I realize that you all think I’m crazy for that, so I got a new argument in defense of RUSH HOUR, and it’s called COLLISION COURSE (1989). You think RUSH HOUR is such a terrible movie – well, what about the version where instead of Jackie Chan it’s Pat Morita, and instead of Chris Tucker it’s god damn Jay Leno? This is a generic mismatched buddy-cop picture only made novel by the rare hero role for the famous Tonight Show host/usurper. It’s funny – not in the sense that the jokes are funny, but in the sense that it’s sometimes interesting to look back at older movies and remember what was considered cool or funny at that time.

Leno’s character fits his modern persona – working class joe from Detroit, drives vintage Corvette convertible. As a Guy’s Guy of the ’80s he’s single and lives in a smelly apartment littered with fast food garbage (see also Jim Belushi, THE PRINCIPAL). One of his primary traits is that he repeatedly tries to abuse his authority to get women’s phone numbers. I can’t remember why that was cool back then. What’s he gonna do, call and hang up? Or say, “Hi, I’m that police officer who pretended it made sense to take down your phone number – wanna come over?” Actually it does become useful when he hits on a girl at a photo developing kiosk. It doesn’t show him calling her, but she develops photos for them later and lets them go into the back with her, which implies something more than the usual photo developer/client relationship. Also she gives them info about gang territory (she knows because she’s black, is the implication).

Morita is a fuckup sent from Japan to track down a super-engine prototype stolen and headed for GM or somewhere. Chris Sarandon, Tom Noonan and Randall “Tex” Cobb are all involved, and the Japanese thief is murdered along with a friend of Leno’s. He’s in robbery, of course, not homicide, because there’s a strict screenwriting rule that movie cops can only investigate cases against their bosses direct orders. His boss (Ernie Hudson) gives him a good dressing-down over this, but he ignores it. I wonder what kind of robbery caseload backlog he has by the end of this thing?

It’s weird to watch Leno in the serious parts, like talking about his dead partner. Made me wonder if Daniel Roebuck studied this movie for his role as Leno in THE LATE SHIFT. He got it just right – that is what that voice sounds like when it gets sad or pissed. It’s also weird to see him in fight scenes, but it’s not the real shit, it’s the awkward kind where the hero mugs and runs around and gets lucky ducking punches. There’s a bowling alley brawl involving angry autoworkers (one of them is Mike Starr several years before his bar brawl involving racist oil workers in ON DEADLY GROUND).

The goofiest piece of nonsense is when he blows up Tom Noonan in a trainyard (SPOILER) and for some reason there’s a pyramid of watermelons stacked up on the ground. You don’t see that everyday. Later it’s got the old car-chase trick where they go through the alley behind the Empty Box Factory – you know, they knock down a mountain of empty wooden crates, then a forklift drives in carrying a giant stack of empty cardboard boxes.

It’s all what you’d expect, the two having cultural misunderstandings and insensitivity (Leno calls him “Tojo,” expects him to know karate), but then learning to respect each other and imitate each other, repeat each other’s dialogue from earlier scenes. What’s unexpected is that they completely blow the setup for a spectacular climactic car chase. This whole movie they’re talking about “the prototype,” this incredible new engine. And then they find out it’s hidden in an ordinary Toyota that’s ended up at a rental car place. An old lady drives it and almost crashes it because it’s too fast. Then our boys take the wheel… and have a brief, TV style car chase (the one with the empty boxes). I bet the screenwriter had something bigger in mind but they didn’t have the money or the time or something. But that’s a major ball dropped.

In one scene Leno steals a motorcycle – and a helmet too. Morita rides on the back, no helmet. What does this say? Why is Leno’s skull more precious than Morita’s? He’s driving, he ought to offer the helmet to the passenger, since both lives are in his hands. That would be more polite.

One saving grace: there’s a part where Morita runs at a fast-moving car and does a (blue-screened) flying kick through the windshield.

Leno is pretty good, he really stretches pretty far in his performance. For example in the movie he’s a cop, in reality he is not a cop, at least not full time (I don’t know of him doing a STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN type deal on the side but I guess I can’t rule it out). In the movie I think he just has one car, in reality he has more than 50. And at the end of the movie, when he’s solved the case that he wasn’t supposed to be on and Morita must go home having failed his mission, Leno’s character sacrifices himself by stealing the prototype from evidence and giving it to Morita to bring home. Obviously the real Leno would be happy with his case being solved and not worry about the other guy’s problem since he didn’t directly cause it and is not technically required to intervene. So it’s an impressive transformation by Leno the actor to put himself into that kind of honorable mindset that is as completely alien to him.

The director is Lewis Teague, same guy that did ALLIGATOR, CUJO and NAVY SEALS. Weirdly it was almost directed by Bob Clark. In an interview with the Onion AV Club Tom Noonan tells the story of how Bob Clark wanted to work with him, said they had this script that was terrible but could be rewritten. Noonan claims he rewrote the script and took the job just to work with Clark, but when he was on set found out Clark had been fired and they’d gone back to the original script. He only stayed on out of a sense of professionalism, but apparently most of his scenes are from his rewrite. So if you ever talk to him ask him about the watermelon pyramid.

The video doesn’t have Black Dynamite in it or anything, but it continues the movie’s dedication to period authenticity and could be said to be a film that exists within the world of BLACK DYNAMITE. You may notice that it is sponsored by Converse, but in my opinion it is better than THE SPIRIT.

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Favorite conversation: when he tells the Jamaican priest about going to a Peter Tosh concert (he wasn’t into it). Favorite scene (easy): when he not only steals the neo-nazi’s shotgun and puts him back in his car, but suddenly bangs his head against the horn.

The pilot reminded me of KAREN SISCO, a surprisingly good Elmore Leonard based show they had on ABC in 2003. Sure enough both are by the same director, Michael Dinner (Mad Magazine’s hilarious parody character of DEATH WISH director Michael Winner). I thought they could never replace Jennifer Lopez as that character from OUT OF SIGHT (still my favorite Leonard movie I think, although JACKIE BROWN is a contender), but after watching a few episodes Carla Gugino became the definitive Karen Sisco for me. It helped that they had Bill Duke as her boss and Robert Forster as her dad. And they did a good job of supplying the criminal-of-the-week characters with personality.

