I guess I should mention it’s a G-rated documentary about cave paintings directed by that weirdo Werner Herzog. So alot of it is just the camera slowly panning back and forth across the same cave wall while squeaky violins and creepy chants lull you into a trance. In 3D!

As much as I loved BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS and as many good things I’ve heard about them I haven’t rushed out to see Herzog’s previous documentaries. But this really is released in 3D and has been playing for weeks at the Regal multiplex downtown. I had to support that. I don’t know if it’s playing in your town or not but I was surprised that it was still playing here when I went to see TRANSFORMERS 3. I might have to see it again to restore my karmic balance.

The subject is a cave in France, discovered by three explorers in 1994. A landslide sealed the entrance and freakishly preserved the oldest known cave paintings in the world, a bunch of fresh-looking drawings of animals like horses, lions and fighting rhinos. The crazy thing is these are great drawings, elegant lines that beautifully capture their subjects. You gotta wonder – how did these cave painters get that good? Before the landslide was the area littered with practice drawings that have been lost to time? Or was this an ancient person (or persons) just born with an incredible artistic gift? And if so how long has this sort of thing been going on? Back in the neanderthal days were there hairy motherfuckers born with the artistic soul of a Michelangelo or a Beethoven or a Michael Jackson? And did they find some way to express it before they got disemboweled by saber-toothed tigers?

How rare or appreciated were these particular paintings back in their day? Was this cave more like a museum, or an abandoned building covered in graffiti? Did we get lucky and the cave that got preserved happened to be one of the best, or were there tons of them as good as this?

Herzog narrates in his weird Peter Lorre-ish voice. He explains the discovery of the cave, who’s allowed to go in and how they’re studying it. Archaeologists tell us what they believe happened in the cave, what the area was like at the time, demonstrate how we believe their hunting weapons worked. Standard historical stuff, but this is Herzog, so he also goes off on some weird notions and tangents. And you will too during all that slow panning across horses and lions as the soundtrack haunts you with its avant garde music, whispers and heartbeats.

For example I started wondering about why all the paintings just show animals. Wouldn’t it be great if we had first-hand testimony of what people looked like back then? Was it taboo to draw humans? Or maybe this/these artist(s) only liked to draw animals, like a girl that only draws Hello Kitty. There actually is one place in the cave that they say depicts a human, but nobody ever saw it until Herzog extended a camera out on a pole to where it could film it. I couldn’t make out the human, but Herzog compares it to some of those old wide-hipped fertility statues you see some time. And he compares it to a BAYWATCH body type, but I don’t see it. Those are some big ladies, and it makes me wonder: does that mean that’s humanity’s natural shape? Is that what we’re actually supposed to look like, but we’ve molded ourselves unnaturally to where smaller is considered healthier? Or is that just evolution, and therefore natural?

How were the ladies getting that big back then, anyway? How much success were the hunters having? I guess maybe there were animals crawling all over the place for this painter to use as reference, maybe it was Meat Lovers Pizza every day. On the other hand why did he bother to paint them if everybody was kicking them out of the way everywhere they went? It would make sense if they were kinda hard to find and that’s why he wanted to share what they looked like.

There’s also a part of the cave that’s just a bunch of dots made out of hand prints. It’s abstract art! So that kinda proves that it’s not just some bullshit made up in the last century, there is actually a long tradition of non-representative art. Like, real fuckin long.

That would be crazy if there was all these antelopes and lions and then in one spot they just got a picture of a bowl of fruit. Or a butt.

There’s more to the cave than just paintings, by the way. There are animal bones, bear scratches, a skull set up almost like an altar. There’s a whole history in there, shit going down over thousands of years. People and bears trading off living in the same cave. I hope the bears appreciated the art in there. There are all kinds of stalactites that formed long after the paintings were made, they look like dripped wax to me. Beautiful.

This would be good in regular D, but I thought it was a good use of the 3D technology. It shows you how the artists used the curves of the walls. Like James Cameron’s GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS, where 3D Imax put you inside a tiny submersible with Bill Paxton, this makes you feel the claustrophobia of cramming into a narrow space with a crew and a bunch of camera equipment. And most of all it just adds that extra sense of being there in this sacred spot to receive a message of expression from a dude 32,000 years ago. I guarantee you this is the most exposure this artist ever got. Appreciated more after his death, like Van Gogh or Brandon Lee.

