Reviews: D

DAGON

Well here we are with another slightly above average horror picture from Stuart Gordon, the guy who did REANIMATOR and a couple other halfway decent movies, but who seems to live next door to Full Moon Video or something. By this I do not mean that he only makes movies about little bastards like ghoulies, demonic toys, subspecieses, dollmen, shrunken heads, puppet masters, and etceteras. All I mean is that he seems to share alot of stylistic choices, collaborators and straight to video horror blood with those guys. But this is one of his movies that seems a little better. A little.

I know this one got a small amount of theatrical play here in seattle and that alone is an amazing accomplishment for Stuart these days. In case you are wondering it is not about dragons. If you look closely there is no R. In fact it is about a village of fish people, which could only mean that it is based on stories by Howard P. Lovecraft.

Now don't ask me why, but Howard P. Lovecraft was afraid of fish. I know it seems like a pretty wacko thing for some fruit to be scared of but at least the guy made something productive out of his whole problem. He was horrified and disgusted by this idea of people who worship a fish god and slowly turn into fish and squid and screw people and make fishpeople babies. And the filmatists here do a good job of making that idea seem like a resonable premise for a horror movie.

The best thing about the movie is the creatures. You don't see them too many times but when you do they have some nice designs, creepy in a phoney cgi kind of way. Most of the time there are no effects though, just menacing villagers who act strange enough that you know hey, these are fishpeople man. The movie was shot in spain with a mostly spanish cast and crew. The leads are american though so it's got this whole touristy, dare I say fish out of water kind of deal going on where the stupid american web-yuppies crash their yacht and end up poking their noses where they don't belong. In fishland.

Or maybe they do belong there. The main dude, who I will call the dude with glasses, has been dreaming about fishpeople, and especially about a sexy mermaid. I don't think his wife knows about this shit though. Man he needs to see a therapist. Anyway the americans are so obnoxious that it is easy to root for the fishpeople. I mean I wouldn't want these idiot lungbreathers walkin around my village if I was a spanish fishpeople.

Slowly the dude with glasses discovers the real deal. There is one old drunk here who is a human. Everybody else is fishpeople because they worship a giant squid named Dagon, and they are slowly growing squid tentacles and gills and shit, and they cut off people's skins leatherface style and wear them for religious ceremonies. Freedom of religion, man.

So they got some nefarious plans. There is a virgin sacrifice involved, and some interspecies fuckin, I believe. Spiritual type stuff. These americans need to learn the cultural differences in my opinion.

The best scenes are long no dialogue scenes where the dude with glasses runs around and gets chased by the fishpeople through hallways and out in the rain and etc. These are mostly old men and they stumble around in a mob and mumble in what might be spanish or might be fishpeoplese, I don't know enough about the region to be sure. So it's kind of like your night of the living dead type situation combined with an evil dead type running around in a panic feel.

Where the movie falls apart though is in the casting, because this dude with glasses just does not have the presence to pull it off. He is your typical straight to video/bad independent movie lead who has no personality or charisma. But he winces alot and keeps adjusting his glasses and it's supposed to make him Bruce Campbell. It just doesn't work and you really don't want this dweeb to keep getting away every time. If Samuel L. Jackson can get his head bit off by a super intelligent shark right in the beginning of NIGHT OF THE SUPER INTELLIGENT SHARKS or whatever that picture was called, then there shouldn't be any problem giving this guy an octopus arm through the earhole and then the rest of the movie could've been about the fishpeople, their relationships, dreams, etc.

DARK AGE
In my ongoing tribute to the land of MAD MAX and CHOPPER I have come across another good giant crocodile movie that pre-dates ROGUE by a good 20 years. But this one actually has John Jarrat - the widower Russell in ROGUE, the fuckin maniac in WOLF CREEK - as the park ranger hero.

This one reminds me of RAZORBACK a little, because it reminds me of JAWS a little. The director, Arch Nicholson, was second unit director on RAZORBACK, but his movie is in a more realistic vein, less stylized and exaggerated. The crocodile never runs through the side of a house and steals a baby like the razorback did. The photography is pretty naturalistic, it's by Andrew Lesnie whose name seems familiar because he did the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, the BABE movies, and I AM LEGEND.

There's a scene that has to be a deliberate homage to JAWS where everybody's playing on the beach and a woman spots the croc and tries to warn the kids to get out of the water, but one kid gets eaten in front of everybody. But it's an Australian twist because half of the kids on the beach are aborigines. That's what makes this story unique is the conflict between the "white fellas" who just want to kill the crocodile, and the aborigines who won't let them.

Jarratt plays Steve, a conservationist who believes in the protection policy put in place to appease the tribal leaders who consider crocodiles sacred. He points out that crocodiles have lived in these parts for millions of years, but Australians made them endangered in 20. But if you ever get a chance try convincing white people to protect crocodiles when one of them just ate a kid whole in front of 30 or 40 witnesses. It's not easy.

So Steve's plan is to kill the one giant croc before all the yahoos come in and kill all the other ones. Pretty good plan, but he has trouble finding the one and before you know it poachers are going ape. I've never seen so many crocodile head shots in a movie before. Or any for that matter.

What makes the movie cool is the twist that happens when Steve tries to enlist the help of the tribal leader Oondabund, whose family has had a relationship with this croc for generations. It seems the only way to find the croc is to get eaten by it, but this guy knows how to find it. Steve needs his help because a poacher just got his arm bit off and the hoopla is sure to get the protection policy lifted.

Oondabund won't kill the croc so they hatch a plan to capture it and bring it to the breeding grounds away from civilization, then kill a different croc and pretend that was the right one. So the climactic action sequence is not a crocodile hunt, but a truck chase with the giant crocodile strapped to the back and the one-armed hunter and his friends trying to catch up to kill it. Imagine JAWS but instead of killing the shark Richard Dreyfus puts it on the back of a truck and drives off before Quint can kill it.

This is an enjoyable movie and another feather in the cap of Australian cinema. Unfortunately it was apparently never seen in Australia (due to the distributor going under before its release) and in the US it's only on VHS.

SPECIAL BONUS REVIEW: TRIPWIRE

Here's another obscure VHS-only release that I watched this weekend. It has no connection to DARK AGE but I don't have much to say about it and I'm a critic who plays by his own rules, so what the hell. I'm sticking it on the end of the other review. And you can't stop me.

TRIPWIRE caught my eye with its painted cover of a dude being dragged behind a truck. Strangely enough there's that other movie THE HIT LIST which caught my attention with its cover of a guy being dragged on the front of a car about to drive over tire spikes, and HIT LIST director William Lustig is credited with the story for TRIPWIRE.

It's not much of a story though. Something about a suspended cop (some dude named Terence Knox) who visits his ex-wife just before his son gets kidnapped by a terrorist (David Warner). The son is played by Andras Jones of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4 fame - the only guy besides Jason to have a martial arts duel with Freddy. The cop/dad isn't on the force anymore so he makes a fake ID and goes to transfer a prisoner so he can torture information out of him. One of the few succesful attempts at badassery in the movie is when the prisoner boasts that he can't do anything to make him talk without getting in trouble and then he reveals that he isn't really an FBI agent and has just kidnapped him.

Yaphet Kotto plays an FBI captain or somesuch, which is kind of cool because you can just pretend you're watching HOMICIDE.

The box description plays up the stunt team on the movie, which was smart because it got me to rent it. Sure enough there are a bunch of motorcycle chases and shit. All pretty cool but not spectacular when you've watched the best. The standout was definitely a snowmobile chase, I liked that one. The get lots of air, one of them goes over a cliff, then they fight in the snow.

The problem is this Knox guy, while convincingly tough, doesn't have alot of charisma. He's adequate but not enough to make you excited about this generic story.

The one thing that kept me watching was waiting to see if Viggo Mortensen would ever talk. He plays one of David Warner's two thugs, and mostly stands around looking menacing. Toward the end he finally talks when he threatens to strangle Andras Jones, and that's when you learn he's supposed to be German. (That explains why the credits call him "Hans".) Then he gets acid thrown in his face and he screams. It's funny, because you could never imagine a guy playing a thug in a low-rent action movie like this would go on to a performance as jawdroppingly spectacular as the one he did in EASTERN PROMISES last year. But at the same time I imagine it probaly helped to have played roles like this, because at the beginning of the EASTERN PROMISES he's the same type of character - hired thug who stands around trying to scare people without saying or doing anything.

Anyway, interesting cast with some good stunts but if you're searching for gold mines like I am you can move along.

9/28/08

THE DARK KNIGHT

I got an email from Scott L. requesting a review of THE DARK KNIGHT, because he's seen all these HYPERBOLIC!!!!!!!! reviews that have been springing up on all the websights and thought I might be a good outsider perspective to temper his expectations. I was happy to oblige because I liked the BATMAN BEGINS movie so I was already planning to see this one at a midnight show with a bunch of kids dressed up as the joker and jacked up on Monster and Mountain Dew High Voltage.

This story is about Batman, the caped vigilante of Gotham City, who is trying to stop some crime. There are many other characters such as Bruce Wayne, etc. I won't give away who is Batman because I'm gonna try not to have spoilers. Also if you were a little confused because "Batman" is not in the title you are not alone. I kept wondering "is this a Batman movie?" Pretty weird.

Okay, disregard that last paragraph, that was just typing practice. Scott L., I have failed you. Although I haven't read too many of the other reviews, I'm guessing I loved it at least as much as those weiners. THE DARK KNIGHT is a hell of a movie. It's not so much a comic book movie as a super hero procedural. They took Batman and the Joker and put them in an epic crime drama - I thought Michael Mann more than I thought Tim Burton. Hell, Batman even talks like Clint Eastwood. It's only slightly about people in funny costumes punching each other - mostly it's about a cooperative effort between the well-funded vigilante, the head of the Major Crimes Unit of the police department, the district attorney's office and the mayor, with the goal of breaking the back of organized crime and giving hope to the citizens of Gotham, showing them that not everything is corrupt and broken.

Even BATMAN BEGINS, which was so smart about being a reality-based character drama, turned a little "comic booky" as it got to the end and had a big special effects based monorail/bomb-to-destroy-the-city thing going on. For this one they got out the mops and scrubbed clean every last drop of that "comic book atmosphere" that Tim Burton did so well back in '89ish or whenever it was that Batdance came out. The opening is like a '70s caper movie, the city is always shot like a real city, no gothic exaggerations. Lots of epic overhead shots of the buildings and most of it even takes place during the daytime (which is when the mafia comes out because they're afraid of Batman).

In BEGINS I thought Bruce Wayne was a great character but I was a little less into it whenever he actually turned into Batman, partly because that armored costume (as great of a job as they did explaining it) looks kinda stupid. So although the little tag at the end left me excited for the next chapter there was also part of me thinking maybe a second one wouldn't be as good because he'd have to be Batman more. Well, luckily this Batman has stepped up his game. The costume is still goofy but you almost don't notice because what he's doing is so exciting.

(Keep bustin'.)

All super heroes have one weakness. Superman is allergic to Kryptonite, Captain America is afraid of mice, Wonder Woman has horrible B.O., Popeye once got E Coli from spinach and Blade alienates friends and loved ones by being too awesome. Oh yeah, and Spider-man will start dancing if you put a chair near him. In BATMAN BEGINS Batman's weakness was not-good-enough staging and photographing of action. I mean there was that great car chase, but I didn't like how the fights were close-up and handheld, you couldn't really tell what was going on, plus they committed the all time number one movie sin of having a scene where the hero betrays an entire clan of ninjas on top of a mountain in a burning temple and then not going into an awesome martial arts battle royale. I mean come on, who does that?

For this one the style is similar and occasionally confused me but they upped the ante so much that it almost didn't matter. Sometimes the disorientation is intentional, because Batman is this force that appears out of nowhere behind a guy or all the sudden comes through the window like a man-sized brick and the note attached is a serious ass-whooping. He glides on his wings, he jumps off of skyscrapers, he goes to Hong Kong to kidnap a guy, he takes a guy's rifle and dismantles it as he continues down the hall. (That seems like a good approach to gun control.) And the car chase scene in this movie is jawdropping. I'm not sure the one in the last movie will seem as cool anymore, this one is so good.

I've seen a bunch of reviews saying Batman's not in it enough or is overshadowed by the other characters, but I don't agree with that at all. This is by far the smartest and most capable Batman I can remember seeing. He does detective work, he does cutting edge forensics, he uses his business deals as undercover missions to ferret out crooked companies, he plans and executes complex operations with soon-to-be-commissioner Gordon.

He also goes over the line, beating the Joker in a police interrogation room, illegally wiretapping the whole city (whole world?). Usually Batman has these batplanes and shit but you don't really question the ethics of how far he should go. This one intends to make you wonder where he should draw the line with the technology he creates. But the movie is so awesome the relevance doesn't set in until later.

I have one major complaint, and that is the character of Two Face, the half-scarred villain that Aaron Eckhart's district attorney Harvey Dent turns into. Unfortunately this new version is not very faithful to the original version played by Tommy Lee Jones in BATMAN PART 3. For some reason this one is half normal and half burned, half good and half vengeful. That is not at all true to Tommy Lee's version which was half normal, half purple-zebra striped. He would flip a coin and if it landed on the bad side he would turn into a totally outrageous party animal. But if it landed on the good side he would re-flip it. That was way better.

Nah, just fuckin with you. Actually he's one of many great characters in this movie, even (maybe especially) before he turns super. You've already heard how amazing and scary poor Heath Ledger is in it, and they ain't lying. Such a great twist on this type of villain too. It used to be cool that they would have some tragic backstory, but now it's such a part of the formula that they were smart to avoid it. This Joker tells more than one story about his origin, so you realize he's lying and you'll never know where the fuck he actually came from. And he's real smart and devious but his schemes don't seem like your usual super villain scheme. Even Liam Neeson in the last one had some silly machine involved in his plan. The Joker is more like a terrorist or a serial killer. He made me think more of the Zodiac killer, or at least Scorpio in DIRTY HARRY, or the threat to blow up schools in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

The city is in a total panic, complete post 9-11 bedlam, and the beauty of it is that it's kind of Batman's fault. At the end of BEGINS Gordon talked to Batman about "escalation," and it seemed like a clever way to explain the use of cartoony characters like The Joker. But it turned out to mean alot more than that. There are numerous copycat Batmen in home made suits trying to help, and when the real Batman tries to stop them they question why he should be allowed to do it and not them. The various gangs have to team up and follow the Joker's plan in order to stay in the game with Batman on the scene. Cops and loved ones get killed, lives get ruined, buildings get destroyed. He's rich enough to create all these weapons, and smart enough to use them well, but is he really just fanning the flames? The movie seems to lean in that direction. Poor bastard is trying to make things better but he's making them worse. But he's still a beginner. Stick at it, Batman. I had to write reviews for years before most people stopped calling me illiterate.

I want to mention the score. It's perfect, even more minimalistic than the first movie. Sometimes it's just simple keyboard riffs or drones, sometimes a violin squeal that goes on uncomfortably long. About as different from Danny Elfman as you could get, so it's not what you expect in a movie about a guy in a cape.

I would also like to point out that this is a $180 million movie that features Michael Jai White, Tommy "Tiny" Lister, Eric Roberts and Anthony Michael Hall, and all of them do a good job! So there's hope for Dolph Lundgren in my opinion.

My colleague at The Ain't It Cool News Mr. Beaks described the movie as "devoid of hope." He meant it as a compliment, but I gotta disagree. There's a very important scene showing that the Joker is wrong and that people are not inherently cruel. And unlike many movies (including HELLBOY II) where the people turn on the hero for no reason, Batman makes a conscious decision to not be seen in a good light by them. (hard to explain without spoiler). The movie is all about giving people hope even if it's not by believing in Batman. And if the text of the movie isn't enough how about the fact that it only took 11 years for this character to go from literally one of the worst movies ever made to a triumph like this that people are seriously talking about as a best picture contender? Doesn't that give you some hope, Mr. Gloomypants?

This is a movie I think most people would like - except maybe not kids. It's kind of a miracle that they even got to make this movie. Not so much because it's disturbing and scary but because it just never seems like it even occurred to them to make a movie that a kid might watch. This is squarely aimed at adults who don't mind if the one guy happens to have bat ears. It never feels like they're following a marketing plan or even a comic book movie formula. It honestly feels like it's a story that's about something, that happens to have a Batman in it, and not the other way around.

When the movie ended I had fuckin goosebumps. The guy sitting next to me told me it was "a triumph," so I re-used his word in this review. As I was leaving the theater I did hear one guy listing off the things he was disappointed in, such as "the appearance of the Joker." Man, I get nitpicking but this is minutes after the movie ended and he's already in talkback whiny mode. I should've told him to give it up because, sorry dude, a movie this good is one in a million. If that direct shot to the heart doesn't get you high then you are immune. The movie you want will never be made. Time to head to the mountains or somethin. Forget about comics and movies and learn to grow organic fruit and vegetables to sell at the farmer's market.

In my expert opinion this is probaly the best comic strip movie ever made. Yes, better than POPEYE. Yes, better than BARBARELLA, although if I was stranded on a desert island please forgive me for choosing BARBARELLA, for personal reasons. And yes, there is a vague possibility that it is even better than the BLADE movies, although that has not been proven in clinical trials and probaly is better left unexplored. Anyway, the point is I never expected a movie this good. I don't care what anybody says, this is the best movie summer in fuckin forever. I don't know what we did to deserve it, but I accept.

7/20/08

DARKMAN

I believe you're all familiar with the director Sam Raimi. You know - kind of a smart ass, wears a tie, master of energetic camerawork, loves the Three Stooges. These days I guess people just think of him as the guy who did the three Spider-man pictures. Nerds curse his name because although the first two touched their hearts and moved their souls the third one was kind of dumb and had a part where he did an evil dance, and apparently in the comic book it is made very clear that the whole point of the Spider-man character is that he would never do an evil dance like that. The Punisher or Blade maybe would do one under the influence of sorcery or an alien ray, but Spider-man - never. So even if Sam Raimi did direct THE EVIL DEAD, EVIL DEAD 2, ARMY OF DARKNESS, SPIDER-MAN, SPIDER-MAN 2, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD and A SIMPLE PLAN it doesn't matter, that's all moot now, like Michael Richards' comedy after he used the n word.

But with this review we gotta transport ourselves back to the early 1990 when Raimi was an underdog, a cult director who had done two drive-in masterpieces and one disowned comedy, and here he was trying to break into the post-BATMAN studio game with a movie that was big budget for him but small compared to the movies it was gonna be held up against. It's kind of like a comic book movie: a super hero origin story, with music by Danny Elfman, and with 'man' in the hero's name. It's also kind of a horror movie: he's a mad scientist and a burnt up Phantom of the Opera type freak whose scarring turns him crazy and murderous. But mostly I think it's like an action movie: it has R-rated violence, he's getting revenge one-by-one on the criminals who wronged him, there's explosions and stunts, and one of the screenwriters is Chuck Pfarrer, the ex-Navy SEAL who wrote NAVY SEALS and HARD TARGET.

Future Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson plays Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist working on a liquid skin substitute for burn victims. When his girlfriend (future Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) discovers proof that her sleazy boss (Logie award winner Colin Friels) is making bribes Westlake gets caught in the crossfire and a gang of criminals blows up his lab with him inside. Everybody thinks he's dead but his burnt near-corpse winds up a John Doe in a hospital where the doctors take the liberty of giving him an experimental surgery that severes his nerve endings so he won't feel the burns. The only negative side effects are that he has lost the sense of touch and that he has very sensitive emotions that can cause him to fly into a blind rage with an adrenaline rush that gives him the strength of ten men. Otherwise everything is fine.

Well, I guess the world's worst ever living burn victim is lucky that he also happens to be the world's foremost authority on replacement skin. But not that lucky, because he never perfected the formula, the skin melts after 99 minutes in sunlight. At this point, Westlake has a decision to make. He could tell the doctors look, I remember who I am, I'm Dr. Peyton Westlake. I happen to be an expert in liquid skin. Maybe you could help me to perfect it. If not well, let's see what we can do here. Put me in rehab, help me to heal. Get me a psychiatrist because the healing on the inside will be even harder. Please, contact my girlfriend. I just proposed to her. She thinks I'm dead.

That would be hard work but you would think that's what you'd have to do. But Westlake is stubborn. Instead he escapes the hospital ODB style, carts his damaged lab equipment to a condemned building and sets up shop. Later he'll make himself a mask of what he used to look like and go to his girlfriend and not tell her about his burns. But first to get his confidence up he'll stalk the thugs who attacked him, disguise himself as them and play elaborate tricks to set them up against each other.

When not disguised Darkman has an iconic phantom kind of look - bandaged face, black hat and trenchcoat. And Neeson does a great job bringing the freak out. With the fake Liam Neeson face he's sensitive and wounded, in the lab out of disguise he loses it, grunting to himself and his cat, sarcastically dancing like the freak he thinks some imaginary oppressor sees him as. I guess he's kind of like the Hulk, whoes super power is that he has a short fuse. But Darkman's catchphrase would be "you wouldn't like me when my feelings are hurt."

When he does lose it Raimi lets loose with the visuals he was known for back then. Darkman's world explodes into a psychedelic collage of flames, smoke, the firing of his own synapses and abstract, traumatic imagery, both real and imagined. Then he can toss people around or break the fingers of an unfriendly but otherwise innocent carnival worker. But to tell you the truth the super strength and lack of pain are not that big a part of what Darkman does. He gets more use out of his masks and his deviousness. And he has the balls to impersonate major crime figures while only knowing how to mimic a few phrases in their voices. And there are always unforeseen complications. He keeps coming mask-to-face with the people he's disguised as, sometimes on accident, sometimes to fuck with their minds, once in a revolving door so nobody knows which is which.

There's a great action movie type opening, throwing you into the world of two hardnosed crime bosses having a confrontation that turns into a tribute to the HARD BOILED warehouse shootout and involves a machine gun hidden inside a dude's wooden leg. It's quite an introduction for the secondary (but most memorable) villain, Larry Drake as Robert G. Durant. That guy was best known for playing a retarded guy on LA Law, so it was pretty cool to see him playing this arrogant asshole who cuts off fingers with a cigar cutter and collects them in carefully sorted display cases.

When the action comes up it's good shit. There's lots of jumping across roofs and fire escapes. In my opinion Dr. Westlake was not only a pioneer in skin replacement technology but also in parkour. The showstopping chase with Darkman hanging from a cable attached to a helicopter keeps switching distractingly to greenscreen-type closeups, but still, these days you watch those other shots and you can't help but be awed. Holy shit, they really did that! Now they'd have some showoffy digital shot with the camera flying through or around the artificial action, but in 1990 they just filmed a real guy hanging off a real helicopter. And there's a great part where Durant starts busting off explosive shells trying to hit Darkman and doesn't give a shit that they're blowing up cars on the highway below. Darkman doesn't care too much about collateral damage either judging by his decision to hook the helicopter to some poor schmuck's semi. Luckily the guy doesn't seem to notice. He doesn't even slow down when the chopper crashes and explodes.

Let me describe a shot that sort of sums up what was cool about Raimi back then. Darkman and his girl's boss face off high above the city in the girders of an incomplete skyscraper. The bad guy mentions how many stories they are up, and the camera does a high-speed pan down the (miniature model) structure, all the way down to the ground - where it shows a cluster of rebar spikes sticking out of the ground ready to impale whoever falls. It looks cool and it's totally excessive because who gives a shit if you get impaled, you just fell down like a hundred stories and probaly bounced off at least 75 different metal girders. Raimi knows the rebar is unnecessary and he knows that we know it's unnecessary, but we all have an unspoken agree that it should still be shown. Because that's how we like it.

DARKMAN has just the right balance of cartoonish over-the-topness and serious melodrama to make the phony bits part of the fun. For example I don't mind accepting that he can scan any flat photograph to make a 3-D model of somebody's head, and somehow finds the right clothes to wear with the disguises. If you or I were Darkman we would probaly figure out how to do those things too. This is a great movie of its type. It mixes so many of the best types of stories and gimmicks - the tragic monster, the super hero, the master of disguise, the avenger - into such a unique combination. It's loaded with clever ideas and imaginative visuals, it has an energetic pace, it even has good acting. I like those SPIDER-MAN movies, I even enjoyed part 3 (sorry everybody), but DARKMAN is way more my speed.
2/27/09

DARKMAN II: THE RETURN OF DURANT

We thought Larry Drake's sadistic, finger-collecting crime lord Robert G. Durant was killed when Darkman caused his helicopter to explode, but actually he survived, in a coma, his gang secretly keeping him on life support in his mansion. Also we thought Darkman was a big screen hero played by Liam Neeson, turns out he's on video and played by Arnold Vosloo.

THE RETURN OF DURANT is a pioneering DTV sequel, one of the earliest examples of the artform, and also the beginning of Sam Raimi expanding his Renaissance Pictures empire by executive producing a bunch of other people's shit instead of just making EVIL DEAD movies. If nothing else this movie was a training ground for sidekicks in future Raimi productions - Vosloo would be Lance Henriksen's in HARD TARGET and female lead Renee O'Connor would be Xena's.

Darkman #2 continues his shadowy outcast existence, now operating from an underground lab. He enters through manholes and can move around beneath the city with a high-speed vehicle that drives on the subway tracks. He uses his strength to beat up criminals, steals their cash and uses it to buy lab equipment. Then one day while perusing the medical journals he reads about a guy working on a liquid skin very similar to his. The headline even mentions that it's light resistant, so I guess the 99 minute problem is well known in the medical research community. Well, lucky coincidence, this other skin doctor lives and works in the neighborhood. Unlucky coincidence: his lab is in a big power plant that the recently-revived-from-his-coma Durant needs in order to build some laser weapons. So Westlake and the other guy form a partnership and improve their skin formula, but since this doctor doesn't give in to the muscling by Durant's men they end up killing him.

I don't think they realize just how lucky they are. If this guy got burnt up but survived this wouldn't be called DARKMAN II, it would be called DARKMEN. You think one burnt up liquid skin expert bent on revenge is a pain in the ass, just imagine if you were dealing with two! Well, they lucked out on that one but now Darkman is even more pissed than before because this is the second time they've ruined his life. And they're interfering with an important scientific breakthrough. That's just not cool.

By the way, Durant has a big scar on his forehead, which is also important to consider. That helicopter explosion was pretty fiery, and he could've easily turned into a Darkman himself. I wonder if Darkman would've shared the liquid skin with him? Or would he just tell him to fuck off? Oh well, no sense in hypotheticals.

Bringing back Durant was kind of a cheat, and kind of an obvious ploy, but also impressive because when does a DTV sequel ever have returning cast members? Only ART OF WAR II did that and that was more than a decade after this one. Seeing this character again reminds you what a good villain he was, and his plan of breaking out a mad scientist and creating more powerful weapons to put on the streets in competition with cheap weapons is a pretty good one. He also is in cahoots with some dude in a suit and tie with two skinhead bodyguards - I'm not sure if that guy's supposed to be a senator, but that's how I choose to read it. What a scumbag.

Darkman has some real shitty luck, he's like Paul Kersey in the DEATH WISH movies, you would not want to be in his life. He makes more than one friend in this one who gets killed. One second it seems like the plot is going one way, next second there's a car bomb and that's the end of that.

Although DARKMAN was itself pretty low budget for a Hollywood summer action movie, the DTV sequels obviously have to have a lowering of production value and filmatic skill. The director, Bradford May, was a TV guy who did some episodes of Friday the 13th and some HUNTER tv movies. This kind of seems made-for-tv the way it opens with narration explaining his origin, recycling footage from the movie but occasionally substituting shots of Vosloo for Neeson. It also recycles Danny Elfman's themes, but I'd say that adds production value, because it sounds way bigger and better than most DTV scores.

But Vosloo, let's be honest, is no Liam Neeson. I always like seeing the guy in movies for some reason, and he would make a fantastic stunt double for Billy Zane. Out of the makeup he works as kind of a stoic if bland problem-solver guy. But when we see his burnt up face and he's supposed to be crazy he's so much less convincing than Neeson that you just gotta laugh at his dubbed in lines. So all the gimmicks of the character are still in place, but I feel like you sort of lose the tragic monster side of it because it just doesn't come through as well that he's a nut. I guess he must be since he spends his time in a sewer playing with a cat and a remote control rat, but when he's walking around he seems pretty well-adjusted, like any TV hero who goes around using his unique skills to help people.

While this is definitely more enjoyable than most DTV sequels, it's still not particularly memorable. Its biggest achievement is just demonstrating what a cool concept DARKMAN is and proving that it did lend itself to further adventures. Apparently there actually was a pilot shot for a proposed Darkman TV series, this time with some other guy as Darkman but Larry Drake returning as Durant. This I'm sure is alot better than that, but it does sort of feel like the beginning of a TV series or a series of TV movies. It's mostly sort of imitating what happened in the first one but doing it on the cheap, and stretching credibility further. In the first one he recorded a few phrases from Durant and learned how to imitate them, and this made it suspenseful to see how he was gonna pull it off. In this one he does the same thing except learning those two lines now means he can do a flawless imitation of anything the guy would say. Pretty silly. But I guess that goes with the territory.

The real fun would've come later on when they started to get tired of the same formula and start messing with it. He starts disguising himself as celebrities and doing PSAs for liquid skin research or something, I don't know. (Okay, that doesn't sound very exciting. But they would've come up with something I bet.)

2/28/09

DARKMAN III: DIE DARKMAN DIE

Darkman's still trying to fix that liquid skin problem, and this time he forms a partnership with one of the doctors who did the experimental surgery on him in the first place. She wants to try out a new technique to rewire his nerves so he has feeling again, and he agrees to be her guinea pig on the condition that he can borrow her top of the line DNA sequencer for his skin project. Both end up getting what they want: the equipment helps him "break the 99 minute barrier" (again - they seem to have forgotten he already did it in part 2) and she rewires his nerves to a remote control device because actually she works for a crazy steroid dealer (Jeff Fahey) who's pissed off because Darkman stole a bunch of his money and now he wants to study him to find out how he gets his super darkstrength.

DIE DARKMAN, DIE has the same director as part 2 but this time it's written by Colleary and Werb, the guys who wrote DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH and FACE/OFF. Come to think of it these guys are obsessed with faces and masks. Colleary even wrote an episode of the new Alfred Hitchcock Presents about a woman who has plastic surgery to look like someone else and Werb was a writer on THE MASK. Weird. But the point is they are pretty good writers and went beyond the DTV call of duty on this one.

The majority of DTV sequels (and DTV in general) is pretty bland and predictable. Usually it's just a cheap rehash of the first one, not alot of ideas, not alot of exciting moments, not much happens. But DARKMAN III has all kinds of shit: Darkman being forced to run an "obstacle course" that involves blowing up a car and running across oil barrels that explode and fly like rockets as people shoot at him, Darkman having to remove an implant from his brain using plyers, even Darkman disguising himself just to show up at the villain's daughter's school play so she won't be sad. They came up with all kinds of funny ideas and clever angles on the DARKMAN concept.

While Larry Drake was a great villain on the big screen, who better for a DTV villain than Jeff Fahey? He's perfect for this kind of role because he just looks like such a prick, you want to punch him just for how he sneers at you. And Fahey gets to use his overacting powers as a steroid kingpin who brags "I don't sell drugs, I sell strength." I also suspect he might get high on his own supply because he has sudden hilarious bursts of what could be roid rage. My favorite is when he sees the D.A. on TV making the usual speech about "we will stop this outbreak, we will get these animals off the streets" and Fahey yells something about "ANIMALS!?? HE DARES CALL US ANIMALS!??" Next thing you know there's a little girl in his office saying "Daddy daddy, look at my new dress!" and you realize all this sinisterness is going on in his own house near his wife and kid.

Bringing up roid rage idea was a good idea because Darkman's power is kind of the reverse. People on steroids have enhanced strength that causes them to have emotional outbursts, Darkman has emotional outbursts that cause him to have enhanced strength. Fahey is obsessed with strength so his mad scientist lady/mistress studies Darkman and somehow makes the leap of synthesizing a drug that does the same thing. The ultimate goal is to sell the drug on the streets, but another part of Fahey's villainous master plan is to have his now super-powered thugs tear the D.A.'s head off on live TV!

I realized this was really something special during the scene where Darkman disguises himself as Fahey to sneak into his mansion at night, get into his safe and steal back the disc that has all his research data on it. (By the way, it's a 3 1/2" floppy disk, so all of his research must've been about 21 megabytes.) Should be a quick and easy mission except that Fahey's daughter wakes up and asks if she can have cocoa. Darkman-as-Fahey tries to brush her off, but she's afraid of the dark, and he knows from staking the place out the night before that Fahey is a terrible father and this poor little girl thinks he doesn't love her anymore. He feels bad.

So Darkman figures ah shit, I shouldn't be doing this but - poor girl. Gotta get her out of my hair anyway. I think I can handle this. Should only take a few minutes, I'll go make her the cocoa and then I'll--

SURPRISE! Turns out he just walked into a surprise birthday party for Jeff Fahey, and everybody's there. So now he has to hang around and talk to guests. Next time you feel awkward at a party just be glad you're not a horribly disfigured avenger and only planned to steal something real quick but now you have to have conversations knowing the clock is ticking to when your face is gonna start bubbling and melting. And then a guy who thinks he's your uncle pressures you to play a sonata for everyone on the piano.

Pretending to be husband and father actually makes alot of sense for the character. He was a successful scientist in a relationship, maybe about to get married, next thing you know he's a monster living in a sewer. When he sees this nice lady (for some reason married to an obvious prick) and her daughter being neglected he sees this opportunity to be kind of a family man for a minute. He's helping them but also getting a taste of something he'll never have. In fact it's important character development too because it shows Darkman struggling with the idea of being a hero. He's really not, he's an avenger, and everything he's doing is for his own satisfaction and to help him, he doesn't intend to help others. But his pity for these two and his emotional need for them sort of pushes him into being a do-gooder, which would've been important if there had been more sequels. Which there weren't. Oh well.

To no one's surprise there are some shortcuts and some cheats like you would expect in a DTV sequel. They use almost the same introduction from part 2 and I'm pretty sure they even recycled an entire scene of Darkman going down into the sewer and driving around on his Darkmobile. (Wikipedia says this one was made first but they held off releasing it after Larry Drake signed on for part 2, so actually I guess part 2 is the one doing the recycling, and part 3 is innocent.)

One little thing I'd like to mention, I always get a chuckle out of overly-explanatory dialogue. For example, when the henchmen are about to get an injection of the synthesized Darkman strength one of them says, "So this shot is gonna make us strong?" Like he really needs to ask that. I kind of like that they have some of that here because they did the same thing in the real DARKMAN, like the scene where Neeson is in the lab and asks out loud "Why won't the liquid skin last?" Sometimes characters in movies have to "reset" like talk radio hosts: "If you're just joining us, we're experimenting with liquid skin that loses cellular integrity after 99 minutes."

Anyway, DARKMAN III: DIE DARKMAN, DIE obviously can't stand toe-to-toe with the theatrical DARKMAN, but it's everything you could hope for in DTV DARKMAN. I like this one alot better than part 2 and in fact I think it may be in the running for best DTV sequel ever made (I know, not saying much, but this sort of ranking is important to me).

2/28/09

DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY

DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY is the happiest, warmest, most joyful movie I've seen in a long god damn time. And not in a stupid way. The problems of the world are not ignored. There's some light-hearted jokes about race issues, there's a mention or two of the war, there's some militant rap lyrics and a brief sermon by Fred Hampton Jr. All things I'm in favor of discussing. But mostly what this movie is is a whole bunch of people coming together to laugh and make beautiful music and have a good time together. In that sense it turns out it is kind of like WATTSTAX, the movie they mentioned as a model when they were filming this. I made fun of my ain't it cool colleague Quint for writing that the trailer gives off a Wattstax vibe as if he came to that conclusion on his own. But there is a faint whiff of that vibe in the final movie I guess, if you're really making a close examination of its vibes.