Every time Carla Gugino has another TV show I think “hey, maybe it’ll be a hit and they’ll finally release KAREN SISCO on DVD.” But it didn’t work for THRESHOLD and whatever other shows she was on that got cancelled. So now we’ll just have to hope this one hits big and causes a demand for other Elmore Leonard TV shows. Rights holders please note that Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow directed one episode. Let’s see that DVD.

And while I’m at it I never saw that MAXIMUM BOB show either. That was supposed to be pretty good, wasn’t it?

I read somewhere that when Robert Rodriguez saw ARMORED it sealed the deal for Antal doing PREDATORS. I’m not sure what that says, because there’s nothing too wrong with ARMORED, but nothing too right, either.

This is a cool looking poster, so they made sure to use a generic group shot for the DVD cover.

It’s a real slim one, just over 80 minutes, and most of the plot was in the trailer. Ty (Columbus Short, SAVE THE LAST DANCE 2) is an Iraq war veteran, his parents have recently died, he’s taking care of a teen brother, and close to losing his parents’ house. But he works for an armored car company with his godfather (Matt Dillon), who’s pressuring him to take part in an inside-job armored car robbery.

So it’s got the vague timeliness of a good b-movie: banks foreclosing on houses, stealing from the banks, helping the victims. And it’s a good dramatic setup: he doesn’t want to do it but if he said no he’d have to rat out his recently deceased father’s best friend and lose out on money he sorely needs. I mean, he just doesn’t need this shit right now, but now that he knows about the plan he has no choice but to be involved on one side or the other.

And all this is really setting up for a good action idea, sort of DIE HARD in an armored car. After one of the crew (Laurence Morpheus Fishburne) shoots a witness Ty decides he needs to foil the robbery and locks himself in one of the armored cars. Then he spends most of the movie inside, with the other guys on the outside trying to talk to him or banging on the door hinges, trying to bust their way in. That’s pretty good. Also there are some pretty good chases and a tense scene when a beat cop (who we know eats at the same burger stand as the thieves – it’s a world of laughter, a world of tears) comes to investigate some noises.

So it’s a pretty cool movie in many ways, but most of them are theoretical. Unfortunately the execution is pretty mediocre, starting with the bland casting and writing of the hero. He seems like a good enough guy, but not particularly charismatic, not possessing a more than average amount of screen presence. He’s not real cool or charming or tough, he doesn’t have any funny or memorable lines, I can’t even remember a single character quirk or unusual detail of any kind. He’s just some dude.

And then he spends a good 10-15 minute chunk in the middle of the movie cowering in the car making scaredy cat faces through the window. If they had already established him as an interesting character who the audience is interested in then this could be a real cool DePalmian type of move where Mr. Antal gets the audience attached to him and then pulls back and says okay, now let’s watch from this angle, see how things look different. But no, by this point he has not made much of an impression so instead of a ballsy directorial maneuver it just makes the guy look like a weeny until later in the movie when he starts doing stuff.

The supporting cast is good, but other than Dillon they’re all pretty lightly sketched generic characters. Fishburne is PG-13 Mr. Blonde, Skeet Ulrich (yeah, remember Skeet Ulrich?) is actually not bad as the more hesitant member of the crew, and Jean Reno plays that same Jean Reno character that used to be in every other movie back in the days when Jean Reno was in every other movie.

The younger brother (of course named Jimmy – we also would’ve accepted Timmy) is used as the motive for stealing the money, but they don’t seem to have a good relationship at all, and not just because Ty had no idea Jimmy had been skipping school most of the year. The big scene with the two brothers is when Ty comes home to find Jimmy spraypainting a huge mural of an owl on the kitchen wall. He scolds him appropriately but never acknowledges, even to himself, that it’s a very impressive, better than professional level painting. To do that with spray cans is an incredible talent. But he doesn’t give a shit, he acts like the kid keyed a car or got drunk and threw up on the couch or something.

The owl and the hamburger stand are the only real standout character moments. I like that the movie is quick and to the point, but I think the script needed a little more meat to it, or if not then each of the actors needed to be given a little more room to bring something more to the table (for example they could bring meat to the table). Unfortunately there was no room on the table I guess. It was too small of a table.

The real reason Jimmy is in the movie is not because he’s a painter, or because his brother needs money to raise him properly, he’s there so there’s somebody for the bad guys to kidnap. And I have to say, Matt Dillon is not getting the #1 Godfather mug this year. I’m not sure if he’s godfather to both kids or just to Ty, but either way it’s a dereliction of the duty. It is his responsibility as godparent to take care of Ty now that he has been orphaned, instead he takes his brother hostage and threatens him. Obviously he knows Ty’s dad better than I do, I don’t want to speak for the dead, but in my opinion it is very possible that the dad would be upset about this business and disappointed in his friend. Just my two cents.

It should also be noted that their criminal mastermindery is not much better than their godparenting. Unless they had some genius plan that’s not mentioned in the movie I don’t think they were putting too much thought into how exactly Ty is gonna pay off the house without his company or the police noticing. Hey Ty, I know you’ve been real depressed ever since you guys got mysteriously robbed by those unknown thieves who were never apprehended and the money was never found, but it looks like your luck is turning around, what with you having paid off your mortgage in crisp clean one hundred dollar bills. I’m proud of you, son. I’m gonna give you a raise.

Admittedly, this is a company that has not yet bothered to put GPS in their fucking armored cars (they mention that’s gonna happen on Monday!), so they aren’t exactly what you would consider a licensed or competent company. But I still don’t think the boss would be stupid enough to not make the connection between Ty’s house and the missing loot, and that’s because the boss is Fred Ward. And I gotta give Nimrod Antal credit for this one: when Ward is first shown he has a clipboard in front of his face, and then he lowers it to reveal himself. This is a clear sign that Antal not only thinks Fred Ward is cool, but that he knows there are other people who will be happy to see him and he is pandering to those people by including this shot. So he’s probly a cool guy. Shoulda put Fred Ward in PREDATORS.

