I like the horror pictures. I used to just review them because I saw them, and what else am I supposed to do, you know? I already saw it, might as well Write the fuckin review you know.
But after a while I started to really like this stuff. I mean everybody likes monsters and shit. I started to watch all the Dracula pictures, all the Chucky pictures, everything. I started to seek them out.
I heard alot about this director, Larry Fessenden, who is some new york independent filmatist who has made a trilogy of pretentious horror movies - NO TELLING, HABIT, and WENDIGO which got some good reviews when it played at a film festival here but I haven't seen it.
First I checked out NO TELLING which is supposedly an "eco-horror" film and is about some dude doing weird experiments on animals. I was impressed when I heard that he never graduates to experimenting on humans - that made it sound more realistic than most horror movies and that could be creepy. Unfortunately I only made it about 8 minutes into the movie before the community theater style acting made me throw in the towel. As far as I saw, the movie was just about couples standing around in a field talking about relationships.
So I gave up on Larry Fessenden, but I forgot he directed HABIT and ended up taking it home by accident. This time I got all the way to the end. (That's nothin to brag about though, I just watched EARTH VS. THE SPIDER starring Dan Ayckroyd.)
Overall I think I'd have to say I liked HABIT. Basically it's the story of some dude right after he broke up with his girlfriend, who gets real drunk at a party and meets a new girl named Anne. She looks kinda like Winona Ryder or a cuter Ricki Lake during her petite elf period. Before he knows it she's givin him a hand job in the park and she bites his lip and sucks the blood. But he thinks nothing of it and keeps dating her and you can see where it would go from there.
The basic storyline is your generic vampire tale but the approach is a little different. Mr. Fessenden is obviously going for a very naturalistic feel and with the exception of a few subjective type shots there is almost nothing clearly supernatural or stylized. It's mostly like one of those movies about these fuckin egomaniac new york artist types and their dating scene and troubles with alcohol and all that shit. You know that type of movie.
All the usual vampire shit is here, and some of it works real well in this context, like when Anne says "Aren't you going to invite me in?" It seems like what she would say even if she wasn't a vampire and could enter a household without permission. And of course they got the daylight, no reflection in the mirror, garlic, etc. And you get all the little double entendres where the dude says she has "a timeless quality," etc. Alot of it pounds you over the head but I think in general you could say the movie is subtle about its vampire story. Because there really is no overt mention of vampires until the very end and the final showdown takes up maybe ten minutes or less. Before that it's just a relationship drama with blood.
There's also at least one obscure vampire detail, that she gets preoccupied by knots. I hope they bring that one back in DRACULA 2000 II.
The casting of the vampire is pretty good. She looks much too innocent and cute to be a bloodsucker but during the sex scenes she turns believably animalistic. She still seems pretty real, though, enough that you believe he might be staying with her even if she didn't give him the hand job.
The main dude is pretty good too and wouldn't you know it, he's played by Larry Fessenden himself. At this point I've got to mention that this guy seems pretty full of himself and the movie is extremely pretentious. The biggest threat to the realistic feel of the movie is the dialogue, which often wanders off into preachify mode. The characters make little speeches about philosophy or the corruptive effect of pop culture on our society or what have you. Larry has to make a speech about his late father and he talks about how people said he wasn't an optimist, but he really was, and he believed this and that and blah blah fuckin blah. Larry is obviously just talking about Larry because this has no story or thematic purpose. You want to nudge Larry, tell him to drop the bullshit. Too often the characters have obnoxious conversations that must be the independent filmatist's idea of sharing the interesting conversations he's had with his friends. We don't fuckin care, man.
It's not as bad as those first 8 minutes of NO TELLING though, and the acting is better, so I was able to give him some leeway. Good thing it wasn't until the end that I saw the credit that says "Writer, Director, Sound and Picture Editor: Larry Fessenden". Or that he plays saxophone in the band that does alot of the music. Or that he narrates the trailer and describes himself as "Larry Fessenden, the acclaimed director of underground cult films." He also narrates a semi-interesting but pretentious making of documentary where he mentions the following directors: Stanley Kubrick, Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Copolla, Les Blank, Roman Polanski, John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese, who he refers to as "Marty Scorsese," maybe because he worked with him, playing the role of "cokehead" in BRINGING OUT THE DEAD.
I wouldn't compare HABIT to anything by those directors, but it does seem to be going for some of the same things George Romero did better years ago in MARTIN. That was another realistic character drama in which one character sucks blood and may or not be a supernatural vampire. It also reminds me of DRILLER KILLER where Abel Ferrara directed himself as a similarly obnoxious new york artist type, although HABIT is better made and has more sympathetic characters.
Although HABIT is only partly successful, I do admire what Larry was going for. He may not be inventing a new genre, but at least he's trying something pretty uncommon, in a genre where retreads are considered pretty acceptable. I'd rather see someone try something really pretentious than just cash in on whatever the horror fad is these days. Unless it's NADJA, man, give me I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER over NADJA any day. HABIT is pretty decent, though. We'll see about WENDIGO. thanks.
HALF PAST DEAD
I don't know how to explain my fascination with Steven Seagal, but you can read my review of ON DEADLY GROUND and maybe you'll understand. I don't think the dude is exactly advancing the cause of Badass Cinema with his works, but I still enjoy every new chapter of his saga.
This time around we find Seagal working with a young rapper named Ja Rule, stealing cars for some European guy. BUT NEVER FEAR. Although Seagal may SEEM to be a mere car thief (or I guess, since he's Steven Seagal, an ex-CIA black ops car thief), it is heavily implied in the opening scene that he MAY actually be some kind of undercover FBI agent. I don't want to give anything away though, who knows if he really is undercover or not. Nobody really knows until they themselves have seen the movie.
Of course, as soon as we've introduced the idea that Seagal MAY be FBI, he fondles his wedding ring and stares meaningfully out the window, so we know that he is still mourning the death of his wife. And in the very next scene he has a job that goes wrong and he gets shot and he and Ja Rule end up in prison.
By the way I forgot to mention that Seagal's name is Sasha, and he leaves his hair down instead of the traditional ponytail. Sorry, no fringe coat or beads this time around.
At this point in the picture we realize that this takes place in the near future, when Alcatraz has been reopened under the futuristic name "New Alcatraz." It is supposed to be a top of the line maximum security joint but since it's new they make a few mistakes. For example when they're loading the convicts in the screws don't mind that Seagal gets out of line and just starts having a conversation with Ja Rule. Also, as soon as they get through the metal detector they start boxing one of the screws, and throw him through a bookshelf, and they don't get punished.
I mean I guess it's some kind of futuristic liberal prison because they also got this kind of new agey hispanic warden in a leather jacket. He's kind of like the cool guy warden. He talks tough but he wants to be your buddy. He practically coddles the lovable old man who they are about to execute for accidentally killing 5 people during a train robbery. (A futuristic train robbery, I think.) He even fulfills the old man's Make a Wish Foundation request of getting to hang out with Steven Seagal before his execution. So luckily Seagal is there when Morris Chestnut and a bunch of other individuals with Columbine style weaponry and clothing drop in with parachutes to try to kidnap the old man to find out where he hid the gold that he stole during the futuristic train robbery that accidentally killed 5 people and put him on futuristic death row.
When last we saw Morris Chestnut in the Seagalniverse, he was a mere comic relief sidekick in UNDER SIEGE PART 2: DARK TERRITORY, aka DIE HARD ON A BOAT PART 2: DIE HARD ON A BOAT ON A TRAIN. But since then Mr. Chestnut has established himself playing handsome love interests in pictures like THE BEST MAN and THE BROTHERS. So now he's gotten a promotion to Lead Villain. (A guy called Kurupt is the main comic relief character in this picture, so he has someone to look up to I guess.)
Mr. Chestnut doesn't bring too many interesting thugs with him. There is nobody as good as Billy Bob Thornton in ON DEADLY GROUND or Everet McGill in DIE HARD ON A BOAT 2. But there is a chick with bright blue eye makeup (Nia Peeples, I guess?) who basically plays the part of Trinity in The Matrix. She flips around in leather and a trenchcoat, looking hot, doing kung fu, firing machine guns, etc. I think the filmatists actually felt a little guilty about the Matrixyness of it all. They have a reference to a place called "Trinity Lake." Or maybe they're sci-fi buffs, because as soon as Sasha gets into prison they start calling him by his number, 1137, which in my opinion is only one or two off from 1138. You know actually they probaly just did that because they regretted that they named him Sasha.
Come to think of it, why in the hell did they say he was russian anyway, or that he had a titanium knee? I don't get it, man.
In my opinion, this is not the most realistic prison movie I've seen. There don't seem to be very many convicts, the ones that are there are all very lovable, and the fuckin place has glass ceilings. True, they're high ceilings, but trust me man you don't want to tempt convicts. Oh well, it's the future.
So how does this rate among the Seagal ouvre? Well it's not in the top 10 percentile but I felt like I got my money's worth. Seagal is kind of down on his luck right now. He's suing his former producer partner Jules Nasso for getting the mob to strong arm him, and at the same time he's fighting an uphill battle to prove he's big screen material. He is widely perceived as fat, slow and not talented. His Dolemite fighting style does not translate well for the Yuen Woo Ping generation. His return to theatrical features, EXIT WOUNDS, opened big, but all the credit was given to co-star DMX. In fact the recent, otherwise great article about Seagal in Vanity Fair described the movie as a DMX vehicle with Seagal in a supporting role (which is a god damn lie).
Well here Seagal looks fatter and less agile than ever, but he's found a pretty good solution for that. I guess I never reviewed THE PATRIOT, but in that straight to video picture he only had two brief action scenes. He played a doctor/toxicolgist and most of the set pieces were about lab work. In HALF PAST DEAD he avoids that problem, delivering the required amount of action by doing mostly ridiculous, cartoony action where he can be replaced by a stuntman. There's a goofy car chase and a hilarious parachuting climax. He leaves all the running and jumping to the kids. The gal with the blue eyeshadow does all the flipping, Morris Chestnut jumps off a ledge like he's Batman, and all the convicts jump down a couple floors for a gun battle. Meanwhile our heroes, Seagal and Ja Rule, hide inside a crashed helicopter.
To be fair, there is a part where Seagal and Chestnut fight while swinging around on chains, Thunderdome style. That was pretty good. But otherwise Seagal tries to stay rested. As a result, there is not a whole lot of bloodshed. For a Seagal movie, there is a very low bodycount, and I don't remember any blood. In fact the most brutal things that happen to people are used as slapstick comedy for the rapper-actors, like when Ja Rule gets flung from a car into another car, or when Kurupt's bazooka propels him 10 feet through the air and right through a window.
I mean this is a PG-13 movie. They even play songs with "motherfucker" in the chorus and then cut out the "fucker." I noticed this three times. What is this, television? BLADE 2 had no problem playing "listen all you motherfuckers." If you can't hang with the big boys maybe you better stay home, HALF PAST DEAD.
That's not a big deal really, I can just yell "fucker" in the theater every time they leave it out. Problem solved. What's really missing here though, is the trademark Seagal corniness. I think the studios feel that in order to market Seagal to a new generation, they have to tone down the asskicking pacifist motif. He doesn't get to agree with the core beliefs of militia groups (as in THE PATRIOT) or protect Native Americans (as in a couple of his movies) or even claim to be Buddhist (as in THE GLIMMER MAN) or do a speech about alternative fuel sources (as in ON DEADLY GROUND) or claim that the CIA created AIDS as a form of genocide against blacks and gays (as he apparently claimed in an unproduced script). He doesn't get anywhere near ON DEADLY GROUND's 3 QUESTIONS OF SEAGAL:
The closest we get is a little karma talk and more discussion of God than you generally expect in a shitty action thriller. Oh well, I guess you can't hit a home run every time. Instead we get a couple quick shots at typical buddy movie shit (Ja Rule teaches him to say "aight") and undercover cop/thief betrayal issues... or do we? Nobody knows if he is an undercover cop or not.1. What does it take to change the essence of a man?
2. How much is enough? How much money is enough?
3. What do you say to a man with no conscience?
Ja Rule replaces DMX as the rapper buddy. He does a good job of reading his lines. But I liked the DMX fella better, he had a very strong screen presence and charisma, and when I saw him in the earlier picture BELLY I realized he was a natural movie star. Ja Rule is kind of a smaller, weaselier guy and judging from his songs on the soundtrack his music is just a shitty ripoff of DMX's. But oh well, I won't judge. The days when Michael Caine or Eric Bogosian would hop on board a Steven Seagal movie may be over, so we'll take what we can get.
Well, maybe Michael Caine would do it again. I wonder if they've asked him?
HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION
A couple years back you'll remember that I reviewed the whole HALLOWEEN series. And I mean the WHOLE series. The first one, the middle ones, the last one. The very last one. The one where they got the original stars back, they got a halfway decent script, they brought everything full circle, they chopped that fucker's head off and they cut to the credits. The end, forever. Never again. Against all odds, they came up with a decent wrapup to an endless series of bad sequels.
Well sadly what they went and did, they talked poor Michael Meyers into doing ANOTHER one, one that nobody in the world wanted, one more in the tradition of parts 4, 5 and 6, but even worse. I guess I can't blame Mike, with a mug like that how you gonna get leading man roles. He's a character actor at best unless he's in HALLOWEEN, then he's the star.
They never really mean it when they say a movie is the last in the series, but I'm telling you, I really mean it when I say this is the worst in the series. The premise is sort of a self consciously modernized HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Busta Rhymes (the rapper who I think should play Dolemite instead of LL Cool J) is Vincent Price, because he's gathered all these kids together to spend the night in Mike Meyer's childhood home, and straps cameras onto them like some kind of REAL WORLD type show, but it's broadcast on the internet instead of real tv. This premise makes the following unwise assumptions:
1. the audience doesn't know that nobody watches "internet programming", especially live on a day they could be doing something else (i.e. Halloween)
2. the audience believes home computers can download 100 live feeds of full screen tv quality digital video at the same time
3. people still believe computers make blipping and blooping noise whenever you hit a key or a graphic appears on the screen
4. we're really gonna buy that this company won't get paid for their event until after it's over
5. we really want to see a HALLOWEEN movie that is almost entirely about a group of kids walking through the shadows of one small house
5b. and that we don't mind if all they ever cut away to is a bunch of kids at a party standing in a room watching a computer screen with the kids walking through the shadows of that one small house.
I think I called UNDISPUTED asinine, but I wasted it, I should've saved that word for this one.
The one section that doesn't revolve around the house is the ridiculous opening which explains away the great ending to the last movie. We are told that the Michael Meyers who attacked Laurie at the end and then got his head chopped off was actually a paramedic who Michael had switched clothes with! In this scene Michael tracks Laurie down at an asylum where she has set up a bunch of boobie traps and manages to hang him upside down. But he kills her anyway and frames one of the other inmates for the murder. I guess I wasn't paying attention in this series - when did Michael and Laurie turn into fuckin MacGyver?
This is one of those embarassingly out of touch movies where they seem to think that being on the cutting edge of technology is enough to make the movie work, even though they're not really on the cutting edge of technology. They keep cutting to shaky, fuzzy digital video footage from mini-cameras attached to the actors. This was an interesting new gimmick in 1986 when they did it in ALIENS. Now it's 2002, it's, what, ten or more years later. You're gonna have to try a little harder to dazzle us, asshole.
As long as I had to see the fuckin thing, I wish I saw it in the theater so I could've heard everybody laugh every time they had a "subliminal" Michael Meyers face appear when the video flipped over. SPOOOOOOKKKY!
Busta Rhymes is the most charismatic individual in the movie, but he doesn't get shit to do except talk to himself making wacky jokes like he thought the movie was supposed to be more along the lines of HOW HIGH. Supporting my theory that he should play Dolemite, there are scenes where he does fake kung fu on Michael Meyers and is overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals. We understand that he knows these kung fu moves because earlier he watched a kung fu movie, which was also overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals, even though it wasn't a Bruce Lee movie. At the end Busta has a sudden change of heart and makes a half assed stick it to the man speech about the media exploiting violence, which I guess you learn after you've faced Michael Meyers. It's like one of those dolphin encounters you can get.
There is one new addition to the Michael Meyers mythology: we now know that rappers are immune to his killing powers. When LL Cool J survived what seemed like certain death, I thought it was a fluke. This time Busta gets stabbed several times in the back, but appears again to save the day. At the end he gets a sling for an apparent arm injury but his rapping powers have healed over the stab wounds.
If Mike shows up again I wouldn't bother calling the sherriff, just call the Wu-Tang Clan.
The asshole responsible for this poppycock is Rick Rosenthal, the director of HALLOWEEN part 2. That movie was okay but apparently he did a bad job so they had to fire him and have John Carpenter reshoot a bunch of the scenes. In an attempt to recapture that classic not-that-badness, they hired Rosenthal again and fired him again and replaced him with (I heard) Steve Miner, who doesn't contribute any of the thrill he gave to part 7 or Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3-D. Before they did the reshoots, Dimension wasn't even planning to release this piece of shit, but Ms. Curtis and Mr. Rhymes talked them into it. I guess you can't blame Busta, he probaly told everybody he was in a HALLOWEEN movie and nobody believed him, and if they hadn't released the movie he would've looked like a liar. Still, I'd rather be called a liar than be called the guy from HALLOWEEN 8.
One final question for you folks to ponder. How come they always got wires in these type of movies, and they always get cut and then they cause massive electro shock and fire. What kind of electricians do they have in Haddonfield, Illinois? They need to be more careful. Not that I don't appreciate a livewire laying around here or there in case Busta needs to shock Michael Meyers in the dick. But there are kids in that neighborhood. Anyway, Michael's house finally gets burned down at the end, so they've finally gotten rid of Laurie Strode and the Meyers house.
Or have they? I'm guessing Laurie faked her death, like she did in part 2 according to conversations in part 7. And the house was actually an innocent house that Michael switched with his house at the last minute.
please deliver to:
Michael Meyers
Spooky old Meyers house
Haddonfield, IL 61764
Dear Michael Meyers,
Vern here. Big fan. Going way back. I watch HALLOWEEN once or twice a year. Part 2 once every couple years. Part 3 every once in a while, even though it's lame that they wouldn't pay you enough to come back for that one. 4 and 5 I watch once every 3 or 4 blue moons. Part 6 I watched once in a theater and once on producer's cut video and that's quite enough of that shit, thank you very much. Part 7 I actually like, mainly because of Laurie getting away, deciding she can't run for her whole life, going back, chasing you down and lopping your god damn head off. No offense. And then part 8 I saw on DVD and if I could I would become a child, dress up as a clown and sneak into that movie's bedroom with a knife. Not that I would get off on that or anything, it would just be the right thing to do. You would hate that one too because they burn down your house.
But since HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION is a movie and there just isn't a feasible way of stabbing it I was almost glad that Rob Zombie was remaking HALLOWEEN. It's wrong, it's a bad idea, but at least it would prevent another scene where Busta Rhymes yells at you because he thinks it's his friend playing a joke and you get scared and leave.
But now that I've seen Zombie's take on the story I got some questions and comments. First of all, which one were you? I always thought you were the mysterious dead-eyed kid "sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall... waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off." But is it actually more like this remake? There was no silent alarm, you just tortured animals as a child and got abused alot and you were evil and escaped and killed more people?I liked you better as the unexplainable killing machine. The walking puzzle with knives in place of answers. To be fair, Zombie does not explain you. He shows your cartoonishly troubled home life as a child, your being bullied about your mom being a smokin hot stripper, your childhood experiments with animals, the details of your first murders, your obsession with masks, your selective memory while in the asylum ("Is everybody at home okay?") and then after an hour of that Zombie seems to say "Beats me, can't explain evil. Let's just run through the story of part 1 and the twist of part 2. Make it quick though, we only got about 45 minutes."
In this one you're more of a rampaging monster. They got this guy Tyler Mane, he's 6'8" and used to be a wrestler but he's slimmed down, he doesn't look like a muscleman thank God. But they got this whole cornball part in the asylum where he's got stringy hair over a paper mache mask, there's some guitars going and there is no way anybody can watch that part without thinking of WWE. They probaly shoulda thrown zebra pants on him and shot some sparks around, got it over with. Don't watch that part, you'll get so mad you'll eat a dog.
I like Tyler Mane though. He played Tiger X-Man in the first X-MEN picture, I also thought he was real likable in the okay made for cable version of HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. I'm not so sure about Zombie's 1980s "if the gun is bigger it's even more totally awesome" type philosophy here but it's not Tyler Mane's fault he's a giant. He does a good job once they finally get the ol' Shape mask on him and although the original, I suspect closer to the truth depiction was better it was a nice twist to have this guy going on a god damn speed rampage smashing people through bathroom stalls, stabbing through ceilings with 2 x 4s, in one part bashing through a door but not a Jason Voorhees style balsa wood door, he does it like a cop or a home invader. All bets are off, locks are powerless against this Shape. You might wanna try that trick out if you haven't already. Seems to work.
Hey Michael did you ever see Zombie's last movie THE DEVIL'S REJECTS? It's pretty fucked up, you probaly have the DVD. I think this movie ate that one though because pretty much the entire cast is here. I'm not exaggerating. Sid Haig, Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Ken Foree, Tyler Mane, Danny Trejo, Leslie Easterbrook, Tom Towles, William Forsythe, Lew Temple, Daniel Roebuck. That's pretty much everybody but Brian Posehn and a couple extras!
I don't know, do you watch horror movies? If so you might find the cameos distracting. There's also Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Dee Wallace, Sybil Danning, Adrienne Barbeau. Not to mention Mickey fucking Dolenz and one of the SPY KIDS. It's like the Rob Zombie Variety Hour. Kind of fun but makes it harder to get sucked in.
Zombie's not as comfortable or as consistent as on DEVIL'S REJECTS, but he's got some good sequences here and there. Biggest surprise: he must be really good with kids. Doug Faerch who plays you as a kid starts out kind of corny (he gives you long hair and a Kiss t-shirt! I don't buy it) but when he's in the asylum he's really good. Those are my favorite scenes, when Loomis is asking you about what happened on Halloween and you think he's asking what kind of candy you got. What an adorable little Shape. You're not being a smartass, you seem like you really don't know, like there really is an innocent little boy in there talking but there's something else taking over. You, I guess. And the little boy doesn't have a clue.
This is gonna sound weird but - are you tragic? In this movie you might be a little. Because you know there's a little bit of that little boy there but he can't help but massacre everybody, even the cool ex-con janitor who was nice to him in the asylum (Danny Trejo). That was a pretty good part where he found you standing in the middle of a bloodbath and tried to convince you to let him take you back to your room. That was fucked up man if you really did that you should be ashamed of yourself. Not to be preachy.
But the little boy in you wants to see your baby sister who you call Boo. I always thought that Laurie-was-your-sister thing was just some bullshit they made up for part 2 but in this remake it seems like the only thing you care about. You find her and we think you're gonna kill her but you just show her a picture of you holding her as a baby and she doesn't know what the fuck you mean. I remember when Quint reviewed an early script for this thing he said you talked in it and I was mad. But then I read that you only said one word. So now I know that word must've been "Boo." And I kind of wish they left that in there.
Just for dramatic purposes though, I know you don't talk, please don't take it the wrong way. We're buddies, right?
So I don't think they quite nailed the tragic part, but I like what they were going for. We're supposed to be a little sad for you, not like you're a victim or anything but just because damn, whatever the fuck happened to that guy, too bad it happened.
Hey well at least you're not fixated on your mom like Jason, Norman, Ed Gein, etc. I don't know how you feel about your mom but I was disappointed that Zombie didn't quite make her work. He got part way there. His wife Sherri Moon plays her and does a good job, much better than her giggly psychopath in DEVIL'S REJECTS. I really like when you're in the asylum and she's visiting you and trying to be a good mother. We tend to forget that you had a family and it's an interesting angle to think of how much it would suck to be your mom. No offense. But because it's Rob Zombie he also has to make her a stripper and have her live with William Forsythe who doesn't have a single line that's not calling somebody a bitch or a faggot or threatening to skullfuck somebody (or both, or all three).
If it was less of a cartoon, if there was a little more time making mom seem like a real woman worrying about what to do about her son (think of THE EXORCIST), I think it would've been pretty devastating when she (SPOILER ALERT) kills herself. Oh wait, I don't have to spoiler alert that, you already knew that. Unless it was made up. Not sure. well, sorry if I gave it away. Don't knife me into a wall, please.
By the way, maybe you could settle something here. Do you know how to drive? I say you do, Rob Zombie says you don't. I like when I watch HALLOWEEN with a friend and it gets to the part where you steal the car. Somebody will usually say "What!? He's been locked up since he was a kid, he doesn't know how to drive!" And I just smile because I know that later the sheriff will make the same point and Loomis will say "Well he was doing very well last night!" I always liked that, but I can see why Zombie might assume that modern movie watchers do not have imagination and can't handle that type of enigma without serious brain trauma.
But the thing is, he then re-enacts the scenes where in the original you were driving a car. Laurie, Annie and Lynda see a car following them around, they assume it's somebody from school and anyway the car is distancing, they can't see you inside. So they have the courage to yell shit at you.
In this there is no car, you're a pedestrian, so they look directly across the street to a 6'8" giant wearing a Halloween mask in broad daylight and they still talk shit and then giggle! It doesn't make sense, Zombie must be wrong. I'm right, aren't I? You're a driver. Not licensed, but you have the skill, and have never gotten a ticket. I just know it.
By the way, what is your opinion of the rock balled "Love Hurts"? Because I couldn't believe Zombie used that for the most crucial montage in the movie. I hope I wasn't supposed to be laughing, but I was. Also did you really eat a dog because in this one you didn't eat a dog but I liked before when you ate a dog.
HOLD UP! (hilarious sound
of needles scratching across record)
I'm so sorry, everybody. This "letter to Michael Meyers" business
isn't cutting it. The "love letter to Mystique" gimmick worked good
for X-MEN 2 I thought, but that was then. This one's a dud but I'm already
too far into it to go back. Like Rob Zombie after he took the job of remaking
HALLOWEEN.
Zombie has his fetishes, the things that make him Rob Zombie but that he's
gonna wear out if he's not careful. For example: cartoon redneck characters
with long hair and '70s band t-shirts. Casts full of under-recognized actors
from horror classics. Paper mache masks. Self-conscsiously vulgar dialogue.
Lurid logos and names for businesses. These are all things that made his other
movies fun and unique but when he peppers them into the very different story
of HALLOWEEN they stick out like Ron Jeremy with his fly open.
For me one of those trademarks
is that I get a little too worked up about some of this shit, a little too
obsessive about it, particularly when it comes to the horror remakes. This
makes for some passionate reviews when I hated them (TEXAS CHAIN SAW REMAKE)
but when I don't it can be an ugly sight. In my review of the HILLS HAVE EYES
remake I went so overboard that I divided the review into the normal review
part and the "not for amateurs" obsessive comparison between original
and remake section. And still, even I can't read that whole review.
I got a problem, friends.
So I'm gonna try to skip over my usual obsessive-compulsive-detail that's
tempting me and get to the meat. This remake to me is a failure, it doesn't
work. The more cartoonish touches prevent it from being the serious movie
it sometimes seems like he's trying to make. Supposedly Zombie was gonna follow
Michael Meyers the whole time, make him the main character, and that would
make it a totally different movie from the original. But that's not really
what he did. What he did was more like this review: first half trying to do
something different, with mixed results, second half just doing a normal remake.
The second half has Laurie as the main character, Michael is across the street
and in the attic until he attacks, just like in the original. In this Cliff's
Notes version there are plenty of good moments but because you have less of
a chance to attach to the characters it feels more like the bad slasher sequels
where it's just a string of murders of teens having sex without the connective
tissue between them that gives them their power.
Still, I don't agree with the consensus that this movie is a disaster. And
I don't feel offended by it, really. With TEXAS CHAIN SAW REMAKE I felt like
they tried to rehash the original but just didn't understand what makes it
great, and that pissed me off. Here I feel like they probaly did
understand the original but intentionally tried to approach everything different.
So they even leave out famous scenes like the closet/hanger scene, Michael
sitting back up, Michael's body disappearing. Even when they do have a redo
of one of the old scenes there is usually some major twist or the dialogue
is completely different. Sometimes it works (Laurie finding Annie bloody,
topless but still alive is pretty horrifying) other times it doesn't (if you
gotta get rid of the great story the cemetery watchman tells why replace it
with more talk about Michael Meyers?) But I at least respect alot of what
they're going for. It beats the hell out of the thorn cult in part 5, the
asshole shockjock that you root for Michael to kill in part 6, the entire
running time and existence of part 8.
They say they don't plan a part 2, but come on. You know they will make these
forever as a tribute to Moustapha Akaad. That's why I'm a little pissed at
Zombie for SPOILER seemingly killing off Loomis. I don't think Zombie likes
Loomis as much as I do, because he gave him the beard and the trenchcoat but
he forgot to give him the Loomis. First he undermined him a little by having
him cash-in on Michael with a sleazy book. Then he doesn't give him enough
of the dramatic Loomis tone. The character we love may be corny but he is
a big part of the building drama, the way he's always trying to poetically
describe just how fucking doomed everybody is and nobody really believes him.
The remake only has two or three lines as a nod to that.
It's too bad - just because
Zombie didn't know how to make him cool doesn't mean the sequel directors
wouldn't have. Of course, they could bring him back but make him blind. He'd
be like Zatoichi. And he'd be able to sense where Michael is in the dark,
an advantage over average joe victims.
What I would like to see them do is follow the mold of the ALIEN series. Each
sequel should have a different director who is allowed to rework the series
to follow his or her own vision. Only serious, smart directors who will try
to elevate the series, not your usual horror sequel cash-in guys. And it's
lower budget so give them the creative freedom that Fincher didn't get on
ALIEN 3. I'm not sure who these directors would be. Even the Weinsteins probaly
could not get Tarantino to come back to HALLOWEEN (at one point he was connected
to part 6). So the talent pool might be small. But they should try.
