Okay, you were right, STREETS OF FIRE is pretty cool. I was a little skeptical because the poster calls it “A Rock & Roll Fable,” which is not really one of my top kinds of fables. I’m more of a free jazz fable type of guy, I like SPACE IS THE PLACE. Also I got some prejudices against the ’80s rock and the retro ’50s style fetishes. Luckily the singer gets kidnapped for most of the movie, so the long onstage performances are only at the beginning and end. It’s not a rock musical or anything.

The movie is by Mr. Walter Hill, and I’m pretty sure nobody else would be able to make a movie like this, or would think of it, or would want to. (except our friend Albert Pyun, who I guess is doing some kind of an unofficial sequel). Willem Dafoe plays Raven, who seems like his character from THE LOVELESS sucked into another dimension where he gets power mad because can lead a huge biker club that gets away with running around taking shit like a bunch of vikings. I think somebody said this movie takes place in the same world as THE WARRIORS but three decades earlier. Or wait, maybe it was this is what’s going on on earth during ALIEN. No, I think it was the WARRIORS thing. Leather-jacket-wearing-gangs, corrupt cops and rock-n-roll groups seem to rule the city. Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) and the Attackers (some guy dressed like David Bowie, others) are performing when Raven’s boys storm in and kidnap Ellen.

So Ellen’s ex-boyfriend Tom Cody (Michael Paré), freshly returned from “The War,” comes into town and offers his asskicking services to her new boyfriend, record mogul Billy Fish (Rick Moranis). You know this is a hard boiled world when even Rick Moranis tries to talk tough all the time. But he agrees to pay Cody and goes along on the mission, as does McCoy (Amy Madigan), a female war vet Cody met at a bar. She says he’s not her type, if you know what she means. If you don’t know what she means let’s just say that if she had to be in a gang from THE WARRIORS I bet she’d choose The Lizzies. Or if she was in space she’d hang out with Vasquez.

So it starts to seem a little bit like THE WIZARD OF OZ, they keep picking up new friends along the road. When they need new wheels they hijack a bus from The Sorels, a struggling vocal group made up of Stoney Jackson, Grand L. Bush, Robert Townsend and Mykelti Williamson. In probly the best scene of the movie the Sorels sing a doo wop song for everybody in a break from battling. I think it’s the only time McCoy laughs.

The Sorels are really understanding about the hijacking, so I don’t think it’s cool what position they get put in. When they get stopped at a roadblock and have to pay off the cops to get through McCoy pretends to be the driver for the Sorels, mentioning the name of the group a couple times. Then Cody pulls guns on the cops, they make them lay down in the street and they blow up their patrol cars. Do you remember how much trouble Ice-T got in just for singing “Cop Killer”? I don’t think it’s fair for the poor Sorels, especially in this ’50s-ish era, to get mixed up in that.

Then, as if that’s not bad enough, Cody immediately announces that they gotta ditch the bus. I was relieved at the end when the Sorels seemed to benefit from their connection to Ellen (commercially if not artistically – they end up supposedly singing the recognizable ’80s pop song “I Can Dream About You” [not a cover, I guess it comes from this movie].) But it was still shitty to do all that to random doo-woppers.

Like THE WARRIORS it’s the atmosphere and the tone that really make the movie. Without being futuristic this city almost reminds me of BLADE RUNNER, it’s so moody and oppressive. The streets really do got alot of fire on them, not just the patrol cars but also he takes pot-shots at motorcycles causing them to explode, and there seems to just be random burning debris on the sides of various roads, the aftermath of some earlier mayhem our protagonists had nothing to do with. And there are great shots of big neon signs reflecting on wet concrete.

Maybe the movie is best summed up by what happens between Tom Cody and Ellen Aim. It’s obvious that he still has a thing for her, but they act like they hate each other. In fact, she tells him she hates him for taking money to rescue her. If he really loved her it would be pro bono mercenary work, obviously. But he actually doesn’t take the money, only collects McCoy’s share. So they approach each other in the rain and without saying anything to each other they kiss passionately like the cover of a romance novel and the next thing you know they’re in a bed somewhere fucking Rock & Roll Fable style. It’s so pulpy and macho and I like how everybody’s always running their mouths off but these two never talk openly about their animal magnetism or whatever it is. It doesn’t really need to be said that she’s gonna leave Rick Moranis for this tough guy who left her behind before. Or at least she’s gonna try.

I’m sure in this post-war period there were alot of guys like Tom Cody coming back kind of messed up, not able to talk about their feelings, and not able to work things out with their soulmates. So what you get is you end up with somebody like Ellen Aim probly marrying somebody like Billy Fish and dreaming of somebody like Tom Cody and they’re in this empty marriage and then they have kids and the family breaks apart because they’re not really in love and they’re addicted to rock ‘n roll so the kids are neglected and grow up running around in the streets playing in the fiery debris. And when those kids get older do you think they’re gonna go out and get an education and get a respectable job, or do you think they’re gonna join the Baseball Furies?

Wait a minute, wasn’t Billy Fish that serial killer that put pins in his balls? If so there is more going on in this thing than I realized while watching it. Also, if this is a fable then where are the talking animals and the moral at the end? And why didn’t somebody try to go up into space to help Ripley? I guess I still got a few questions about this one, hopefully Pyun will clear some of these up in his movie.

Maybe you can help me out: the “gamepod” controllers are little lumps of flesh, like mutated breasts. They plug a tentacle into a “bioport” on your spine, but if yours is installed wrong (which it turns out can happen if you let Willem Dafoe install yours at the gas station) it can overload your game pod and it will have to be repaired, which is a surgical procedure. The pods are actually genetically modified amphibians. There are alot of those little guys around, two-headed mutant lizards that look like praying mantises, or little blobs that crawl into the hole on your back and disappear inside you. It’s hard to figure out if you’re playing or if shit is just weird, and they try to trick you with video games within video games and fake “waking up from the game” sequences. The game responds to your thoughts but also gives you the urges of a game character in order to advance the plot, so you better distinguish which is which because you end up fucking or killing and sometimes you’re wrong and you weren’t supposed to do that. And you want to be sure you’re in the game because outside of the game those things have more consequences, in my opinion. And Jude Law as Ted Pikul notices that reality and game feel so close to each other that it’s kind of fucked up to want to kill somebody even if it is just a game.

