when he was a teen and he feels that his high school football team is what turned him around.
But I don't think you'd need to know that about The Rock to see that he really believes in what this movie is saying, it's not just a job to him.
At his side you also have the rapper Xzibit as the assistant coach. Although he is best known to America for facilitating the pimping of rides (and to me for providing vehicles to Ice Cube in XxX STATE OF THE UNION) this is another tough cookie who came from a violent background and he is very believable in the role. He doesn't get a huge amount of dialogue though (they even cut out some of what you see in the trailer) but he looks good at The Rock's side.
Speaking of looking good, I don't want to sound gay, but it's 2006 so who gives a fuck if I sound gay. The Rock is the best dressed former wrestler of all time. I'm not criticizing any other former wrestlers, but the world of wrestling has its own sense of fashion that looks silly to the outside world (just like funk music, Serenity, anime, or the evil clowns with the giant pants) and most of the guys retain some of that when they move on. But not The Rock. There aren't very many musclemen that can not look ridiculous in a suit or a nice shirt, but The Rock pulls it off with class. He's like George Clooney crossed with He-Man.
Anyway, that's not important, and neither is this movie. Of course I like the message, and it's always moving to see two rival gangbangers working together and becoming bros. It's just like that part in INDEPENDENCE DAY where the Israelis and Palestinians work together to fight the aliens, except not stupid. But the one and only unique ingredient in this movie is The Rock. And it proves that The Rock is a winner.
You can do it, The Rock. I believe in you. You're good in crappy action movies, as the hero or the villain. You're good at comedy, like that role in BE COOL. Now you're good in a serious drama that means something to you personally. I think you've gone through the 36 chambers of Shaolin now, you've proven your skills. Now it's time to live up to your potential. It's time to start making truly good movies. Even great ones. Go the George Clooney route, figure you have enough money and now only do roles you really believe in. Some of them should be action movies though, because you're good at that. Just make sure they're topnotch.
When you die, do you want people to say, "THE RUNDOWN was surprisingly good, he was great in it, although I hate Sean William Scott"? Or do you want them to list off their ten favorites from the long line of classics you did?
You can do it Dwayne. Believe in yourself and knock us on our asses.
GROUNDHOG DAYLast week I reviewed this movie THE ICE HARVEST which I thought was only okay. And I think I blamed director Harold Ramis, who I accused of mediocrity. Then the other day, through coincidence or karma or something, I ended up watching GROUNDHOG DAY, which is the Bill Murray movie Ramis directed back in 1993.
I'd seen this movie before but I actually forgot how good it was, so I gotta give Mr. Ramis credit. I give credit where credit is due, and credit is due right here. Harold, here is your credit. Take it.
I'm sure you've seen this one before but if not here's the deal. Bill Murray is a bitter, cynical weather man who has to go to Punxatawney to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony where they pull the groundhog out of a tree stump and pretend to ask him if he saw his shadow or not. Bill clearly hates this shit so he gets it over with and tries to get the hell out, but a blizzard (which he had predicted would not happen) strands him at a bed and breakfast.
The next morning he wakes up at 6 am hearing the same broadcast he heard the morning before, and thinks the radio station fucked up and played the wrong tape. But he looks out the window and there's no snow, and people on the streets are headed for the Groundhog Day ceremony again. And he goes downstairs and starts to have the same encounters with various locals that he already had the day before.
And the rest of the movie is about the increasing frustration, mischief and eventual enlightenment caused by his having to live the same Punxatawney Groundhog Day over and over again (we don't know how long it lasts but it's definitely a long time - according to the DVD extras the writer originally envisioned it as thousands of years).
When I saw this before I liked it because it's a good Twilight Zone type premise and it's funny to see the way Bill Murray takes advantage of the situation, using his knowledge of events to rob banks or manipulate people, or using the lack of consequences to create mischief. He can lead the police on a chase or punch an old high school acquaintance in the face because the next day it will be undone and nobody will remember. And he can use the endless time loop to learn to speak French or play piano.