The funny thing is, I don't think Zombie means for Meyers to be supernatural
at all. He's supposed to be a normal guy who snapped and was evil and at the
end he really is supposed to be dead. The problem is he's Michael Meyers,
we as citizens of the world already think of him as unkillable, so it didn't
really occur to me until later that that's what was going on. And I guarantee
you they will make a sequel where he is unkillable and everybody will forget
that he's not, and Zombie's version of Michael Meyers will retroactively become
supernatural, just like Carpenter's became Laurie's brother.
What a shame. What a sad, ugly shame.
No, just kidding. That's how Moriarty ended his
HALLOWEEN review (which I thought was a pretty good take, even
though I think he's being way too hard on it). I couldn't think of any way
to end my review that would be as dramatic, and that's a shame. A sad, ugly
shame.
THE
HAPPENING
Okay, you guys were right. I've been defending M. Night Shyamalan as a talented
director based on how he moved the camera around in THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE.
I didn't like SIGNS as much, but alot of it worked. I didn't see THE VILLAGE,
which may have strengthened my argument through the ancient technique of "denial."
And LADY IN THE WATER was a hilarious disaster, which means he's at least
interesting even when he's embarrassing himself and all of his ancestors and
descendants and anyone who has ever known him or seen one of his movies.
But after this one I'm with you guys, I give up on Shyamalan. And it has nothing
to do with twist endings (there isn't one in this movie). This is just a bad
movie that blows it from the beginning and gets more silly as it goes along,
and there isn't even much of the technical skill he used to display to make
up for it.
The movie (loosely based on WHAT'S HAPPENING? I believe) is about a day when
all the sudden everybody in Central Park just snaps and commits suicide. It's
assumed to be caused by a terrorist attack, but then it starts happening at
other places, and not just in major cities. The story follows science teacher
Mark Wahlberg and his wife Zooey Deschanel as they try to find somewhere safe
to go, etc.
It's a scary idea with some creepy death sequences and you'd think the Shyamalan
of those two Bruce Willis movies would be able to make it, as they say on
the covers of DVDs, "Scary as hell." But to me the movie never,
even at the beginning, feels real. The opening is kind of like NIGHT OF THE
LIVING DEAD or VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, two great movies to emulate. Except
in this one, instead of taking a little time to establish everyday life before
something odd starts happening, it takes about 3 sentences of conversation
on a bench before everybody starts killing themselves.
As the disaster spreads there are just too many things that don't ring true
at all. One that really bugged me was when some construction workers see their
friend fall of the building they're working on, thinking it's an accident
- and their reaction is to stand there in awe. There's no fuckin way! Have
you ever seen somebody get hit by a car, or an old lady fall down? People
might hesitate for a second, but then they run in from all directions and
try to help. These construction workers see their buddy fall down and they
just stand there, then one guy walks toward him and says "give him some
room." Then another guy falls, and they just stand there for him too.
It doesn't make any sense.
Another one: a woman in a crowd is talking to her terrified daughter on a
cell phone, and tells the daughter to keep looking out the window next to
the tree. Wahlberg (who does not know her) tells her no, tell her to stay
away from the window next to the tree, so she does tell her that. Then he
starts telling her questions to ask. Then when the girl starts talking nonsense
(the first symptom of the toxin) the woman puts the phone on speaker and holds
it up so everyone in the crowd can hear. And as the daughter is apparently
killing herself the mother allows Wahlberg to take the phone away from her
and listen. It's as if the movie was made by a guy who just woke up from a
20 year coma and has not had a chance to reacquaint himself with human behavior.
It's like the problem alot of you had with Indiana Jones. A couple things
like this wouldn't kill a movie, but the camel is covered in ten tons of straw
before it even steps out into the desert. This movie is mostly made up of
odd, not believable behaviors. The whole point of a disaster movie is to make
it feel like it's really happening (get it? happening.) It's kind of amazing
how fake movies look after 9-11. Didn't you learn what it was like to really
experience that kind of terror? So why do you have all these phony news reports
pop up to convey all the information you want: experts say it is a terrorist
attack. Experts say it might not be a terrorist attack. Most people believe
it's the government, because a confidential source said the CIA has a secret
base in the northeast. What the fuck? Do people who make movies just
not get cable? I don't understand how you put these in movies and expect people
to accept them as actual news broadcasts.
I think this is a problem he started having with SIGNS. Maybe he's better
at small stories about a few characters. Once he starts trying to depict world-wide
disaster it's clear that he doesn't get out much. The other problem that started
with SIGNS that is a big one here is his "sense of humor." He's
trying to build this serious tension and then for some reason he thinks it's
funny to have a guy talk about how he thinks hot dogs are underrated. Worse,
he seems to think it's a good idea to put most of the "jokes" in
at the end, when the tension should be highest. He has a mostly dead serious
movie about a sudden disaster that seems likely to end the human race, and
in the last half hour he decides to have a little comedy routine about Mark
Wahlberg talking to a plant.
Wahlberg I'm afraid is pretty bad in the movie. I like the guy but he's not
the kind of actor who can play all different types. He sort of needs to stick
to working class. As soon as he starts using the word "whom" you
got a problem. And here he has to deliver alot of terribly written dialogue
where, based on only basic information he comes up with a theory for why this
is happening (get it again, happening), that's obviously supposed to be correct.
And that's another thing. SPOILERS AHEAD. You knew this being 2008 that the
reason for THE HAPPENING would involve the environment, right? But the novel
twist Shyamalan puts on it is pretty fuckin funny. I had to put on Stevie
Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants to write this review in
honor of Shyamalan's revival of '70s new age theories. The movie argues that
plants can communicate with each other and are pissed at humans and are releasing
toxins in order to defend Mother Earth from the humans. I had trouble holding
back laughter in the scene where, after enough hints have been dropped that
this is what's going on, a soldier says "whoever's doing this may be
watching the roads" as he stands on a road with a bunch of trees behind
him. LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!
And I swear on Christ's
rarely used crutch that there's a scene in this movie where a little girl
is playing on a rope swing and the camera keeps panning up to the branch it's
tied to as if you're supposed to be scared. Did you see the expression
on his bark? He looked fuckin pissed!
I don't know, man. Nice try coming up with something new, but I had trouble
finding this premise not hilarious. There's a scene where Wahlberg is in sort
of a cabin and there's pounding from outside and I was hoping the door would
swing open and there'd be a GARFIELD style computer-animated Lorax standing
there with a pissed off look on his face. That would be a good Shyamalan twist
for you.
It's kind of weird that
there's a whole wave of "suddenly everybody snaps and turns violent"
type movies now. There's this one, THE SIGNAL, there's the Stephen King book
called CELL I think that's supposed to become an Eli Roth movie, I think there's
some other ones, and then there's 28 DAYS LATER which is pretty similar. Must
be something in the post 9-11 air about this particular theme, I'm not sure.
But I'm pretty sure if it is remembered as a late oughts cultural phenomenon
this will not be the movie anybody points to as representative. It's a bad
movie and not even that crazy of a bad movie, so I'd honestly recommend watching
LADY IN THE WATER before this one. That one has more unintentional laughs
and a couple monsters here and there.
So I don't know what it was, I don't know if I was just wrong about this guy
ever being good, if those good ones were a fluke, or if he just snapped due
to toxins and is not himself anymore. But many believe it was Bruce Willis.
This is because there is a confidential source who says that Bruce Willis
secretly directed THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE.
Still, I'm gonna assume anybody who refers to Shyamalan as "Shamalamadingdong" or anything like that is a dumbass. Even if you can convince me it's not some xenophobic shit where you gotta make fun of any name that doesn't sound American it still reflects poorly on you. A guy who makes movies as bad as this and LADY IN THE WATER, you oughta be able to come up with something better than making fun of his name like a playground bully.
And before we pack it in for the evening I think we should all share in some possible alternate titles for THE HAPPENING. I would have to start with PLANT OF ATTACK. You could also go with PLANT 9. THE HILLS HAVE PLANTS.DON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE WOODS. LEAF ME ALONE. ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVES. MAXIMUM OVERPLANT.
Hmmm, I thought this would
be alot easier than it's turning out to be. I was thinking you could just
take any movie title or phrase with "me" in it and replace "me"
with "tree." But for some reason all the ones that come to mind
are small indie movies that don't sound real badass. For example YOU CAN COUNT
ON TREE or TREE, YOU, AND EVERYONE TREE KNOW. Or if you find a phrase using
"fallen" you can change it to "pollen." But POLLEN ANGELS
doesn't work.
You know what - I think I got it. TREEVENGE. Yep, I'm sticking with TREEVENGE.
6/14/08
This is kind of a misleading title because really it is about ugly drooling guys sitting around in their underwear getting drunk and wishing they could have violent sex with neighbors that won't even talk to them and that kind of business. Which, in my opinion, is not all that happy. You know how Hollywood usually pretties everybody up? Like even the criminal element in motion pictures, most of the time they are a LOT better looking than anybody I ever worked with. And the same goes for stories, if it's a true story chances are they're gonna streamline it, water it down a little, gussy it up a little, make it look nice "for dramatic purposes." But the truth is there are a lot of ugly motherfuckers in this world, and they do a lot of ugly things, like some of them call up women in the phone book and jack off while they talk about "I'm gonna fuck you so hard you're gonna come out your ears" and what not, and coincidentally that is exactly what this picture is about, Happiness.
What this is is a loosely connected set of characters and every last one of these motherfuckers is really, really fucked up and sad, although some more than others. On the lesser side there is the old fellow who leaves his wife without giving a reason, says he's not looking for anybody else, and when a woman seduces him he can't get it up if you know what I mean. (Can't get his dick up, or an erection in other words.) On the other side we have the psychiatrist who seems like a regular guy, until we see him buy a teen magazine, get in the backseat of his car and desperately jack off to a picture of a young boy. Not to give anything away but then he molests two boys.
There are ugly situations in this movie, ugly people, ugly behaviors, ugly topics. I mean pretty much everything is ugly, there is one gal who is hot looking but she's ugly on the inside. This movie is inhabited with the most lonely, pathetic individuals you ever did see and this gal is complaining that she's too successful and people like her too much.
This isn't the deepest movie in the world, I mean if you want it to blow the lid off suburbia you're a little bit late on that one bud. But there is something real refreshing and what not about an unflinching type of picture that doesn't pussy out in any manner. I mean this movie steps directly onto the taboo line and starts dancin around shakin its ass. All these horrible motherfuckers and there is not even any forced redemption for them at the end to make you feel good about it. It's just on display, warts and all. And these are some big, pussie, drippy, smelly warts, with little curly pubic hairs growing out of em.
Happiness makes jokes about topics that probaly should be left unlaughed. You heard of movies that are scary and funny, well this Todd Solondz is working on the sad and funny. The sadder it gets the funnier it gets, because it's so sad you start to laugh. Also there is a technique used, where he puts on this saccharine type music like from an old educational film and then anything that happens you just can't take seriously. I think my favorite part is this charming domestic scene where the spunky soccer mom type gal is rushing her two kids out the door, trying to hand them their lunches and get them to the bus on time, when they turn and notice that someone has spraypainted "SERIAL RAPIST PERVERT" across the front of their otherwise immaculate type house. It's funny, 'cause it's true.
This movie has a pretty negative type attitude toward the sexuality. Everybody's problems has to do with sex - not getting any, not getting the right kind, getting it with the wrong guy, getting it with little kids, not knowing how to cum, etc. Although I disagree with that stance I do see the point that all these motherfuckers always jacking off on the phone and what not, they are sort of held prisoner to their boners. And I have to give a Vern seal of approval to a picture that attacks the oppression of the boners in such a unique and funny/sad style. Good one Todd.
This picture really stuck with me. I think it's really well made otherwise it would have just come off like a bad john waters ripoff. It will disgust alot of people and it might hit too close to home for some people but otherwise it's a good entertaining piece of horrifying filth and depravity. Have at it guys.
HARD BOILED
Well god damn here's an action picture like I've NEVER seen. This is a must see for ANY action fan and I am not fucking joking. I mean you don't have to see Payback, you don't have to see Die Hard with a Vengeance or any of these other movies I talk about but in god and mary's sweet name of christ jesus, you OWE it to yourself and to the lord to see this chinese picture Hard Boiled.
I mean don't get me wrong I like the van dammes and what not but this is on a whole other plane flying way up in the sky. It will forever change what you expect from an action picture in my opinion although I only saw it this afternoon so what the hell do I know. But it is to shootout movies what Godfather is to mob movies or Jaws is to shark movies. Don't take this the wrong way but it is such a leap ahead it is like die hard times ten. It is WAY, and I mean WAY more violent than anything you will see in the US of A but at the same time the characters and story plot are far more developed.
This has the most balls to the walls action scenes you've ever seen in your god damn life. Trust me, I know, even if the Die Hards are your idea of a great action movie your gonna shit yourself. (I mean I'm not saying I shitted myself I'm just saying, this one knocked me out you know, that's all, it was impressive.)
I am talking about hundreds of gun shots, walls and windows splitting apart, people dying left and right, blood spraying on windows, things catching on fire, people rolling across rooms on gurneys blowing motherfuckers away. There is a shootout in a hospital that lasts more than 20 minutes and never gets dull. There is a scene where two arms dealer gangs have a huge battle in a warehouse, crashing cars and motorcycles into each other, firing uzis, throwing grenades. Only after the battle seems to be over does the hero, a cop named Tequila swing in on a rope and attempt to take on all of the survivors singlehandedly. And do a damn good job I might add.
This is one of many classic shootouts, and Tequila is the type of dude who gets knocked over onto a banister and decides to slide down it, firing all the way down.
But still, it's the characters and the storyline that you really care about. This is partly cause the gang of filmatists behind this one led by director John Woo don't look at this like your typical good vs. evil, cops and robbers type scenario. The gangs have a good side and the cops have a bad side. From the beginning Woo cuts between Tequila and a gang assassin Tony Leung walking in the same place and manner, drawing a parallel between these two. (The assassin turns out to be an undercover pig but he feels a family type bond with the gangs he pretends to be a part of.)
Leung's first boss Mr. Hui is Hong Kong's king of weapons smuggling, but he seems like your friendly grampa. And he never even shows a dark side, he lets Tony kill him when he betrays him. You gotta feel for this guy and for Leung having to kill him.
The gang boss Johnny has a one-eyed henchman named Mad Dog and this guy is a baaaaaaaaad motherfucker. He drives into the warehouse and crashes his motorcycle, sliding across the pavement and STILL SHOOTING. He spins away from the motorcycle and never loses his balance. Stays on his feet and doesn't skip a beat before killing more motherfuckers.
I mean we see this guy shooting people, throwing a grenade into an office, slitting the throat of an invalid, leaning into a flaming car to light his smoke. And yet this is the guy who turns his gun on Johnny for killing patients in the hospital, says you have to draw the line somewhere. You see what I mean this is a big action movie but the characters aren't all good or all bad, they are a little more complicated.
I mean the pigs aren't exactly the pope either. if you pay attention in the opening teahouse shootout, the guy that turns out to be an undercover cop actually uses innocent bystanders as a human shield! WHich is how you can tell he's a cop. Typical but you don't usually see that in movies.
There is also a real freaky ass type of technique where when Tequila is in trouble he is able to go to the jazz bar and get advice from director John Woo himself. John just gives him some type of yoda advice and Tequila says "thanks Mr. Woo." I guess it's kind of like how Bugs Bunny can reach up and grab the animators paintbrush. I don't know what all that's about it kind of blows your mind but oh well man I like it.
Anyway Tequila is a classic Badass and illustrates an important point about Badass Cinema. And that is that juxtaposition is an important element of any Badass. Most of the best Badasses in Cinema have a cute hobby or a sensitive side which, through contrast, only serves to accentuitate the Badass qualities. For Tequila, it's playing clarinet in a jazz club, because he always dreamed of being a musician. Clint Eastwood used the same shtick in In the Line of Fire although he chose piano. For Tony Leung, it's origami - he makes a paper crane every time he kills a motherfucker. For me, it's the Writing to document my journey.
The juxtaposition can be visual too though, like a 300 pound mexican with tattoos and scars, holding a balloon. That would be a good one. For Tequila, he runs through a hospital with a big gun in one hand and a baby in the other. He even sings to the little crumb crusher and wipes the blood off his face. There is a legitimate reason in the plot for why he's carrying the baby but it's still a cool thing to bring along during a bloodbath in my opinion.
Chow Yun Fat plays Tequila and he is an actor with 1) chops 2) charisma and 3) attitude. He can charm a gal with his smile or blow a mans head off it doesn't matter. He is the chinese Bruce Campbell or Willis, a man whose talents are too big for this world.
Now I know what you expect me to say next. "Mark my words, this Chow Yun Fat is gonna be huge. The nerds on the internet will worship this dude like a god. We must bring him to our shores immediately for his first American pictures." The type of shit I said when I thought I discovered Bruce Campbell. Well look pal I'm not a retard I did my research this time. Yun Fat has already done three movies in the American language thank you very much.
But let's face it that's not good enough. I don't mean to get patriotic here because really I could give a rats ass about the red white and what not but jesus man, we can REALLY do better than this replacement killers bullshit as far as I'm concerned. Without Yun Fat that movie would be NOTHING. In Hard Boiled he is one of many top notch elements but in these American ones he's Atlas holding the whole god damned movie on his shoulders. And I don't even wanna TALK about this Anna and the King and I garbage, I haven't seen it so I'm probaly totally wrong, but let's get real here.
What is America's #1 export? That's right it's movies. If we want to make the best movies in the world we should be on our knees BEGGING this man to make movies with us and if we can't offer anything as good as the Hong Kong then Hong Kong has won him fair and square. And their gonna keep him. Right now he is doing a film in cantonese with Michelle Yo from the James Bonds. Not only that but it is a historical flying karate type picture from acclaimed director ang lee AND it has a great title, Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger or something along those lines. Do you know what that means? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT FUCKING MEANS?
Don't play dumb jackass you fucking KNOW Crouching Tiger Hiding Dragon is gonna be better than his american movies and we're never gonna see the dude on our soil again. Great job hollywood way to go guys.
Anyway long story short Hard Boiled #1 action picture of the '90s thanks
HARD CANDY
If you read
my LADY IN THE WATER review you might remember my tangent about a thing I
saw on TV called "To Catch a Predator." Well, HARD CANDY I guess
must be the big screen adaptation of that show, but it also works as a prequel
to X-MEN PART 3. Ellen Page, the girl who made a bitch out of Juggernaut,
does the same thing here with a guy she believes is a pedophile. But instead
of "Shadowcat" she's called "Thong-Girl" and instead of
walking through walls her power is tying up a guy and threatening to cut off
his balls.
The trailer for the movie was really unsettling because it cleverly stuck
to the first 20 minutes of the movie, when Thong-Girl seems to be an innocent
14 year old girl who thinks she's more adult than she really is, getting in
over her head by going to meet a much older guy she flirted with on the internet.
The thing was creepy as hell because Ellen Page looks much younger than most
horror movie victims, and the guy is a photographer who APPEARS to be a normal
guy and therefore you figure must actually be a deranged pervert. You get
the idea that the movie is sort of an I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE type scenario where
the guy rapes her or tries to rape her, or she finds out he killed her friend,
or something, and then she enacts a vicious revenge.
But that's not quite the case. It turns out the whole thing is a trap from
the beginning. The movie poster, which shows her standing in the middle of
a bear trap, is a more accurate description of what's gonna happen. They meet
and there's alot of innocent innuendo. It's a believable portrayal of a kid
like that because she has to name drop the bands and authors she likes as
an attempt at adult sophistication. But soon after she gets to the house you
realize that's all an act. She doesn't really care about impressing him. You
realize that right around the time she's drugged him and tied him up.
Part of what's cool about it is that you don't really know how guilty he is.
I mean, you don't have any respect for a dude who brings home a 14 year old
and lets her drink screwdrivers in his kitchen. But he hasn't done anything
yet. Maybe he's not as bad as she thinks? You want to side with her, because
you're against pedophiles, but she seems crazier than he does. And movie convention
asks you to side with him, because he's the victim here. He's the one who
seems normal, and is tied up and screaming because he, like most of us, doesn't
want to get his balls cut off.
You have to decide how much you agree with this style of justice. Should he
really be tortured, maybe killed? Shouldn't there be some kind of trial first?
Why couldn't she just have the Dateline NBC guy come out and interview this
guy, then the cop dressed up as a bush tackles him and they arrest him? Or
is she right, is he actually a murderer? If so maybe there should be a couple
extra cops in the bush costumes.
It's a clever movie because the setup is so simple. There are only five actors
in the whole movie, and three of them are only in one scene. One of them is
a guy who sells them candy in the beginning. Sandra Oh is in it, she sells
them cookies. Most of the movie is just the guy tied up and the girl psychologically
tormenting him, trying to get him to admit that he's a pedophile. It could
almost be a play. Even the setting is minimalistic, a really clean and uncluttered
house that's mostly white and solid red (this guy probaly liked DMX's black
and white apartment in BELLY). Sometimes during a horrible moment the camera
will pan across and the lens will be filled with the red of the wall, like
some kind of abstract representation of horror. (Or more specifically, an
abstract representation of a guy getting his balls cut off.)
But the clever part is that the setup is simple but the ambiguity makes it
more complicated. Is the victim the bad guy? Is the tormentor the hero? Should
we be rooting for or sympathizing with anybody? (Maybe Sandra Oh?)
How did this girl find out what she knows about this guy? What made her so
crazy? Why does she take this so personally? Has she done this before? Will
she do this again? What is she thinking at the end? And why is it called HARD
CANDY? Is this somehow related to GINGER SNAPS?
This isn't fun like a good slasher movie. And it's a little too much of a
gimmick to be truly horrifying. But it definitely made me uncomfortable. If
you like being uncomfortable maybe you will enjoy it.
HARD TARGET
Well
as you can see above, I reviewed John Woo's HARD BOILED long ago. In that
review I was obviously right about a bunch of crap that I said. For example,
HARD BOILED is still a masterpiece. And as I predicted, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN
DRAGON was a masterpiece that blew away the combined artistic merit of every
American Chow Yun Fat movie times ten. But I was wrong that after the success
of CROUCHING TIGER my man Fat would never do an american movie again. Back
then I would've been happy to hear that but that's because I never saw fucking
BULLETPROOF MONK. Oh for crying out loud, what is the man doing?
Anyway, hindsight is 50/50 or whatever but looking back I think I should've
focused my review more on John Woo. That's the real tragedy is what happened
to John Woo after we abducted him to American shores. The very next movie
he did was this one, HARD TARGET. And man, this is not even a huge step down.
It's like, he just falls all the way down the stairs. I mean you can see similarities
in the use of slow motion and everything but everything substantial about
John Woo and his style is not here. And these days the slo-mo could be considered
a bad thing now that we've seen it imitated for more than a decade. Anyway,
this is a historic movie because it signalled the beginning of the importation
of Hong Kong directors and the first known case of the legendary Curse of
Van Damme, which would later strike Tsui Hark (2 times), Ring Lam (3 times)
and Ching Tsu-Tung (the rare Steven Seagal variation of the curse).
A few movies later Woo recovered his footing with FACE/OFF but that was it
man. The best we can expect from him now is a dumb action movie that is entertaining
in it sheer stupidity and surprises you with the occasional light touch of
John Woo sentimentality. Think MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: 2.
Now that we know there's no hope for a return to the real John Woo, it is
easier to enjoy this moronic piece of shit. The story is a variation on the
Most Dangerous Game story of humans hunting humans. Lance Henriksen, one of
our greatest actors in our worst movies, leads a group of scumbags running
a service for decadent millionaires who want to hunt homeless veterans ("volunteers,"
they call them).
[why didn't I finish this review?]
HARDCASE AND FIST
When a guy like me finds out there's an '80s action movie called HARDCASE AND FIST there's pretty much only one choice: watch it immediately. The box says that Hardcase and Fist are cops who are framed so they have to bust out of Folsom to prove they're innocent. That's a classic arc, the 1980's version of the hero's journey. I was hoping of course that the characters would be named Detective Jack Hardcase and Lieutenant John Fist, but unfortunately there is nobody in the movie who is named, nicknamed or even referred to as Hardcase or Fist.
But I got a good idea that Hardcase is Bud McAll (the credits say McAll, not McCall) because he's a cop so he has to make a hard case or something. And Fist would have to be Eddy, his heartsick, kung fu obsessed cellmate. Hardcase was a cop framed by his crooked partner and Fist was in a "Hey Joe" type situation where he killed the dude he caught his stripper girlfriend with. The movie opens on Fist, dramatically lit in his cell, going through all his badass kung fu routines as a low keyboard drones John Carpenterishly and the camera slowly pulls out. Meanwhile, we keep cutting to Hardcase as he approaches in the prison bus.
When Hardcase is brought to his cell, Fist is sitting on the ground, still doing his exercises, staring menacingly into nothingness. Then out of the blue he reaches to shake Harcase's hand and says, "Hi, I'm Eddy" in a much friendlier tone than you expect. This historic first meeting is not supposed to be funny, as far as I can tell, and is a good example of the type of weirdly inept highlights of this low budget, amateurish movie.
The director/producer/co-writer/original story writer/music editor/co-star is Tony Zarandast. While watching it I kept thinking this was just some guy with no filmatic background who decided to make an awesome action movie on the weekends with his buddies. It's all so laughable but I figured hell, if I wanted to get together a bunch of dudes and film a bunch of car chases and shootouts it would probaly be even worse because I wouldn't know how to set up a shot or film stunts or get a non-actor to deliver his lines properly. Mine would have better dialogue though. But the point is, for a regular guy with no experience or talent, Zarandist did an okay job, I thought. Then I looked him up and found out he had already made several movies before this, which makes you wonder what the hell the deal is. Zarandast is still at large today and has a web sight at www.tonyzarandast.com with hilarious promo photos and copy editing that makes my sight look like the god damn Webster's dictionary.
According to his bio, Zarandast was an editor before he started directing, but you would never guess that because the movie has a horrible sense of rhythm. It's actually the opposite of the problem with action movies today, the shots are too long. It's not like they're making a dramatic point, or a Gus Van Sant ELEPHANT type realism. They just don't seem to know when to cut off the shot and get on with it.
One funny example is the medium speed car chase/shootout in which the heroes drive over train tracks as a train is approaching. The bad guys who are chasing them haven't gotten to the tracks yet, and the gates are lowering. In a normal movie, the bad guy cars would either crash through the gates and just make it, or they would crash through and get hit by the train and blow up, or they would dramatically spin out trying to avoid the train and crash. But this isn't a normal movie, this is a Tony Zarandast movie. So instead he has a really long shot of the cars approaching as the gates lower. Apparently they were lagging way behind, which makes the chase a little less tense, in my opinion. When they get there, they just stop. Then there is a really long shot of the train passing. Then the gates go up. Then they start driving again and catch up.
The low budget and ineptitude causes alot of confusion in the way things are staged. There's a whole lot of action scenes where cars suddenly go off ramps into the air for no reason, or where it cuts to a little girl smiling as a car rolls over. One of the most laughable parts is when a guy catches on fire and runs around. For this shot, the sky suddenly turns dark and a picture of smoke covers up the left half of the screen to hide some mistake they made or something.
Zarandist also acts in the movie, playing Tony Morino, Hardcase's Vietnam buddy turned small time criminal who is now supposed to "ice" him but instead busts him out of prison. Zarandist is a middle aged businessman-looking dude from Iran, so he is a funny choice to play an Italian American Vietnam vet tough guy. But that weird casting makes him the most interesting character in the movie. It almost seems like they're going for a John Woo heroic bloodshed type deal with his loyalty to Hardcase. Rather than showing his past, they zoom in on his eyes and cut to stock footage of helicopters and bombings. This is a pretty long scene that establishes an emotional resonance. Or at least gets us closer to 90 minutes without breaking the bank. This is the only use of stock footage but it's not the only zoom into eyes. It seems like half the movie is overly long shots of characters looking at things. And one thing that's funnier than actors who don't know how to deliver lines is actors who don't know how to make facial expressions.
I guess I should say who the actors are. Nobody you ever heard of. Hardcase is played by Ted Prior, a bearded pretty boy who kind of looks like a soap opera version of Chuck Norris. I looked him up though and it turns out he wasn't in soap operas, he was a Playgirl model. He's in alot of these types of movies because his brother David A. Prior directs them. Fist is played by Carter Wong, a guy you might've seen in legitimate martial arts movies going back to the early '70s, many of them with "Shaolin" or "Wu Tang" in the title. You would most likely recognize him though as Thunder from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. His fighting here is pretty good but his acting and English speaking are below terrible. It's funny because before he talks he's pretty intimidating but after he does you think of him as this boyish goofball for the rest of the movie.
Like many of the individual scenes, the plot as a whole doesn't make much sense. Hardcase is innocent so he's talking with the FBI trying to prove it. But then Tony shows up and busts him out so he goes on the run. Then he kills his old partner and it ends, and nobody ever tried to prove anything about innocence. After they're out Hardcase and Fist decide to part ways because they have "separate destinies." Fist goes straight to the titty bar to reconcile with his stripper girlfriend. This is the perfect excuse for a four minute strip tease/fire eating sequence. When it's over Fist tries to approach his girlfriend but you know, they got all those rules about not touching the dancers so suddenly ten or fifteen guys jump out and he has to do a damn ENTER THE DRAGON just to make his way to the stage. Suddenly Hardcase walks in and joins the fight, no explanation offered. When they've subdued everybody in the bar, the girfriend comes out from backstage, still wearing only a g-string. And then Hardcase and Fist leave without saying anything to her.
Hardcase also has a girlfriend, she actually gets some dialogue but her main part in the movie is getting kidnapped and tied up by the ex-partner villain guy. The villain makes a speech about how he plans to "take off your clothes piece by piece and bite you." That's his whole plan, is to bite her. Then he cackles.
Without question though the highlight of the movie is the very last scene. There is an awesome shot where Hardcase is standing dramatically in the sun, silhouetted while firing a gun. A car approaches behind him, and for no reason it flips over right behind him. And he just stands there and doesn't flinch.