Basically, this is the movie they were trying to make with SUPER MARIO BROTHERS but they didn’t have the technology to pull it off then.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Allegra Geller, mother of Sarah Michelle Geller and a famous visionary game designer who survives an assassination attempt from a “realist” who sneaks into a focus group with a gun made of lizard bones and gristle that fires human teeth. (This is based on something that happened to the creator of Dig-Dug, if I remember right.)

Then she runs off with Pikul, an assistant PR guy who she mistakes for a bodyguard, introduces this “newbie” or “newber” I believe they’re called to her video game and they have various thrilling reality-bending encounters and what not. You know, crazy Cronbergian shit. NAKED LUNCH for people who are more into first person shooters than shooting up.

As a thriller it’s not real strong. It’s hard not to assume from the beginning that everything is a trick, so the various twists and turns are fun but never actually a shock. The weird Cronenberg New Flesh shit is some of the best ever, though. Everybody is so accepting and matter-of-fact about little living skin lumps used as gadgets. It’s like some fucked up William S. Burroughs version of THE FLINSTONES, except the gamepods never turn to the camera and squawk, “It’s a living.” I love this kind of movie that authentically captures the weirdness of the subconscious. There aren’t too many of them.

There’s a part where Jude Law’s driving and he says, “Oh, it’s my egg phone” and pulls out a little glowing, pulsating rectangularish slab of living tissue. As I’ve said before I’m of Luddite-American heritage, I do not carry a phone or covet an iPhone or any of that shit. But I would consider an eggPhone. I guess it depends what kind of plan you gotta get on. You sign a contract and you literally get a pound of flesh. Anyway this type of weirdo business is constant throughout the movie – bleeding gadgets, tooth guns, mutant meals, all with top of the line effects work. Just very real-looking, detailed animatronics plus one of the more bizarre digital characters in a movie so far.

I think people forget that Cronenberg’s movies were a big part of advancing the art and science of makeup effects. There was that couple of years there where Rick Baker and Rob Bottin did AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, THE HOWLING, THE THING and VIDEODROME. So it’s great to see Cronenberg almost 20 years later working with the new state of the art. The effects on this were overseen by Jim Isaac, who later directed Cronenberg as an actor in JASON X.

(By the way, I wanted to mention that I think it’s funny when people insist on imitating the typography of a movie logo in their reviews, the biggest example of course being when people type the movie “SEVEN” as “SE7EN”. But in the case of this one the characters actually say in the movie that it’s lower case e, capital X, lower case i – s – t – e – n – capital Z. If Morgan Freeman said, “He’s following the seven deadly sins. S – E – the number 7 – E – N” then I would extend the same courtesy.)

(And as long as I’m throwing in random parenthetical comments I got a bonus random parenthetical comment for you. You ever notice how many challenging, maybe flawed or controversial but smart or ambitious sci-fi movies Jude Law is in? ‘Cause there’s this one, GATTACA and A.I. – THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. I don’t think I’d count SKY CAPTAIN and I haven’t seen REPO MEN. But at least he’s got a trilogy here.)

I think this was a good place for Cronenberg to stop with this type of shit and become the David Cronenberg who did A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and EASTERN PROMISES. The New Flesh was starting to smell like Old Flesh and he’d taken it about as far as he could. I mean, what is he really saying with all this in eXistenZ? That our devices become extensions of ourselves. That video games (or movies or TV shows) show us what we ask for, that they open up the darkest dungeons of our minds, and even though we know it’s not real, isn’t it kind of real? Because it’s our real desire, our real fantasy, it’s what we want. We’re some weird fuckin mugwump perverts, whether we admit it or not, and our technology does our filthy bidding. This is all pretty interesting themes, but not at all profound, especially since he had most of that in VIDEODROME. I’m not sure if he knew that, because he said he hadn’t watched VIDEODROME in 15 years when he wrote this. But in many ways it feels like an update and I think he did a good job of making the technology timeless here by making it all organic. He won’t need to do a new one to deal with the eggPad or flesh messaging.

So thank you for your brave service Freaky Chest Vagina Cronenberg, but for now let’s keep you retired unless you get a chance to do something that could do real damage, like a HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL sequel or a remake of FOOTLOOSE or something.

I still liked it though. I’ve heard there are alot of people who hate it, but I’m sure they’re just video game nuts who don’t want us to know the truth.

[ratings]

But it’s not that type of movie at all. The crossbow is strictly for self defense. I was even wrong about who the main character in the movie would be.

The story takes place in something like the world Deacon Frost was trying to create in BLADE. Vampires openly run the world. Society is nocturnal, cars are equipped with UV-blocking windows and video mirrors (since vampires have no reflections). The models on billboards and the anchors on TV have fangs and glimmering eyes. Coffee comes with blood mixed in. Humans are a rare sight – they’ve either gotten turned or been captured to be farmed for blood.

Of course, you see the problem there: dwindling supply. These vampires can live pretty normal (but immortal) lives when they’re drinking blood, but if they don’t get enough (or especially if they drink blood from another vampire) they start to mutate into bat monsters. Ethan Hawke plays a corporate hematologist desperate to find a substitute for blood before the world supply runs dry in about a month. Unfortunately the stuff they’re testing is disastrous. It’s not looking good for the vampires, and therefore the human race, since vampires are about all that’s left of it.

Then one day he literally runs into some fugitive humans and, being a liberal, helps them elude authorities out of the kindness of his no longer beating heart. Next thing you know he’s pulled into a plan to save the human race, not by creating a product to sell to them but by curing vampirism.

I guess in the advertising they had a hard time expressing how smart and unique this was, because you see a bat monster or whatever you’re gonna make assumptions. But what I really like is that this is not at all like the other vampire movies. The vampires are not evil. The humans are not hunting vampires. The main character is not a warrior. He questions the ethics of the vampire establishment, but he lives as upper class with a sleek car and a fancy home and discomfort with his brother who’s in the military and brings him a bottle of pure human blood for his birthday. He’s technically a monster but he reacts to violence the way most people would. When the humans shoot an arrow into his arm he doesn’t hiss at them, he begs for them to please not to shoot at him again.