I saw this movie in what I consider a JASON X set up: the same big auditorium where I saw JASON X, mostly empty with only a few people peppered throughout, but sharing their love for the movie across the empty rows. At the end of the movie people clapped, like it was a live performance. I can't remember the last time I saw that at a regular multiplex showing like this.

I won't be condescending and pretend to explain to you who Dave Chappelle is, why he's great, etc. But let me make 3 points before we get to it.

1. After the untimely demise of CHAPPELLE'S SHOW, cast member Charlie Murphy put a positive spin on it saying it had burned bright and ended before it got old and compromised, calling it "The Tupac of Shows." I thought that was a good description but I'm hoping this movie is a new beginning and not just another posthumous album.

2. At some point before he died Richard Pryor apparently said that he considered Chappelle to be his heir apparent, or whatever Richard would've called it.

3. In this movie, Chappelle is wearing a Richard Pryor t-shirt.

Like anybody, I think Chappelle is a funny and likable guy. But for me personally, his leaving for South Africa episode brought him to the next level. I don't know what kind of troubles he was having but no matter what it was, there's not alot of people who would've said, "Oh well, it's just a multi-million dollar contract for a hugely successful TV show at the height of its popularity. I have bigger fish to fry." It's the same thing I always say about Chris Tucker. We live in a culture where The American Dream has come to mean making alot of money, even if it means serving up a bunch of disposable crap for your idiot fans to waste money on. Chris Tucker and Dave Chappelle are two guys who got themselves in a position where they could've made millions just by signing on to Martin Lawrence type crap or throwing out some catch-phrases and half-assed Soul Plane type business. And instead, they just took a break. Chappelle actually had it in his hands and decided he would be happier if he let it go. Hell, even Richard Pryor didn't do that.

He seems like a genuine guy to me. I don't know if you watched that episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, but that was a great fucking interview. The guy is still hilarious but also alot more thoughtful than you'd think from all these dumb kids running around saying "H-WHUT? H-WHUT? I'm RICK JAMES BITCH! H-WHUT?" I didn't see him on Oprah (and it just now occurred to me that he did a whole skit about impregnating Oprah to get to her money - I wonder what she said about that?) but apparently he said he would consider doing his show again but would give all the money to charity. Apparently he has this complex that he feels guilty for being funny because what he considers funny he also considers socially irresponsible. That's a cool guy right there.

Well, DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY is chapter 1 in the cool-guy-gets-lots-of-money saga, where Dave has recently signed his big contract with Comedy Central and decides to use his money to put together the concert of his dreams on a block in Bed-Stuy. So it's a concert movie showing performances by Kanye West, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Dead Prez, The Roots, Eryka Badu, Common, Jill Scott, Cody Chesnutt, The Fugees, others, hosted by Dave Chappelle. In between performances you see Dave in a small town in Ohio where he lives, trying to find a few people to bus to New York to watch the show. So you see him being funny talking to all these people and in rehearsals and backstage with the performers.

Like all my favorite documentaries, this is a movie with some interesting characters. There's the two guys from Ohio who are humorously excited to go to the show and tell some funny stories. There's the weirdo acid-head couple who own a strange, mostly destroyed house next to the block party stage. There's the nice old lady from the convenience store who Dave wants to reward for not bothering him when he comes to buy his cigarettes in the morning. And the mohawked guy who Dave calls "Mr. T" and pulls out of the crowd for a freestyle battle.

The interviews with the musicians aren't very in-depth because that's not really what it's about, but there's some good stuff there too. There's a couple really moving moments in the movie for me. One is the prayer that the rapper Common gives backstage before the show, because it's a damn good prayer. It will probaly make a few atheists think praying is cool. I'm not all that into this guy's rapping but he is very good at picking out hats and at praying.

The other touching moment is when the Fugees (whose surprise reunion for the block party was a huge deal) talk about getting over their disagreements to be together again. This guy Pras says that when he hears Lauryn Hill sing it almost makes him cry, and then you see how much it obviously means to the people in the crowd, and it makes you almost cry too. Unless you're tough like me, I wouldn't almost cry at something like that, obviously.

The scene that completely amazed me though is when Chappelle is joking around in a Salvation Army and he sits down at the piano. You're expecting him to make some joke like when he fucks around on the bongos, but instead he sits and plays Thelonious Monk's beautiful, off-kilter anthem "Round Midnight." We learn that Chappelle is not a trained musician, but over his life has managed to learn how to play two songs, one of them being Round Midnight. And then he tells the camera how much he loves Monk's "ill timing" and that all comedians and musicians should study it.

Pretty deep for the "H-WHUT?" guy. And he clearly has a deep love for music, whether it's an influence for his comedy or not. The performances are infectious, you definitely don't have to be a fan of these people to be moved by it. In the introduction to his new book THE DEAD EMCEE SCROLLS: THE LOST TEACHINGS OF HIP-HOP, the brilliant poet (and star of the movie SLAM) Saul Williams writes:

"There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, 'yes,' in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister. Instantaneously, the same mechanical gesture that occurs in moments of dialogue as a sign of agreement which subsequently, releases increased oxygen to the brain and, thus, broadens one's ability to understand, becomes the symbolic and actual gesture that connects you to the beat."

In the theater, if you are not too self conscious, you will probaly find yourself nodding your head "yes" to this music, or tapping your feet or some other type of activity that seems kind of goofy when you're sitting in a chair watching a movie. Like Williams, Chappelle is trying to glorify the "positive" movements in hip hop and soul that have been mostly buried or forgotten, at least in the commercial world. I don't think there's one song performed in this movie that talks about jewelry or cars or bitches or guns. These are people who are talking about love or revolution. They're more interested in the Black Panthers than Donald Trump.

By the way did you notice up there how I quoted an unrelated poet and drew parallels between the substance of his work and what I see as the themes of this movie? And I was totally casual about it. You'd think I quote poets every day. I might be reviewing a straight to video Van Damme movie pretty soon, if somebody knows a good greek philosophy quote or something, let me know. Man, that was awesome if I do say so myself. Eat a dick, Rex Reed.

Speaking of Rex Reed, I love how when a movie like this comes out they gotta review it in all the newspapers and everything so you got these 50 year old white dudes in a situation where they gotta pretend they know who Dead Prez is or that the Fugees broke up, or that there actually is somebody called the Fugees. It kind of shows how dumb it is that one person is supposed to be the judge of all movies. All you gotta do though is find a crack research team to explain all the shit to you. Then you can drop a few pearls here and there and people will think you're an encyclopedia.

For example there are some great moments for fans of The Roots. On the song "BOOM!" Black Thought shows off his dead-on impersonations of old school legends Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap. But for BLOCK PARTY Kane and Kool G pop up to perform those verses themselves. Another great moment comes during the Grammy winning "You Got Me" from the album Things Fall Apart. The song was written by Jill Scott before her success as a solo artist, but the label insisted on a more famous guest star so she was replaced by Eryka Badu. You might wonder if Scott is bitter about that, and the answer seems to be no since the two get to perform the song together in BLOCK PARTY.

See, if you get help you can make it seem like you've heard of all these guys before. But it's important to point out that you don't have to have heard of them to enjoy the movie. And it's not geared to this exact moment in pop music - in fact, it was filmed in 2004. Kanye West is definitely the biggest of the performers right now, but he goes on first and there's not that much emphasis on him. There is a brilliant moment though where he gets to watch a marching band perform his song "Jesus Walks" (aka "Theme from JARHEAD Trailer").

As a documentary it's very straightforward, not alot of show off business. It's got a beautiful, timeless look because it's shot on film. The director is genius Frenchman Michel Gondry who everybody loves now because he did ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A SPOTLESS MIND. If I could just say one thing here - "I TOLD YOU SO." Please refer to this phrase whenever the national re-evaluation of Gondry's first movie HUMAN NATURE begins.

I think WOODSTOCK won the best documentary Oscar, but these days it's hard to imagine a concert documentary even getting nominated. In order to help BLOCK PARTY's chances I should probaly just come out and say, this should win best documentary but there's no way in hell it would even get nominated, because they are a bunch of fuckin pansies who don't have the balls to do it, they don't care about black people, etc. etc. Anyway I hope they give it some serious consideration next year. Consider this, mothefuckers: this is a must-see movie. If you are the type of person who likes to laugh and have fun, then I think you would like it.

I've seen people say this about other movies but I'm gonna use it here. AN INSTANT CLASSIC. DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY IS THE FIRST GREAT MOVIE OF 2006.

THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT
I am not a history buff. I am not highly educated. I don't necessarily have what you would call "a curious mind" when it comes to history. And I don't really dig on civil war movies. It all just seems like a bunch of dudes running around in muddy fields yelling and stabbing. But for some reason lately I caught a weird case of interest in that era. I don't know man, I understand that slavery was a way of life for those people and they were raised to be racist, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around that whole concept. How can somebody be willing to die to take away somebody's freedom? How can that be the thing you really believe in?

I just don't get it. But so much of that conflict still echoes in our lives today: in race relations, class relations, politics, institutionalized racism, relations between different regions of the country. So it's important shit.

My interest started with John Brown. He was a white dude but he was an abolitionist, and you could say a terrorist. He was real religious and at a certain point in his life he decided that if he really believed in God he couldn't stand for slavery and would dedicate his life to ending it. He led an attack on an armory, hoping to spark a slave uprising. He probaly could've gotten away but he let himself be arrested because he thought going on trial and being executed would do more for the cause. And he was right: many (including Frederick Douglass) credit his raid as the incident that led to the Civil War. So his sacrifice led to the end of slavery.

A couple months ago I watched a biography of John Brown from A&E or the History Channel or something. They mentioned a tidbit I didn't remember reading before: when Brown was hung he was surrounded by troops because there were rumors of a plot to rescue him. Civilians weren't allowed to witness it. But a young actor, John Wilkes Booth, got a fake uniform and impersonated a soldier so he could watch. I thought that was crazy and it got me thinking about a couple of questions. One, I wonder if it gave him a boner? Two, what was up with that dude, anyway? I mean when you're a kid you learn that Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, in the balcony of Ford's Theater during a play. You just accept that information and have it ingrained in your brain just like Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and the Wright Brothers flew a plane and 2+2=4. But when I think about it I don't remember ever thinking about the context or details of the assassination. I'm not sure if I even understood that it was about the civil war and about Booth being a racist. I just figured he was some nut.

So I decided to read this book called Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson, and I loved it. This guy is obsessed with the Lincoln assassination the way I am with Seagal movies. The book is just packed with detail but he's so excited about the stuff that it never gets dry. The book goes through every stage of the conspiracy and especially the 12 days Booth was on the run. Everywhere they hid, everyone who helped them, every mistake they made (like hiding in bushes for days waiting for the coast to be clear to row across the river, then getting turned around and getting themselves farther north.)

The book reads like a suspense thriller. You want to find out what's gonna happen, but you're also so wrapped up in the story that you don't want it to end. Luckily I had a little treat I'd promised for myself when it ended: the TV movie THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT. I knew it couldn't be as good as Manhunt, but it would be cool to see some of this in movie form. And even though I hadn't been interested in Lincoln until recently I'd actually been meaning to watch this one forever, for one simple reason: Lance Henriksen plays Lincoln.

Lance does a pretty good job. He's got a quiet dignity, a sense of both strength and compassion. There are scenes where he plays with his kids, scenes where he stands up to his cabinet and refuses to execute traitors. He talks with admiration about General Lee and says that the two sides have to learn to live together in peace. The one thing he doesn't do is talk with an accent. I mean keep in mind, this dude was from Kentucky. He was seen by his rivals as a backwoods hick, making it all the more impressive when he appointed them to his cabinet and won their respect. Henriksen's Lincoln doesn't seem like a hick. He seems like Lance Henriksen in a top hat.

The makeup is good, kind of eerie. It's amazing how much it can look like the photographs of Lincoln while also clearly being Lance Henriksen. I call this hybrid Abralance Henrincoln.

But the story is mostly about John Wilkes Booth, and that's a hard guy to cast. I mean, that's a guy I can't get my head around. He was not only an actor, but a very famous one. He had many girlfriends and penpals because he was known for his dreamy eyes. So he's kind of a charmer, but for some reason he hates black people so much that he is willing to give his life just to give them a big fuck you. The South had just surrendered and he was going around moping about how he didn't have a country. If you live in Washington DC and they've just won the war obviously there are gonna be some celebrations, and seeing that every night pissed him off to no end. Somehow the movie has to portray this guy who is charming, but a huge prick, and a murderer, but who thinks he's doing the right thing. It's gotta be a hell of an actor. But a hell of an actor was not available so they just got Rob Morrow, the dude from NORTHERN EXPOSURE.

Nah, I don't want to be mean. The guy tries. He gets the look down. But this is a TV movie and he gives a TV movie performance. How can you really shed light on this mysterious figure when all your effort is going into sounding semi-convincing with your accent and old timey dialogue? He just doesn't feel real.

They do show how Booth and his conspirators originally planned to kidnap Lincoln, but it didn't work out. (It's kind of unclear why they didn't go through with it, both in the movie and in history.) So when Booth happens to find out one day that Lincoln will be seeing a play at Ford's Theater, a place he's very familiar with, he gets his racism pals together to hatch a plan.

If you are as ignorant as I was before I read the book you might be interested to know that they actually tried to attack three members of the government at the same time. Booth shot Lincoln, another guy named Powell stormed in and stabbed the secretary of state in his bed, and a German named Atzeradt was supposed to shoot or stab vice president Andrew Johnson at his hotel, but he chickened out and left. Also Booth had a young sidekick named Davey Herold who went on the run with him. He's fittingly played by the same whiner who played the Schofield Kid in UNFORGIVEN.

In the movie Booth makes alot of bitter speeches about Lincoln being a tyrant. He is mad about the suspension of habeus corpus - fair enough. I can agree with that. But I don't think this really works. The writing seems designed to show where Booth was coming from but the performance is pretty over the top, he clearly knows he's playing an evil villain. It doesn't really convince me that it's a guy who thinks he's the good guy.

They also keep having people randomly come up to Booth and say that he'll never be as good of an actor as his father, which seems like a pretty forced way to paint a psychological portrait.

My big mistake was to watch this right after reading Manhunt, because it's just not about the same thing. There's a montage showing all of Booth's alleged accomplices being arrested and I thought oh, that's too bad they had to skip over all that stuff, but obviously they need to focus on Booth's attempt to escape. And then all the sudden it says "12 days later" and shows him surrounded in the barn where he gets shot. Man, that's all the interesting stuff, that 12 days they skipped over.

There are alot of interesting angles that are not explored. It kind of blows my mind to know that Booth thought he would be vindicated by history. That's what he wrote in a letter. Uh, sorry dude. And in fact he wrote in his journal that he had half a mind to go back to Washington and clear his name, which he said he felt he could do. That's amazing, but this is a TV movie, there is no room for amazing stuff. Davey Herold, even though he went on the run with Booth for 12 days, really felt that he would not get in trouble since he didn't fire the gun. That's not mentioned. And the guy who shoots Booth - his name was Boston Corbett, he was a religious nut who had cut off his own balls with scissors to prevent temptation from prostitutes. He became a celebrity after he killed Booth, and got lots of fan mail. He refused to sell the gun that he used, but it was later stolen from him while he was asleep and has never been found. Later he was offended by a conversation in the Kansas House of Representatives where he worked, pulled a gun on some politicians, and got sent to an insane asylum. He escaped and may or may not have later died in a fire. In the movie he's just some dude firing a gun, though, it never says anything about who he is.

The movie ends with text saying that Andrew Johnson's administration was very harsh towards former confederates, the opposite of what Lincoln had wanted according to the movie. So the idea is that Booth really fucked up. If he would've just done the right thing (i.e. stay home and practice his acting instead of going out and shooting the president in the head) things would've been better for his confederate brothers. So he did the wrong thing morally and strategically. Way to go asswipe.

I gotta say, I am not a fan of John Wilkes Booth.

The director is John Gray, a director of TV movies such as "Martin and Lewis," "Brian's Song" (remake) and "Helter Skelter" (remake). More importantly this is his followup to 1996's theatrical release THE GLIMMER MAN. He does an okay job. It looks nice I guess. I don't know if the weaknesses are really his fault. You know, it's a shame they couldn't get a great actor and a great performance for Booth, but maybe he doesn't deserve that. He never was as good as his dad anyway. It's best if we remember him as a bad performance by Rob Morrow.

DAY OF THE WOLVES

One of Richard Stark's most ambitious Parker novels is The Score (aka Killtown) where Parker, Grofield and a bunch of other thieves team up to knock over an entire mining town. It would make a great movie, and it already made some french movie called Mise à sac that is not available to mere americans. Day of the Wolves isn't based on The Score but it sounded similar enough that I thought I should check and be sure. Anything to help out my man Richard Stark.

I gotta warn you, unless somebody decides to put this one out on dvd, I don't know if anybody else is gonna find it. It's one of those mysterious dust-covered tapes you find, recorded in EP mode, real bad full frame transfer. Movie you never heard of, director you never heard of, big cast of actors you never seen before, real low production values. The only major connection between this movie and my world is that the cinematographer, when I looked him up, turned out he did three of my favorite Steven Seagal pictures (MARKED FOR DEATH, OUT FOR JUSTICE and ON DEADLY GROUND). But let's face it, you don't watch Steven Seagal movies for the cinematography, or at least I don't. So this movie is a mystery find. And usually those finds don't amount to much. But this is one of the better ones.

A mysterious criminal mastermind brings together a team of thieves that never met before and gives them numbers from 1-7 as their names. They don't know what the job is, just the amount they're gonna get, and that they gotta have a beard. He flies them on a private jet (because a helicopter is hard to steal) to an isolated farm, where they practice and prepare for the big day, but without really knowing the whole plan.

So far the plot is pretty similar to The Score, except the leader is alot more James Bond. The guy in the book is obviously an amateur (it turns out he has a grudge against the town - very unprofessional) and he doesn't have access to these private jets and shit. Also, the beards is a new touch. The idea is that facial hair will help disguise them, but the reason it's cool in the movie is because you got this gang of 7 dudes who all have suits, ties, shades, and big, bad '70s beards. Even if they weren't holding guns, you'd know the second they get out of that plane that something's wrong here. Plus, alot of the beards are obviously fake, but they're supposed to be real in the movie. Those are not good beards.

There is a subplot about the nice chief of police, Pete Anderson, who the city council forces to retire because he takes this crime shit too seriously. This is a small, planned community type of town, he needs to chill out, they figure. So the new trainee takes over on, you know, the day of the wolves.

Just like in The Score, the wolves go in and take the cops unaware and lock them up. For some reason there is a big cage, like an outdoor jail cell, that they lock one up in.

Lucky for the town, Pete Anderson hasn't left yet. He catches on to the robbery and goes out there, Bruce Willis style, to do what he does.

You gotta be patient when the movie goes away from the wolves. The chief of police storyline is pretty corny, and the little scenes with the townspeople (especially the couple that owns the farm they take over) are silly. And one thing that keeps the movie from being completely engaging is that you really don't get much character out of any of the wolves except a little bit on #1. They're all pretty minimalist and hard to tell apart with their beards. But when the robbery starts it's pretty good, the distance almost makes it work better, like you're watching it happen for real, not knowing who the fuck these bearded guys are.

Also, the music in this movie is pretty badass. Lots of congas and wah wahs to let you know this movie means business. Then there's a catchy hippie title song type deal at the end. Good job from Sean Boniwell, who I guess also did THE HELTER SKELTER MURDERS.

And now an ultimatum. Until somebody puts this out on DVD - I'M LOOKING AT YOU BLUE UNDERGROUND - I'm giving away the ending. So here it is. Pete Anderson has a shootout with the wolves as they are all climbing into a moving getaway car. All but 3 of them get away, they make it to the plane and parachute out to different desert towns with the instructions to bury their parachutes and shavers. (Most of the guys turn out to look pretty cool without the beards.)

But one wolf was shot and captured. He wakes up clean shaven in the hospital and just smiles at the cops as they prod him for information. He makes a deal to tell them everything he knows, which is nothing! He doesn't know who anybody was and when they ask who the mastermind is all he can say is "#1."

Stuck in a hospital bed, the guy is forced to watch some kiddy show about a clown on a unicycle telling the story of Ali Baba. The cops come in and start hassling him again. And suddenly he just starts to laugh and laugh, as he realizes that the clown on TV is #1. the end.

Okay, so it's not PSYCHO, but it's a good ending.

DEAD ALIVE

I'm really gonna get it for this one. I know the ladies and gentlemen of the internet fucking LOVE this movie. It's one of those few things, like Chow Yun Fat or Bruce Campbell, that NOBODY says a negative word about on the internet. And that's unusual because there is a LOT of Negativity on the internet in my opinion, I mean I bet Ghandi or Martin Luther King or somebody could have gone on there and get flamed to tears. But anyway...

When I reviewed the Evil Dead pictures, alot of individuals suggested that I would also like Dead Alive. And I guess I can see the connection, but excuse me while I kiss the sky - I'm afraid Dead Alive is no Evil Dead 2 in my opinion. This is a comedy about a guy in New Zealand whose mom gets bit by a half rat half monkey and turns into a zombie. And then the zombie disease starts to spread and what not and I think you can see where this is going, before you know it there is blood spraying everywhere.

What Evil Dead has that Dead Alive doesn't is a delicate control of atmosphere and tone and a strong central character to hold it together. Ash is an unforgettable character, he is hilarious and he is an idiot and we love to see him in agony. Dead Alive doesn't have that appeal. In fact I don't even remember the dude's name, sorry bud but it's the truth. I believe he had glasses, average height, possibly light colored hair. That's about all I remember.

Evil Dead also has such a strong atmosphere that it is creepy even when it is funny. Sam Raimi really means it with his horror, he doesn't pull punches, so even when he's making us laugh at flying eyeballs and what not we don't forget the threat of those cackling demons and flying cameras and rapist trees in the woods.

Dead Alive doesn't have that. It takes place in a small town which is well photographed but low on creep value. There are jokes like a doctor who is so obviously a Nazi that there is a little tear in his sleeve revealing a swastika armband underneath. Like in the cartoons. In that context you can't really take any of the zombies or what not as a serious threat. I guess not all horror comedies have to work as horror, but what I like to call The Evil Dead Precedent proves that it is possible so I think it's something that should be strived for. I mean there are two types of horror comedy, there is Evil Dead and there is Dracula Dead and Loving It. You decide.

There are two reasons why everybody loves this movie though, and they are pretty good reasons. One is where a priest says "I kick ass for the lord" and starts doing a bunch of karate. The other is where the forgettable main character lifts up a lawnmower and walks through a room plowing a crowd of zombies into slush. This really is the goriest scene I have ever seen and it is so ridiculous it is hard not to love it. This sequence builds into many elaborate and disgusting creature effects. They are very imaginative and well executed, pretty much in the spirit of the original Evil Dead. But it's like having one amazingly great chapter near the end of a book. You can enjoy it and give it its due but still, the thing doesn't work as a whole. You don't give a rats fuck about what happens to the characters one way or another. You just wanna see some slimy tentacles pop out of their mouths or something. It's too bad the story and characters don't live up to the power of the lawnmowing zombies sequence.

Good try though Peter Jackson I'm sure some of this motherfuckers other stuff is better, this definitely shows some brains on the guy but I don't think it's no masterpiece, sorry just tellin it like it is.

DEAD END DRIVE-IN

Most Americans, when they think of Australia they think of kangaroos and koalas and shit. Me, I think of high speed car chases and vicious (but wise) giant crocodiles. And I guess maybe occasionally I think of 6'5" Seattle Storm center Lauren Jackson. But usually it's the cars and crocodiles, because as you maybe noticed I've been watching the Australian films this last year or so - ROGUE, DARK AGE, ROAD GAMES, RAZORBACK, etc. I've never been there, but something about that place really appeals to me, and so do their movies, I'm not sure why. They seem to have an untapped (by me) reservoir of really good filmatists there who work in a style that appeals to me. Energetic but not frantic, stylish but still raw, serious but not pretentious, lots of car flips.

I was kind of embarrassed though when I found out there was a documentary going around called NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD that lumps these movies together under the silly name "Ozploitation." It was real popular down there in Austin where my Ain't It Cool colleagues are and Tarantino's interviewed in it and everything so it got them all interested. I swear it's a coincidence, I had no idea this was a big thing right now. If anything, the documentary probaly copied the idea from me.

Anyway, one of the really prolific directors I haven't checked out yet is Brian Trenchard-Smith, who I believe is actually English but did dozens of movies in Australia starting in the '70s. He's got a bunch of them I've been meaning to check out, and DEAD END DRIVE-IN wasn't one of them. But the new Fangoria has an article about NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD and it includes this picture:

So obviously I rented it.

Although it's a post-apocalyptic movie full of crazy punks and there are some of the car stunts implied by the picture, this is not at all a MAD MAX rip-off. In fact it's a pretty clever allegory. The story takes place after a series of disasters caused world economic collapse (oh come on, that would never happen) and shit is fucked up.

The main character is a skinny punk named Crabs. His musclehead brother is in the towing business, because there are lots of car wrecks in this world, but it's a dangerous occupation and Crabs might be too weak to cut it. Then one day he brings his girlfriend to a drive-in movie, and somebody steals the wheels off of his car while he's there. The drive-in is at the end of a restricted road so there's nowhere to buy wheels and it's highly illegal to walk. So they're stuck.

But they're not the only ones. In fact, this drive-in is pretty much a commune for futuristic punk rockers and new wavers who have all been stranded. They live in their junked out cars, cover the walls in graffiti and subsist on theater concessions. There's easy access to drugs so nobody's in a hurry to leave. Life is better for them here than if they were free. But most of them don't even notice the electric fences that keep them locked in.

Crabs wants to get the hell out of there though, and it quickly becomes obvious that it ain't gonna happen. These people were stranded there for a reason - they paid the unemployed rate for the movie. This is society's way of dealing with the youth and the underclass. They spend their days watching movies, eating hamburgers, getting high, fucking and fighting, not wanting to do anything else. Both literally and figuratively they're at a dead end.

The allegory gets even deeper when the cops show up with busloads of Asian immigrants who they leave at the drive-in. Instead of realizing that they've been had and their hangout is an internment camp, the dumb-dead enders turn their hatred toward the Asians. They call a meeting to discuss such fears as "they might rape our women." Even Crabs's girlfriend falls for this shit. This seems like a fair criticism of various punk movements that seemed to fall pretty easily into stupid racism like that. It's hard to separate the serious anti-establishment people from the morons who just want to break shit.

So DEAD END DRIVE-IN raises many questions: Where is the line between having fun and wasting your life on superficial bullshit? What should I be doing with my life? Why are we so quick to turn on our own people instead of those who oppress us? And most of all how the fuck did this guy end up directing LEPRECHAUN IN SPACE? I mean, not just because it's LEPRECHAUN IN SPACE, but it's just such a shitty movie. This one is pretty smart and real nice looking, lots of production value in the elaborate recycled society at the drive-in, nice photography with smoke always in the background, a great fight scene, and some amazing car crashes and explosions (see photo). There's even some very clever directing in the way the movies on the drive-in screen (other movies directed by Trenchard-Smith, it turns out) sync up with the action in front. For example the camera pans across as Crabs fights various foes while behind him a scene from THE MAN FROM HONG KONG pans across as the hero defeats enemies with his martial arts.

I also want to give them some credit for having really good graffiti on the walls. Almost all low budget punk rock movies of the '80s have god awful graffiti, a bunch of anarchy signs and stupid sounding names and crude statements of rebellion, in sloppy amateurish lettering. I don't mind graffiti as long as the kids show pride in their work. Some of it is real sloppy and you figure they should go home and practice more before defacing public property. The graffiti in movies is even worse than that though because it's not done by people who give much though to the subject, they just gotta cover some walls real quick for the movie. It's just terrible. But the graffiti in this one is great, very elaborate tags obviously done by real graffiti artists. That's going above and beyond there. There is clearly more effort put into the graffiti wall than into any single element of LEPRECHAUN IN SPACE.

I'm gonna have to check out more of this guy's movies, so I'll keep you updated.

4/3/09

THE DEAD POOL

THE DEAD POOL is the fifth, last, and worst of the DIRTY HARRY series. It's still watchable because it's Dirty Fuckin Harry, but it completes the pattern of each entry being not as good as the last.

It's important to consider the time of the release though. In the US it came out 20 years from last month. July 13th, 1988. It was a Wednesday. Harrison Ford was out celebrating his 46th birthday. One of the girls from the "High School Musical"s was being born. Long haired kids in Minneapolis were trying to find someone to buy them beer at a convenience store near the Metrodome where the Monsters of Rock Tour would be playing that night. Red Sox fans were trying to figure out what to make of John McNamara being replaced by Joe Morgan. Ronald Reagan was signing Executive Order 12646, establishing an emergency board to investigate a dispute between the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation and certain of its employees represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And there was a new fuckin Dirty Harry movie coming out!

If you're too young to remember it or if you had substance abuse problems at the time and also don't remember it let's try to picture it: it's the middle of summer. You like action movies. RAMBO III has been out since May, but it wasn't very good. You don't give two shits about CROCODILE DUNDEE II. This summer needs a really good action movie. I mean, THE PRESIDIO? Not that exciting. RED HEAT? Okay I guess. ROGER RABBIT was cute but... I don't know. So you're excited to go out and see that new DIRTY HARRY movie! You should be able to get out of work on time to get to the theater. Hopefully it won't be sold out yet. Yeah, man, DIRTY FUCKIN HARRY! THE DEAD POOL! You're fuckin THERE. Even if it's not that good it's gonna be the best thing out there. What else is coming out? The only other action movie is on Friday there's that one about the skyscraper, with the guy from MOONLIGHTING. Pretty laughable.

(I'm not making that up, the DIRTY HARRY series really ended two days before the DIE HARD series started.)

Man, what was up with the '80s? How is it that the most recent DIRTY HARRY is by far the most dated? If Callahan is a registered voter I'm sure he voted for Reagan, and this is what he got. Eight years of that shit and you end up with Lalo Schifrin having to use synthesized drums.

It's very 1988 that the main theme of the movie is the morbid fascination with celebrity. The "Dead Pool" of the title is a list of celebrities people are betting will die. And some sicko takes it and decides to kill everybody on it. Harry is on the list, which seemed like a good bet because the mob was pissed at him for busting one of their big shots. So now he's got the mob after him and this stalker too.

One of the suspects and/or potential victims is Liam Neeson as a pretentious horror director, so there's a bunch of shit on the set of a shitty horror movie. Maybe the most memorable scene of the movie, for all the wrong reasons, is Jim Carrey (as the junkie rock star Johnny Squares) lip synching "Welcome to the Jungle." I guess at the time the movie was made that song hadn't really caught on yet, and there was no way to know that Jim Carrey would be a superstar, so it's just bad luck that you can't watch that scene now without thinking "Whuh? Is Jim Carrey supposed to be Axl Rose?"

Meanwhile Harry is commanded to be nicer to the media, who he hates. Reporters are part of this morbid fascination with celebrity, and Harry represents rejecting that. When some reporters try to mob Johnny Squares's widow right after she found out he was dead (SPOILER) Harry takes their camera and tosses it. The reporter is played by Patricia Clarkson (her second movie role, after THE UNTOUCHABLES) and she sort of forces Harry to go to dinner with her as his punishment and they strike up a relationship.

As you know Harry always has to wear a disguise during a tense standoff, so in this one he pretends to be a cameraman when a guy dousing himself in gasoline and holding two flares demands to be interviewed on TV. Usually these scenes are played for laughs, but this one is all tension and it fits that celebrity theme. This guy is at the end of his rope and his solution is to beg to be on TV.

And I'm not sure what it's trying to say exactly, but there's some attempt to explore the idea of movies causing violence. Neeson says, "People are fascinated with death and violence. That's why my films make money. They're an escape, a vicarious release of fear. Same thing with this game. Nobody takes my films or the dead pool seriously." But of course his character is a prick, and he turns out to be wrong - a guy is taking his movies very seriously, claiming they come from his nightmares, and re-enacting them to get revenge for the theft of his nightmares. Maybe this is saying that movies do cause violence? Or maybe it's saying you would have to be a nut to shoot somebody because you saw it in a Dirty Harry movie. I don't think it's doing that classic punk move of saying "you think action movies are violent, what about horror movies? Those are the real problem."

(TANGENT: That's the same as a lame argument made by some rappers I like.

Jay-Z: "Are you sayin what I'm spittin / is worse than these celebutantes showin' they kitten-- you kiddin?"

Nas: "They say I'm all about murder-murder and kill-kill / But what about Grindhouse and Kill Bill?"

In both cases these rhymes are surrounded by much smarter ones, but those ones make me cringe. I hate that these guys are pointing their fingers at somebody else instead of just standing up for their art on its own merit. I mean, hip hop and KILL BILL are both worth defending. And "celebutantes showin they kitten" is the business of the celebutantes who the kittens belong to. Let the Taliban get mad about that shit and go write some more rhymes.

[But at least GRINDHOUSE got mentioned on a Nas album.])

Of course it's always good to see Harry back. There's some good action (flipping his car when mobsters shoot at him) and funny moments (pulling his Magnum on some guys who turn out to be asking him for his autograph). But it's not as funny as most of them, the villain is not as scary as a Scorpio, and San Francisco doesn't even look as interesting because most of it takes place at night. I like that it's a Dirty Harry for its time, but I guess it just wasn't as good of a time as when the earlier ones were made.

The director is Buddy Van Horn, Clint's long time stunt double, which is kind of a cool choice for a movie where the killer impersonates a celebrity. Van Horn does fine, not spectacular. The script was written by some friends of Clint's who didn't write any other movies, and I don't think it really has as many good touches as you need in these movies. I do like the part where they tell Clint that Evan C. Kim is transferring to homicide, expecting him to be mad, but he says it's a good idea because homicide could always use more cops with his experience. Everything is cool until this installment's Stupid Bureaucrat character blurts out that it will be good for the department's image to have a Chinese-American on the force. And the poor bastard looks sad because it's like saying he doesn't deserve the promotion. Kind of a nod to THE ENFORCER when whatsername clearly notices that they're using her to make the department not seem sexist.

But I don't know, some of the script seems slightly lazy. Harry will take the time to pause and make a joke before shooting somebody and it makes no sense. Like why does the guy not shoot Harry while he's making his fortune cookie joke? Another thing that's a little lazy is at the end when they come up with the idea of Harry impaling the bad guy with a harpoon. Pretty cool. They set up the existence of the harpoon and everything, but they don't bother to make it seem justified. The guy is out of bullets and not that tough. I am 100% positive that Harry could've grabbed him by the face with one hand and held him until backup got there. Instead he executes him on the spot. So it makes the climax of the movie ridiculous and transparent about just trying to find a cool way to kill the bad guy. I mean there was a real thematic significance to the sudden impact of the guy in SUDDEN IMPACT. The only significance to the way this guy is turned into a dead pool is that Slash used the harpoon earlier in a music video.

I guess the killer using exploding remote control cars to attack is pretty clever. And apparently they had to get the world champion of remote control car racing to drive the thing. You don't really think about that when you're watching it, how hard it would be to control that thing.

I don't think the movie is embarrassing or anything, but it's too bad it has to be the last one. I was really hoping that recent rumor was true that they were working on a new one about a long-retired Harry having to go after some killer for some reason. Clint doesn't seem convinced you can do another one, but somebody oughta convince him. I think the Eastwood of today could make a much more fitting end to the series.

Of course, what's really missing in DEAD POOL is Albert Popwell, who played different characters in all four of the other DIRTY HARRYs. Maybe his absence is what cursed DEAD POOL. And since he passed away in '99 he wouldn't be in a new one either, subjecting it to that same bad mojo.

Oh well. Even if we never see Harry again at least he didn't go out THAT bad. The movie is watchable. He's still Harry. It's not PG-13. He doesn't have a wisecracking young partner to make the movie relatable to a new generation. He's not straight to video. He didn't make it into the digital age. And he managed to make a five movie series where none of them totally suck. Here's to you, Harry Callahan.