It wasn't until the third time I rewinded it that I realized he was actually facing away from the camera, firing at the car, and that's the reason why it flipped. I liked it better when I thought it flipped just from getting too close to him, but it's still a good shot. I immediately thought wow, that's the shot of the movie, you know that's gotta be the end of the trailer. But then the next shot is even better. The car is on it's side, in flames, and Hardcase is shooting at it. Suddenly some dude (a stuntman portraying the evil partner guy) runs out from behind the car, completely in flames. And then the camera actually turns and follows him as he runs about 30 feet and jumps into a river to put the flames out. All in one shot. That's the kind of shot we live for. That's what the art of cinema is all about. Tony Zarandist may be on the list of all time worst directors, but he made this shot. So he should be proud. Way to go Zarandist.
The bad guy doesn't seem to be in bad shape but he starts talking like he's horribly disfigured and begs Hardcase to put him out of his misery. When he does, Fist smiles and raises his fist in the air. The end.
I guess it goes without saying, but you should definitely find a copy of HARDCASE AND FIST and watch it with a bunch of friends. It's pretty slow in parts but it will pay you back for your patience. If your attention span is just too short, the DVD (yes, this somehow got released on DVD) includes the trailer, which shows most of the best parts. You get explosions, people on fire, a hefty nutgrab, some boobies, etc. Everything you could ask for in a movie other than complex insights about relationships, a powerful statement about foreign policy or cool robots.
This is not the George C. Scott/Paul Schrader movie HARDCORE, this is the 2004 Greek movie HARDCORE that I only rented when I read that the director, Dennis Iliadis, was hired to do a remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. So this is kind of a review and kind of a scouting mission.
This is the story of two teenage prostitutes, told from the POV of the less crazy one. They are in love but they are always fucking other people, especially the crazier one Nadia, who loves to manipulate rich older men to get what she wants out of life. Along the way there is some blood, some cocaine, some suicide, lots of depression, lots of disturbing passionless fucking and dildoing.
It reminds me of plenty of junkie-chic and crime movies, where the heroes are fucked up in a way that you're supposed to feel sorry for them but also think they're kind of glamorous and sexy. Because of how fucked up they are. The tone is very hip and trying to offend sensibilities, but there's also a little bit of HEAVENLY CREATURES in there with the way these two are kind of lesbians, kind of little girls who play together, kind of homicidal.
I don't know how bad the world needed another movie like this, but maybe Greece needed one. I am not real familiar with their film scene, by which I mean this might be the first Greek movie I ever watched in my life, I'm not sure. So this might be a more original type of subject matter in the context of Greek film than if you compare it to American or British movies.
Either way, if you can get into that type of thing this is a well made movie, I thought it was pretty good. This guy is clearly a music video director, but not in the quick cuts and flying cameras sense. More in the a guy who would be friends with Spike Jonze sense. It's pretty calm, not too hyperkinetic, and with more quiet moments than even a non-music-video-director usually gives you. There is more than one crucial moment where the song on the soundtrack is doing just fine but it abruptly cuts off so you can just hear the quiet, maybe some breathing, maybe some sobbing.
And there are little gimmicks like the ol' Spike Lee float, furniture disappearing in a shot to illustrate the passage of time, a fantasy sequence where the characters are in the intro to a TV show that's supposed to be like Beverly Hills 90210. But these type of tricks are spread out enough that they don't seem like the whole show. To me it feels more like DRUGSTORE COWBOY than a Michel Gondry movie.
Here's an example of a real smart scene. This is one of them spoilers by the way. The two girls go away on a vacation together. While they are gone, their pimp (really more like an office manager than a pimp) finds out about the rich john Nadia has been fucking on the side, not cutting the organization in on the take. We see that he knows, but the girls don't know he knows, at least as far as we know. When they come home they have a purple post-it note from the boss. We know from earlier that purple represents a really high paying but degrading job where they have to get gangbanged by a bunch of rich people. But Nadia's not worried about it. They take the note and we see them walking down a hall. And it keeps cutting to a door with a bunch of cheesy party decorations on it, and inside the apartment are 3 big muscular skinhead thugs with bats. So clearly they are being set up. Oh no, we think. We don't want this to happen to them. But it keeps cutting to them strutting down the hall, to the door, to the thugs inside.
Finally, the girls come to a door - but not the same door. They open it to find their pimp in bed with two young girls, and they pull a gun on him. Ah ha, we realize. They knew he was setting them up. They were headed toward a different door the whole time. We are relieved that they're safe, and kind of excited about this idea that they're gonna kill this sleazeball who degrades them. But then after they kill him, they also kill the two girls, innocent people no different from themselves. So we go from fear to relief to sadism to disgust, all in one tightly edited scene.
The stars, apparently none of them celebrities even in Greece, elevate the material. You get alot out of their facial expressions. The girl that plays Nadia is especially good. She's boyishly skinny but assertive and crazy enough that she manages to seem very alluring. She has that charisma where you kind of love her and kind of fear her. Which is exactly how her friend feels about her in the movie.
I should probaly declare
my stance on this LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake. I'm against it. Not because
of the usual they're gonna ruin it reasons, but more of a that's
the last thing we need is this generation of morons watching this shit and
not understanding it. It seems like either the filmatists are gonna water
the story down and nobody will understand why this movie was ever a big deal,
or they'll stay true to the pitch black brutality of the original and young
teens will go see it for a fun night of socializing with their friends and
getting OH MY GOD, TOTALLY FREAKED OUT by the rape and murder of these girls.
Something tells me the typical modern horror audience will not pick up on
Craven's idea of the family losing their humanity when they get their revenge.
They'll just think it's a horror movie and either it's cool or it's gay.
But you know what, if they HAVE to remake it, this Greek here is not a bad choice. The fact that he's directing it makes me more curious to see what they come up with. First of all, he does such a good job with these young girls here. He makes them sympathetic even though they're snorting coke and doing gangbangs for money. One fear with the story is that if the girls just come across as typical bad horror heroines it will diminish the horribleness of the crime against them. In this movie Iliadis clearly identifies strongly with the girls, so hopefully he be able to do that in LAST HOUSE. In fact, this is an area that could be improved over Craven's version. But they're not in the whole movie, and they spend most of their time crying and pleading, so it would be harder to develop them further as characters. It makes me wonder if it might not be such a bad idea to have one of the girls barely survive and come stumbling in at the end to finish off the revenge. That might be cheap, but it might be satisfying. I'm not sure.
Another factor, Iliadis did a good job of portraying a criminal underground, making it seem real even though it's pretty movie-fied. So I imagine he could do a good job with the gang here.
And Iliadis is not too flashy.
Flashier than Craven, but he's not what we would call nu-horror. He knows
how to hold a shot and he doesn't throw guitars and beats on everything. He
can take the material seriously and he can be taken seriously.
Good luck buddy, please don't make a sucky movie, but don't corrupt the minds of our youth too bad either.
THE HARDER THEY COME
Believe it or not it took me this long to arrive in Jamaica on my ongoing journey through World Badass Studies. Sure, I saw that movie THIRD WORLD COP a while back, but I didn't think much of it. This one is legendary, even has a Criterion Edition, and they say it's what popularized reggae in the US and other parts of the world. Stars some guy named Jimmy Cliff, a reggae singer, but I didn't know any of his songs so didn't know what to expect.
Well sure enough it lives up to the reputation. Jimmy's character has the topnotch name of Ivanhoe Martin, he's a country boy that moves to the city. He's got an uptight girlfriend who's the daughter of a preacher, he sings in the church choir and he's good at fixing bicycles, but one thing he doesn't have is money. Can't even get anyone to give him ten cents. The best thing about this movie is the music, but second best is the authenticity of the class differences in Jamaica. These are obviously non-actors and real locations. The director's a white dude but he's Jamaican so don't worry about it. This is not exploitation.
The first time I knew this movie was special was just a scene in the church. It's a fictional movie but this scene has got to be documentary. The people are singing and clapping and dancing and they really look like they're getting shitfaced drunk off of praying. The world's greatest atheist, if he watched this scene, would probaly go, "Huh. I guess I see why they go to church so much." I don't want to sound like some horrible comedian, but we white people don't know how to have church like this. If people were feeling the music like this in white churches, I think alot more people would go.
It turns out though my man Ivanhoe Martin is not so happy with the christian type religion. He is thinking about returning it as defective. He is starting to lean toward more of a rasta type philosophy, where Heaven is on earth and the Man is Babylon and etc. He doesn't see the point of going around begging and getting oppressed by pigs and getting pushed around while waiting for some big reward only after death. That seems like a scam to him.
The way we know this is when he goes into the studio for his big shot at making a hit reggae record. Like so many young rappers or what have yous today he decides the one way he's gonna get out of poverty is through music. He gets to record with a famous music producer, and he does the title song. (The Harder They Come is the title.)
"Well they tell me of a pie up in the sky / Waiting for me when I die / But between the day you're born and when you die / They never seem to hear even your cry."
Later he sings "But I'd rather be a free man in my grave / Than living as a puppet or a slave"
This scene is amazing on about 27 or 32 different levels, but mainly these two here:
1. The lyrics. Here's this guy we don't know much about, and all the sudden in this one song he's telling off his religion, his religious girlfriend and the Man. He acts like his girlfriend should be proud of him even though he's singing about how wrong her whole philosophy of life is. The song is also one of them self-fulfilling type prophecies for the rest of the movie. He comes hard and he falls hard, just like he told us.As soon as he finishes, the producer offers him twenty bucks for the song. Remember, we're talking about a guy who can't even get ten cents, but he knows it's a great song so he turns it down. And goes out to sell it as an independent producer. And fails. Like anywhere else, the whole Jamaican music industry is a stacked deck, and nobody's about to play Ivanhoe's song. He comes back with his tail between his legs, takes the twenty bucks and his record gets played, but only a little bit, because he's a troublemaker. The producer says he wants to make his money back but he doesn't want it to be a hit.
2. The performance. I knew Jimmy Cliff was a reggae singer but that's all I knew. Once he started belting this fucker out I instantly GOT it. He's more like a soul singer, reminded me almost of a Jamaican Sam Cooke. And he's this skinny young guy in a long sleeved t-shirt with a star on it, sweat beading up on his forehead, seems like he's gonna break his lungs singing like that. You know how they made this scene? They filmed him recording the song for the first time. And then it became a classic song. And there it is, in the movie, the actual recording process, captured forever. It's one of those scenes you watch movies for, in my opinion.
Okay, so maybe he's a genius and everybody loves his song, but all he's got is twenty god damn bucks and he uses it to cop his girl a mini-skirt. The music thing's not working out so he gets into the marijuana business, and that's what the movie's really about. Just like in music, he ends up pushing too hard against the authority figures in the drug trade, has to kill some cops and becomes a fugitive. So he's finally a star, and his song becomes a hit. That's what coming and falling hard means in this case. Among other things.
I'm sure the movie is popular first because of the music, second because of the timeless, universal appeal of a poor man getting fed up, saying fuck all y'all going on a rampage. But for me it's all about those two amazing musical scenes, the church and the recording studio. Also I liked the part where he stabbed the guy in the face with a bottle.
HATCHET
Well, I guess now it's officially a pattern. The pattern goes like this:
1. small independent horror movie plays a few small film festivals.
2. People on the internet go ape shit because they got to see it first.
3. Buzz spreads for a year or so.
4. Anchor Bay (#1 releaser of horror movies in the VHS days) buys rights, gives tiny theatrical release.
5. I see it on DVD.
6. god damn it, why don't they make good ones anymore
This pattern started with BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON and fortunately this one is not as asinine as that one. It's not terrible, but it doesn't cut the mustard. Believe me, I wish it did. I see mustard everywhere and I want nothing more than for that mustard to be cut by a movie like this. But just being above the standards of the DTV giant snake movies is not a horror resurgence.
I had hopes for HATCHET because unlike BEHIND THE MASK there's nothing postmodern or meta about it. It's just a straightup slasher movie about a big, unkillable freak chopping people up in the Louisiana swamp. His name is Victor Crowley and he's played by Kane Hodder, who played Jason in some of the later FRIDAY THE 13ths. Victor has a backstory kind of like Jason meets the guy in THE BURNING: he was a deformed freak who kids treated bad, then his dad (also Kane Hodder) hit him in the face with a hatchet and also I think he was set on fire or something, I forget.
I enjoy and miss this type of movie, but I can't give it a pass just based on nostalgia. I like using that blues analogy for slasher movies, I think I made it up in my HIGH TENSION review. I believe that slasher movies are a classic American artform not equal to but similar to the blues. There are simple, familiar tunes that you follow, and you put your own spin on it, but you don't have to get too fancy, you still want it to be recognizable. Well, thankfully the song is recognizable in HATCHET. But on the other hand it's a pretty cheesy Blues Hammer type of take on the song. It just isn't cool.
And this is gonna fuck up my analogy but I think one huge problem is the music. Low budget directors, listen up. You may not want to spring for real film, I understand that, I'm getting used to that. I wish you would make it look like a real movie but if you can only afford digital or whatever that's between you and St. Peter. But if you don't have some incredibly talented dude making weird sounds like Tobe Hooper did way back on the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW, or a very original keyboardist like John Carpenter, then please, I beg you, don't be a cheapskate. Get a small orchestra. I don't care how good the technology gets, a keyboard is a keyboard. A keyboard is not an orchestra. And when you try to play it like an orchestra you make an ass out of you and Victor Crowley.
Yeah, maybe those FRIDAY THE 13ths were cheap but it doesn't seem like anybody told Harry Manfredini that. He classed up the joint with his PSYCHO violins and experimental sounds. Even on part 3 when he turned it into a dance tune he still knocked you on your ass. But the keyboard violins in HATCHET sound like some fuckin LEPRECHAUN movie or something. It would be better to have no music than to have this.
I don't think the look is cuttin it either. How do you make a horror movie in the Louisiana swamp and have no atmosphere? The whole thing looks like people in front of some trees at night, but with a flood light on them, and a smoke machine in the background. There's no sense of place, no feeling that there is any swamp beyond this little chunk we're looking at, no sense that they have moved from where they started out.
There's not much cleverness here either. There's a part where a guy says that the touristy swamp tour is "about as fun as a bag of dicks," that's about it for successful jokes. And I kind of like the abrupt ending in the middle of mayhem. Also there's a part where a guy keeps getting body parts thrown at him, that's pretty funny. But otherwise not much to surprise you.
I guess because of the genre
they figure they can get away with all the characters being cliches (wannabe
actress, dumb blond girl, jive talkin black guy). Fine, but making them all
obnoxious is not the same as making them funny. Even the lead (a guy from
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL) who is obviously supposed to be the most sympathetic
they make you hate by joking about how obsessed he is with his ex-girlfriend.
I agreed with his friend that he should shut up. And by the way, the token
black guys in slasher movies are usually a streetwise tough guy stereotype
(see FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3), not
a bug-eyed Steppin Fetchit scaredy cat. This guy is so afraid he climbs up
a tree and refuses to come down.
Although it's obviously made by fans of the genre I think they made a mistake
by not staying closer to the traditional story setups. Instead of having a
group of friends in the same area getting picked off one by one without knowing
it at first, they have them all stuck together after their boat sinks. So
there's too much time with a big group of people arguing about what to do
and where to go, and not enough suspense about who's gonna get it next and
who's gonna figure out what's going on.
Also dude, putting Robert Englund and Tony Todd in cameos is kind of lame. If they had good roles that fit them well that would be kind of cool, but these are both dumb characters and bad performances. Freddy and Candyman deserve better. I guess of the '80s and '90s horror icons it's Mr. Hodder who comes off the best, but I don't think his Victor Crowley is gonna join the pantheon. Basically he's an elephant man wearing overalls with dubbed growling and roaring like the Toxic Avenger. Not really scary or funny, not sure what they were going for there. Maybe sad?
I wonder, what is it that makes me harder on these movies than the rest of the internet? Am I a horror snob? I don't think so. In fact among my horror fan associates I'm considered the chump with the low standards. I'm the guy who at least thought the John Carpenter episodes of Masters of Horror were pretty cool. Who liked HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES and DEVIL'S REJECTS and the remake of HILLS HAVE EYES. Who still stands by WOLF CREEK and secretly bought a copy of SILENT HILL and paid money to see HILLS HAVE EYES 2 in the theater and actually had high hopes for it. I want to love this stuff.
My only guess is maybe alot of the writers who have been praising this one are more casual horror viewers. They are not the people like me who try to watch all the horror movies that come out, who have seen all the sequels to all the big horror series, even when they know they're gonna suck, who see the remakes of their old favorites and compile lists of what's wrong and right with them. And that is a good lifestyle choice on their part and has the added bonus of making them enjoy a movie like this. I guess if you have not found a place in your heart to appreciate Jason popping eyeballs out in 3-D then there is more of a novelty to watching a clumsy modern reflection of that type of movie. There is a residual joy that makes it in there and it will get you drunk if your tolerance level is low. That's a theory.
And I wonder if part of my problem is there's some element of a time capsule to those movies, a kind of fetishism for the period they were made in. There's something about how the film looked back then, how the scenes were lit, how the effects were done, how it looked on location in Connecticut, the hairdos, the clothes. What if I saw this exact half-assed movie, but it was made in 1986? Would it somehow become more enjoyable? Would its flaws seem more forgivable because after all it's from the '80s? I don't know. These are questions to consider.
What I do know is that here in 2007 this movie didn't work for me. It didn't rub me the wrong way like its asshole cousin Leslie Vernon did. But if director Adam Green is a blues guitarist he's no Howlin' Wolf or even Steven "Slow Hand" Seagal. Thanks for keeping it simple but now you gotta take that template and you gotta smoke. What good is a slasher movie without tense chases, "holy shit!" moments, surprises, or even good laughs? A good straightahead genre movie is a showcase for directorial chops. I mean maybe this isn't fair but consider holding this up next to THE EVIL DEAD. That's not a slasher movie but it's a low budget independent horror movie by a then-unknown director. There was nothing original about the story or characters, but everything was original about the filmatism. Just about every scene has some part where it knocks you on your ass with a shot or a gag or a home made special effect. Raimi and friends actually had less in their arsenal, because they used their friends as the cast (not established TV and movie stars) and I'm betting the budget for HATCHET was several times over EVIL DEAD's $350,000. But the EVIL DEAD crew had invention and wit coming out of their pores and they were getting its greasy fingerprints all over their lenses. That's what a breakthrough independent horror movie used to be: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN. Now it means any shoddy tribute to those movies that somehow got played in theates.
Anybody remember that movie BAD DREAMS, it had this cult leader killer guy who it kind of seemed like they were trying to position as the new Freddy Krueger. What was that guy's name again? I don't remember either. Victor Crowley, you might want to look that guy up and see if he needs a roommate. I think Dr. Giggles has his phone number. They used to hang out with Wes Craven's SHOCKER.
HATED: GG ALLIN AND THE MURDER JUNKIES
Supposedly this is the highest grossing student film of all time. It's only about 50 minutes long and it's a documentary about one of the shittiest and most unlikable rockstars who ever lived. But it's great entertainment. The film was directed by Todd Phillips, who went on to do a controversial HBO documentary called Frat House and then the teen comedy Road Trip. In that one there was some dude who put a mouse in his mouth and that was supposed to be the ultimate grossout. Well obviously the individuals who said that haven't heard of Hated.
You see when I said GG Allin was the shittiest rock star who ever lived I meant that literally. One of this dude's trademarks was that he would take a shit on stage and then wipe it all over his face and ass and throw it into the audience and etc. Or one time he takes a banana and sticks it up his ass and then mushes it up and throws it out there. Basically, he is like the most mentally illest motherfuckers you ever come across in the correctional system, but with a microphone.
Now this guy had a small but very dedicated following of troubled alcoholic punks. And obviously they weren't in it for the lyrics. But he was able to tour and do small shows and live his life as an outlaw. Personally I think he gave the lifestyle a bad name but what can you do man. He kept his one pair of pants and one shirt in a paper bag and must have crashed on people's floors but god only knows how he bought food and drugs.
The documentary takes place when GG has just been released from prison and he agrees to break parole to go on tour so the film can be made. Every show he does seems to break into chaos in under ten minutes and end with this maniac pulling on his underwear and running from the cops or security guards all covered in blood and shit. Sometimes the fans jump on stage and kick the shit out of him. More often he attacks them, grabs some girl by the hair or punches some dude, then rolls around on the floor and starts shoving things up his ass. He says, "My mind is a machine gun, my body is the bullets, the audience is the target." Which means, "I throw shit on people." In his "spoken word performances" he does the same shit, he attacks people and cuts himself and then just starts calling everybody motherfuckers and robotic puppets of society.
I gotta be frank as well as honest, this great movie is not for the weak of stomach. And not just because there's a video of his birthday party where a gal pees in his mouth and then he pukes all over himself and then takes another mouth full of pee. Even if you fast forward through that kind of garbage it is still very unpleasant to watch this dude. He is always naked and it is not a pretty sight. Even his tattoos are ugly as shit. I don't know what most people consider entertainment but it is probaly not seeing a pudgy punk rocker strutting around all covered in shit, naked with his tiny little dick bopping up and down like a headbanging bumblebee.
I mean, the filthiest hippies in the world will probaly hop into the shower after watching this movie. Not because they feel bad for watching it. But you don't want to take the chance that something splattered on you.
I wish I could wash the germs off from this movie but even the permanent mental damage, nightmares and emotional scarring it has caused me is probaly worth it for this fascinating freak show. Phillips extensively interviews GG and his brother/bassist Merle (who is more reasonable but has a bald head with giant sideburns and a hitler mustache) to find out what in fuck's name made GG this way. He goes back to GG's home town to play tapes of his music to his mortified high school band teacher. He even interviews a group of GG's high school buddies who are a bunch of idiot good ole boys who know alot about guns and love jokes about wifebeating.
It is obvious that this illness came from somewhere, and you get a sense that it may have been passed on from his father who often threatened to kill himself and his family and even started digging the graves in the backyard. GG is also able to share the madness with his fans who are not always just thrillseekers. Some of them seem to actually admire him and wish they also had "the fucking balls" to wipe shit all over themselves and eat it and threaten to kill themselves on stage on Halloween.
There are alot of interview clips with a fan named "Unk" who is a smarmy looking guy with big black hipster glasses. At first you just think he likes GG because he's so crazy that it's entertaining. Then he tells a story about GG going to visit John Wayne Gacy in prison, and what Gacy told HIM about it the next week! And I'm really not sure whether Unk went to see Gacy because he was so fucked up he'd want to go visit Gacy, or because he was so fucked up he'd want to visit anybody that GG Allin had visited.
Jesus, the things that are popular these days!
The entertainment value is unbelievable. This is the most "HOLY SHIT!" movie I've seen in a while. There is also a naked drummer who is as crazy, but less violent, than GG. And there is a former band member who quit not because he couldn't take GG, but because he was jealous of him. He keeps bragging about what HE would do if he was GG (involving a mass cult suicide and/or presidential assassination) and about how it's not that big a deal to bash your head with a microphone. I would almost think it was all staged if I didn't see this fuckball shitting and then eating it in one shot.
As amazing as this documentary is, even more memorable is the "50 minutes of bonus footage" on the dvd. This is a home video Phillips made of GG's last performance. Right after this video, GG had a drug binge and overdosed and died and then they put headphones on his bloated body and had a traditional funeral for him but the drummer was still naked when he helped carry the coffin.
I know right now it is considered cool to pretend you never liked the Blair Witch Project. Well I never even seen the fucking thing. But I think this video is probaly more intense. There are only a couple of edits so you get to see first hand and in real time the incredible adrenaline rush caused by hanging out with this shiteating maniac.
The footage starts with the "rehearsal", where all the band members and the club owners are all swearing at each other about a soundcheck.
When the performance starts it is still daylight and they seem to be playing inside this little house. The hardcore fans and masochists are inside and there are others gathered outside looking in the door, for safety and hygeine purposes.
They only do about one and a half songs before the fighting and shitting and the tiny bumblebee dick start to be too much and there is mass chaos and apparently somebody from the club tells them they can't play. It is hard to tell exactly what's going on because the camera is shaking around, but if you listen to the conversations it sounds like the people who are there aren't exactly sure either. There is a european guy dressed in all white who at first I thought was the one kicking them out, but then I think he puts his hand up GG's ass. Not sure.
Then GG starts kicking things and whining "I wanna play, we came here to fucking play we wanna fucking play" and it's virtually indistinguishable from the part where he was playing. And there's this nutball fan who starts chanting "GG! GG! GG! GG!" At first I thought it was to be funny but it continues through the rest of the video. Turns out that former band member wasn't wrong about GG being able to be a cult leader. Something about a guy who wipes himself with shit, I guess, it makes people like you.
So then GG goes outside and this is when it really gets good. You see this concerned teenage gal who says, "GG, you gotta put your shorts on!" Not wanting him to get arrested. The fans start breaking some windows and GG is shaking his bumblebee dick in front of unfortunate passersby and you can hear Phillips behind the camera complaining that he got shit on himself, not from GG but from fans who GG threw it on. And then a cop car drives by and GG runs and hides and then his entourage starts to try to get out of there.
But a big crowd of fans follow them. They keep trying to get a cab but what cab driver wants to help a bunch of punk rockers and a guy covered in shit escape from a small riot. And the fans are chanting "GG!" and GG goes back and forth between raising his arms in victory and telling them to fuck off.
This goes on for a long time until GG finally catches a cab and escapes to his destiny. Left behind, Phillips reconvenes with some of his buds to talk about how great the show was. There is a young gal who breathlessly repeats over and over "That was amazing! That was fucking amazing!" And for the first time you understand what the attraction is for some of these people. They know GG is a fucking nut, but when else can you experience that type of full on danger and nuttiness outside of prison, and for only seven bucks? It is similar to that thing they do in spain or whatever, where the bull is let loose on the streets and everybody runs like hell. Same thing, only GG had no horns and a smaller dick. I think Phillips started making his documentary as a joke but when he got to know GG he experienced the rollercoaster thrills and maybe even got to convincing himself that there was something important about the way his act pushed the envelope.
Well, there probaly wasn't. But they sure had fun watching that shiteater run from the cops and a hundred punk idiots while his friends say, "This is Beatlemania! This is Beatlemania!" and another guy says, "You better not get any shit on my pants GG!" and every once in a while GG starts bashing his head into a pole or something. That's what life is all about, man.
HEAD OF STATE
Chris Rock is kind of a weird dude in my opinion. Remember when he was first on Saturday Night Live? The guy didn't seem funny at all, and they would just bring him out whenever they needed a black guy. It took a while but eventually he started to get better material and he really broke out, and when he left the show people really started to realize what a smart guy he was. His standup specials are great, his Chris Rock Show was great and he produced that movie POOTIE TANG which is one of the more madly brilliant cult hits of the past such and such period of time.
But despite all this his movie career is only a level or two above David Spade's. His heart is in the right place but he ends up making corny shit like CB4. When he tries for more credibility he instead ends up in a god damn Kevin Smith movie. I guess NURSE BETTY was okay but still, the guy is obviously capable of so much more.
Well maybe HEAD OF STATE is the first baby step toward living up to his potential, I don't know. This one he directed and co-wrote in addition to starring. He plays a Washington DC alderman who saves an old lady and her cat from an exploding building so he ends up running for president (long story). Because he's a black dude he starts advertising himself like a rapper and in his speeches he starts telling it like it is, Bulworth style, and saying "that ain't right." It's funnier than it sounds, though.
The feel of it is like one of the better Adam Sandler movies not including PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. It all feels real cheesy, the bad guy characters are REVENGE OF THE NERDS broad, there seems to be little understanding of how presidential races and real life work, but still there is alot of real funny jokes, mostly that seem to come out of the blue. And then in between those jokes he starts scratching a record and playing "Hot in Herre" and the old white people dance and everybody laughs.
I enjoyed the movie though, there were alot of big laughs. It's no POOTIE TANG because in that movie the plot was so light that you kind of forgot it was even there and it seemed to transcend the art of the cinematic storytelling and evolve into some higher life form that cannot really be explained, like that magic space baby at the end of 2001. In HEAD OF STATE it's more like a Chris Farley vehicle where you almost feel like you're supposed to care about the characters. But not quite. Like all those type of movies, there is a love story that seems like it is sincerely trying to be sweet, but you don't fucking care about that shit. The movie is best when it's firing off in all different directions. Like when the democrats first tell Chris they want him to run for president, there is a quick shot of him accepting the presidency and immediately being shot.
One of the highlights is Bernie Mac as Chris's brother Mitch, who runs for vice president. Now I think the whole world has caught on by now but Bernie Mac is the greatest. He has that wild, intense look in his eyes and every time he sees Chris Rock he starts punching him in the gut because he's little brother. Unfortunately he only really comes into the movie in the last act so you don't quite get as much of him as you wish you did.
Keith David is also in there but only in one scene. Tracy Morgan from SNL and Crank Yankers has a small part as a guy who tries to sell stolen meat.
Now a word about Chris Tucker. Don't worry I'm not retarded I know the difference between Chris Rock and Chris Tucker. But here's the thing. Mr. Tucker is a very funny man who has done several great performances: the hilarious FRIDAY and MONEY TALKS, the controversial FIFTH ELEMENT and the dramatic DEAD PRESIDENTS and JACKIE BROWN. But when he teamed up with Jackie Chan for RUSH HOUR he became a superstar. Suddenly he could get $20 million for a role. But he turned down almost everything. In fact in the 5 years since RUSH HOUR he has done exactly one (1) movie: RUSH HOUR 2. I think he's a humble dude, and he wants to do a good job. He'd rather just live a normal life than put out some fuckin Martin Lawrence style shit once a year. In fact he almost did BLACK KNIGHT but backed out when it looked like it wasn't going to be good. Then he travelled to Africa with Bono to learn about AIDS.