Probly my favorite scene is when one of the bat monsters storms his house and attacks. Him and his brother fight it, decapitate it, like a regular horror movie. But then the police come and file a report, call it a “home invasion,” and his co-workers ask if he’s doing all right and everything. He finds out who the monster was and feels bad about what happened. In this world they live in it’s the equivalent of if some homeless man broke into their house or something. It’s not supernatural, it’s just sad.

There’s some pretty good action and suspense here and there, but it’s really not an action movie. It’s more of a thriller within this world of vampires. There are many details to this world (for example you see kids smoking or drinking coffee, because they’re actually old) but the movie’s real good about showing us this stuff more than telling. There are some news reports that explain things but mostly the movie is content to be quiet and even subtle. It had won me over already before anything really happened, it was just showing him going to work on the subway and visually establishing what this world is like and what the rules of the vampires are (sun will kill them, they drink blood, they don’t have reflections, etc. No word on garlic or crosses, though).

This movie made me realize that you know what man, I kind of like Ethan Hawke. I mean, in movies. I don’t know the guy, and I wouldn’t have crossed Beatrix Kiddo the way he did according to the gossipologists. But I think he’s kind of an underappreciated actor. I always thought he didn’t get enough credit for being put-upon by Denzel in TRAINING DAY, and he was real good in a more showy role in BROOKLYN’S FINEST. In this one he’s good too, and kind of hilarious in the way he looks going to work wearing a spooky black hat and suit. He looks exactly at the halfway mark between businessman-who-doesn’t-get-enough-sleep and fucking-Nosferatu. You can’t really tell which one is him. Or maybe it’s both.

A buddy of mine who didn’t like DAYBREAKERS called it “dry,” which I’d say is pretty accurate and the last thing I would’ve expected. It’s that rare modern genre movie that’s not constantly trying to poke and prod you to be excited. And although it does have a sense of humor it’s not jokey or smart alecky, it maintains total seriousness. And it ignores what is expected of a vampire movie, it’s not interested in that.

My friend complained about the vampires not having increased strength or hearing or anything, they were too much just like people. But I think he’s missing the point on that because that’s the beauty of it. This is that thing I love so much, the genre movie full of cool shit that also says something about the real world. Obviously there’s a metaphor about our society being stupidly based on resources that aren’t gonna last forever. And there’s the whole deal of this corporation that he works for wanting what’s most profitable instead of what’s best for humanity.

But I think there’s so much more in here. There’s the class tension, the haves turning their backs on the have-nots, with the added convenience of them being literally dehumanized. That could be me getting cattle-prodded by the cops, but it’s not me so I’ll try not to think about that it could be me and enjoy my blood-coffee. There’s the political tension between the brothers, the way they have this family bond but have disagreements about how the world needs to work, and they end up on different sides and it pushes them apart. And it shows how sad and pointless that is.

Hawke’s character gets into some shit for just not believing in something. I guess he could be like a vegetarian in a family of cattle ranchers. His brother tries to pressure him to drink blood, but it’s against his ethics.

Of all the truths this reflects about the world we live in (which is ironic because vampires have no reflections) I think the biggest point is about the way we adjust to the most horrible shit, and it becomes normal. Here is a world where everybody has turned into bloodsuckers, and if you don’t drink enough human blood your ears will grow, and there are monsters fighting in the sewers that might’ve been your neighbors, and everybody’s used to this. If society agrees that it’s okay to be monsters then I guess it’s okay to be monsters. They just don’t think about it, they’re completely oblivious.

So, I don’t know if the world is ready for this movie yet, but I was. It’s just my speed. I’m sure everybody else will catch up eventually.

[ratings]

Don’t get me wrong, she still directed POINT BREAK. But there’s more to her than we paid attention to before. So in honor of that I decided it was time to go back and watch the ones I haven’t seen before.

What I’d really like to see is her student film THE SET-UP, a 20–minute short that supposedly deconstructs action. Word is it’s one long fight scene with a voiceover by two philosophers. The most promising part is that one of the fighters is Gary Busey. But I don’t know where to get that one, so I started with Blue Underground’s release of her first feature, THE LOVELESS (1982). It stars Willem Dafoe (his first starring role) as a nomadic biker some time in the ’50s. Bigelow co-wrote and co-directed with some dude with the redundant name Monty Montgomery, who didn’t direct anything else but produced a bunch of David Lynch projects. And I can see the connection, it makes sense.

Montgomery says on the commentary track that he wished they’d worked on the script longer, and I wish they did too. It doesn’t have much of a story. But man does it have a tone and an atmosphere. It’s a much more realistic, less nostalgic version of the ’50s than what you usually get in movies. It’s very slow and deliberate, with minimalistic dialogue, lots of quiet. But also a great soundtrack of mostly rockabilly. Dafoe, sometimes alone, sometiems with some other bikers he met in prison, is headed for Daytona. He stops in little diners and bars, buys some Thunderbird, changes a woman’s tire, then grabs her boob, picks up a teenage girl and drives her dad’s car.

Early on it does a great job of showing the appeal of the open road, the freedom of perpetually moving forward to new places and people. And all throughout it keeps stopping to peer at people looking at him. Women fear or lust for him, one man says he’s an “animal” but wishes he could switch places with him for a little while, another thinks bikers are all communists and gets impending-heart-attack-livid at the very sight or thought of them.

There are a bunch of really well put together scenes. My favorite is when he’s staying in a hotel with the girl. He’s naked on top of her while race riots play out on TV. Suddenly there’s a noise – the tires being shot out on the car. They jump up to put pants on as the girl’s dad kicks through the door, grabs her and drags her out. She cries that Willem ain’t done nothing to her that ain’t been done to her before. The dad tosses her in the car he came in and drives off.

That over with, Dafoe exhaustedly stumbles to the door, shuts it, and sits down on the bed and forgets about it. I mean, what else is he gonna do? That’s over. Time to move on.