It does point to some limitations of 3D, though. There’s one scene where they’re walking to the cave, shot with a handheld camera, and that gave me the ol’ Blair Witch motion sickness some people complain about. I don’t usually get that. I can only imagine what those CRANK dudes plan to put us through with their 3D GHOST RIDER sequel. Somebody’s gonna get a detached retina I bet.

I’m not one of these people (James Cameron, one or two others) who thinks everything will be or should be in 3D. But I hope people continue to use it for interesting things. Hell, I’d even say this is an example of using it for important things. This cave was an awe-inspiring discovery, and it’s already growing mold from the people and air getting in there. It won’t stay preserved forever. They’ve made laser measurements of it, I’m sure they’ve heavily photographed it, but bringing in 3D cameras is a good idea too. Shit, I’m down with smellovision. I want to know what it smells like in there. Unless it smells like cave bears.

If somebody finds an even older cave, or remnants of Atlantis, if they find Al Capone’s other more often used vault, or it turns out there’s a secret porn room in one of the pyramids, or if they land on Mars, I vote Herzog gets first dibs on 3D documentation. We owe it to future generations, and to prehistoric man.

What exactly is THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS? It’s not a sequel, not exactly a remake to BAD LIEUTENANT. Werner Herzog, who directed this new one, claims he hasn’t seen BAD LIEUTENANT. Ferrara claimed he was gonna stop this one from being made. (In my opinion he failed.) This isn’t about the same character and I didn’t notice any mention of the original screenplay in the credits. But it does have a little bit of a BAD LIEUTENANT vibe, and that’s all I can ask.

Actually I hope you guys haven’t seen any of these, but there are some DTV sequels to WILD THINGS and CRUEL INTENTIONS and THE SKULLS that aren’t exactly sequels, they basically just do a similar plot to the original, rehash some of the famous scenes, but with different characters. At first TBL:POCNO seems like they only took the idea of a corrupt, crack smoking cop trying to solve a case and used the title. But then he also starts getting into debt from betting on sports, same as in the original, and there’s even a scene that’s the (tamer) equivalent to the infamous scene where Harvey Keitel pulls over the two teenage girls and has them make faces and show him their asses while he jerks off and talks dirty to them. People are talking this BAD LIEUTENANT up for being weird, but that’s just for a movie starring Nicolas Cage, it’s really not as extreme as the original. It’s a funnier and more mainstream-palatable take on the crack smoking, gambling, cheating, murdering, lovable bastard cop genre.

Before we move on I want to say a few things about the title. I believe PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS can and will be the new funny subtitle to add to everything, finally replacing the tired “ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.” I had been trying to get people to switch to “FAREWELL TO THE FLESH” as an all-purpose fake sequel subtitle, but that’s never gonna catch on. So look how well POCNO works for any movie title:

COMMANDO: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
AVATAR: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
KING OF NEW YORK: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
BAD SANTA: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
A CHRISTMAS CAROL: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
GARFIELD: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

I also think it’s interesting to note that the title screen calls it THE BAD LIEUTENANT. There’s a THE in it. I think we finally found the missing THE from THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. Part 4 of that series was just FAST AND FURIOUS, because the first THE went to THE FINAL DESTINATION and the second one to THE BAD LIEUTENANT.

Herzog’s THE BAD LIEUTENANT PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS dumps the Catholic themes of Ferrara’s, so unfortunately Nic Cage never hallucinates Jesus and calls him a rat fucker. Instead of a nun getting raped it’s a Senagalese family getting massacred. He gets high about the same amount as Keitel, but never waddles around naked or does that weird Chewbacca cry. Instead he summons his super power, which I usually consider an enjoyable type of overacting, but I read that Nic Cage didn’t like being called “over-the-top” in this movie. So instead I will call it mega-acting. He’s not just firing off on all cylinders all the way through though, he’s like a mess of a guy barely holding it together and then a few times when he smokes crack he goes into the Castor Troy/howditgetburned mega-acting mode. It’s like Popeye eating spinach or Pac-Man eating one of those bigger dots that means for a short period of time he has the power to digest the souls of the dead, except for their eyes.