But there is one movie he tried to develop during that time, and it was an epic comedy drama about becoming the first black president. He said it was going to be very thoughtful and emotional, he even had Maya Angelou helping out somehow. He was very seriously preparing the movie to the point that he actually hung out with Bill Clinton to learn about the life of a president. During the 2000 election, before it became the 2000 coup, I remember watching Larry King one night and the three guests were Jon Stewart, Chris Tucker and some republican columnist in a bow tie. Mr. Tucker talked about his experiences developing the movie and started to stray off into fictional stories, like the time Jesse Jackson took him to the White House and it looked like nobody was home, but Jesse had a key to the side door so they went in and Jesse called out in the dark, "Bill? Bill, are you home?" The republican thought Mr. Tucker was serious and was completely outraged that Clinton had given Jesse Jackson the keys to the white house. You could tell he was already composing a column about it, hoping to be the first to break this shocking new scandal in the print media.
Anyway the point is, god damn it Chris Rock, I liked the movie but why did you have to fuck over Chris Tucker like that? Don't tell me you didn't know. God damn it. Oh well.
HEAVY METAL 2000
Let's face it, only nerds watch cartoons.
Okay so I know the above statement will rile up alot of male individuals of the internet. I know it is an overgeneralizational type deal especially since I have been known to like the cartoons. Such as the Miyazaki fellow hailing from the island of Japan. That is one individual who knows how to make a fucking CARTOON.
But jesus. I mean, Heavy Metal 2000. Need I say more? Probaly not. But I will.
Let me frame this with a little anecdote. I went to the video store and checked out some new releases with a gay individual. You know how a gay guy often likes movies such as Bedrooms and Hallways, Edge of Seventeen, Queer As Folk and etc.? These are apparently some of the higher quality new releases from the gay Cinema. However there are many other titles out there of a lower quality. There is one called Vadim's Story, which is not about Roger Vadim, it's about naked boys riding around on horses in Siberia. But most of them are about a bunch of gay guys in the city who are waiters or whatever and how they all have a bunch of friends and relationships and what not, and how it's all funny that they are gay and everything. There's one called West Hollywood Stories and on the back, I swear to fucking christ, it says "These are the gays of our lives."
So my gay buddy is reading these boxes talking about how great these movies are and suddenly he just turns to me disgusted and says, "Gay people are so stupid."
Well I imagine that's how cartoon lovers must feel when some jackass movie like Heavy Metal 2000 comes out. This is a long anticipated straight to video type movie about a cartoon girl with gigantic tits flying around killing people. This is the type of movie that 25 year old nerdy guys with goatees claim is going to help the cartoons to finally gain acceptance by us grownups. Even though they're written and designed with a 13 year old mentality.
If you are a nerd, and I mean that only in the derogatory sense of the word, you will eat this worthless piece of brainless shit up. You will love it. I am sorry my friends I know this is going to hurt the feelings of some of my dedicated fans but jesus you people. I can't believe it if you like this one.
Now somebody in the guestbook said that my reviews are under researched, so I decided to do a little legwork on this one. Let me tell you what I discovered:
1. The title comes from the French fantasy comics magazine Metal Hurlant, which introduced such artists as Jean Moebius Giraud and Jean-Claude Barbarella Forrest. The magazine was marketed to tits and ass fans in the US under the name "heavy metal" which helped to associate it with a now-archaic style of rock music that was popular in the 1980s.
2. It is a by-name-only sequel to the 1978 cartoon anthology Heavy Metal, a fantasy which featured the voices of a bunch of people from SCTV and had alot of loud rock music and cartoon nudity. It was a legendary cult film until the second it was released on video in the mid 1990s.
3. The new movie was produced by an individual by the name of Kevin Eastman, and this is what explains the movie and why nerds love it. Kevin Eastman is the creator of the comic strip Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was popular with the kids in the late '80s. Alot like how Pokeyman is today. After obtaining millionaire status Kevin Eastman married Julie Strain, a nudie model with giant boobs. Then he went and made a cartoon for her to star in, Heavy Metal 2000.
You see, Kevin Eastman and Heavy Metal 2000 are the ultimate nerd fantasy. Some day they'll stop laughing at me for drawing karate animals. I'll show them! I'll be a millionaire and then girls will love me! I'll marry a lady with giant boobs and draw pictures of her wearing a thong! HA HA HA HA HA REVENGE IS SWEET YOU MOTHERFUCKERS HA HA HA HA. etc.
Every aspect of the movie is approached from this philosophy. The supporting characters are obviously based on how these people see themselves: doofus computer experts and pilots who have goatees and sunglasses and leather trenchcoats to make them look cool. The bad guy, who has the futuristic name "Tyler", looks how they would like to: he has big He-Man muscles, a pony tail and fangs.
Here's the story. Tyler drinks magic water that makes him indestructible. He is trying to find a magic crystal or some shit like that that will make him immortal. But in order to get the magic key that opens the magic crystal he has to kill everybody on the planet F.A.K.K. 2, home planet of Julie Strain's character who has the exotic name "Julie".
I'm not sure the wisdom of these motherfuckers starring a nudie model in a cartoon movie. For one thing, the way they draw her face she looks kinda ugly. So you don't get the looks, which is her specialty. You just get the acting. And I'm no expert on the topic but as far as I know this is the worst voice-al performance ever given by a lead in a feature length cartoon.
I would like to present as evidence the scene where Julie sifts through the devastation of her home planet post-massacre. They draw her crying as she looks at the mutilated corpses and holds up the helmet of a slain soldier. And then she goes:
"Why."
Not "Why!?" or even "Why?" Just, "Why."
I mean for all I know she was saying, "Y."
Then of course she chases after Tyler to get revenge on him, and she kills people and says one liners and he gets two chances to say that old chestnut, "Next time you kill someone, make sure they're dead."
The guys in the movie are sexist pigs, and you are supposed to cheer when Julie kills them or tells them to fuck off or whatever. Instant feminism. But at the same time I'm pretty sure you're supposed to get a boner when she swims naked and when she straddles Tyler and squeezes her giant cartoon boobs and when her sister gets out of the shower and when there's a Rambo type montage with a close up of her pulling a thong up her ass and when her clothes get all torn up while she's fighting so you can see more skin.
I mean I guess if you like giant cartoon boobs and space monsters who use swords and crappy rock bands like "insane clowns" and what not and if you have really low standards and especially if you're mildly retarded or whatever - I mean I'm not saying that in a bad way I'm just saying, there are people out there with some difficulties and what not, maybe they like Heavy Metal 2000. Who knows. So if that's the case then yes, maybe this is a pretty good cartoon. in a way. Also I got a new game for you. It's called dungeons and dragons or d&d for short. It's about how there's elves and you roll dice and everything. you nerds are gonna love this.
enjoy boys
HELL
RIDE
The first time I saw KILL BILL VOLUME 2, when Michael Madsen got chewed out
by his boss at the strip club, I thought Who is that guy? Because
he had such a presence, he seemed so perfect to play that type of sleazy (but
completely justified in this case) boss, but I didn't think I recognized him
from anything. Turns out he was Larry Bishop, son of Joey Bishop. He's an
actor going back to WILD IN THE STREETS and an I DREAM OF JEANNIE episode,
and the guy who directed that movie MAD DOG TIME a while back. Well, Tarantino
obviously liked him so he helped him to make a biker movie, this time not
just as director but as writer/director/producer/star.
Tarantino put his name on the movie as a presenter, hooked Bishop up with
Dimension Films, and loaned him the use of Michael Madsen and David Carradine
for a while. He also seems to be a big inspiration on the attitude of the
movie, which is basically a western on motorcycles with lots of weird non-sequitur
shit thrown in. The movie also has some pretty hip marketing, one of the first
incidents in modern times of a movie released with a cool illustrated movie
poster that remains as the DVD cover. Everyone knows you're supposed to throw
away the poster and put a shitty photoshop collage of the actor's heads on
the DVD. That's in marketing 101. This one breaks that rule.
Okay, I can't lie to you, after you're done looking at the cover and put the
actual DVD in your player - and after you get past the awesome DEATH PROOF
trailer that looks like it's transferred to VHS and has a cheesy '80s style
narrator - most of you will think this movie is a piece of shit. And it kind
of is. Anyone who claims that Tarantino just rips off old movies and pieces
them together and anybody could do it needs to compare and contrast this one
with KILL BILL. Bishop also mixes and matches old exploitation shit he likes
('60s biker movies, western showdowns, softcore porn, spaghetti western music,
songs that Tarantino would use in his movies) but doesn't have the same strong
narrative, memorable characters or great action scenes. It's a simple story
muddled by a way too complicated backstory and flashback structure, and with
little momentum, powered only by attitude and the occasional funny or weird
little moment or scene. On the positive side it's less than 90 minutes long
so it doesn't torture you. For me it went down easy in three half hour installments.
Bishop plays Pistolero, the president of the Victors motorcycle club. He's
out for revenge against the 666's because they burned one of his guys alive
recently, and also he's trying to find out who burned his girlfriend alive
in 1976, and find her son who disappeared, and something about a key to a
safe deposit box that he has in the opening scene, a flash forward where he's
been shot with an arrow and he's saying weird shit about existentialism and
then a sexy lady in white jeans sits on his face.
Pistolero's closest colleagues are The Gent (Michael Madsen, always wearing
a ruffled tuxedo shirt) and Comanche (Eric Balfour) who is also called Bix
for some reason and who is also obviously the kid from the flashback, unless
I misunderstood, which is very possible, although I don't think so, but who
cares, probaly not Larry Bishop, or he would've made a movie that seemed to
care about making sense.
Or maybe he does. He says on the DVD that he originally wrote it as a 400
page novel, then a 130 page screenplay before it was this 86 minute movie.
It feels more like a 5 page summary fleshed out with a week or two of improvisation
out in the desert. It has kind of an otherworldly feel because although they
drive around alot there are literally no characters in the movie other than
the bikers or super hot babes. I don't think they even pass another car on
the highway.
By the way, a word of caution
for young men considering the biker lifestyle: the ugliest woman in this movie
is about a 400% improvement over the hottest biker mama you will ever even
hear legends of. The camera enjoys many round butts, exposed breasts, nipples
poking through shirts. There's a bar where girls wrestle and invite bikers
in for an orgy. Women writhe on pool tables begging Larry Bishop to fuck them,
they writhe on motorcycles trying to seduce him with long lists of fire-related
puns, they don't mind him walking up and grabbing their crotches. Watching
it I really thought he probaly just did the movie for the groping and ogling
opportunities. You know, it's the journey that matters, not the destination.
But if he did write it as a 400 page novel first I guess he must've had a
personal vision or some shit, I don't know. So the crotch grabbing was just
a bonus.
I want to go off on a tangent here for a minute. And I can, because this is
America. There's a whole lot of guitar playing on the score here, a spaghetti
western/DESPERADO type of feel. I'm not much of a rock guy but there are a
few guitarists I think are real good so let me say a word about a guy named
Eddie Hazel. He played in Funkadelic, and he was one of their greatest assets,
but even George Clinton admitted he didn't realize at the time how good he
was. After standout performances on Maggot Brain, Standing On the Verge
of Getting On and Hardcore Jollies and a super rare solo album
called Dames Games and Guitar Thangs, Clinton didn't use him that
much on their albums. He continued to tour with them over the years but alot
of times even on Eddie's signature song "Maggot Brain" Clinton would
have other guitarists do the lead. Heavily influenced by Hendrix, Hazel still
developed his own unmistakable sound, an acid drenched soulful type of soloing
that sounded almost like crying at times. That seemed fitting because he had
a pretty troubled life - drinking and drugs gave him stomach problems. I read
somewhere that it hurt so bad while he was playing that tears would come out.
His doctor told him not to tour because it was too dangerous, but he did anyway,
and his friends thought he wanted to die on stage. He finally died from internal
bleeding in '92, not on stage though.
Hazel's biggest legacy is that song "Maggot Brain." Only the tragic
figure I just described could record a song like that. It's pretty much just
Eddie playing a solo for 10 minutes, but it never gets old. The story goes
that Clinton asked him to play like his mother just died, and man, I believe
it. Also they say the band were all high out of their minds and Clinton thought
everybody besides Eddie sounded like shit so he turned them way down in the
mix. Whatever happened, it's one of the best guitar solos and purest musical
expressions of emotion you'll ever hear.
The reason I bring it up is I think HELL RIDE is the first time I've ever
heard "Maggot Brain" used in a movie. But it's used for a scene
where Pistolero does peyote (where else?) out in the desert. It actually works
pretty well in the movie, and people that aren't familiar with it will probaly
just think it's the score. I know Eddie did alot of drugs but I don't know
man, that song is so pure, it kind of offends me to use it for a getting high
scene. Oh well, better than a car commercial.
And now
I have returned from my tangent. Every
once in a while something pretty badass happens in HELL RIDE to keep you interested.
I like the scene where Balfour breaks a bottle over Madsen's head, then throws
down a playing card with "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" written on it. Why
didn't I ever think of that? Balfour proves his grit by peeing on Dennis Hopper's
boots while Hopper threatens him at gunpoint. Vinnie Jones shows up occasionally,
says the word pussy about 50 times and shoots several people with a rifle
that fires arrows. Later he gets a severed head delivered to him in a picnic
basket. (possibly a reference to a Yogi Bear episode I haven't seen.) In one
scene Bishop and Balfour have a conversation that's important to the narrative,
meanwhile Madsen is sitting in a tree in the background. He blows into his
beer bottle and says, "Look, I'm an owl."
It's a weird combination of kind of good and really terrible,
which to me somehow combined to form surprisingly watchable although not
good per se. It has the elements of a type of movie that is painful to
sit through (like, say, SOUTHLAND TALES, or some of the later David Lynch
movies if you're not into them). But it's not hard at all. The story, such
as it is, ends satisfactorily, it doesn't linger too long after that, and
it has a pretty great final line. So what the hell. The ride wasn't too hellish
for me.
note: no pun intended on the "what the hell" part, pun intended on the "ride wasn't too hellish for me," this adds up to 1 pun half-intended, which is not that bad really so lay off, pal.
10/28/08
HELLBOY
(Written for The Ain't It Cool News, but they never put it up.)
Dear Harry and Moriarty,
I saw a new movie you guys might be interested in, called HELLBOY. It's about this guy with a giant hand. He is red but he works for the government. Then he fights monsters because he's in love with the girl from STORYTELLING, but she catches on fire. etc.
Actually come to think of it it's based on a comic strip so I would not be surprised at all if you boys heard of it already. This is NOT the Punishing guy, this is a different guy, named Hellboy.
What I liked about this movie was the character of Hellboy, who is played by Ron Perlman (BLADE II). He is a guy from Hell who decides he's not into being evil. So he does other stuff. I always thought Perlman was funny when he was on that Beauty and the Beast show with the gal from TERMINATOR. Because he is this scary lion man and the women loved him because he was sensitive and wore a blouse and because it was only a TV show so they didn't have to face the reality of what a guy smells like if he lives in the sewer. Believe me man, you ever spend more than two days in a sewer, hiding out or whatever, it's curtains for your love life for at least a year. Not to brag or nothin. I guess that is not a brag though. Just my 2 cents.
Anyway the point I was getting at was that when he took the makeup off, he still looked like a fuckin beast. This is a grizzled looking dude. He plays in makeup all the time so I guess it's no big deal for him to be painted red and have a tail and horns and a giant hand and whatever other shit they pasted onto the dude. He doesn't even notice, to him it's just like wearing pants. So he is able to give a real acting performance and make this a great character.
He goes around with his giant hand and he punches through things and gets thrown through things and blows things up. He makes some smartass comments occasionally. It's real good to see such a combination of makeup and acting to make a classic monster character, like Frankenstein's monster meets Dirty Harry.
Perlman has made some bad movies before, in my opinion. In this category I would include OPERATION SANDMAN, POLICE ACADEMY: MISSION TO MOSCOW and SLEEPWALKERS. When Mario Van Peebles and Ice-T are put into the Straight to Video Hall of Fame, Perlman will probaly be invited. But I also think he was truly great in CRONOS, CITY OF LOST CHILREN, ALIEN RESURRECTION (as the dumb tough guy) and of course BLADE II. So as long as he's working with a French or Mexican director he's good. This one will obviously be one of his signature roles. I hope we get to see him in this makeup again.
Seriously though about that sewer thing, there were legitimate reasons to stay out of sight, I know it sounds paranoid. This was a long time ago when I was young, I would not usually have to do that kind of thing now.
There was nothing I really hated about this movie, but I was not as crazy about the world around Hellboy as I was Hellboy himself. They spend alot of time trying to explain who he is and how he is hidden from the world and what not. My one question about that would be, who the fuck cares. So he is a demon guy - lay off. He doesn't really look THAT weird. Michael Jackson, for example, is a weirder looking dude than Hellboy. Also, those freaky "chicks" in the trailer for WHITE CHICKS that played before HELLBOY. Thay are WAY scarier looking than Hellboy and nobody locks them up in a room and goes on talk shows to try to create a smokescreen. Just let the dude walk around and fight monsters and shit. He's obviously good at it.
The director is Guillermo del Toro (BLADE II) and I would HIGHLY recommend checking out this guy's work. CRONOS and DEVIL'S BACKBONE proved that he was a genius. MIMIC was his worst movie and I still liked that one. And obviously we all agree on BLADE II, except for a couple hotshots in the talkbacks. I would not say that HELLBOY is Mr. Del Toro's best movie. I don't think it has quite the crowdpleasing action, asskicking and oneliners that BLADE II did. But that's not a fair comparison. It is a lot of fun and also has a little bit more emotion in the nice love subplot. And kids will definitely like this movie because it is about a cool monster who fights cool monsters. Plus the bad guys are Nazis, and everybody hates Nazis, except Nazis. And Nazis don't deserve this movie anyway. I don't want to be controversial but I hate fucking Nazis. Fuck 'em.
Like the Nazis though, if you are a comic strip guy you might have some trouble with this picture. I talked with my geek culture correspondent, a guy in my Wednesday night creative writing class. I'm not sure what the guy's spy name would be, maybe Darth Superman. Or Harry maybe you could make up some stupid Dungeons and Dragons type bullshit like Gandalf the Elfmaster or Attack of the Hobbits or something like that, this guy would eat that shit up.
According to my notes here, he has some complaints. He says that in the comics Hellboy is more of a detective who travels around to little European villages, going to old churches, castles and graveyard to investigate ghosts and werewolves and shit. He says there is alot more mythology and ghost stories involved. More atmosphere. Not as much American cities and bureaucrats and product placement. He doesn't get locked in a room and have agents following him around unless he needs them for the mission.
Also this guy says Abe Sapien (the fishman) should walk around in regular clothes and a fake beard, he should not be locked up in a fish tank. And Kronen is just a scientist in a mask, he is not made of sand and windups (Vern note: who fuckin cares). Also it says something here about pancakes. Can't read my handwriting.
I guess this guy is probaly right, they could probaly do up a better story if there is a part 2, where Hellboy just steps on and you already know who he is and what he's gonna do to the stupid tentacled or ghostly motherfucker that gets in his way. None of this explaining bullshit. But still I enjoyed this picture and I got a hunch you might like it better, wetting your pants right and left over this thing, or at the very least wetting them in the front. Good job Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro keep it up fellas.
See ya boys,
Vern
http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern
HERO
HERO is no surprise. I knew I was gonna like this movie. I heard enough to know this was gonna be a good one. I mean it's got that acclaimed director who did all those movies I haven't seen like THE ROAD HOME. But then instead of doing another movie like that, what he does, he gets Jet Li and Maggie Cheung and Donnie Yen and Zhang Yiyi and he says, let's do an awesome fucking epic with kung fu and swords and about ten million arrows.
This movie has been making the rounds for years. It got nominated for the foreign film oscar, and it played the seattle international film festival, and it's been on DVD in Asia forever which is no problem for a worldly dude like me, I've been free of the region code shackles for years. Region 2, region 3, bring it on motherfuckers, I go all the way up to region 4, region 5 on a good day. I could do region 10 if they threw it at me, region 11, I don't give a fuck. Anything. But here in region 1 Miramax was supposed to release HERO in theaters. What they wanted to do was leave it on the shelf for years and finally put it out when there's less interest. That worked so well with SHAOLIN SOCCER. Unfortunately HERO was sitting on the shelf but then it fell off the shelf and got stuck behind the desk and nobody knew it was there. Then I think Tarantino dropped a pencil back there or something, so he reached back there and he felt HERO. So he pulled it out and dusted it off and he was like, "You guys still have this? You should, like, release it in theaters, where people go to watch movies projected on a screen."
That was a few weeks ago and it turned out Tarantino was right, people wanted to see this movie and it's been doing very well. No thanks to me. I kept not seeing it and not seeing it.
In a way it kind of shows how cool I am, here is this great movie that everybody loves and I'm like, yeah, I know, masterpiece. I'll see it later. I gotta watch FRANKENFISH. I knew it was there but I left it unseen, I wanted to save it for later. Who knows when you're gonna need to see HERO for the first time. Well yesterday I finally figured the time was right, we had come to the point in our relationship where we should take it to that next level, sit down together in a theater and make visual contact.
And shit, not that I flinched or anything but MAN what a great fuckin movie. Jet Li plays the HERO of the title, a man with no name who has just killed the 3 deadliest assassins in China. As his reward, he gets to sit within 100 paces of the king. And what he does, he tells the story of how he killed those assassins. Of course, it's more complicated than that, and you figure out pretty quick that the other duels were a way to get him into the palace so he himself could assassinate this bastard. Because of what he did to his people, etc.
This is one of my favorite have-your-cake-but-also-eat-the-cake type of movies where it's all about super badass violence but ultimately is literally about laying down your sword. So you get the satisfaction of standing up against violence but the enjoyment of watching lots of violence first.
I don't know if anybody's reading modern politics into this story. There are some definite parallels, but I think it would be giving Bush too much credit to compare him to this king who thinks he can create peace by unifying China - i.e. slaughtering thousands to conquer all the bordering countries (and he doesn't want to stop there). The big difference between this guy and Bush is that this guy's plan works, and his wars even go well. Anyway, it's some interesting political themes, whether you choose to apply it to current events or not.
The fight scenes in this movie are some of the best I've ever seen. They use the wires but not the way so many other people use them these days. They just use them for otherworldly effects like leaning over farther than gravity allows or running across water. But most of this is sword fights, and they are swinging those swords so fast and hard you'd think somebody would've lost a few fingers during the filming. Probaly not though otherwise I'm sure we would've heard something in the news about Jet Li's fingers going up on e-bay or something.
So it's a good epic chinese history/mythology type story with classic fight scenes, but then the acclaimed-director-who-let's-face-it-I-am-not-at-all-familiar-with takes it to the next level with an incredible use of color and sound. It's all about the huge spectacle (armies of thousands holding up bright red banners, shooting a thousand arrows all at once) and the tiny details (splitting a single hair during a sword fight). It's about sounds, like 300 wooden paintbrushes pinging as they're dumped on the floor, or 70 candle flames fluttering at the same gust of wind. It's about using a sword to deflect an avalanche of arrows, or to slice through droplets of water mid-air.
Also for the ladies, there is one part where it shows Jet Li's ass.
So yes, this is a real classy and well crafted kung fu epic. The only movie anybody would compare it to is CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. It's shorter and less complicated but in some ways even more awe inspiring. I would like to thank Miramax for finally doing the right thing and releasing the fucking thing. Yeah, they put Tarantino's name on the ads, but at least not on the movie itself. And they didn't add any DMX songs to the soundtrack. I mean I gotta be honest, I'm surprised they didn't look into adding a few reaction shots from Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson and calling it CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE: THE BEGINNING.
I don't want to sound naive, but it's amazing to me that Jet Li can do a movie like this and then just go back to America and do CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE. You'd think he'd want to stay in Hong Kong and count his blessings. Who wants to be in a cage swingin a midget around while DMX is riding a four wheeler across the rooftops being chased by the cops and professional motocross racers in their full uniforms? I mean seriously, who needs that kind of stress? Not Jet Li.
And what about Ching Tsiu-Tung? He's choreographing these incredible swordfights, the very next year he's doing BELLY OF THE BEAST, he's got Steven Seagal standing in one place punching his opponents when they swing close enough to him. Like fucking tether ball.
I'm not stupid, I know why they do it is they do it for the money. But you don't just roll over for injustice like this. This just plain should not be happening, period. Your mom shouldn't have to sell her ass to put food in your mouth, and these guys shouldn't have to work with Tom Arnold after making a movie like this. Just think about it. Kurosawa didn't have to come to the US and do a couple PORKY'S sequels to keep his career going, did he? The world doesn't have to be this way. I see a better tomorrow. Lay your sword down, Jet Li, and take off your sunglasses. You are no longer the property of Hollywood. Fly away Jet Li. We love you, so we set you free.
HIGH TENSION (aka HAUTE TENSION, aka SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE)
This is another one of those heavily buzzed foreign imports that I put off watching forever. The final deciding factor, I keep seeing the trailer for a remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES which is made by these same frenchmen. So I figured I oughta investigate, see what these guys are about.
HIGH TENSION is a well made throwback kind of slasher movie, but not as good as WOLF CREEK. Similar subject matter though. Two young ladies, Marie and Alexia, go to visit Alexia's parents out in the french boonies. While everybody's in bed, some grunting redneck schlub (he looks like M. Emmett Walsh in an Ed Gein costume) drives up in a rusty truck, breaks in and starts killing everybody. Most of the movie - and the best part of the movie - involves Alexia being tied up and gagged in the back of the truck, while Marie chases the killer trying to save her.
So it's the kind of energetic, non-verbal chasing that can be fun when well directed. A cat and mouse game is what they sometimes call it. The clever thing is that for alot of the game, the cat doesn't even know the mouse is there. She keeps sneaking around just out of his eye sight until she can find a way to save her friend.
Another twist is that these two are more than just friends, if you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean, what I mean is Marie obviously has a crush on Alexia and Alexia doesn't know it. I like that they leave that unspoken, it seemed like a nice idea, although the way the movie ends up it seems like a pretty backward view of gay people. I don't know, maybe that's how they do it in France.
There's some pretty gruesome deaths in this one, and even a little kid dies. The first time we see the killer he's in his truck, getting a blowjob from a severed head, then he throws it out the window like a piece of litter. So you know right away that you're dealing with a classy movie. It didn't piss off critics as much as WOLF CREEK did though, for two reasons. One, the look is pretty stylized, very nice photography but not realistic, and the killer reminds you of the killers in that disowned Sam Raimi/Coen brothers movie CRIMEWAVE. It's more of a cartoon. And number two, it's just not as good. You can't take it as seriously when it's not as scary. And it has a ridiculous plot twist at the end.
Some movies I might not mention that. Because sometimes just knowing that there IS a plot twist ruins it as much as knowing what the plot twist is. But with this one, every single person who told me to watch it said "it's good, but there's a really dumb plot twist at the end." And I was glad they warned me because otherwise it would've been pretty disappointing when the fun movie went off the tracks and just became stupid. Ah hell, I'm just gonna tell you what it is since it's not that hard to guess either. Marie (who is shown in the opening to have some sort of mental problems) is actually imagining the killer, it is she herself who is killing everybody. Wow, what a mindblower, huh? There is no explanation for how or where she got this cool looking truck near her friend's house out in the middle of nowhere. Also I have to wonder about that severed head blowjob scene I mentioned before. Nobody saw this happen, and the guy who did it only exists in Marie's head. So what is this scene, exactly? A hallucination that she didn't see? I'm confused.
It's funny, because just by being simpler and more generic it would've been a way better movie. Slasher movies are a pure form, like the blues. You don't have to complicate them to make them good. Sometimes you can get away with it, like SCREAM if you like that movie, or Muddy Waters' psychedelic album ELECTRIC MUD. But usually what you gotta do is play the same song everybody else does, but play the hell out of it. You fuck it up when you try to get all fancy with this subjective-reality bullshit.
But before that twist it's kind of fun. Reminded me a little bit of that great section at the end of HALLOWEEN H20 where Laurie is about to escape from Michael Meyers but decides, "Ah, fuck it," then turns around, chases him and chops his head off. Spoiler.
So what does this mean for THE HILLS HAVE EYES? I don't know, it could go either way. They obviously have some skills, that's good. They got good photography. They enjoy violence and gore. Being the director of a fun but heavily flawed movie is a step up from being the guy who was fired from END OF DAYS for being an asshole, which is the resume of the TEXAS CHAIN SAW remake director.
Visually, the trailer for the new HILLS HAVE EYES reminds me of the CHAIN SAW remake, which on its own wouldn't be bad. It's beautifully shot. But that does give me some bad vibes, guilt by association and what not.
One thing I was worried about before was what they were gonna do for the family, who are supposed to be mutated by weapons testing out in the desert near where they live. The original had Michael Berryman, a real guy who really looks like that, but the remake is gonna all be makeup. I was worried they would look like monsters, like the so-called inbreds in that movie WRONG TURN. I'm not worried about that anymore after seeing the trailer, because they seemed to have based all the designs on real birth defects. It actually made me kind of uncomfortable, like watching those documentaries about circus freaks. And they got a good use of retarded laughing, which is much scarier than evil cackling in my opinion.
I love the original HILLS HAVE EYES but unlike TEXAS CHAIN SAW it is not a perfect movie. I'm not against a remake if it's gonna be done right. I love the themes of the original. Wes Craven shows his college professor background in that one. It has this whole class tension theme where the surburban tourists face off against mutated savages, and end up stooping to their level. I mean, there's even a scene where they use their mom as bait. (I've never been able to figure out if she's dead or alive, or which one would be worse.) And Craven emphasizes this duality theme by having two dogs, one named Beauty and one named Beast.
I hope these frenchmen understand Americans enough to keep that theme in the movie. I think they probaly did because the trailer shows a girl talking about going to Cancun for her vacation next time. That seems to fit the clueless suburbanite characterization of the old movie. We'll have to see if that's a throwaway line or not.
Anyway, this concludes my pointless speculation on this topic.