So within individual scenes it’s got the visual storytelling Bigelow later mastered, but as a whole it’s more about a feel than a plot. But for that type of movie it’s very good. I just wish she would’ve gone and made one of those bikers-in-Vietnam movies, she could’ve done a good one. But this is pretty good too though.

I’m not sure if Bigelow has done any other DVD commentary tracks besides this one. It’s interesting because on this she’s very soft spoken and quiet, doesn’t say much. She recorded with Dafoe, who she lets do most of the talking, and their time is split with Montgomery who recorded separately. Because of the type of movies she makes and the fact that she has made it so far in what in my opinion is a male dominated industry (please send feminist of the year award c/o Vern, Seattle, WA, USA) it’s easy to assume she’d be a real assertive ballbuster type, a female Michael Mann or William Friedkin. Nope, she sounds more like a Sofia Coppola type, at least when talking about this movie. Interesting.

I gotta admit, because of that cover and title I always thought this was a gay hustler movie. It’s not, but it’s a real dry arthouse type of independent movie, it’s probly closer to a gay hustler movie than to POINT BREAK. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think it gave a whole lot of competition to E.T. that year. It’s probly the least straightforward of Bigelow’s movies, but it shows obvious talent and potential right out the gate. Then it took her five years to get her next movie going but when she did it was worth the wait ’cause it was NEAR DARK.

[ratings]

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On one hand I don’t want to just dismiss this movie outright, because it’s at least unique and it has a bunch of weird shit that might tap into somebody’s nightmares and really creep them out. On the other hand it’s about Willem Dafoe talking gently to Charlotte Gainsbourg and asking her how she feels about things and then every once in a while he sees a deer in the woods and gets scared and then toward the end she bashes his balls with a block of wood and jerks him off until he bleeds and attaches a mill-stone to his leg and then he scurries around naked in the woods and hides in a little burrow like a wounded badger and tries to beat a crow to death but it gets away.

In my opinion I don’t know WIFN director Lars Von Trier was going for with this fuckin thing, or if there even was something specific that he was going for, or if he even is aware that there are people that watch these things and try to get something out of them. I don’t know if there’s a way to ask him that without it being awkward, but if it ever comes up please see what you can find out.

Divided into chapters (with splattery painterly title cards) it starts with an overblown slow-motion prologue set to opera music (IMDB says “‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from ‘Rinaldo’”) and shot in vivid, high contrast black and white somewhere between the look of SIN CITY and a Calvin Klein Obsession commercial. Dafoe and Gainsbourg (credited as “he” and “she” – oh, for Christ’s sake) are fucking while their toddler climbs out of his crib and falls out the window. Just in case you’re not clear on what exactly is going on here there’s a THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE style insert shot of a penis inserting into a vagina. They climax just as the kid hits the ground and as their laundry finishes.

If you think about it this is the same thing that got the camp counselors into so much trouble in FRIDAY THE 13TH. They were too busy getting it on to watch Jason and that’s why he drowned. At least He and She managed to get their laundry done, they were more productive than the counselors. Still, the result is similar: the mother goes crazy, but unlike Pamela Voorhees this gal doesn’t kill teenagers, and does cut off her own clitoris. I think it’s implied that she was already evil before the baby died, or the baby was evil, or maybe the house is haunted, or nature is evil and real fucked up or what not. It is very possibly related in some way to one of those things, is the vague idea I sort of got out of this one. But I am not very confident in any of those theories to be honest. I am confident there was vaginal penetration, at the very least that was communicated clearly.

The rest of the movie is about their grief and the resentment tragedy brings into their marriage. They go to their vacation home out in some woods, and it’s called Eden. Don’t you see? It’s like the Bible! Isn’t that crazy? You can’t make shit like that up.

Oh, I’m sorry. Reverse that. You can only make shit like that up.

Dafoe is a therapist and decides to treat her as his patient. So alot of the movie is him gently asking her how she feels about different things and to picture herself laying in a field turning green and shit like that. Then most of the rest of it is her complaining about him doing that, and freaking out. Dafoe starts having encounters with various animals, maybe it’s a dream, maybe it’s not, isn’t it so deep that you don’t really know, that just blows your fuckin mind I bet. Also there is talk of chestnuts. Gainsbourg starts remembering things about some book she tried to write a while back, which she describes as a scholarly thesis but appears to actually be some kind of illustrated occult book that she could sell to dungeons and dragons nerds or heavy metal fans. Then she goes out into the woods naked and furiously masturbates (sorry, Serge). There is some implication that the kid either had cloven feet, or mom tried to give him some, or that Dafoe is overly parnoid about the shoes he’s wearing in a photo. Is he the antichrist? Who knows? Who cares? Not me. Not you. Not von Trier.

Hey wait a minute, it’s called ANTICHRIST and it stars the guy from LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. If Dafoe had said no I wonder if he was gonna try to get Jim Caviezel?

Also I wonder what this guy’s deal is with the northwest. DANCER IN THE DARK took place in Washington state, but didn’t even resemble the United States very much. In this one you know from a Seattle address on an envelope that it takes place here. I guess it’s more believable that this would be in Seattle than Bjork and Catherine Deneuve working in a factory here. But still, von Trier. Come up with a new place unless you’re gonna come here and see what it’s actually like.

I’m sure von Trier is probly saying something real fuckin deep about women or the nature of evil or therapy or chestnuts. But for me he failed to get it across or to make it seem interesting enough for me to try to figure it out. I know he’s not new to the arthouse horror game either, but it still kind of felt to me like a guy who thinks he’s above genre thinking he’s making something way better and more meaningful than other horror movies, while actually making a horror movie that’s not scary at all and doesn’t mean a damn thing. I’d hold CANDYMAN up to this any day of the week. Plenty of straight horror movies have way more interesting things to say and still work better as horror because the characters are relatable enough to pull you into their reality. It might not be fair to assume von Trier doesn’t know about those movies, and it’s not like he’s lecturing the audience like fuckin Michael Haneke in FUNNY GAMES. But I just couldn’t shake that feeling that that was approximately the attitude this thing was coming from.

