George Clooney is… THE AMERICAN. In Anton Corbijn’s Americanized remake of Soderbergh’s THE LIMEY, Clooney plays–
nah, that’s not true, it’s not a remake. That would be weird though, especially since Clooney knows Soderbergh pretty good. But I do think THE AMERICAN joins THE LIMEY in a modern genre that I think of as arthouse badass. These are movies that are too quiet and leisurely paced to show to a bunch of teens in a multiplex, but also got motherfuckers getting shot or punched. THE AMERICAN is much more basic and straightforward than THE LIMEY, LIMITS OF CONTROL or GHOST DOG, and admittedly less original. But there’s something powerful about its simplicity. Like a bullet. (read the rest of this shit…)
MACHETE is the story of Machete, a man with alot of machetes. That is why he is named Machete. Danny Trejo (MARKED FOR DEATH, URBAN JUSTICE) stars alongside Steven Seagal, Robert DeNiro, etc.
I didn’t have time to do a countdown for 
FACE/OFF is a crazy one-time-only deal, a strange collision of people and movements that could only really exist in that specific place and time. Not before, and definitely not since. On that day the wave of late ’80s Hong Kong action cinema crashed and exploded against the rocky shores of Hollywood, spraying sideways and soaking Nic Cage and John Travolta, who happened to be standing there. It’s not the only American John Woo movie I like (we’ll always have HARD TARGET and BLACKJACK), but it’s the only one that seems like The Real John Woo. It takes that old Hong Kong John Woo we loved, with all his emotional sincerity and unhinged sense of stylized action, and combines him organically with big budget Hollywood, achieving a smooth balance where the Hollywood bullshit side doesn’t overpower the other one. 
I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW is an hour long documentary following Jeff and Kelly, two fans of the ’80s teen pop singer Tiffany. While most of us forgot Tiffany existed until we read that she was teaming with Debbie Gibson for MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID, these two remained dedicated fans the whole time. Jeff continued to follow her career long after she fell off the map. He went to all her shows around Santa Cruz, went to every autograph show she did, collected magazine articles, wrote her letters, etc. And by etc. I mean that in ’88 he got arrested at a courthouse trying to give Tiffany some flowers and a samurai sword, and the year after that she got a restraining order against him. In the opening scene he sarcastically reads an old magazine article about it and laughs when they use his full name and call him a “stalker.” He thinks the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. But, you know, most of us don’t end up in any situations that could be blown into those particular proportions. 
THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE is the buzzed about “dude it’s the most fucked up ever” horror movie of the moment. I had heard it mentioned about ten thousand times but honestly managed to never see a poster, a trailer or a still from it or even really know much about its plot or origins other than the fucked up thing that happens in it. I guess there’s probly not much overlap between people who haven’t heard of this yet and people who are into crazy fucked up shit, but if you somehow manage to be in both camps I say stop reading this, cover your ears and go watch it immediately, and you will be surprised. I kind of wish I could’ve done that, but of course if I hadn’t heard about this madness I wouldn’t have made the effort to see it. It’s like that old zen coan, does crazy fucked up shit really happen in a movie if nobody ever watches it? 
WHITE BUFFALO opens with dread as John Barry’s eerie horror score rumbles through a view of a huge white buffalo grunting and snorting like a demon in a spooky cave somewhere. It feels like a nightmare and it is one. It belongs to Charles Bronson. He not only wakes in fright, he wakes with two pistols in his hands and he unloads them into the ceiling of the train car where he’s staying. Luckily nobody was upstairs and they let him off with a warning. 
You know how it is when you’re a young woman playing drums in a band but you see your boyfriend with another girl at your show so you flip out and get kicked out of the band and you’re depressed anyway because your dad is dead and your mom left town for months so you get real drunk and some guys in a parking lot try to kidnap you but some other dude takes you from them and you get chased by guys hopping around on bladed pogo-stick goat-leg stilts and you pass out and wake up with some dudes hanging out in a warehouse and it seems like this is their home but it turns out they brought you with them when they broke in here to rescue girls from the human traffickers who tried to take you. 
You know, people always complain that there’s too much crap out there and not enough smart movies, not enough movies that have something to say or make you think or really move your soul. But then when a truly important and powerful film like that does manage to slip through the cracks – and I’m talking specifically about PIRANHA 3-D, which is a new 3-D movie about piranhas – those same complainers always stay home, the movie doesn’t make as much money as hoped and Hollywood is forced to go back to making the types of movies that do make lots of money, like INCEPTION. So shame on you, moviegoers. Shame shame and shame again. You have blood on your hands. You are murderers and liars. Fuck you.