ARMORED is a watchable movie, and I will probly give his other ones a shot. But a real standout movie could be made with this basic structure, and this isn’t it.

And of course they kill the kid’s family and drag him away to become a slave in a mine. Not to sound racist, but it seems like Barbarians are always trying to pull shit like this. I mean, not all Barbarians. There have been many great members of the Barbarian culture throughout their proud history, such as Conan the Barbarian and Theobald Boehm, the inventor of the modern flute. But SOME Barbarians act like a bunch of dicks, doing shit like this. That’s where the stereotype comes from.

Well, after the opening credits it could go through the whole thing where the kid escapes and then tries to run away but he meets some wise individual who trains him and teaches him about his destiny and then he swings a sword around in the air for practice, possibly has two ferret pals, passes a series of tests or trials, gets advice from an old hag oracle, and after some long boring stretches he meets a girl, more boredom, possibly fighting a monster or ogre of some kind, perhaps has to solve a riddle, then at the very end tries to get revenge. Not WOLFHOUND. This one skips right to the kid, now fully grown, long-haired, scarred and badass, laying siege to the fortress of the Man-Eater (one of the two dicks responsible for the massacre of his family and Grey Dog clan), killing that asshole and taking back the sword his father made right before his death. Also he has a pet bat.

Man, I really liked this movie. It’s a Russian picture, based on a Russian fantasy novel. The Russian title translates to “Wolfhound of the Grey Dog Clan.” The Weinsteins released it here, but I don’t think they cut it and although it defaults to a dubbed version you can switch it to Russian with English subtitles. And it’s even a rare case of the American poster being better than the original one. Wolfhound is such a badass the Weinsteins don’t even know how to ruin him.

I gotta compare the appeal to CONAN THE BARBARIAN and BEASTMASTER. But just by way of being filmed in Russia it gets a really different feel to its fantasy world. Cold and grey, mountains and forest trails, and everything’s dirty. Maybe there’s a little FLESH AND BLOOD In there. It definitely reminds me more of the old ’80s sword and sorcery movies than of the post LORD OF THE RINGS era, but it’s more entertaining than most of them. Digital effects are very subdued until the climax, and then the style of the effects reminds me of the stop motion monsters that would be in the old school ones.

Anyway, the plot is not about his quest for revenge, it’s mostly about the consequences of having already achieved his revenge. Killing a motherfucker nicknamed “the Man-Eater” sounds real good on paper (such as a scroll), but this time it throws off the whole balance of power in the area. Turns out Man-Eater was always bickering with Zhadoba, the other guy involved with the Grey Dog massacre, and that’s the only reason they never bothered to conquer the kingdom of Galirad. The king figures the only way to be safe is to send his daughter to Man-Eater Jr. in exchange for making sure Zhadoba (who now wears a scary skull-faced mask like the guy in WILLOW) doesn’t fuck with them.

So our boy Wolfhound proves himself to the princess so he can be one of her guards on the journey.

There are many reasons why Wolfhound is a great badass character. First of all he just looks cool, a grizzled, mangy bastard. Unlike, say, BEASTMASTER (sorry Beastmaster) there’s no thought in the back of your head that he might be kind of a weiner. You just look at his mug and know not to cross him. His long hair is era-appropriate, he looks like a scummy mercenary, not a Rob Zombie character. Kind of Rutger Hauer-esque, actually. And whenever he ties his hair back it means the same thing as when Billy Jack takes his boots off.

Second, I believe Wolfhound incorporates an innovative double-back or boomerang form of badass juxtaposition. See, he has this cute, squeaky pet with an injured wing that he’s very protective of, that’s the badass juxtaposition. But at the same time it’s not like it’s a baby duckling or something, it’s a fucking bat, and it’s even commented on early on that you can’t trust somebody who would carry a pet like that. So it works simultaneously as a cute thing to play off of his toughness and a demonic thing to make him seem scarier.

Wolfhound (center) doesn't talk much, mostly stands around grimacing like that until it's time for swords. I'm not sure why the guy on the right is looking into the camera.

And he doesn’t talk much, that’s always a plus. One of the scenes where he has alot of dialogue is the one where he’s yelling at the gods.

Most importantly he demonstrates it over and over again. It’s not one of those movies that just keeps telling you how valiant he is without him having to prove it. There’s the scene where the princess’s guards don’t take him seriously so he stands in the middle of the path and tells them to get past him. There are the scenes where he seems to almost smell an attack before it happens, like the time he throws a sword to block two throwing knives and impale their thrower, thwarting an assassination. There’s the one where he’s just passing through the Bear Clan’s bridge and ends up rescuing a stranger from execution. Or the one where he summons an army of evil spirits and defeats them with fire.

You know what, here’s how you know who’s bad. Well into the movie, like 90 minutes in, we still don’t really know how he became Wolfhound. The princess and entourage are at a campfire and a lady starts singing a song that everybody likes the tune of. She explains that it’s about this brave guy in the Crystal Mountains who was the only one to escape slavery. Wolfhound stares at the ground, embarrassed, and doesn’t tell anybody that by coincidence they’re sitting with the legendary warrior that the song is glorifying.

The only reason Wolfhound almost gets bested is because of some cold-hearted treachery by the princess’s cousin. He doesn’t mean ill-will, but he’s made a deal with Zhadoba because he’s convinced it’s the only way to save the kingdom. Zhadoba wants to sacrifice the princess for a spell or somesuch, so he makes this bargain with the cousin. He says either way she’s gonna die but if the cousin helps out he gets to become king of Galirad instead of the Man-Eater’s kid. He’s not initiating a plot, he’s just allowing himself to be convinced of the moral correctness of going along with a plan where he’ll become king. So you see, he’s not evil. He’s just Jay Leno.

Wolfhound is the best kind of hero. Never preachy, scares the shit out of everybody, not motivated by doing the right thing, and yet incapable of not doing the right thing. Especially if he sees some kid in trouble, he’s definitely gonna put his quest on pause for a second and go try to help the kid. But then he won’t try to take credit for it or anything, he’ll just move on.