But now that I see it again as a more thoughtful, positive individual and a more astute motherfucker in the area of filmatic theory and practice, the movie takes on a much deeper meaning. The reoccuring day is not just a cool gimmick, it's also a reflection of the way he feels about his life. He is tired of repeating variations on the same old weather shit, going to the same places, surrounding himself with the type of people he hates. So he ends up literally having to relive the same day every day, and cannot escape these small town people because of the blizzard that strands him there. And the one person he really likes, his new producer (played by Andie McDowell) he has a hard time connecting with, first because he approaches it on a superficial/manipulative level and then because he only has one day of genuine bonding before she forgets it all entirely and he has to start over from scratch.
But over time he starts to change his attitude toward life, even this horrible repeating life. It's not just that he picks up hobbies and interests, and starts making a more sincere effort to have a relationship with Andie McDowell. That's what I remembered from before, he learns to do things to genuinely make Andie McDowell happy instead of just things that trick her into thinking he's cool. That's a good moral but I think there's more philosophy in the movie than just that. He also starts trying to help people he doesn't even know. To me the most moving scene is when he decides to start feeding and hanging out with the old homeless guy he's been walking past every day. The guy gets sick and dies, and you see how much this upsets Bill Murray. He won't accept it. He tries to figure out what it is that kills the guy so he can stop it from happening the next time.
To me that's the deepest thing about the whole movie. He lives in a world where there are literally no consequences to anything. The old man dies every day, but he's back again the next day, so it really doesn't matter all that much. And yet, instead of choosing to not give a shit and to continue indulging himself, Bill Murray decides he wants to spend his time by trying to make this guy live. And by catching the kid who falls out of the tree everyday and changing a flat tire that some old ladies get every day. He has no reason to do these things except to make the world a little better, to make today a happier day, to be a nice guy. And he does it. That's Jesus right there, that's Buddha, that's Santa Claus and probaly Superman and Ziggy. Arguably Popeye. Maybe Zorro, I don't know too much about Zorro. Anyway, it's deep.
So I will follow Bill Murray's lead. There's no reason to take back what I said about Harold Ramis, since he never heard it in the first place, but I take it back. This guy, at least in 1993, was striving for excellence. It's nice to see a mainstream studio comedy with such an unusual gimmick (before Charlie Kaufman), but especially with one that has deeper meaning than just a clever hook for a movie. And I also gotta credit Ramis and co-writer Danny Rubin for not ruining it by trying to explain what caused the loop (a curse? some radiation?) or specifically explaining exactly what causes it to end. If he was a mediocre director he probaly woulda worried that the audience would be confused and come up with some phoney explanation.
By the way, did you know there's an Italian remake of Groundhog Day called It's Already Yesterday or Stork Day? I wonder if that's any good.
Anyway, good job boys, a couple more movies like this and you won't have to keep coasting on your records of public service as Ghostbusters.
THE GRUDGE
For serious movie watching individuals like you or me, movies start to be like a drug after a while. You know how potheads and acidheads are always experimenting with their drugs? Dude, I wonder what the produce department is like on acid. Dude, I wonder what Disneyland is like on acid. Dude, I wonder what Knott's Berry Farm is like on acid. Dude, I wonder what Police Academy 2 is like on acid.
Well you and I, we're walking the clean path. But we're kind of the same way with movies. Depending on the movie you want it to be a different situation - sit in a different part of a theater, see it with friends or alone, see it with a big crowd or early in the morning so there's nobody there. If it's a sequel, do you rewatch the original first or keep it distant in your mind? I had to make these type of decisions for THE GRUDGE because it's a remake of this japanese horror movie I've been meaning to see for a while. Nobody probaly remembers this but I was the first one to review RINGU and RINGU 2 over there on The Ain't It Cool News and the first one to report it was being remade as THE RING. And then I reviewed that remake too when they made it.
This time I decided to go the opposite route, I did NOT watch the original (called JU-ON or JU-ON: THE GRUDGE) first. Just to mix things up. I mean who knows what will happen. I'm flying blind here. Dude.
I don't know about JU–ON but THE GRUDGE is the story of a spooky haunted house type deal in Japan. It's this place where there's an old lady who can't really talk and has to have a nurse take care of her. But then some wacko spooky ghost shit happens or something like that, so her nurse Yoko gets sucked up into a closet. Also, Bill Pullman jumped off a balcony earlier. So Sarah M. Gellar goes to replace Yoko as the nurse, but there's a spooky little boy running around making cat noises. Also some other gal, I forget who she was or what happened to her but it was some kind of spooky shit. That's pretty much what it all boils down to I guess is a bunch of spooky shit happens in this movie. Some people die, some people just get real scared, etc. It is PG-13 but one character still manages to get her chin ripped off, that was pretty good.