8/9/08

THE DEAD ZONE

Revisiting THE DEAD ZONE for the first time since the '80s is kind of a trip. I didn't know who David Cronenberg was back then so I didn't know it was one of the most commercial movies he'd ever make. No weird phallic lumps, all vaginas presumably in the right spots. It's an eery thriller with a cold, wintery atmosphere and a good idea from Stephen King. If you don't remember, Chris Walken is a guy who gets into a car accident, wakes up from a coma and soon starts having premonitions. Sometimes when he touches somebody he finds himself in some traumatic future event. So he uses this to save children, catch a killer, etc., and becomes a local hero.

Walken of course is real good. He's such a weirdo, but he gets to joke around, be kind of a charmer, and also be pissed off at this turn of events that people tell him is a "gift" even though it's ruined his life. Cronenberg plays up the tragic love story. Walken and his old girlfriend still love each other, but while he was in the coma she got married and had a kid. So it's tough. Not much you can do there that's gonna make you happy in the long run.

It's definitely up there with the better Stephen King movies, but I gotta say it's no CARRIE. Both have these events you never forget, but no matter how many times I watch CARRIE it still gets me in the gut because you know exactly the horrible thing that's gonna happen and De Palma wrings every drop of tension he can from it, taking his sweet time, making you waaaaaaaaaaaaait for it. Very. Very. Slowly. As good as Cronenberg is he's not that masterful with DEAD ZONE. It's a cool idea - he sees a vision of a senatorial candidate starting WWIII and decides he has to assassinate him - but it happens pretty quick and then it's over with. You kind of expect it to be drawn out more.

The weird thing about the movie that I didn't remember is there are two crazy things that happen that I just can't buy in this somewhat down-to-earth story. I'm not talking about the part where a guy commits suicide by propping up a pair of scissors and lowering his mouth onto it. That's how you know it's a Cronenberg movie, but it works perfectly well in context. There were a couple other things that were too much though.

In a "normal" Cronenberg movie people can do bizarre things (like fuck a leg wound) and it makes sense in his reality. But this one's closer to the regular, non-wound-fucking world we live in every day so I gotta call bullshit on a couple of the characters' actions. First of all, in the WWIII vision Martin Sheen (playing his same character from THE WEST WING and SPAWN) needs the vice president to put his palm on a scanner to launch the missiles. The VP refuses until Sheen says he's gonna do it if it takes cutting off his hand. Now, obviously our real VP right now would not only put his palm down, he'd use the tip of his erect penis to enter the launch codes. But this isn't Cheny, this is depicted as a normal human being who knows it is madness. And I can't believe he would give in under any circumstances, and especially just from verbal threats. At least let them get the machete out and take a practice swing before you give in. Instead his attitude is like "Well, okay fellas, if YOU want to start a nuclear war then I'll go along with it, but remember that I disagreed."

The more laughable one is the climax, so obviously this is a BIG FUCKIN SPOILER. It happens when Walken tries to shoot Sheen at a campaign event. His ex sees him taking aim and calls his name, distracting him enough that he misses the first shot. Sheen's reaction is to run over, grab the ex's baby and hold him up like in THE LION KING or when Michael Jackson was out on that balcony. You know, the ol' baby-shield trick. Sure, you'd shoot me. But would you shoot this adorable baby?

My friends, I do not have the power to convey how hilarious it is to see Martin Sheen frantically pick up a baby and hold it in front of his face as a bullet shield. It's NICOLAS CAGE WICKER MAN crazy so it takes what has been a sophisticated thriller down a notch. But at the same time it's something I haven't seen before. So it's the magic that movies are made of.

DEADBEAT AT DAWN
What this is is a no-budget first timer trying to prove himself 16mm type movie. A film student named Jim Van Bebber stars in it and directed it, using his film school buddies as actors, spending many years and sweating alot of blood to make his movie and prove himself. He finally finished it in 1988, but it feels more like early '80s or at times even late '70s. I think he was definitely trying to make a movie like EVIL DEAD or TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or something but one thing that makes it unique, he made an action movie instead of a horror movie. But he still put in a whole lot of bleeding and stabbing and screaming and dying, etc.

Now, there are alot of reasons not to like this movie. There is alot of bad acting and dialogue, awkward and amateurish shots, self conscious attempts at shocking the audience. Worse than that, it is a movie about gangs with names like The Spyders and The Ravens. And the characters have names like Goose and Bonecrusher (actually I thought they were saying Bumcrusher, but I'll take IMDB's word for it). We're talking about those movie type of gangs where they are a bunch of long haired heavy metal dudes who don't look tough at all but they figure if they wear a headband and a driving glove, and supposedly do alot of drugs, then that will make them hardcore. There are lots of bad getting high scenes and drinking beer scenes and evil cackling and threatening gum chewing. And every once in a while they remember that they want it to be THE WARRIORS or CLOCKWORK ORANGE so suddenly the guys will be wearing Halloween masks or codpieces or something. And there is always graffiti in the background that says things like "THE CITY IS SHIT." (social commentary)

Oh yeah and I should probaly mention there's a scene where Goose practices his nunchucks in the cemetery and then when he's done he looks out to the city and he yells, "YOU FUCKERS!"
He also has ninja stars.

Well despite all that, there is a definite appeal to this movie. I've never seen an action movie like this before. It's just so grimy and sleazy, you feel like it's gonna leave your DVD player smelling like a piss-drenched alley. It's got porn shops and teenage runaways and many, many knife fights. It mostly takes place in dilapidated squats or rotting city blocks. In one scene Goose is going out and he tells his girlfriend he's gonna lock the door. Then you see him put a padlock on the door.

The story is about Goose's girlfriend gets upset because he's always coming home cut up or something, so after some whining he agrees to quit the gang. Because of love. But next thing you know she asks a ouija board if she's gonna die and it says yes, so some rival gang members break into the house and disembowel her.

Goose gets upset about this so he throws her body in the trash compactor and then goes to steal beer from his junkie dad. Later he's gonna shoot himself but the gang convinces him to come back and then the same bastards who killed his girl keep fucking with him. So they rob an armoured car together and then kill each other.

It's hard to take any of the dramatic crap seriously, but when it gets violent (which is alot) it's pretty inspired. I liked the part where he whacked a guy on the head with nunchucks and stole his motorcycle. Or slid down a rope from a parking garage and threw a knife into an armored car guard's head. The dude does some crazy stunts like jumping off a bridge or a freeway overpass, or hanging off a car or swinging on a chain. And it wouldn't be that great in a normal movie but you can clearly see that this guy is really doing it, and he's clearly not a trained professional. He's not supposed to try this at home, but he still does.

And there's alot of gore effects. Sewing up wounds, stabbing people in the eye, shooting people in the neck, beating heads against concrete. He gets his finger bit off and it sprays blood everywhere. So he literally tears the guy's throat out with what's left of his fingers. Then he tosses the guy off the overpass, a car hits him and his head tears off. That kind of stuff.

So yeah it's corny and amateurish, but it's so brutal and sleazy that it becomes kind of captivating. I'm not saying it's great but at least it's unusual. Give it credit for that.

No clue what the title means though, other than "I saw Evil Dead 2."

Looking into the early works of Brian Trenchard-Smith I found a genre I never knew existed: stuntsploitation. Here are two movies about the world of stuntmen, with flimsy plots (if any) to string together a bunch of cool stunt sequences.

First and best is a goofy comedy called DEATH CHEATERS. The title daredevils are played by the mustached John Hargreaves and the bearded Grant Page. Page seems kind of like the sidekick here, but in reality he was and is one of Australia's top stuntmen. He was the movie's stunt coordinator and had already done the same for Trenchard-Smith's THE MAN FROM HONG KONG. He even did the hang gliding for that one as you can guess when you see him do the same in this one. Later he would be the stunt coordinator for MAD MAX 1 and 3. He seems like a goofy kind of Jim Henson creative countercultural type in this, so it never occurred to me that he's the crazy bastard stalking Stacy Keach in the excellent ROAD GAMES.

Anyway they're playing a couple of stunt men who we learn from flashbacks were war buddies who once did all kinds of dirty special ops deeds, but vowed never to kill again. The stunt life is fun but isn't quite enough death cheating to satisfy their adrenaline habits, and the local cops take advantage of that, strategically letting them know about crimes in progress so they'll get involved. For example a cop chases some bank robbers right past their filming location, knowing they won't be able to resist joining the chase. They use their weird all-terrain vehicle (a camera truck?) to catch up and throw a frozen lamb chop through the thieves' windshield.

Eventually they get hired for a "freelance job" from a mysterious secret agency. They have to sneak into a base in the Phillipines and steal some documents. Along the way there is some hang gliding, submarining, dangling from heights and bombing lots of shit. Also the guy with the mustache has to placate his wife and the guy with the beard tries to get laid. This could still be a serious plot for a movie, but it goes for comedy. Some of it (the crazy German movie director in a beret) is embarrassingly broad, but most of it's okay. Page especially has a good deadpan line delivery, and spends alot of the movie talking to his basset hound like it's a person. I'm not sure why but the style of humor sometimes reminded me of The Monkees minus the laugh track.

STUNT ROCK has more of a following due to a DVD release and some screenings in Austin, L.A. and here in Seattle. Page returns, this time playing himself. He leaves Australia to work on a cop show in Hollywood and while he's there he hooks up with his (not in real life) cousin, who plays in a cheesy wizard-themed rock band called Sorcery. A good chunk of the movie is concert footage of these guys. They have a dude dressed as Merlin who fights against their singer, holding a crystal. They also do various Alice Cooper/Kiss type shit with people being executed on stage and what not. Off stage they like to do magic tricks and escape-artistry. They have the type of hair and clothes that only a rock band would ever wear, but they're huge nerds. They even have a keyboard player who always wears a hood and has a distorted voice. You know these fuckin guys play Dungeons and Dragons.

Page hangs out with the band and also tries to teach his co-star and a journalist about stunts. It keeps cutting to stunt footage from other movies including DEATH CHEATERS. The end.

It's an undeniably weird mix of ingredients. Rock + magic + stunts = what the hell. So that's the reason for the cult following. And it's interesting to watch Page, more of a cool celebrity dude in this one (no basset hound), talk about his work and why he does it. Parts of it are like a documentary. DEATH CHEATERS acts like a stuntman's life is all fun and games, just a couple buddies who like to jump off of shit and throw each other through tables. This one has a little bit about how they get treated bad by directors and don't get the credit they deserve since they're doubles.

So this is a unique movie, totally worth watching, but I gotta admit it didn't live up to my hopes, because a friend of mine has a STUNT ROCK poster that gave me the wrong idea. Above a cool painting of the band it says DEATH WISH AT 120 DECIBELS! That means "Grant Page is crazy, he must have a death wish!" but unfortunately I took it to mean "this movie is like the movie DEATH WISH! Only with guitars!" I thought it was a rock band who also work as stunt drivers. But maybe their bassist or road manager or somebody gets shot in a drug deal gone bad. So the rest of the band goes after the drug gang, or maybe the whole cartel. Maybe they plan their tour dates around the locations of the people they gotta get revenge on, moving their way up the pyramid. And they also do side wheelies and motorcycle jumps. Their tour bus probaly flies off a cliff and blows up. Then there's a big concert at the end.

Well, there's plenty of concert in this one, in fact way too much concert. Just no revenge.

On Youtube I saw Brian Trenchard-Smith introducing the movie in L.A. He's real self-deprecating and laughs about the movie but I was still kind of put off by what seemed to me like smarmy laughter from the audience. I mean, the guy's standing right there, his movie is entertaining you, you don't have to act like you're above everything. I say honor what is awesome in the movie, or be disappointed that it's not awesome enough, but don't give me that "ha ha, so bad it's good" shit. Anyway, I learned that 1. No, it was not planned as a Sorcery vehicle, they were just the best band that was available. 2. Phil Hartman is apparently in the movie, but I didn't notice him.

There are alot more heavy stunt movies I should get into, particularly in the area of car movies. But as not-great as these two are there is definitely an appeal to movies where the stunt people are the stars. That's part of what I liked so much about DEATH PROOF. You got this character you're enjoying watching and then you know it's not fake, it really is the same person sliding down a rope or hanging on a ledge or whatever. These two have already blurred together, but I believe it was STUNT ROCK where Page talks to a woman by suspending himself in mid-air outside of the tall building where she lives. Obviously it's fantasy that he would do something like that in his every day life, but there is a reality there because you know he's really doing it for this movie.

But for my tastes I'd prefer to see those skills used in a serious action or revenge type plot. DEATH CHEATERS has a lighthearted adventure plot, STUNT ROCK has a lighthearted, uh, well, no plot. And the rock band is funny for a minute but I don't really want to sit through all that. So like alot of cult movies I gotta admit I appreciate these more for the idea of the movie than for the actual movie. The fact that they exist is more interesting than actually sitting and watching them (especially with STUNT ROCK). But it's the thought that counts I guess.

DEATH RACE

In these trying times it's hard to have any faith in a lowbrow movie delivering on a good high concept or even a classic standby. There's just too many ways to fuck it up. You see all the wonderful explosions in the trailer for THE MARINE and you know it's a pro-wrestler playing a soldier saving his fiancee or somebody from kidnappers, that seems like it should be easy to pull off. And then they fill the movie with lame comic relief and have the wrestler spend most of the movie walking around a field trying to track the bad guys before his brief stints of PG-13 revenge. It's just boring.

Or more often they go in the other direction, they force in way too much. Like CRANK - I should be able to totally get behind a movie where Jason Statham has been pumped full of a drug that will cause his heart to explode if he does not keep his pulse rate constantly up, and therefore he has to get into all kinds of action and craziness. I know some people like that one but I guess I'm picky, I just can't stand when they take an exciting premise like that and then seem to worry that unless they throw in ten thousand random quick cuts and split screens and CGI zooms and switches to black and white and video and shit that maybe somebody will get bored. Similar deal with DOOMSDAY which has just about everything you could want in a derivative sci-fi action yarn and then ruins every single one of them with terrible camerawork and editing. For me all that hyperactive shit and lack of thought put into visuals just ruins these movies.

But I'm always looking for a good one, I just want something more like PREDATOR and less like ERASER or some shit. Or I want a STONE COLD or an ACTION JACKSON. I don't want to have to settle. When I saw the trailer for DEATH RACE it looked like one of those premises that could really work, but then it had a gloomy grey look, it was from Paul Not Thomas Anderson (ALIEN VS. PREDATOR) who has long since earned his reputation as a crappy director, it starred Jason Statham who doesn't exactly have a flawless track record either, and it was clearly a dumbed down version of one of the classic pre-Verhoeven subversive action sci-fi movies. And I was still gonna see it until several people I knew told me it was unwatchable.

It's not unwatchable. I totally watched it. Consider it watched. It's not a classic like the Schwarzenegger and Boz vehicles mentioned above but it is a solidly constructed movie that I enjoyed watching. Details follow.
If you remember the original DEATH RACE 2000 (yeah, a better movie, but oh well) you can sort of guess what the premise is here. It's a futuristic world where the most popular show on TV is a deadly race where the drivers try to kill each other. In this version they're prisoners and instead of cross country the race takes place on a circuit. But they kept the gimmicky male driver/female navigator setup - that way they can include lots of shots of hot chicks walking toward the camera in slow motion. And by the way, they got a pretty good lookin bunch at that women's prison there. I was surprised. More Charlize and less Aileen Wuernos.

Like in the original the most popular racer is David Carradine as Frankenstein, but in this one he gets killed in the opening scene. Then Jason Statham, a former NASCAR driver, is at home when his wife is murdered and he's set up for the crime. He gets sent to the privately owned Terminal Island where warden Hennessy (three time Oscar nominee Joan Allen) forces him to don the JASON X-esque Frankenstein mask and enter the Death Race.

I will probaly be the first and last person to ever compliment the screenplay to DEATH RACE, but I think one reason this works better on me than alot of modern movies of this type is that it has a solid structure to the story. You have the setup of the characters and premise, and then the rest of the movie is built around the three stages of the Death Race. He has to survive the first two stages, then make it to the finish line in the third stage, and he will get his freedom. Before each stage there's kind of a catch-up, where the TV narrator reminds us who has been killed and what's at stake, and after each stage there is some exposition and some plot thickening. And there are the various threads to keep you interested: you know he has to find out who killed his wife, he has to get revenge on the warden, his feud with Machine Gun Joe has to come to a head, he has to get his freedom.

Statham does his usual thing, and Tyrese plays it admirably straight as Machine Gun Joe, who is either gay or uses male navigators because he kills so many of them that it would horrify the viewers if they were all women, depending on who you ask. I think Rock Hudson used the same excuse.

My favorite setup is the super weapon. We see early on that the warden has sectioned off a whole wing of the prison where they're "working on something." Nobody knows what. Then later in the movie the walls come down and we only see the scaffolding that was used to build something huge. When we finally see what it was it doesn't disappoint. It's a huge semi truck combined with a tank and a bulldozer and covered in guns and blowtorches. And it kills most of the drivers before having a spectacular (and real) crash of its own. Of course, you can't help but wonder why Hennessy didn't save this for the third stage - it comes very close to wiping out all the racers and costing her millions of dollars in profits.

The biggest mistake in the movie was to have all the cars have a similar black and grey color scheme. It's a mild case of the TRANSFORMERS syndrome. Alot of the camerawork is handheld and close to the cars, so it does get disorienting at times. But I was able to follow most of it and was thankful they at least put a red stripe on Frankenstein's car.

What really surprised me though is there aren't very many digital effects. I mean obviously there's alot of shots of Statham pretending to drive, but the shots from the outside of cars are mostly real - it's the anti-SPEED RACER. With the possible exception of DEATH PROOF this has got to be the most stunt car driving done on a movie in quite a few years. There are some pretty spectacular car crashes and flips, and not any of those stylized FAST AND THE FURIOUS type shots where they zoom through the engine or rotate bullet time style around the driver's head or that type of shit.

The story is pretty straight ahead and predictable - for example, when the masked wife-killer makes a "bang bang" gesture with his hands at the beginning you obviously know that eventually some character will make that gesture again so you'll know who the killer is. I felt they did a good job of speeding through those plot details instead of lingering like you're gonna be surprised. But if you're looking for some sort of mystery or enigma in your movies there's a doozy of a line for you when Joan Allen (I repeat, a three time Oscar nominee) says "Okay cocksucker, fuck with me I'll show you who shits on the sidewalk!" When this was playing in theaters I got an email or two asking me what that meant. Since I hadn't seen the movie I thought maybe there was some context where they had been talking about dogs maybe, and she is saying that he is her dog. If he fucks with her then she will prove within the span of that fucking that in fact he is a dog and therefore may sometimes find himself shitting on the sidewalk, which is something dogs sometimes do. In this scenario we would have found out that Frankenstein is shitting on the sidewalk while Hennessy is not shitting on the sidewalk, and the one who shits on the sidewalk would be the loser of this shitting or non shitting contest, while the person who does not shit on the sidewalk would be considered the winner.
However, I saw the movie now and those rules are out the window. There is no context. There are no clues of any kind to explain what this means or why this character would think it was something that she should say out loud within range of human ears. Also, the reports were true that Anderson was so proud of the line he played it again at the end of the credits. I don't know how it works, but since Frankenstein seems to have won at the end of the movie (SPOILER) I can only assume that it is Joan Allen who shits on the sidewalk. Well, unless shitting on the sidewalk is supposed to be a good thing in which case it is Frankenstein who shits on the sidewalk and Joan Allen doesn't shit on the sidewalk at all, because she gets blown up. (SPOILER.)

Even though I liked this one I have to pay tribute to the original DEATH RACE 2000, which was better. Corman just wanted a ripoff of another car movie, Paul Bartel delivered a brilliant satire of violence in sports media (plus awesome car stunts provided by the second unit director). It's crazy - this movie was made as a completely absurd scenario extrapolated to make fun of such violent sports entertainment as football and boxing. Now they're remaking it in a world so not-far from the sci fi of the original that the style of the broadcast is based on actual television shows that really exist. One nice touch: they include a warning about violent content at the beginning of the broadcast.

But the original was also more fun because they were more over-the-top about it. The biggest thing missing is the running over of pedestrians. In Bartel's movie the race was not on a closed track, and the drivers received points for running over pedestrians (with a scoring system based on who the victim is - for example the elderly are worth more points). I especially love the rebel underground who protest the race by laying down underneath the cars and avoiding being run over. None of that is in the remake.

I also miss the colorful, cartoonish designs of the original cars. These ones look pretty cool as fortified ROAD WARRIOR type cars, but they don't stand apart from each other the way the old ones did. Adding some color would not only help the action scenes but it would make sense - I'm positive these guys would be painting up their cars to make them look menacing.

But I enjoyed this one for what it was. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may just have the best Paul W.S. Anderson movie since MORTAL KOMBAT.

1/17/09

DEATH SENTENCE

Kevin Bacon plays a regular ol' businessman guy whose son is randomly murdered in a gang initiation killing/convenience story robbery by tattoo-having, muscle car-driving, meth-dealing fantasy skinhead gangsters. When it becomes clear that the killer will only get a few years in prison he decides not to testify so that the case will be dropped and then he hunts the guy down and murders him. That is why it is called DEATH SENTENCE. The end.

DEATH SENTENCE (continued)

Wait, no. My mistake. There's more. Even if it's obvious, even if it's corny, what makes this movie cool is the gimmick that the good guys and bad guys reflect each other. In the scene where Bacon's son is murdered, the older gangsters call the killer "my boy," like Bacon would've at his son's hockey game. They're proud of the little guy. You know what they say about gangs, even phony movie gangs like this: they're like a family. Bacon has a family member murdered, so he gets revenge. But that means the gang has their family member murdered, they must get revenge on him, so they come after him and his other son and his wife, and then he has to get revenge on them for trying to get revenge on him for getting revenge on them. So it's the endless cycle of violence, the circle of revenge, the snake biting his own tail, the 360 degrees of Kevin Bacon. Just a couple of proud papas killing each other for killing each other's boys. You know how it is. When the vengeance keeps going back and forth you can't help but think of Iraq and other endless military conflicts. A police detective does refer to Bacon's activities as "starting a war" but luckily that's their only elbow nudge as far as "get it? It's about war."

The director is James Wan who directed the first SAW and therefore is the godfather of "nu horror." But his action movie here is pretty old school. Not just because it's a Charles Bronson throwback but because it avoids all the quick cuts and other showoffy shit we hate in modern action movies. I like the action in this one, especially the extended car and foot chase in the middle. It would be a hell of a thing to do in real life but by action movie standards it's very small and down to earth. Nicely put together, you feel like you're right there with him and yet the camera doesn't have to shake.

By the end Bacon goes Travis Bickle on that ass. He wears kind of a tough guy coat (actually his dead son's - just like Punisher wearing the stupid skull t-shirt his son gave him) and he shaves his head. One nice touch I don't remember seeing in a movie before - this guy is a businessman, he's not experienced at shaving his own head, so he misses a spot on the back, and it stays that way for the rest of the movie. So instead of making him look cool or tough like your usual revenge-seeker after he gets suited up this getup makes him look legitimately crazy. It would be even better if he wore his son's childhood pajamas or something but this will do.

I thought this was a DEATH WISH ripoff but it turns out it's a blood relative. Officially it's adapted from the book by Brian Garfield, which was actually a sequel to his book Death Wish. So in that sense this is sort of to DEATH WISH as DIE HARD was to THE DETECTIVE. Apparently the movie has almost nothing to do with the book, but since Garfield wrote the book as a response to the DEATH WISH movie and this movie shares his anti-vigilante statement, he likes it.

I should mention that I saw this one under unusual circumstances. I don't think I really did anything wrong. I had a day off and I knew I could go to an early show. I looked up the movie times online, went to the earliest show, which was 1:10. At the theater I used the computer kiosk to buy tickets. When I clicked on DEATH SENTENCE there was no 1:10 showing listed. Then I noticed a separate button for OCA: DEATH SENTENCE or something like that. I couldn't figure out what the letters stood for but I figured it was digital projection or something. Shit. Wish I knew that. Oh well, I know if I don't see it now I'm never gonna get around to seeing this one. I'll stay.

I thought about asking the gal who tore my tickets what those letters stood for, but I figured it didn't matter. When the ads and trailers and shit started they were on film. So maybe it's not digital. Or maybe the digital starts after the ads. Eventually the 20th Century Fox logo comes up. Still projected from film. Except on the bottom of the screen there is a subtitle with musical notes and it says "(Triumphant music)".

Around me there is shuffling and muttering as many, if not all of the 7 or 8 of us in the theater realize "Oh shit, this is close captioned for the hearing impaired."

At first I thought it wouldn't be that bad. I just wouldn't look at them. But no matter how hard I tried not to notice them I could not not notice them. It's like a constant heartbeat in the form of a blurry white flash below my field of vision. Even in the movie's long, wordless chase scene it would flash musical notes on the screen, as if seeing that symbol would make the scene more intense for deaf people.

I considered leaving, getting a pass to come back some other time. But I knew there was no other time. My solution was to watch the movie while holding my hands up in front of my eyes to block the lower part of the screen.

Two things about the closed captioning: 1, a guy answered his cell phone during the movie. He went outside to have the conversation but he actually answered it at normal volume and talked as he walked to the exit. Usually you would figure he was a huge asshole but this time he must've assumed everybody was deaf anyway and wouldn't give a shit.

The other thing is that a couple weeks later I was in the same theater and I noticed OC: THE BRAVE ONE, which is the higher brow DEATH WISH ripoff starring Jodie Foster. So you gotta figure there must be some huge demand for vigilante movies in the hearing impaired community.

Anyway, the reason I bring up the captioning is because this movie was pretty enjoyable in a generic sort of way, but who knows, it might've been the god damn GODFATHER if I had not been so distracted and had been able to see the whole frame. It all depends on what was going on in that lower part of the screen. Or maybe the movie is actually pretty bad but all the bad stuff is in that lower part, maybe I enjoyed it more than I would have. If so I would like to thank Regal Cinemas for not using the mirror that reflects subtitles from the back of the theater like they do at Cinerama.

DEATH TO SMOOCHY
I guess you have to be suspicious of a movie made in 2002 that is making fun of Barney. Which was a children's show that was popular for a while a couple years back. Barney is one of those things that everybody in the world hates, but then some people think they are the only ones who hate, and that they are being subversive by complaining about it. But hating Barney is as unique as liking pizza or chocolate. "No way! You like pizza too? I can't believe this!" There's not really anything subversive about connecting a lovable tv icon and murder. It's old.

I still like this premise though, that since there's so much money in children's television, there also must be corruption. So scenariographer Adam Resnick and directator Daniel DeVito paint a portrait of the seedy underbelly of children's television, where children's tv stars are caught up in bribery and stalking and murder. The story begins with a great scene where Robin Williams as "Rainbow Randolph" takes a bribe from parents to have their kid featured on his show. The bribe is a suitcase half full of wrinkly ten dollar bills, and Randolph says "You want me to put your little booger eater on my show?" Next thing you know, though, he's walking out with the money, and the parents pop up with guns and yell "Freeze, cocksucker!"

Then Edward Norton from the 1999 Outlaw Award Winner for Best Fuckin Picture FIGHT CLUB enters as Smoochy, a purple guitar playing health nut rhinocerous. He plays the part as kind of a half imitation of Woody Harrelson. Mr. Resnick, in an interview, described his character as being like Serpico, an ethical person who comes into a world of corruption and struggles to stay on a straight path. Kind of like me I guess also.

Anyway all kinds of wackiness ensues as Rainbow Randolph keeps trying to set up Smoochy, and the Irish mob and a brain dead former boxer and some other colorful individuals get involved. And there are jokes and what not.

There are some real funny lines in this picture. Vincent Schiavelli says, "Sorry if I smell like piss, but you know how it is." Smoochy says, "There are kids and junkies out there counting on me!" I guess you had to be there.

Robin Williams is also surprisingly un-annoying. The filmatists get more mileage than you'd expect out of having Mr. "I always star in crap like Patch Adams" yelling motherfucker and cock and etc. Even I was laughing a couple times. He also gets a couple of magical Rainbow Randolph moments. There is a well choreographed dance through the city and an end credits "ice dancing" scene. I don't know if you know what ice dancing is, but it is like ice skating except even more for fairies. There is one guy I saw on tv who does ice dancing based on major motion pictures. He did one based on CASTAWAY, with a volleyball, a fire and everything. The next day he did one based on WILD WILD WEST, with a cardboard saloon. I shit you not, this really exists. In this movie I liked it though, in my opinion.

Still this is a pretty obvious movie with lots of scenes where the music tries to convince you that it is more whimsical and funny than it actually is. You won't be completely wasting your time but it doesn't live up to its potential.

NOTE WRITTEN FOUR YEARS LATER: sorry for the "fairies" comment above. I wish I could say I literally meant magical fairies like tinkerbell, but I was probaly just being ignorant there. also, I'd just like to point out that this is probaly the most positive review ever written of this movie.

DEATH WARRANT

This is the early Van Damme picture that was written by David S. Goyer of BLADE fame. I know that guy has gotten some shit since he directed BLADE 3 and it wasn't as good as the other two, but I give him credit. Sure, his directing needs work, but BLADE 1-2 are A+ action screenplays with the ideal balance of humor, brooding, swagger, mythological mumbo jumbo and pitch perfect build to moments of badass payoff and clever action scenes. Plus he worked on DARK CITY and BATMAN BEGINS, and I say anyone who works with Chris Nolan but also wrote a movie for Van Damme is worthy of respect.

In this one Van Damme plays a cop from Quebec (they always gotta have a different excuse for his accent) who puts five shots in a serial killer called The Sandman, then gets sent on a mission undercover in a prison to investigate mysterious inmate murders. Robert Guillame plays his best friend in prison, and I'm not sure how BENSON ended but he must've been up on some serious corruption charges to wind up in this place. He also got stabbed in the eye so he looks like a kindly, smaller Tiny Lister.

Prison movies are usually mighty Christian - they forgive most of the characters even though they did bad things. And they always have segregated gangs but the hero proves his worth to one of the other races and then they have his back. So Van Damme is down with the blacks more than the white dude with the mohawk and the names of his kills tattooed on the side. All prison movies are kind of the same but this one has the advantage of a hero who can do a spinkick during a mess hall tussle. That's a good one. The murder plot is pretty funny too, it involves organ smuggling. As much as I talked up Goyer as a writer a few paragraphs ago I do have to admit he disappointed me with his restraint here. Van Damme gets a physical and they point out he has a rare blood type. That seems like it could only possibly be there to set up some ludicrous reason why a rare blood type is needed, but sadly they let that one go. (To be fair it isn't as out of place as the titanium knee in Seagal's undercover-in-prison movie HALF PAST DEAD).

Also I think parts of it make no sense. A teen hacker (Joshua Miller, the obnoxious kid from NEAR DARK, RIVER'S EDGE and CLASS OF 1999) breaks into the prison computer and the passwords are things like "Morpheus" and "sleep" to foreshadow the return of The Sandman. But when Sandman does show up at the prison it's kind of arbitrary, not part of some master plan that should include themed code names and passwords.

Still, Goyer does manage to find ways to keep things lively despite the isolated location. You get an explosion or two, medical power tools, an ax, a guy on fire. The climactic duel with the Sandman is a good one. He unscrews a lightbulb, breaks it and uses it like you'd use a bottle in a bar fight. Try to remember that in case you're ever in a jam. Sandman's smart to think of that but he balances it out with the stupidity of standing in front of the entrance to a burning room and yelling "Welcome to Hell!" Should it really surprise him that Van Damme kicks him into the fire? I don't think it should. That's not a spoiler for how he dies, the actual death is better but I won't give it away. [but maybe he doesn't die anyway, who knows?]).

Not too bad. Not one of my favorite Van Dammes, but worth my time.

12/20/08

DEATH WISH
After enjoying recent DEATH WISH ripoffs and spinoffs like DEATH SENTENCE and THE BRAVE ONE, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the source, and to see those sequels I never got around to watching. (By the source I mean the first Charles Bronson movie and not the book by Brian Garfield, which is apparently similar but clearly anti-vigilante in the end - that's why he wrote the sequel Death Sentence, because he was so mad about the DEATH WISH movie.)

Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, New York architect, happily married father, "bleeding heart liberal," Korean War veteran with conscientious objector status. A cool guy. Then one day a gang of hoodlums (including Jeff Goldblum in his first movie role) follow Paul's wife and daughter home from the grocery store and rape them. Mrs. Kersey dies and the daughter is so traumatized she's hospitalized in a near catatonic state.

Paul's annoying son-in-law (who calls him "dad" way too much for comfort) convinces Paul to take an opportunity to go work on a project in Tucson to get away from it all. Hanging out with ranchers he ends up going to the gun range, where he gets a condescending lecture about how the city wouldn't be so violent if everybody had guns like out here. When he leaves they give him a gun as a gift. So, uh, that might end up being used for something. Who knows?

Of course Kersey ends up in a one man war against crime, going out late at night waiting for people to try to mug him so he can shoot them with his new gun. It makes him feel good. Strangely, he never ends up tracking down or even trying to track down the dudes who attacked his family. Since this was the start of the urban vigilante formula it hadn't yet occurred to them that that was a good way to make the story satisfying. Or maybe they just knew it was unrealistic. That didn't become a part of the formula until part 2.

Obviously nobody likes bullies, and this was at a time when crime was fairly rampant in alot of major cities, so it hit a chord with alot of people. Anybody who ever gets fucked over fantasizes about getting revenge. But the manipulation of the movie is pretty blatant, the way it openly states that Kersey is a "bleeding heart liberal" and basically says that all his values were wrong and now he knows since his wife was killed.

Being made in a more sexist era the portrayals of his wife and daughter are pretty embarrassing to look at now. Obviously an attack like this is deeply scarring but the wife seems to die of fear and the daughter quickly reverts to the mental state of a little girl. She's even that way years later in part 2. It's reinforcing this fantasy for the Tucson ranchers that women are helpless little fragile waifs and that a man's primary job in life is to violently protect them from other predators.

If the movie wanted to really make the vigilantism argument credibly it wouldn't have to stack the deck the way it does, with the hoodlums being these silly cartoons who run around hooting and giggling and randomly attacking people for fun. If that's the way the filmatists see street crime then you gotta figure they're just paranoid, they wet their pants every time they see a longhair or a black guy, then run home and tell their friends they just barely dodged a gang rape. This movie definitely exploits our basest and most paranoid instincts. (I mean jesus, check this out.)

But you know what? I still dig this movie. Bronson is so good at these type of characters that I accept him more like he's a real guy who went a little crazy in a bad circumstances than as thinly veiled audience manipulating right wing fantasy time. So I forgive him. And for such exploitation the filmatism is pretty classy. The elegant and sometimes funky score by Herbie Hancock goes a long way toward making it work. Apparently director Michael Winner's girlfriend gave him the Headhunters album and convinced him to get Herbie. Good job Michael Winner's girlfriend at the time(aka Maria from Sesame Street).

And although the movie seems to be coming out on the side of vigilantism, you gotta acknowledge that there is some ambiguity there, the way at the end Kersey has completely lost it and he starts spouting cliches from the western stunt show he saw earlier. To me it seems to be saying that what he's doing is at least in part inspired by that blatantly fake world - rehearsed, lipsynched, acted out for tourists. And maybe that's why he takes his chance to leave New York instead of dying or committing suicide like alot of people would after a crazy rampage like that. Maybe that's why he doesn't really have a death wish.

DEATH WISH II
For the first DEATH WISH sequel we trade down from Dino DiLaurentiis to Golan and Globus producing. Apparently Menahem Golan almost directed, but Bronson wouldn't do it unless they got Michael Winner back. I bet he said "why get a loser when you can get a Winner?" Anyway we caught a lucky break there. I guess Winner must've broken up with Maria from SESAME STREET by this time so Herbie Hancock was out. Instead he got one of his neighbors to score, a neighbor who happened to be Jimmy Page. I was worried but there's only guitar soloing on the beginning and end credits, the rest is standard old school score, not cheesy '80s keyboards and rockin guitars and shit. So I'm not gonna complain.