The one thing I’ll remember from this is the spoiler somebody told me about, involving the fox. I’m sure this got huge laughs in theaters where nobody saw it coming, but I saw it on DVD and kept waiting for it to happen. Basically, Dafoe is looking at a fox that’s wounded or dead or something, then suddenly the fox does this:

I mean, is von Trier trying to make us laugh there? It doesn’t seem like it. I remember the talking dog in SUMMER OF SAM got laughs, and that one made sense ’cause everybody knows David Berkowitz claimed he thought a dog gave him orders. But this shit? Come on. It would’ve been hard to pick a cornier phrase and voice. Maybe something about “the doorway to true evil.” Come to think of it this fox could show up at the end of Demon Dave’s CHAOS. That would be great.

I’m not sure if it was worth watching just for the fox, and it was actually funnier how I imagined it when somebody described it to me. He’d only read about it himself, so in his telling the fox had a Peter Lorre voice. And the way I pictured it the fox wasn’t in closeup, he was just pawing through the woods and then he turned to the camera and said it, breaking the fourth wall, a little witty aside, like Ferris Bueller would do.

Aside from the Chaos Reigns Mania sweeping the nation it seems like most of the discussion of ANTICHRIST is of the “people are shocked and outraged!” variety. There are two or three quick nasty parts in the movie, it’s true, but I didn’t find them all that shocking. Maybe I’m desensitized but I think it’s more that the movie just wasn’t working on me so none of it really hurts. You gotta empathize with the characters in order to really feel their pain, but I’d already been groaning and rolling my eyes at all the pretentious ludicrousness for 60-90 minutes by the time the shit went down. It’s kind of the Marilyn Manson factor, by the end of the movie it’s pretty clear Mr. von Trier is trying to be outrageous so unless you’re a real sucker you feel more like patting him on the head and saying “Oh Lars, you little rascal” than gasping in terror.

[ratings]

Well it’s a low down shame we didn’t get to see that but otherwise XXX2 (which ended up being made with Ice Cube instead of Diesel and Lee Tamahori instead of Cohen) is more fun than the first one in almost every way. I’m not saying it’s a good action movie or even a great bad movie, but as an honest individual who tells it like it is I gotta cop to enjoying the fuckin thing.

It’s almost like they read my mind, or at least my review of the first one. They dumped the whole “action sports” angle completely and even make a joke or two about it. They got less of the standard action (skiing, motorcycles) and more of the over-the-top (flying boats, cars, tanks, trains, etc.). They made it more American – no fuckin dreary, snowy european villas, no boring greasy haired euro-trash villains, no shitty German heavy metal music. This one’s in Washington DC and the villain is Willem Dafoe as the secretary of defense. In my review of the first one I pointed out that the NSA has a “break a few eggs to make an omelette” philosophy while Vin Diesel’s was “never leave a man behind.” This time they shifted it so that the good guys are the people within the government who want peace and getting along and saving innocent lives, the bad guys are the warmongers who don’t mind killing people to get their way. Ice Cube’s character is tied to Sam Jackson’s big cheese Augustus Gibbons with an Above-the-Lawian backstory where Dafoe was their general who was burning down civilian homes, and they were the guys who went in and tried to save the civilians.

One positive I didn’t ask for in my review: there’s way more Sam Jackson in this one.

Most importantly though, Ice Cube’s character Darrius Stone is more like a genuine anti-establishment hero, not some corny skateboarding sellout in a fur coat like Vin Deisel’s Xander Cage. “The new XXX” as they actually call him in the movie starts out in a military prison. For a minute I wondered if he was the same character he played in Three Kings. Then I figured out he was sort of like, what if Ice Cube from NWA – never shoulda been let out the penitentiary – what if he went straight outta compton and into the Navy SEALS, an experience that turned him into a Seagalian one-man-army-with-a-conscious. In fact, during the standard Just How Badass Is This Guy scene (you know, the scene where a bunch of authority figures stand around in a room with computer screens talking about the hero’s incredible training and accomplishments), one of the old photos we see is NWA Ice Cube with his jheri curls and Raiders hat.

Cube’s not Doughboy here, he’s in better shape than you’ve ever seen him, and looks semi-believable fighting, jumping, climbing, swimming, driving and rapelling. He has three different inventor/equipper types on his team: his hot ex-girlfriend (high end souped up sports cars), his buddy Xzibit (quit Pimp My Ride to run chop shop, jacks tanks for him) and “College boy” (wacky white dude in sweater vest from the first movie, shows Cube fanciful inventions that he never bothers to use).

The bad guys are apparently killing off NSA agents as preparation for a coup. They use high tech equipment (including the military equivalent of the Phantasm flying disc) to attack Gibbons’s secret underground lair, which now includes a big “XxX” logo on the wall. I wonder if that was Xander Cage’s idea. “Hey guys, why don’t you make a giant sign out of my tattoo?” Gibbons has to make his escape in a badass car and goes underground – he actually has to bust Cube out of the joint, and has another fed with the triple-x-ian name of Kyle Steele after him (don’t worry, you know he’s on the up and up because he’s the guy who played Ben on Felicity).

Please note the character who turns out to be evil, then the next time you see her she’s wearing low cut black leather. Cat’s out of the bag, might as well put on the evil leather.

Now, if there is somebody out there who really enjoys the first movie, I’m not sure they would agree with me that this one is better. I mean you could make a legitimate argument that it’s not as good because without the whole snowboarding/videotaping/energy drink/Playstation gimmick it’s not quite as retarded. There is nothing as hilariously ridiculous as Xander Cage’s little speech about censoring rap music and video games. But I think as a whole it’s far more entertaining. Part 1 has alot of good laughs during the first third or so, but the second two thirds is mostly lifeless James Bond retread. Part 2 gets bogged down for a section of exposition/set up before the big finale, but the other three fourths held my attention. Good job, other three fourths. Especially the part where he was driving a car with no tires 160 mph on train tracks.

