Posts Tagged ‘Mel Gibson’

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

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

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

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

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

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »

The Road Warrior

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

(or MAD MAX 2)

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

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

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

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

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 9 Comments »

Payback: Straight Up – The Director’s Cut

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

I don’t know how familiar any of you are with Payback, the 1999 Mel Gibson-starring adaptation of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. That’s the same book that inspired one of the all time canonical works of Badass Cinema, Point Blank.

Well, Mel Gibson is no Lee Marvin and writer/director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) is no John Boorman. But I think Payback is an underrated movie. It’s a good balance of vicious and funny. It’s got a bit of a ’70s throwback feel and lots of weird touches to make it an indistinct time period. There are rotary phones, and primitive credit card technology that makes fraud more convenient, and the film is washed out with bleach making everything have a pale blue tint to it. You’re not sure when this is supposed to be taking place, which in a weird way reminds me of the experience of reading the books. Most of it reads pretty modern but obviously you are dealing with armed robbers, there is money, communication and security technology that would make some of the stories impossible today. So I sometimes have to check the copyright dates to be sure when this would’ve happened.

Point Blank is the best movie based on those books, but it’s not really faithful to their tone. It’s much more arty, and “Walker” (as Lee Marvin’s Parker character is called) is much more emotional. There’s even a part where he sits on a couch being sad for a long time. They always gotta give Parker too many normal human attachments in the movie adaptations. I think Payback is a little closer to the feel of the book. You side with him, but he always does things that make you think, like James Coburn’s character says, “Man, that’s just mean!”

Let me give you an example of how tough this movie is. Right now the current movie everybody I know is talking about is Grindhouse. In that movie, Freddy Rodriguez plays a guy who is pretty much supposed to be the toughest, most skilled motherfucker on the planet. In Payback, Mel Gibson as “Porter” beats the living shit out of Freddy Rodriguez. He grabs him by the head and tosses him against a wall. Freddy pulls a gun, Porter quickly grabs it out of his hand, punches him in the stomach, nearly makes him puke. Then he turns him around and frisks him. Then he punches him four or five times in the kidneys. Then he rips out his nose ring. Watching the movie back in 1999 I thought “Jesus, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” and watching it again the other day I thought the same thing. (more…)

6 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments »

Apocalypto

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

MEL GIBSON’S APOCALYPTO
by Mel Gibson
not anti-semitic

APOCALYPTO opens with a wild pig being chased through the jungle. Eventually the group of hunters on his ass lure him into a trap that impales him on a set of wooden spikes. Victorious, the hunters step through the leaves and reveal themselves to the camera. They’re Mayan so they’re half naked, covered in ritualistic scars and tattoos, piercings through their noses and chins. We’ve seen guys like this in movies before, they’re called “savages.” I just saw a more fantastical version in the “300″ trailer before this movie. You see these type of guys, they might as well be bloodthirsty aliens, you just can’t relate.

But then they drop down to the ground and start cutting up the meat, whoo-hooing and laughing. And you realize, these are just some dudes. They could almost be high fiving each other. The hero Jaguar Paw (who looks like Jada Pinkett) cuts up the parts and distributes them, and he tricks his friend Blunted (not a pot joke) into eating the balls. (see, that’s why I knew I could call the pig a he in the first paragraph.)

This is a brilliant opening, because Gibson sets up what appear to be authentic ancient Mayans, speaking their real language, but also portrays them as ordinary relatable people. I can’t think of many movies with Mayans in them, but if I could I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t see them joking and laughing too much. They’d be serious, either angry or noble, speaking in mystical broken English. Of course, Gibson ends up overdoing it a little. By the time you’re 15 or 20 minutes in and Blunted is screaming in pain, dunking his dick in a water trough because of an outrageous POLICE ACADEMY style prank, you remember that this was made by a talented man most people agree has lost his mind, and you wonder if he’s ever gonna get on with it. Luckily, the wacky hijinks pretty much disappear, except for one “oh jesus, what were they thinking?” reference to MIDNIGHT COWBOY’s famous “I’m walkin here!” scene. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags:
Posted in Action, Reviews | No Comments »

Lethal Weapon

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

I meant to see APOCALYPTO this week but I was too god damn sick to haul my ass to the theater. So I figured what the hell, it’s December, I’m Vern – might as well revisit LETHAL WEAPON. Haven’t seen that one since the ’80s. One of my buddies swears by it.

Well, it was interesting to watch this movie again, and I had fun, but I can’t say it has aged too well. I know it’s not fair to compare everything to DIE HARD, but LETHAL WEAPON is no DIE HARD. Bruce knew to keep the hair conservative, it will be timeless, no problem. His hair in that movie is so not dated that today, when the LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD teaser debuted online, everybody was pissed that he didn’t have the old hair do.

Not so Mel Gibson’s do in LETHAL WEAPON. That fuckin thing better be in a vault somewhere covered in ten feet of lead. What is it about the fuckin ’80s man, where even a ridiculous hair do can be so toxic as to not be cool years later? I mean, you find some silly flip hair do girls wore in the ’60s, or an afro from the ’70s, hell, the fancy high top fades from the ’90s even fair better than pretty much anything these people were trying to do in the ’80s. You cannot look at Mel Gibson’s lion mane of a mullet and take him seriously. Everything else is fine. He’s still lean like MAD MAX, he looks young but he seems grizzled, like life has tossed him through a few windows. He walks with a swagger, he dangles a cigarette from his mouth, he is completely nuts. But still, the fuckin mullet.