Also, did I mention, he has a pet bat. That’s what makes Wolfhound iconic. Snake Plissken has an eyepatch, Wolfhound has a bat.

The movie is pretty long, as in longer than some movies are, not as in longer than it needs to be. It’s kind of epic, but I’d gladly watch another one. Apparently there’s a lower budget TV mini-series called YOUNG WOLFHOUND starring the same guy (Aleksandr Bukharov), hopefully that will make it to the land of English-subtitles at some point.

I read some complaints from people who didn’t like WOLFHOUND, they seem to think it’s too much generic fantasy stuff. Instead of generic I would say classic. It’s stuff you’ve seen before but with a more interesting hero in the middle, with a higher frequency of exciting events, and a bit of a Russian spin on it to make it fresh. Also Yakov Smirnoff plays a sidekick/narrator character similar to Mako in the CONAN movies. Just kidding. There’s nothing like that.

There have also been complaints about the action scenes, which admittedly are a little choppy in the way the shots are put together, although not real shaky or quick-cutty or nothin. They’re not the clearest but I guess they have enough style and variety that I enjoyed them, they’re not stiff Kevin Sorbo type business.

Man, I really dug this movie. I don’t know if you all will like it, but some of you will. In fact I bet at least one of you will decide to get a pet bat after seeing it. That’s my guarantee. Please send me a picture of you with your pet bat and I will post it here.

Richard walks around town with his mildly retarded brother Anthony, staking out a group of small time criminals who are hanging out at a small diner and who I got a pretty good hunch will soon be enjoying a revenge sandwich. These guys don’t have many illusions of being tough. They sell drugs but don’t always carry guns. They drive around together in one goofy Volkswagen like some old ladies carpooling to the church picnic.

Richard begins his revenge just by fucking with them. He gets in a confrontation with one at the diner, then ambushes him hours later in a completely different location to apologize. The ol’ “on the surface he’s being really cool but due to the context he’s actually planting the seeds of terror” trick. It gets crazier when he starts spooking them Michael Myers style wearing a gas mask. He lures them outside, then trashes their apartment and steals their drugs in the few minutes when they’re looking for him. When they go to tell their boss Sonny what happened the next morning he answers the door in clown makeup that he doesn’t realize Richard put on him while he was asleep. This is all to make them notice him and remember who he is – Anthony’s brother. Whenever they say it the room is draped in an “oh shit” silence.

The best moment in the movie is when Sonny goes to confront Richard. Sonny tries to be the pretending-he’s your-buddy-but-you-know-he’s-actually-threatening-you type villain. He says, “You know, the lads got this funny idea–”

“Yeah it was me,” Richard interrupts.

Richard’s fearlessness is maybe a little suicidal, but also justified by the gang’s incompetence. They have plenty of chances to take him out, but they always screw up or get scared and run away. He seems to have some Vorheesian offscreen murdering skills, but his plan is not air tight. If they were better shots or less cowardly he wouldn’t succeed. At one point he even stands with his arms out offering to let them shoot him, and they don’t take the chance. He’s not Rambo. It’s just that his enemy is sub-Dennehy.

I like Considine in the movie. It’s a good psychotic avenger performance. And I also gotta give credit to Toby Kebbel, who plays the brother. He does a good job of seeming genuinely mentally challenged without going over-the-top on any of it. I’m not familiar with him from other movies so I almost wondered.

I also like the tone of it. There’s alot of humor in the dialogue and the reactions of his victims, but it’s not jokey. I like that it’s a low budget movie shot in a small town and they make the criminals small time to fit. They don’t pretend Sonny is Scarface. He might think he’s a little more Scarface than he is, but nobody else is fooled. He’s just some dipshit that wronged the wrong guy.

It’s also kind of clever to mix of genres. The backstory is revealed a piece at a time and there’s quiet musical interludes. So it’s kind of like a crude lower budget version of a brooding arthouse revenge movie like THE LIMEY or GET CARTER. But it also has  a few slasher elements in the way he turns into this masked stalker. But that might’ve given the marketing people the wrong idea. I don’t know about the American DVD cover (left), that might be part of why I didn’t see this sooner.

I definitely recommend this one, but I also gotta tell it like it is with frank honestness and everything, so I have to admit that this is not getting a 100% Badass sticker from me. It’s at about a 97, which is a respectable number. The missing 3% is because there’s just a pinch of too-corny-for-my-tastes here. When he talks about how his bloody revenge makes him a monster like it’s some unexpected ironic twist it makes him seem as stupid as his enemies. And I already wasn’t really gonna side with this guy based on the sadistic way he says he’s gonna let a guy go and then doesn’t. Not that they should turn him into a hero, but the man-isn’t-it-fucked-up-how-crazy-he-is thing was real old by 2004 when this came out. I mean, if that’s what you want maybe put a trenchcoat and some mime makeup on this guy so I know what I’m getting into.

Also, when it finally reveals what exactly happened that he’s getting revenge for it’s pretty convoluted and ludicrous. I’m not quite buying this one. I guess at least it’s one I hadn’t seen before. But just so you know, makers of revenge movies, I’ll always go for “you killed my friend or loved one.” You don’t gotta get this exotic.

But I don’t want to be too harsh. It’s a unique movie, not trying to copy any of the various popular styles of crime movies. I liked it. Now you can get on me about watching some other movie. (not tv show, I know what that one would be.)

The opening establishes that this guy is doing repairs on a rich family’s home and his interactions with each family member. But it also shows why he’s so desperate for money that he’d pull an asshole move like robbing their safe. He tells a crime boss (Robert Wisdom) that he’s the only guy that can get into that safe, but I think it’s a lie. He just has a little box he can use to listen to the clicks as he spins the dial – I feel confident that I could figure out how to use that thing if you gave me a couple minutes. But maybe he’s the only guy with one of those boxes, that’s why he said it. And because he knows the code to turn off the alarm.