It's 1982 now, 8 years later, but they say it's 4 years later. (The magic of cinema.) Paul Kersey lives in L.A. now. His adventures in Chicago (portrayed in the book Death Sentence) are ignored. He's still an architect, h has a new girlfriend (Jill Ireland) and he's moved his daughter to a hospital in California. She's still so traumatized she doesn't speak.

His life seems happy but then he has a run-in with some weirdos in the park. They steal his wallet so he chases one of them down and beats him up in an alley. Very satisfying, but too bad his driver's license was up to date. They go to his house, rape his housekeeper, hit him over the head with a crowbar, kidnap his daughter, then rape his daughter until she kills herself.

One time a guy at the DMV scolded me for not updating my address after I moved, and he said if the police were looking for me they'd go to the old address. I said that was a pretty good case for not updating your address, and DEATH WISH II is another one. If Paul was still carrying around his Illinois driver's license his daughter and maid would still be alive. And those thugs would be wandering around Chicago trying to find him.

This story raises a few questions. In DEATH WISH, Kersey's vigilantism was said to lower the crime rate in New York City. And it inspired other people to stand up for themselves and fight off muggers. But did that last? And is he gonna hafta travel the world to lower crime rates everywhere else, because L.A. of 1982 seems way worse than New York of '74. How's he ever gonna keep up? He's not Santa Claus. The hoodlums here are even less human and more violent than Jeff Goldblum's crowd. They just run around grabbinb people. They giggle and stick their tongues out and swing around like monkeys. Then occasionally they just set up a boombox and dance badly to shitty guitar rock.

A word of warning: the rape scenes in this one are much longer and more graphic, almost headed toward I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE territory. In the Jeff Goldblum future-respected-actor-playing-rapist slot we have Laurence Fishburne as "Cutter", wearing sunglasses like Levar Burton on Star Trek. I read that the U.K. cut has some of that stuff censored but I wouldn't mind. I get the idea.

I always wondered why in DEATH WISH all he needed was a gun. Wasn't he ever gonna get mugged by somebody with more than a switchblade? In II that escalation has taken place, so he does get in shootouts. These guys are pretty pickpockets and crazy rapists, but they trade a bag of coke for machine guns from the mob. Shit is getting crazy out there.

The simplistic approach to issues continues. People Kersey hes call him a hero and refuse to give a description to angry cops who seems to care more about busting him than other criminals. Alot of sticking it to the man goes on in these movies. Jill Ireland's character is very interested in criminal rehabilitation, Kersey kind of plays along and you're probaly supposed to think "isn't it cute, women don't know what they're talking about." An anti-death penalty senator is made to look naive by only giving him one weak sentence to explain his stance.

But since Kersey's tracking down the specific guys who did the crime this time it's hard to get too mad at him. And his methods are extra badass - he calls himself Kimball, wears a knit cap and rents a rathole to use as his headquarters, his hall of urban justice. Meanwhile he's trying to act normal whenever his lady shows up. He keeps having to hide guns or hope she doesn't notice the blood pouring out of his sleeve. For his last kill he has to use her connections and a fake doctor ID to get into a mental hospital where the guy gets locked up for rehabilitation. The craziest part is Kersey proposes to her and plans it so that running off to Acapulco will also be his post-murder-spree getaway. Not too romantic. That's kind of in the same category as Homer Simpson buying Marge a bowling ball with his name on it for her birthday.

There's some pretty good violence. Laurence Fishburne has the best death - he tries to hold up his precious boombox to shield himself from bullets - it gets shot in half in time to see the bullet hit him in the face. But actually my favorite part of the movie is earlier, when Kersey is not yet on the warpath because he's only had his wallet stolen. He doesn't have a gun but he beats the guy up. The guy tries to stab him, he catches the blade in a cardboard box and disarms him. He gives him a few pounds but the guy turns out not to have his wallet, so he tosses his knife over a tall fence. Schmuck.

Then when he goes back to the ladies he doesn't even tell them what happened. He just claims he can't buy ice cream because he forgot his wallet. That's Paul Kersey for you.

DEATH WISH 3

Well, L.A. didn't work out too hot for Paul Kersey. Might as well head home. So Part 3's opening credits show Kersey taking a bus back into New York City, looking out the window to the tune of the most in-your–face, half cheesy/half cool blast of white-man's-keyboard-rock meets jazz-fusion-'80s-cop-movie-establishing-shot-of-the-city theme this side of HARD BOILED. Jimmy Page is back in the composer's chair and comes up with a pretty weird and experimental sound more often than he comes up with the crappy guitar noodling you usually got after LETHAL WEAPON came out. He's still no Herbie Hancock, but he'll do.
Director Michael Winner returns for his last at-bat in the DEATH WISH series, but you immediately gotta wonder what the hell's up because this feels nothing like his other DEATH WISHes. I'm honestly not sure if it's a deliberate artistic choice or a sudden case of not giving a shit, but he has completely removed whatever traces there were of subtlety, thoughtfulness, ambiguity, class or elegance, not to mention realism. It looks cheaper, plays out more clunky and seems to have been made all in a week or so with no time to prepare or to stop to take a breath. And that's exactly why it's the most popular of the sequels. This movie is pretty fuckin nuts.

The first two took questionable morality and made it go down easier with execution that's just a little smarter than the material. No time for that in III. The writing and editing both go for a sometimes hilarious bluntness and minimalism. No beating around the bush. No time to set up or explain things, no time to set a mood, to develop an idea, to linger on anything at all. For example a scene will start with some place already on fire - why bother to show how this starts? Let's just skip to the burning. Maybe the funniest example is the lawyer who Kersey strikes up a relationship with during a few scenes. They start to see each other and before you have time to catch your breathe Kersey has left her in the car for a moment, the bad guys have punched her out, put the car in neutral and rolled it down the hill where it crashed and exploded. And Kersey is pissed but I don't think he 0ever mentions her again. The movie's saying, "yeah yeah yeah, revenge, etc. You get the idea, I'm not gonna blow a bunch of smoke up your ass about it."

In the opening Paul comes to visit a Korean War buddy (who cares why?) moments after a bunch of punks have broken in and killed the poor guy. Then a whole bunch of cops show up and arrest Paul. One cop knows he was The Vigilante so he tells him he can go if he continues killing "creeps." As a reader named Drew B. pointed out to me, "Eastwood shoots 'Punks,' and Bronson shoots 'Creeps.'" Anyway now the story doesn't have to deal with much secretiveness or cops trying to catch him. Just him shooting muggers.

The villains are your standard young white guys with chains and vests. Their leader Manny Fraker has a reverse mohawk and they all paint two lines on their foreheads in his honor. He's a weird looking dude with a good lawyer who, after his first meeting with Kersey, offers to kill a little old lady in his honor. But you can tell underneath the bluster he's a huge nerd. He sounds like such a weiner when he gets on the phone to call in some biker gang reinforcements. "Manny Fraker here..."

The Jeff Goldblum/Laurence Fishburne slot I guess this time would be filled by Alex Winter as "Hermosa." I mean he's mainly known as Bill or Ted (I never remember which one) but I still respect him for directing a movie nobody else knows about called FEVER.

The creeps seem to make up 99% of the neighborhood's population. There are a handful of elderly people or women who live there but if they go outside they're always surprised by a purse-snatching or a gang rape. If they stay inside the creeps climb in the window. So Kersey starts setting booby traps such as a bed of nails on the floor by his window or a plank that swings up and takes a guy's front teeth out. Sadly these traps always go off off screen.

Alot of the movie is Kersey happening to walk around the corner as a crime occurs, then he chases them down and shoots them. He uses a gun designed for African big game hunting, and later a machine gun his late buddy Charlie saved after the war and a rocket launcher he uses to blow Manny Fraker through the side of his apartment. (He ain't getting his deposit back.) The escalation is justified by the rioting creeps who just start blowing up cars, lighting people on fire and hiding on the roofs shooting at any citizen they spot. (More proof that Kersey's vigilantism did not lower New York's crime rate in the long run.)

The battle is painted broadly as a war between old people and young people. About the only time cops ever get involved is when they falsely arrest Kersey or when they come to take guns away from elderly people. (The right wing propaganda is at its all time clumsiest.) It seems like no cops give a shit about the crime at all except the one guy who gives so much of a shit that he secretely authorizes Kersey to execute all criminals on sight. I mean look, Kersey's a good guy, I trust him. But this brings up some constitional issues, in my opinion. Some due process and what not. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this.

But this is a hell of a movie. You can't watch it and not get a little giddy. Whether its stripping down of the cliches DEATH WISH created was intentional or not is something that will require further study. Jim Blanton of Fantasmo Cult Cinema Explosion tipped me off to a book called Bronson's Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films by Paul Talbot. I couldn't find it at the local book stores so I had to order it. As soon as I get it I'm gonna skip to the chapter on part 3 to find out what the hell was the thinking on this one. It seems like the movie that every violent parody of violent action movies in the '80s was directly based on. By normal standards of filmatism it's the worst of the series, but judged by raw force and entertainment value it's the best after part 1.

If you like your action raw, ridiculous and completely ignorant, DEATH WISH 3 is a must-see.

DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN
For part 3 Michael Winner stripped DEATH WISH down to its crudest elements. There was nowhere further to go within. So for THE CRACKDOWN new director J. Lee Thompson (GUNS OF THE NAVARONE, the last two PLANET OF THE APES movies, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, tons of other shit) dresses it back up again. You know this right away from the opening which contains suspense, mood, atmosphere, build, surprise, and symbolism, all forbidden by part 3's strict DOGME style rules.

Kersey is an architect again, and has a family again - another reporter girlfriend with a teenage daughter he regards as his own daughter (we know this because he says "I regard her as if she were my own daughter.") Oh jesus, not more gang rape, right?

Well, we're in luck. Kersey's regarded-as-daughter dies not from an attack but from a cocaine overdose. Kersey follows her boyfriend to the video arcade/roller rink, sees him confront and get stabbed by their dealer, ends up shooting him so his body falls and gets shocked by the top of the bumper car rink.

The admirable thing about this sequel is that the only punk or "creep" in the whole movie is the guy who gives the cops a description of Kersey's car after the arcade/roller rink shooting. Kersey goes after the organized crime figures who get rich off of the drugs that killed that girl. So finally the class conflict of DEATH WISH is reversed. It's not this well-to-do architect going after poor people who dress funny. It's Kersey vs. rich guys who wear suits and live in mansions or penthouse condos. And to enter their world he pretends to be the help, sneaking into a party as part of the catering staff, or pretending to be a worker at the drug front fishpacking plant.

This secret agent business wasn't his idea. A rich guy recruited him. He knows about Kersey's vigilante activities, claims his daughter was killed by drugs too, sort of forces/convinces Kersey to go after the kingpins. He gives Kersey intel (you hear it as narration) and supplies his equipment: sniper rifles, bombs, bugs, uzis, rocket launchers. Everything he needs for a crackdown.

So it's a series of missions and the feel is kind of more THE MECHANIC than DEATH WISH. You start to wonder how he got so fuckin badass just from shooting muggers and being a medic in the Korean war. He does things that usually require a special ops backstory, like in the great scene where he tries to escape the fish plant with about 80-100 working stiffs coming after him. Somehow the comparitive slickness makes it seem more reasonable than part 3, but at times it's just as ridiculous.

He also has a couple great one-liners. My favorite is when a gangster finds him in his kitchen, asks him what he's doing there and he says he was gonna make a sandwich.

About the music, let me say this: the saxophone is a proud instrument. In jazz and funk it can steal the show. John Coltrane used it to channel the planets and the love supreme. Maceo Parker made it funkier than a fat man's ass on a hot day on the bus. But in rock music and especially in action movie it is rarely dignified. This includes HARD BOILED. That may be one of the greatest action movies of all time, and playing the soprano saxophone may fulfill Tequila's need for pre-babyholding badass juxtaposition, but that David Sanborn/Kenny G smooth jazz sound doesn't cut it in my opinion. THE CRACKDOWN uses that type of saxophone sometimes, dating the movie. But I forgive it. In a strange way it's kind of comforting, reminding you of a time when even a lesser action movie, a part 4, could be pretty good.

I know THE CRACKDOWN is not one of the more popular entries in the series, but I like it. I think they were smart to have Kersey's strategy finally progress. Going after the heads of the gangs seems more likely to have an effect than going after street punks (although to be fair Bronson and Michael Winner had already shown this tactic as ineffective 15 years earlier in THE STONE KILLER). It also has a fun thriller structure (even if the twist is pretty easy to see coming) and lots of enjoyable action scenes. Keep it up, Kersey.

DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH

This one finishes off the series, it's a goodbye to Paul Kersey and to Charles Bronson for those who aren't gonna watch the three FAMILY OF COPS movies (the only thing he made after this). I've read that Bronson had Alzheimer's, but he seems completely with it and in good shape.

The year is 1994, Paul has another girlfriend with another daughter. Like part 4 they don't get mugged or raped, but like all DEATH WISH movies they're in serious danger. This time Paul runs afoul of the Irish mafia, specifically his girlfriend's crazy ex-husband Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks, aka Sherriff Earl McGraw from FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, KILL BILL and both GRINDHOUSE movies). We find out Paul is in witness protection now, not on the run, and he calls an old friend at the D.A.'s office (Saul Rubinek) to help him with O'Shea. But of course that makes things worse, so Paul finds himself sneaking around picking off mobsters. It occurs to me that makes it kind of like a slasher movie where you root for the slasher. Oh well.

This installment's strength is its colorful characters. Parks is a great villain, very eccentric, making odd faces, mumbling to himself, sinisterly amused by some joke even his own men aren't in on. And he kills a mannequin, for which he will suffer dearly.

The other most memorable character is Robert Joy (the guy with the burned face in LAND OF THE DEAD) as Freddy Flakes, a schizophrenic hitman who is introduced in drag, is obsessed with security, and suffers from severe dandruff. (Seriously, they make a huge deal about his dandruff.) Paul goes after him with a radio control soccer ball. So we are pretty far away from the tone of part 1 at this point.

The soccer ball scene is great, but my favorite is when Kersey poisons a mobster's connoli in a restaraunt. As the guy is violently choking to death Paul comes over with a big smile on his face and asks if something is wrong. His delight is hilarious.

This is a fun movie, but honestly it feels more like it should be a new Charles Bronson character than another Paul Kersey adventure. The other sequels have more purpose in the overall series. Part 2 is a rehash, a first attempt at continuing the story. Part 3 takes that story to its logical conclusion, showing how ridiculous it is. Part 4 ups the ante, shows him graduating from petty street thugs to higher level criminals behind the conditions that make those guys proliferate. But this one doesn't progress at all. It's mobsters again but with a more personal connection again.

I might be alone on this one, but I enjoyed this entire series. I'm not sure if there's another series with 5 movies and I enjoyed all 5 in their own way. This is a miracle of exploitation filmmaking.

And looking back over these 5 movies - god damn, poor Paul Kersey. His wife was killed, his daughter raped into catatonia. Then his housekeeper was raped and killed, his daughter kidnapped and raped and impaled in an escape/suicide. His war buddy was murdered, his neighbors killed trying to do something about it, his new girlfriend blown up. His next girlfriend's daughter O.D.'d, then she herself was shot to death. Then the girlfriend after that had her face slashed and fell to her death. I mean, this guy should stop talking to other people. Too dangerous. In a way this is a happy ending to the series, because the daughter is still alive at the end. We never have to find out what horrible thing happened to her.

The climax takes place at the dead girlfriend's clothes factory, which hopefully was shut down by OSHA afterwards. They have an open pool of acid, a machine that can grind a man into meat, a machine that plastic wraps a guy. I mean it's just not safe.

At the end Kersey struts away and, his back turned to the camera, says to contact him if you need any help, then it freezes. He looks so confident and so content. Nobody to avenge (except Jeff Goldblum and the other creeps from part 1). This is a good way to remember Kersey and Bronson. He's inside a factory, but he's pretty much riding off into the sunset. And you know what Paul? I'll take you up on that. I will contact you if I need any help.

6/4/08

DEATHDREAM

Like ROLLING THUNDER and FIRST BLOOD, but before both of them, this is a genre movie about what happens to soldiers when they come home. Andy is a soldier who dies in Vietnam (well, they never actually say it's Vietnam). And his family gets a letter and they cry and they deny it and his mom says it's a lie and wishes it wasn't true and sure enough that night they find him downstairs, back from the dead.

Even though he's a zombie, he's also a metaphor for people who survive war. They come back changed and nobody knows what to do to help them. Andy doesn't get his hand in a garbage disposal like in ROLLING THUNDER, he doesn't get bullied by the sherriff for being a longhair like in FIRST BLOOD, he doesn't get spit on by protesters like in the urban legends. On the surface people treat him real good, like a great hero, but they just don't understand him. They don't even try.

At first the family thinks it's a miracle, the state department made a mistake. But it's immediately clear that their son has come back different. He barely talks, he stares off into nothingness, he smiles worse than Dick Cheney, he strangles a dog in front of a bunch of little kids. Also he's been going around killing people, draining their blood and shooting it up (a little vietnam drug reference for you there). And then he starts to rot. Andy never had maggots crawling out of him before Vietnam.

But nobody seems to notice that Andy is different, or at least they don't want to admit it. They welcome him home and ask him questions and then answer them for themselves and don't notice that he's not talking to them and maybe not listening. They tell him anecdotes about world war 2 and act like they're his buddy and don't notice that they aren't connecting with him on any level, or that he literally doesn't have a soul. Or a pulse either.

The feel is alot like a play or a movie from an earlier era, with some very dialogue heavy scenes and a little too much jokey dialogue from the various characters in the neighborhood (like the wacky mailman who talks to their dog).

The cast is good: the mother in denial, the pretty, scared sister and the dad who looks exactly like Magneto reborn as a small town american dad. And especially the guy who plays Andy. He kind of reminds me of the kid who stars in MARTIN, but his character is much more distant and emotionless.

It's not incredibly gorey, but it's Tom Savini's first movie. He gets the credit for the makeup anyway, but according to the extras on the DVD he was pretty much an assistant for Alan Ormsby (who also wrote the movie). Savini was a combat photographer in Vietnam, so I wonder what he thought about doing this movie?

The movie has a bunch of different titles, like DEAD OF NIGHT and THE NIGHT ANDY CAME HOME and I guess it was written as THE VETERAN. None of these titles are any good, including DEATHDREAM, and I bet that's why it's not a very well known movie. I mean come on dude, DEATHDREAM? Let's get real here boys.

The director is Bob Clark, who also did the fucked up but very funny Ed Gein movie DERANGED (also with Ormsby and Savini). This guy made some good (if ugly) movies for a while, then he got famous for PORKY'S and CHRISTMAS STORY and then, I don't know, details are sketchy but I'm figuring at some point he must've gone off to a war and came back traumatized. Because he does BABY GENIUSES movies now. Also something called THE KARATE DOG. But still, DEATHDREAM's worth seeing. Give the guy a break. Maybe he's doing garbage now but he's got his bases covered because he made this movie back in 1974 that's very relevant today. And who knows, maybe 30 years from now we'll be saying the same thing about BABY GENIUSES 2: SUPERBABIES.

DEEP COVER

This one's from '91 and I guess it's most famous as the movie that introduced the world to Snoop Dogg. Not as an actor, but the young Snoop is "introduced" on a Dr. Dre song that plays on a stereo in the movie and then on the end credits. But this is a pretty good one, a serious undercover cop movie directed by Bill Duke, made memorable by a great performance by Mr. Laurence Fishburne.

Laurence plays one of those straightlaced cops whose dad was a junkie shot in front of his eyes and ever since he's walked the straight path, stayed 110% clean and fought to clean up his community, stop the drugs, etc. Against his better judgment he signs up to become an undercover cop, working for a sleazy white fuck, looking the other way when people are murdered and selling drugs to kids and pregnant mothers - all because of the carrot at the end of the stick, the chance to bust a guy near the top of the pyramid bringing drugs into the country. But not the guy at the very top, a politician, because that guy's off limits.

In every movie about an undercover cop, alot of the same shit is definitely gonna happen. But if it's done well, you're gonna make me a sucker. It's just like a con-man picture or a revenge picture. We can see the same shit over and over but if the execution is good enough, that's what we want.

Obviously we all know where this story is going. He builds a relationship with the criminals he's working with, and even a sleazy lawyer/drug kingpin played by Jeff Goldblum becomes somewhat likable. He gets his hands dirtier than he wants to, kills people and regrets it, even starts snorting coke. He ends up becoming disillusioned with the phoniness and corruption of the DEA, saying that he thought he was a cop pretending to be a drug dealer, but was actually a drug dealer pretending to be a cop. (I liked that line but I doubt this was the first movie to use it.) So he quits the force but is so entrenched in the drug dealing that he has to continue, until he can pull a badass Superfly type move and turn the tables on everyone. The kind of fuck–you that Vin Diesel should've pulled at the end of XXX instead of just selling out and lounging on a beach.

The secret to this picture is Fishburne, after he changed his name from Larry but before he was Morpheus. We haven't seen him in too many movies since he started the Matrix movies (MYSTIC RIVER and BIKER BOYZ are the only two I can think of off the top of my head) but the dude is always good. Here he uses that quiet Furious Stiles righteousness to full advantage. It's all in the intense look on his face. You can see why he'd be cast as the badass leader of a rebellion. He seems so good and honorable and scary at the same time. At any moment he could pull out his gun and/or give you that lecture about gun shops and liquor stores on every corner in the Hood.

My only complaint about this picture is the music. The Dr. Dre song is great, but the rest of it is on the cheesy side. It's from that period when a director might think hey, I should have a hip hop score for this thing. So instead of going to the RZA like Jim Jarmusch did for GHOST DOG: BEST MOVIE EVER, they hire some 50 year old white guy with a grey pony tail and give him a couple CDs to listen to for reference and see what he can come up with. (I don't know if that's really the case, but that's the impression.) It's not terrible, it's just the least convincing part of the movie.

Otherwise though Bill Duke, famous supporting cop actor, brings everything off strong. Fishburne does some dark, growly narration that gives it a sort of neo-noir type feel. And it's got a little more of a political edge than usual, with references to Noriega, corrupt politicians funneling drugs into the black community and black on black crime. I liked this one, I'm glad it was recommended to me.

THE DEFENDER - A film by Dolph Lundgren

As you know, I'm a fan of these movies where an action star decides to take matters into their own hands and just direct the damn thing themselves. Participants include Bruce Lee, Tom Laughlin, Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone and most successfully Clint Eastwood and Takeshi Kitano. THE DEFENDER is the first picture directed by Dolph Lundgren (he has also made a second one, THE MECHANIK).

One thing Dolph already blew before you even watch this one is that generic title. I don't think this is based on the old video game Defender, so there's no excuse. It sounds like the american title for a Jet Li movie, and probaly is. On the positive side, he actually is a defender in this movie. He defends stuff. Specifically, he is the head of security for the presidential security adviser. So he's defending her.

As far as stunt casting goes Dolph gets a few points because in this movie, Jerry Springer plays the president of the United States. That's not quite as ridiculous as some people might think, actually, if they don't know that before he was a host of staged talk shows he was the mayor of Cincinatti. But it's still funny to see, and near the end he does a speech about the meaning of America that could pass for "Jerry's Final Thought." Dolph previously co-starred with Montel Williams in THE PEACEKEEPER so this might actually be a Lundgrenics trademark. I would like to see him take on that crazy witch lady Sally Jesse Raphael in one of his future works. Maybe Sally Jesse and Montel are abusing troubled teens at a brainwashing camp out in the desert somewhere, and Dolph has to go undercover as a teen junkie (or as a square dad) in order to bust em out. At some point Sally Jesse would get thrown off a cliff and you'd see her falling Hans Grueber style, and she would cackle all the way down.

Despite what you'd expect from a movie directed by Dolph Lundgren and starring Jerry Springer as the president, this is not really a funny or goofy movie. It's a straight forward, competent low budget action movie is all. The action is mostly just gunfire, nothing too exciting. The plot is full of twists and turns and it's a little hard to follow. The politics of the movie are pretty interesting though, especially coming from a guy mostly associated with anti-commie propaganda like ROCKY IV and Jack Abramoff's RED SCORPION. It could take place in the next administration after Bush, with a new president who wants to drastically change foreign policy. It's mentioned that "the war on terror" needs a drastic rethink, we need to stop scaring the shit out of the rest of the world so there's about to be a vote on the president's "peace inititiative." They never tell you what the plan is, though, and they're careful not to say if Springer is a democrat or republican. The point is, the movie is acknowledging that the Bush approach of terrorizing everybody and hoping as a side effect it might stop terrorism is stupid.

But at first it seems like Dolph's mission is to protect the security adviser while she has a top secret meeting with a bin Laden type. Like maybe she's gonna pay him off or something. The setup is pretty unbelievable for something like that, because the Condoleeza type only has Dolph and 5 others protecting her, and the bin Laden type only has one guy with a scraggly beard which I guess is supposed to suggest he's Arabic but would probaly work better for playing Charles Manson.

Anyway this part is interesting because it's easy to agree with the movie's premise that we need to find a new way to deal with terrorism, but you also gotta be uncomfortable with somebody sitting down with bin Laden to discuss it. Then, after this has been milked for a while, there's a twist. And this is a spoiler for all you Dolph maniacs out there, read on at your own perile. It turns out this is not the real guy, it's actually a CIA agent and the whole thing is a trap set to draw out some military industrial complexionists who are planning a coup against the president, who they say is a traitor because he wants peace. I'm not really sure why the whole terrorist ruse is necessary, it seems like there would be an easier and less morally ambiguous way to do it. But it probaly makes sense. I trust Dolph.

(In the ensuing mayhem, by the way, the fake bin Laden type gets shot and killed. This will probably make the world think the real guy is dead when he's really still out there. Keep that in mind for part 2, Dolph.)

I never really liked Dolph all that much until I saw him playing an American in BLACKJACK. He plays these Russian guys (he does it again in THE MECHANIK) and he just seems like this big bland hunk of meat, but when he's more like himself he's got some charisma. This one isn't anywhere near as entertaining as BLACKJACK, but I think it helped me understand the appeal of Dolph. For one thing, he's aging better than some of the other '80s guys. He's still in good shape but the age adds lines to his face that make him look more interesting. He kind of looks like Viggo Mortensen on steroids. And to be honest he's just more classy than some of those other guys. He doesn't go for ponytails and mullets and shit, he has a classic look. Suits and turtlenecks. Not trying to prove he's edgy.

But the big revelation I had, if this counts as a big revelation to anybody: Dolph doesn't seem like he's full of himself. Almost all of the American action heroes seem like they have big egos. I mean sure, they play nice, modest guys some of the time, but you never buy it 100%. Deep down, you know Jean-Claude and Steven Seagal and everybody have huge egos. But at least in this movie and in BLACKJACK, I believe that Dolph is a genuinely nice and humble guy. I guess The Rock has kind of the same thing, this sense of genuine decency to him. It makes this kind of movie a little more watchable, even if it's nothing special. And it's not. But I wouldn't write off director Dolph Lundgren.

And that's my final thought. Until next time, take care of yourselves, and each other.

DELTA HEAT
DELTA HEAT is a somewhat entertaining buddy movie from '92. It's kind of like RUSH HOUR but instead of Chris Tucker as a wiseass LA cop it's Anthony Edwards as a wiseass LA cop, and instead of Jackie Chan as a Hong Kong inspector it's Lance Henriksen as a crazy ex-cop New Orleans swamp rat. And instead of doing kung fu he has a hook hand (bitten by a gator, of course). Actually it's kind of like RUSH HOUR 2 but instead of going to Hong Kong they go to New Orleans.

Edwards gets into town just in time to find out that his par†ner who got there before him is already dead and even got his heart cut out. So so far this investigation is not going well. They had followed a "designer drug" to its source which, according to the partner in his last payphone call, was a guy named Antoine something. Turns out the name belongs to a killer who Henriksen burned alive the same day he got bit by that gator and decided to leave the force. So Edwards is sent to him for tips and after the customary period of buddy rejection they team up to solve the case. Lance cuts his swamp dreadlocks and rejoins society with a leather jacket on his back and a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

You know, come to think of it it's kind of like MONEY TALKS, because one buddy is clearly more likable and enjoyable to watch than the other. Who is more interesting to you: Lance Henriksen with a Cajun accent and hook hand, or Anthony Edwards with a dangly earring? The introduction of Edwards' dumbass character is perfect. Somebody's carrying his luggage into the hotel for him and he snaps, "Careful with that - there's a laptop in there!"

(you'll also get a good 1992 laugh when you see one of the cops talking on a brick-sized cell phone)

This is by no means a great movie, but if you're like me and you rent it thinking "hey, this might be a watchable Lance Henriksen role" you will be satisfied. His name is "Jackson Rivers." He gets to do a Cajun accent. He's introduced with a baby raccoon climbing around on his back. Later he has a snake around his neck. In one scene he jumps up, hooks his hook hand into the ceiling and kicks a guy - but then gets stuck and when he reaches for the gun in his pants it slips and falls out his pantleg. That's one I've never seen before. In the same scene Anthony Edwards rolls through a giant pile of shrimp. It's like a special Cajun edition of Super Sloppy Double Dare.

Somebody is behind this drug trade, and whoever it is keeps cutting hearts out. Maybe it's that burnt up killer, come back Freddy style. I wonder if the ELM STREET remake will be an action movie where he sells designer drugs? It could happen. One good part is when Edwards finds a human heart in his hotel bed. Take that, city boy. At this point Jackson Rivers isn't talking to him so he goes to his gate and leaves the heart there in a plastic bag, like "Maybe this will refresh your memory." And it does, that's how he wins him over. I wonder if he ate it? I don't know that much about swamp culture.

It's not bad. As I often write, "there are a few twists here and there." There are a couple odd touches, like a scene where Edwards has to pay some hillbilly to bring him to Jackson's place on a boat, then when they get there it turns out there was a road there and he was just scamming the tourist. A couple odd touches like that made me wonder if it was loosely based on a novel or something, and the credits do say "based on characters created by" somebody, but I haven't been able to find any explanation of what it means. (More likely they wrote the first draft where it was totally different - less like MONEY TALKS and more like X3: X-MEN REUNITED or RED DRAGON.)

Well, this is a short review. I could try to compare it to other movies with "Delta" in the title such as DELTA FORCE, DELTA FORCE ONE, DELTA FARCE, etc. Maybe try for some kind of Delta Burke reference. But why postpone the inevitable? the end

7/20/08

THE DEPAHTED

If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There's alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.

Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese's young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson's gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who's really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody's gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he's fighting some kid in a treehouse.

People are calling this a return to form for Scorsese, but it's more like a return to genre. Come on man, THE AVIATOR wasn't good enough for you? Of course it's great to see Scorsese back doing a current day gang movie. And this is a great movie. But don't get TOO excited, it's not GOODFELLAS. There's alot of funny macho dialogue that makes it alot of fun, but it's more stylized I think. GOODFELLAS seems more authentic. THE DEPARTED is more just for laughs. This probaly isn't a masterpiece. But it's a really fuckin great thriller.

And in a way that's what's cool about it. It's a huge cast and a very complex story, but for Scorsese these days it's almost minimalistic. It's a pretty straight ahead suspense thriller without the period trappings. He even stays away from the multiple narrators gimmick he's so good at. The only narration is from Nicholson at the very beginning, and that actually kind of bothered me because the rest of the movie never seems like it's in his point of view at all. (And why does he gotta use the n-word right at the beginning when there is nothing else about black-white relations in the entire movie? I guess this was before Michael Richards went nuts.)

I loved the movie from beginning to end, but for me it wasn't the instant grab you by the ear and drag you along that you get in most Scorsese. We have a great collection of movie stars here but it takes a little bit to forget they are movie stars. You got Matt Damon and Leon Del Caprio of course, but also Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, etc. Mark Wahlberg gets alot of the funniest lines, and his Boston accent is really his, but to be honest it was hard not to think of him as Mark Wahlberg. But the biggest one is Jack Nicholson. I mean this is a good role for him, it's a fun role, his best in a while. But it's Jack Nicholson. It's the Joker. Good old crazy Jack, we all love how irrascible that fucker is. I don't know, he almost makes it, but at the end he's still Jack Nicholson, he is not an indelible character like Paul Sorvino has done or Robert DeNiro has done or even Daniel Day-Lewis as Robert DeNiro in GANGS OF NEW YORK.

And Martin Sheen. I don't know if it's from doing that president show or what, but he isn't BADLANDS anymore, he seems like such a teddy bear now. There's a good cop/bad cop thing going where Wahlberg is the asshole boss and Sheen is your nice grandpa. So the one kind of unintentionally funny part of the movie was after something bad happens to Sheen, Nicholson's guys say something like, "That cop was tough, we really had to work him over." And I thought come on man, that lovable old man in the windbreaker wasn't that tough.

And by the way, I'm so proud of Anthony Anderson for being in this. I know he already had a better role in HUSTLE & FLOW, but still. The guy is in a Martin Scorsese movie. This guy did three Andrzej Bartkowiak movies teamed up with Tom Arnold. He did MY BABY'S DADDY. He did KANGAROO JACK. He did AGENT CODY BANKS 2. He did more than one SCARY MOVIE sequel. And that's just scratching the surface. So when Anthony Anderson was in this a little bit, and especially when he appeared somewhere near the climax, I wanted to congratulate him. Good job, Anthony Anderson. You did it. Up from the bootstraps. The American dream.

I don't remember INFERNAL AFFAIRS too well. This takes the basic storyline and I remember the stake out scene with the two opposing moles sneakily trying to communicate with their masters. There was a female psychiatrist in the movie but she wasn't that big of a part, although the hot chick with the gun on the cover of the American DVD might be supposed to be the psychiatrist, I'm not sure. Anyway, I could be wrong but I seem to remember INFERNAL AFFAIRS having some of the ol' conflicted loyalties where they start to care about the side they're ratting out. That is always a great conflict in movies like HARD BOILED and DONNIE BRASCO but (whether it was in the original or not) it's kind of cool that it's not in this version, since it's in every other undercover movie.

Most of the characters in this movie are pretty likable. You root for Leon, but you also like his co-workers who he's betraying. Matt Damon is more of a dick, he's obviously a bad guy and he's got kind of this AMERICAN PSYCHO lifestyle, wearing a tie and calling his friends fags and living in an amazing loft that he shouldn't be able to afford. But it's still kind of tense whenever he has to pull off a fancy maneuver to get out of a jam. So you end up just kind of watching these different pieces on the chess board, moving around trying to be the one that survives.

Watching the movie again on DVD I had the same feeling I did the first time I saw it. It starts out pretty good. It stays good. It starts to get really good. And then by the end it's fucking GREAT. It pulls you in slowly, tightens the screws, squeezes the Charmin, battens down the hatches. By the end you're not taking sides, you're just on the edge of your seat watching the pins spin around wondering if any of them will stay standing.

* * * BIG ASS BOSTON BAKED BEAN STYLE SPOILIES COMING UP - IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE GO PAHK THE CAH OR SOMETHIN (ha ha get it, Boston) * * *

Since the movie keeps getting better and better as it goes along, mathematics dictate that the best part of the movie is the end of the movie. I think the way things end up is ingenious. It really seems like Leon has it figured out, he has Anthony Anderson to witness everything, he's gonna get through this by the skin of his teeth. And there's that moment in the elevator when Matt is all bluster, "oh I can't WAIT to see you explain this to a Suffolk County jury, this is gonna be fun," and then he can't even keep up the front anymore, two seconds later he just breaks down and asks Leon to shoot him. Leon has it in the bag and then out of the blue a dude shoots him in the face.