(not that the blonde girl who kills herself at the beginning is any better. What the hell was wrong with us, is what I’m asking.) (more…)

Unlike

Tags: ,
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »

Open letter to Mel Gibson after his drunk driving/Jew hating incident

Tuesday, August 1st, 2006

Dear Mel Gibson,

You fucked up, dude. First you let MAD MAX 4 slide away from our grasp, now this whole “I hate Jews when I’m drunk” business. So here’s what you do now, Mel. There is one and only one way you can have a shot at fixing this: a documentary.

You already took the first step that I was gonna suggest, you are making arrangements to meet with leaders of the Jewish community to be scolded and hopefully learn some things. You will definitely be spending some time at the Holocaust museum, my friend. Probaly less than you deserve. But what I’m telling you is, you’re gonna have to film some of these meetings.

Like it or not, you are in the public eye (see your crazy movie PAPARAZZI for more info). Everybody knows you are a fuckin anti-Semite nutbag now, so if you’re gonna be Mel Gibson the Huge Movie Star again you need to convince us that we can trust you again. That’s why you’re gonna make this documentary about your journey from “crazy drunk guy who hates Jews” to the new, down-with-the-Jews Mel Gibson of the future. (more…)

Unlike

Tags:
Posted in Vern Tells It Like It Is | No Comments »

Payback

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well in late December as I was preparing to face down the ol’ Y2K problem I got to thinking about the old Mad Max and Road Warrior movies I used to like so much, and that got me thinking about Mel Gibson, the young Australian actor who played Mad Max.

Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition.

At the video store I found one Mel Gibson film called Ransom, about a kidnapping. I figured okay this will be good, it’s probaly about a cop named Ransom, I’m thinking most likely John Ransom. Well turns out he’s not John Ransom, Ransom is just the name of the movie and not Mel Gibson. He’s not a cop either, he’s just a rich guy. But his name isn’t Ransom. So I decided to give this one a pass and pickup Payback instead.

Turns out his name is Porter in Payback but at least he’s not some rich guy. He’s not a cop either but come to think of it why the fuck does the star of an action movie have to be a cop anway? I mean nothing against McClane but let’s face it, if you had to pick one occupation of guys you want to hang out with, it’s not going to be a fucking cop, jesus. That’s why I haven’t been watching as much TV lately, I mean if I want to see cops and lawyers I’ll just answer the door. (more…)

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »

Paparazzi

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

This is one of those mysterious movies that suddenly appeared out of nowhere one Friday night, then disappeared again a week later without so much as a puff of smoke. It straddles that blurry line between mainstream studio movie advertised on national television and straight to video thriller nobody’s ever heard of.

I actually saw an ad for it that week and I gotta admit I was a little intrigued. You just saw some dude falling down a fire escape and maybe a car flipping or something, and I thought maybe it was some gritty low budget late ’70s early ’80s style down and dirty revenge thriller. I mean there were no stars in it, it looked like the main character was that sleazeball Tom Sizemore (actually it’s Cole Hauser, some guy who looks kind of like Christian Bale but sounds kind of like Willem Dafoe). The only way they tried to make it sound like a Real Hollywood Movie was to brag that it was produced by Mel Gibson. (the guy from MAD MAX.)

It turns out Mel Gibson is some kind of paranoid freak. I heard something about how he thinks the jews are out to kill jesus, now he thinks the paparazzi are out to put his son in a coma and the only way he can stop them is with a little frontier justice with a wink wink and a nudge nudge from the cops. The cops love Mel Gibson because they agree that they would do anything, ANYTHING to protect their family, and so would he, and also because they enjoyed the LETHAL WEAPONS series of films. This movie presents a very interesting idea for America, home of the moral values: the idea that it would be okay for Mel Gibson to commit a series of murders to avenge a non-fatal car accident.

That’s what I assume this is about anyway because this is an obviously autobiographical work about some dude named Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser, mentioned him earlier I believe) who suddenly becomes a big star in the movie ADRENALINE FORCE and now sleazy photographers take pictures of his son at soccer practice. I mean he’s just a regular guy with a family, just like you or me, only women love him the world over and every day he flosses his god damn teeth with more money than our entire family will see in generations. Other than that though he is a regular guy so we should relate to him. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »

Signs

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

There are bigger fans of M. Night Shymalan than me. He seems a little too nice to me, trying too hard to please everybody. They call him a new Spielberg but if so he’s a new Spielberg who skipped over the young vital years of Spielberg when he made shit like DUEL and JAWS. Still, I really like this young man’s style. He seems to have a couple of trademarks already. He treats supernatural themes very seriously and in a unique style that tricks mainstream audiences into thinking they are not watching a genre picture. He populates his stories with precocious child actors and movie stars who give uncharacteristically quiet performances. His stories have themes of tragedy and loss, and they are much more about character and suspense than about actual action. SIXTH SENSE was about discovering what’s goin on with these ghosts, not running from them or fighting them. And UNBREAKABLE was a super hero movie without a single scene of somebody swingin on a rope or shooting a laser or something.

And I really like what this fella does with the ol’ camera. He knows how to communicate crap visually. None of this “people talking to each other” bullshit. I mean, that’s there too, but it’s not the only thing he knows. All three of these movies (I’m not including that Rosie O’Donnell catholicism thing because I haven’t seen it) take full advantage of the star’s faces, letting the camera linger on them to show their reactions to all this supernatural business. Especially in this movie, most of the fantastic things happen just off screen, and instead of us seeing it we see Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix standing there staring at it.

In SIGNS, the new one about crop circles and trying to make the new CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD TYPE, Mel Gibson plays a former reverend who lost his faith after the death of his wife. And now there is weird alien shit goin on all over the world, and his live-in brother, his two young kids, and other residents of the small town he lives in seem to want him to tell them, from a religious type perspective, that everything’s gonna be okay. Problem is though he doesn’t believe it is. On account of he lost his faith. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | No Comments »