HIGHWAY
As I have mentioned before I live in Seattle. We are famous for a couple of different people. First of all we got Bruce Lee. When he left China he came here, he went to the University of Washington, he opened up a Jeet Kune Do school. The movie about his life, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, largely took place here although they didn't film here because the University of Washington wouldn't give them permission because they wouldn't remove the part about the football team calling him a gook. He and his son Brandon, star of Laserblast, are both buried here.
Then we got Jimi. Jimi grew up here and he's buried here too, although he hated it here and probaly woulda wanted to be buried in London if he had lived long enough to think about that kind of shit.
Then we got Elvis. He didn't live here or anything but he filmed It Happened At the World's Fair here. I never seen it but I think he dances with Ann Margaret on the Space Needle.
Finally, there's Kurt Cobain. He wrote some nice songs and then killed himself in 1994. He's not buried here, because he was cremated. But after his suicide there was a public memorial service at the fountain in Seattle Center, the same grounds where Elvis walked and, if I'm right, danced with Ann Margaret.
That memorial service was an important moment in music, I guess, and it's been the jumping off point for at least a couple of different movies. You got a Canadian one called The Vigil about a bunch of Nirvana fans from Alberta taking a road trip to the memorial. Now we got this one, which I think was actually made first, from this jackass Scott Rosenberg who wrote Con Air but is most famous for having a movie where the first line is "Self-mutilate this, Fluid Boy." I guess he specializes in awkward clumps of words because the original title for this one was A Leonard Cohen Afterworld. Anyway it's basically a collection of cliches: young man sleeps with gangster's wife, goes on run chased by thugs, accompanied by friend who wants to reunite with the girl he had a crush on in high school, they meet a kind-hearted hooker, etc. Their destination is Seattle and the climactic chase scene is during the Cobain memorial.
I must say I was a bit disappointed though because the picture wasn't really as bad as I expected. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty embarassing. They got a main character named Pilot. On the cover of the video, he's wearing goggles. The other guy (Jared Leto, once a tv heart throb, now a hipster film sex symbol due to his roles in Fight Club, Requiem For a Dream and soon Panic Room) calls himself "The Fuck King" and walks around in slow motion with his mullet mohawk and confederate flag shirt - the fashion magazine version of "southern" "white trash" chic. Also you got John C. McGinley, one of the Michael Bolton loving consultants in Office Space, running around naked with his hair in corn rows like Bo Derek, raising his arms to God and yelling out grand statements about the universe. And the bad guys are called "Miranda's Pandas." But still, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
For one thing they're not trying to go to the Cobain memorial. I thought that was the whole gimmick. The plot summary on the box is like "blah blah blah grunge music scene of the '90s blah blah blah." So you want to have some speeches about what the youth want and why the music moves them and etc. You know, the funny shit. Unfortunately the filmatists are smarter than that, and that makes the movie boring. There is mention of Cobain's suicide but they just go "Oh, shit" and don't discuss it. For all we know they listen to Gene Kruppa or something. So they just end up at the memorial by accident.
If you live in the northwest you might get a few chuckles. For one thing they portray oregon as fucking little house on the prairie. Everybody's a hick and talks in a southern accent. The towns are small and backward and the villagers (as you might as well call them) are all obsessed with an old fashioned alligator boy sideshow. Kinda reminded me of that old movie Bigfoot: Legend of the Sasquatch or whatever it was called, where everybody in washington is a woodsy old hick with a long beard.
The memorial service is pretty ridiculous too. They obviously couldn't get enough extras. Then they just passed out a bunch of blue flannel shirts to make the kids look "grungey." Kinda looks like a mormon picnic with a "come dressed as a Crip" theme. My favorite part is when the good guys get chased out of Seattle Center, they cross the street and are in Pioneer Square, where they almost get run over by a trolley!
Anyway the acting is okay. Jake Gyllenhall is good at playing these type of brain dead stoners. And I kinda like the Selma Blair gal, in an inappropriate way I mean. The cinematography is pretty good for this type of generic MTV movie. It looks better than straight-to-video.
Still not good though, and not bad enough to recommend, or to continue Writing ab
THE HILLS HAVE EYES (remake)
As you may remember, I fucking DESPISED the Texas Chain Saw remake, but I thought the Dawn of the Dead one was fun. I can definitely be a purist at times but not always. I just calls it like I sees it. For me THE HILLS HAVE EYES is a remake with alot of potential because the original is a movie that I like alot, but I know it's flawed. It's got these great archetypal type themes, a perfect setup, lots of great horrible gruesome fun, but it's pretty sloppy and cheap looking, and not always in a good way.
The remake, by the same frenchmen who made HIGH TENSION, had a couple things here and there that bothered me, but I think it goes in the pantheon of the good remakes. It stays very true to most of what I like about the original, and in some areas it even improves. TEXAS CHAINSAW I felt like was made by people who had no fuckin clue what was great about the original; DAWN OF THE DEAD was a good action movie but had none of the substance of the original; also please note I used two semi-colons in this sentence, which I think is pretty god damned professional in my opinion. To me, THE HILLS HAVE EYES feels like a new production of the old classic, because it stays very close to the original story for the first half, and when it veers off in a different direction it still stays true to the themes of the original. Shit, I'll say it: THE HILLS HAVE EYES = Shakespeare. Hopefully we'll have many different versions of THE HILLS HAVE EYES - we'll have it modernized, we'll have it set during WWII, or in space, we'll have it done entirely by puppets or animals or children.
But that's later, for now let's deal with the first remake. The basic story is almost the same as in the original. The whitebread Carter family are on a trailer trip to California, taking a stupid route through New Mexico. They stop at a gas station called Fred's Oasis, take a dirt road shortcut and then crash and break their axle. Then a pack of weird mutant/inbred bastards terrorize them, kill some of them and steal their baby. And the survivors turn savage to get the baby back and exact revenge on behalf of civilized man. the end.
Wes Craven was a college professor once so it's not surprising he put alot of pretentious subtext into his early movies. I'm not trying to say it's deep, but the way he set up this story has some kind of mythic quality or something that elevates it as far as I'm concerned. You got this family (named after the president at the time) that represents Middle Class America (in the new one they even have flags on their truck and on the mom's shirt, and Big Bob makes fun of his son in law for being a democrat). Then you got this other family that represents pure savagery. But they're two sides of the same coin, assuming the head side is all melted and fucked up. That's why the Carters have two dogs named Beauty and Beast. If they only had one it would be named The Duality of Man. Notice that Beauty gets mutilated early on, Beast starts chewing on people and knocking them off cliffs.
That's right, man is both beauty and beast so when the families face off it quickly becomes clear they're not that different. The non-mutants turn completely vicious when the chips are down (just like in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT). And in both versions the mutant pack also has the younger sister Ruby who wants to be normal. In the original version, she actually ran off and lived a normal life (if you believe the horrible HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2). In this one she steals a hoodie from the Carters and wears it for the rest of the movie, which to me represents that she wants to be part of their family instead of Jupiter's.
Like I said, if you MUST remake a '70s horror classic, this is a good one to do. Because the original HILLS HAVE EYES is not perfect. Alot of the acting and dialogue is pretty bad. The production values are low. Craven and his boys made an entertaining movie but they didn't make a low budget sing the way, say, Tobe Hooper did in CHAIN SAW or George Romero did on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It always bugged me how they just shine a bright light on the side of the trailer at night and you're supposed to believe it's moonlight or something. But on the other hand they got the great themes I mentioned, they got scary looking Michael Berryman as Pluto, they got some bits of weird production design by Robert Burns (the same dude who did TEXAS CHAIN SAW and TOURIST TRAP), they got a couple hilarious moments between the mutants and some savagery that still feels fresh today. Because I don't know another movie where the heroes are pushed to the point of using their mom's dead body as bait.
It's safe because it's not
a note perfect masterpiece like TEXAS CHAIN SAW, it's a great idea with the
execution only halfway there. Sure enough, the two frenchmen have made a real
entertaining movie that I will go so far as to say is in some ways better
than the original. I wasn't ready to say that right after I walked out of
the theater but the next day I watched the original again. And usually that
would be a bad idea that would make you notice more flaws in the remake. But
actually it had the opposite effect, really making me notice that the Carter
family is more sympathetic and believable in the new version (and more silly
than I remembered them being in the old version), and it made me really appreciate
the spooky desert atmosphere of the remake. Of course, there's a charm (yes,
violent horror movies have charm) to the primitive/raw/sloppy feel of the
original that can never be recreated, but these guys do a great job of reinterpreting
it.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are a couple of fuckups here and there. They
changed up the backstory, which is fine. Instead of tying the family to the
gas station attendant, there's a story about miners who refused to evacuate
their homes for the government's nuclear testing and apparently gave birth
to some mutants. But they don't trust the audience to figure that shit out
on basic clues (or DAWN OF THE DEAD remake style opening credits montage),
so in the scene where Big Bob Carter (played by Ted Levine this time) finds
a stash of stolen credit cards and jewelry in the gas station and figures
out this guy is preying on tourists, he also has to see a series of pristine
newspaper clippings detailing the entire history of the miners, nuclear testing
and disappearances. This was even worse than the scene I wish they had cut
out of WOLF CREEK. We already figured out what's going on here, fellas. You
don't need to draw us a picture.
But the very worst scene is close to the end, when an Elephant Man looking dude in a wheelchair makes a speech about "your people" and what they did to us, somehow blaming the Carters for nuclear testing and unwisely turning the hills pack into whiny victims. This speech was so bad I was afraid the movie was gonna pull a HIGH TENSION and end on a note so stupid it would erase my enjoyment of everything that came before it. Fortunately the scene is over quick and you can pretend it never happened. Like that time you (insert joke about jerking off while thinking about your friend's girlfriend/mom/whatever).
Also, the climax of the movie takes place in a nuclear testing site with houses full of mannequins. I thought that was a little too cute. But I understand how the idealized mannequin family fits in with the themes and why they'd want to have a new setting to set it apart from the original.
My only other major complaint is that in the opening scene and a couple scenes at the end they use a skipped frames/handcrank type deal to make the footage look all modern and hyperreal. It makes it hard to look at and doesn't fit with the more timeless feel of the rest of the photography. That's the problem with the young directors and Tony Scott, they rely on these type of dumb stylistic gimmicks that they think will make the audience more excited but they just date the movie like those cheesy video effects you used to see in the early '80s.
Those are small complaints though. The story has the same dread and primal thrills as before but with protagonists that feel more like real people. The mom especially. Big Bob is still a macho gun toting republican but he's not a racist or a complete asshole, he's pretty likable, and less of a coward. And there's a little detail where brother-in-law Doug checks out young Brenda in her swimsuit, which I think is supposed to imply that somewhere in his id or whatever the fuck that thing is called, he has something in common with the mutants who try to molest her later. And he does, because by the end of the movie he has fucked up more than a couple genetically deformed individuals, using a gun, a pick ax and even an American flag. As he stumbles out victorious and covered in blood, triumphant spaghetti western guitars sarcastically tell the audience that he's our hero. I mean obviously you can't blame the guy for going to extreme lengths to get his baby back, but the circumstances are so horrible that maybe a more civilized audience would be sad about the whole ordeal instead of cheering him for coming out on top. But not us.
I actually think it's scarier than the original. It helps that the Carter family is more believable, better actors. And they spend a while setting up the mutants as an unseen presence, making you really dread them before you actually see them.
To me, both versions of THE HILLS HAVE EYES play out like a very straight faced, very dark comedy making a pretty obvious but always enjoyable satirical point about american culture. Through the medium of cannibalistic mutant attacks. It could be called THE DELICIOUS TASTE OF THE BOURGEOISIE, but that would be stupid because THE HILLS HAVE EYES is one of the best movie titles I ever heard. So please hollywood, don't change the title to this new not as good one I just made up. assholes.
The big question I had when I first heard they were doing a remake is, how are they doing the mutants? Is Michael Berryman gonna be in it? No, but this time Pluto's not the only one who looks strange. They're all wearing birth defect makeup, some of them very extensive. I was skeptical about this idea but I think they did a real good job, making it look very disturbing and realistic. And best of all is Ruby, who in the original looked like Helena Bonham Carter dressed as a lost boy in Peter Pan, now has a digital effect to make her eyes look too far apart and uneven, an effect so convincing that everyone I've talked to about it thought the actress actually looked like that. (Stanley Kubrick talked about doing a digital effect like that in A.I., but it took several years, one former college professor and two weird french dudes to make his dream a reality.) Ruby is definitely the most improved aspect in the remake. She looks younger and weirder, and she's much quieter, speaking through actions instead of words.
The mutants are almost the same as before personality-wise, but you don't hear them talking quite as much, they stay in the shadows a little more and some of them are unintelligible. I missed some of the funny conversations from the original (like the one after the dog knocks Mercury off the cliff) but I liked the mysterious approach to the family. You're even less sure who's who than in the original, and most of these guys are huge and menacing. One guy likes to bust through walls and throw people long distances. I also really liked the smaller, wiry guy Lizard, played by Robert Joy who we all know from LAND OF THE DEAD and that one episode of BRUCE WILLIS'S MOONLIGHTING where he's the concert pianist who keeps getting beat up.
I do have to warn fans that in the remake they do not use their mom's dead body as bait. But this is by no means a watered down remake like WALKING TALL or something. In most other respects it's more brutal than the original. In fact it has one thing that happens, involving mutants and a baby in a trailer, that has upset some people when they heard about it, even though they would never dirty their asses by sitting in a theater that plays a low life movie like that. To be honest it didn't occur to me as all that shocking at the time, I was too distracted by what they were doing to the parakeet to think much of the baby. Also, in my opinion, this is a fictional movie and not something that actually happened. (Just my two cents.) But still, the mutants' irresponsible behavior has called forth Regurgitated Argument #5,067, in which today's horror movies are cast asperison upon and judged too shocking and repulsive for civilized human beings to watch or coexist with. You may recognize this argument from such movies as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, WOLF CREEK, and ten thousand horror movies in between. Do we really have to go through this shit again? The bottom line is, this is a well made horror movie. If you don't like horror movies or don't like this type of horror movie, I have good news for you: there's other movies you can watch. Personally I have no interest or understanding of the appeal of shit like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, GUINEA PIG, CHICAGO, or RENT. But some people like those movies, for some reason, and somehow life goes on. I happen to like a HILLS HAVE EYES type of movie and I don't think it's gonna destroy civilization, especially since the subtext of the movie itself is saying the exact thing you are about the degradation of our culture and civilization!
Plus, you've had almost 30 god damn years to find out what THE HILLS HAVE EYES is all about. I can't feel that sorry for you if you're surprised when the mutant cannibals invade the tourists' trailer and then - in a shocking twist - behave in ways not befitting of gentlemen. Are you asking for a movie about mutant cannibals who steal a baby and then raise it in a safe and loving environment? Because I don't think I would like that movie as much. (I'd watch it, though.)
Look at it this way. For the past, what, 7 or 8 years, horror fans have been whining about watered down, PG-13 studio horror movies replacing the serious horror that they love. Now that we finally got a handful of more gruesome adult oriented horror movies, do we really have to hear people whining about horror movies being too R-rated? For god's sake man go rent DARKNESS FALLS or something and leave us alone.
APPENDIX:
OBSESSIVE REMAKE VS. ORIGINAL COMPARISON
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THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE II
First, a review of my review of THE HILLS HAVE YES REMAKE I: not so hot. I had so much I wanted to say about that movie that I couldn't figure out what was actually worth saying. Just skip to the end where I ask, "Are you asking for a movie about mutant cannibals who steal a baby and then raise it in a safe and loving environment? Because I don't think I would like that movie as much. (I'd watch it, though.)" Somebody oughta do a remake of that review. Sorry, everybody.
Second, a review of the advertising for THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE II: top-notch. The teaser trailer was one single shot of two weird mutants dragging bodies through the desert, then the title of the movie. Because what more needs to be said? A masterpiece of simplicity. I also enjoyed the TV commercial narrator who said, "Last year, critics said THE HILLS HAVE EYES went too far. Now, get ready to go even further..." I am not a fan of advertising in general, so I gotta give credit when credit is due. You did it, fellas.
Okay, now the sequel. Okay at best. Not painful, but not good, a wasted opportunity for sure. Maybe as an homage to the original part 2 it's worse than the first one in pretty much every respect. Not as stylish or atmospheric, not as good of characters, less of a story, not as tense, less subtext, nothing all that new to offer.
The opening scene is a grossout shocker though. Right off the bat we realize the trouble with these mutants: not enough women in their tribe. When you live deep in a mine in the middle of a top secret military nuclear testing facility it's hard to meet people who share your interests. These guys must not be so sweet on Big Mama, the bald lady I believe survived part 1. They prefer kidnapping innocent non-radiated women and using them for reproductive purposes. So you see some poor tied-up lady give birth to a baby mutant. And you gotta figure she's been there for a long time by the apalling state of her toenails.
This is actually a smart way to open the movie because it establishes what the mutants want, and what the non-mutants sure as hell don't want. And because it actually shows where the baby comes out (fuck you MPAA) you kind of think shit, anything can happen in this movie.
Anything could happen, it's just that it doesn't. Maybe it will happen some other time.
The premise of the original part 2 was that some dirt bike racers (including one of the kids from part 1, the surviving dog, and the reformed hill-mutant Ruby) happen to go through the same stretch of desert and run into the mutants again, with less Michael Berryman. This has a way better premise: a team of military trainees goes to deliver equipment to scientists setting up surveillance equipment after the massacre in part 1, and they get attacked by the mutants who live in the mines who you didn't see before. So the soldiers have to fight and actually go into the mines to save one of their own.
This is a great premise for many reasons, none of which occurred to the filmatists. Even though it's written by Wes Craven (well, mostly his son Jonathan who wrote the horrible WES CRAVEN'S MIND RIPPER) it doesn't go for any deeper meaning than "some people fight some mutants." With American soldiers fighting vicious insurgents in the desert obviously there's room for some war commentary, but they just settle for pointing out that one character is against "the war" because "the president lies too much." Later this is the guy who completely destroys a mutant's head with a rock, but that's about all you get. Also, let's face it, the mutant culture is not real enlightened about how to treat their women. And you got two women soldiers here, so it could definitely explore some gender issues. But the Cravens don't want to, I guess.
The only thing that really reminded me of the themes of the original movie was that the mutants and soldiers have similar names. Listen to these names: Crank, Napoleon, Hansel, Sniffer, Spitter, Chameleon... can you guess which ones are the mutants?
Of course, I might follow the Dawn of the Dead Remake Precedent and forgive a lack of substance if the movie was full of kickass action. And it sure oughta be. Imagine that tribe of mutants attacks somebody who are trained and equipped to fight back. That's an Oh Shit It's On Moment right there. It should be like ALIENS. These people should be smart, and they go into those mines and they run into problems and they don't know what they're up against, but they figure out a good strategy and fight a hell of a battle. And the mutants should escalate, they should dig into all the things we know they've salvaged over the years and go to code red. You remember the fight the Devil's Rejects put up when the cops came after them? Well this is a tribe of mutant savages, they live for this shit. This should be all out fuckin mayhem!
Sorry. No antes will be upped. They use the excuse that these are trainees to treat them like any stupid victims in any other horror movie. The typical suburban family of the original actually put up a better fight. This is some special branch of the military where you're allowed to keep your hair pretty long if you are sensitive or into mountain climbing. These guys suck. Maybe that's the political side of this, they are so desperate for new recruits the National Guard even accepts these losers.
Also, I'm not saying I want to be a member of the Carter family or anything, but this new set of characters is more obnoxious. They got what characters in alot of bad movies have, Random Asshole Syndrome (or R.A.S.). This is where instead of writing believable or interesting characters, they gotta make everybody have a sticker bush up their ass the entire movie for no reason, always insulting and bickering with each other, and saying that everything is "bullshit." It's kind of funny when the anti-war guy is called "peace ass shit boy," because that's the kind of poorly conceived insult real people tend to come up with, but otherwise it's not very enjoyable to watch these pricks hate each other for 90 minutes.
One main character in particular bugged me because he reminded me too much of that comedian Carlos Mencia. Imagine if Carlos Mencia was younger, and was actually Mexican instead of a German-Columbian guy pretending to be Mexican so he can say "beaner," but he's still an unfunny asshole saying moronic shit all the time. That's Jacob Vargas's character.
And the mutants are of a reasonably high quality strain, but not the greatest. They are better than a WRONG TURN type mutant but a little less interesting than either the original HILLS or the original remake. They have little character moments but not enough. There is even less talking and interaction than in the first one. There was more personality to Lizard and some of those guys. The new sort-of-nice-mutant is not as good as Ruby, although it's funny that he looks like Eric Stoltz in the movie MASK. It might even be the same character and that's why he's trying to be nice. I wonder why Cher abandoned him in a mine, though, that's pretty shitty of her. Anyway, the big lugs aren't as big as the ones in the first remake. One guy has a long tongue, though. The better to get bitten off.
Alot of the things you try to do in a good sequel, they don't try to do in this one. There is not even much continuity. I understand most of the characters from the first one are dead, but not all of them. (Well, we do learn that all the surviving heroes actually died, ALIEN 3 style.) But it would be nice to see some connection with the mutants. There are no re-appearing characters here, unless maybe one of the scorpions you see crawling on the ground is the same.
And what about making it bigger and more exciting? Since going into the mines is sort of the new twist here, you would think there would be something exciting in there, but all you get is one small room with a bunch of body parts hanging up. To quote George Clinton, "It would be ludicrous to think that we are new to this, we do this. This is what we do." In other words, we Torture Porn Enthusiasts (TPEs) who would watch this movie have already seen more original and elaborate underground cannibal digs in TEXAS CHAINSAW 2. We were hoping for something more deluxe.
There are some good moments here and there. The best is right at the beginning though. A mutant who looks like the Toxic Avenger impales a guy on a spear and then uses it to toss him over a cliff. Imagine if you stabbed a watermelon with a long spear and then tried to catapult it at overhand as far as you could, that's what it's like. And then the topper is there's an overhead shot of this ugly bastard raising his arms in victory and barking like a walrus. That's how I like my mutants.
(Somebody should edit that into the trailer for Shawshank Redemption.)
One original gross out scene involves a dude climbing out of a latrine covered in shit. The soldier they call Napoleon (ha ha, not a mutant's name) is taking a shit when a hand reaches up and grabs his ass. That is some freaky shit but instead of using it for a scare they gotta make it into a joke. Another soldier asks who's in there and Napoleon says, "Shitman the Barbarian - I don't know!"
What the hell does that even mean? You gotta ruin a good scene with a joke and the joke doesn't even make any god damn sense. Why would he be making up names of barbarians when something this crazy just happened? It doesn't fly.
Shitman the Barbarian. Come on, Cravens. You can do better. You must do better.
The direction is competent but not half as stylish or effective as the first remake. Technically this part 2 is better than the original part 2, but since it doesn't have a dog flashback it's not as memorable, I will not be rewatching it like I do the original. Sorry.
I kind of hope it makes money though because part 3 will be a last chance for a do-over. I do like the way it ends, setting up a badass sequel. The Toxic Avenger guy from the beginning barely survives, and he's crying and dragging the dead bodies of two of his brothers through the mines into an area we haven't seen before. He comes to this sort of platform made of junk, where he lifts up the dead bodies, one by the hair and one by the ankle. And he yells, "This... Are... WARGH! THIS ARE WARRRRR!" and then the camera pulls back to show this crowd of dozens, maybe hundreds of crazy mutants there deep in the mines, they all let out these bizarre cheers and militantly pump their knives and spears and weird retro-fitted guns in the air. Oh shit, it's on.
Okay, actually I made up that ending, what really happens is they kill one of the mutants and then leave. I was actually surprised when it ended, I thought something big was still gonna happen. I'm not saying they gotta go with my corny ending, but they shoulda come up with something to leave you wanting more. If there's another sequel they should do what they shoulda done this time, and escalate. The military knows what's going on there so they should send in an actual strike force, go into the mines and try to wipe 'em out. It should be a fuckin World War II movie but with mutants. Or THE DIRTY DOZEN. Get some memorable non-mutant characters for once, and an army of mutants. Or if they want to go political again they could have the mutant uprising, they actually attack the army base themselves, or a New Mexico suburb, and then the humans chase them back into the mines where they have all kinds of boobie traps set up.
Do you know who Survival Research Laboratories are? They're these weirdos from San Francisco who build robots and make them fight each other as kind of a performance art. Not like the battlebots, these are horrifying machines out of your nightmares, sometimes they staple cowskin to them and weird shit like that, and they accompany the fights with scary sounds of metal clanging and rabbits dying. They spray fire at each other, chop each other up, destroy windows with air cannons, sometimes people in the audience actually get hurt. Alot of their parts are stolen from dumpsters and they use animal parts to create horrible smells. The robotmakers follow a samurai code like me, they don't believe in selling out, they even turned down doing a music video with Herbie Hancock. According to one of their videos they did consider a proposal from some anarchists to "steal" their robots and use them to fight against police, but they decided against it.
But I swear I read one time that one of the guys from SRL was actually convinced to direct part 3 in the original HILLS HAVE EYES series. Of course it never happened, and evolved into that horrible MINDRIPPER movie I mentioned before. But can you imagine what that psycho would've come up with for the hill mutants to do? Something a whole lot more interesting than part 2 here, that's for sure. Come on Cravens, let's put some god damn imagination into this thing next time. I don't care if you're trying to get it finished in a year, you can still come up with some exciting ideas to throw in there.
Let's see something we haven't seen before, please. You can do it, Cravens. Don't fuck this up again.
THE HIP HOP PROJECT
Here's a little documentary not many of you will probaly bother to see, but I just saw it and I have to vouch for it. I know THE HIP HOP PROJECT sounds like a working title they never bothered to change, but it's actually the name of the youth outreach program documented in the movie. This is the story of a guy in his 20s named Chris "Kazi" Rolle who finds some troubled teenagers with a talent for rapping and helps them record an album. It's not only his way of keeping them off the streets, or giving them a voice for self expression, or even getting into their lives to be a mentor and a positive influence. It's all of those things, but it seems like it's also a form of redemption and self discovery for him, having been an orphan and a homeless criminal and still not having come to terms with where he came from.
Kazi lures these kids in with the promise of recording, and then he tells them the catch: you can't talk about "money, hoes and clothes." He wants them to talk about their lives, their problems, try to touch somebody emotionally, maybe change somebody's life. We do see a scene of some rappers battling, insulting each other to each other's faces, and it's very entertaining. But Kazi is trying to get at something more sincere and from the heart. As an exercise he asks them to tell about something that has happened to them in their lives. This leads to an amazing scene where one of the kids rhymes (and I'm not clear whether he has had time to write this or if he is improvising) about his father. While he's rhyming he starts to cry, his voice quivers, tears start pouring out. But he keeps going. I heard DMX gets tears on stage sometimes but I don't know if he rhymes while crying. I never seen anything like it.
So then the movie starts to go into the lives of these kids. The girl whose dad got locked up 3 weeks before the movie started, the guy whose mom dies during the 4 years of the project and his landlord uses it as an excuse to evict him. You can see how having the album and the influence of Kazi keeps them going. The lyrics they write about their troubles sometimes sound a little forced, a little too much like an assignment, but sometimes they're really good. The most powerful is probaly the song by Princess about the pain and guilt she feels over having had an abortion. That's one topic I haven't seen Little Jon or 50 Cents delve into yet.
When Kazi was growing up though, he didn't have an album to work on. He tells how he was born in the Bahamas, and when he was about 3 his mom went to America. She was supposed to come back for him, and she didn't. So he ended up in an orphanage, then a foster home, then as a teenager he started getting into trouble. So they wrote a letter to his mom. He was able to go to the U.S. to live with her, but he was acting out, so she threw him out, and that's when he lived on the streets and started stealing to get by.
While helping these kids out, Kazi really starts to think about all these things. He takes a trip back to the Bahamas, visits these places from his past, meets with his foster mother and his social worker. When he comes back he decides that he can't be telling these kids to heal unless he heals himself. He's been trying to get to see his mother, then it finally happens.
This is the most tense scene I've seen in a documentary since Nick Broomfield walked into the prison to find Suge Knight in BIGGIE AND TUPAC. But it's obviously alot more emotional. At first it seems like they're just gonna catch up and pretend like everything's okay. But Kazi forces himself to blurt out the question "Why did you leave me?" Somehow, his mom won't admit any guilt, in her eyes she is the victim somehow. She refuses to apologize. He tries to explain how the trouble he got into as a kid came from being an orphan, trying to get attention. This isn't an excuse, he knows this, he works with kids like that now, that's what he does. But you can't tell if this lady gets it or not. You look at her, she seems like a nice normal lady, but she fuckin abandoned her little boy. Left the country without him and never came back. And has convinced herself there was nothing wrong with that.
Faced with this, Kazi chooses not to tell her to fuck off. He came here to make progress. So he pulls a Jesus move: HE apologizes to HER for other things he did later, years after being FUCKING ABANDONED AS A BOY BY HIS OWN MOTHER. And sounds sincere.
This is not the only scene in the movie that I thought was amazing, but it's the one that made the movie. Many adults will tear up. When the movie is not being inspirational, it can be pretty damn sad. But what's sadder is watching it fall on deaf ears. I saw this with an audience full of teenagers who were excited at the beginning but got more and more restless as the movie got better. You never saw so much cell phone glow in one area before. Well into this scene where Kazi tries to understand why his mom abandoned him as a child, I saw a young dude turn around to tell his friends "This is weak." Another kid had a similar reaction to the touching scene where Kazi hugs his woman after she's accepted his marriage proposal.
I mean really, who wants to see that shit? Emotions? Love? Humanity? Come on! We want guns and gold chains and diamonds! Real men don't fall in love and dedicate their lives to helping young people. Real men collect pretty necklaces and rings. Like 50 Cents or Liberace.
But I'll try not to write off the entire generation based on the little bastards I see at the movies. I'm sure this movie could be inspirational to some kids, as it's obviously supposed to. But I think it might work better for adults, showing what this Kazi guy has done and making you wonder why you're not out there trying to help people.