So then we follow Matt for the last stretch and we see how despite winning the game, his life is shit now. At the funeral he sees his own girlfriend crying over Leon and there's that great shot of him thinking about it, and you can practically pinpoint the moment when he remembers Leon saying something about his only contact with the world was a police shrink. And later as Matt's coming into his fancy apartment with his groceries he tries to say hi to a neighbor's dog in the hallway and the dog ignores him. He gets dissed by a dog! And you let your guard down because of this little joke but then he steps into his apartment and there's Mark Wahlberg as Dignan, the cop we haven't seen since he went on leave. And you know he means business because he's wearing booties on his feet. And then the greatest moment of the whole movie: Matt says, "Okay." Not "Oh God please, don't kill me!" or "Get it over with you bastard! Shoot me!" Nothing like that. Just, "Okay." He's just been dissed by a dog, he has not been able to put his groceries down, and he recognizes that this is finally the end of the road. Check mate. Okay.

A note about Mark Wahlberg in this movie. I like that dude alot so I'm happy that he got an Oscar nomination. But to be honest I think they're giving him too much credit, they're rewarding him for having most of the funny lines in the movie, like "I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy." He was definitely more deserving in some of his other performances like BOOGIE NIGHTS and I LOVE HUCKABEES. That said, he's a fun character and I'm excited about the idea that they might make a sequel around him. I never saw the INFERNAL AFFAIRS sequels and I know one of them is a prequel so I'm not sure if this would have anything to do with those or not. And I'm not even sure if Dignan is still a cop at the end of this one - we hear that he is on leave, we also hear that he resigned, and I'm not sure if that second one was a lie or not. All I know is, put him in those booties again.

By the way what kind of a loser hasn't seen this movie yet, am I right? we are cool because we saw it.

* * * OKAY THE SPOILER PART IS OVER IN MY OPINION * * *

Since I am finally writing this review and it's a few days before the oscars, I might as well throw in a soon-to-be-dated discussion of that topic. Pretty much everybody in the world expects Mr. Scorsese to finally get his best director oscar for this one. And I've heard alot of people say that he shouldn't get it, it's just a career award (like how Forrest Whitaker is gonna get his because of GHOST DOG, in my opinion) and since THE DEPARTED is no GOODFELLAS or TAXI DRIVER or what have you it would be kind of sad for it to win.

Well, I don't agree and let me tell you why. This award is for directing. It's not necessarily for being the deepest director or the director who just created the best movie of his career. It's for the act of directing a movie really well, and that's what this guy did. You gotta consider, Scorsese didn't write this movie, he didn't even create the story since it's a remake, but if somebody else directed it it would not have been the same movie at all. You can see that this is the work of a master filmatist, a teller of visual stories, etc. Remember when Steve Soderbergh got two nominations in the same year, one for ERIN BROCKOVICH and then he won for TRAFFIC? I kind of thought BROCKOVICH deserved it more because that was the more mainstream movie, it was kind of a generic manipulative stick it to the man type of crowdpleaser in alot of ways but it was the way he directed it that made it transcend that and really work. That's the theory I'm working on and that's why I think it would be pretty cool if Scorsese won for this one. (Cuaron shoulda been in there for CHILDREN OF MEN though.)

Anyway, not to be controversial but I would just like to make one observation about Martin Scorsese: that there is a guy who can fucking direct. Way to direct, Scorsese.

DERANGED (a.k.a. Deranged - The Confessions of a Necrophile)

I don't know if you've ever heard of a serial killer out of Wisconsin called Ed Gein. He is the most fucked up motherfucker that ever was fucked up. He is the original American Psycho as they would say on Entertainment Tonight. When they caught him he had a dead lady hanging in his shed cleaned out like a deer. He had a heart on his stove and all kinds of heads and skulls and chairs and clothes made out of human skin. He started out digging up graves and then started killing people, collecting their body parts, wearing them and possibly eating them. I mean jesus, I'm not making this up, but don't read it if you're eating - the dude had a box full of vaginas and he liked to dance around in the moonlight wearing a belt he made out of nipples. In my opinion, he had a problem with women.

Anway this fucker inspired alot of the most famous horror pictures, from Psycho to Texas Chainsaw to Hannibal Lecter and, I forget which other ones, possibly The Fly or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or one of those. But this picture Deranged is a more obscure one from 1978 which is based much more closely on the actual case.

For the movie they changed his name to Ez instead of Ed, because he is still alive and living in some minimum security place somewhere and I mean, you never know. But personally I think he would be able to figure out that it was him if he saw the movie. Anyway the story begins with Ez's mom dying, and shows how lonely he is, and next thing you know he digs her up and starts taking care of her. Then it's more graverobbing. I don't mean to preach or anything but the guy is a sicko in my opinion. Anyway there are subplots about Ez having dinner with his childhood buddy, who he calls sir. His buddy's wife ("ma'am") convinces him to start going on dates, and this leads to him start killing.

Now this whole graverobbing cannibal business is a really crazy story and that's obviously the main appeal of this picture. But the only reason I enjoyed it is because, well, it's funny as hell. I mean yes, there might be some people who would argue that it is tasteless to take some of the most shocking atrocities ever committed, put them on screen thirty years later and play it for laughs. But, in my opinion, there is, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, with the uh... well, they're right. It's tasteless. but still.

Ez is played completely convincingly by Roberts Blossoms as this dim old farm boy who is over polite and with no social skills. Which fits the character pretty good if you think about it. When a gal is trying to come on to him, he seems confused and says, "ma'am?" Later he tells his mummified dead mama that he thinks the gal has a screw or two loose.

There is another funny scene where Ez is driving home from having first dug up his mom's corpse. He gets pulled over and he tells the cop that the bad smell in his truck is from a dead pig. As he drives away he says, "I apologize for calling you a pig, mama."

And then when local gals are missing, Ez starts telling everybody that they're not missing, he has them at his house. People just laugh and say that he has a twisted sense of humor. I thought this was pretty funny, then I read that it really happened with Ed Gein. So maybe it's not funny, even though I laughed. I guess it depends on your tastes in real life serial killer comedy. I mean if you like them then, this must be one of the better ones.

DERBY
If you manage to find a video of this obscure 1971 documentary, you might think it's gonna be a behind-the-scenes look at roller derby. Which is a phoney sport they used to have, kind of like pro wrestling, Harlem Globetrotters, American Gladiators or Olympic ice skating. What the sport was, I think, was people rolling around in a rink with rounded walls, then they knock each other over and start getting mad at each other and that type of shit.

What you really get though is a little slice o' american culture, focusing on this one particular dude who decides to quit his job at the factory to pursue roller derby. He goes back stage to talk to one of the pros (you're not sure if the filmatists set this meeting up or not) and then tells his wife he's gonna do it, he's gonna go to a school and train and give it a shot. And she says okay, if that's what you want to do. She's real supportive.

Which is why it's kinda shocking about halfway through the movie when we go along with this dude and his buddy on a double date and the buddy brags about how this dude once had three mistresses without his wife or any of them knowing about each other. Turns out he's a real scum bag, and the poor wife kinda realizes it, so there is a scene where she and a friend go to one of the mistress's houses and they all bitch each other out. In 1971 this stuff was done in documentaries because there was no television programming to fill this gap.

There are scenes at the derby, and one scene in a car with a couple of female pros in a car on the way to a game, talking about how people look at them funny because they're white girls with afros. But you never see this training school the dude is talking about, or find out if he makes it into the derby. It ends kind of abruptly but it's real fascinating while it lasts, getting a peek into this guy's life while he waits to get started.

This guy thinks he's real fuckin cool. Even though he's just some fuckin rollerskater. One scene I really liked was where he was at work at the factory, wearing sunglasses. His boss tries to get him to take off the glasses, saying he needs to wear safety goggles. He says he has to wear the sunglasses to see. The boss points out that if something flew at him, it could blow glass right into his eyeball. He says yeah, I sorta gotta wear em to see. And the boss says, yeah, okay, I'll look into that, I'll do some tests. So the guy smiles, he's still wearin his sunglasses.

(I bet he wouldn't be smiling after the glass went into his eyeball, but they don't have that scene in here.)

There are other interesting characters too, like this fat teenager that lays around on a mattress in their house, with no shirt on, reading Playboy. I'm not sure if he's their son or somebody's brother or just some guy that they can't get to leave. The wife tells him how he needs to bring his dog to the pound if he's not gonna feed it and he just keeps lookin at his playboy and tells her she should get playgirl. People think these types of losers were invented by the young people in the '90s, but here's documentation to prove otherwise. This is one scene that could be straight out of gummo.

Later on there is, I think it's the roller skater's brother, fresh back from Vietnam. He brags about how brutal it was, but consoles himself by playing himself off as a great american, doing his duty, seeing the world realistically. He tries to denegrate his brother's dream of rollerskating for a living. He criticizes everybody's morals and tries to get everybody to join up.

And in this scene you actually side with the braindead gummo kid, when he grunts "Don't you feel bad about killing all those people?" And the vet says, "What are you, one of these hippies they got goin around?" You can see how even the most pathetic waste of youth was able to get a little bit of perspective, trickling down from the counterculture. When are we gonna get that goin, kids? Get off your mattresses, put down your playboys and start makin a god damn difference. I will loan you some hustlers later.

Filmatically this is not on the level of, say, a Maysles brothers picture. Because those are all masterpieces. There are a couple of shots in here that are obviously set up. For example when this dude goes to look at a motorcycle he wants to buy, there is a really long shot of playboys glued onto a door, and then the door opens up and the guy selling the motorcycle comes out. But they obviously set up the shot and then told him to come out. I think it's all real, but those type of phoney set ups make you wonder. Also it's awkward that the whole thing is done Maysles style, fly on the wall, until one part 50 minutes in there is suddenly a guy talking to the camera.

But this is a good one, I'm real glad I found out about this one. The directionist did not seem to do any other documentaries but he did a drama called CARNY so I will check it out in case it's good.

THE DESCENT

"From the studio that brought you HOSTEL and SAW..."

(comes a British movie from last year that they bought the rights to.)

Let's say you're six ladies (5 British) who go together to explore an uncharted cave somewhere in the Appalachians. And after you crawl through a very narrow tunnel, your entrance caves in and as far as you know there's no way out, you're under 2 miles of rock and nobody knows you're there.

Well, you gals are pretty much fucked. So it's almost beside the point that after you wander around for a while longer you're gonna run into some weird underground fuckers (or wufs) who are gonna crawl around squealing like fighting cats and try to eat you.

I've been hearing about this movie for a year or more now since it took a while to get from England to our shores, or at least to our theater screens. So there's alot of hype around it and the advertising is embarrassingly over the top, using a quote where some joker claims it's "the scariest horror-thriller since ALIEN." (Ever heard of THE SHINING, dude?) After all that buildup it's easy to focus on the weaknesses, like there's a couple too many BOO! moments in the first section, and the part where a girl breaks a monster's neck is maybe a little too Seagal, and one revelation about the character relationships is arguably unneeded, and some of the action is kind of hard to follow. But you know what, that shit's insignificant in the face of what a truly grueling experience this movie is. It's a real journey from beginning to end. It's nice to see a movie again where when the heroine crawls out of the cave you really feel like she's been to Hell and back. And she certainly looks like hell. Well, actually she looks more like Carrie.

That's right Brits, you heard me. In our version she gets out of the cave. They made a special American happy ending where she climbs out on a rainbow and gets saved by a unicorn, and everybody hugs. I was concerned about the changed ending, thinking maybe I should just watch the PAL-DVD import instead of seeing it in a theater. But now, having seen only the rainbows and unicorns ending, I'm thinking I like it. After all that poor gal goes through I think you sort of need some relief at the end. I know that Sam Raimi's rule of horror is "you must taste blood to be a man," but there's another rule of horror that says "if you completely submerge yourself in a puddle of chunky blood, then come out and beat a monster to death with a bone, you should get some kind of reward for that." Yes, some would say that getting to submerge yourself in a puddle of chunky blood and then beat a monster to death with a bone is a reward in itself, but keep in mind this gal has had a long day. That kind of thing can be stressful if you're not in the right mood.

Anyway, what's really brilliant about this movie is that it thoroughly stresses you out long before the wufs show up. The most harrowing section of the movie is when the ladies crawl through that long stretch of rock that's no bigger than the ventilation shaft Tom Skerrit crawled through in the aforementioned alien movie. Only they're not doing this to save their asses, at this point they're doing it for fun and adventure. There's one spot where there's water almost to the top and you can't believe they're willing to crawl through there. And then they start doing the dangerous stuff. I don't know of another movie that makes you feel that claustrophobic. It's mostly the idea that's disturbing but the way it's shot doesn't hurt. There's one scene with a gal in some water. The water's not a problem for her but they shoot it from an angle where the surface of the water bounces up and down, getting closer and closer to the top of the frame, and you feel like you're gonna suffocate.

The other brilliant touch is that since most of the movie takes place in a cave, that means most of the movie takes place in the dark. So they'll be crawling over piles of bones or dead bodies, and you don't get a clear look at it. Sometimes their flashlights give you glimpses of horrible things that they never even notice.

I gotta say also, it's nice to see an all-woman horror movie. The movie is pretty brutal - lots of blood, some stabbing, some flesh eating, some slow dying, some horrible betrayal, a compound fracture - but it's not macho. It's nice to see a movie where when people get horribly injured nobody yells "Don't die on me!" or "Fight it! You're a fighter!" or shit like that, they try to comfort each other and say everything is going to be all right, and they really mean it. As they get all covered with blood they do go primal and turn into mama bears, but it doesn't have that feel of a male director trying to give you a Hot Chick Who Kicks Ass. They don't give them any Ash oneliners. The little Ripley moments feel completely earned and genuine.

The director is Neil Marshall, who did that low budget soldiers vs. werewolves movie DOG SOLDIERS (which, come to think of it, everybody compared to ALIENS). I liked DOG SOLDIERS but I think he still deserves some kind of most improved ribbon for THE DESCENT. This one's way scarier, the tone is much more controlled and man, the effects are a big improvement. I know it's mostly a budget issue, but I'm still impressed that he jumped from dudes running around with unmoving wolf masks to these wufs. The makeup effects are great, almost Del Tororific. These almost seem like real creatures - weird albino naked bat children who crawl on the ceiling but thankfully are all mushy so they're easy to kill with your bare hands. It's like fighting a baby mole except it's big as a human and it'll bit your throat out if it gets half a chance.

I enjoyed this movie. It made me uncomfortable. I wouldn't say it actually scared me, but I can imagine if you're the type of person who gets scared by movies, this might do the trick on you. Unless confined spaces and weird underground fuckers coming at you in the dark help you relax. Come to think of it, those little guys are kind of cute. I bet some day they'll domesticate them and Paris Hilton will carry one around as a prop and everybody will laugh at how silly THE DESCENT is. So let's enjoy it while we can.

DESERT HEAT aka COYOTE MOON or INFERNO
When I reviewed Jean-Claude Van Damme's SECOND IN COMMAND on The Ain't It Cool News recently I made a shocking admission: I haven't seen a whole Van Damme movie since 1998's KNOCK OFF. I understand if that means I lose credibility in some of your eyes, but I gotta be open and honest with you people. I'm one of them straight shooters, in my opinion. So I gotta admit it: I learn more and more about Steven Seagal every day, but when it comes to Van Damme I'm a straight up amateur. And I want to become a more well rounded person so I asked for some advice on the best movies from Van Damme's post-theatrical days. Two people made convincing cases for COYOTE MOON, or DESERT HEAT as it's called here in the states, so that was my first stop. (one guy described the plot, the other guy a threesome scene.)

DESERT HEAT is a weird-ass DTV movie from John G. Avildsen, the Oscar winning director of ROCKY. I'm not gonna bother to cross-reference but until somebody tells me otherwise I'm gonna assume Avildsen is the only owner of a Best Director Oscar statue who has ever directed a Van Damme movie. And for some reason, I don't know why but he decided to play down his involvement in this picture and credit himself as Danny Mulroon. And then later it also says his name. Make up your mind Avildsen - are you ashamed or not? Keep your story straight.

Anyway the movie starts with a Seagalian quote about the coyote's place in Native American legend, as Van Damme chases and surpasses a coyote on a motorcyle. He parks his vintage Indian motorcycle in the middle of the desert, swigs some whiskey and waves a gun around. Suddenly, a vision of the great Danny Trejo (playing a Native American) appears to him and tries to talk him out of killing himself.

It's funny to see J.C. play drunk talking to a ghost, especially when he starts firing his gun randomly in the air. Somehow the bullets hit the truck of some sleeveless musclebound porn movie style cowboys named the Hogan brothers. They are one of two gangs that terrorizes the small town, somehow squeezing a criminal empire out of a town that seems to consist of one cafe, one bar, a hotel and some dirt.

Anyway the Hogan Family (probaly named after the old sitcom with Jason Bateman) do what anybody would do if they discovered a drunk man firing a gun in the middle of the desert: they go and threaten to beat him up. It's weird because they don't present it like these guys are badass for doing something so dangerous, I think the writer just didn't consider that maybe it wasn't smart to threaten a random drunken gunman. But you know what, it turns out they were right, they are able to beat him up and steal his motorcycle. They intend to kill him but one brother doesn't have the stomach and only pretends to shoot him in the head.

While all this is happening a truck drives by with Jaime Pressley (TICKER) and her boyfriend inside, seeing something they weren't supposed to see. Think about the likelihood of something like that happening: a motorcycle and two trucks all intersecting at the same spot in the middle of the desert. How often does that happen? The chances of driving by just as an attempted murder takes place in the middle of a desert have got to be pretty slim. What I'm saying is, don't bring Jaime Pressley to the casino for good luck.

The movie is obviously based on YOJIMBO, because J.C. drifts into town and meets the oppressed people and plays one side against the other and etc. Also because at the end one character asks another character out on a date to go see YOJIMBO and then, in case that's not enough for you, he explains what YOJIMBO is. (by the way, it's impressive that a town with a population of less than 50 would have a theater that plays Kurosawa movies).

One thing that's different from Yojimbo, it's all about him trying to get his motorcycle back. So I guess it's like YOJIMBO meets PEEWEE'S BIG ADVENTURE.

Van Damme gets some good chances to kill people, kick people, save people and what not. There are some guns. One of the villains is Larry Drake, another one is named Beserko. Van Damme hires Mr. Early, a "handyman" played by Academy Award nominee Pat Morita, to wrap the dead bodies in saran wrap and dump them in a canyon.

The movie tries hard to be quirky, with lots of annoying Small Town Types and Folksy Old Men and what not. A couple of the jokes are genuinely funny though. He steals a bad guy's cowboy hat and puts it on. When another bad guy taps him on the shoulder thinking he's the other guy, Van Damme turns around and says, "Right hat, wrong guy." And then there was some sort of kicking, if I remember right.

Also there's a scene where a blonde gal he saved in a bar fight comes to his hotel room to "thank him" and he's wearing only a towel and boots. He's holding a gun in case she's trying to pull something. When it becomes clear that she's sincere he looks at his gun, clearly uncomfortable about holding it on her, but then instead of putting it down like you think he will, he just lowers it. She drops her dress, revealing she has nothing underneath, and says, "Thank you." Suddenly Van Damme dramatically whips his towel off so he's naked except for cowboy boots and says, "You're welcome."

(Before you know it there's two girls involved, plus an elderly, alcoholic religious fanatic watching through the window, sipping booze through a straw and praising the Lord.)

And at the end there's a good joke about how they explain the overnight disappearance of 28 crooks in a small town.

There's also a clever idea or two. Or maybe just one. Like THE HILLS HAVE EYES this town is near an Air Force base, and every once in a while they get buzzed by low flying military jets. At the climax of the movie Van Damme is unarmed and has a gun pointed at his head. Behind his opponent he sees a jet coming. The loud jet sound causes the sucker to turn his head and Van Damme seizes the moment to kick him and turn the tables.

DESERT HEAT isn't as weird as Van Damme's Tsui Hark pictures, or as some of the classic Seagal freakouts, because it's obviously trying to be funny in alot of parts. But it's still pretty bizarre, especially when they start bringing the Native American coyote motif back in. There's actually a scene where Van Damme intimidates his enemies by sneaking around howling like a coyote (dubbed by an actual coyote, I think). Now there's something Seagal hasn't done. Yet.

Later, Danny Trejo's character Johnny Sixtoes, who previously was invisible to anyone else and seemed to be a ghost or an imaginary friend, can be seen by the bad guys and they kill him. I don't get it.

And there's another thing I don't get. Either there's different cuts of this movie, or the guy who wrote the summary on IMDb is crazy. He describes a totally different storyline where Pat Morita's character finds Eddie beat up, brings him to an abandoned mineshaft and nurses him back to health. I'm positive that in the version I saw, Danny Trejo nurses him back to health and Pat Morita sits in a diner until Van Damme hires him, and then he's just kind of a servant. Anyway, the IMDb guy also says that Van Damme feels guilty about killing the waitress Rhonda's husband, and has come to the town to deliver her a letter from her dead husband, and the reason he helps her is to find some kind of redemption. If that happened in this movie man, I sure wasn't paying attention. But it's good to know.

At the end Eddie and Rhonda (the waitress he fell in love with, not one of the two girls he had sex with a day or two ago) ride their Indian through the desert and they see the spirit of Danny Trejo on a matching motorcycle. Then we see three coyotes running. Which is some kind of symbolism about the three of them being coyotes, obviously. I don't really know what the implications are of that, that they are coyotes. Maybe it is one of those abstract 2001 type endings that will be discussed for decades to come.

Anyway, if YOJIMBO, FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and even LAST MAN STANDING are checked out at your video store, you might try DESERT HEAT. Or you might not. I don't really know you well enough to make a solid guess.

THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE

Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being excited about a Mexican horror picture. This is from a fine director who did the CRONOS which the box is a picture of some blond gal but the movie is about an old grandpa who licks blood off a bathroom floor. This guy also came to Hollywood directed a picture called MIMIC which I will not mention in this article. It had some good parts though. But I won't mention them.

However this is more important than your average mexican horror picture. You know why, because this is a mexican horror picture from the director of the most highly anticipated movie of next year.

Yes my nerd friends, you know what I'm talking about. Now I already admitted that your x-men were good and everything. I liked your hobbit picture and what not. Hell I mean even superman and fishman are not all that bad, in my opinion. just kind of fruity. But lets get real here.

When it comes to the real thing, the serious big time comic book movies, you and I both know there is really only one movie that can possibly fit the bill. That movie is Mr. Wesley Snipes as BLADE.

I know I know I know. Wesley Snipes. Always hangin around with Woody Harrelson. "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. An address that changes all the rules." Yeah, I heard 'em all.

But when it comes to this picture Mr. Snipes is top notch. This is, quite simply, the greatest nerd movie ever made. The fact that you nerds don't like it can not change this. Fuck comic books. Fuck vampires. I don't care. Fuck everything. If Blade can kill about a hundred vampires drenched head to toe in blood without getting a single god damned drop on his brand new leather outfit, and make it believable, then I will vouch for this fucking movie. That's the least I can do.

Well now they got BLADE EPISODE 2. And who is the director? That's right. Guillermo Del Toro, the director of THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE.

Now, this picture is very different from BLADE. It is the story of a boarding school run by communists during the Spanish civil war. Which, I mean, is different from a story about a half man/half vampire who kills other vampires and there is techno music. In this one there is no techno or vampires but there is a ghost involved, and an affair, and scheming over gold.

There is original touches in this picture. The young, handsome villain is fucking the good guy's wife. But she's about 60 years old and she only has one leg. You don't get that in most hollywood pictures. One or two maybe but not most. I mean have you ever seen Ben Affleck or Mel Gibson fuckin an old lady with one leg? Not since at least the mid-'80s.

This is a story about people in limbo. In the middle of the town there is a bomb that was accidentally dropped by warplanes flying over. But it just stuck in the dirt and for some reason didn't go off. So all these people really should be dead, but for some fuckin accident within an accident.

Most of the story is about a ghost who has been spotted fucking around in the school. So you got lots of atmosphere and creepiness like, say, The Others. Throw in little inventive like touches, ideas that could be whole stories on their own (like the babies in jars that give the movie its name). And there are some nice uses of the computer medium of special effects. Alot of individuals in the special effects industry say hey, what can we do that has been done to death for the past ten years? Yeah, let's do that again, then.

Not Mr. Del Toro and his people. There is a sparing use of the computers, and they use it in a very original and visually appealing way that will make you think damn, I like the computers.

But let me warn you this is not all shadows and wind and shit. It gets pretty fuckin brutal. The scariest parts of the movie are not so much the ghost as the war. There is an act of violence in here that you've seen in every action movie ever made, but it's executed in a way that makes you feel like you are there. And you're the victim.

There is a theme in Del Toro's work of little kids. So most of the main characters in this one are little boys maybe ten or eleven years old. They feel like real little kids because they are just as vulnerable as real little kids. I mean seriously friends this ain't pretty. By the end, most of them are dead or limping around on a stick. There are scenes of kids pulling glass and shrapnel out of each other. You didn't get that in home alone. Or any of the Culkin ouvre, for that matter.

Be patient with the beginning, and I think you will be glad you did. This one is a keeper. Now just imagine if it had Wesley Snipes in it, cutting vampires in half with a sword and saying oneliners. Look out america, the future of Badass Cinema, vampire division, is on its way.

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS

If you ever saw THE HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, there's one thing you probaly remember. It's this montage set to "I Remember You" by Slim Whitman. It's got lots of slow motion and you can't hear anything but the music as the cops discover a couple of the house's thousand corpses unexpectedly, then get gunned down by the Firefly family. The montage ends with Otis (Bill Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 Moseley) holding a gun to a cop's head and it sits there with 20 full seconds of complete silence and stillness before he executes him.

That movie was pretty good, I liked it overall for it's spunk and what not, but it was real sloppy and uneven. And that "I Remember You" scene was the one part where the director, a guy named Rob Zombie (yeah I know, I think it's Hungarian or something), seemed like a real filmatist. Well good news, Mr. Zombie's new one THE DEVIL'S REJECTS is not as much a sequel to HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES as it's a sequel to that scene. It's about the brother of the first cop killed in the montage hunting down the Fireflies for revenge. And all the sudden the Zombie guy knows what the fuck he's doing: real good framing, way better acting, expert use of slow motion and effective montagings edited to old country music, blues and classic rock. Very dirty and raw, lots of '70s techniques like Peckinpah slo-mo and fancy wipes. Kind of what Jim Van Bebber was going for with THE MANSON FAMILY. Maybe not quite as authentic but way better thought out and more involving. It's almost changed genres - now it's less straight up horror and more of one of those sicko '70s serial killer/crime/road pictures, or a revenge picture like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It's just as sick and inexcusable but more fun.

This honestly is the biggest part 2 improvement I can think of offhand, a serious leap forward for the Zombie. And the whole idea is ingenious. Obviously HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES took place mostly in the house, so this one starts out with cops surrounding the house, and the Fireflies who survive the battle have to hit the road of 1,000 corpses. Like that "I Remember You" scene and like many great '70s pictures, this one takes place mostly in the daytime, in the sun, on dusty roads and in sleazy hotels. And at a whorehouse run by the great Ken "When there's no more room in hell the dead will walk the earth" Foree, and his sidekick Michael The Hills Have Eyes Berryman. Now with wrinkles.

I mean, how come nobody ever thought of that before? What if instead of just showing up to hunt more victims in part 2, Leatherface, Jason or whoever got found out and had to run from the cops? Instead of unstoppable killers, they're just criminals, outlaws without much time left on their clocks. They probaly know they won't make it far but they're gonna drive til the wheels fall off.

The biggest problem with HOUSE was that the villains were great, but the protagonists were less than good. Not just that you didn't like them, but they seemed like amateur actors, they just didn't work at all except when they were being tormented. So what this movie does is totally brilliant, they turn the horrible killers of the Firefly family into the protagonists, and at the end they have them being tortured and chased. And you can't help but hope they get away. And it's wrong. But it happens.

The victims are better too. This time instead of some smarmy kids it's a family country group called Banjo & Sullivan. And these filmatists are so detailed in creating the world of the movie that a "Best of Banjo & Sullivan" CD is available now in stores. And there's a song on there called "Lord I Hope I Don't Die in a Cheap Motel." Hmmm. Anyway there's a couple scenes here that are real grueling. Even when they're not stabbing people the Rejects do sadistic shit like force a girl to slap her own mother. Mostly their cruelty is stomach churning but there's also parts where you can't help but laugh, like when the clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig, absolutely great in both movies) carjacks poor P.J. Soles and completely unneccessarily decides to stick around to talk to her son and give him a life long fear of clowns. I saw about six walkouts during this movie (well, two groups of three anyway), but the rest of us sick fucks (and one baby - why does somebody always bring a baby to a movie like this) were laughing all the way through. I had unfairly assumed the couple in front of me was gonna bail before the halfway mark but I knew I was wrong when the blond girlfriend laughed hard at the mean clown tormenting the kid.

Just to be clear, in real life I am against clowns tormenting kids. This is ONLY okay in movies and arguably books. Otherwise let's keep it clean, clowns.

Most of your favorite characters from HOUSE are back. (Not the movie HOUSE starring Cliff from Cheers, I'm talking about HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES again but this is how I will abbreviate it for now on. As HOUSE.) Mainly you got Spaulding (now known by his first name, Cutter, and sporting a Manson beard), Otis (no longer Albino, and sporting an even Mansoner beard), and Baby, the giggly blond chick that shows you her butt then murders your family. My #1 favorite character in the first one was Grandpa Hugo, but the actor who played him, Dennis Dimple, died. So they don't mention him. #2 favorite was Tiny, the deformed giant. He's not on the poster so I was worried he'd get killed right away. His part is small but it's perfect: in the opening scene we see him walking through the woods with a burlap sack on his head, dragging a naked corpse with one hand. Suddenly he sees a convoy of sherriff's trucks heading to his house. Lucky Tiny, he chose the exact right time to go dragging naked corpses.

I mean look, it's his morning routine. He coulda been jogging, he coulda been pulling weeds, reading the newspaper, whatever. Tiny likes to drag a naked dead lady through the leaves. I don't agree with that behavior either but let's not be too hard on him. There are worse people in his family so let's be thankful for what we got.

Completely absent and not mentioned at all is Dr. Satan, or whoever that weird cyborg dude was that showed up at the end of HOUSE. I guess he's the Jar-Jar of the thousandcorpsesverse. I woulda liked to see him in handcuffs though.

There's a bunch of small new characters, like Danny Trejo and some wrestler I never heard of as bounty hunters known as "The Unholy Two." And Ken Foree is real likable as Spaulding's brother Charlie Altamont. Why the fuck don't we see tis guy in more movies? I never forgot him from DAWN OF THE DEAD and he's still just as charismatic, but I think last movie I saw him in before this was a thankless cop role in some straight to video garbage about a killer sandman. And that was years ago. (He also had that cameo on the Dawn of the Dead Remake, but they HAD to give him that. How about giving him the roles he DESERVES, too?)

Also joining the cast is William Forsythe as the vengeful Sheriff Wydell. I love this motherfucker because of his over the top roles in OUT FOR JUSTICE and STONE COLD. In OUT FOR JUSTICE he's a wannabe mobster with a death wish, going around shooting strangers point blank and smoking crack in public. His character here is completely psychotic, but to my surprise he plays him more real than in his classic action villain roles. You don't like him at all, you're kind of rooting for the bad guys, but you can't blame him for anything he does.

By the way before I forget, there's been alot of discussion of how there's no fuckin way there's a thousand corpses in that house in the first one. This one mentions 75 murders but also says there's a mass grave of decomposing corpses under the house. So the possibility is left open. Let's not call the title a liar until all the facts are known.

Also I wanted to mention, this will be the ONLY review of DEVIL'S REJECTS on the internet that will not use the word "grindhouse" in it. That's my personal guarantee. You know, when Tarantino was out promoting KILL BILL it was grindhouse this and grindhouse that, next thing you know everybody on the internet gotta use that word anytime it's even halfway appropriate. This looks like a GREAT grindhouse movie! Can't wait! Grindhouse grindhouse grindhouse! Then Tarantino has to go and announce that his next movie is even CALLED Grindhouse. So now it can't be stopped. Grindhouse in a box, grindhouse with a fox, grindhouse here there and everywhere. Even BEWITCHED can somehow be traced to its grindhouse roots I bet. And the fucked up thing is if I understand the word right, DEVIL'S REJECTS is one of the few movies of this decade that actually earns that adjective. So you will probaly see some reviews of the movie that are just the word grindhouse 75 times with a "the" every once in a while, maybe an "of", and a couples "rules" or "owns," if not "blows" or "sucks" and something about a gay guy. Anyway, this review will NOT contain that word, I'm not even gonna say which word because I'm not using it in this review.

Anyway you definitely got the same sensibilities as HOUSE in this one but this time it's more real. The same sort of fetishes show up but they're more restrained, it's less art direction and more location shooting. Kind of a grindhouse fee-- ah fuck I blew it. Just kidding that was on purpose. That was a test. Anyway the Fireflies play it a little more real, they even got a couple moments of caring for each other which maybe makes it harder to take how horrible they are to everybody else.

The crowd I saw it with seemed to really love it, everybody laughed even when you weren't supposed to and one guy clapped at the end. Even the baby liked it I bet. Like I said before we're a bunch of sicko scumbags, but I think with this kind of unanimous agreement among those who stayed for the whole movie, it has a good chance of crossing over to mainstream Oprah type audiences as well. This is sure to be a big crowdpleaser like HITCH or KEN PARK or something along those lines. I recommend you bring the family, even grandmothers. And like I said it is baby tested so bring babies too.

Okay maybe that's a little too optimistic, the truth is this movie definitely is not for everybody or even for all babies, but if you like sick shit like this, you will like it. By definition. Unless you don't like it. But I did. Keep up the good work Zombie. I will send you a ribbon for most improved.

DIAMOND MEN

Remember for a little while there people thought Quentin Tarantino's job was to find washed up actors who can't get good roles anymore, put them in a great role and revive their career. He did it for Harvey Keitel and John Travolta anyway, and sort of for Bruce. He also helped bring attention to Steve Buscemi, outlaw award winner Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and others. But somehow, when he gave both Pam Grier and Robert Forster in the best roles of their careers in the great JACKIE BROWN, the same magic didn't work.

I mean these two were incredible in JACKIE BROWN. And what do they get? Oscar buzz that amounts to nothing, and some more really bad roles. Poor Pam Grier was in JAWBREAKER and SNOW DAY. Robert Forster kept doing straight to videos, with only an occasional bit part as a generic cop or doctor in things like MULHOLLAND DRIVE and the remake of PSYCHO PART 1.

Well I'm happy to say that although DIAMOND MEN is no JACKIE BROWN by any stretch it is finally a worthy role for Mr. Forster. He plays an aging diamond salesman who, in the opening scene, keels over of a heart attack. Once he recovers he finds out that his company won't let him "carry the line" anymore, which apparently means travelling around with a suitcase full of a million dollars in diamonds, showing them to store owners. He convinces his boss to give him one more chance training his replacement, played by Mark Wahlberg's brother Donnie.

The cover art for this one is going to be very misleading. Here are a few things from the cover you will not see in this movie: handcuffs, cutoff jeans, a glittering diamond ring, hundred dollar bills, or especially hundred dollar bills spilling out of a briefcase handcuffed to a guy wearing a glittering diamond ring standing next to a guy wearing cutoff jeans. There is a gun but it plays a role smaller than Robert Forster did in MULLHOLLAND DRIVE.

For the most part this is not a crime movie. It reminded me more of SALESMAN. But it's also not one of those movies obsessed with showing off its research. They have diamond salesman lingo and strategy in there but it flows smoothly. Mostly the movie is about the relationship between these two, and the widower Forster's need for companionship. Donnie Wahlberg is a huge dork, and there is alot of humor from Forster's facial expressions as the kid acts like an idiot. Watch Mr. Forster's eyes as Donnie says things like, "Did you see the look on that old guy's face?"