One thing that’s great about Cage playing this role is that you kind of feel like you’re supposed to root for him. There’s one scene, not a real important one or anything, where he flips out on a pharmacist because she’s taking a personal call and he’s been waiting forever for his prescription. It’s kind of a FALLING DOWN type situation, everybody hates poor service and phone etiquette, so you get a satisfied laugh from this nut getting so fed up that he pulls out his gun and jumps behind the counter to get his Vicodin, leaves his co-pay plus tip and tells the security guard “Get the fuck out of my way!” before leaving triumphantly. Ha ha, wish fulfillment, right? We can all relate to wanting to do something like that, or some of these other things he does, like when he takes crack hits out of a teenage girl’s mouth and forces her boyfriend to watch at gunpoint while he fucks her in the parking lot.

(After that scene a guy in my audience said matter of factly, “He’s out of control.”)

That’s just the beginning of the joyfully unhinged mayhem that happen in this movie. I would have fun listing all of them, but I’m not gonna because I think most of you should just take my word for it and see for yourself. That guy in the theater who might’ve expected a normal Nic Cage movie like NATIONAL TREASURE was right, things are out of control and it’s fun to not know where the line will be drawn. But I want to be clear that it’s not just a bunch of random weirdness. It has a definite plot and structure to it. I like the original BAD LIEUTENANT but I gotta admit it’s a chore to get through, and it took me two times to enjoy it. This is different. This one’s a fun time at the movies.

To me it works brilliantly as a subversion of cop movies. Since DIRTY HARRY and WALKING TALL we’ve seen approximately three hundred and six thousand four hundred and thirty two movies where a cop goes over the line and breaks the rules in order to bust the bad guys. Here is a guy who does that while also stealing drugs from his hooker girlfriend’s clients, threatening old ladies and babies, etc. In fact, he’s so functional while high that he comes up with a master plan to play everybody against each other, and at one point it works so well that even he seems shocked.

Cage himself seems to be enacting some master plan to fuck with our minds, because this is not the first time he’s tried this crazy formula. It’s Nic Cage and Millennium Films (whose movies are mostly DTV, including many with Seagal, Van Damme and Snipes) taking the title of an arty cult movie and giving it to a somewhat respected auteur who you wouldn’t expect to do a movie like this to do a supposed remake that has very little to do with the original. And the funny thing is everybody made fun of him about THE WICKER MAN but he didn’t give a good god damn, he felt confident in using the formula again. What if he was getting at something there that nobody picked up on? I did feel like there were some things going on in that script that people didn’t give it credit for, but it wasn’t as good as this. I’m gonna have to revisit that one. Anyway if he wants to make it a trilogy maybe he could let Abel Ferrara get revenge and remake AGUIRRE or something.

I read in a recent Entertainment Weekly article that Nicolas Cage outbid Leonardo Dicaprio for a dinosaur skull. I wonder what you do with a dinosaur skull? Just mount it on the wall? Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.

There are many good character actors showing up for little parts, including a sleazy Val Kilmer, a  really memorable Shea Whigham, Xzibit in a really nice suit, Jennifer Coolidge (who I didn’t recognize playing a serious role), and a tight-bodied Fairuza Balk in her underwear making sexual advances at the lieutenant and he has a big bulge in his pants but he’s too high to be interested. The biggest surprise for me was Eva Mendes is actually pretty good as his junkie hooker girlfriend. I always wonder how she even gets in movies, but here she’s not bad. And I thought it was really funny to have the same couple from the inexcusably terrible GHOST RIDER reteaming for something like this.

I love THE BAD LIEUTENANT PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, and it gives me a new respect for Nicolas Cage. It takes alot to make up for GHOST RIDER, NATIONAL TREASURE and all that shit, but this and KNOWING might do it. I know there are some gossipy stories now about Cage being in debt, but I hope that won’t stop him from aiming his mega-acting powers in the direction of more enjoyably one-of-a-kind movies like this. And I hope he doesn’t have to sell the dinosaur skull to DiCaprio, because he’s earned it.