Now, this is kind of weird because it's a remake of a Japanese movie but they tried to stay faithful. So they kept the same director, kept the same actors playing the ghosts, kept the story in Japan. But they threw in a bunch of american actors so it gets kind of weird. You got all these white people living and working in japan. But they hardly ever speak Japanese and they answer their phone "hello." In horror movies in the '80s, they always found out that some murder or suicide happened in their house or neighborhood by going to the library and looking at news articles on microfiche. Now it's the internet. Just google your house I guess, you will find an article about the murder that took place there, with photos. And even in this movie, you can be in Japan and look up your neighborhood, you'll find detailed English language articles about the horrible murder that happened there. They're doing a good job on the internet I guess, putting all kinds of information on there, in case anybody needs to look it up.
Like THE RING there's lots of quiet scenes in this movie, with hushed conversations and no intrusive music. On the other hand, every time they want you to get scared they start pushing you up against the wall with a flood of squealy violins. One of the producers is Mr. Sam Raimi so I'm gonna assume it wasn't him, but some asshole musta been giving the japanese director a hard time. "Look here japanese guy, I don't know how you do things over there but here in the U.S. of A. we like our horror LOUD. If it's gonna be scary it's gonna be fuckin loud and if it's gonna be fuckin loud it's gonna be scary. We don't know to be scared unless the violins tell us it's a scary part so fer cryin out loud quit whinin and throw on the god damn violins before I fire you and replace you with the guy who did HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION."
Or maybe they do that in Japan too, but the point is it doesn't work. You're telling me it's scary so much that it makes me think no, it's really not that scary. You're overselling it, boys.
And I gotta lodge another complaint here: the first big scare they have is a fuckin cat jumping out. Do we really need that? How many fucking times we gonna have a cat jump out and scare somebody in a horror movie? Can we come together, Americans and Japanese, hold hands and agree as citizens of the world that we are done with that one? I think we can do it. I don't know, if Bush gets re-elected it might be a setback but I think regardless, we can get through this.
It's hard not to compare this one to the RING movies. I don't know if JU-ON is a rip off of RINGU or if it's just a japanese cultural ghost story type deal, but there are many similar motifs. You got your unstoppable curse dating back to horrible family trauma. You got your flickery spooky black and white videotape of scary apparitions. You got your scary little kid haunting everybody. You got your weird mysterious noise phone calls. You got your creepy discovery when looking at ordinary household photographs. I mean these can't all be coincidence. Due to these reasons I got no choice to compare these movies and I must come to the conclusion that THE GRUDGE is no RINGU or RINGU 2 or THE RING. The story and characters are not as compelling. There is not as much of a drive to the story, it seems more like an arbitrary series of spooky shit instead of escalating spooky shit building towards one giant spooky shit blowout. In the RING movies you got your 7 day curse and they gotta figure out how to stop it before the 7 days is up and they die. Here, all you gotta do is not go to this particular house. Maybe they should've had that on the internet: "don't go in this particular house, unless you enjoy spooky shit." Then everybody would be safe.
I wanna say one thing about the opening scene. I already told you Bill Pullman jumps off a balcony. It's the first scene, he's standing out there deep in thought and his wife is waking up. She starts saying something to him, but he doesn't respond, all the sudden he does a weird snake move over the rail and goes kersplat on the street. Japanese people run down the block to look at the carnage and it cuts to Sam Raimi's credit.
The kids in the theater thought this was hilarious, but I thought it was a good opening. However I gotta admit I was disappointed halfway or more into the movie when the character showed up again in flashbacks and ghostly business. If Bill Pullman had taken the part of ONLY doing the balcony jump, he woulda been my god damn hero. But no, he has to have actual lines and scenes and crap. Oh well. I guess we live in a world with no heroes.