It's a very down to earth movie, so the one or two movie type twists that happen do feel pretty out of place. But it's easy to get over that because Mr. Forster's performance is truly great. The guy just has so much charisma, and he's so different from other movie stars. He seems like a real guy. Most of his performance is in his face, but his dialogue flows so naturally sometimes it's hard to believe it's scripted. It seems like his real reaction when Donnie asks him "Dude, you got any rubbers?"

This is only a pretty good movie but Mr. Forster makes it seem great. I would honestly consider this to be one of the best performances of 2002, right up there with Danny D. Lewis in GANGS OF NEW YORK and Jack Nicholson in ABOUT SCHMIDT.

DICK

Well hell man I know what your thinking and I can't really blame you. But seriously man it is not what you think. I have never rented a gay porno. It is the '90s I have nothing against gay pornos but personally just have not rented them before. Remember prison rape is not a homosexual act it is a predatory act of violence. not that I am into that either but just to clarify.

Anyway man what it is is Richard Nixon. Dan Hedaya plays Richard nixon and it is a comedy where two teenage gals get mixed up in all the watergate and everything.

The two gals are played by Kristen Dunst and Michelle Williams, two pretty young gals and they are funny. To be frankly honest they are not very smart and that is why it is funny. They don't really know what it is going on and they just want to walk the dude's dog is all. It is funny how Michelle has the hots for Richard Nixon. Also there are two canadian guys playing Woodward and Bernstein and they are a couple of babies always whining, it is funny.

There have been a lot of good movies in this time since i was released and this one is not exactly at the top of the pile. But it's pretty funny and especially if you like jokes about history you will like this one. You will go, "ha ha ha, that is what happened at watergate, that is why it is funny."

There are also jokes about that movie deep throat and that is a porno but there is more to it than just dicks, in my opinion.

DIRTY HARRY

Man, I've watched DIRTY HARRY so many times since I've been writing about movies, and it is clearly one of the classics of Badass Cinema (the Loose Canon, I recently decided it should be called. Get it it is a pun I believe.) But I just figured out that I never wrote a review of it. Weird.

This time I watched it on the occasion of buying the new DIRTY HARRY ULTIMATE COLLECTION box set, which totally made my day and I did feel lucky punk and it is so good it would blow your head clean off and is the most powerful box set in the world. That is not really puns but you know what's going on there, I think you get it.

Anyway, I know I'm not talking to a bunch of rookies here so I'm not telling you anything you don't know if I tell you this movie is awesome. Clint Eastwood is at his peak as far as just being a cool looking motherfucker, with his cocky hair do and his still handsome but already full of character early '30s Clint face. There's that shot when he's eating the hot dog and just realizing that he's gonna have to stop a bank robbery instead of finish lunch and he slowly turns around and it shows him in profile - you can tell that Don Siegel knew what a cool motherfucker he had in front of his camera there. The camera seems to be saying "holy shit, look at this guy!" Such an iconic profile. Put that fucker on the penny. Sorry Abe, you're great, but look at this. I think you would agree.

That scene is one of my favorites, and obviously everybody in the world remembers that great "do you feel lucky" speech, but what I like best about it is definitely the hot dog. He foils a bank robbery while still chewing his hot dog. I do not know how you could be more casual about taking care of business. Maybe if he was wearing a bathrobe, or had curlers in his hair. Or was reading the newspaper, with bifocals.

This movie could easily be powered on the fuel of Eastwood alone, but Don Siegel is also smokin hot with his filmatism. He's known as a workmanlike master of down and dirty b-movies, but the opening of this movie especially is the work of an artiste. That bright blue, rectangular swimming pool filling up the widescreen, the super fuckin cool stutter of funky Lalo Schifrin drums... you're hooked into this movie way before they show Harry Callahan. And it all works especially well on this new DVD, the transfer is so much brighter and clearer. I didn't know it looked this good.

Some of the extras on the DVD are pretty cool. I would like to see something even more in-depth, though. There's no mention of the draft of the script Terence Malick supposedly wrote, no mention of the Zodiac killer or the cop they say Harry was partly based on (as seen in Dave Fincher's ZODIAC). There is an interesting note that they considered setting the movie in Seattle, since it hadn't been used in many movies. But they happened to scout Eastwood's birth city of San Francisco first and couldn't say no to it. Man, that would be so fuckin cool if Dirty Harry was a Seattle cop. Then maybe I would've felt better about getting pepper sprayed by SPD. Shit, we would have a statue of Dirty Harry I bet. We don't have the best Jimi Hendrix statue, and no Bruce Lee, but I bet we could spring for a Dirty Harry in this alternate universe. Anyway, those guys dropped the ball but John Sturges and John Wayne picked it up and shot their DIRTY HARRY ripoff McQ in Seattle.

On some of the extras they talk about the politics. I guess Pauline Kael called the movie fascist, and some people get mad about that. Alot of talking heads mention that the movie was made shortly after the Miranda decision and there was "lots of talk about the rights of the criminals, but what about the rights of the victims?" Clint, being a class act, mentions that he does think the rights of the criminals are "very important" also. But what none of these people mention is that it's not the rights of criminals that anybody is worried about, it's the rights of suspects. People who do not always turn out to be criminals. That's the whole point of it.

That's why if you look at the message of the movie it's pretty laughable, the deck is so obviously stacked. Watching this movie obviously we know that Scorpio is a serial killer and a sick bastard, we hate the fucker and love that Harry breaks his leg when he cries about "my rights, I have rights." But that's cheating, we have the omniscient power of movies. In reality we don't have that power, so we don't want cops to torture a guy they chased into a stadium. That guy might not be Scorpio, he might be you or your uncle who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In one of the more memorable jokes it's mentioned that Harry got into trouble by shooting a guy he felt had the intent to rape. He felt this because the guy was chasing a girl while he was naked with a butcher knife and a hard-on. See, in a world where that could happen of course I trust Harry to shoot the guy. In the real world I'm afraid the cases are usually more complicated. So treating this as a serious argument against police accountability is pretty fuckin stupid. But that didn't stop people.

I'm interested in the politics because the fact that I could love this movie so much says something. I don't like people who would take these ideas seriously. I can't relate to right wingers. I think those rights that Scorpio whined about are a big part of the ideals our country was founded on, and are more important now than ever before. I hate cops who think they don't have to follow the regulations. And yet I love this movie. Maybe it's just that this is a fun movie and is not really a serious political argument. Or maybe it shows that if a movie is good enough you can brush off the politics. Awesomeness transcends politics.

I mean, remember that shot when Scorpio has the school bus full of children and he's coming towards the bridge and he just sees Harry standing there on top of the bridge, and he just about shits himself? How can we argue about left vs. right when THAT is going on? We might disagree on some of this stuff but we can agree that that is some cold-blooded shit right there.

6/10/08

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE
Alot of you know that I am a big fan of the surrealist movement. Well actually I do not know a whole lot about the history of the movement but among respected film Writers I'm pretty damn sure I am the biggest supporter of Jean Claude Van Damme's surrealist period, which is best represented by his collaboration with Tsui Hark and Dennis Rodman, Double Team. Well someone pointed me towards Louie Bunuel the famous surrealist and I was able to catch one of his later works, the discreet charm blah blah blah, on the Bravo network.

Most of you sickos probaly know Louie from that old porno The Andalusian Dog where some sick fuck cuts a lady right in the eyeball (but it's actually a cow's eyeball which is almost as bad, I mean jesus). He did that one with Salvador Dali and in his later solo work he still loved the dream logic of the surrealism but he used it to make comedies making fun of dumb rich people. And this my friends is a good fucking use for a movie.

Discreet Charm , aside from some gunplay, isn't as action packed as Double Team. But it is almost as weird and freaky assed. The "plot" is about a bunch of uptight ambassadors and ambassador's wives who are always inviting each other over for dinner, and a bunch of weird shit happens before they ever get to eat anything.

My friend that recommended this picture to me explained it like this: "There is a scene where this ambassador is having a meeting, and he sees a woman out his window walking a mechanical dog. He says, 'Don't worry, I know just what to do,' then he pulls out a rifle and shoots the dog."

There are many great Cinemanic moments like this and what makes it so funny is how unimpressed these characters are by all the weird shit that happens around them. They are so wrapped up in inviting and entertaining and choosing a good wine that they never think to question bizarre behavior or bombs going off outside their house. There is one scene where some soldier they've never met comes to the table and says that he would like to tell them the tragic story of his childhood. He does, then immediately gets up and leaves, and they don't even seem to think it's weird.

My favorite scene though is when a Bishop comes to the house to see this family. The maid (who is said to be elderly but looks about 19) tells him they're not home, and he decides to wait for them to come back. He sneaks off to a shed and changes into the clothes of the recently fired gardener. When the couple comes home, the Bishop comes back in wearing overalls and a straw hat and announces himself - they don't believe he's the Bishop and throw his ass out. A minute later he comes back, wearing the Bishop's robes again, and they let him in. And that's when he tells them that he would like to be their gardener.

You may be asking, what the fuck? Well I don't know either. And that is the beauty of it. This movie illustrates the absurdities of a shallow rich fuck lifestyle but without being bitter about it. It just makes it funny as hell. It also makes fun of movies themselves by imitating them up to a point and then senselessly dropping out. The story starts to go one way and as soon as you might be on the edge of your seat it completely abandons that plotline or says that it's a dream or a dream within a dream.

It's all played real poker faced and that makes it alot funnier. And there are so many little details. There is this one scene where a couple is about to get it on, and the dude keeps turning the gal around and putting her ass on his lap. She'll turn back around and start kissing but every time he'll figure some way to get back around to the doggystyle. I thought ha ha ha it's funny cause it's true, I know so many guys like that. Always wanting to do her up the butt and only because she doesn't want it. You know what I'm talkin about fellas. Well let me tell ya spend a few years in the can and you wouldn't ever want to do that kind of vile shit to your lady you bunch of fucknuts. grow up.

The character most of us will relate to is the lady with the mechanical dog, some kind of anarchist revolutionary who tries to spout off her beliefs but they always get drowned out by low flying airplanes or loud typewriters. One of these bourgeoise motherfuckers tries to tell her what's what while he's feeling her thighs and every time he pauses to get her input, she breaks something in his house. That is my kind of lady in my opinion.

Anyway some of you may be misled by the title, you may think wait a minute, I HATE the fucking bourgeoisie, I don't want to hear about their charm no matter how god damned discreet it is. Well don't worry bud it's sarcasm, it's making fun of them in my opinion. Don't worry about it man thanks.

DISTRICT B13
(originally BANLIEUE 13)

I'm way behind on this movie. I remember a couple years ago I went to see some movie at the film festival here, and this one was just getting out on the same screen. I saw some people I knew coming out and I asked them how it was. They said it was ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK except in France, and with some weird martial art where they run up walls and shit. I knew it was a Luc Besson joint so I thought wait a minute, is this related to that YAMAKASI movie I saw? The art of climbing and flipping?

Now it's years later and the movie has long since played American theaters and DVD players in a dubbed version called DISTRICT B13. The advertising campaign has tried to convince us we know what the word "parkour" means. Another practicioner of the art has battled (and lost) the new, badass James Bond. Now it's old news, the excitement has worn off, so I saw it now. That's just how I roll.

Well, it really is an ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK ripoff - the poor neighborhood District B13 has been walled off just like New York was, and our hero is a badass released from prison to go into B13 and do a mission for the man. Only instead of saving the president he has to find a nuclear bomb that's in the hands of his enemy, and instead of Ernest Borgnine he's teamed up with a cop, and instead of having an eyepatch he doesn't have an eyepatch.

But despite the similarity, the whole look, tone, spirit and poetry of the movie is nothing like ESCAPE. What it's more like is exactly what it is: an action movie produced and written by Luc Besson. Fun and energetic if not entirely memorable. I liked it though.

The hero is Leïto, played by David Belle, who is apparently the founder of parkour. That is pretty good bragging rights right there because you can't say who the founder of basketball is, or the founder of karate, but this guy is the founder of parkour, the art of climbing over shit. To be honest I am not completely schooled in the different forms of climbing over shit. This guy founded parkour. Sebastien Foucan, the guy who Bond chases in CASINO ROYALE, also helped with the parkour but is considered the founder of free running. The guys in the movie YAMAKASI are also a different thing, their art involves unnecessary flips and other show offy maneuvers, whereas the parkour and the free running is about trying to get from point A to point B in the fewest possible movies. And then the other version of this is in the movie CREMASTER: THE ORDER where Matthew Barney climbs around in a museum with a napkin in his mouth. That is about getting from point A to point B in the most pretentious and annoying way possible. The Barney form is separate from parkour, free running and yamakasi on account of just being stupid.

Anyway, David Belle doesn't have an eyepatch but he does have some tattoos, doesn't like to wear shirts and looks kind of like a tougher Adrien Brody. He has a likable presence, it's suprising that he's not a real actor. If you made a movie about mountain climbing and had it star the number one mountain climber, I doubt the guy would be this good on screen. Also, watching a guy climbing a mountain wouldn't be as cool as the scene in this movie where he effortlessly leaps feet first through a tiny window in the top of a door and makes it through, for real.

Leïto is more of a good guy than Snake Plissken, because he's trying to keep the drugs out of his neighborhood. But the cops screw him over and the bad guy takes his little sister and keeps her drugged up like they did to the girl in THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE. So when he has an offer to "escape" prison with a guy he knows is actually a cop trying to trick him, he does it. And various climbing and fights ensue.

The cop is Damien, played by Cyril Rafaelli, another guy who's not really an actor, he's a stunt co-ordinator. So they have some pretty good fights and stunts. Damien is introduced in a pretty spectacular sequence where he's undercover and has to fight his way out of a mafia casino vault. In this scene they also use a pretty good law enforcement technique where they drop a huge weight through the top of the building, then drop a cable through the hole they created to hook their prisoner like a fish.

Damien isa good character, but Leïto is clearly the cooler of the two, and I will tell you why. Early on there's a scene where the local crime boss Taha is trying to get some drugs back from Leïto, so he has his thugs kidnap Leïto's little sister as leverage. Once the job is done Taha is telling his boys to spread the word so Leïto will find out they have his sister. And as he's saying that he can't wait to see the look on Leïto's face when he finds out, Leïto himself crashes through a high window in the office and puts this sonofabitch in a chokehold. Waaaaay ahead of you there, Taha.

That is a classic badass move, the three steps ahead badass move, the sort of thing Blade is good at. Combining a cool stunt with evidence that the hero is intelligent. Way to go.

And I really like the supporting cast in this one. Taha is played by Bib Naceri, who actually co-wrote the movie with Besson. He is a real wiry, obnoxious bastard. His #2 is K2, a big guy who kind of looks like Chopper but wears gold chains and has a giant K2 shaved on the back of his head Brian Bosworth style. Both of these characters are really funny and still threatening to the heroes.
The action is real good, there is a scene where two guys jump over a moving car at the same time. There is lots of running up walls and buildings, jumping across roof tops, climbing up tall structures. There are some good fights. To be honest I think it could use more fighting and climbing, but I can't complain too much. The story and characters are surprisingly strong even in the middle portion where it sort of gets heavier into those things than you might want in a goofy Luc Besson action movie.

One thing that gives the story a little extra punch is the universal truth of the class issues it deals with. I checked and sure enough this movie was made in 2004, the year before the series of riots in the French suburbs which the dystopian world of the movie is seemingly inspired by. In the movie, Leïto feels that nobody gives a shit about him and his people because of the neighborhood they come from. The rich bourgeoisie motherfuckers, who by the way do not have very much discreet charm in this one, live outside of the walls and actually want to bomb the poor people to stop crime. Leïto trusts the law at the beginning and tries to bring his enemies to the police, but he quickly learns that they are not to be trusted. (This also leads to an awesome head smash.)

It's weird to compare this to modern day America. In France many of the poor and the immigrants live in the suburbs (translated as "barrio" in the subtitles here). That's where the movie takes place and where the riots happened. But the rich people live in Paris proper, in the city. I guess you could compare the banlieue to what we call the ghetto, but here the suburbs are where the rich and the middle class people live, not in the city. Alot of the poor people tend to live in the city, which is how "inner city" and "urban" became code words for "black." The people with money live out in the suburbs and commute into the city to work at their office buildings and what not. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

But I wouldn't be surprised if things change to the DISTRICT B13 model here in a decade or two. Right now in Seattle, and I know in many other cities, they are basically trying to force us all out by knocking down any building they can find and turning it into condos with office space beneath it. I can only afford to live in apartments, but every time your lease comes up they raise the rent, and more and more these buildings are either being converted or completely destroyed and turned into condos. And people like me can't afford that shit. So you got the same poor people fighting for fewer and fewer apartments, eventually some of us are gonna have to leave and go out to the banlieue and live somewhere between the Office Depot and the Chipotle, where we will work at a gas station next to a strip mall until our souls are a dried out husk and there's a Subway on every corner. And if you try to climb on it you will be tried and convicted and smothered with Jared's giant pants.

UPDATE: My bud "Mystic Chasm" informed me that there is a founder of basketball, this guy. Check out the picture, he should've starred in an action movie too.

DOG SOLDIERS
Well we know the spanish can do good modern horror, and the japanese can do it, and there's that one canadian dude. But what about the Brits? They had the great Hammer Studios way back when, and they made the Wickerman I believe, so they got a good tradition going. But it's been a while since I've heard about a real good one. To be honest I haven't paid too much attention to the british culture lately. All I know is they got those annoying crime movies and that tv show where you go into your friend's house, repaint it and glue a bunch of pinecones and inner tubes together as decorations.

But now maybe they got the next horror visionary. A newcomer by the name of Neil Marshall, he wrote and edited a couple earlier movies and this is his debut as writer/director/editor/credit hog.

This is not a perfect movie, and I don't think it's as knock you on your ass inventive as say THE EVIL DEAD or something. But it's just a great premise that crossbreeds familiar genres into something weird you've never seen before, sort of like when they genetically combined brocolli with asparagus. Only not as disturbing.

Here, let me just tell you the premise. Two groups of british soldiers, one just regular grunts and the other one special ops, are deployed in some remote wilderness for a war game. We're with the grunts as they stalk the woods with a mixture of nervousness and boredom (one guy wants to be home watching the football/soccer ball game, others want to prove their worth by standing up to these special ops fuckers).

So then they're sitting at the fire telling war stories when somebody throws a dead cow at them.

Next thing you know they find the other team, most of them completely eviscerated. And since you've seen the cover of the video, you know it was by werewolves.

Before you know it they're holed up in a farmhouse and the werewolves keep coming at them. So it's kind of like a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD scenario. They even got the leader of the special ops group as the big asshole character so they can have lots of Romero style dramatic disagreements (I guess they're actually more just arguments than dramatic disagreements, but whatever).

But in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD they didn't have machine guns, and the phrase "short, controlled bursts" never came up. There don't seem to be as many werewolves as there were zombies, but they're faster and smarter so it's a good battle. I guess you could compare it to ALIENS but it doesn't feel like it's trying to copy those sorts of characters, it's just a good way to make soldiers interesting: put em up against werewolves! (Didn't somebody call this BLACK HAWK DOWN with werewolves?)

Thankfully, this is another serious horror movie, any humor is in a bleak "oh shit we're fucked" kind of way and there's not even much of that. There's one gruesome joke with some intestines that I won't give away. Most of the gore here is more in the style of a war movie than a horror movie. People get these horrible injuries but they're soldiers, they try to get out of there, even if they have intestines hanging out. You never saw that in a Jason picture, I don't think.

Not everything works. There were some turns of the plot I didn't particularly like, but nothing too bad. And the werewolves look pretty silly sometimes. Most of the classic independent horror pictures have humanoid type villains, like zombies or killers in masks, because that's a lot easier to do successfully. (EVIL DEAD had some good freaky ass creatures but that was only a few shots). Here you gotta make a guy that's part wolf and part dude that actually looks cool, and that's hard to do even with more money than this. Alot of the time these just look like overly detailed team mascots.

BUT, it doesn't even matter. They do a good job of hardly showing the werewolves at all while still making you feel their presence. It's part of why it works anyway. You do wonder why they aren't curious enough to take a close look at the corpses after they kill them, but oh well.

I would recommend this picture which is coming to video here in a few months but has been circulating around some of the arthouse theaters and I think they even showed it on the sci-fi channel at one point. So look for it. I know it's hard to believe there were two good low budget werewolf movies in the last year or two (this and GINGER SNAPS) but seriously man, I'm not making this up.

DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS
Okay so you're familiar with skateboards, right? Well what this documentary is about is a specific team/subculture of the skateboarders, in the '70s, in a wasteland of a beach resort in california. The team starts up around the Zephyr surf shop, a shop apparently known for its unique shaped boards and handpainted graphics inspired by hispanic gang grafitti around the neighborhood. The shop plucks up young street kids who know how to surf. During the off hours, when the waves aren't good for surfing, they practice on their skateboards, going up concrete embankments, putting their fingers on the ground the way their favorite surfer did on the waves.

Eventually they get so good at the skateboards that that becomes their main thing. Their surf inspired style is completely different from what everyone else is doing, and the archival footage does a good job of showing that it was a more visually appealing style. Then they come across the idea of sneaking into mansions, emptying swimming pools and skateboarding up and down the sides of them until the police come. The movie shows how this group of Kids From Broken Homes took their hobby (that nobody ever saw as a profession) and turned it into a whole culture with magazines and movies, inventing all the elements that would grow into many of the things we have today in professional skateboarding, "extreme sports", "action sports", Sobe Adrenaline Rush beverages and of course Vin Diesel in XXX coming this summer to a theater near you.

The story is really pretty interesting even for those of us who couldn't give a mouse's balls about skateboarding or surfing or rollerskating or what not. There is alot of old footage of the kids surfing and skating and the setting is real interesting. The private beach where they surfed, full of potentially deadly posts and pylons from an abandoned amusement park, is like something out of a Mad Max movie, and the city looks like the rotted corpse of a dead tourist attraction. The kids all look like Hanson brothers or the kids from the '70s summer camp movies. So the movie has a raw, ugly look and feel real different from anything we've seen in a while. And watching the kids skateboard you can see why they were so influential.

Unfortunately the actually filmation and directationalism of the picture is not up to the Vern standard of quality documentarianism. The director is Stacy Peralta, one of the kids on the team and owner of a skateboard company. He didn't have enough archival footage to tell the story so most of the movie is made up of talking head interviews with the skateboarders and a few others who knew them.

Alot of the interviews, especially those with Stacy himself, tend to go off into grand proclamations about who was the greatest skater ever, who changed the world, comparing themselves and their buddies to great jazz musicians or Muhammed Ali. Alot of sentences start out, "You gotta understand..." and you know they're going into Paul Bunyan territory. The story is not told from Peralta's point of view (he is interviewed just like the others, and lets Sean Penn do the narration) but since he's behind the camera alot of the interviewees keep referring to "you guys" or "what you guys were doing." It makes it a little dishonest or at least it's distracting because it makes you wonder if every day of this guy's childhood really was a great moment in history or if he's just full of himself.

They also have trouble communicating some of the basic facts of the movie. I don't think they ever explained the dorky "Z-Boys" part of the title and it's not until after the end credits that they explain that "dogtown" was a nickname they made up for their neighborhood one day and not what other people in the area called it.

And there's a hackneyed super-8 motif with lots of phoney film leader and projector sound effects thrown in. Yeah, I know, it represents the do it yourself, home movie quality of the story but it gets old fast. There was one part I liked where Sean Penn coughed during the narration and they left it in.

But I'd still recommend the picture. It's a real interesting topic and seeing the old footage of these punk kids and their outlaw talent is even a little inspirational.

DOLEMITE

Josef von Sternberg was an Austrian-American director whose first film, 1925's THE SALVATION HUNTERS, is considered by some to be the first American independent film. He worked with Charlie Chaplin and Howard Hughes, he discovered and bedded Marlene Dietrich, Robert Mitchum threatened to throw him off a pier, he directed 25 movies including THE LAST COMMAND, THE BLUE ANGEL and THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, and his influential films and stubborn dedication to directorial vision made him a hero to proponents of the auteur theory. Also he had a son named Nicholas Josef von Sternberg who was the cinematographer for DOLEMITE.

While DOLEMITE is arguably not as accomplished a picture as THE SCARLET EMPRESS, it does follow in von Sternberg's spirit of independence, and that's part of what appeals to me so much about the works of my man, the legendary Rudy Ray Moore, who passed away last month.

I don't know about other places but in these past 10 or 15 years young white people in Seattle have picked up the adjective "ghetto" to mean low rent or shoddy. It kind of bugs me because I don't know how the "ghetto Safeway" that doesn't have the best selection of organic foods is comparable to the actual experience of living in poverty and segregation. But I think "ghetto" is a pretty good adjective for the life works of Rudy Ray Moore, because he seemed to maintain the same ethic from beginning to end, the ethic of a club singer who learned a poem from a homeless man, reworked it into a standup act, started pressing his own comedy records and selling them out of the trunk of his car, made a cottage industry of underground XXX comedy records like "Eat Out More Often" and used those profits to make a series of scrappy low budget movies shot in his house, at a night club where he performed and in the parking lot of Ralph's.

I think he would've been great as somebody's hilarious uncle or grandpa in a mainstream comedy, but he never went that studio route. He was independent to the end. To the age of 81 he was touring tiny clubs (I saw him perform with a broken hip on his 80th birthday) and making crazy no budget kung fu movies like SHAOLIN DOLEMITE and the please-God-release-this-on-DVD-soon DOLEMITE EXPLOSION!

His merchandising empire was definitely "ghetto" in the white people meaning of the word. The absolutely awesome DOLEMITE soundtrack CD reissue sounds like it was transfered straight from the record, and some of the songs don't fade out, they just stop like somebody hit eject on a tape deck. The DOLEMITE dvd I own, if you go into the chapter selections, the titles for the chapters are all referring to what happens in a totally different movie, PETEY WHEATSTRAW ("Petey's back," "magic cane," etc.) At his shows Moore sold chintzy wooden backscratchers tied into a song he was singing for a while. So yes, I do own an autographed Dolemite backscratcher.

When I heard about Rudy Ray Moore's passing I thought about that DIYFS (do it your fuckin self) ethic of his and how it inspired me in the stupid shit I do. And I realized that although I wrote about that 80th birthday show and reviewed a couple of his movies I never officially reviewed DOLEMITE. So I got out my Dolemite box set ("Officially Disapproved By the Man" it says on the box) and here is my belated tribute.

Usually when I think of Rudy Ray Moore my image of him comes mostly from those comedy shows and from what I consider his two best movies, PETEY WHEATSTRAW and THE HUMAN TORNADO. Those two are exaggerated, comedic takes on the blaxploitation genre. But I forgot that this first one is pretty serious. Moore portrays Dolemite as a version of himself, a comedian famous on the streets for his toasting and his comedy records, but he puts himself in a typical blaxploitation plot. I guess that's what you do when you're trying your first home made movie, you take your character and put him in a plot you've seen before. In that great "Let's put on a show!" tradition Moore got together friends and connections to pool their talents to make this thing. Some of his comedian and singer friends perform in the movie, director D'Urville Martin also plays the villain Willie Green, screenwriter Jerry Jones also plays Detective Blakely. Moore himself is credited as set decorator, and he found a local karate champion and a swordfighting expert to do the fight scenes. It was alot of hard work decorating those sets and shit so forgive him for not getting the Dolemite tone perfect the first time around. (Or you could argue this is the best one because it seems the least aware of how ridiculous it is.)

Dolemite just got released from jail and now that he's back on the scene he pays Willie Green's stooges the 50 grand he owed him and considers himself once again the owner of Dolemite's Total Experience night club. Willie Green disagrees, because he thinks he should get 100 grand in interest, or if not should be co-owner with Dolemite. So it's a story about business disagreements that end mostly in karate.

From the opening scenes, despite Mr. von Sternberg's efforts, you can see that the filmatism is crude. But then the theme song fires like an arrow right between your eyes and injects you with six tons of funk so you know this movie means business:

You like that? It's like the riff from "Inner City Blues" has been hanging around with a bunch of wah wah pedals and drinking too much caffeine, very fast and hard blaxploitation funk that would make the Pope strut like a pimp. The theme song is important because the lyrics impart ten crucial facts about Dolemite:

1. He's bad
2. The man is outta sight
3. He's a tough son of a gun, y'all
4. His name is Dolemite (maybe this one is self-evident)
5. Ben Taylor (the singer of the song) heard of Dolemite's coming even before his time
6. He ain't lyin' about number 5
7. On the day that he was born his pappy wore a sign saying "Dolemite is here and this bad little brother is mine."
8. In addition to being outta sight Dolemite also is all right
9. He's gonna let the whole world know how bad a man is he
10. It is recommended that you stop, look and listen due to the fact that Dolemite is here for y'all to see.

(By the way, I highly recommend that soundtrack CD. Not only is this song a must-own, the thing is loaded with ridiculously funky instrumentals that I never even knew were in the movie because they play quietly in the background, you can't really make some of them out. Also it has some radio spots at the end where Rudy Ray says under 18 won't be admitted without a parent or a note from their jailer.)

The Dolemite we see onscreen is not quite the mythic figure of the Dolemite toast, who went 8 years without eating food, has an uncle who killed a dozen men with the smell of his breath, he caused the Rocky Mountains to part and, uh, fucked an elephant until she broke out in tears. Also he can look up a bull's ass and tell you the price of butter, that's one of his abilities. It's like Rambo being able to eat things that would make a billygoat puke, though - you're just never gonna see Dolemite using the butter pricing thing on film, unfortunately. So the movie Dolemite isn't as super-powered, but he has the same kind of foul mouthed insults and boasts. His character is established pretty quickly when he comes out of the joint, gets picked up by a limo full of hot chicks, strips off his clothes, throws them back to the prison and tells the guard to wipe his ass with them. That's a good one - many movies could benefit from these types of dramatic gestures. And to be honest I would rather see that than him fucking the elephant.

Everything about the plot is generic: released from prison, framed for a crime he didn't commit, racist white cops trying to bust him, sympathetic black cop sees what's going on, etc. If you just read a plot description it wouldn't sound like it stood out from other blaxploitation movies in any way. But it does, because Dolemite is unlike any other movie character. He's not suave like Shaft or Superfly, he's not physically impressive like the Hammer or Jim Kelly. But he's more sure of himself than any of them, and has a bigger mouth. He brags that "When I see a ghost, I cut the mutha fucka," that "Dolemite is my name, and fuckin up mothafuckas is my game." He calls somebody a "rat-soup eatin, insecure, honky motha FUCKA!"

One thing people like about the blaxploitation pictures is the ridiculous outfits. The '70s was the best time for an audacious motherfucker to really go overboard on a white bellbottom suit or a fur coat. Dolemite took advantage of that window, and wears alot of silly shit in this movie. After performing part of his "Signifying Monkey" toast at the Total Experience we see Dolemite in a dressing room, wearing a silver sequined cape and powdering up. When he goes back into the club to confront Willie Green he's wearing a white tux with a huge plaid bow tie.

But the thing that really makes Dolemite stand out from other movie heroes is his rhyming. He gets to perform his toasts, and not just in the club. One of my favorite parts is a long scene in a parking lot where he performs the "Shine on the Great Titanic" toast for some dudes who recognize him. He kind of gets self conscious that they don't want to hear the whole thing, asks "Is that enough?" but they're into it and he has to keep going. It's a good story (the black guy working his ass off in steerage who shows those silly rich people up by surviving), Dolemite tells it well, and this is the one scene in the movie that feels like reality. I imagine this is exactly what would happen to him every once in a while when people approached him on the street.

DOLEMITE is not a good movie in any of the traditional ways, but the over-the-topness of the character combines with the crappiness of the filmatism and the funkiness of the music and clothes, causing a chemical reaction that can burn through metal. It's a crappy movie that's awesome enough that we hold it on a pedestal more than 30 years later. We're protective of it.

When they were talking about remaking this with LL Cool J, the prestigious cracked.com complained that "some clever devil at Dimension Films... decided that Dolemite would be a much better character if he wasn't a pimp, and if he was framed for a crime he didn't commit." But I gotta point out that neither of these would be changes from the original movie. Dolemite was in prison because the corrupt cops Mitchell and White planted coke and stolen fur coats in the trunk of his car. Although he seems like a pimp when he gets out and is met by what appears to be his stable of hoes, Queen Bee explains that while he was gone things got so desperate that his girls had to sell themselves on the street. In fact they are the employees of his club, and he never pimps them. He does call one of them a bitch for bringing him cotton drawers, which he says she should know he never wears. That's disrespectful but it doesn't really count as pimping in my opinion.

So I can't really be outraged by that. Like with many things I think a pretty good remake could happen, but wouldn't. The passing of Rudy Ray may or may not push along the development on that thing. Last I heard it was some nobody production company trying to do it with Snoop Dogg. I still think Bust Rhymes would be better, with his gravelly voice. Snoop is too tall and lanky, too smooth and soft-spoken. He's more of a Superfly than a Dolemite. Him and Busta both had Dolemite on their album intros though. Maybe he passed one of them the torch. Good luck holding onto that thing, fellas. Not gonna be easy. I'd rather they not try, but if they do they better not fuck up.

What will a post-Dolemite world be like? It's too bad, Rudy pretended to run for president so many times, but he didn't quite live to see President Obama. Probaly would've been disappointed that legalizing prostitution wasn't on the agenda. As far as an artistic output, the guy was 81, he had enough time there. I'm dying to see DOLEMITE EXPLOSION!, but I didn't expect him to do another one. He was actually moved into a retirement home and had to be carried around. Even if he could walk the main thing he was doing in those later years was cameos in crappy low budget movies most of us weren't gonna track down. I don't care how big your posse is, I will not watch a movie made by Insane Clowns. It's not my thing.

Will that remake still happen? With Dolemite gone will some studio take it over? Would that maybe be better?

What happens to the cottage industry anyway, when the boss isn't here? Does his son take over? Or Queen Bee and the girls? Does it just disappear, since there are no shows to sell t-shirts at? Or does Dolemite become the registered intellectual property of some corporation? A license, a franchise, a property, a brand. House of Blues Presents The Dolemite Total Experience™ Resort with your host Dolemite™.

Whatever happens, the legacy will live on. DOLEMITE isn't even his best movie, but it alone is enough to make him legendary in my mind. The power of DOLEMITE in your DVD player will overcome whatever some stupid motherfucker tries to do to make money off the name. But they better be careful fuckin with the legacy, and I'll tell you why:

11/28/08

DOMINO

I probaly never woulda known this if there wasn't a movie, but it turns out Laurence Harvey, who is a guy in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (but not Frank Sinatra), had a daughter named Domino. But wait, there's more. This daughter supposedly tried to follow in the footsteps of her super model mother, but then got bored and became a bounty hunter. Rich girl model becomes bounty hunter - sounds like a good story, and apparently director Tony Scott was friends with Domino and spent 12 years trying to bring "her story" to the screen. Tragically, she died of a drug overdose last summer having only seen parts of the unfinished movie. I just watched the whole god damn thing so believe me, I can relate.

Okay, that was low and unfair and in poor taste. In the spirit of the movie. They say the real Domino liked what she saw of the movie and was real excited. She was a DJ and recorded a song for the opening credits. And her death was ruled an accident, unlike my paying $9 in good faith for a movie I hoped would be entertaining. You gotta wonder if the best way to honor your dead friend is to put her name on a horrible movie that has nothing to do with her. Whatever happened to pouring one on the curb? I guess maybe they had a weird friendship.

[Confidential to Skander Halim: if I die tragically before your option runs out, FOR GOD'S SAKE don't let Tony Scott direct. Or produce. Or watch. Life is too precious.]

