This would’ve been a perfect opportunity for another “is…” movie. James Belushi is… THE PRINCIPAL. But director Christopher Cain (YOUNG GUNS) let that one fly by. Anyway, in this drama-leaning-toward-action James Belushi plays Rich Latimer, a fuckup teacher who’s punished by being “promoted” to principal of Brandel, the crime infested cess pool of an alternative school where all the district’s worst troublemakers get shipped off to after they light a teacher on fire or crash a stolen hot air balloon whatever. Those are not specified but I’m assuming that’s the type of stuff they did. You know this place is bad when Latimer stops by to check it out during non-school hours and gets mixed up in a fight and car chase. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
The Principal
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009The Informant! and The Girlfriend Experience
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
Today I have a Steve Soderbergh double feature. I got his new one, THE INFORMANT! followed by his previous one, THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE.
Twenty years after SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE and Steve Soderbergh is still experimenting up a storm. This year he’s alternating a low budget improvised drama starring a porn star (more on that later) with this big studio comedy starring Matt Damon. But as far as Soderbergh’s commercial movies go THE INFORMANT! is on the weirder end. He takes the true story of a corporate crime whistleblower who helped the FBI crack open a huge price fixing scandal, but he plays it as a broad comedy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Synecdoche, New York
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is the most complex and convoluted movie that worked that I’ve seen in a long time. I loved it and you might too. But there’s also a good chance you’re not on its wavelength, and in that case it will be torture, like me watching WAKING LIFE.
P.S. Hoffman plays Caden, a guy who directs plays. He’s fat, unhappy and uninteresting and his wife (Catherine Keener) is obviously miserable. The opening is so mundane it’s almost hard to translate as a movie: he has trouble getting out of bed, reads the newspaper, mumbles to his wife that Harold Pinter died, they have sort of a conversation but aren’t listening to each other. It’s kind of nice that it begins so uncinematically mired in normal life, because as it goes along it becomes more and more fantastical. (read the rest of this shit…)
Fighting
Monday, August 24th, 2009
FIGHTING is a new movie about fighting. The “fighting” in the title is not a metaphor for struggling against crushing poverty, self doubt or family troubles, it’s only a metaphor for fighting. Actually, now that I think about it I guess it is a double meaning, I was trying to be a smart ass here but actually it’s true. But mainly it just means fighting.
You could definitely compare the movie to HARD TIMES. It also made me think of LIONHEART because it’s this circle of rich assholes setting up underground fights in different weird locations. But honestly it’s more Spike Lee or Martin Scorsese than Jean-Claude Van Damme. This is not the slick Hollywood movie I expected, it’s a gritty New York movie, layered with texture and naturalism. It makes you feel like you’re in New York, surrounded by people, hearing sounds coming from all directions. It’s all shot in interesting, dirty and cramped locations. The dialogue sounds partly improvised, mumbled and overlapping, sentences that trail off. (read the rest of this shit…)
Funny People
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
As a producer and an influence, Judd Apatow dominates the current comedy movie scene. His movies re-popularized the R-rated, filthy-mouthed comedy, they started a much-imitated improvised approach to comedy scenes, his TV shows and movies started or kickstarted the careers of Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Siegel, Jonah Hill and others. In a few years he’s completely changed comedy movies, started a few cliches, and gained the inexplicable antagonism of talkbackers.
But just a couple years ago he was a hard-working, mostly ignored writer and producer whose name you’d see on stuff like The Larry Sanders Show, ZERO EFFECT and ANCHORMAN. He was a behind-the-scenes guy for Ben Stiller and Jim Carrey. He rewrote THE CABLE GUY from Chris Farley vehicle to the weird stalker comedy it became. Apparently he wrote Jim Carrey some jokes for the AFI Salute to Clint Eastwood. Nobody hated him back then. He was just another joke writer who had been roommates with Adam Sandler. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Hurt Locker
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
THE HURT LOCKER is the best movie of 2009 so far excluding all movies about old men who fly around using balloons. It’s a tightly constructed action-suspense movie, but also a character piece and an acting showcase. It takes place in Iraq 2004 and it says something about war, but it’s not especially political. It’s more about a place and a time and a mindset. Nobody in the movie talks about why the Americans are in Iraq or whether they should be. They’re just there. It’s their job, they gotta survive until the end of their rotation (the days are counted down onscreen).