The family’s supposed to be on vacation but he hears something while he’s in there, and it turns out to be The Collector, a guy in kind of a hybrid lucha libre/S&M mask who is currently torturing the family members. Not only that but he set up a bunch of booby traps. Some of them are little things like a needle that pokes our guy in the ear when he tries to use the phone, or razor blades that slice his fingers when he reaches for the window. But also there are tripwires all over the place that set off ridiculously elaborate traps. You know how the FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels established the rule that killers can catch up to their victims without running? I guess SAW set the precedent that killers are engineering geniuses with the ability to foresee and set up for any outcome.

The traps are increasingly ridiculous. By the time I noticed a bunch of bear traps on the floor in the background of a shot I was laughing, well before a guy fell onto about 8 or 9 of them. The silliest one somehow uses a cable to swing a girl across the room and stick her on a bunch of wall spikes like she’s one of those velcro balls you throw against a target.

Meanwhile The Collector has people tied up so he can pull out tongues and teeth and what not. As you know I don’t really like the torture movies, not for moral reasons but because I think it’s uncinematic. The thrill of the slasher movie is in the chase, in just barely getting away. The “kills” are enjoyable exclamation points on the end of some of the sentences. A torture scene is a long, dragged out exclamation point. An elipses. It can serve its purpose but in this case it doesn’t, it’s not really a scene you dread getting to. You just don’t enjoy getting through it.

The predicament that the safecracker is in is interesting – the family members see him there and he says “It’s okay, it’s just me!”, but of course they gotta be wondering what the hell he’s doing in their house. He’s gonna get himself in trouble, but he’s a good enough person that he stays and tries to help them. And when the dad tells him the combination to the safe so he can get the handgun he says, “Okay” and not”I don’t need the combo, I have a special box for listening to the clicks,” so you know he’s a sophisticated criminal.

I like the setup , the character is developed enough to root for and we can all related to a safecracker in trouble. An everyman. But this Collector guy is a different story. That guy’s just lame.

SPOILERS? I’m not sure if this even counts as a spoiler, because it doesn’t really matter who the killer turns out to be, it has no consequences. But as you suspect early on he’s a pest control guy working on the property. It’s kind of cool that the killer knew the alarm code for the same reason our protagonist did – he works there. But the director uses his profession as an excuse to linger on CGI spiders and wasps on the outskirts of events, which is laughable whenever it happens. At one point it shows a spider watching, and moving his mandibles. Somebody oughta dub in a “CHAOS REIGNS!”

I liked in BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT how the title came up at the very end. It’s kind of cocky to do it that way, like fuck you, I put the title on the end, I don’t care what anybody else does, but it’s an earned cockiness. Also, in both cases you realize the meaning of the title when it appears. Ah ha, so we’ve been through all this, now BATMAN BEGINS. Or okay, “Gotham’s White Knight” has slipped up, Batman’s gonna take the fall, only now is he THE DARK KNIGHT. With THE COLLECTOR what you realize as the title comes up is “Oh, they’re trying to do a series of these, like SAW.” They’ve shown us a killer and an M.O., they’ve even left the protagonist alive. I still think it’s novel that the SAW movies keep different characters alive and expect you to remember what’s going on from sequel to sequel, but I don’t want to see another series like that. Come on. It seems a little presumptuous to end that way.

Well, it turns out this was originally written as a SAW prequel, but then even the people who make the SAW movies didn’t want to see a fucking SAW prequel, so they rejiggered it into this. Man, I hope there aren’t a dozen rejected SAW sequel scripts that are gonna be turned into separate movies the way so many rejected DIE HARDs and LETHAL WEAPONs and stuff did. The people responsible for this one apparently did the FEAST movies and some of the SAW sequels, if that tells you anything.

Anyway, a semi-valiant attempt I guess. At least it had a good setup and a couple laughs. But I don’t recommend it. If you must, I guess it’s available exclusively at Blockbuster now (man, what a coup) and everywhere else April 6th.

Even as a still photo this is in slow motion.

I have to admit I don’t really get the Boondock Saints. Haven’t seen it since it first hit video, but I remember it just being kind of a shitty Guy Ritchie/post-Tarantino wannabe tough guy movie. It just seemed delusionally confident about how cool it was. It probly had some good bits here or possibly there, but it mostly seemed to me like some guys saying unconvincing macho lines and then some techno music comes on and the camera rotates around. It’s like an applause sign lights up that just says “AWESOME!” on it and you’re supposed to take its word for it.

I mean jesus, the fuckin guy who replaced Howard Hesseman for the last season of Head of the Class is supposed to be cool because you give him sunglasses and guns? What the fuck is that? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s what dumb motherfuckers decided after they saw Travolta in PULP FICTION and thought they understood the magic formula. Yeah, yeah, it’s the guy who replaced Howard Hesseman on the last season of Head of the Class. But what if he was… a hitman? Am I blowing your mind? Am I reinventing the guy who replaced Howard Hesseman on the last season of Head of the Class? This is the ’90s, this is the New Crime Cinema, get with the program. Did I mention he can hold the guns sideways? Well he can. Now do you understand what I’m talking about?

Okay, I know, that’s strictly an American point of view. In his homeland Billy Connolly’s not known for the declining year of a cheesy ’80s sitcom, he’s known as a standup comedian. So it’s totally different. He’s not a sitcom teacher, he’s this guy:

See, he’s not Howard Hesseman. He’s Howie Mandel. Now he’s old and grey and bearded, he looks like a homeless guy dressed up as Neo, and that’s what the movie has to offer as the ultimate badass. Also, he has a huge tattoo of a butterfly on his hand. (or is that supposed to be a re-entry stamp?)

I don’t get it. Nothing against Connolly, he’s a likable actor, and maybe his standup is good. But this character is a good metaphor for the movie. He clearly thinks he looks cool as hell. He must know something we don’t?

I’ve seen worse action/crime movies than BOONDOCK SAINTS, but mostly I’ve seen better. So it almost seemed like some kind of vindication when I saw that documentary OVERNIGHT and found out BOONDOCK writer/director Troy Duffy is a Guinness Book of World Records worthy asshole. The Weinsteins bought his screenplay and plucked him from bartending to become their new wonderboy, and he decided the next day that he was Francis Ford Coppolla multiplied by Stanley Kubrick divided by all of the Rolling Stones. He was such an impossibly arrogant shitbag that even the Weinsteins had to disavow him like a CIA assassin that blew his cover overseas.