The movie DOMINO is most like is NATURAL BORN KILLERS. I always figured Oliver Stone was trying to make some prophetic warning about the media's exploitation of violence, not realizing that everybody already figured that one out before he did. But in retrospect it turns out maybe he was prophetic: he was trying to warn us of the incoming tide of the Michael Bay style, the Bruckheimerization of the cinematic language, and/or Tony Scott's big screen mid-life crisis. Oliver Stone was whacking us over the head, cutting the soundtrack into 750 pieces, torturing us with electric guitars, jarring edits, uncomfortable closeups, senseless switches from super 8 to regular to vhs to black and white to cartoon network. As obnoxious and pretentious as it was at least we knew what he was going for, I think. Some kind of impression of an oversaturated media culture is my guess.

What Tony Scott does now in movies like DOMINO and MAN ON FIRE is torture us with that same beating-you-to-death-with-a-movie style, minus the purpose. He just does it because he mistakenly, foolishly, embarassingly assumes that it is cool. This time he does bother to come up with an excuse: she gets dosed with mescaline at one point. So therefore it's supposed to make sense that at whatever point in the future when she is narrating the story of her telling Lucy Liu the story of her life, she tells it like she just blazed ten turkey sized crack rocks.

There is not a scene where they are on peyote and go out into the desert to get mystical advice from a Native American guru. There is a scene where they are on mescaline and go out into the desert to get mystical advice from Tom Waits.

I am not going to say one way or another, but I want you to guess whether or not this is one of those movies where every time they introduce a new character they freeze frame and write the character's name on the screen. And if so do you think you will remember those names at the end or feel that you have learned much more about them other than their names? I think you will be able to guess correctly but who knows.

Any random 30 second sampling of this movie would contain every symptom of the Bruckheimer plague: Avid farts, whooshy camera move sound effects, flying subtitles, Michael Bay energy drink edits, disorienting extreme closeups, overexposed/digitally saturated photography on any shot, no matter what it is, from a big ass shootout to a closeup of a fish to an interview in a police station. There is no sense of rhythm or momentum or build because EVERY. GOD. DAMN. SCENE. MIGHT. ASWELLBEABIGEXPLOSION. BOOOM.

JUST GUESSING HERE BUT I BET IF I WAS GONNA WRITE A WHOLE REVIEW IN ALL CAPS THAT NOBODY WOULD WANT TO READ IT. WHAT IF I JUST STARTED REPEATING STUFF FOR NO REASON JUST STARTED REPEATING STUFF FOR NO REASON NO REASON AND WHO NEEDS PUNCTUATION ANYWAY WHO NEEDS PUNCTUATIONOKAY HERE IS SOME PUNCTUATION FOR YOU YOU BIG ASSHOLE.......?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT TONY SCOTT TONY SCOTT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND IS THAT CINEMA IS A LANGUAGE LANGUAGE LANGUAGE. TONY SCOTT. THERE IS A CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE WHO'S ALWAYS SPEAKING SPANISH TO ENGLISH SPEAKERS, NOT CARING THAT THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HE'S TALKING ABOUT. THAT'S TONY SC0TT RIGHT THERE. NO RESPECT FOR COMMUNICATING A STORY OR CHARACTERS. IF I JUST START THROWING IN WACKY COLORS AND FONTS FOR NO GOD DAMN REASON IT IS GOING TO START DISTRACTING FROM from THE MEANING THE MEANING THE MEANING I'M (allegedly) TRYING TO COMMUNICATE. HOW THE FUCK IS ANYBODY GONNA UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM TRYING TO SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE IF I BURY THE WHOLE GOD DAMN THING IN A PILE OF RANDOMLY SELECTED, ANNOYING STYLISTIC FLORISHESQUESTION MARK

**************xxx##############

Or to put it another way, if a guy is telling you a joke, but at the same time he's pissing on your leg, you're probaly not gonna catch the punchline. In my opinion.

And this is not a well told joke, because Tony Scott is putting all his effort into pissing on your leg. I don't expect this to be a true story. I like that they openly don't care about the facts and got the DONNIE DARKO guy to write the script. But the whole thing is muddled. Somehow they manage to make it feel like it has no plot and at the same time has way too much plot. Because you're never involved in any character or event, and yet you can't keep up with who is trying to do what to who or why.

If you have any interest in a goofy movie about a bounty hunter, watch THE HUNTER starring Steve McQueen. I am not sure this one is even about a bounty hunter. If kids, martians or the Amish watched this movie, not knowing what a bounty hunter was, I am betting they would come out still not knowing what it was. Although she does say "My name is Domino Harvey, and I am a bounty hunter" many times throughout the movie, there is only evidence to support the first part. The actual bounty hunting in the movie is minimal. Even when she first meets her bounty hunter team (Delroy Lindo, Mickey Rourke, one other guy) they are not actual bounty hunters. They're pulling a scam, taking money for a "bounty hunting seminar" and then taking off out the bathroom window. I think there is one scene after that where they go to collect a bounty, but instead of asskicking she gives the guy a lap dance. (Seriously.) "My name is Domino Harvey, and I am a stripper." The main plot has something to do with an armored car robbery, the mafia, the FBI, etc. Not bounty hunting. There's a shootout or two but for me there wasn't a single frame of film that seemed like an action movie. Because it goes out of its way to make everything so visceral that nothing is visceral at all. You can't have Christmas three times a day.

WHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSHHHHH. (lights cigarette.) sizzzzzzlllllllee. BOOM! SHHHOoooooPP! boom bip boom bip. (repeat until movie ends)

We get it, Tony Scott. You're not old. You're young. You're hip. You probaly have an earring. You got your tips frosted! Maybe a soul patch. Only one problem asshole: your act is about as convincing as Vin Diesel in XxX. The truth is, you're 61 years old. You remember when your fictional Domino character was saying she didn't like Hollywood bullshit? Did you ever wonder who she might be talking about there? Let me point out a few facts. You directed Top Gun. You directed Beverly Hills Cop 2. You introduced Tom to Nicole. This is all documented. Your character hates Hollywood bullshit, and you directed Top Gun. I will let you draw your own conclusions.

And of course, this movie is Hollywood bullshit. For a guy trying to be so hip Tony Scott you sure are out of touch. For example, this story centers around a reality show. You really thought that was virgin territory for satire, huh? Jesus, Tony Scott, Ron Howard did a movie about reality TV six years ago. I saw it on cable. RON FUCKING HOWARD beat you to this. The guy with the baseball hats that likes astronauts. The guy who did SPLASH. There's a rule of thumb for you: if Ron Howard beats you to a topic by more than half a decade, you are officially for sure a bonafide Square with a capital S. Motherfucker, you can't deny that you watch Jay Leno. No, you tape Jay Leno every night because it's too late to stay up. If you can figure out how to program your VCR.

I mean, one of the big "laugh" scenes in DOMINO is an episode of the Jerry Springer Show. Damn, how did they get Jerry Springer to play himself? He hardly ever does that, unless you count MEET WALLY SPARKS, KILLER SEX QUEENS FROM CYBERSPACE, KISSING A FOOL, THE 24 HOUR WOMAN, AUSTIN POWERS 2, SUGAR & SPICE, or PAULY SHORE IS DEAD. Other than those 7 movies and the one he starred in and a few others, it is very rare to see Jerry Springer parodying himself in a movie, so that was quite a coup there for DOMINO.

This is a movie that really leaves alot of questions for you to ponder. Like, is there really still a Jerry Springer Show?

Roger Ebert, who somehow performed the feat of enjoying this movie, talked on his show about a scene where an arm gets cut off because it has the combination to a safe tattooed on it. (Believe me, not as exciting as it sounds.) He thought this was funny because it would be easier to just write down the number. That means Ebert didn't pick up on one of the few jokes in the movie that made me chuckle slightly. After we already know the arm is chopped off, we find out that the arm was chopped off due to poor cell phone reception (the boss told them to take his arm out of the jacket and look at it, but his phone kept cutting out and there was a wacky misunderstanding). I don't blame Ebert for not catching this, it's hard to make any sense out of this big screaming mess of holy hell. It's like watching TRUE ROMANCE while jumping on a trampoline and people keep taking turns banging you on the head with pans.

I only compare it to TRUE ROMANCE because Tony Scott directed that one also and I guess that would have to be considered his best movie. I don't think it's a great movie but it's a good one and they got a lot of similarities: single parented white kid fascinated by the dark side plays movie anti-hero, gets in over his or her head with mafia and FBI but soldiers on to bloody conclusion. TRUE ROMANCE was also written by a hipper, younger writer and remember it had some goofy pop culture touches like getting advice from an Elvis apparition in the bathroom and his friend auditioning for TJ Hooker. I saw it a few years ago, and saw DOMINO last night, but I remember TRUE ROMANCE better. I remember specific characters with personalities (Brad Pitt as the stoner roommate, the douchebag from PERFECT STRANGERS, the movie producer/coke dealer, Drexl the white pimp). I remember specific scenes with actual tension or suspense (the Dennis Hopper/Christopher Walken showdown, the shootout in the hotel). For DOMINO I don't remember anything like that, but I remember that two guys from 90210 were in it.

I guess when you have goofy touches like the ghost of Elvis in a studio crime movie like that, it almost seems subversive. But when you do it in a movie that's clearly trying to wave its ass in your face 24-7, it doesn't mean shit. This movie is a sullen teenage girl with a giant blue mowhawk and a 666 tattoo on her forehead, wearing a shirt that says "SUCK MY DICK." You know she's just trying to get a rise out of you so the shirt has no meaning. If Condoleeza Rice wore it though you might raise an eyebrow. This movie spends its whole afternoon poking the mowhawk at you saying "Hey look mister, look at my mowhawk, I have a blue mowhawk, did you notice my mowhawk?"

There was a line I liked at the end of DOMINO, something like "If you're wondering what parts are true, too bad. It's none of your fucking business." The problem is I assumed none of it was true since there's not a note in the whole symphony that rings true. It has all the soul of a BMW commercial. In fact, there is an actual BMW commercial also directed by Tony Scott that has the exact same feel as this movie. If you ever saw THE HIRE, the series of short films/BMW commercials starring Clive Owen as an underworld driver, maybe you saw this. It was called BEAT THE DEVIL and it was a story about how James Brown (playing himself) made a deal with the devil, played by Gary Oldman. And Clive Owen has to take him to the devil's apartment to try to renegotiate his contract. I know, it's a crazy idea, it sounds good on paper and you would think there would be no director on earth who could make a concept like that dull. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Tony Scott. This asshole makes 8 minutes seem feature length. It goes beyond self indulgence. Tony Scott's movies have figured out how to suck their own dicks. They invite you over to the apartment, tell you to make yourself at home, and you look over and suddenly they're sucking their own dick right in front of you. I don't know about you but I think that is rude.

The only enjoyment you get out of BEAT THE DEVIL at all is you keep telling yourself, "But James Brown. And Gary Oldman is the devil. Ha ha, and James Brown." You keep telling yourself there is no way you don't like it and yet, in reality, you don't like it. Same thing here. How could Christopher Walken be in this movie as a crazy TV producer and add nothing? Ask Tony Scott. Want to see Lucy Liu do nothing? Here's your movie. There are two guys from 90210 playing themselves (as hosts of the reality show). They're there for almost the entire movie and they only get one good joke at the end. They are actually more successful than most of the rest of the cast though because they are better when they have nothing to do. Like, there's a scene where the self-proclaimed bounty hunters are being hunted by the mafia, etc. and they are stranded out in the desert and even though he hasn't added anything to the plot in about half an hour, Brian Austin Green is still in their entourage, sitting there all bandaged and bloody. Just there, for no reason. That was kind of a funny idea, I thought, in my brain. Here, hold on, let me write this down. Yep, sure enough, it looks good on paper.

Now because I am a gentleman I will say a couple nice things. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you even if they just tormented you for two hours and made you pay money for it. First of all, Mickey Rourke is good. He might have the closest to a full character, coming in at almost one half of an actual movie character. Kiera Knightley has gotten some shit in reviews but I don't think she was that bad in this movie. She is not believable as a tough girl but she is not as bad as you might think. The real Domino didn't look that tough either at least in the couple of pictures I've seen. Although she had more meat on her bones. Anyway, if the movie bothered to give her a personality or motiviations instead of just phoney poses - hell, if it just gave her some better poses - I think there is a possibility that Knightley would've pulled it off okay. I don't know if there is a trophy for that or not but that's all I got for her.

There is a good crazy idea here and there, thanks to DONNIE DARKO guy. He probaly was trying. I might forgive him for this one. I can't say the same for fucking Tony god damn pain in the ass fuck you Scott, though. Last year he had Denzel Washington in a pure, simple, badass revenge story with the screenwriter of PAYBACK, and he fucked that up bad. Now he has the DONNIE DARKO guy doing a crazy story about a bounty hunter, he fucks that up even worse. There is definitely, for sure, no redeeming this motherfucker. These are movies that any competent director would've at least made watchable. Not Tony Scott. He has other plans. Looks good on paper + Tony Scott = run for the hills.

In fact, before I saw this movie I was not too pleased about Tony Scott remaking THE WARRIORS. And then I read somewhere that he wants his remake to be "KINGDOM OF HEAVEN meets THE WARRIORS" and that instead of say 30 guys in a big knife fight he's gonna have armies of 3,000 running through the LA river basin. And I thought well actually, that sounds good, as long as he doesn't try to make them realistic gangs, and it doesn't sound like that's the plan. I mean, imagine one of those big LORD OF THE RINGS battles but with Baseball Furies! That sounds good, I thought. On paper. Uh oh.

Tony Scott, you have long since used up your get out of jail free card. Your time is up. You're 86ed. I'm sorry sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Your garbage is no longer welcome on our screens.

DON JUAN - OR, IF DON JUAN WERE A WOMAN

Now I don't know if you remember last Valentine's Day when I wrote a little bit about my man, the late Roger Vadim. Or maybe you already know about him. Personally I never met the dude, but he has always been a personal hero of mine ever since I read the title of his book, MY MARRIAGE TO THREE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN THE WORLD. This is an individual who was married to 1) a young Jane Fonda. 2) Brigitte Bardot. And others.

Now although Mr. Vadim is obviously one of the great filmmakers of our time, just based on those great accomplishments, I have not seen too many of his pictures. One I have seen is the Barbarella, which is about a gorgeous space gal going on adventures and etc. Excellent. Number two I have seen Dangerous Liasons 1968, a French version of that story which takes place in - you guessed it - 1968. And the music is jazz music by Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey. It stars Jeanne Moreau. Can't remember if Roger married her too but it wouldn't fucking surprise me. If not, I'm sure there was SOMETHING going on there, I mean think about it, this dude could accomplish anything he set his mind to.

Now I am on my third Vadim picture and I am starting to see some of his themes. For one thing, the man obviously thinks about sex alot. And who could blame the dude with pretty gals like that walking around the house. I read somewhere that he got the idea to do Barbarella because he saw Jane Fonda walking around the house topless. I mean, what a way to brainstorm.

But Roger is a tease. He likes to bring up sex alot but he doesn't show very much. He likes to show us his wives naked, but for not as long as we would prefer to see them naked. Just little glimpses. The famous credits for Barbarella have the words bouncing around covering up all the parts of Barb's nudity while she floats around in her spaceship. It is a movie all about sex but it has almost no nudity and even has a pg rating now. But jesus if it ain't better than all the world's biggest gang bang videos combined. I mean yeah nothing against cum shots and what not but I think the look on jane's face when she's in the "orgasmatron" machine is more erotic.

Dangerous Liasons showed Roger's meaner side. I think he thought women were out to get him. That story is about a woman who uses her beauty and sexuality to screw motherfuckers over. There's a dude in the movie that does the same type of thing but let's face it, that doesn't really support my theory. So forget about it. And plus he gets redeemed in the end and she doesn't. I think that's Roger's true view on women and men. Anyway Don Juan continues in the Dangerous LIasons fashion. Brigitte Bardot plays Jeanne (the Don Juan of the title) who loves to make men lust after her, then leave them. Like she makes friends with a dude and his wife and gets the dude all excited for a threesome, then as soon as he's all ready she puts her clothes back on and tells the dude he's a piece of shit.

The framework of the story is about how Jeanne goes to see her cousin, a priest, and tell him that she has killed a man. She proceeds to tell him stories about the different men she has toyed with, only one of which is the dude she killed. And the way she killed this dude, not to give away the ending but, yes, I will give away the ending - she asks him if he would give up his life to have sex with her, and he says yes. So he has sex with her, then slits his wrists.

My favorite scene in Dangerous Liasons 1968, or DL-68 as I call it for short, was when the main dude was at a party where Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were playing. Then he fell over and hit his head on a brick and died. And then Art Blakey played a real good drum solo. Well there is a less crucial but similar scene in Don Juan where a gal at a party falls down and hits her head on a rock or something and is unconscious and bleeding. I mean isn't the weird? What kind of parties did Vadim go to? Maybe his life wasn't as glamorous as I always fantasize it was.

Nah. It probaly was. I mean hell it would be worth it anyway, for those wives. In my opinion.

Anyway, I gotta be honest, Don Juan is for Vadim or Bardot completatists only. Visually it is very arty and show offy, reminiscent of Barbarella even though it ain't in space or the future. So right from the start I thought hell, this is gonna be a masterpiece. It is very sexy and slick and cool and etc. On the other hand the story is not that great and by the time Brigitte goes up in flames you gotta admit, you were kinda bored. I think it needs a little more of the humor. If richard pryor or somebody had done a rewrite we mighta had something here. Oh well, there is always next time.

rip roger.

DONNIE DARKO

I gotta admit I was surprised by this picture. It is about a young man (named Donnie Darko [that is why the movie is called Donnie Darko, it is the dude's name]) to whom all the weird shit happens. Like for example a demonic rabbit lures him out of bed to a golf course, whispering mysterious type business to him in a spooky voice. In the morning he comes home and, you know, a plane engine has fallen onto his bedroom. Only one thing is, nobody knows what happened to the plane the engine fell off of. And it would be bad enough to have a plane engine fall into your room in the first place, then you gotta throw in all this mysterious bermuda triangle type business too. I mean he has a hard enough time just with school work now he has to deal with this shit.

This movie didn't get much of a release and I don't know, maybe it's because it's coming out in a time when Donnie Darko's life doesn't seem all that different from ours. Engines do fall out of the sky. I mean they have ax fights on planes now. They have shoe bombs and shit. They're gonna have baboon attacks pretty soon, the way things are going in my opinion. Pilots gored by elephants after that. I mean why do they allow elephants in the cargo hold anyway is what they're gonna say. We shoulda seen that loophole.

The story involves many elements you've seen before: hallucinations, teen angst, sibling fights, time travel, crazy old ladies, Patrick Swayze. The box of the video will compare it to Final Destination but it really doesn't have that feel. It's much more low budget and "quirky" for one thing, but it's also more original. Like I said these are elements you've seen before but the way this young filmatist pieces them together and the way he unfolds them for you feels very unique.

Apparently this dude is only 26 years old and this is his first picture. Everybody told him they loved the script but he should use it as a Writing sample. It's very original so use it to get a job Writing the same old crap everybody else Writes. Well he did the right thing, he held onto it and kept trying and wouldn't sell it until he could direct it. Then he went and made it the way he wanted to and I'm not saying this is Citizen Kane or even the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies, but it's nice to see a young man sticking to his guns and making a movie that doesn't exactly fit the cookie cutter. In an age when many young men measure their success in how many pedestrians they run over while talking on their cell phones about how much money they used to make when the computer business was still a viable option, it is good to see an individual who instead makes Donnie Darko.

It should be noted that this young man chose to make the movie take place in the '80s and put in at least one conversation about The Smurfs. He also used the sort of bad white people with casios music that was popular in that time, that some people mistakenly think is kitschy and fun and enjoyable to listen to. Nevertheless I do not think this is as self indulgent as many works of his generation and the two or three generations before him. I like how he used many Michael Dukakis references and lines up Donnie's impending doom with the election of George Bush part I. It just seems so pathetic that Michael fucking Dukakis was our last hope. I don't know if Donnie takes that as symbolism that he should just throw in the towel but it seems to do the trick.

Anyway I don't want to say too much about what happens in the picture but we'll just say it's not really a traditional horror picture, except in the old Carnival of Souls what in fuck is going on here type of way. And it's not really a teen movie although I guess it has a little bit of the Heathers in it. I think it's a good, original, and slightly less orthodox independent picture to go along with the Ginger Snaps movie which I also recommend. I hope you folks will like this one in my opinion. There is a rabbit also.

DOOM

There are three very clever sequences in this movie. First, it opens with narration over a starfield, and then pans over to show Mars. Suddenly the familiar UNIVERSAL logo letters spin around Mars. So it's just like the usual studio logo except the red planet instead of the globe. Then the letters go off screen and the camera zooms into Mars and into a space colony where the movie takes place. It's like there's not even time to bother with a studio logo, our only option is to work it into the plot. That is how urgent it is to get to the motherfucking DOOM.

Yeah yeah, I know my movie history, so you don't have to flood me with emails pointing out that the great visionary McG already connected the first shot of C'S As 1 to whichever studio logo it was. But this is a different thing because the movie has already started, and then we get the logo within the movie. If we are to follow our understanding of standard cinematical language, there may really be giant letters orbiting around Mars within the reality of DOOM. It all takes place indoors, so there's no way to know if there are giant UNIVERSAL shaped shadows dripping across the landscape.

The number two clever sequence is the one you maybe already heard about, the climax of the movie. It's a five and a half minute sequence that is a continuous shot from the point of view of the hero (Karl Urban), running through space colony corridors shooting monsters that pop out like it's a Halloween haunted house. Alot of his opponents are just dumb zombie dudes but there's also a variety of monsters from rubber costumes to computer animation, and weapons including guns, grenades and a chainsaw. (Apparently the video game the movie is based on is famous for being first person like this, so that's where the idea comes from. they sure have come a long way since Pac-Man in my opinion, although the stupid thing about the POV concept is that you can never do a MS. DOOM, because how are you gonna know if you're wearing a bow and lipstick?)

Number three, the end credits, the type that seem like they were designed for the opening but tagged onto the end instead so the movie can get down to business faster. These are computer animated and are also a continuous POV shot going through corridors shooting things. Only instead of shooting monsters, you're shooting the credits, blowing the letters to bits. This was maybe a little redundant after the other POV shot but I still thought it was the funniest credits since FREDDY VS. JASON was carved into flesh and then exploded. And it raises the same questions the Universal logo did. If the characters had stuck around longer, would they have eventually been attacked by flying letters? Maybe that's why they travel to Mars using a portal called "The Ark" instead of space ships. All the manned missions to Mars kept colliding with giant flying letters. Those things are big enough to wrap around Mars, you don't want to bump into those.

Unfortunately all three of these sequences I've talked about were probaly directed by somebody other than DOOM's director Andrzej Bartkowiak, and his chunk of the movie doesn't seem to be making the same effort to be inventive. Bartkowiak is the cinematographer who previously directed the Joel Silver Players Trilogy of ROMEO MUST DIE, EXIT WOUNDS and CRADLE TO THE GRAVE, which were all done in a similar ridiculous style. Here, since he doesn't have Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson in the cast (they were the R2D2 and C3PO, or the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or the Salt and Pepa of that other trilogy) he creates an entirely different visual universe. One that is probaly trying to seem legitimate and tasteful. But what it really is is just subpar ALIENS ripoff number three hundred and sixty seven. No wonder James Cameron thinks he's king of the world when a damn sequel he made has squirted out an entire genre.

I wasn't surprised that this wasn't a real solid sci-fi action spectacular, but I guess I was a little disappointed that it wasn't completely ridiculous. Remember, this director's last movie had a sequence involving a search for a ring, gladiatorial combat in a cage, a midget, Jet Li, parking garages, and an entire team of uniformed professional motorcross drivers trying to get a 4-wheeler back from DMX. So I thought he might bring that same insanity to the sci-fi genre. Unfortunately, it turns out, he knows how to make a normal movie.

The Rock plays Sarge, the commanding officer of a group of marines sent to the quarantined section of a scientific outpost on Mars to figure out what happened to some dead scientists. I guess alot of weenies (which is what serious video game players call themselves, I'm told) were upset that the marines fight scientists mutated into monsters instead of DEMONS FROM HELL. I'm pretty sure demons from hell would not have saved this movie, but I guess it would've been a little more different from ALIENS. They coulda had some more horns and fire and shit. Maybe a goat head.

If you're one of these people upset because the movie isn't exactly the same as the video game, keep in mind that this is by far the most faithful adaptation Bartkowiak has ever done. You want a good laugh, read the gritty police corruption novel Exit Wounds by John Westermann and then watch the Steven Seagal movie Bartkowiak made out of it. CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE was originally supposed to be a remake of Fritz Lang's M. And I am not shitting you, look it up.

Anyway, the marines go in there and all the things you expect to happen happen. Some monsters appear behind them in the dark, some of them get tossed around, some of them get infected and turn into zombies and/or monsters. Some of the supporting characters are really annoying, especially the cynical asshole character, sort of a poor man's Gary Busey standing in for Bill Paxton. You gotta wonder, if they're going on an important mission like this shouldn't they take a team of fully trained, non-asshole marines? There must be some other ones to choose from than just these fuckups. In ALIENS Bill Paxton is an asshole but you like watching him because he's a funny character. This guy you wish could die before the movie starts. At one point he announces "I have to take a dump" and it seems like in the grand tradition of Elvis and the lawyer in JURASSIC PARK he's gonna die on the john. But then he doesn't and they drag the scene on, keeping you in suspense about when we're finally gonna be spared of this fucker.

You know what, this is a movie that could've used LL Cool J.

The Rock is good though, as always. Poor The Rock. He could set the world of cinema on fire but instead he does DOOM. I'm sure he had fun though, he finally got to do a rated-R movie. He fights monsters. A couple times he uses a gun almost as big as his torso. He turns into a bad guy who talks mean and does things that are morally indefensible. And at the end he has a fight scene while slowly transforming into a monster. That seems like it's supposed to be a surprise twist, but since The Rock talked about it in every interview I saw of him promoting it, I guess it doesn't matter. It's like I always say, "If The Rock don't give a shit, I don't give a shit."

Unfortunately, there's not really much reason to give a shit about this movie. It's not good enough and worse, it's not bad enough. Even the makers of the movie realized this because there's an option on the menu to just watch the "first person shooter" scene, kind of like how the Friday the 13th dvds have a "jump to a kill" option. I woulda included the Universal logo and end credits in there too but maybe we'll have to wait for the Unrated Second Unit Director's Cut.

DOOMSDAY
and the end of the world of action and horror movies

Well, shit. I been looking forward to this one for a long time. ROAD WARRIOR + ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK from the director of THE DESCENT? Yes please. I thought. And in the week since it came out I've gotten alot of emails about it and talked to several people who saw it and only 2 of them said they didn't like it. Most weren't willing to call it "good" but they did seem pretty delighted by it.

So hopefully most of you who see it will like it too, but Jee and Zuss. To me DOOMSDAY seems like my own personal doomsday, the end of the line for my two favorite genres.

DOOMSDAY is not a horror movie, but after DOG SOLDIERS and THE DESCENT Neil Marshall is a bigshot in the "Splat Pack" or whatever stupid name you want to call what passes for the best horror directors these days. I've had alot of discussions with other horror watchers about this crop and what worries me is that so much of modern horror - including the stuff I like - is looking backwards. You got Rob Zombie with his various '70s homages, Eli Roth with his "grindhouse" and Italian horror and Takashi Miike references. I think Aja shows some promise, but his best movie is a faithful Wes Craven remake. Everybody complains about the avalanche of remakes but even among the well-reviewed movies you got some stuff that's 100% tribute and references (HATCHET, BEHIND THE MASK). I get it, I like those old movies these directors like too. Let's all high five each other and quote a couple lines but then let's make some new movies, shall we? Where is the George Romero or the John Carpenter of today? It can't be the fucking SAW guys, can it?

Backed into a corner I had to say Neil Marshall was the closest thing we had, based solely on THE DESCENT. It hardly reinvented the genre but it doesn't closely remind me of any specific movie or type of movie, and it's nicely executed. For me the character drama works, the setup is creepy (and claustrophobic) as hell, the monsters are perfect, it has a primal rush to it when she beats the Weird Underground Fucker to death with a bone, and there's that great moment when the bitch who's been trying to screw her friends over the whole movie uses her dying breaths to help them get away. Definitely one of the best horror-in-a-theater experiences of recent years. Maybe the best.

But scratch that. Now that he's directed his version of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, we know for a fact that Marshall is no god damn John Carpenter. Judging by this he's not even Rick Rosenthal (guy who directed HALLOWEEN II but got fired and reshot by Carpenter). The real Carpenter has been trying to ape Howard Hawks his whole career, but in the process he created a unique and recognizable JOHN CARPENTER STYLE. His own feel, sound, look, sense of humor, type of story. And over in Australia George Miller created his own style. Now Marshall takes the subject of one film from each, crunches them together divorced of their original style, plugs them in and hopes they'll still work. And for his next movie he says he might do his version of an INDIANA JONES movie. Instead of his version of a movie. So I guess we can forget about him blazing new trails in the near future.

So the big picture's not lookin good. But what about the movie on its own merits? It's kind of dumb to criticize a movie like this for being derivative. How would you make a completely original cross between ROAD WARRIOR and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK? And I'm the one always defending the legitimacy of formula in action movies, comparing it to the traditional structure of a blues song. So I can't act like originality is the number one thing to strive for.

But there are two things you should strive for in a good ripoff, and you have to strive for at least one of them if you want to be watchable:

1. Put your own spin on it. Make it your own. Carpenter said he based ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 on RIO BRAVO, but clearly he ended up with a John Carpenter movie. Some people point out similarities between HALLOWEEN and BLACK CHRISTMAS, but it has its own style and feel that for most people surpasses BLACK CHRISTMAS. Even 28 DAYS LATER - I'm not a huge fan, but the handheld DV shakycam approach is very consistent and distances it from the two Romero movies most of its ideas are clearly lifted from. It becomes its own movie.

2. Execute it well. There are slasher movies, vigilante movies and DIE HARD riffs that don't have an ounce of originality but that are put together cleverly enough - sometimes just profesionally enough - to be fun to watch. That's all I ask.

But I think DOOMSDAY fails in both categories. They add so little to the two movies they're homaging it gets kind of sad. They try to have everything from ROAD WARRIOR: mohawks, scary retro-fitted vehicles, a guy harnessed to a vehicle, a guy who introduces the leader on a microphone as if he's "The Ayatollah of Rocknrolla," two competing tribes, a fortified settlement for the less-punk apocalyptians, high speed car chase combat involving a police car. But what do they add to this to make it different from ROAD WARRIOR? Mostly ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Cynical, apolitical badass with eyepatch and sleeveless black shirt sent into walled off hellhole on a government mission. Most of how DOOMSDAY differentiates itself from the two originals is just by not being as good. It's not as cool, not done as well, not as dedicated to its fantasy world. It's less outlandish but not more believable. The hero is less iconic but not more real or complex.

So that's #1. #2 is where we get to the doomsday for action movies.

If you think today's crop of horror directors is sad just take a look at the action directors. Most of the old masters like Woo and McTiernan have lost it. Cameron hasn't made an action movie in about 15 years, Carpenter's last one sucked, Miller has had to put his great chase scenes into animal movies and comic book fundamentalists are trying to stop him from doing a super hero movie. Friedkin still had it as of 2003, but who knows if he'll do another action movie. Walter Hill seems mostly retired, Frankenheimer is dead. I guess I shouldn't write off Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and France, they've got some good stuff coming out. But who do we have making Hollywood action movies who still believes in good old fashioned visual storytelling? All we have is disciples of the shaking camera and the farting Avid. If you ask me Paul Greengrass has taken that shakycam style as far as it's gonna go, and the result of that has nothing on a HARD BOILED, are you fucking kidding me? Spielberg is the one guy still left with consistently great action through visual storytelling, but he's never been interested in the straightup action I want to see.

I mean the state of action is so bad that I was having this discussion with a buddy recently and we decided to count David Cronenberg as an "action director" just so we had somebody to be proud of. And I guess I could count Tarantino. KILL BILL had some of my favorite fight scenes ever, and DEATH PROOF had classic car chases. So there's our two greatest action directors of the 2000s, two guys who are not interested in being action directors.

And then there's Marshall. When you fail #1, it amplifies #2. If you do a straightup aping of ROAD WARRIOR, are we supposed to watch it and not compare what you're doing to one of the best action movies ever made? Because I couldn't help but notice these chases were not as good as the ones they were rehashing, and not even on as big of a scale. But the chases are better than the fights. There's a sword duel in this movie where I'm pretty sure every single move in the entire scene gets a separate shot. What, you couldn't find stuntpeople who could swing the sword twice without stopping to rest?

I know I sound like a broken record (hey kids a record is a type of round listening device made of black plastic which we used in the old days to listen to music and "broken" meant that some poor sucker had dropped it and created a scratch which caused the needle to skip and play the same part over and over again) but FOR FUCK'S SAKE ACTION DIRECTORS - ACTION IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT ACTION. That's why they call it action. Just sit down, shut the fuck up and let some people fight. If you can't choreograph a good fight then hire somebody who can, and then trust that it will look good if you allow the audience to see it. If we survive DOOMSDAY I hope that we as a society will come together in peace and unity and learn to show the actor's faces when they're fighting and make it so you know which characters are involved in the fights and what they are doing to each other. Is that too much to ask? All we are saying is give comprehensibility a chance.

But before you even get to the action the story itself is uninvolving. That's the biggest problem with the movie and the one I have the hardest time defining. The pre-mission setup is way too long and uninteresting but I kept telling myself "Don't worry, once they get inside it will get good." But it didn't so then I was telling myself "When those punk guys show up it'll be cool" but that was poor judgment on my part. By the time the movie's 2/3 over I'm thinking "Maybe the car chases will be good?" It's a rare and sad thing for me when a movie fails to hook me for its entire running time. I honestly considered going home to do something else. I can't remember the last time I thought of doing that.

Maybe the problem is that they just kind of assume you'll dig these characters even if they don't set them up very well or give them much to do. I couldn't stop thinking of the lead character Cindy Plissken (just kidding - I have no idea what her name was though, check IMDb if you must) as Posh Spice in a half-assed last minute Halloween costume of Snake Plissken. She didn't have a sleeveless shirt so she borrowed a tank top from Sporty. She's the closest thing to a memorable character in the movie but she just doesn't cut it. Her attitude isn't bad enough, she doesn't have any funny oneliners, her badass maneuvers are few and far between, when she gets locked up she stands around not trying to escape for way too long to be taken as a serious threat. The ladies in THE DESCENT weren't as cartoonish yet they were more convincingly tough.

The movie also undermines her by making her part of a team, but then the team doesn't do much. In a nod to the movie's unoriginality that is in itself unoriginal* Marshall names two characters Miller and Carpenter, but then you never really know anything about those guys or remember what they look like. (I guess you sort of have to have that though, a way of saying "hey guys, I'm not trying to trick you, this is so you know I know that you know I'm ripping these guys off.")

The aspects of the movie that are good are all superficial. They did a good job applying bones to motorcycles and buses, for example. The main character had a removable glass eye with a camera in it, that was kind of cool and Snake didn't have that. I don't know man, I want to say something nice about the movie for all my readers who liked it, but I kind of feel like I listened to my friend's song and I'm having a hard time thinking of a way to compliment it without being totally full of shit. "Was that you on rhythm guitar? I really liked the rhythm guitar."

The one section of the movie that is not ROAD WARRIOR or ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is when they go into the woods and some knights on horses find them and bring them to a castle. For a second I got excited because it is in fact a cool idea - in Europe they have castles, so apocalypse survivors can use them for shelter. Might work better than a shopping mall. But Marshall made the decision that all the characters living there dress and behave as if they are medeival. Kind of a funny idea at first but since the movie is so uninvolving my mind started to wander and I realized that it if they brought their modern scavenged supplies into the castle it would not only be more believable, it would be more interesting to watch. Like if the punks lived in the castle, or at least battled the guys in the castle, that would be cool. Instead they segregate those lifestyles so we just get a section of the movie that looks like some XENA-style medeival show that would be on syndicated TV on weekend afternoons. The only thing funny they do is show a plaque that says "Gift Shop" in one shot.