The weirdest thing that
happens in the movie is about a third of the way in, when Kazi realizes that
the money he gets for his non-profit program Art Start is not enough to record
the album. He has some fundraisers, makes alot of calls trying to find someone
who can donate studio time. Suddenly, out of the blue, a studio is donated
by Russell Simmons and... what the fuck?... a guy you all know from talkbacks,
Motown recording artist Bruce Willis
(The Return of Bruno, 1987, catalog #MOTC-6222). And Bruce actually
appears briefly in the movie, giving Kazi a hug and doing a press conference
with him to announce the deal. After that you don't see him again but every
once in a while you see a logo for what is now called Bruce Willis Art Start.
(Bruce is actually credited as executive producer of the documentary along
with Queen Latifah.)
One thing the movie does not explain (because it's not all that important
to the main story) is how the hell Bruce ended up getting involved. It's obviously
a good cause but it's just kind of a surprise that he would be the one to
get involved in it. I never heard of Bruce having any interest in the hip
hop, although as somebody pointed out in Harry's "I just got off the
phone with Bruce Willis" talkback, hip hop loves him. There have been
many lyrics about Bruce, such as:
"Rapid fire louie like Rambo got bullets / I'ma die harder like my kid
Bruce Willis"
"Mr. Big Bad Insane / black John McClane,"
"Say you wanna battle, I'ma go forth / in a bunny suit like Bruce Willis
in the underrated movie North"
"Mr. Black Bruce Willis / plea-ease don't kill us!"
I don't want to be an asshole and overshadow this very good documentary by
bringing up the whole PG-13 LIVE FREE OR DIE [to be determined] issue
again, but I'm afraid it's actually relevant here. You see, THE HIP HOP PROJECT
was originally given an R-rating. Apparently the fuck word is used 17 times,
and the more friendly variation of the Michael Richards word is used at least
that much. But the filmatists appealed the rating, and they actually won!
It was determined that the social merit of this movie overcomes the use of
the fuck word and therefore fucking kids should be allowed to fucking see
it without a fucking adult. (Kazi never would've had an adult to take him
to the movies.)
Could this precedent also be used to release a real man's DIE HARD as a PG-13?
Well, no. But I do have to give the MPAA some credit for the first time in
my life. I'm glad they could actually understand the concept that "fuck"
is just a word people say, and they were able to judge the movie based solely
on the content of its character, as Dr. King and John McClane would've wanted
it, maybe.
Anyway, ratings and Bruce Willis aside, THE HIP HOP PROJECT is a good one.
It will not blow you through the back of the theater, and it would be fine
to see it on video. But you might consider going anyway, because according
to the credits, 100% of the net profits will be donated to youth programs.
The kind of programs that will keep kids off the streets and out of the movie
theaters if and when we bite the bullet and pay to see a PG-13 DIE ****. Then
maybe there will be less distraction from dipshits checking their phones and
saying that McClane is "weak" for caring about his daughter.
If I was wearing a hat I would take it off right now in honor of the people
who made this movie and especially to this Kazi guy, who should be an inspiration
to all of us.
HIT LIST
Here's a VHS only action piece from director William Lustig, who I got some respect for due to the sleazy horror movie MANIAC and the badass Robert Forster revenge thriller VIGILANTE. (whoah, I never realized how similar those two titles are.) This one is closer to VIGILANTE although it was a work-for-hire deal for Lustig and not his usual New York-based independent filmmaking.
Basically this is the story of a regular guy whose kid is mistakenly kidnapped and he tries to get him back. I thought because of the title that he would have a list of people to get revenge on, but really he's just going after this one guy who has his kid.
Like VIGILANTE alot of the fun is in the ridiculous way the story unfolds. There's this mobster (Leo Rossi) who gets busted and the feds are trying to get him to turn over on his mentor (Rip Torn!). Torn has a badass hired killer to take care of any potential prosecution witnesses, so the feds have Rossi and his son cooped up in a suburban house. But the phone is tapped so the killer is dispatched to this address.
Meanwhile, our hero's son is having trouble being picked on by bullies. His "Uncle Brian" (Harold Sylvester in a Steve James-style thankless role as the badass African-American friend who gets killed immediately) teaches him a few karate moves. Then he shuts the door too hard and the 9 on their address flips over to look like a 6. So the killer comes to the wrong house, shoots Uncle Brian and mom and kidnaps who he thinks is Rossi's son.
Our hero, dad, comes home to the crime scene and is understandably upset. And he gets more upset when he happens to overhear that one of these feds (Charlies Napier) is not gonna go after the kidnappers but instead will lock him up to keep the mistake a secret until Rossi is able to testify.
So dad goes out for justice himself, and ends up getting Rossi as a mismatched partner. So the stage is set for a good b-movie, something Lustig has been known to deliver. But there are two fiends who conspire to obstruct Lustig from his goal: an actor named Jan-Michael Vincent and a disease called alcoholism.
Yep. The hero is played by Jan-Michael Vincent, who's no Robert Forster in terms of presence. I guess people know him as the guy from AIRWOLF, but I never watched that show so I mostly think of him as a young motorcycle riding hotshot in movies like THE MECHANIC with Charles Bronson and DAMNATION ALLEY with George Peppard. Time and spirits have not been kind to his face between those movies and 1989, but he doesn't end up looking grizzled. He just doesn't look like a movie star. Maybe a little league coach. More importantly he must've been hard to get ahold of during moments of clarity. Scenes without him seem like a real movie but alot of the scenes with him are awkwardly pieced together with him obviously not in the same shots as the other actors. In one early scene he's in his backyard laying on a bench trying to play it off as "just kickin it" as opposed to "too drunk to stand up."
So poor Jan-Michael holds the movie back but the other elements are strong enough that I think it's still kind of a gem, or at least kind of a smooth shiny rock you find on a beach. An agate. The best thing about the movie by far is the guy who plays the hired killer, Lance God Damn Henriksen.
I'm always looking for a good Lance Henriksen performance that I haven't seen, and damn if this isn't one of the better ones, up there with his villains in STONE COLD, HARD TARGET and maybe even NEAR DARK. I mean, the guy is introduced as a shoe salesman. We learn that he makes all this money doing hits for the mob but he doesn't do it for the money, he just has a passion for murder. So he keeps it real and keeps his day job at the shoe store. There's something creepy about that, I can't quite put my finger on it. But next time some dude is shoehorning a pair onto you just think about how many people he's killed. (This one's "killed so many people he owns his own cemetery." Not literally, I don't think.)
And then as soon as Lance starts killing it's clear that he's even more of a badass than you've ever seen him play before. He seems to have ninja training. He effortlessly goes into a jail and kills everybody on both sides of the bars. He does martial arts, he's good with knives, he's acrobatic, he likes to drop from above. Okay, he's kind of stupid about finding the correct address, but otherwise he's a master killer.
It occurred to me while watching him fight Uncle Brian that this is kind of a glimpse at what it would've been like if he had played The Terminator like Cameron originally planned. In fact he might as well be a cyborg in the great final battle where Vincent drives around a parking garage with Lance hanging on. He grips the top of the car (Jan-Michael bites his hand), he hangs off of a swinging car door, gets bumped against walls and pillars, almost falls off the edge, hangs on the bottom. Man, how is Jan-Michael gonna get rid of this guy? I can't imagine how he'll be able to do it. Oh, by the way here's a picture of the cover:
Another thing that puts this one over the top into unheralded agate territory is the hilarious behavior of the kid during the climactic showdown. Henriksen is carrying the kid under one arm, busting off shots at Jan-Michael, who's dancing around behind some parked cars like a coward, and all the while the kid is yelling "Get him dad! Get him!" as if dad has the upper hand. Then as soon as dad has managed to shoot Henriksen the kid is happy and smiling and he says "Where's mom?" As if he expected both parents to come along on this gun battle/car rampage. I guess she doesn't really care about him, does she? What a terrible mother. Then moments after that they're driving away and Rossi, who the kid has barely seen before, if ever, has his arm around him and they have big smiles on their faces. Not a traumatic event at all. Everything's great now. Dad killed the bad guy. I'm not sure how, because he's just a regular dude, and Lance Henriksen is a ninja. But he did it. You got him, dad!
HITMAN
Timothy Olyphant (the bad guy from LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD [aka the killer from SCREAM 2 {SPOILER FOR SCREAM 2}]) plays a gentleman by the name of Forty Seven, who is a super badass hitman who does nothing at all in life except kill people for a secret organization that has something to do with the church and that raises orphans to be assassins and tattoos bar codes on their heads and makes them stay bald and dress like Dick Cheney. And although the movie has some enjoyable moments I feel like a movie that's about that should really be more enjoyable than this is. And I'm sorry to say it but I think I have to throw some of the blame at the casting of Mr. Olyphant.
He's a pretty good actor and I usually like him, but there is a major problem here: he doesn't look good bald. I really believe that when they had him all signed on and were excited and then started fitting him for his costume and shaved his head and looked at him they must've thought oh shit. What have we done? There are plenty of people who can pull off bald: Samuel Jackson, Jason Statham, Telly Savalas, Patrick Stewart, Louis Gossett Jr., Montell Williams, Isaac Hayes, Gordon from Sesame Street, etc. And then there's everybody else. I'm not saying Olyphant looks like a freak or anything, but he doesn't look cool, it doesn't look natural. This is a guy who should not be bald until God or cancer tells him to. And every time he's sneaking away from an assassination, trying not to be captured or killed by Interpol, the Russian Secret Service and everybody else in the world you keep wondering how it is that nobody can spot this weirdo with the bald head and the tattoo on the back wearing a spotless black suit with a blinding red tie. I know it's based on a video game and that's where they get the look from, but come on. Super Mario would have an easier time not getting spotted.
And anyway if this UPC code has to be there then why doesn't anybody ever scan it? They need to look at his file so they scan his head. Or he is being hired for an assassination and he meets the client at Target and they use one of those price checkers to scan his head and it shows how much it will cost so he doesn't have to say the figure out loud. I don't know man, but if you're gonna put something stupid like that on the main character it should be used for something at least once. For example Charles Bronson carries a harmonica in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and he plays it. He doesn't just carry it around. I heard that in THE NUMBER 23 Jim Carrey wears a saxophone around his neck all the time and never plays it. So there is a precedent for this. The Schumacher Precedent. Is that really the standard you want to live up to, whoever-made-HITMAN?
Anyway, there is one scene
where he does realize that he sticks out like a sore thumb and should wear
a disguise, so he steals some kind of uniform (looks like a shriner's outfit)
but then, in the grand tradition of Lando Calrissian in disguise at Jabba
the Hutt's Palace, he takes off the hat to reveal himself to the camera.
And to expose his identifying tattoo and head. You know, for a guy trained
his entire life to do nothing but this, he should probaly be more competent.
And I don't know about this character. Other than having some cool moves he's
not cool. He doesn't fight for anything that's right, he doesn't seem aware
that his life is a tragedy, he only makes one joke and it's not funny, he
seems to be afraid of sex, he's weird and socially awkward but not in a funny
or scary way. And Olyphant is dedicated to this portrayal but he doesn't find
a way to make you like the dude anyway.
So I'm glad the guy can pay rent but I gotta blame the casting, because maybe
if it had been some Charles Bronson type charisma in there it could've transcended
the crappiness of the movie. But you also gotta blame the filmatists. This
is a movie that feels DTV from the very beginning. It does have more cool
things that happen than most DTVs, but stylistically and storywise it's a
dead ringer for the Seagal spy intrigue pictures like THE FOREIGNER, SHADOW
MAN and a little MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, or some of the recent Wesley Snipes
pictures. It's got the white flashes, the dreary European locations, the awkward
rhythm to the editing, the busy BOURNE-ripoff score, and according to IMDb
it even uses stock footage (not sure if it was fixed for the uncut DVD I saw
but apparently some of the opening montage was recycled from the TV show DARK
ANGEL).
The narration that explains Forty Seven's background is pretty funny. He tells
us he works for a group "so secret nobody knows it exists," but
also that it's "known only as 'The Organization'." Which is it,
baldy? Is it known or unknown? How bout you say "it would be known only
as 'The Organization,' except nobody knows it exists, so it's really not known
as anything at all, and even if it was, nobody would know the right name,
so even if you talked to somebody who was in The Organization they wouldn't
know what you were talking about, because it's really not called The Organization,
and even they don't know it exists anyway, because nobody does"?
Hmmm, maybe not. I'll need to streamline that a little.
But early on there is a
scene where the movie transcends mere stupid to the type of absurd that I
love. Forty Seven gets surrounded by a bunch of other bald UPC heads. This
would be a good time to line them all up and do inventory but instead they
all point two guns at each other. When Forty Seven asks if they would like
to die with dignity they agree and ritualistically pull back their guns, empty
the cartridges, drop the guns, and reach to the back of their suits to pull
out two full sized swords! Must've been uncomfortable running around with
those things in there. And then there's a big sword fight on a subway. Now
we're talking! The scene honestly did turn me around and convince me that
I was watching my type of movie, but the rest of the movie did not really
live up to that promise.
When it's only interested in over-the-top action like this that's where it
manages to be better than DTV. There's a long sequence full of homages to
Olyphant's nemesis John McClane - bare feet, swinging through a window, shooting
a bunch of guys from the top of the elevator, etc. There are occasional clever
ways to kill people like a guy with a bomb in his neck or some guns hidden
in an ice bucket in a hotel hallway. In this cut the violence is pretty graphic,
lots of blood that splatters unneccessarily far, heads that explode when shot,
a digital arm-hacking, a severed ear. Also you get a few boobs. Remember those?
They used to show them in movies. You'll recognize 'em.
There's enough to make the movie watchable but not enough to make it very memorable. There are blown opportunities. In one scene he has to flee the hotel stripped of all his trademark gear, down to his underwear, not even wearing shoes or socks. I thought aha, this is gonna be good, this is like Mel Gibson at the beginning of PAYBACK having to build himself up from nothing, pickpocketing and petty thieving to get himself an ID, a credit card, a meal, a suit, a gun. I love this type of shit.
But nope, Forty Seven just walks into a building, off camera, walks back out fully-clothed again. Never mind.
I'm not sure really what
they were going for with this movie. There's nothing wrong with a generic
assassin movie, but it has to be better executed to transcend the lack of
originality. And there's nothing wrong with adding some weird touches like
this whole secret backstory, but personally I thought the backstory was pretty
stupid and never was explained very well or applied much to the story. It
just seemed like they had to mention it because it was in the game and nerds
would get mad if they didn't.
HITMAN HART: WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS
Not long ago I reviewed a VERY fucking excellent wrestling documentary by the name of Beyond the Mat. That was a picture about the Mick Foley, Jake "The Snake Roberts", Terry Funk and some other wrestlers, exploring what it is that drives these whacked out motherfuckers to destroy their bodies and endure torturous pain every night for silly entertainment. All of the stars of the movie are fascinating and I almost would've liked to see a whole movie focusing on just one of them.
Well little did ol' Vern know that there already WAS a picture focussing on one wrestler, a Canadian by the name of Bret "The Hitman" Hart, who was WWF tag team champion in the '80s and world champion for quite a while in the '90s. Bret doesn't have the tragic dimension of a Jake "The Snake" or an aging Terry Funk, but what he does have is a great story and I would say that this picture is arguably even better than Beyond the Mat, which is saying alot.
I don't know if there is an award like this but I think whoever made this picture should get a Lucky Motherfucker Award - Documentary, based on the fact that they set out just to do a story about Bret Hart and by accident happened to be filming him during a time which, as one film critic said, "is like a god damned SHakespeare type tragedy." As a Film Writer I would have to agree with that. This is the story of a man born into wrestling - his dad is a wrestler, all of his brothers are wrestlers, all of his sisters are married to wrestlers. But Bret was destined to be the brightest star of them all, becoming for many years the most popular wrestler in the world and, according to the documentary, declared the most famous Canadian in the world. Which I guess isn't saying much but still, give the canadians a chance I guess.
Bret was a dude who loved heroics, and although I remember him being a bad guy in the '80s, he was known as a straight laced Good Guy when he was champ, and that is one of the themes of the picture - good guys and bad guys. Bret loved being a good guy who beat bad guys, and was distressed when wrestling started to change in the '90s, and guys like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin - who cheated and sprayed beer around and flipped off the crowd, like bad guys - became crowd favorites. The WWF organizational type folks asked Bret to become a bad guy, and he didn't want to. So what they worked out was an interesting thing where Bret would be a bad guy by telling the audience what he really believed - that americans are a bunch of jackasses for glorifying characters like Stone Cold.
This is another great theme of the picture, that wrestling is actually more real than you might think. What seems like Bret's anti-American shtick is actually him speaking honestly to his fans. One of the funniest scenes cuts back and forth between Bret being booed and hissed as a villain in the US while he speaks his mind, and being applauded as a hero in Canada for saying the same thing.
Like in Beyond the Mat, we get to know the family and see the way wrestling is passed on through generations. There are some pretty creepy type scenes where the Hart boys all laugh about hearing screams of pain coming from "the dungeon," the basement where their dad practiced real submission holds on rookie wrestlers. Then there is a scene where their dad, an old hunched over man who speaks and walks slow, goes into the dungeon with a couple of huge, musclebound young dudes to demonstrate some of those holds. It is amazing to behold this little old dude forcing the oafs to scream in pain. "STOP SIR, STOP SIR, IT HUUUURRRTTTSS!" This dude has absolutely ZERO of the badass presence of The Limey, but judging from this footage I'd have to say he'd give The Limey a run for his money in the even-older-than-Vern badass category.
Another parallel to Beyond the Mat is a brief segment with an interview with Mick Foley. Also, there is more from the weasely WWF owner Vince McMahon, who in this picture is playing the Darth Vader character. Where Hitman extinguishes itself is by building a suspenseful storyline as Hitman is offered $3 million to leave Vince McMahon's WWF and join Ted Turner's at-the-time more popular WCW for 2 years. Hitman decides to turn down the deal out of loyalty to McMahon, who he sees as a father figure, and he signs a lower paying deal to stay with WWF for 20 years.
But as the story unfolds we realize ironically that just the fact that Hitman considered leaving the WWF put him on McMahon's hitlist. (You see it is ironic because his name is hitman, but it is a hitlist, metaphorically anyway. If you get my drift, kind of hard to explain there. never mind.) After signing the deal McMahon then turns around and says that he can't afford it and has to let Bret go. Bret is then forced to plan his exit from the WWF, and we get to see the behind the scenes dealings and major betrayal that takes place. Because after 20 years with the WWF, and as a true Wrestling Artist, Hitman would like to go out in a blaze of glory, but Darth McMahon wants to do whatever he can to degrade Bret, making him a less valuable commodity for Ted Turner. You see, even in the wrestling world all the power hungry rich fuckers ruin it for everybody.
Fuck you.
Anyway I don't want to give it all away, but you motherfuckers know me. You know that I mean business. I do not take this type of shit lightly, I would not recommend a god damned documentary if it wasn't worth your time. This is a truly great picture, and even if you don't like wrestling at all, even if you don't like Roddy Piper pictures like I do, by the end you will be very wrapped up in the characters, on the edge of your seat waiting to find out what happens. I like the way there are things that seem like just part of the act, that we are able to see are actually real. And sometimes the wrestlers handle their problems like wrestlers. In any other context it might be Negative to punch out your boss, but here they are just following the code of the Wrestler and you realize it's the only thing that really could be done.
Anyway it will be a tight race for best picture, wrestling documentary this year. The only Negativity I have to say about this one is, what the hell kind of name is wrestling with shadows? I have no idea what it has to do with themes, motifs and what nots of this piece. It doesn't really fit the story at all. Oh well, maybe it's a canadian thing.
HOLY
MOUNTAIN
PLOT SUMMARY:
When a dwarf with no hands or feet and some little kids try to stone a naked
dude they found passed out, pissing himself with his face covered in flies,
the naked dude and the little guy smoke a joint, hug and become fast friends.
So they go into town, where tourists laugh and take pictures of the troops
executing school children, and they watch the frogs and chameleons re-enact
the conquest of Mexico in a model city. Also the naked dude looks like Jesus
and these guys drug him and make a cast of him and he wakes up surrounded
by hundreds of duplicates of himself so he screams and smashes them but takes
one and carries it around for a while and later he eats its face off and ties
it to a bunch of helium balloons and sets it free. He hangs out with 12 hookers
in matching see-through black outfits. One of them is an old lady, one is
a little girl and they also have a chimpanzee. Some people might call it 13
hookers I guess, but I'm old fashioned so I'm gonna assume the chimpanzee
is just an associate and not a professional.
But when the Jesus guy puts a knife in his g-string and rides a hook up into
a giant orange tower to try to assasasinate the Alchemist (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
it could change the course of his life forever. A deadly game of cat and mouse
could happen maybe, or a suspenseful who knows what. Explosive revelations
about the past could hold the key to the future. I don't know. You really
can't turn HOLY MOUNTAIN into a tagline but the point is, Jodorowsky asks
the guy if he wants gold, he says yes, then he makes him shit in a bowl. Then
he burns the shit and the guy sits in a big glass case and breathes in the
fumes of the burning shit and his sweat drips into a tube and they pour it
through some other tubes and eventually it crystallizes and then turns into
gold. And Jodo hands him a chunk of gold that used to be his shit and you
just know the guy is thinking I shoulda had a bigger breakfast.
But that's only the beginning. Believe it or not this movie actually has a
clear plot and structure. It really is the craziest movie I've ever seen.
This could be the Adult Pleasures movie you pay 15 bucks for when you stay
at the Interzone Best Western. But it's not just a bunch of random psychedelic
bullshit. I'm not gonna lie and claim I can make heads or tails of, say, the
part where an old dude has boobies and then they turn into tiger heads and
spray milk all over a dude's face. (I think it has something to do with society.
Or relationships, maybe.) But for the most part I think this movie is on my
wavelength, I get what is going on here.
Once the naked Jesus dude
(who unfortunately is called "The Thief" in the credits instead
of "naked Jesus dude" - this may be the one concession Jodorowsky
made to the mainstream) gets inside the Alchemist's orange tower (not a penis,
by the way, just a tower) it turns into some kind of occult ritual with these
beautiful stylized sets that are shot from a bird's-eye-view and rotate around.
The place is pretty stripped down but I'd still say the Alchemist is living
large since he has this beautiful naked tatooed black lady bodyguard working
for him, and he has a throne made out of two stuffed mountain goats and a
bathtub with a live baby hippo in it. I mean, this would be a fuckin spectacular
episode of Cribs. Anyway he brings the thief onto a giant turntable
that spins around and points at 7 different life-sized naked wax sculptures
of the other people who he's going to take on a journey to the Holy Mountain.
But there's also a pelican walking around on the turntable. Okay so Ice-T
has a shark tank, that might top the pelican, but not alot of people have
a pelican and a baby hippo. I think he might have a buzzard or something
too. But it figures I guess - you turn enough shit into gold you're gonna
buy some exotic animals. It can be a very profitable vocation, alchemy.
This is basically the second section of the movie, where each of the characters
represented by the wax sculptures introduce themselves and their planet ("My
name is Sel, my planet is Mars.") I've never been sure if they are literally
supposed to be from that planet, or if it's some zodiac thing. The Alchemist
says that they are "thieves, like you" but they don't turn out to
be the kind of thieves that steal little pieces of gold. They are corporate
thieves - a guy who makes beauty products (including artificial faces and
asses) an arms dealer, an architect with a very unique approach to low income
housing (coffins), a manufacturer of toy guns and GI Joes, a government financial
adviser, etc.
Seeing this movie at the
Grand Illusion theater here in Seattle, this was the part where the audience
finally loosened up and realized it was okay to laugh. This is an extension
of that town at the end of El Topo, where the rich old ladies had slaves and
their husbands had whores shipped in in crates. I love this type of surrealist
approach to satire - we see so much weak satire these days where it's too
damn obvious (this guy represents Bush, this lady represents Ann Coulter)
or it just isn't accurate. Jodorowsky's satire is outrageous, nightmarish
broad strokes in a fantasy world that have a clear truth to them. So you nod
your head at the arms maker creating psychedelic designs on guns to appeal
to hippies or the toy lady training kids from birth to hate Peruvians in case
there's a war against them in the future.
Once everybody's introduced themselves, the Alchemist leads them on a quest
to climb the summit of the Holy Mountain to kill the 9 Immortals and steal
their secrets. Obviously, killing the 9 immortals is the kind of thing we
can all relate to, we know exactly what this means. If not, just think of
CITY SLICKERS II: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S GOLD. Those assholes go ride horses
or whatever and it teaches them the value of, you know, to savor it or, you
know, learning the wisdom and what not, etc. etc. Is it about actually finding
the legend of Curly's gold? No, it's about looking for the gold. In the end,
they throw the gold in the river and then self-immolate (just guessing, I
haven't seen that movie.) Anyway same exact thing here except instead of Curly's
gold you have the 9 immortals, instead of Billy Crystal you have a dude with
a mowhawk who cuts people's balls off with scissors and collects them in jars.
And then instead of riding horses they hump a mountain. The details are different
but the substance is the same. Every rock has a soul.
[TANGENT: This brings up something somebody asked me about, and it occurred to me too watching it this time. If you've seen it maybe you can give your opinion. The Chief of Police says that 999 officers have already had their balls cut off, but then he says it's a Sanctuary of 1,000 Testacles. But the question is, shouldn't it be 2,000 Testacles? Well, there are alot of possibilities. Maybe for the first 500 ballsacs he didn't think to use formaldehyde so they went bad and he had to throw them out, but he still wanted to honor their sacrifices by mentioning their numbers. Or maybe he only cut off one ball, it's not really clear until we get a remastered DVD and can pause and zoom. Also a possibility: all the officers have one ball, like Lance Armstrong. Or maybe it is a mistranslation or script error, but those seem far-fetched. Anyway, enough about ball counting.]
I think the Alchemist knows
from the beginning that it's all about the journey, just the experience is
gonna enlighten the hell out of these pricks just like Billy Crystal before
them. Think about it. This is the Alchemist, this is the guy who turns shit
into gold. And he's taking these corporate vampires and enlightening them.
Same thing. Shit into gold.
Also one of the prostitutes (a really gorgeous one, not the old lady or the
little girl) and the chimpanzee follow the thief because they love him. So
any time it's getting too deep into alchemy and tarot symbols don't worry,
there will be a funny shot of a monkey wearing clothes at some point.
I love this movie. It's honestly one of my favorite movies. It's the DIE HARD
of surrealist alchemy comedies. This is the first time I've seen it projected
on a screen. This print was still dubbed and did not appear miraculously alchemically
remastered. It didn't have all the pubic hair blurred out like on the Japanese
release though. But it was fucking great. I couldn't stop smiling while I
was sitting there, wondering if these other people in the theater hated it.
I heard one dude sighing impatiently several times, but maybe he just has
a breathing problem.
My buddies Moriarty and Scott Swan wrote a Masters of Horror episode
where everybody's trying to find a print of a movie that has only screened
once and when it did it drove everybody crazy and they all killed each other
or themselves or something. That was what I always figured a public screening
of HOLY MOUNTAIN would be like, but somehow this was a normal moviegoing experience.
I would've liked if somebody had released ants or baboons in the theater,
but no dice. Nobody even got up and left in frustration. I think people liked
it.
As I was leaving the movie I heard some young people comparing the movie to
Matthew Barney's, agreeing it was more fun to watch and had more of a story.
It would've been funnier if they were crying and all they had to compare it
to was "Little Miss Sunshine" or something, but still. It was nice
to know that the kids dig Jodorowsky.
There is no other movie like HOLY MOUNTAIN and there probaly never will be. It is some crazy shit you can't believe is really on film, but at the same time it's watchable and enjoyable. Listen to the youth of America, they have spoken and they prefer Jodorowsky to Barney. If we could have one of those shows where kids pay money to text message a vote for a meaningless contest of some kind, the kids would totally vote for HOLY MOUNTAIN. And all the profits would go to buying tiger heads to replace old men's boobs.
If you are a Sandra Bullock/Meryl Streep type of individual who sometimes doesn't like a movie because it's "too weird," this will probaly cause your eyes to bleed and you will lose all feeling in your extremities and when they find you you'll be naked in a fountain downtown munching on fistfuls of caterpillars. Who knows where the fuck you got em, you were just in the mood for caterpillars. So check it out. It finally comes out on region 1 DVD May 1st, 2007. If you are rich I suggest you pre-order 100 copies and give them to all your relatives, your pastor, members of the city council, etc.
It's weird, this has always been an elusive, mysterious movie that most people never heard of and you have to go to an underground freemason lodge and use a password to rent it. But starting on May Day 2007 a new era is upon us. with the help of Anchor Bay, we might be seeing this shit in Wal-Mart, or at least Best Buy. This is a dream come true for me, I have always thought this whole fucking nightmare that is American pop culture 2007 might pop like a balloon if we could just print up a couple hundred thousand copies of HOLY MOUNTAIN (Excrement Into Gold Edition) and start re-molding everybody's minds.
The secret will be out. It won't have that mystique anymore, but it'll be cool to finally share this with everybody. Before long HOLY MOUNTAIN will be as mainstream as NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. Guaranteed to be in stock at Blockbuster Video, or you get a coupon for free jalapeno twizzlers from Pizza Hut. There's gonna be Holy Mountain ringtones, Holy Mountain valentines card, Holy Mountain Home Alchemy Kits, Holy Mountain Slurpee with a hologram of the Jesus dude getting his ass washed, limited edition prop replica of the crucified flayed lamb, t-shirts and lunch boxes and talking key chains with all the quotable lines like "Your excrement... you can turn yourself into gold" and "Rub your clitoris against the mountain" and of course my favorite "Your sacrifice completes my Sanctuary of 1,000 Testacles." People are gonna be quoting this movie so much you'll get sick of it, like Austin Powers. Some of those pricks who do the SCARY MOVIE type parody "movies" will get some has-been dressed up dorf style to play the limbless dwarf in the WWII helmet kicking the Jesus dummy in the alley, there is a lot of spoofability there. Saturday Night Live will get more traction though with their reoccurring "Alchemist" character. Dressed up in Jodorowsky's duds and with a Peter Lorre accent, he goes around asking people if they have any extra poo anywhere they can give him. I don't know man it's hard to explain, you just gotta see it to understand how hilarious it is, I'm sure it's on youtube.