Not only is OVERNIGHT a good cautionary tale, it’s also a hilarious movie full of some of the greatest poser tough guy talk ever captured on film. If anything that’s the beloved character I’m excited to have back on screen: that hilarious asshole Troy Duffy. So I was pleased to see he has a couple gems on the behind the scenes featurettes for part 2. I wish I had time to listen to his 2 (two) commentary tracks.

When we last left our beloved Boondock Saints, they were doing something in Boston I think, involving guns or action. They were wearing black. There were two of them, I believe. The Boondock Saints have no names, they are only known as Boondock Saints #1 (Sean Patrick Flannery, the one with unconvincing Irish accent) and Boondock Saints #2 (Norman Reedus from BLADE II, the one with the more subdued unconvincing Irish accent). Now, eight years later, the consequences of whatever it was they were doing then maybe have come home to roost or something. (?)

Honestly I have no clue. It’s hard to say because I saw the movie about ten years ago and since then have experienced these characters and stories only through the medium of hoodie.

The point is they now have American Taliban beards and live in a quaint little cottage in Ireland with their dad (Billy Connolly, who I thought was Scottish). But back in Boston some dude killed a priest and put pennies on his eyes, so everybody thinks the Boondock Saints did it (were they priest murderers in the first one? I don’t remember that). They know it’s a trap but they go back anyway and kill the people involved while saying prayers and stuff.

(anybody know what this Catholic assassin business is all about? Is it supposed to be a critique of perceived hypocrisy on Catholic theology? or is it just supposed to make it aaaaweeeesome for Catholics to watch? I don’t really get this part either.)

Judd Nelson, imitating Al Pacino, plays a crime boss who mostly hides inside a panic room and talks over closed circuit TV (kind of a cool idea). I liked when he was yelling at everybody and used the word “reconnoiter.” Julie Benz from RAMBO and PUNISHER: WAR ZONE replaces Willem Dafoe as an FBI agent on their tail. She does a Southern accent ten times worse than their Irish accents, and I don’t understand why. The only time it seems relevant that she’s from the South is one part where she says some folksy thing about a pig. (You know how Southern people are, they say cute things like “y’all are as clumsy as a cow playin marbles” or “He’s like a sheep confusing Dale Earnhardt, Jr. for Hank Williams, Sr.”) But I figure if she has to do the accent then you get a different actress; if it has to be this actress then you don’t make her do the accent. Should be pretty easy. If he just picked one of those two things it would’ve worked.

Poor Clifton Collins Jr. becomes the comic relief sidekick. Apparently he’s friends with Duffy, so I’m sure he wanted to do it and had fun. But I still feel sorry for him being in this and CRANK 2 in the same year. And those were probly seen by ten times as many people as saw him in EXTRACT. But oh well, he generally rises above the movies, he’s pretty likable.

Meanwhile the dad sits home in the little cottage staring at various objects that can segue into flashbacks about his old timey GODFATHER PART II childhood. Since the filmatist is an egomaniac making a movie for worshipful fans I knew there was a very good chance that this would not turn out to have any significance at all, it could just be that he figures everybody loves this character and wants to know some background. Fortunately it turns out to be leading to the climax of the movie (where the dad leaves the house) but along the way Duffy manages to show us the making of the leather vest with the holsters on the front that he looked so “cool” wearing in the first movie. Because that was important to know.

Then there is a HUGE surprise where the FBI agent admits she’s assigned to help them, not catch them (SPOILER). But these other cops who I guess were in the first one who I guess are also helping them get away with their murders don’t know that she knows that they’re in on it so they all go to a bar and squirt water on each other and laugh and say “You mean you knew all along?” I don’t really get this part either, why we watched the whole section of the story before this which is now meaningless. Whoops.

Okay, the story makes no sense (just wait until you get to the “mindblowing” cliffhanger ending) but it’s supposed to be a goofy action movie, let’s just look at the action scenes. The good news is Duffy’s stuck in the ’90s, so there’s none of the shakycam or Michael Bay/Tony Scott editing. The bad news is that the Boondock Saints have some kind of magic gun powers where almost all of the gun battles go exactly the same: Boondock Saints stand stationary next to each other firing in one direction, 5-10 bad guys stand across the room firing back at them, Boondock Saints hit all of the bad guys, bad guys do not hit any of the Boondock Saints. Sometimes they play a little trick to set up the bad guys (they make a guy strip to his bikini and shit his pants and then leave him on a cart with a message painted on his back) just so they can then say “You’re fucked!” and wait for them to turn around and aim all of their weapons and then they use their magic gun powers to defeat them. (I’d skip the pants-shitting part and just sneak up behind them. But I’m not Catholic.)

Another thing is it actually has a couple bullet-time-esque camera rotations. In the year 2009. So adorable.

At the end poor Peter Fonda shows up, apparently having burned through his check from GHOST RIDER. By this time I had lost track/interest of who he was supposed to be, but I learned from the DVD extras that he’s called “The Roman” and that Duffy thinks the audience will be “filled with righteous anger” toward him when he shows up but then when he starts talking we’re almost won over by him. So yes, if you were wondering, Troy Duffy has seen KILL BILL VOLUME 2.

I guess the heart of this movie would be the dream sequence where a character who apparently was their sidekick who died in the first one, although he doesn’t look familiar to me at all, appears to them in a dream to make a big speech about how they are not being macho enough. He appears in a hockey rink and on a roof talking about how “these are hard men, doing hard things, and it gives me a hard on.” It made me a little embarrassed to have a dick, but Duffy explains on the featurette that “in my opinion it became a manifesto” for blue collar men who have never had a chance to be represented in movies before, not even in the movie BLUE COLLAR. Or PAUL BLART IS: MALL COP. In the manifesto the longhair talks about how real men don’t cry, so it’s ironic that Duffy wipes a tear away while talking about what a powerful and important scene he created.