This is the story of a 3-man bomb disposal unit. They get a new team leader at the beginning, and he’s played by Jeremy Renner. I don’t know if his team recognizes him from DAHMER like I did, but shit man, look out. From the beginning he seems a little unstable and alot reckless, and they gotta worry if this will prevent them from getting safely to the end of that countdown. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Whole Shootin’ Match
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
A couple years ago I was on one of my bi-annual TEXAS CHAIN SAW kicks, and that led me to track down another old Austin indie movie from 1983 called LAST NIGHT AT THE ALAMO. It was a real good black and white day-in-the-life drama that happened to be written by CHAIN SAW co-writer Kim Henkel, and it also co-starred Lou Perryman two years before he got his head hammered and face peeled as L.G. in CHAINSAW 2.
That one still flounders in rare VHS obscurity, but the director, Eagle Pennell, did an earlier movie that has undergone a rediscovery. THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH (1978) is very similar to LAST NIGHT AT THE ALAMO: very episodic and conversational, black and white, working class Texans working out their frustrations and cementing their friendships while shooting the shit. It even has the same star, Sonny Carl Davis, and in this one Perryman is the co-lead. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tyson (1995 HBO movie)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
From Uli Edel, the visionary director of BODY OF EVIDENCE and THE LITTLE VAMPIRE, comes the 1995 made-for-cable biopic of Mike Tyson. HBO had made alot of money off the Mike Tyson fights, but then he lost the title and went to prison. I guess they made this movie to keep him in their library and maybe spark new interest for his comeback.
The most notable part of the movie is that Michael Jai White plays Tyson, in the role that brought him to somewhat-prominence. Before that he had a small part in TOXIC AVENGER 2-3 and was in a couple low-rent martial arts movies that I ought to track down one of these days, but this is what got him the bigger roles like, uh, Spawn.
You know, in the first UNDISPUTED the Ving Rhames character was clearly inspired by Mike Tyson. I think he was the current-champ, not the former-champ, but he was in prison on a rape charge that he denied. I’m not sure if I thought about it before that when Michael Jai White took over the character for part II it was the same guy who played Mike Tyson! This movie ends with him about to go to prison, so for a real weird experience I challenge somebody to watch TYSON, then UNDISPUTED, then UNDISPUTED II all in a row. (read the rest of this shit…)
Leadbelly
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
I liked Gordon Parks Sr.’s direction on his SHAFT movies so much that I wanted to see what else he’d done. The one that looked most interesting was this. The cover shows the title character shirtless, muscular, holding a guitar like John Henry holding a hammer, and calls him a black legend. So it looks like some period piece blaxploitation tall tale or something. But it’s really a biopic of the legendary singer and guitar player.
Roger E. Moseley plays Hudie Leadbetter, who we first see as a grey-haired old man in prison. Some white musicologists, Professor Lomax and son, are going to prisons recording “negro folk songs” for the Library of Congress archives. Leadbelly tells them he knows alot of songs, some he learned and some he made up, and as he begins to sing and talk about his life it flashes back to when he was young and tells his life story, how and where he learned these songs or why he made them up. (read the rest of this shit…)
Mission of Justice
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
Hey, it’s another one from the VHS pile. Recently some of my fellow Seattle-based action fans asked me if I’d do an interview for their podcast, “Stack of Dimes.” I don’t really like to be interviewed so I weaseled out of it, but I still listened to some of their episodes to see what it was all about.
They’re really into Van Damme and mixed martial arts and stuff like that. They make fun of Seagal a little, but you can tell that’s one of their favorite types of movies. “JD” was the guy who contacted me, but his co-host “Thunder” keeps mentioning this DTV kickboxer guy called Jeff Wincott, and in the latest episode they actually scored an interview with him. I really wasn’t familiar with this guy and of course I’m always trying to expand my horizons and enjoy the vast spectrum of everything available, all the way from Van Damme to Jeff Wincott. The movie they talked about most in the interview is called MISSION OF JUSTICE, so I decided that would be a good one to start with.
Man, how did I miss this one before? I mean I’m not sure it’s rocketing to the top of my list, but it’s probaly gonna be scribbled somewhere in the margins of the list at the very least. It’s kind of like a really good Dudikoff movie that occasionally reaches for STONE COLD level awesome. It’s got quite a collection of the great action movie tropes: stumbling across a liquor store robbery, cop who gives up his badge, partner who risks her job to help him continue his investigation, undercover infiltration of a mysterious organization, evil person pretending to be good to run for mayor (Brigitte Nielsen!), best friend murdered, chop shop, nice grandma who you just know is gonna get murdered, incriminating video tape… (read the rest of this shit…)
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