Before I finish up here, a quick note for the douchebags at the MPAA. Alot of times a horror movie is rated-R, it's some Jason movie or something, people getting shot with spearguns and their eyeballs squeezed out of their heads and that kind of business. In that case you don't always mind a bunch of yahoos whoopin and hollerin and cheering on the horrible murders, etc. But in this genre of the eerie but not gorey ghost related american remake of popular Japanese horror movie, it's all about atmosphere. But it's PG-13 so you get a bunch of 13-16 year old kids giggling and socializing and making phone calls during the movie and you REALLY don't want that.
What I'm trying to say, MPAA, is fuck you. Send the little girls to the Jason movies where it doesn't matter that they won't shut up because you can't hear them over the yahoos. You better figure this out quick, MPAA. 'Cause this lack of accountability shit in the US can't last forever. One of these days you know people who fuck up are gonna start being held accountable again. And you're gonna have to answer to being the douchebags who fucked up all the horror movies.
Anyway, I did think this movie had alot of good creepy imagery in it and some good ideas. It just isn't put together all that masterfully. When Sarah M. Gellar discovers some fingers in her hair while she's in the shower, that's some spooky ass shit. But then they're gone and the movie goes on like nothing happened and what have we accomplished? Oh well, I at least gotta commend THE GRUDGE for not feeling like a typical american horror movie. I knew for sure it had a japanese feel when the movie ended and some pissed off kid behind me said, "That was the shittiest movie I've ever seen in my life!" If it had been any generic mediocre hollywood movie, he would've said it sucked. But he fucking HATED it. It was the SHITTIEST movie he'd ever seen. It was like when I saw the american remake of THE RING, some young fella was so confused by the ending that he yelled "that's BULLSHIT!" and punched the seat in front of him. Same aggression here and this time from a real japanese director. Good job, japanese director.
GUMMOWhat this picture is about is these two kids who go around riding their bikes and hunting cats, and there are alot of filthy houses, and ugly rednecks talking shit about the blacks and punching each other. Then they find a dead cat and just keep shooting it with pellet guns. In the opening scene two kids are making out in a junkyard and the boy finds a lump in the girl's tit. Later this guy is trying to make out with a black midget and Chloe Sevigny teaches her little sister how to pull hairs out of her nipples with duct tape.
Well I gotta be honest this pictures makes no damn sense, it is kind of amateurish and pretentious and exploitative. But I kind of liked it too. You see it is like a home movie, but a real good one. The gal who directated it, Harmony Korine, is real good at finding weirdos and videotaping them acting up. So my two favorite scenes are just showing these people acting crazy and I'm pretty sure they're just being themselves. One is just these two brothers in the kitchen, and they start punching each other as brothers sometimes do. And they're laughing and being competitive and they just start really punching the shit out of each other and knocking plates off the counter and it's all in fun. I mean jesus to think I used to have that kind of aggression too. In real life it's sad but in pictures it's funny, because it's sad.
There is another character who always wears bunny ears, and the real good scene is when these two little hellions like maybe 10 years old are dressed up as cowboys smashing cars in the junkyard. They come across the rabbit and they pretend to kill him with cap guns, and they start cussing up a storm, calling him queer and yelling like drill sergeants as they check his pockets for money and poke him in the ribs to find out how much meat he has on him. Well I guess you had to be there but it's a hoot because, I mean, jesus. How did those kids get that way anyway.
And I mean, think about it, if that was your home movie you'd be pretty damn proud, and rightly so. Unless they were your kids then it's debatable.
Maybe the guy with bunny ears is Gummo, I'm really not sure.
Anyway the whole no plot/makes no sense thing starts to get old after a while, and there is alot of scenes where you can feel Harmony trying a little too hard to be weird or shocking. But still you gotta admire the lady for her spunk. This is a movie that really doesn't follow the rules, it tries to break boundaries by taking on weird subject matter, random editing, intentionally sloppy filmatic techniquery, garbled narration, no plot, made up as they go along, etc. It is an experiment that doesn't always work and maybe is not always well intentioned but I'm still glad the lady did it. As long as the Art of Cinema is an artform we will need gals like Harmony Korine to remind us that you don't need to just copy what everybody else is doing. This is not too bad of a debut and I think there is a good chance she will grow into someone real interesting, a director of real importance, although you never know she might just end up as a dancer or something.