Ladies and gentleman, 2007 will be the year of HOLY MOUNTAIN and Jodorowskymania. Mark my words. (or just bookmark this page I guess.) You heard it here first.
<HOME PAGE>
Well I've been on a documentary
kick the last couple weeks and I been meaning to see this one since it first
came out, for reasons that do not need to be explained. If you're stupid,
well I'll just explain it to you then, it's because this documentary is about
people who Write for the world wide web type medium. You know what I mean?
Do I have to spell it out for you?
What I'm getting at here is that I also Write for that same medium. If you have not seen my web sight, it is the one you are reading right now. Check it out.
This movie focuses on the web when it was first becoming a phenomenon, and in particular it focuses on the web journal type web sight. Although at times my sight can be PRETTY fucking personal, I have never quite understood that type of web sight. Because everybody likes to Write all about themselves, yeah, but who the fuck wants to read it? At least I talk about Vin Diesel and shit, to reel them in. I don't think I've ever sat down and read somebody's random musings of the day. Not to be harsh but I really don't give two and a half fucks about your relationships, even if you do Write in all lower case.
Well to be frankly honest you would think that the only thing more boring than reading some college kid's web diary would be watching a documentary about reading some college kid's web diary. But this movie actually kept me interested. It comes from an outsider perspective of a man who first starts using the web back in the magical naive time of a couple years ago, when everybody was starting to get AOL and Earthlink, even grandmas and ex-con movie buffs. You really get a feel for the time this takes place when the director's parents decide to get a new computer and start using e-mail.
And there's the lingo, too. Everybody calls web sights "home pages." People feel comfortable speaking aloud web slang like "IRL" for "in real life." There is even a part where a young gal refers to "cyberganic SF people", whoever in fuck's name they are. (They turn out to be people in halloween costumes as far as I can tell.) And they never talk about reading a web sight, they talk about ACCESSING it. Have you ACCESSED my HOMEPAGE yet? It's about CYBERGANIC SF issues.
This movie is great as a time capsule of a time when all this seemed new and exciting, nobody at all took it for granted, and people were actually interested in asking these questions. How much do you really want to reveal about yourself on a web sight? How many people will see it? Is it crazier, or less crazy, than revealing it in public? Is it fair to reveal the intimate details of your life when there are other people involved in those details?
Also, everybody in this movie keeps talking about the endless possibilities of the web. And they really think they're there. But they're only possibilities, not actualities, which means they have no idea what exactly these possibile things are that they're talking about. But there's something that the web will be able to do, they're pretty sure, and it will be revolutionary.
The main character is Justin, who is sort of notorious/famous on his campus because he Writes bad poetry about whoever he last had sex with and publishes a naked picture of himself. People seem to admire and fear him because he is so eager to reveal his secrets to the world. For example, that he once figured out how to suck his own cock.
I guess I can understand sort of where Justin is coming from because I once Wrote about having tubes shoved in my ass and my dick, sitting bareassed on a cold metal stirrup chair while "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" played on a boombox. That was a little personal. I sometimes still wonder if I shoulda put that online. It's not like I ever talked to people about it. But for some reason Writing that down, and more than that, putting it out there where anybody bored enough could see it, helped me deal with it. Purge that memory. I mean today, if I had really bad taste in music, I could probaly listen to the Lion King soundtrack without my orifices tightening reflexiveley. I mean maybe. I could at least try.
The point is, something compelled me to share that unpleasant information with all of you, and not with my friends at home, and that is something that is increasingly common with this sort of new technology, for good or bad. But I think that piece was not only my most personal, but my most honest. And to this day I still get the occasional e-mail from a new reader who has just read that column and was moved by it. Even by a few people who had similar procedures although with other Disney soundtracks being played, or none at all. I think what I did was a little more meaningful than just throwing my life out there for shock value.
Besides if I figured out how to suck my own dick I'd include detailed instructions, to give back to the community.
Anyway this guy is Writing about himself all day and at the time that was a novelty, so he gets Written up in magazines and some jackass throws out a comparison to Jack Kerouac. Next thing you know Howard Rheingold, an author who looks like Jeffrey Tambor in Zubaz pants, hires Justin to come live with him and help start a new... online magazine? Or something. Something cutting edge at the time, I guess.
The director of HOME PAGE doesn't seem to understand what Justin's new job is, so he asks Howard. Howard sort of hems and haws and then calls Justin his "guru." Remember, this was the pioneer days. It was a new medium, so it required a new type of work, where people carved out their own job descriptions. Justin's was to walk around the house with no shirt on, occasionally laughing ghoulishly. When a spanish news crew comes to interview the two of them, Justin does his interview shirtless, laying on the couch, his lower half covered by a blanket. You can tell these guys are thinkin wait a minute, what's goin on here?
So as the movie rolls on, we meet other computer people connected to Justin, including one guy who seems like a typical computer nerd who shows us his office and his "macquarium" which I guess is an old Macintosh that he plans to put a fish in some day. He talks in a squeaky voice and he likes computer humor and his web sight got bought out by a company so now he gets paid to do what he likes, but he doesn't have enough money for a separate apartment so he sleeps on a metal Ikea bed frame by his cubicle. Oh yeah and he has a journal online too and that's why everybody knows the details of the truck accident that killed his girlfriend and her sister and how his father hung himself.
You gotta feel sorry for that kid and then there's the other guy who doesn't get to talk to his wife very often, but read on her web sight about the guy she's been fucking.
But the most intimate interviews are actually with the director's family - his parents and especially his wife, who seems annoyed by the documentary, and the new computer obsession. He starts keeping an online diary of his own, and he asks her if she's read it. She says she hasn't mainly because it's private. Even though it's online, and he's her husband. I mean I know how it is. Alot of the people who are closest to me don't read my shit either. So does that make you guys closer to me than them? Because you haven't seen me in person before, but you know not to sing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" around me?
But at the same time, his wife is obviously trying to understand him, and to consider the questions he is asking with his documentary, and she is usually near tears when he interviews her, like she's afraid their marriage is falling apart when she's answering these questions on camera. (It turns out okay though, don't worry.)
I'm not sure how much I like any of these people, or how important any of these questions are anymore. But I think this movie is worth watching and will be even better the more out of date it gets, the more absurd it seems that these people really thought they could MAKE MONEY doing this shit.
Make money! Ha! Imagine if somebody had tried to buy MY sight. There WAS a young man who wanted to option my life story for a movie, but all he could pay was $1 (I think I haggled him up to one pack of cigarettes). But I mean that's understandable, my life IS a movie. You can't blame the young man. It would be an entirely different deal though if some corporate schmuck thought that my sight was the next cultural laser to cut a swath through the new medium of electronic communication or what have you. I mean that was happening to people every day. Little web sights turning into corporate magazines, web toons being optioned for tv shows, or to put on dvd. And almost all of it was crap! I mean I make crap too, I shoulda been picked.
I really don't know if
I would've taken the money or told them to shove it up their ass. I will consider
offers though. Thanks millionaires.
HOSTAGE
Legend
has it that the times we're in create the movies we watch. Sometimes on purpose,
sometimes subconsciously. I mean who the fuck knows how it happens but the fears
and the turbulence and the shittiness of troubled times somehow soaks into the
celluloid and poisons the screen. So Vietnam and racial unrest soaked into the
PLANET OF THE APES pictures, for example. The atomic age bred giant crabs, Hiroshima
gave birth to Godzilla, Ronald Reagan caused ROCKY 4 and RED DAWN, AIDS made
THE FLY.Well, HOSTAGE is not a political movie but it is a Bruce Willis action thriller for the fucked up age we are currently being sat on by. In the DIE HARD pictures he fought terrorists, so now that terrorism is more of a realistic threat, he's going back to fighting criminals again. But because it's the Bush era, this is a dark, ugly, sometimes gorey thriller. A story about a bunch of psychotic, sadistic, greedy assholes terrorizing each other, and all the rest of us who get caught in the middle. A movie that wears a mask and has your wife and daughter tied and gagged in the back of a van and forces you to break your moral code and risk your life to get what it wants. It's a real intense, well made thriller but what I'm saying is, this is 2005. Don't expect to get blown through the back wall of the theater and have a good time and all that.
The movie opens a year ago, when Bruce had long gray hair and an ugly beard, and liked to absent mindedly comb his beard to show off that he really grew it for the role. After one bad day on the job as a hostage negotiator in Los Angeles, he decides to throw in the towel, shave his hair, move out to the suburbs and become chief of police. He wears glasses though so you know he's a small town chief of police, not some asshole chief that yells at you and wants you in his office NOW. He's buddy buddy with everybody. He's a cool boss.
Some shit goes down though with three rebellious teenagers in a redneck style pickup truck. They get mad at a girl so they follow her family home to their mansion and try to steal their ESCALADE(tm) brand transportation machine, end up in a spontaneous home invasion, etc. These are 2005 style troublemakers, so they have a sort of fetishized Hollywood dirtiness, where they have long uncombed hair and spray on sweat and dirty Working Class clothes. The three dudes have 3 levels of bad-guyness. One is the little brother, so he has a conscience and tries to stop them from doing everything, and wouldn't even be a bad guy if he just took the bus home instead of riding around with his stupid older brother Dennis and his friend Mars. Mars is top level bad guy, over the top nutbag with a traumatic past, sexual frustration and enjoys watching people die. Then the other guy Dennis is just medium bad guy, "this bowl of porridge is just right" kind of thing, so he gets to be the leader.
Next thing you know there's some bodies, it's a stand off, the house is surrounded by cops and Bruce is trying to talk them out but with more of a cold, tough stance due to his bad experiences one year ago when he had a beard. Now, sometimes in a DIE HARD or a DIE HARD ripoff, there is a point where it is out of the hero's hands, he is safe and should go home and let the police take care of it, but instead he decides to hop on a helicopter or something and go after the bad guy and blow him up. That's not Bruce in this movie. The sherriff's department shows up and takes over, he wishes them luck and drives away. The end.
Well, no, that's not the end. See then it turns out, funny story, the man of the house (comedian/Usual Suspect Kevin Pollak) is an accountant for organized crime and has an important computer disc hidden inside a DVD case. Could cause some problems, apparently. So some scary ski-masked mob enforcer types kidnap Bruce's wife and kid and force him to go back, re-assume command and make sure nobody goes in or out of the house until "our people" get there.
A note about the DVD being used as the mcmuffin in this movie. If some time in the future I happen to write an action movie where Steven Seagal is an ex-CIA video store clerk who has to fight off a team of highly trained mercenaries searching for weapons codes on a disc that accidentally got returned to the video store, be advised that I came up with that idea BEFORE this movie, and I never even heard of the book. It is not a copy of this movie, no matter how much I like Bruce.
Another thing. In DIE HARD type movies, it is amazing how many human sized air vents there are in buildings, that you're able to crawl around in. This family, because they are so rich, they have those type of vents in their own house. And the little boy Tommy, he knows how to climb through them and get anywhere in the house. (They make it more believable by making it his fort or clubhouse, with all kind of toys and an area labelled "BUG LAND" with magnetic letters. Because kids like bugs.)
So the kid gets away from the home invaders, calls up Bruce, and Bruce finds himself in the amoral situation of giving this kid advice while having a conflict of interest, that he needs to save his own family even more than he needs to save this one. Because he likes his alot. And then more complications keep happening, things keep getting worse, etc.
You know, come to think of it, you probaly saw the trailer and know all this anyway. Sorry about this review friends. One thing you don't know from the trailer though: real good opening credits. It's somewhere in between an old fashioned Saul Bass type credits sequence and modern show offy CGI bullet time type shenanigans. Good job on that one, designer people.
Anyway, Bruce is real good in this one, a grim and serious tough guy role. He's friendly and peaceful in the beginning but then he gets Pushed To The Edge and has to do what he has to do. What's nice though is that's more about risking his own life than going apeshit on some motherfucker. Here is a BIG ASS RUIN THE ENDING SPOILER now. When the bad guys first don't show their faces, they have Bruce look in the rear view mirror and see his wife and kid tied up and gagged in the back of a van. Then near the end of the movie there is a similar scene where Bruce tells Kevin Pollak to look out the window - and see that his children are alive and getting medical help, because Bruce just saved them. This is the scene that shows what my man Bruce is all about. The bad guys tell you to look and see that they have your family so you better do what they say or they'll get killed. Bruce tells you to look and see that he saved your family, so you oughta help him out or you're an asshole.
John McTiernan made DIE HARD more humorous and less grim than the book it was based on, Nothing Lasts Forever, because he said he wanted it to be a movie with "joy" in it. This is not a movie with joy in it. This is a movie that does not like joy at all. Bruce doesn't do alot of wisecracking or running around getting upset saying "JESUS CHRIST! FUCK ME MAN, FUCK ME!" He's more of a quiet, grimacing type. But it's a good joyless movie. This is not one of those lemons Bruce does alot of the time. This is a good circa 2005 sicko Bruce movie.
That's all though.
No way in hell HOSTEL is the landmark horror movie that at least one of my online buddies will tell you it is. Also, it's not the worthless piece of shit some other people will tell you it is. This may seem weird, you probaly have never heard an opinion like this on the internet before, but HOSTEL falls somewhere in between GREAT AMERICAN HORROR CLASSIC MASTERPIECE and COMPLETE SUCKING OF ANIMAL SEX ORGANS. I call this condition "okay."
As the ads will tell you, HOSTEL is "FROM DIRECTOR ELI ROTH" - in other words, the guy whose only other movie is CABIN FEVER. I liked that one. The hero-victims were dumb teenagers, but they had funny dialogue that made you like them anyway. In HOSTEL we get a trio of dumbass pussy fiends straight out of an '80s fraternity movie, and they're not as funny as those cabin kids. The first half of the movie is mostly about trying to get laid, smoking pot and drinking at a dance club. If you like to watch stupid dipshits get all excited about hot chicks taking their shirts off, you will enjoy this. I can't remember if they keep high-fiving each other or not, but that is the basic vibe we're talking here. The high fives are implied. Also, there is not a wet t-shirt contest at any point, but maybe on the DVD. Of the three characters, one is so obnoxious as to be kind of humorous, one is halfway sympathetic in comparison to the other two, and the third one is just a completely bland frat boy with few distinguishing characteristics except that he is the guy who plays Carlito Brigante in the CARLITO'S WAY straight to video prequel that I haven't watched yet. So of course they die in that order, leaving you trying to root for the least interesting of three unlikable pricks.
One thing they didn't have in the '80s is cell phones, so that makes this pretty different from FRATERNITY VACATION or some stupid shit like that. These dipshits go around and take pictures with their cell phones and keep leaving each other voice mails and crap. So if your interests are talking about pussy with other guys, high fiving other guys to congratulate them for the size of their bongs, and going around annoying people by playing with your stupid fucking cell phone, you will relate to these characters. But if you are one of those guys you probaly won't be reading this review unless it's edited down to one paragraph and reprinted in Maxim. So confidentially between me and you, fuck those guys.
Remember in the '80s they had all those horror movies where a girl takes her shirt off, then either Jason kills her or she turns into Freddy? Well, at least this time all the boob scenes are separated from the mutilation, so it's more convenient for teens to jerk off to. But they have the internet now, what do they need these R-rated boob movies for? Aren't they obsolete now? You hear that Entertainment Weekly? THE INTERNET killed the r-rated comedy. Not Hollywood.
Through a series of overly elaborate moves (why don't they just throw bags over their heads and throw them in the back of a pickup truck?) the boys end up in a filthy warehouse where rich sadists pay money to torture and kill people. At this point I was thinking okay great, Eli Roth is one of these guys who enjoys CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and GUINEA PIG and crap like that, we get to watch people get drilled and cut up for the rest of the movie. Fortunately there's not too much of that. The last survivor turns the tables and then it turns into a chase and a fight and that's when the movie somewhat redeems itself. It gets more energy and you can always relate to a character trying to survive. This is where it seems to create its own identity, doing things a little different from what you usually see in a horror movie.
My buddy Harry Knowles says it's some kind of allegory about ugly Americans exploiting foreign cultures, or something like that, but I don't see it. I talked about that classic tourist tension technique in my WOLF CREEK review, but I don't think this one really fits into that subgenre. Yes, they're asshole tourists, but the villains are perverted rich guys, hot girls and bulky euro-trash dudes in black leather jackets. Imagine the bad guys from MONEY TALKS, but the size of bouncers. Maybe that's a little too obscure. Anyway, it's not so much class or cultural tensions as it is some dipshits getting cut up by some weirdos. I could be wrong, but I don't think Eli Roth thinks these characters are dipshits. I think they're his type of dudes.
There's a subplot about a gang of little kids tormenting people on the streets. I think that's the most unique "Eli Roth" aspect of the movie. If you saw CABIN FEVER you might remember the goofy subplot about the albino kid who does karate and loves pancakes or whatever it was. This isn't quite as weird but it's another thing you wouldn't expect to see in somebody else's horror movie. Also, Roth seems to be good at clever, mood-setting opening credits.
Unfortunately, characters like this are a weakness that just can't be overcome, but it's still a pretty fun horror ride. The guy goes through some serious shit. And it's not all confined to the grimy dark place that is quickly becoming the "haunted house" type cliche of modern horror. By the way, is it even legal anymore to advertise a horror movie without fake dirt smudges and crap on the poster? I think maybe it's time to take a break on that one for a while.
And speaking of posters, if you've seen the ones for this movie, they're not a literal depiction of what happens in the movie. They just give you an idea of the mood. For example, one picture shows a dude wearing some kind of super hero goggles, holding a chainsaw at his crotch like a giant boner. That guy is not in the movie at all. There is no chainsaw boner. But the chainsaw boner is the general mood of the movie, I guess. There is a guy with a chainsaw but not that particular guy and not with those type of goggles. Proper respect is shown to the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, actually maybe too much because the guy falls and cuts his leg and wiggles around exactly like Leatherface does in that classic scene. spoilers. If you haven't seen TEXAS CHAIN SAW I apologize if I gave something away but for god's sake why are you reading about HOSTEL, you should be out renting TEXAS CHAIN SAW.
So here's a quick guide to translating the advertising.
GUY WITH CHAINSAW BONER = don't worry, no chainsaw boner in this movie
"QUENTIN TARANTINO PRESENTS" = Quentin Tarantino hangs out with the director of this movie
"FROM DIRECTOR ELI ROTH" = this guy did CABIN FEVER
"INSPIRED BY ACTUAL EVENTS" = this movie does not take place in space and therefore is real.
I was just complaining about this with WOLF CREEK, but man, HOSTEL takes the "actual events" bullshit to a new level. Apparently the actual event it is referring to is that Harry Knowles told Eli Roth there was a web sight where you pay $10,000 to shoot somebody. Holy shit, now that I know that I feel like this could happen to me at any moment.
I should mention, by the way, that this is probaly not a movie for women. I don't mean that in some asshole "women are delicate" kind of way, I mean it in the sense that there is really nothing in this movie most women could possibly identify with, unless at some point in their life they were a semi-retarded 15 year old boy who lived inside a locker room. Most women I know, including horror fans, probaly wouldn't enjoy watching a movie about some pricks talking about pussy, then getting mutilated and escaping. Slasher movies got a reputation for hating women, but I agree with that old book MEN WOMEN AND CHAINSAWS that pointed out how the final survivor, the one who outsmarts the killer, is almost always a girl, and that's who you're supposed to identify with. Think HALLOWEEN, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. All the way up to SCREAM and its ten thousand babies. It's tradition. The last year or two of slasher movies though it seems like everybody is trying to piss on that tradition. (spoilers for other movies coming up.) WOLF CREEK - last survivor is a dude. HIGH TENSION - it seems like it's about a badass lesbian hero but then she turns out to be the killer. The other girl spends the whole movie gagged and crying. And now we got this one where not only are the protagonists male, they actually are penises. They are walking, bong hitting penises shaped like humans. Along the way they do pick up a female friend, but she is a painful stereotype of a passive Asian woman. So there's nothing.
On the positive side, you ladies have that one channel only for women, where they show all the Cybill Shepard movies. If it's any consolation. Sorry about this.
Anyway, if you're a heterosexual male, and if you like this sort of shit, and if your standards aren't really high, I say it's worth watching. But don't get your hopes up.
TRIVIAL POSTSCRIPT CRITICIZING ONE LINE OF WHAT SOME GUY WROTE ABOUT THIS MOVIE:
Before I go I can't help but take a swipe at David Poland, the guy who does the "Hot Button" column and shows up on TV and radio sometimes to talk about box office. I don't read the guy's stuff usually because he's one of those guys that's fascinated by the business aspect of the movies, and always brings up box office and heads of studios and all that kind of crap. Anyway a buddy of mine pointed me to Poland's recent "blog" posting on HOSTEL because my bud Moriarty had set off a big flameup in the comments section. (Poland and Ain't It Cool News have some kind of ongoing east coast/west coast type feud.)
Anyway who gives a shit about that but I could not let this one line in his post go without comment. After a bunch of exaggerated bullshit about the movie being "horror porn" and having "no humor, no horror" and etc., he says that,"My joke about the film was that it should be called Hostile."
Motherfucker, that's not "your joke." It's the fucking TITLE of the movie. It's a double meaning. A pun. I should warn you, there's another movie out right now called THE FAMILY STONE. It's about a family with the last name "Stone." Also, it's about the family wedding ring, or "stone." (It's not about Sly and the Family Stone. I found that out the hard way.) Anyway just wanted to let you know that although there are two meanings to the title, YOU DID NOT MAKE UP THE DOUBLE MEANING. They actually chose that title on purpose because, get it, it means two things.
If you're confused enough to believe that you cleverly MADE UP the obvious double meaning of the title HOSTEL, how are we supposed to trust you to understand the type of horror and humor that is in the movie? I guess I shouldn't waste my energy defending the honor of a movie I only kind of liked, but it seems to me that horror is the only genre that really has to put up with this type of shit. Romantic comedies, costume dramas and civil war epics don't have to be subjected to all these writers who have little or no interest in the genre, or who even think the genre is immoral, trying to put their opinions out there like they are relevant to anybody. I mean come on, nobody should listen to me if I reviewed a Broadway musical and talked about how Broadway musicals suck and I don't watch them but this one is the worst Broadway musical of 2006. Also take away points if I said that about two days into 2006, which happens to be the case here. And no, if I like one Broadway musical every 30 years that doesn't count as me being a Broadway musical fan. I should probaly just leave it at, "Man, I always hate this shit, why do I keep going?"
Part of Moriarty's argument was that Poland liked the remake of TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and therefore couldn't be trusted on horror matters. It's a good argument because 1. fuck that fucking movie, motherfucker and 2. Poland calls movies like WOLF CREEK "horror porn" but then makes an exception for a movie that does the same damn thing but with less humanity and skill (not to mention defiling the sacred ground that is the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE).
It's a good point, that's a pretty big blow to the credibility there, but to me the "hostel/hostile" thing is even more unforgivable. Because even a person who doesn't know jack shit about horror should be expected to have a basic understanding of puns. Shit, you give me 48 hours I bet you I could find an Amish guy who's never watched a movie in his life, and this guy is gonna understand that a horror movie called "HOSTEL" is a play off of the word "HOSTILE." I mean for fuck's sake dude. For crying out loud. For the love of Jesus. For the love of the game. In the name of the father. On deadly ground.
DAVID POLAND, YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND PUNS AND ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO MAKE THEM.
HOSTEL PART II
aka DAVE POLAND'S HOSTILE 2
NOTE: I started writing this review but I realized between actually reviewing the movie and once again responding to the response to the movie, the thing was just too god damn long. So I figured if I split the two topics into two separate columns nobody would notice that it was too long. But then I felt bad about trying to deceive you like that so I admitted that that was what I was doing. But you found it admirable that I treated you as a mature adult so you read the two columns willingly and did not feel they were too long. It was awesome.
REVIEW: Well, I only kind of liked HOSTEL, and I don't know about this Eli Roth. His movies so far are pretty fun and he made one of the best GRINDHOUSE trailers. But then there was that time when a Fangoria letter writer criticized his use of the word "fag" and Roth decided he was a first amendment martyr and warned that "we live in a dangerous climate of political correctness." Dangerous. We get complacent because we are free to release movies like HOSTEL and because we can parody the victims of 9-11 on the MTV Movie Awards and because they can say the n-word on the Cartoon Network and shit. It SEEMS like you can get away with most anything these days but now some Fangoria reader had the audacity to argue that calling everybody faggot over and over again in a movie might promote homophobia. If not for the very few brave souls like Eli Roth, the South Park pricks, that asshole Carlos Mencia, all of the dudes on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, the hacks who do that Family Guy cartoon, Dennis Miller, every jackass on morning, drive time or evening radio, and a few tens of thousands of others, the courageous voices of political incorrectness would be silenced forever. Or, well, not silenced, but people would disagree with them in a letter to Fangoria. That's one step away from dictatorship. I'm sure alot of good directors say and do alot of dumb things, but come on. The Fangoria letters page is sacred ground. If you're gonna be a jackass do it in Rue Morgue. Still, I wanted to see HOSTEL for two reasons. One, Roth talks a good game. Right after the first one came out he said the sequel was gonna be a revenge movie about the character Paxton going back and hunting down these motherfuckers responsible and putting an end to it. More recently, Roth started saying how he didn't want it to be another crappy retread horror sequel. He was talking about sequels like ALIENS that up the ante and change the rules. He mentioned DEVIL'S REJECTS as a more recent example (definitely a sequel that is better than and completely different from the original). He said he doesn't have plans for a Part 3 because this completes the story, he compared HOSTEL and HOSTEL PART II to KILL BILL VOLUMES 1-2. And the number two reason is because he used the word "PART" in the title. Nobody does that anymore. I gotta support that. Well, just like the first one I'm kind of down the middle on the sequel. It does less of what I hated about the first one, but also less of what I liked. It does explore an interesting new area or two. It doesn't really up the ante much or change drastically enough from the template of the first one. It sure as fuck isn't ALIENS or even DEVIL'S REJECTS. Once again both the morally outraged critics and the sensationalistic advertising are gonna cause alot of disappointment, because they're both describing some crazy demonic nightmare of a movie that is not at all the one now playing in theaters. If there are any actual horror fans reading this before seeing the movie: DO NOT EXPECT A SHOCKING ENDING! The TV ads brag about "the most shocking ending in movie history," which is even more of a lie than you'd assume. In fact, I'm only about 75% sure about which part they are talking about being so shocking. I believe they're talking about a particular scene but it's not exactly the ending. It must be what they mean but I will allow for the possibility that they are talking about the even less shocking scene that is actually the end of the movie. They are already kind of SPOILERing it by even telling you to expect something at the end. So I'll just tell you, what they have is not a twist or a surprise, it's just a bodily mutilation. The ad should say "Don't miss a body part that only gets cut off every once in a while in movies getting cut off." Unless they are talking about the last scene, in which case it's a body part that gets cut off quite often in movies. I think this advertising is a big mistake. A great ending really can go a long way. Think about when Neo flies away at the end of THE MATRIX and you imagine what happens next. Or when Sally gets away in the pickup truck at the end of TEXAS CHAIN SAW and Leatherface waves the chain saw around in frustration. Hell, even THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, the way the ending set up a sequel had people who hated the movie telling me they would watch the sequel. Great endings are a good thing, this is not a great ending by any stretch of the imagination. Mildly amusing, yes. But by talking it up they ruined it. Anyway. The problem I had with HOSTEL was that the protagonists were idiots, just some pricks fiending for pussy, liquor and weed. Roth claims this was supposed to make a satirical point, that they were "ugly americans" out to exploit Europeans and the Europeans exploit them instead. Well, I sure didn't pick up on that but if I did I'm not sure it would've helped it work as a horror movie. You end up rooting for the dude by default because he's escaping torturers, but a more solid horror movie would put you on his side before that. A good half of the movie was just that 1980s fraternity spring break shit. When the horror movie mechanics actually kick in in the last act, where he escapes from the torture factory, then it's more fun. Luckily, Roth tries a different approach this time. The protagonists are three female American art students taking a trip to Prague. Bijou Phillips of course plays the party girl (squeezing the sex and drugs into one character), Heather Matarazzo from WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE plays the nerdy tagalong, and somebody named Lauren German is clearly the Final Girl. I thought having girls get tortured instead of guys might be a bad idea, but it's actually pretty smart. They are immediately more sympathetic than the part 1 characters, even Bijou (I think she's always gonna be like this after BULLY, you just gotta accept her as she is). They're lured to the same hostel by a similar exotic European beauty. In part 1 the guys were baited with the promise of pussy, in this one the girls are tricked into going to a spa. Which I guess is a stereotype, but a more respectable stereotype than the one the guys got. (And check out what these movies say about male and female fears: at the end of part 1 the male gets revenge on a dude who tried to fondle him, in this one the female gets revenge on a girl who pretended to be her friend.) Anti-HOSTEL hardliner David Poland (see right column) claims that the movie has no subtext, a sign that the guy doesn't even have rudimentary movie-watching skills. Actually, there's a pretty obvious class theme, which brings me to what I liked best about the movie. The first major departure from the feel of the first film is after the three girls are captured the camera follows a hostel employee into the back room where he makes color scans of their passports. Then there is a great montage of rich people around the world receiving text messages with the girl's names and photos, and they begin bidding on the right to torture and kill them. You see all these seemingly normal people in suits, at business meetings, on golf courses, on vacations, at home with the family. Like Roddy Piper says in THEY LIVE, "It figures it would be somethin like this." The first movie made it clear that the torturers were rich, but this visual depiction drives it home. The theme is also illustrated by the brief appearance of an Elizabeth Bathory-inspired character. She doesn't have any dialogue but you get everything you need from the images. She's obviously very vain, she drops her fur coat and struts into the place naked, and treats torture and murder the way many women would take a bubble bath after a bad day at work. But she's also Of A Certain Age, and there's a closeup of the veins in her ankles as she steps into the bath. The legend of Bathory was that she bathed in the blood of virgins believing it would give her eternal youth. But because she was a countess they never even brought her to trial. A rich older lady murdering innocent girls for cosmetic purposes? There's a little subtext there, bud. The movie follows two of the clients, a John C. McGinley type macho businessman and his buddy, a henpecked husband who seems hesitant about becoming a murderer. But, you know, it's a birthday present, and it would be rude not to accept it. These scenes are what make this a worthwhile sequel. Roth makes you uncomfortable by showing that these guys pass for - maybe even are - regular human beings. They treat this as a macho bonding ritual like a hunting trip. Roth even has the balls to make you wonder if he's trying to make one of them sympathetic. Through them you also get to understand better how the whole operation works. There's even a scene where they get to choose their weapons and costumes, and it's treated like one of those montages where teenage girls try on different outfits together and laugh. So the sequel improves over the original by having more sympathetic leads plus the creepiness of showing the client point of view. They fixed the bad part of HOSTEL, but I don't think they matched the good part. The main thrill of the classic slasher movie structure is to watch the characters try to escape, and perhaps try to get revenge. The HOSTEL movies do both, but in this one there's less time spent on those aspects. And although we've seen a thousand movies where the Final Girl escapes just by fighting back in some clever way and then running, Roth's new method of escape seems like a cop out. BIGGEST SPOILER OF THE REVIEW COMING THROUGH: she doesn't escape them by outsmarting them or by outfighting them. She escapes by paying them off. It's not out of the blue, in fact it's what they call Telegraphed A Mile Away. So it's not a story-cheat. But man is it unsatisfying. Usually you're supposed to cheer or breathe a sigh of relief as the Final Girl gets away by the skin of your teeth. Here you just have to say Good job lady, you're rich. You did it. I guess it does fit in with that class theme though. You'd expect it to be that the torturers are rich and the victims are poor. But the victims in these movies are rich too, they're spoiled kids who can afford to go on these hedonistic vacations. In this one they're rich enough to study abroad, and the Laurie Strode character became a millionaire from an inheritance. In the end she's just another rich murderer, even if she's doing it for revenge purposes instead of for getting a chainsaw boner or showing your wife you're a man. But what's more disappointing than the pay-off ending is that things are left at the same place they were in the first one. I understand the George Romero theory of not restoring the status quo in horror movies, but we were promised escalation in this thing. DEVIL'S REJECTS was a sequel to HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES where, in the opening scene, the killers were busted by the cops and had to flee from that house of 1,000 corpses, which they never see again. The first one is a dark and stormy night in a spooky house, the second one is a sunny fugitives on the run road movie. Roth talks like he switched things up that way, but he didn't. It's not bad, arguably better than the first one, definitely stronger than many sequels. But man, I would've rather seen that movie where Jay Hernandez gets his bloody revenge. Maybe it's not the whole movie. Maybe he shows up at the end with some other escapees and they try to raid the place. And maybe they don't succeed. But at least progress the story along. Show us something we didn't see at all last time. There are ways to excite the audience other than bodily mutilation. To be used in conjunction with bodily mutilation.
