There are many arbitrary ways to divide filmatists into two groups. Today I’m gonna separate out the ones who have an obvious vision/theme/style/obsession (good or bad) that can be seen throughout most of their works. For example you can look at your Alfred Hitchcock or your David Lynch or your Roger Vadim and you can usually tell who is responsible for this business. I mean even a Michael Bay or a Kevin Smithee, the lowest of the low, has a signature style. Or you can at least see what the dude was going for there.
Then in the other group we have the commercial or “hack” filmatist who goes from one project to the next just looking for something that might be successful, or that seems cinematic, or that might capture that fuckin zeitgeist thing the germans are always so interested in. Some of these guys might even be decent at the directation of films but they just don’t put that strong of a personal stamp on them. For example you got your John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Dracula [1979], Short Circuit, Point of No Return) or your Randal Kleiser (Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Big Top Pee-Wee, Honey I Blew Up the Kid). Occasionally they make a good picture like Saturday Night Fever but you still have no idea what these clowns are trying to do artistic-wise. They’re just doing a job, like plumbing or washing windows or passing out pizza coupons and gum samples on the street corner. They punch the clock and then they go home.
I like Rob Cohen better than I like those individuals but I think he’s in the same category. He even produced three of John Badham’s movies. His best movie was DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY. That one’s about Bruce Lee. But he followed it up with crap like DRAGONHEART and DAYLIGHT. The ONLY thing these three pictures have in common is that they have the letter A in them. And MAYBE the letter D but even that’s being generous.
Now this dude seems to have suddenly hit a stride making commercially successful PG-13 movies with up and coming actors that are widely considered to be surprisingly entertaining at least on an unintentional level. The first in this series was THE SKULLS, and he hopes to continue in that vein with the Vin Diesel bungee-jumping-James-Bond movie XXX and of course THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS PART 2: THE FASTER AND THE FURIOUSER. (more…)
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MACHETE is the story of Machete, a man with alot of machetes. That is why he is named Machete. Danny Trejo (MARKED FOR DEATH, URBAN JUSTICE) stars alongside Steven Seagal, Robert DeNiro, etc.