Also you gotta look at the subtext. For part 1, Vin Diesel was a rebel and underground folk hero or whatever, but the government tamed him, made him their bitch and left him laying on a fuckin beach working on his tan. The subtext was that the Man was right, the counterculture was wrong, and he might as well cash in, get paid and get laid. Thanks alot for that important message, Rob Cohen. For part 2, it’s a little better. This time the XXX agency is for people who love their country but not everything it does. Okay, so it’s kind of hard to take a movie right now where the president is a good guy, but the reason he’s a good guy is because he’s unveiling a new foreign policy that is the opposite of what we’re doing now. Vin Diesel’s mission was just the usual saving the world, Cube’s was more like saving our republic. And in the end, the credit goes to the cops and the white guy, and Cube drives off to an unknown future, leaving the Man and his woman behind.

There’s a scene where the heroes are all on top of a tank, driving toward a big action setpiece. And the song on the soundtrack is some shitty white rock band shitting all over that song “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy. In a sense this is symbolic of the whole movie: a little piece of genuine raging against the machine that’s been watered down and amped up and turned into a big dumb collage of daring jumps and fiery explosions. In fact, somebody pointed out to me that the guitar player from Rage Against the Machine is on the credits for “additional guitar.” Add him to Ice Cube and Public Enemy (who do a new song on the end credits) and you got three countercultural icons of the late ’80s/early ’90s, all working on a sequel to a Rob Cohen movie. That’s pretty sad when you look at it that way. But the glass is half full too. At least they managed to get an anti-war song playing in every multiplex in america for a couple weeks, the phrase “grand theft oil” ringing through the heads of the kids that have to clean up all the popcorn and shit.

* * *

Maybe you’re wondering what happened to Xander Cage. Not because he’s a memorable character or anything, but you’re just curious how they explained changing leads. All they say is that he was killed in Tora Bora. To get the details you gotta see the special edition DVD of XXX, which includes a really ridiculous 4 minute short called “The Final Chapter: The Death of Xander Cage.” It stars Vin Diesel’s stunt double, who you only see from the back or below the chin, and he only has one line, recycled from the movie. Funny thing is, even though it’s his stunt double, he never does any stunts. Asia Argento’s character, now played by some porn actress, gets kidnapped by a SWAT team. (No mention of this in the sequel.) Then Xander goes into a building that immediately blows up. His fur coat flies out the window, then something else… a sizzling pile of ears and skin from the back of his head, including the XXX tattoo, perfectly intact! Then some guy comes and picks up the skin pile, now on fire, and makes a quip. The identity of the killer seems to be important, but I didn’t recognize him from either part 1 or part 2. I guess that one’s for someone who gives a shit to figure out.

The end of part 2 sets you up for another new lead if there’s ever a part 3. The idea now is that Augustus Gibbons ties the movies together, and each time he hires a new and more outrageous anti-James-Bond. Obviously they’ll go for a girl next time, that’ll knock our socks off. But here are some other suggestions on directions they could go for an outrageous XXX #3:

1. This time, XXX is an old guy! I was thinkin Clint but somebody suggested Kris Kristofferson, and that idea can’t be topped. He’s always muttering about I can’t believe they’re makin me do this shit and that kind of thing. And he’s got the tattoo on the back of his neck. Bill Cosby would also work.
2. Danny Trejo. He plays ex-cons all the time, good guys occasionally, but never the leading man. It would be EXTREME!
3. some albino dude might be cool
4. That Chinese basketball player that’s like 8 or 9 feet tall. No subtitles.
5. Mr. T
6. John McClane
7. the other members of NWA besides Ice Cube
8. If he plays his cards right, Michael Jackson. Let’s say he’s found innocent in his trial. In the movie, he’s in prison, so we get to see what that would look like. Then they bust him out, and he works all kinds of dancing and shit into his fights. They make him a special boomerang hat weapon. This could be fuckin unreal. This is probaly the best idea there is.
9. Olympian XXX. All the stunts are like lifting weights and throwing spears and crap. And pole vaulting.
10. XXX in a wheelchair, but he still does awesome stunts like jumping off a bridge and crap, and his chair has all kinds of weapons and parachutes built in. He has real muscular arms from rolling around all the time, and maybe prosthetic legs with guns and bombs built in. Then at the end they give him robotic legs so he can run around.
11. all of the above, working as an ensemble

[ratings]

Anyway. This is a picture by Mr. Sam Raimi only it is based on the popular children’s comic strip, “SPIDER-MAN”. If I remember right what that was about was a nerdy kid who gets bit by a magic spider so he puts on a red and blue bodysuit and swings around on webs saving people. This works on account of he now has magic spider powers to climb up buildings, make wisecracks, etc. My internet research indicates that the webs actually did not shoot out of his wrists, as any logical person might assume, in fact they were shot by mechanical laser watches or some stupid shit that Peter Parker invented and this apparently is the building block on which all Marvel Comics are built and should never be altered if Sam Raimi doesn’t want to face a fate similar to that of Salman Rushdie (i.e. years of fear and hiding, followed by a cameo in Bridget Jones’s Diary).

There is a dash between Spider and Man apparently, you gotta be careful with that one on the internet. Again, Salman Rushdie.

Other than changing the web lasers this one appears to be very faithful to the juvenile picture books it is based on and that is where the charm is. It seems to me that most of these funny books are based around outlandish costumes, and at the same time the outlandish costumes cause the biggest dilemmas when adapting to the legitimate artistic medium of Film. I mean do you really want to have a guy wearing that kind of shit or not, that is the big question. In the case of Super-Man they said yes, he’ll wear the exact same thing that he wears in the drawings. And America loved it.

But that was the 1970s or 80s, a simpler time. Then there was Viet-Nam. Well, Viet-Nam had already happened but then there was a series of movies about Viet-Nam. So America was changed forever. I don’t know.