So no, I would not consider this to be any better than part 1, although I guess I got a little more of a kick out of it because it’s even further off the mark. On the other hand, it tries to be more nudge-nudge, wink-wink, with the characters talking about being “the sidekick,” coming up with catch phrases, trying to think of “creative” ways to attack, and in that sense it’s kind of more tedious. Unfortunately I can’t give Boondock Saintheads any advice because I have no clue if this will seem good to them or not. The only evidence I have is: one guy I never heard of gave it a positive review and gave away tickets to two screenings of it on Ain’t It Cool (and is quoted on the ad). Otherwise I’ve heard that fans were disappointed.

So you can’t learn much from this review, but maybe I can learn something from it. Here is a summary of a few of the things I don’t get:

1. The whole “BOONDOCK SAINTS” thing.
2. Why is Billy Connolly with guns supposed to be badass
3. what’s the deal with having a butterfly tattoo on his hand. And did he steal it from some girl’s lower back
4. Catholic?
5. Southern accent?
6. squirting water at bar

can’t wait for part 3.

As an adaptation of the original book, ALICE IN WONDERLAND is not entirely faithful. Like many versions it combines characters from the first book and the sequel (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and Humpty Dumpty were from the second book according to Wikipedia, a popular websight). However it’s not meant as a straightforward translation of the book, but more a riff on the world of Wonderland, using our familiarity with some of the imagery and characters from previous adaptations and trying to be clever about re-interpreting them in a different context.

In this version Alice is not a little girl anymore, she has grown up quite a bit. In the world of reality she’s having relationship troubles. But this awkward looking white rabbit runs by, she follows him and escapes into this fantasy world where her encounters make her realize what she needs to do.

She’s completely naive and innocent, but because of her age her interactions with the fantasy characters take on more adult meanings. When she shrinks out of her dress she ends up naked, and the behavior of the weird animal people she runs into makes her uncomfortable. But it’s not until nearly a half hour into the movie that a talking rock convinces her to finger herself and then next thing you know she meets the Mad Hatter, who has no pants on, and she gets curious enough to start giving him a blow job.

By the way I don’t know if I mentioned this is the 1976 porn version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND I’m talking about, not the new Tim Burton one. I’m gonna talk about that later in the review.

Directed by Bud Townsend (NIGHTMARE IN WAX), it stars Kristine DeBell as Alice. She was a Playboy model, but there’s at least one hardcore scene that seems like it’s gotta really be her. (There’s also an R-rated version, like PIRATES). She still managed to go onto a pretty good career in TV and movies, everything from MEATBALLS to THE BIG BRAWL to The Young & the Restless. And she’s the best thing in the movie, playing the ludicrous porn naivete pretty straight. She’s kind of like the poor man’s Barbarella, and come to think of it I never really thought about how much the plot of BARBARELLA resembles a porno with the sex scenes cut out. Oh well. Coulda woulda shoulda.

Basically the story is about her going around meeting the different Wonderland characters, but don’t worry, she doesn’t screw all of them. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum for example are depicted as a man and woman wearing beanies and no pants, they take care of each other. Humpty Dumpty (played by screenwriter Bude Searle) gets his boner back thanks to Alice’s help, but her technique is offscreen and then it looks like he just has a dildo attached to his costume. She doesn’t have to actually do an eggman. That’s why she could still be on CHiPs and NIGHT COURT.

The weirdest thing about the movie is that it seems to be trying harder than you’d expect. The sets and costumes are cheap, and for some reason the rabbit’s ears attach to the side of his face. But it’s got all these musical numbers and dance sequences and they obviously have real dancers and choreographers, even if sometimes they end up getting naked and licking each other. There’s more time and emphasis spent on the musical numbers than the sex scenes, though. And it seems kind of serious about Alice going on this journey, it’s only the wacky music and title cards with sex puns that make it seem like it’s trying to be funny. Also there’s a joke where a character says they used to have a towel but a hotel stole it from them. There’s a character who looks kind of like Bruce Vilanch, but I don’t think he was a writer on this one.

I don’t remember a Cheshire Cat or a Caterpillar. Some Carroll purists may be disappointed by these liberties, as well as the part where Tweedle Dum pulls out of Tweedle Dee and cums all over her butt. (I could’ve said “some may be disappointed by these omissions, as well as several emissions,” but this is a pretty classy websight in my opinion so I don’t write that kind of garbage.) I personally was disappointed that the credit for “nude underwater volleyball sequence” turned out to be a joke.

To be honest ALICE IN WONDERLAND is not all that entertaining. It’s kind of funny that it exists, and there are some okay blowjobs. And it is probly one of the only movies where a girl talks to a bunch of animals and learns that she should stop being so uptight and screw her boyfriend. But there are better porns, better musicals and better versions of this particular story.

By coincidence I also watched the new Tim Burton movie called ALICE IN WONDERLAND. This one is designed more as a RETURN TO OZ type deal, a sequel, where an older Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Wonderland, although she can’t remember being there before. It has the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts and everybody but in more of a fantasy quest type thing where Alice is a chosen one who gets a sword and fights a dragon and shit.

I have some real mixed feelings about this movie. As a visual experience I think it’s unprecedented. Some people claim it’s more of the same from Tim Burton, but that’s not true at all, he’s never made anything half this elaborate. It’s fucking incredible to look at, even ignoring that it’s in 3-D with lots of nice CAPTAIN EO style flying-out-at-the-audience show-off shots. He’s using all that “mo-cap” and what not but in a more artful animatory kind of way. It looks like a very detailed psychedelic painting like you’d see in that “Juxtapoz” magazine they got at Borders.

The Queen of Hearts is Helena Bonham Carter with a head the size of a La-Z Boy, and it looks pretty real. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (strictly Platonic in this version) look like a painting of Pugsley Addams. Crispin Glover plays the Knave of Hearts, whose proportions look very exaggerated but it was a while before I realized they were digitally stretching his limbs. And you got all these little frogs running around wearing clothes, living playing cards that could be stop motion characters, a very real looking Cheshire Cat floating out of the screen into your face, a talking bassett hound who strikes a perfect balance between realism and cartoonish characterization, 100% free of GARFIELD style creepiness.