* * *

If you haven’t seen the movie yet consider that the end of the review, because I want to discuss THE ENDING: PORT OF CALL SPOILERS

This is for my buddy code name Mr. Armageddon who didn’t hate the movie but said it didn’t have a point or meaning. I disagree. For the most part it’s just a cracking crime tale, full of dark humor, inappropriate behavior and occasional spots of violence. Somehow you want this asshole to stumble out the other side alive, but he keeps getting himself in deeper trouble with a wide variety of enemies.

That would be enough for me to enjoy it, but the way it’s bookended with the flooded jail cell opening and the aquarium ending turns it into something of a zen koan. It’s hard to believe all of his addiction happened after the opening, but I think that’s what you’re supposed to assume – he started using Vicodin because of the back injury and it just got out of control from there.

Well, he’s in this sea of corruption, he’s encouraged and tempted to let the prisoner die. But he saves his life instead. A selfless act that ruins his expensive underwear (and pants and shirt I’m assuming, although this is not mentioned). Because of that act he gets the injury, and the addiction, and turns into a bad lieutenant. In the end he somehow manages to pass himself off as a hero and becomes a bad captain and a family man, but he can’t stop being a junkie.

But in the end we learn that what he did really made a difference, because the man he saved did turn his life around. And he wants to return the favor. He sees that the captain is at rock bottom and he seems to basically become his sponsor, be there for him and talk to him. And this should be a redemptive moment for the captain. He was rewarded greatly for all the horrible things he did, and I think that weighs heavily on him. Now finally the one good thing he did a long time ago has come back to him. He actually deserves this help. He really can be a force for good, for positive change in the world.

And he sits there and thinks about it but he comes to the conclusion that he regrets doing it, because it ruined his underwear.

(or that’s what he says anyway. It’s up to you whether he’s serious or not. And I don’t think his new friend knows what to make of it either)

[ratings]

In my opinion MISTER LONELY writer/director Harmony Korine is a weird dude. He wrote KIDS for Larry Clark when he was 19, became a director with GUMMO and later did JULIEN DONKEY BOY. His movies are freak shows of improvisation, arty photography and the complete rejection of any mainstream idea of what a movie is supposed to be. As much as I have tried to push the idea of him directing a mainstream movie like a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE it doesn’t seem to be something he’s interested in. Instead he hangs out with Werner Herzog, gets involved in that whole Dogme 95 deal, and makes weird books with titles like A Crack Up At the Race Riots. He’s also known for his bizarre interviews like on Letterman when he was younger or with a fan websight who he instructed to meet him in the projects, then spoke to them by phone for a while, then showed up and made them listen to Beyonce on a laptop while he sat in a lawnchair petting his dog.

So MISTER LONELY is the kind of movie a guy like that would make as he’s growing up slightly. It’s weird for weirdness sake, but kind of charming, kind of funny, kind of arty, very ridiculous. It has some dark and sad moments but not the same kind of punk attitude or shock value as the younger Korine. It’s just as strange but maybe more sincere. It’s kind of a sweet surrealist fairy tale with some beautiful images and colors as you can tell by these pictures. Also a part where Michael Jackson rides a mini-bike in slow motion with a monkey doll tied to the back bouncing up in the air like it’s flying.

Diego Luna plays Michael, based on the later straight-haired era, sometimes with mouth mask, always with fancy coats and armbands. Like the real Michael his character is bashful and childlike, but he speaks Spanish and has a human nose. The other impersonators in the castle include Abe Lincoln, the Pope (John Paul II I believe), Queen Elizabeth (who I didn’t recognize as Anita Pallenberg, the Black Queen from BARBARELLA), Madonna, and for some reason Little Red Riding Hood. The Pope says the prayers (sometimes from on top of the castle), but is also a drunk and always encourages everybody to drink. President Lincoln is kind of the leader. The Three Stooges do the dirty jobs, like shooting the sheep when they get infected. Marilyn is married to a Charlie Chaplin, who’s kind of a dick and looks more like Robert Davi than Chaplin. When they fight Marilyn tells him that sometimes she thinks he looks more like Hitler. They have a daughter, “she lives as Shirley Temple.”