I knew this movie could go either way, but I never imagined I would be completely bored from the first minute to the last. I know that good movies have not been un-invented, so I expect something better than this, especially from a director whose already contributed positively to the world. Just because other people look down on these genres that I love doesn't mean I can't expect quality.

The saddest part is that this is the one god damn fantasy type movie that doesn't have a chosen one in it. If you're gonna be doomsday for action and horror you should at least have a prophecy of a chosen one who will come and nail all the cameras into the ground and tell them to keep the film rolling. Carve him into stone or paint him on a scroll. We need a prophecy so there's something to look forward to.

3/23/08

* a few movies with characters named after horror directors:

BLOODMYTH (Carpenter, Corman, Barker)
THE DEAD NEXT DOOR (Raimi, Commander Carpenter)
DEATH MACHINE (Dante, Carpenter, Raimi, Scott Ridley)
FINAL DESTINATION (Browning, Lewton, Hitchcock, Murnau, Dreyer, Waggner)
FINAL DESTINATION 2 (Carpenter, Corman)
FINAL DESTINATION 3 (Romero, Ulmer, Freund, Wise, Dreyer, Christensen, Polanski)
HACK! (Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Argento)
THE HOWLING (Waggner, Fred Francis)
JASON GOES TO HELL (Sheriff Ed Landis)
NIGHT HUNTER (Detective Browning, Curt Argento, Detective Hooper, Sangster, Ulmer, Castle)
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (Romero, Hooper, Cronenberg, Cameron, Landis, Raimi)
WAXWORK II (Polansky, Romero, Argento, Scott, Hitchcock)
ZOMBIE BLOODBATH (Bookwalter, Romero, Fulci, Argento, Raimi)

Maybe it's time to put this tradition on ice for a while is what I'm saying.

P.S. The punks in this are cannibals, so they thought it was funny to play the song "Good Thing" by the '80s pop group Fine Young Cannibals. Tobe Hooper already thought of this joke 22 years ago when he showed a Fine Young Cannibals poster in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2.

DOUBLE DARE
This is a 2004 documentary about two stunt women. One is a veteran, Jeannie Epper, double for Lynda Carter on WONDER WOMAN. The other is more of a newcomer, Zoe Bell, double for Xena the warrior princess. And of course now we know her for playing herself, Zoe Bell, stuntwoman, as the heroine of Tarantino's DEATH PROOF. But this was before.

The movie splits between telling the stories of these two women. Jeannie is in the US, having a harder time getting jobs at her age, also involved in organizing younger stunt women and helping them out like a mom. (In fact, one stunt woman she helps is her daughter.) Meanwhile, Zoe is in New Zealand worried about her future because XENA is about to end.

Then - and I'm guessing this involves a breach of the documentarian code of honor, but oh well - Jeannie and Zoe meet. Zoe goes to the World Stunt Awards with Jeannie, almost gets groped by Gary Busey, goes to a workshop for learning how to fall from great heights, tries to get a new job. Jeannie helps her make headshots and gives her lots of tips.

It's cool that they chose to make this documentary about Zoe at this particular time, because during the filming she ended up getting the job of all jobs as stunt double for The Bride in KILL BILL. I guess it would've been an interesting story if they just followed her after XENA and she faded off into obscurity. It's hard out here for a stunt girl. Instead they're there when it all goes down. First you see a scout for KILL BILL checking out Zoe at the falling workshop. Then you see her audition in front of Yuen Woo Ping and Tarantino, she keeps doing flips off a trampoline but not sticking the landing. Later you hear the actual phone call when they told her she got the job. And her calling her parents and telling them. It's all in the movie.

The documentary is pretty much Maysles-style, my favorite. You don't ever hear a narrator or an interviewer asking questions, you just follow them in their lives. You see Zoe swinging around on cables, bouncing off trampolines, fighting with various weapons, being lit on fire and spun through the air, etc. But you also see her joking around with her family, crying when she has to leave them, buying a dress for the awards show. What makes her an interesting subject is the same two things that made her great in DEATH PROOF: 1) she is amazingly talented at this stunt shit (she is possibly Death Proof) 2) she is very charismatic, always laughing and smiling, never taking herself too seriously. So she seems like your nice buddy who happens to know how to do flips, swing swords, jump over cars and shit. (For some reason as Xena she has to get hit by a car - guess I missed that episode.)

This is not an exposee into sexism in the world of stunts, but they are able to handle that issue gracefully and subtly. There is some mention of sexism but they don't really make a big deal about it. But then at a planning meeting for the stunt awards it's brought up that maybe they should consider having separate awards for men and women, since that's how they do acting awards for the Oscars and since women are not often given the same opportunities for stunts in scripts. I don't know whether they should agree with that or not, but it's telling how the men respond, clearly not even able to vaguely comprehend why this is even an issue. They get all mad and start talking about how they don't want to reward "weenie stunts." Nobody has to point it out, you can see what's going on here.

Zoe talks about how great it is to be able to take off the Xena wig and just go home as Zoe, not having to worry about being famous. Which is funny considering DEATH PROOF, where she stars under her own name and profession, and the story even plays off her having moved to the U.S., like DEATH PROOF and DOUBLE DARE take place around the same time. Hell, I guess you could say this is a prequel to DEATH PROOF. Since G'HOUSE was such a failure moneywise maybe she can still walk around in public without getting hassled, but I recommend she not come anywhere near everybody I know, 'cause they loved that movie. This documentary makes her seem even cooler, you really want to see her star in some more movies. It's pretty weird to watch her being Xena or the Bride and then realize wait a minute, that really is her doing all that shit. Like that classic shot in the House of Blues in KILL BILL, when the Bride runs right up the banister, jumps up and does an awesome kick. You see her doing that and you think shit, of course that's not Uma. But I always believed it was. It's kind of unnerving, splitting the Bride into two people. Next time I watch KILL BILL it might be weird.

If you dig KILL BILL like I do you'll be happy to know that there is some behind-the-scenes scenes on that, and even more in the deleted scenes. There you find out that she had to wear a mold of Uma's nose, since her own is very distinct and non-Uma.

Jeannie, it turns out, is also in KILL BILL - she plays the preacher's wife in the chapel in volume 2. She has to get shot, so being a stuntwoman she knows what to do. But I'm betting there's a different reason why Tarantino wanted her. Early in DOUBLE DARE there is a montage of some of the stunts she's done. She was the double for Robocop's partner, for example. But the one that really got me was this scene from COFFY. Coffy goes into this bar and kind of a white trash gal says some racist shit to her, and they get in a fight. That's Jeannie. Not just doubling, she gets to play the character since it's just that one scene. As soon as I realized that was her she was in my cool book. Wonder Woman - whatever. But if she fought Pam Grier she deserves respect.

The movie isn't perfect. It would be nice if they explored some of it in more depth. For example, Zoe mentions that she just kind of fell into the business by accident after she got out of school, but they never explain what that means. Still, it's a real interesting slice of life. I would recommend this to anyone who likes movies, but especially if you like KILL BILL and DEATH PROOF. When you see some of this stuff you'll believe she really could take out Kurt Russell.

DOUBLE IMPACT
Well I thought this would be funny because Jean-Claude Van Damme plays twins but it is not one of his better pictures in my opinion. It is not nearly as boring as Cyborg, but it is pretty generic and dull and shows few signs of the iconoclastic action pioneer that Van Damme would later become.

I guess he does an okay job of playing two different characters for such a limited actor but you would think they would do more with the twin concept. The opening scene where jean claude's characters is only a baby is pretty well done, but then it skips to 25 years later and the happy keyboard music plays and it's just your usual mistaken identity twin garbage.

About 5 seconds into jean claude's first scene he's already doing the splits, in colorful spandex, for an aerobics class he's teaching. Then he goes to hong kong to avenge his parents death and happens to run into his brother and find out his parents were killed. That is how it always is with these twins, either their parents died or they got divorced and they try to get them back together.

The plot and action are real routine, just a bunch of exploding and running around in the streets like an old cop show and not even very much kicking. They do this kind of crap in Vancouver Canada every day, it is called syndicated action shows that nobody you know has ever watched. There is usually a magic car or a super hero involved though instead of twins.

Don't get me wrong I like Jean Claude, its just that I prefer his more experimental surrealist period best represented by Double Team and Knock Off. Unlike Double Impact these are movies that you never know where they're going next, because there is no logic to it at all. They are crazy and random, you don't know when this motherfucker is going to team up with some computer expert monks or drop his baby off in a roman arena with tigers and land mines or run around pulling a rickshaw with Rob Schneider whipping him with a fish yelling "Move that beautiful ass!" Double Impact does not have that kind of magic though sorry.

This film was co-produced and co-written by Mr. Van Damme, as a stepping stone to his later work as a directing cinematist. So if you are studying the evolution of the artist it may be an important work to examine. But if you're nto an academic and you would rather go straight to his best work I would definitely recommend the two hong kong pictures, double team and knock off.

DOUBLE TEAM

I've talked to alot of people who are going back and rediscovering Mickey Rourke performances after seeing THE WRESTLER. They rent BARFLY, maybe 9 1/2 WEEKS, ANGEL HEART, JOHNNY HANDSOME, THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE. I was thinking about that and suddenly it occurred to me that I don't hear anybody talking about a little picture I am very fond of but haven't seen in many years, one with a cover that says VAN DAMME - RODMAN - ROURKE. So I rented it in preparation for a post-Oscars celebration.

Well, poor Mickey didn't get the Oscar, but who needs an Oscar when you can say 'I WAS IN DOUBLE TEAM, MOTHERFUCKER'? I mean, which would YOU rather have? Okay, I guess most of you probaly said the Oscar, but what would your second choice be?

Anyway I love this movie. It joins STONE COLD in an elite category of highly enjoyable action movies that combine serious action chops, high energy, a way above average number-of-explosions-to-minutes-of-screen-time ratio, a stupid story, a great actor playing the villain and a goofy performance by a ridiculously dressed flash-in-the-pan professional athlete turned non-actor.

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays P. Jack Quinn, a secret agent involved in the attempted assassination of Stavros (Rourke), a former agency asset. It turns out Stavros has his little boy there, the kid gets shot, and Quinn must be avenged. (Come to think of it, this movie could be told from Rourke's point of view and he would be the good guy.)

If you're into this kind of movie, which you are, it won't take long to realize that this is in the higher echelon. Within the first fifteen minutes or so you've already seen Quinn driving a futuristic truck full of plutonium off a mountain, Stavros walking slo-mo away from a cab he blew up, a bunch of people at a carnival still going on rides even though Stavros and Quinn are running around firing guns and blowing shit up, a hand grenade thrown into a baby's bassinet (man, Stavros carries alot of grenades with him when he brings his kid to the carnival)... and then when Quinn gets knocked out and wakes up he kills a TV because it informs him that his wife thinks he's dead and he's now living on an island called The Colony where all the world's most dangerous secret agents are spending their golden years hanging out at a pool and then wearing sci-fi goggles and poring over data about recent terrorist acts to offer their analysis. So Quinn trains himself up BLOODSPORT style, executes an impressive escape from the island, finds out his wife had a baby but Stavros kidnapped it, then goes to the Roman Collisseum with Dennis Rodman to fight Stavros and a tiger without setting off landmines. You know, one of those kind of movies.

Rodman is, let's just say, a unique movie presence. In my experience most movies don't have a 6' 8" foot tall dude with tiger striped hair wearing pink spandex pants and a silver bra selling weapons. Later when he wants to blend in he changes the hair to green and wears a nice suit and fedora but still has two nose rings and 3 hoop earrings and drives a tiny car with his head sticking out of the sun roof. He looks good in the fights too, he's no Kareem in GAME OF DEATH but he does have a similar thing going on with the ridiculously long legs doing high kicks. Also he tends to toss people around like basketballs. Actually, he uses your arm sort of like a handle, just lifts you up and throws you against a wall or through a window. He's a weapons dealer who invented a special basketball shaped parachute and a smoke bomb coin. He turns out to have a heart of gold, so when he finds out about the kidnapped baby he goes along in the mission free of charge. But then when he rescues the baby from the tiger/minefield he just hides him in a hole in the wall and abandons him.

Xin Xin Xiong, who was in some of the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA movies, choreographed the fights, and I guess he figured if you want it done right do it yourself, so he has the best fight with Van Damme. He jumps up and kicks his shoes off in the air, then produces a switchblade from his foot and has a knife fight. The weird thing is I figure he doesn't really do anything he couldn't do better with his hands, but he just knows it's gonna fuck with a guy's mind if you come at him holding a switchblade in your toes. People tend to lose their shit when you pull freaky tricks like that.

As for Rourke - okay, this is not exactly the greatest showcase of his talents, but they don't completely waste him. He treats it seriously and doesn't play it as a maniac, he is obviously in the right from his point of view. He even gives Quinn a chance to win his son back, and if not he's gonna raise it as his own, not kill it. So he's a nice villain. Rourke also gets to take his shirt off and do a little boxing. Kind of cool to have the boxer vs. the kickboxer (although they have Mickey doing some kicks too). Anyway I thought this was being entirely forgotten in his filmography, but to my surprise they showed some clips of it before his interview on the Barbara Walters Oscar special. In the interview he talked about a low point in his life after his wife left him and he had taken a movie just for the money and felt like a whore. But don't worry, I did the math, it can't be this one! Maybe the Stallone remake of GET CARTER, but not this one, he was still with his wife during this one. Phew!

But obviously it's more of a Van Damme movie and it's easily one of my favorites because it's so over-the-top and such a weird combination of elements: a cool ripoff of THE PRISONER crammed into the middle of this weird Dennis Rodman movie. I didn't even mention the computer expert monks who return in Rodman's SIMON SEZ, the out-of-place basketball references or Van Damme's bohemian disguise. There's really no other movie like this except Van Damme's other movie with director Tsui Hark, KNOCK OFF (the two are often referred to as Van Damme's surrealist period, although only by me.)

Whenever somebody wants a recommendation for a completely insane, hilariously stupid but also awesome action movie, this is one of the first titles that pops into my head. If I had an Oprah's book club type deal I would have to assign this one. Go watch it and let me know what you think.

2/24/09

DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY

As I have said before many times the Bruces are some of the best action stars in my opinion: Bruce Willis, Bruce Campbell, and in this case one Mr. Bruce Lee star of Enter the Dragon and The Chinese Connection etc.

There have been many fine biographies of this particular Bruce, among them Bruce Lee: The Man the Myth starring Bruce Li, who also starred in one called Dragon Story. In The Man the Myth Bruce is depicted as a nationalist always out to prove the superiority of chinese kung fu over thai boxing, japanese karate, and fat Italian-American guys. Bruce Li at times looks similar to Bruce Lee although the karate or kung fu I guess is not as good. He has a good haircut and pants in my opinion but still does not capture the essence of the man.

Other Bruce Lees have also played Bruce Lee from Bruce Le to Bruce Lei to Bruce Liang, Bruce Leung, Bruce Lin, to even Dragon Lee and Conan Lee. They have told Bruce Lee's life story as well as his exploits beyond the grave, etc. I have read about a lot of fake Bruce Lee films but I do not know where to rent them. They have Bruce Lee Fights Back From Beyond the Grave, Black Dragon Revenges the Death of Bruce Lee, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Ilsa Meets Bruce Lee in the Devil's Triangle, and Bruce Lee versus Gay Power.

I also had a friend named Bruce Leee, a bootlegger who was probably the best Bruce Lee I have ever known. I am not easy to please when it comes to Bruce Lees, I have been around the block a few times, so I was skeptical about this Jason Scott Leigh Bruce Lee from Dragon. I mean what kind of a Bruce Lee name is that nobody's gonna fall for that one.

More than that, this dude doesn't even look remotely like Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was a lean and compact Chinese man, Jason Leigh is this beefy Hawaiian dude. When you dress Jason Leigh up to look nerdy, you see the muscles underneath so your not surprised when he jumps into the air and flexes to rip the shirt off mid-air. If Bruce Lee had done that, which I gotta tell you I'm skeptical whether he did, it would have been more of a surprise.

But somehow this Jason Leigh makes the movie work. I mean fuck Jim Carrey in The Man On the Moon, anybody can play a guy who wrestles girls. Bruce Lee is a whole different ballpark, one of the greatest fighting showmen who ever lived, and this Jason Leigh manages to capture much of Bruce's physicality. When he starts fighting, his face curls up and his body twists and somehow, for some reason, this beefy little bastard contorts himself into Bruce Lee. Fucking incredible transformation in my opinion and one of the better acting jobs of the '90s as far as I can tell.

Like most biopics this movie is a lying sack of shit as far as telling the true story of Bruce Lee, but I like how it combines Bruce's life with his work and his philosophy. This is kind of a melodrama/romance type deal about his struggles, his emotions, relationship etc. but at the same time it is a full fledged karate movie. And I tell you the karate is good. In real life Bruce was a braggart and liked to prove his superiority by beating ass or at doing a high kick from behind to nip somebody's unexpecting ear. There is a legend of him going buck wild on the set of Enter the Dragon, kicking a guy so hard that he broke the ribs of a different guy. That's what Bruces are all about.

Well in the movie most of the fights are probaly complete hogwash historically but it makes for a better movie than if it was all Bruce doing exercise and signing contracts. The best scene in the movie is when Bruce is working as a dishwasher, and some chefs get jealous of him. So Booker T and the MGs or something starts playing and Bruce goes out into the alley and fights about five evil chefs with meat cleavers. Now it is one thing how Seagal is an asskicking chef in Under Siege, but could he take on five other asskicking chefs at once? I don't think so.

Another thing I like is the way this deals with racism between whites and asians like Bruce lee. (We don't use oriental anymore, by the way.) Usually in a movie this is completely a white and black issue, but I know for example in the joint there is all kinds of tension with puerto ricans, samoans, asians etc. It is a lot more complicated than just whites accepting blacks and even though it's nothing deep it's nice to see a movie that mentions that.

Bruce has to deal with his white wife's mother who worries about "yellow babies." He also gets called gook by the UW Husky Football team before beating them all up and then teaching them karate. This is why the University of Washington wouldn't let them film on campus, even though they are very proud that Bruce Lee attended there they thought it would be in poor taste to admit that football players are racist idiots.

There are also some parts about a demon curse and whatnot.

This is a fun movie that does a pretty decent job of showing how Bruce Lee's enormous talents elevated asskicking and even the Badass movement to the level of art and philosophy.

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (1966)

Well, in the tradition of Scream 3 I have been watching bad sequels to movies I haven't even seen in the first place. This is the sequel to Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine which is supposedly a good "spy spoof." What a spy spoof is for those of you who are too young, they used to have movies like James Bond 007, which is about a secret agent who gets laid ALL the time and goes on adventures around the world and what not, with little devices and what not. You know what I mean. So these james bond pictures were so popular that spy spoofs became a pretty huge genre. What they are is they are in the same style as James Bond but they are a little more campy and fun, more entertaining, funnier, sexier, better, etc. But sometimes you can also take them kind of seriously even though they're mostly for laughs. For example the best one was the Flint pictures, Our Man Flint and In Like Flint starring James Coburn one of the few who I would want to play me in a movie. This guy is also in 1998 Oscar winner Affliction and 1999 Outlaw Award Winner Payback. Anyway Derek Flint is this secret agent who has a team of beautiful gals working for him, and he flies around the country to teach ballet, he is a master of karate and can meditate so deeply his heart stops. And he has to stop a plan about this evil cold cream I believe. Well I don't know man, it's hard to explain to you kids with no context, you don't know what james bond is obviously you're not gonna know what the fuck a spy spoof would be like. Sorry.

Anyway I THOUGHT this Goldfoot deal would be funny. It stars Vincent Price as the diabolical Dr. Goldfoot, who has created an army of EXTREMELY hot robot gals in bikinis, when they kiss you they explode. That's how he assassinates the 7 NATO generals and then he impersonates one who looks just like him. His opponent is a secret agent played by Fabian. The movie is directed by Mario Bava, it is Italian so the voices are all dubbed on afterwards, and the music is real happy groovy '60s goofball music.

I have no idea WHAT the fuck this movie is about, though. Mostly there is a lot of real bad keystone pigs type of comedy, with the film all sped up and people running around bumping into each other. There are these two really stupid characters played by Ciccio and Franco, who I read are supposed to be the Italian Abbot and Costello. Well let me name a few comedy teams that are funnier:

1. The American Abbot and Costello

2. The Icelandic Abbot and Costello

3. The albino Abbot and Costello

4. The leper Abbot and Costello

I mean these two are horrible. Vincent Price is good like always and I like looking at the girl bombs, but believe me, it is not a good movie or a good bad movie. I haven't even seen the original but I'm telling you, stick with the original. The only real good part in this is the end credits when all the girl bombs dance while some gal sings about Dr. Goldfoot.

THE DRIVER

This is a lesser known but completely fucking badass Walter Hill picture about a getaway driver. Ryan O'Neal plays the driver character (called "The Driver") who is pursued by a semi-crazy cop with no name ("The Detective" on the credits) played by Bruce Dern.

The movie starts out with a robbery sort of like the dog race robbery Hill wrote for the remake of THE GETAWAY, except that the movie rushes through the robbery part and focuses on the escape. Right away you know you are in for a treat with this movie, because it's some of the most intense car chases I've ever seen. Lots of car's–eye-view shots as the driver swerves through oncoming traffic, red lights, parking garages, narrow alleys... he's got 2 or 3 cops right on his ass everywhere he goes but he keeps managing to run them off the road or fake them out and leave them in the dust.

When the POV is not on the hood of the car, most of the time it's inside the car, with the Driver staring ahead emotionlessly and the two gunmen sitting in the backseat, watching the cops through the rear window. You really feel like you're inside the car, not sure you're gonna get away with this, but hoping you will. I love when he cuts through parking garages and you hear the sirens echoing all over the place.

It occurred to me while watching this that alot of the time in movies when there's a car chase, you are with the cop car that is trying to catch the other car. This one puts you firmly in the getaway car and you're definitely rooting for them to get away. And they do.

Watching this movie, you really come to appreciate the skills of a high level getaway driver. I'm sure they get paid about the same price as those NASCAR fuckers, but what they do is so much more challenging. They are dealing with unpredictable terrain and obstacles, and also they get shot at alot. If they were shooting at each other in NASCAR then maybe I'd watch it, but probaly not unless they dropped all the corporate logos and maybe went off a few jumps or did some side wheelies or something. I mean those fuckers with the patches and the mustaches, they may be good at driving around in a circle but I bet you put them in a getaway car they'd turn into a timid 15 year old girl with a crisp new learner's permit. Getaway drivers are the real talents of the racing world, and yet they almost NEVER get their picture on mugs at AM/PM. It's bullshit, man.

The Detective knows exactly who the Driver is, he just hasn't been able to pin anything on him yet, and when he finds a witness, she pretends she can't identify him. So he ends up busting another crew after they knock over a grocery store, and makes them a deal: they can do a ten year bid, or they can set The Driver up by hiring him for a bank job.

The best scene in the movie is when these knuckleheads drive their orange Mercedes into an empty parking garage to meet The Driver. They scoff at his price, asking how they know he's worth it. So he hops in the driver seat and demonstrates - tearing through the garage, spinning out, slaloming through the concrete pillars, tearing through the place in reverse, practically making these guys shit their pants. Or maybe he does make them shit their pants, if so Walter Hill did not make it clear enough that they shit their pants. Anyway after they tell him he's made his point, he starts intentionally crashing into things, ramming into the walls, taking off both the bumpers by hitting corners at the right angle. Then he stops, opens the door -- but instead of getting out he backs up and takes the door off on a pillar.

(Maybe they tricked me on this one - I didn't rewind it to check - but I could swear the way they shot it, it had to really be Ryan O'Neal driving for this shot.)

Then after he's completely destroyed their car he tells them, "I don't work with people like you."

There's one chase scene that's on foot, that involves two characters, a bag of money and a train. That also reminded me of THE GETAWAY, although in this case it's a scene that comes from Jim Thompson's novel and not just Walter Hill's two screenplays for the movies starring Steve McQueen and Alec Baldwin, respectively.

Speaking of great crime writers, I first heard about this movie on a fellow geocities web sight, The Violent World of Parker. It's about Richard Stark's Parker novels (that's the character Lee Marvin plays in Point Blank, Mel Gibson plays in Payback, Robert Duvall plays in The Outfit and Peter Coyote plays in Slayground). The author of that sight considers The Driver to be a "Parker-like" movie, if Parker were a getaway driver instead of a thief. I think it's a good comparison. This is a straight up tough guy movie, very low on dialogue, high on action and scowling and authentic detail. It's very simple in its plot and characters, so it's appropriate that none of the characters have names. (I coulda sworn Bruce Dern called the Driver "Carter" near the end, but the Norwegian DVD I was watching didn't have English subtitles so I couldn't verify it. [Come to think of it, I should've turned on the Norwegian subtitles. God damn it Vern, you really fuckin blew it.])

Anyway, it's a quiet, laid back movie with lots of badass stoicism that always leads into heavy car chases the way a musical always leads into musical numbers.

This is definitely one of the best not-very-well-known crime movies I've come across in a long time. Now that you know about it, you should see it.

DRUGSTORE COWBOY

If you want a good picture about junkies this is it. This is not a western like you may think it is the story of Matt Dillon, his lady and another couple who travel the Pacific Northwest region knocking down drugstores to score various pharmaceuticals. As someone who has known these type of people I can GUARANTEE you they do not have prescriptions for these items. They are addicts.

What I like about this one in my opinion is that it is an anti drug movie that doesn't stack the deck. It makes it clear that drugs are fun when you are doing them, they make the world happy and the cowboy lifestyle as they call it is exciting. So then after being honest it goes on to deal with the negative side.

Most movies would depict these folks as scum but here they are real people, and this is how they live. They are a family and the picture even starts with clips from their home movies. This is also a Mary Poppins type deal where the head of the household is a bit too into his job. He is so dependant on medicinal pleasure that he loses all sense of priorities - he doesn't even want to get laid. His lady is taking her top off and he gets nervous and starts rattling on about a hospital he wants to rob. And that's when you know this guy is a fucking addict.

They aren't only addicted to the drugs, but also to the hunt. And the robbery scenes are thrilling to watch. This dude also plays some clever tricks, and it's real funny when he gets the cops that have him on surveillance to think his neighbor is an accomplice, and gets his neighbor to think the cops are peeping toms. The cops watch the neighbor with binoculars and they have typical hot-shit-movie-cop dialogue: "I wonder what's in the bag?" "The only thing I know for sure is that it's not his god damned lunch."

But it is.

I believe this is inspired by somebody's memoirs, and it has a very true to life feel. When Matt has a dead body in the hotel room, he is asked to check out to make room for a sherriff's convention. And don't you just know that would happen to you too? I mean that's the way life throws it at you. If he was smuggling rare south american black market beetles I'm sure it would be an exterminator's convention, but it was a dead body so it was sherriffs.

Later in the movie William S. Burroughs has a small role as an addict priest named Father Murphy. And it is good to see him. That is a brilliant man have you ever read Naked Lunch? I gotta be honest I don't know WHAT the fuck he's talking about 90% of the time and I could REALLY do without all this bugmen fucking a little boy shit but there is some very clever and fucked up shit in there as well. I think "junkies christmas" from Interzone is a holiday classic and to be frankly honest my own nutmeg story is kind of a ripoff of it, although it is a 100% true story.

Anyway Burroughs is great on film because he is creepy as hell. I mean you probaly remember what he looked like when he was old, like a hunched over mummified birdman or something. And he talks in this slllllooooowwwwwww creaky croaky voice and good god the man is scary but he also reminds you of an old man next door who tells you really good war stories.

The filmatic work here is real good from a director named Gus Van Sant Jr. What it is is he has very good abstract visual ways of depicting a high. He has a lot of fetishistic closeups while they prepare their drugs and later, when Matt goes to a methadone clinic, he shoots the boiling water and tea bag the same way. The camera work alone gives you an idea of Matt's yearning to get high.

Well hell man all I'm trying to say is it's a good movie, if you haven't seen it I guess that's your problem isn't it but I'm just saying you should watch it is all. thanks

DRUMLINE

I don't know what the deal is with this movie but I gotta admit I kinda liked it. Basically it is your formula movie about young kids competing in something, like LOVE AND BASKETBALL or KARATE KID or WORLD'S BIGGEST GANG BANG or that kind of thing. But in this case instead of sports they are competing at marching band.

The main kid is Nick Cannon who I just looked up on IMDb. I guess he was on the "nickelodeon" kids channel and even had a show named after him. So basically he is an unknown. He is real good as a prodigy on the drum. Not the drums, just one drum that you carry around. This kid is real good, especially good at memorizing and picking things up fast, but you find out later that he can't read music. Still, he gets a scholarship to this college and goes to this marching band and finds out it's alot more strict than he expected. They got a curfew, they got a drum major that hates him, etc.

One thing I like is they don't try to convince you that marching band is cool. They just kind of assume that you already think so. And you kind of feel like there must be some mistake, I guess I never knew marching band was cool. This kid is a superstar, like Ray Allen in HE GOT GAME, there is even an instructor from a rival marching band talking him up trying to get him to switch over.

Another thing I like is that it takes itself seriously. It is basically a drama, there's not alot of bad comic relief type crap. There is a little bit about one white guy who tries to compete in this all black band, but nothing embarassing.

What really makes or breaks the movie though is if you enjoy watching the band. I mean it's not like I'm into that kind of crap but they do a good job making it seem exciting. The drumming sounds good and they play lots of classics by Earth Wind and Fire, Sugar Hill Gang, Michael Jackson, etc. They make it into a big ass duel, they even have the competing bands face to face drumming at each other. I swear to christ a fight breaks out in one scene because the drumming competition gets too personal or something, I don't know.

There is sort of a theme in the movie of "old school" vs. "new school." The teacher (Orlando Jones from OFFICE SPACE and 7-UP) is real serious, like he's trying to be Laurence Fishburne. I think he's the 21st century Ernie Hudson. Anyway he hates that other bands play popular music, and criticizes rap as not being music. But in the end he learns to combine "my old school with a little bit of your new school" which turns out just to mean playing old Michael Jackson songs. (?)

I think maybe there is a theme in there about individuality also, as they try to hammer the rebelliousness out of the kid and teach him the concept of "one band, one sound." Fuckers.

Anyway, I thought it was mildly entertaining. I will keep an eye on this director Charles Stone III who also did PAID IN FULL. I'm not sure what the deal is with this one though.

DUCK, YOU SUCKER

You talk about striving for excellence - to a guy like me, Sergio Leone is just about the highest level of excellence any director could aspire to. He took the western genre, which had grown stale and conservative, and injected it full of his Leone brand cinematic steroid and turned it into an unstoppable super soldier version of the old beast, one so powerful it became its own genre that is still worshipped and studied by cult movie watchers to this day. All he did was five westerns bookended by a gladiator picture and a gangster epic. But those westerns contributed so much to the Badass Cinema I worship to this day that they might as well be considered its legal guardians.

Think about it: the stoic Clint Eastwood persona of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, which he parlayed into an entire brilliant career and which spun off into a hundred bastard sons in the action genre, from Steven Seagal to Daniel Craig. The epic cinemascope wide shots showing the vastness of the desert, cutting to the extreme closeups on some ugly bastard's squinty eyes, surrounded by wrinkles and lines of sweat. The ingenious use of sound - buzzing flies, some piece of metal somewhere clanging in the wind, the clicking of guns, and of course the legendary Ennio Morricone scores that are forever glued to any memory anybody ever had of these movies. Leone's style is like a drug, it heightens all your senses. You feel like a blind man whose hearing becomes more powerful to balance out the loss of the eye sight, but then you get the eye sight back for some reason and the super-hearing stays so you go watch some westerns.

To me it seems like Leone must've had film spooling through his veins. He's the definition of a guy who mastered the idea of camera angles, of sound, of music, of pacing. When I talk about what I love in movies, what I think is too often missing from movies these days, this is it - this CINEMATIC (all caps) feel, this god-like mastery of visual storytelling.

So what the fuck was I thinking NOT having seen DUCK, YOU SUCKER (also known as A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE)? This was Leone's last western, available as an import DVD for a while but only recently released in a restored version in the US, the first time the full 157 minute Italian cut has been in English.

Now I've finally seen it and it's not at all what I expected. It has all the qualities I described above, but it's not like the Man With No Name movies. It starts out funnier and ends up darker. It's as epic as ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (probaly my favorite Leone movie) but it's also very political. The heroes get involved in the Mexican Revolution, and it's Leone's way of saying the revolutionaries of the '60s were full of shit. I'd like to think he's wrong, but he paints such a vivid picture of the messiness of revolution. Like Verhoeven's BLACK BOOK you see the weaknesses of people you assume are idealists and the horrors of violence even when it's for a good cause.

But it's also a damn good western with a weird set of protagonists. What if I were to tell you that the movie stars Rod Steiger as a Mexican (Eli Wallach style)? And that he does a good job? And that he partners up with James Coburn as a motorcycle riding Irish dynamiter?

Their first encounter is a classic. Steiger and his family have just stolen a fancy stagecoach from some upper class pricks. Suddenly a weird dude drives by on a motorcycle. Steiger is an asshole, so he shoots one of the tires out.

Coburn gets off the bike. He looks like some kind of post-apocalyptic nomad, his face covered in goggles and a handkerchief, his lanky body exaggerated by a weirdly cut trenchcoat. They have the kind of long, silent stare down that is associated with Leone and spaghetti westerns in general. This is what happens between men in the old west when one man shoots another man's motorcycle tire out for no reason. These type of guys are always looking for fights. Always looking for stupid excuses to prove their masculinity and physical dominance.

After the long stare, Coburn strolls up to Steiger holding what appears to be a cigar, but is actually dynamite. (precisely one fist full of it.) You think he's gonna get in his face but instead he pulls the cigar out of Steiger's mouth, uses it to light his fuse, and walks past him like he doesn't even see him. He tosses the explosive onto the freshly stolen stage coach and says "Duck, you sucker!" just before it blows a hole in the roof. An eye for an eye, a roof for a tire.

The politics are in there starting with the opening shot, which is Steiger peeing on an anthill. And then throughout the movie you see how the upper classes pee on the lower classes' anthill. Not even the revolutionaries are innocent - Steiger says a revolution is where the people who read books say they need a change and then get the people who don't read books to kill each other. You know how it is. Motherfuckers always peeing on an anthill.

But at the same time this is a really funny movie. Steiger's dream is to rob the bank at Mesa Verde, so when he sees Coburn's skills with explosives he tries to rope him into it. But when they get into town it turns out Coburn is involved in the Mexican revolution. They go to rob the bank as part of a coordinated series of attacks. And it's funny to see Steiger get more and more disappointed as every vault he opens is full of political prisoners instead of money. Not only does he not get the loot, but Coburn gets to make fun of him calling him "a grand hero of the revolution."

One point of confusion with this movie is the title. I think most Americans prefer the more badass sounding A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, but it is kind of a misleading title since the feel is much more ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST than A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. DUCK, YOU SUCKER, it turns out, was Leone's preferred title. It's said at least 4 times in the movie, usually John warning Juan that he's about to blow something up. So to me it emphasizes the friendship angle of the movie. But it relates to the Italian title which was something more like "KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN," a double meaning for ducking the explosion and staying out of trouble during political upheaval. And his biographer says that Leone for some reason thought Americans went around saying that all the time.

The extras on the new DVD are kind of funny because they're so contradictory. The biographer paints DUCK, YOU SUCKER as Leone's big, personal political masterpiece, but the writer Sergio Donato says there's "very little Leone" in the script, that he wanted Peter Bogdanavich to direct it, and tells a story about Steiger being pissed because Leone kept trying to pawn off directing duties on somebody else.

You know what's sad, this movie was made in 1971. His next movie ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA wasn't until 1984, and then that was the last one.