Here’s a weird fuckin movie written and directed by William Peter Blatty, the guy who wrote the novel of THE EXORCIST. I’ve been hearing the title for years so I know it has a cult following, but I think they had trouble selling it because all they could figure was “from the creator of THE EXORCIST” but it’s not like that movie at all. It starts out as a goofy comedy and turns into a sad essay about God, or something. I don’t really understand the meaning of the title, but it has something to do with a protein molecules and the existence of God. It’s mentioned in a dream scene where an astronaut finds a giant crucifix on the moon.
But now I’m making it sound stranger than it actually is. All I can figure to describe it is “ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST meets ROLLING THUNDER.”
The story takes place in an old castle “in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.” Which is funny because I’m pretty sure the Native Americans who lived here first didn’t build castles. And we don’t have Mideival Times restaraunt here so it can’t be that either. Anyway this castle is being used by the military as an experimental mental facility for mentally ill (or possibly faking) Vietnam vets. Neville Brand is an angry drill sergeant type but he pretty much just lets them have the run of the place, going around dressed as pirates and Superman and crap. One guy is busy casting a dog version of Hamlet (which perhaps could be an influence on Ang Lee’s racoon version). Robert Loggia does a blackface routine. One guy has a funny hat. etc.
There’s some funny lines in her but I have to admit I’m not entirely on the movie’s wavelength. This is in the SHOCK CORRIDOR kind of vein where each insane person has some gimmick or is wacky and cute. There’s all kinds of random dialogue like “the man on the moon fucked my sister!” and people do wacky things like read the miranda rights to a boar’s head on the wall or show up at 3 in the morning dressed in beach gear and dump a bucket of wet sand on the colonel’s desk. Sometimes it’s funny but I feel like it’s kind of forced and because so much of the dialogue has no meaning I found myself starting to tune out what people were saying. (read the rest of this shit…)
March 15th, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Boys -
Most people around here know by now that I’m partial to the Steven Seagal pictures. And with The Steven Seagal Blues Band (who I think oughta be called “Steven Seagal and the Hard to Kill”) coming to Seattle in a couple months I probaly oughta be putting my Seagalogy studies into overdrive to prepare. But my New Year’s resolution for 2006 is STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE, and I intend to strive all year long. So I’m not gonna stick with what I know, I’m gonna start trying out new things, becoming a more well rounded individual. With that in mind I recently watched Dolph Lundgren’s directorial debut (Read it here!) as well as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s upcoming May 2nd release SECOND IN COMMAND.
Because of my intense deliberations on Seagal, I’m sorry to say that my Van Damme knowledge is out of date. In fact, the most recent Van Damme picture I’ve managed to watch all the way through was KNOCK OFF. That played in theaters, if that gives you an idea of how long ago we’re talking. So it was interesting to see what Jean-Claude is doing in the DTV medium.
In SECOND IN COMMAND, Van Damme plays the new military attache to the US ambassador in a country called Moldavia or Muldovia or something like that. Let’s just call it Syriana. It’s supposed to be a peaceful country, but he’s literally just off the plane, gets dropped off at the hotel for a quickie with his girlfriend when he hears gunshots in the lobby. I always thought because of DIE HARD’s ingenious detail that Bruce has to fight with no shoes on, it should be tradition for action heroes to get stuck in various stages of undress. This was a perfect setup for Jean-Claude to have to fight communist hardliners while wearing only a hotel bathrobe or towel, but I guess they’re saving that for if there’s ever a SUDDEN DEATH 2. (Which there oughta be.) (read the rest of this shit…)
March 13th, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Since my last review was a Truly Great Movie, I decided this time to write about two mediocre movies from two legends. First we got Bruce in 16 BLOCKS* and then we have Dolph’s directorial debut, THE DEFENDER**.
*includes tangental bonus rant about the upcoming movie FLIGHT 93
**Special thanks to the nice person who reminded me about THE DEFENDER. But I couldn’t find the email so now I forgot who it was.
March 12th, 2006 | No Comments »
It pains me to deliver this news, but Bruce’s new one is not too hot. It’s not terrible, it’s mediocre, which of course is usually worse.
The premise of the movie is that Bruce is a washed up, alcoholic cop who’s been up all night and before he can go home he has to deliver a witness sixteen blocks from the jail to the courthouse. He really looks like he could use a nap, but that never comes up in the movie. It would be cool if there was a suspenseful scene about whether or not he could take a nap without getting shot.
But despite the tiredness, this doesn’t sound like a hard mission. Right away you’re figuring geez, sixteen blocks is all? This is gonna be a short movie. You figure maybe 2 minutes to walk a block (that’s probaly being conservative), plus a couple minutes to get him signed in, it’s not gonna be longer than 40 minutes. You start thinking maybe there should’ve been a discount on the movie tickets. BUT THERE’S A CATCH. He drives him the 16 blocks instead of walking, and the traffic is bad. So it’s alot slower than walking. Also, he stops at the liquor store, so that causes a little delay. And also the witness is gonna bust open a huge police corruption scandal so all the cops are trying to kill him and Bruce’s character Detective Jack Moseley decides to do something right for a change and get this guy to his destination. Remember, he was a cab driver in THE FIFTH ELEMENT and maybe he has a little of that work ethic still in his sense memory. Anyway, because of shootouts and hiding and what not it takes longer than expected and it seems like they end up travelling alot more than 16 blocks overall. (they should probaly tell you in the corner how many blocks they are from the courthouse, kind of like EIGHT BELOW keeps telling you how many days the hero dogs have been alone in the snow.) (read the rest of this shit…)
March 12th, 2006 | 5 Comments »
A film by Dolph Lundgren
As you know, I’m a fan of these movies where an action star decides to take matters into their own hands and just direct the damn thing themselves. Participants include Bruce Lee, Tom Laughlin, Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone and most successfully Clint Eastwood and Takeshi Kitano. THE DEFENDER is the first picture directed by Dolph Lundgren (he has also made a second one, THE MECHANIK).