One weird thing: there is no Elvis. And no Bruce Lee. I would’ve liked if they tracked down Bruce Li to make an appearance. There’s no overlap either, not two Marilyns or anything. It kind of seems like they’re trying to collect one of everyone. When Marilyn tries to talk him into coming to the commune she says, “We need a Michael.” When she floats up in the boat she yells, “I found a Michael!”

If this sounds unbearable to you it probaly would be. But I’m the type of guy who enjoys seeing Abe Lincoln, the Three Stooges and Michael Jackson wearing yellow boots standing out in a field trying to figure out what to do about their sick sheep. It reminds me a little bit of other movies about outcasts forming tight-knit communities, but only in small ways. This is the kind of movie that’s not so much about telling a story as about setting up scenes around loose ideas and seeing what happens. For example, what happens when Michael moves out of an apartment (he says goodbye to the room and makes a speech about how good its been to him and how he will never forget it and hope it always remembers him). And what happens when a kid dressed as Buckwheat rides a Shetlund pony? (He talks lustily about naked women and chickens.)

Believe it or not, this also happens to have the most skydiving footage I’ve seen in a movie since POINT BREAK. I didn’t expect that going in. There’s a whole subplot (connected only in its symbolism) about Werner Herzog as a priest who flies a small plane to drop food to an impoverished village. One of his nuns falls out of the back and prays so hard she survives. So all the other nuns jump out of planes to prove their faith, and this leads to many nuns skydiving, one of them while riding a BMX bike. (I still don’t understand why you bring a bike with you skydiving. Just not that useful and probaly not good for the bike.)

Unfortunately Herzog doesn’t skydive, and he’s not as funny as he was in JULIEN DONKEY BOY. But he does have an incredible scene where he talks to a man holding flowers who wants to borrow his plane. He talks to him about why his wife left and gives him spiritual advice. The guy is obviously just some local they ran into, and his improvising seems amazingly natural. Then tears come out of his eyes and you realize this conversation is real. He might even think Herzog is a real priest.

I gotta admit, I am a Michael Jackson fan, and the persona of Michael Jackson is inherently interesting to me. I’ve written about my dream of a Julie Taymor directed Michael Jackson musical. I would also like to see a Jackson biography where he plays himself, and it goes over his whole life and career but continues into the future a thousand years like A.I. For the last half hour of the movie he lives in a tower with E.T. watching over a post-apocalyptic wasteland through a giant telescope and lowers down specially trained giraffes to help people who are in trouble. Or something like that – the story needs work. The point is I’m gonna be a sucker for a movie about a Michael Jackson impersonator, but I was a little concerned because obviously they didn’t get the rights to use the music. I had heard he uses other music, but mostly he just does the moves without music. So every once in a while it cuts to him standing on some rocks surrounded by water, spinning on his toes and throwing a finger up, making the different Captain EO sound effects. And he does a good job.

A few times a song title comes across the screen, like “Man In the Mirror” or “Thriller.” These titles seem to fit thematically and act as chapter titles, but I kind of wonder if they could also be hints to turn on those songs at those points. I wonder if it would match up at all? I had to return it to the video store before I got a chance to test out my theory.

Of course this is in no way a realistic look at the lives of impersonators, but it does make you think about the concept a little bit. CONFESSIONS OF A SUPER HERO does a good job of showing the kind of obsession, desperation and social awkwardness that can lead you to dress up as Superman, but is it even weirder when you’re dressing as an actual person? Obviously you gotta really like Michael Jackson if your’e gonna spend your life dressing up as him. Otherwise it’s gonna be a problem paying attention to the details of what he wears and how he moves. It takes a sort of idol worship but also it’s kind of belittling to yourself, saying that you would rather live in imitation of somebody else than be your own person. The character of Michael in this movie is not happy with himself, doesn’t like to see himself in the mirror, and hides behind the image of Michael Jackson. And of course he doesn’t seem to realize that Michael himself doesn’t like to see himself in the mirror and has been hiding behind the face that is now considered Michael.

I really liked this movie, which is good because I don’t think we’re gonna be seeing CAPTAIN EO 2 any time soon. This’ll have to hold me over for a while. By the way, if anybody wants to be my benefactor and get me the Michael Jackson auction catalog I’m not gonna stop you. He had a life-sized statue of himself wearing a Batman costume.

[ratings]