They also do a good job with the shifting of sizes. You remember Alice drinks potions and eats cookies and it makes her shrink or grow and all that? They do that here too, she changes sizes many times so we see the characters from different perspectives. Sometimes the caterpillar is her peer, sometimes he’s a bug on her shoulder. When she first meets the Tweedles they’re behemoths, later they’re little boys. That’s one aspect where they got the dreamlikeness down just right.

It all looks fucking incredible, I never seen anything like it. It really puts the Whoopi Goldberg version to shame, in my opinion. Unfortunately it’s an amazing visual depiction of a pretty boneheaded script. If it was a straight adaptation of the story people would probly say “been there, done that,” but fuck ‘em, it would be an impressive new visualization of a classic story, like that version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL that I loved and nobody else I know was willing to watch. Instead they decided to make references to all the familiar Wonderland shit (the Mad Hatter is still having a tea party, still asks the same riddle, caterpillar’s still sitting on a mushroom smoking a hookah asking “who are you?”, Queen is still trying to find out who stole her tarts, etc.).

THen they take that half-assed ALICE IN WONDERLAND and cross it with some obvious CHRONICLES OF NARNIA shit. And I say that as someone who has only seen the trailers for NARNIA. This has the same amount of depth as those trailers. And when it gets into this by-the-numbers fight-the-monsters plot it no longer feels like Wonderland. Instead of trying to follow these characters and their insane logic you just watch them run around on a mission to save the kingdom from evil. It loses way too much crazy.

I don’t give a shit that they’re changing the story, but it just doesn’t mesh. THe new shit is not in the spirit of the old shit and doesn’t have any imagination to it. And putting the characters into that type of story takes away what makes them cool in the first place. To me the Cheshire Cat even in the Disney cartoon is a terryifing character without doing anything evil. He’s just unpredictable and hard to read and jesus man stop smiling at me you’re gonna make me shit my pants. In this movie he turns out to be heroic. That fucking ruins it, man!

Same goes for the Mad Hatter. In fact, they’re all facing a grave danger and are working together to save the world or whatever. This can be scientifically proven to be less entertaining than when they were crazy and had no logic or purpose. The story is supposed to be nonsense, right? So how do you shove it into a formula? Mathematically that can’t work.

Here’s an example. Alot of it is based off of that “Jabberwocky” poem. The poem says “Oh, frabjous day,” so they turn that into an important holiday called “Frabjous Day” when a prophecy is gonna go down. They’re literally trying to turn nonsense into sense. But they’re not Jodorowky, they can’t turn shit into gold. It’s just a bad idea.

Also it’s strangely humorless for Tim Burton. Anne Hathaway is kind of funny, though. She plays some kind of queen and she keeps posing her arms into bizarre poses. I’m not sure why.

Have you noticed, they got Sam Worthington in AVATAR and CLASH OF THE TITANS, now this Mia W. in ALICE IN WONDERLAND. For some reason they’re farming out the cast of Greg McLean’s ROGUE to all the 3-D movies. She seems like a good young actress, but unfortunately the character in the movie is pretty bland, I didn’t really feel like following her into the rabbit hole necessarily. She’s almost as old as Kristine DeBell was in the other one, but she looks more like a kid so I think it was a good choice by Walt Disney Pictures not to do it as a porno.

It’s a movie full of cool looking characters but not memorable ones. If I had to pick one that was the best I guess I would go with the Queen of Hearts. They actually added a little vulnerability to her. She still cuts off heads but she’s really self-conscious about her own giant head (wait a minute, I just now I understood that) and very susceptible to people who pretend to care about her. I’ve heard criticisms of Burton casting his lady friend in a movie yet again but I have to ask, who else would be better at this character? I can’t think of too many. Although it would’ve been funny if they cast Helen Mirren.

Glover’s Knave of Hearts is not as memorable but I approve of the scene where Alice is bigger than him so he fondles her head and talks excitedly about liking her size. And you realize he’s a fuckin fetishist just like he was with hair in the C’s A’s pictures.

So unfortunately the movie is pretty boring. Amazing and boring. Jawdropping and thumb twiddling. I almost want to see it again just to try harder to like it. It should be great. But it’s not. Somebody’s gotta figure out how to make Tim Burton hungry again. Or maybe just write him a better script.

A couple of random thoughts to start things off:

1. I know people always complain when you discuss Oscars and have to point out that they are meaningless or whatever. Fair enough. Like anybody doesn’t know that. But I’ve noticed that this year more than usual they have had a positive effect already. The main one is the amount of discussion I have heard about Kathryn Bigelow. As recently as when THE HURT LOCKER came out you could not find anybody outside of nerd clubs who even knew that movie existed. Now it’s one of the most discussed movies and Kathryn Bigelow leans closer to “household name” than to “name only known by movie nerds who like NEAR DARK or POINT BREAK.” I’ve also run into many people who would not have seen HURT LOCKER if not for all this awards talk, and also some of the other nominees that wouldn’t have been nominated without the expanded 10 best picture nominees, mostly A SERIOUS MAN. So that’s good. I myself have to admit I probly wouldn’t have gotten around to seeing CRAZY HEART if Bridges wasn’t up for best actor.

2. I put Kathryn Bigelow up there because I want her to win (and think she will) but if Cameron ends up winning let’s not roll any cars or anything. I personally don’t think AVATAR is up to the standards of earlier in his career, but you have to admit that “best director” is a good way to honor the movie for its technical achievement and daring. It’s easy to look at its ridiculously gigantic success and say that it was an obvious crowdplease, but that dude was working on that movie for years with sayers saying “nay” on all sides. The tenacity to get that made at that budget, to invent the technology and to at least on a technical level orchestrate it all together is something probly no other director could’ve done. So although I would rather reward a movie that to me has more heart and soul to it I think those would be legitimate reasons to give him the award.

If Jason Reitman got it I would be kind of pissed though.

After the “jump” or whatever it’s called I will present to you a series of posters commemorating previous works of all the best director nominees, arranged in order of preference of who I would want to win.