One thing Dolph already blew before you even watch this one is that generic title. I don’t think this is based on the old video game Defender, so there’s no excuse. It sounds like the american title for a Jet Li movie, and probaly is. On the positive side, he actually is a defender in this movie. He defends stuff. Specifically, he is the head of security for the presidential security adviser. So he’s defending her.
As far as stunt casting goes Dolph gets a few points because in this movie, Jerry Springer plays the president of the United States. That’s not quite as ridiculous as some people might think, actually, if they don’t know that before he was a host of staged talk shows he was the mayor of Cincinatti. But it’s still funny to see, and near the end he does a speech about the meaning of America that could pass for “Jerry’s Final Thought.” Dolph previously co-starred with Montel Williams in THE PEACEKEEPER so this might actually be a Lundgrenics trademark. I would like to see him take on that crazy witch lady Sally Jesse Raphael in one of his future works. Maybe Sally Jesse and Montel are abusing troubled teens at a brainwashing camp out in the desert somewhere, and Dolph has to go undercover as a teen junkie (or as a square dad) in order to bust em out. At some point Sally Jesse would get thrown off a cliff and you’d see her falling Hans Grueber style, and she would cackle all the way down. (read the rest of this shit…)
March 12th, 2006 | 1 Comment »
First Great Movie of 2006 alert: DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY. Seriously, if you haven’t considered seeing this, it’s time to consider. Also I just got interviewed by a Seattle web sight called Seattlest. Because I am the Seattlest guy they could find. I think it’s like BET or Lifetime Television For Women though, you’re allowed to read it even if you’re not from Seattle. Or at least they can’t stop you.
March 9th, 2006 | No Comments »
DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY is the happiest, warmest, most joyful movie I’ve seen in a long god damn time. And not in a stupid way. The problems of the world are not ignored. There’s some light-hearted jokes about race issues, there’s a mention or two of the war, there’s some militant rap lyrics and a brief sermon by Fred Hampton Jr. All things I’m in favor of discussing. But mostly what this movie is is a whole bunch of people coming together to laugh and make beautiful music and have a good time together. In that sense it turns out it is kind of like WATTSTAX, the movie they mentioned as a model when they were filming this. I made fun of my ain’t it cool colleague Quint for writing that the trailer gives off a Wattstax vibe as if he came to that conclusion on his own. But there is a faint whiff of that vibe in the final movie I guess, if you’re really making a close examination of its vibes.
I saw this movie in what I consider a JASON X set up: the same big auditorium where I saw JASON X, mostly empty with only a few people peppered throughout, but sharing their love for the movie across the empty rows. At the end of the movie people clapped, like it was a live performance. I can’t remember the last time I saw that at a regular multiplex showing like this. (read the rest of this shit…)
March 9th, 2006 | No Comments »
CRASH? Are you fucking kidding me? Did I really just see that? Some post oscar thoughts.
March 6th, 2006 | No Comments »
This column used to be about movies, not Bush, so what the hell. I’ll do an oscar column. If you don’t give a shit about the oscars no problem, go read something else by me, such as my book. thanks.
I like to watch the oscars but I got a sixth sense for not being able to guess what’s gonna win. Every once in a while it fucks up on me and I guess one of the dark horses. I knew Polanski was gonna win for THE PIANIST, to name the one example. But for the most part, I am not an individual to be betting on any oscar pools. This year, I really thought BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was a lock. My feeling was, this is not only widely acclaimed and award winning, its also a great movie that everybody seems to like. I can’t tell you how many people I know who were just like me, surprised how much they liked a movie about gay shepherds. It’s just one of those things like ice cream or root beer or something. Who likes movies but doesn’t like BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN?
People tried to turn it into a gay thing, like “oh, Hollywood is trying to prove they’re enlightened so they’ll vote for a gay movie.” But I don’t think that’s even it. It’s just a good movie. And I should point out, Larry McMurtry wrote this movie. The guy wore jeans and cowboy boots to the Oscars. He wrote LONESOME DOVE. He doesn’t have a computer and still writes on a typewriter. If this guy is okay with the gays then maybe it’s time to figure this type of tolerance is normal and not something you need to brag about in 2006. BROKEBACK deserved it not because we gotta prove a point about a shepherd’s right to love another shepherd, but because it’s a real good movie.
I mean if it was up to me it woulda been A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, but that wasn’t nominated. And of course alot of people didn’t like KING KONG as much as I did. But this is the first time in my life when I’d seen all the best picture nominees when they announced them, so I can truly say it’s a good lineup. You got BROKEBACK. You got CAPOTE, which was another one that surprised me. It was real creepy and tense and managed to paint Capote (or CUH-POE-TAY as both me and Jack Nicholson pronounce it) as a complete scumbag without making you hate him. Even Gore Vidal, who despised the real Capoté, said it was a pretty good movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
March 6th, 2006 | No Comments »
Gotta leave town for a couple days so I’ll leave you with an un-proofread (even by my standards) column. By popular demand, the angry political rant is back. It’s hard to keep up with what’s going on in the world so I have combined Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face, the domestic spying scandal and the port security scandal all into one satisfying pile of words.
February 26th, 2006 | 5 Comments »