So by the time of the year 1989 and BAT-MAN (1989), nobody wanted to see that kind of dress in public. It made people uncomfortable. People were not as accepting of that kind of alternative lifestyle and did not want anyone dressed like that around their children. We fear what we don’t understand and in the ’89s we did not understand a guy swingin on a rope wearing tights and a cape. One of the biggest concerns by all involved (those making the movie, those watching the advertising) was that it would be like the old tv show from the ’60s, and nobody would take it seriously. Their solution – no bat-man costume, put im in rubber armor. And it worked. Audiences were immediately won over by the gloomy, serious approach, and although the movie is considered pretty boring by today’s lower standards of summer entertainment I would argue that it turned out to be one of the most influential movies of that decade. Even the topic of discussion this evening, SAM RAIMI’S SPIDER MOTHERFUCKIN MAN, by Sam Raimi, fits a bit into the Bat-Man template (spider-man confronting the killer of his guardian, danny elfman score, big showdown at community event featuring large inflatable characters).

THE X-MEN starring 2000 Outlaw Award Winner Hugh Jack-Man as Young Clint Eastwood also took the embarassed approach to costuming. They not only abandoned the colorful costumes from the children’s booklet series but had the characters joke about how asinine it would be to wear costumes like that. The best comic book movie franchise ever, BLADE, features fashion that might be considered eccentric but that at least passes as an outfit rather than a costume, and which is not based on the colorful costumes he apparently wore in the ’70s strips.

But Sam Raimi is an old fashioned gentlemen. He wears a suit and tie on set as an homage to Alfred Hitch-Cock. He creates imaginative horror masterpieces and then claims the inspiration is all 3 Stooges. He swears he really wants to be making boring movies about baseball. He starred in a movie as a manson like killer vietnam vet but he is in a pre-Vietnam film mentality. He is not the kind of guy that is gonna put Spiderman in black leather with some kind of infra-red goggles or some shit like that.

I mean maybe Spider-man is different. It’s hard to imagine what else you could do with him other than put a Spider-man costume on him. So that’s what he did. If you remember what Spider-man looks like, yeah, that’s what you see in the movie. Just, some guy wearing a Spider-man costume.

And I gotta be honest, the costume works, and so does the casting, and the effects. Together, they create exactly the comic book world that Mr. Raimi must remember reading from when he was child, and was able to still read comic books. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco are all perfect for their characters. It is easy to get wrapped up in the story as Peter Parker discovers his powers, uses them to deal with his nerdy teenage problems, than finds a greater purpose for them.

What really makes the movie work though is all the swingin around. I mean it was pretty cool in Sam Raimi’s THE AMAZING DARK-MAN when Dark-Man was hanging off a helicopter, but now computers can do all this swinging shit. Spider-Man just flops around all over the place, swings and swooshes and floopty floops. He jumps from buildings, kicks people across rooms. He does MATRIXY spider-dodges, and BLADE 2-esque computer jumps. And it’s all spectacular to watch, a real good time at the movies. To be honest it makes Super-Man, flying around in straight lines, look like a fuckin baby. Is that all you can do is fly, you fuckin cape wearin pussy? Spider-Man can flip, and stick to walls, and hang upside down. He has little pointy bug leg things that come out of his fingers, for christ’s sake. Can you compete with that? I don’t think so. Go home Super-Man. You can’t save the day, why don’t you go do a visa commercial with the guy from Seinfeld, asswipe.

You know what in all seriousness though, Christopher Reeve is the real Super-Man. Because he’s in a wheelchair.

Another thing Spider-Man does that most of the other comic book movies don’t bother with, he saves a bunch of people. Gals, babies, you name it. Not just a few cursory establishing heroics, they seem to make up the bulk of his daily activities. But there is a main villain, and that’s where the problem comes.

Willem Dafoe is pretty great as Norman Osborne, a scientist trying to get money from the military, who makes that classic Dr. Jekyll mistake of testing on himself and getting all Hyded up. Next thing you know he’s in a room by himself talking to a mask sitting on a chair that he thinks is telling him to kill people. Which, I mean, it’s time for some therapy there dude. He starts flying around on a magic jetboard wearing green armor and a mask, and throwing bombs at people and laughing. They call him the Green Goblin, I guess because he’s green.

I don’t know what it is but I completely accepted Toby Maguire flingin himself all over the city in a fancy molded Spider-Man costume. I wondered where in fuck’s name he GOT this costume but I had no problem watching him wear it. But then the second you have him standing on a rooftop talking to a guy in green armor, the whole thing seems pretty silly. They make a good joke about it, having Green Goblin lean up all casual and talk buddy buddy with Spider-Man. But until their final showdown (which for some reason reminded me of a scene in the Raimi executive produced HARD TARGET) you have a hard time taking things seriously any time the two costumes are in the shot together. I mean, jesus. Put some real clothes on, people. You can still be evil wearing, say, a hat.

So yeah, the villain is pretty stupid, but when he’s just Norman Osborne he works. His son Harry is Peter’s best friend and roommate. He treats his son coldly but gets excited around Peter because of his knack for science. And of course this makes things uncomfortable between the boys. I mean there are actual characters and relationships in this movie, melodramatic but interesting, and they set up many possibilities for sequels. It’s a good story, good characters, only one stupid costume, and good action scenes.

One word of warning to the hardcore comic strip enthusiasts. The pig version of Spider-man, Peter Porker the Amazing Spider-Ham, does not appear in this picture. He is apparently being saved for the sequel. I enjoyed this picture though thanks.

APPENDIX. RAIMI TOUCHES OF NOTE: Cameos by Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi, Lucy Lawless. We learn of Peter’s future powers via guided student tour of laboratories (as in Dark-Man). Green Goblin talks to evil version of himself in mirror (as in EVIL DEAD 2: HIS BEST SO FAR). Ends with corny shot of Spider-Man in front of American flag, which I’d guess is how FOR LOVE OF THE GAME probaly ends, but I haven’t seen it.

[ratings]

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When we see him again in ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO he has become even more mythical than before. Instead of having to send Steve Buscemi to bars to make up stories about him, the bartenders themselves tell the stories. His hand has healed so he can play guitar better than ever, in fact he likes to just walk around playing guitar even when people are trying to kill him. Robert Rodriguez knows how to make a hand made guitar look like the most beautiful thing in the world, so it’s good that the Mariachi is hiding out in a town of guitar makers who like him to test their creations.

In DESPERADO, Mr. Rodriguez really fucked around with the conventions of sequels and action storytelling. He put a large gap between DESPERADO and EL MARIACHI where we the viewers had to imagine how this guy went from a regular dude to Antonio fucking Banderas, how Steve Buscemi became like a brother to him, and how he picked up these other badass mariachi friends who will give their lives for him and fire rockets out of their guitar cases.

And remember how Rodriguez made a subplot about one of the villain’s henchmen? You see this babyfaced guy’s initiation into the family, where he proves himself by spinkicking a guy AFTER having his leg broken. You feel a connection to this guy and you know that you’re following him for a reason… but you’re wrong! He just gets an unspectacular death by bullet like any nameless, faceless thug. You never know what to expect.

In ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO there’s an even bigger gap between the movies. So much has happened that there are flashbacks back to what happened since DESPERADO. I think Rodriguez is pretending this is Mariachi 4 and it is following up on the loose ends from part 3 (Mariachi 3-D). So the Mariachi breaks a vow that is probaly from part 3 and not part 2. He avenges a couple deaths from part 3. Maybe in part 3 we saw where he met these two more gunfighter mariachis who help him out.

That is one of the reasons I love these movies. They take place in a world where if you are a gunfighter mariachi, you will be able to hook up with others like you. I wonder if in DESPERADO those stories everybody heard about the guy with the guitar case full of weapons – well we know now that there are at least 5 people like that. Are these stories even about the same guy? Maybe there’s a sixth one out there that really is the biggest Mexican you’ve ever seen.

One of the new mariachis is played by the singer Enrique Iglesias. I have a theory that his character could be the little guitar playing boy from DESPERADO now grown up. That is why he keeps the Mariachi’s guitar case full of weapons. There is nothing in the movie to tell you that he is that boy, but there’s nothing to prove otherwise. So to me, he is that boy, and you fuckers can’t do a thing about it.

There are other connections to the other movies that are undeniable though. Like a CGId up remake of the bus stunt in EL MARIACHI. And a cell phone ring of ‘Cancion Del Mariachi’, the song from the opening dream sequence in DESPERADO.

Ah shit man, I’ll just say it. This is a great fucking movie. Part of me was worried that Rodriguez was gonna let us down. It’s been 8 years since DESPERADO and although he’s never made a horrible piece of garbage, he hasn’t really lived up to my expectations. Back then the guy had the blood of Leone and Woo pumping through his veins, he had Tarantino whispering in his ear and he still came up with this original vision that combined westerns with Mexican music and a cartoon sensibility and turned it all into, you know, whatever excactly DESPERADO is. After that he made movies that were amusing, like the first SPY KIDS, but you go back and watch DESPERADO again and you wonder what ever happened to THAT Robert Rodriguez.

Well turns out he’s still in there somewhere. Like the title suggests this one puts the Mariachi (now nicknamed “El… as in ‘the’”) in a more epic situation. A nutball CIA agent named Sands (John Depp) hires him to kill a general who is planning a coup and who also happened to have ruined his life in the nonexistent part 3. (Man, this is the third fucking asshole that’s ruined the Mariachi’s life. Leave this fucking guy alone, people.) There is also a drug kingpin who’s about to get surgery and a corrupt cop and an FBI agent played by Ruben Blades and Mickey Rourke always holds a chihuaha behind his back out of respect. It’s real complicated, it would take too long to go into so I won’t explain it.

Well actually also I really didn’t understand what all these factions were trying to do exactly. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I was gonna see the movie again anyway. Give me something to look forward to.

Just the shots are more epic though. You definitely see the Leone influence with lots of wide shots, wind blowing, intense closeups of eyes. You see the Mariachi about a football field away playing guitar on top of a building. There’s a big riot during a Day of the Dead parade. When El sits down and reminisces about Carolina, his flashback is a big action scene. You know this is a real action movie when the love flashback is a big chase scene with complimentary fiery explosions.

The music is more epic too. Rodriguez has been known to write, direct, edit and camera operate for his movies. Now he adds score composer to the list of credits. (He’s also one of the guitarists.) DESPERADO had a great score by Los Lobos. This one adds an orchestra. Also many of the actors were involved in the music – Salma Hayek sings a song, Ruben Blades and Antonio Banderas apparently had some kind of involvement, and Depp recorded the great theme for his character.

If I had one single complaint about this movie, and I say that because I do have one single complaint about this movie, it’s that there’s not enough Mariachi. Like the man with no name in THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, the Mariachi has to share the movie with other characters, in this case Depp’s character Sands. So although he’s still the hero, he doesn’t get as much focus as he did in the other two movies. This is not really a weakness of the movie, it’s just that I like that character and I’ve been waiting a long fucking time for this. Why can’t you give me a 3 hour movie you bastards.

But the character of Sands is great. I know Mr. Depp hangs out with Marlon Brando alot, and I think he has some of the same kooky genius. Here he plays a CIA agent who wears tacky thrift store t-shirts and unneccessary fake beards and mustaches. He’s not your traditional villain. He’s a total goofball. There is an abrupt change in the movie where this manipulative CIA asshole gets his, well, I won’t give it away but he loses a pair of round organs that are not testacles, that are used for seeing with. They get poked out by a mad bandaged ghoul. So he takes it in stride, he puts on a funny getup and walks around blind trying to shoot people. And suddenly, for no reason at all, we are expected to sympathize with this asshole. And better yet we go, okay man, we’ll do it. That blind gunfighter thing, that takes spunk. There is a hint that this character will get his own spinoff movie, and let me just say I am already in line. Well actually I am not physically in line, but I left my coat in line to mark my place. That should count in my opinion.

If you were one of those people who thought DESPERADO was too silly, then you better stay home and hide under your blankets from this one. Except for the mariachi, there is more of almost everything the rest of us want. More violence, more atmosphere, more guitar playing, more guitars, more funny lines. Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo and Tito Larriva all died in DESPERADO, so no problem, this time they play different characters.

I don’t know what anybody else will think, but I love this fucking movie. Congratulations Robert Rodriguez on your perfect trilogy. (not spy kids.)

[ratings]

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