|
"TORTURE PORN" DEBATE ROUND 23: This review itself is a sequel, so we have to check in with the surviving characters from part 1. Which brings me to that dude Dave Poland of the Hot Button. In the first review I made fun of him for being so far off base about the movie that he didn't even understand that the word "hostel" sounding like "hostile" was intended as a double meaning and was not, in fact, a clever joke that he made up. Poland is at it again in his column, claiming that he bought a bootleg of PART II on the streets of Seattle and didn't intend to actually review it but accidentally watched it in his hotel and was so offended that he had to draw a line in the sand and demand that we, as a society, declare war on HOSTEL PART II and all that it represents. This war will require sacrifice, it could last generations. But when the horror history books are written, what do you want them to say about you? Either you're with us, or you're with HOSTEL PART II. Granddad, what did you do about HOSTEL PART II? The scene that Poland chose as the location for line-drawing was one that I actually had to look away from a couple times. I declare SPOILER. Poor Dawn Weiner gets hung upside down naked. You have to watch her crying, not knowing what's gonna happen to her. Eventually the "client" comes in, a woman who lays in a bath tub beneath her, cuts her and bathes in her blood. For me the obvious reference to that crazy bitch of a Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory kind of took me out of the scene, which was actually kind of a relief because it's true, the scene is pretty horrifying. What makes it so tough to watch is that you can tell Heather Matarazzo is hanging there for real by the strain on her face and the way all her veins are popping out on her neck and shoulders. Jesus man, it's harsh. But what critics like Poland for some reason can't comprehend is that the scene should be harsh. This is a horror movie. It's designed for people who like horror movies, i.e. not David Poland. His argument is that by being so disturbing this movie crosses a line that should not be crossed. He deefends the obvious ludicrousness of his argument by specifying that it's in wide release and that's what makes it bad. In other words it's okay to make these movies as long as you make sure they don't catch on with mainstream American audiences. Keep it in the arthouse, boys. What happens in the arthouse stays in the arthouse. So let's consider how the scene could've been made more acceptable. The worst part of the scene is watching Matarazzo hang there, so maybe they should've had her right side up. That right there would make the scene completely forgettable, but I'm not sure it's enough. Her being naked is so dehumanizing and makes her seem so vulnerable, I don't like it. So maybe they should give her like a hospital gown or a prison jumpsuit. The fact that the torturer was a woman for some reason bothered Poland (he didn't catch the Bathory reference until somebody pointed it out to him) so let's make it a dude I guess, and give him a Leatherface remake mask since Poland actually enjoyed that piece of shit, the mask might win him over. The problem is that now you don't have HOSTEL PART II anymore, you have the bland, ineffective wave of studio PG-13 horror that led to this current hard-R horror wave in the first place. In this type of movie you're supposed to upset the audience. That's what they paid $10 for. Neither of the HOSTEL movies is a classic, but I believe they would be even further from that status if they were Poland approved. You don't make classics by being careful to color inside the lines. When Hitchcock made PSYCHO it was shocking just to show a toilet in a movie. In NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD there was a naked zombie, there was gut munching. TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE showed very little gore but upset people just with what it made them think about. DAWN OF THE DEAD was so over-the-top gorey it had to be released unrated. THE EXORCIST, for crying out loud it has a little girl jamming a crucifix in her private bathing suit area. David Cronenberg never worried about crossing lines, he blew up that head in SCANNERS and with THE FLY made one of the most disgusting, and yet soulful, mainstream studio movies of the era. Shit, loan me a book about history's best horror movies, I could continue this paragraph for a hundred pages. You name me a horror movie that gets its scares by making everybody feel comfortable and safe, and I'll - well, when you give me the title I'll go look it up on IMDb, because obviously nobody remembers that movie. Now, I don't want to be too hard on Poland because I do agree with his main point. Just because something is allowed doesn't mean you should do it. You can talk morality in movies without demanding censorship. But if you start making declarations about movies you clearly don't understand, you just make an ass out of you and you. The guy needs to draw a line for himself and not for society. He doesn't like horror movies or know much about them. If he did he would know that these two movies are very tame compared to CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, CANNIBAL FEROX, NEKROMANTIC, or even Roger Ebert approved classics like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. So how do we draw the line here decades after some of those movies came out way the fuck over on that side of the line? Let me give a quick primer to the David Polands of the world. You people always use that derogatory term "Torture Porn" to talk about these modern horror movies with stories, often with subtext, with characters who you are clearly supposed to root for who 2/3 of the way into the movie come up against a few scenes of torture or torment and then, hopefully, escape. We're talking well made movies like WOLF CREEK and THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE which may not be as good as but are clearly in the tradition of now recognized classics like TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE NOT THE REMAKE and THE ORIGINAL HILLS HAVE EYES. But if these people actually knew their horror they'd know there are subgenres that really could be accurately described as torture porn or gore porn. The main thing that comes to mind is the Japanese GUINEA PIG series, which don't exactly have plots and characters, they are more like an alien autopsy video and are designed to look like snuff films. In fact, Charlie Sheen saw part 2, FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD, and reported it because he thought it was real. The FBI had to investigate and the filmatists had to prove how they did the special effects. Same thing happened with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, which is part of the subgenre of Italian cannibal movies, where some westerners go to an uncharted island to document a tribe of backwards dark-skinned savages who eventually rape, mutilate and eat the protagonists. I had to turn off CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST but I did see CANNIBAL FEROX at a horror marathon one time. They not only show women getting mutilated, they show animals getting killed for real. It's more like accepting a dare than watching a movie. I don't enjoy those types of movies, but HOSTEL is not one of those types of movies. Do you think anybody, even Charlie Sheen, would report HOSTEL PART II to the FBI? Come on, man. Not even Emilio Estevez would do that. But aside from a general unfamiliarity with the genre, the other reason why Poland doesn't agree that these movies are tame is because he has decided that the audience is supposed to get off on the torture. But no reasonable person can watch this movie and believe that you are supposed to enjoy what's happening to Matarazzo. Like in most slasher movies, she is meant to be a sympathetic character. The audience is supposed to be with her, be tormented with her, wince at her pain, hiss at the older woman's enjoyment of it. It's the same as an action movie, you root for the heroes to get away, knowing that occasionally they might get shot. In PAYBACK (theatrical cut) you almost feel a little shock of pain in your toes when Mel Gibson gets hammered. If the audience shouts "ooooooh!!" that's becaues they sympathize with his pain, not because they think it's awesome he's getting tortured and it gives them a boner. This scene is the same way. Okay, so I don't think he ever used an upside down POV shot - I'm kind of surprised he didn't. But still. You are the one hanging upside down helpless. Not the one smiling as blood pours all over you. To say that you are supposed to root for the deaths of the heroes of horror movies is not only a harsh insult to all fans of horror movies, it's also just a plain stupid interpretation of how movies work. I gotta assume that these people are just getting overly emotional because they are probaly not stupid enough to miss the point of these movies so badly if they actually sat down and watched them. Ironically, Poland complained that HOSTEL had "no humor," when in fact it was pretty jokey. The tone of this one is, I think, much grimmer from the opening credits on. Part 1 opened with a big scary dude whistling as he mops up blood and teeth. That's a joke. This one just opens with the quiet burning of passports, journals and other personal belongings of tourists (maybe the last batch, maybe this movie's heroines, you're not sure). It's much more serious. So of course this time Poland says his problem is the opposite of his problem with the first time, that it "treat[s] the subject as a joke." The widely hated (and quite good) WOLF CREEK is better in his book because it's more serious about killing. (Actually, WOLF CREEK is alot funnier than HOSTEL II.) By the way bud, just admit that you downloaded it. I've lived in Seattle for years and never once seen anybody selling bootleg movies on the streets. One time a guy tried to sell me a porno on 2nd and Pike, but that was a legit VHS copy in the box and he only had the one movie. That was more along the lines of the guys that try to sell you batteries and razors. to be continued (unfortunately) |
HOT FUZZ
HOT FUZZ is the new British comedy picture from S. Pegg/N. Frost (lead comedy actors) and E. Wright (director). They are the same individuals responsible for SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the zombie comedy from a few years back that is known to be so potent that just the mention of it causes a boner on any film fan under the age of 27 residing within a 50' radius, even if they don't have the equipment.
Well, I'm gonna lose some credibility with my friends and colleagues in the nerd community by saying this, but I think these movies are a little overrated. I do not by any means think they are bad movies. They are fun movies, they have laughs, they are fairly original, and they are very sincere about their love for the genres they are paying tribute to, it's not some Leslie Nielsen style "spoof."
All I'm saying is, it's not the second coming of Jesus. It's not even the third coming of Jesus, when he is just trying to get attention. It's not Prince coming to your house and writing songs about you for his new album. It's just a funny comedy to watch once and then move on with your life, trying to do good deeds in the world, etc. In my opinion.
I guess with SHAUN OF THE DEAD my problem is a horror purist thing. Mixing comedy and horror is like mixing dangerous chemicals. You gotta do it just right or you're gonna end up running down the street on fire like Richard Pryor. There are very few movies that mix a high volume of laughs without dilluting the horror. I would say AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is the all time #1 perfect ratio for that mix. EVIL DEAD 2 is #2. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD comes close but the punk rockers push it too far, some comedy drips down the side and burns off the skin on the side of your hand. SHAUN OF THE DEAD is not trying to be that kind of movie, but I guess that's the kind of movie I'm looking for. Do you want to listen to "Weird Al" Yankovic or do you want to listen to real music? That's an unfair comparison, but I gotta speak from my heart, friends. It's a good comedy but they put those zombies in there and it just reminds me that I'd rather be watching a real zombie movie. That's my bias, that's my weakness, that's my curse. The curse of the zombie.
That said, I liked SHAUN OF THE DEAD, and I like this HOT FUZZ too. This one is a tribute to another genre close to my soul, the '80s and '90s action movie. Specifically they are dealing with cop movies (not as much my thing) and the two movies most directly referenced are POINT BREAK (good choice) and BAD BOYS 2 (the only movie ever made that irrefutably proves the existence of the Devil).
The gimmick is that Simon Pegg is this tough cop from London who gets transferred to a village too small for him, partners with Nick Frost as a dumbass obsessed with cop movies, and together they end up wrapped in a murder case that leads them into big over-the-top shootouts and car chases like in those movies. The story really takes it's time, the laughs are pretty low key and infrequent for a while, but they really cleverly build up all these details that lead to the big action movie third act and it gets alot better as it approaches its destination.
The movie is not entirely pure action movie. The villain is a mysterious hooded killer, so it's not exactly Hans Grueber or somebody. It works in a couple tributes to THE WICKER MAN and spaghetti westerns and stuff, which kind of muddies the waters. But it doesn't get too far off track. What I really appreciate is the attention to detail in their action movie tribute. There is alot of Bruckheimer/Tony Scott type shit in the style of the movie, even though its much smaller and Britisher. Early on, even before it becomes an action movie, they have some pretty funny Avid fart parodies complete with the the door slamming and flashbulb sound effects and everything. At the end they have the perfect metallic title logo that slams on the screen. And they have lots of elements to the plot that they could've left out but they didn't because they knew this is what would be done in a cop movie, so for example you gotta have about 4 fake endings and the part where it's one year later and they go to visit a grave.
The action scenes pay tribute to that Bruckheimery style, lots of quick cuts and closeups and shit, but strangely they make the scenes more clear and therefore more exciting than some of the scenes they're homaging. I guess they're looking at some of the better ones too, like there's a foot chase where they must've studied the foot chase in POINT BREAK for tips.
Also I gotta admit they buttered me up a little by including a copy of OUT FOR JUSTICE in a collection of cop movies that inspire the heroes. (HARD TO KILL was in there somewhere too, according to the credits.)
Anyway I'm not gonna spend too much time on this one, but it's worth seeing.
DONALD WESTLAKE DOUBLE FEATURE:
THE HOT ROCK
and THE STEPFATHER
Most of you fuckers probaly
think Donald E. Westlake is just the creator of your precious Father Dowling
Mysteries*, but actually he's got a whole big resume behind him. In fact,
in these parts he's more famous as Richard Stark. I'm not sure which one is
the real guy and which one is the alter ego but Richard Stark is the hard
motherfucker who wrote the Parker books I love so much. Twenty Parker novels
so far and also four about Parker's part-time actor, part-time thief associate
Grofield. Stark's books inspired POINT BLANK, PAYBACK and several not
as memorable but pretty good movies.
[*I'm just
jerkin your chain there bud, I never watched that show either]
And then Donald E. Westlake writes funnier ones, they say. Richard Stark is
his dark side, they say. (Stephen King even named the dark half character
in The Dark Half George Stark.) But I am here to tell you that
Westlake has two sides to him regardless of Stark. And the proof is right
here with THE HOT ROCK, a goofy light-hearted heist comedy based on
one of his books, and THE STEPFATHER, a fucked up horror/suspense/family
values satire that he actually wrote the script for.
THE HOT ROCK is from one of the
Dortmunder novels, I never read em but judging from this movie he's the opposite
of Parker: a thief with a sense of humor that has fun with what he's doing.
Robert Redford plays John Dortmunder. Fresh out of the joint and George Segal
(his brother in law, no relation to Steven Seagal) already has him on a job
trying to steal a jewel from some museum.
Basically the plot is they gotta steal this rock, but every time they do they
fuck up and then have to go steal it from somewhere else. Like the first time
they almost get away except the guy with the stone gets caught. So he runs
around the corner and swallows it first. Then Dortmunder and the gang gotta
break him out - not sure if it's for his sake, or for the rock only. Anyway
it turns out he doesn't have it anymore, he hid it in a cell at the police
station before he got transferred. So now they gotta break into the police
station. Etc.
Most of the fun of the movie is with the ridiculously ambitious schemes they
come up with for the attempted scores. Like their first plan involves a stunt
driver flipping a car and catching on fire in order to distract the guards.
A fake doctor is also involved. When they gotta break into the police station
they actually wear uniforms and land a police helicopter on the roof of the
headquarters. (first they land on the wrong building and have to ask directions.)
Once they're there they start tossing bombs everywhere and the captain actually
thinks it's the start of the revolution and announces he'll be damned if his
is the first American police station to go down. That part was almost worthy
of Dr. Strangelove.
The character "Policeman" - the cop that first sees the bombs going
off - is played by Christopher Guest, director of Best In Show and
all those ones. I believe he is playing the same character as in Death
Wish where he is called "Patrolman Reilly." In that one he's the cop who
identifies Charles Bronson as the vigilante killer and tells his superior,
who decides to let Bronson go. In the early seventies, if shit was goin down
in New York, Patrolman Reilly was gonna be there.
This is a crime picture but it's not a badass picture at all. It's all about
comedy. Lots of goofy shit happens, like they surreptitiously meet with their
connection in a park, sitting on separate benches and not looking at each
other. All the sudden an old lady sits on the bench between them and they
don't know what to do. That kind of thing. I mean, you got George Segal and
Zero Mostel in the cast, obviously we're not talking Point Blank here.
The tone is so light you even see the World Trade Center towers under construction
during the helicopter scene. Because this is before 9-11 changed everything
and made the eagle cry. When movies didn't have to bum you out.
What this movie reminded me of is why everybody used to love Robert Redford
so much. He's just a real likable dude. For you young folks, he's got George
Clooney's charm but with Brad Pitt's blonde pretty boy looks. He's a one man
Ocean's 11. This was a fun light-hearted movie sort of in that vein,
but maybe a little cornier.
THE STEPFATHER is not in that vein
at all. If this is a crime movie it's because killing your wife and daughter
is a crime. Or if it's not then it should be, in my opinion. Well yeah, actually
come to think of it it is a crime I believe so scratch that last sentence.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is this is an '80s horror/suspense thriller,
kind of feels like one of those Psycho sequels they made back then.
At first I thought it would be cheesy because it has one of those '80s scores
that wants to sound like a whole orchestra but who are they foolin, we all
know it's just one measly keyboard. Sounds like the Full Moon Videos they
used to have, about all those little fuckers running around on the ground
with knives and crap. Haunted puppets and killer ghoulies and shit.
But this one's not like that, it's smart and disturbing and maybe even classy.
According to an interview I read, Donald Westlake was hired to write a script
based on a one line treatment, which was itself based on an actual case. Some
nutbag somewhere killed his own family and disappeared, and they found out
that three weeks before he killed them he had quit his job, and every day
pretended he was going in to work. The idea of the movie is, what the fuck
was this guy doing from nine to five during those three weeks? And the movie's
answer is he was setting up a replacement family across town.
The killer stepfather is played by Terry O'Quinn, who now is known for playing
tough bald cops and FBI agents and individuals of that nature. Back then he
was skinnier, looked just like fuckin Ted Bundy which I bet is why they hired
him. Opening scene he has just killed his family, and he calmly shaves his
beard, changes his appearance. As he's leaving, he puts away a couple of his
daughter's toys that are laying on the floor. A nice touch. Then walks past
her bloody mutilated corpse. Strolls away whistling "Camptown Races." This
scene takes place in Bellevue which is exactly where this type of shit would
happen, the rich people city east of Seattle, across the bridge.
Next thing you know he's remarried, working real estate, making speeches to
his neighbors about how he hopes he's selling them more than a house, he's
selling them a lifestyle. He acts like a nice guy but his step-daughter knows
what time it is. Actually, she doesn't have any reason to suspect him at first,
but because she hates seeing her mom with this fucker she catches on to him
quick. So it catches that feeling of how people feel when their mom his a
new boyfriend. But in this case they are completely right about the boyfriend.
This was 1987, there really were people like this, wanted all that Leave
It to Beaver crap to be true. (In fact, they got a scene where he watches
Mr. Ed and gets nostalgic for his childhood.) Alot of this '50s sitcom
family stuff was satirized to death right around this time, it became pretty
cliche. But this is a good serious treatment of the stuff. It's satire but
it's not at all a comedy. It's not Serial Mom or something. But it's
there - the guy is killing his family when they "disappoint" him. He also
kills a guy he thinks is on to him but you can tell what really gets his goat
is when the guy claims to be "a confirmed bachelor" and talks shit about the
idea of marriage and kids.
So in alot of ways unfortunately this movie is getting more relevant again
today.
I think Westlake's script is good but it's Terry O'Quinn that's gonna make
or break the movie, and what he does is, the first one. He makes it. There's
one scene that's actually pretty fuckin scary where the step-daughter gets
sent to the cellar to grab some ice cream for the neighborhood picnic and
sees O'Quinn flippin out, yellin gibberish to himself. Then he realizes she's
there and has to explain it, saying he's a salesman, he has to smile all day,
he needs to let things out sometimes. "You know how it is." He seems so authentically
nuts in the scene though, it's pretty spectacular. Good one, Terry O'Quinn.
Director Joseph Ruben also did some movie called THE SISTER-IN-LAW about a
fucked up sister-in-law. So the moral is, don't marry into this guy's family.
You're not welcome there.
Well this is one of those pictures you would call a hitchcockian type thriller, and yes that is named after Alfred Hitchcock. But one difference is that this is NOT directed by Hitchcock, it is the director debut of Mr. David Mamet.
In the opening scenes the acting is kind of stiff and everything is kind of dull and I was thinking of watching something else. But as soon as the story kicks in you see that that is to illustrate that this lady psychologist who is the main character, her life has grown banal and she is in need of adventure. Her everyday job scenes are almost draining they are so dull while the rest of the movie is full of suspense. One of her patients tells her what does she know, she hasn't experienced anything. And through his gambling problem she goes and decides to thrust herself into some real experiences. She goes to a small bar called "house of games" (get it, that is also the title of the movie, house of games) where she meets a gambler named Joe Montegna. I mean that is the actor's name anyway.
Well hell I'm not gonna tell you what the picture is about because it would ruin it. But it's about con men and how this lady goes along and watches different cons in action. But they call it "confidence games" instead of cons because that is how con men are, number one they are liars and number two they are show offs. And just because they make a living outsmarting everybody they are convinced that they are smarter than everyone else. But despite my personal disdain for some of these pricks I gotta say that it is a pleasure and an honor to watch them at work. It is always fun to watch the tricks as they unfold and try to piece them together and watch some dumb motherfucker besides you get taken. And you gotta question what you are seeing and are you really in on it or are they fooling you too? So a good con man movie is always a good movie to watch, and this is a good one.
Ricky Jay, the narrator of Magnolia has a small role in this one and was also a consultant. I guess he is real into con men and is also a magician. But the real star of this picture who steals the show, is the lead. Her name is Lindsay Crouse and she is older and more serious than you expect to star in a movie, she is not a typical hollywood beauty. She is kind of cold and intense, and knows how to be a real ballbuster when she needs to, but also through the course of the story shows her vulnerability. And I'm not saying I want the gal but it is also refreshing to see a sexual aspect to this story even though hollywood is usually so youth oriented and would be afraid of scaring off their audience by showing a slightly more mature gal prancing around in a nighty.
I would never dream of giving away any of the surprises particularly in the end where it turns out that Lindsay is actually a con woman herself, and has been putting on the psychiatrist persona as part of an elaborate game against the con men. The audience only finds out her secret in the scene where joe montegna finds a videotaped confession she was planning to broadcast through her pirate satellite. there is a north by northwest type action setpiece set inside and on the roof of a chuck e. cheese restaraunt that has to be seen to be believed. So even if I tried to give it away I wouldn't be able to because you wouldn't believe me, because it has to be seen to be believed.
You see
that is what a con is about, you try to make someone believe something that
isn't true, like that last paragraph which was a huge load of horse shit.
So anyway this david mamet would be a hot young talent except for one thing,
he made this movie a long time ago. but it's a good one though. If you like
a good suspenseful thriller with lots of little tricks and twists, and with
lindsay crouse and joe montegna as the stars, well this is the one to turn
to in my opinion thanks.
HOUSE OF ONE THOUSAND CORPSES
Well this is the long delayed horror movie from first time writer-director Robert Zombie. Let's face it, that's probaly not the dude's real name. But I like it better than "McG." Apparently Mr. Zombie is some sort of rock and/or roller who directs his own videos and draws his own album covers, and my guess is that he's better at the artistical stuff than at the actual rock n roll.
Everything I know about Rob Zombie I know from this movie. I know that he likes brutal '70s horror movies, in particular THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE but also probaly THE HILLS HAVE EYES. I know that he is fascinated by gaudy roadside attractions, tasteless t-shirt slogans, phoney sideshow curiosities, serial killer legends, spookhouse rides, scary rednecks, Bela Lugosi movies, Zacherly-style TV horror hosts, iconic Halloween decorations, oversized paper mache masks, gimmicky cereal boxes, old video footage faded to the point of abstraction, violent satanic rituals. He also has great taste in b-movie actors judging by the cast which includes Sid Haig (SPIDER BABY), Bill Moseley (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2), Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) and Karen Black (everything). If you cram all of those motifs and influences so that they barely fit into one movie, this is what you get. Or to put it another way, you take the first two texas chain saw movies, and you put an episode of Pee Wee's playhouse in between em, then you smoosh it together like a peanut butter sandwich and keep it in your pocket for a while. like that imaginary sandwich the movie is kind of sticky and messy and doesn't really work but it's got a lot of good shit in there. I'm not sure why the hell you would put a sandwich in your pocket though, that's kind of a weird analogy. what the hell man.
So this is a movie you really want to like more than you actually do like it. It is loaded with great characters and of course they're all the bad guys. You got Sid Haig as the working class clown Captain Spaulding. And you got Otis, who is Bill Moseley reconfiguring his Chop Top character from 'Saw 2, this time an albino and wearing a "Burn This" american flag t-shirt but without a metal plate in his head or a coathanger that he uses to pick off pieces of skin from his head for snacks. And you got Grandpa Hugo, I don't know what his deal is but I liked the scene where he was watching the Munsters hot rod episode and he yelled, "Throw me behind the wheel of that bitch I'll show you drivin'!" And there's Tiny, who is a horribly mutilated giant who wears different masks and eats Agatha Crispies cereal. And also there's a bubbly Britney-Spears seductress type in a cowboy hat and Karen Black and Dr. Satan and I'm probaly forgetting a couple more too. Come to think of it there are a whole lot of killers in this movie, they probaly really do have a thousand corpses stuffed in there somewhere.
It's a real visual movie, crammed with detail. They didn't skimp on any of these sets, they are even more detailed than the underground amusement park from 'SAW 2. The filmatists never pass up an opportunity to cover a wall in art school graffiti or serial killer portraits or to nail a hundred dolls on the side of a house. If it's Halloween (which it is) then the porch has to be covered with 20 or 30 of the best jack o lanterns you ever saw and all along the driveway there gotta be scarecrows with the coolest paper mache heads possible. When one of the young gals makes a run for it just like in the 'saw movies it has a little different feel because this time the killers dressed her up in a bunny costume.
Shit the more I think about it the more I like this movie. I mean the title says alot about the movie - it doesn't mean anything, but it sounds so great and ridiculous that it doesn't matter. A movie called HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES really should be the greatest fucking thing ever but the trouble comes with the storytelling. They got the ideas and the artistic flair that you need but in other ways they got the kind of flawed filmatic skills you might expect from a rock guy named Robby the Zombie. For one thing, he didn't really know how to direct the victim characters. I really don't think you have to like the kids whose car breaks down in the wrong place - it's not like I want to hang out with the kids in Texas Chain Saw. But they do need to have some resemblance to real people. The victim characters in this one never seem real until they start screaming. The acting is too much straight to video and their bickering and condescension doesn't make you want to forgive that.
And if these guys are travelling around specifically to write a book about crazy roadside attractions, then why the hell does only one of them really want to go in when they discover the greatest roadside attraction of all time, Captain Spaulding's Fried Chicken & Gasoline/Sideshow/Murder Ride? It makes no sense Zombie. Come on Zombie.
And with the exception of one pretty bravura montage (is bravura a word? I think it is. that was a good use of bravura I think) the guy still needs to learn more about how to use the camera and the editing to tell the story. He has some of the problems with closeups and quick cuts interfering with the action that you expect from these fuckers from music videos. fuck all you fuckers.
So no, the movie doesn't really work and I'm not surprised it is getting some bad reviews but overall I gotta say I am in support of this picture. It is not only a breath of fresh air for modern horror to have something this chaotic and brutal, but the art direction is so spectacular that I think it is guaranteed cult status forever like FORBIDDEN ZONE or that type of deal. So maybe it's a failed attempt but it's an admirable one and I would like to reserve a seat at the first showing of whatever movie Mr. Zombie does next unless it is on digital video.
p.s. Positive reviews of this type of movie usually start out by saying "no this is not going to get any oscars" but actually I would like to recommend that this movie gets an oscar for best costumes. If not for the masks or for Tiny's bright red skull and crossbones turtleneck then for Captain Spaulding's t-shirt that says "If I wanted to hear an asshole I'd fart" on the back and on the front shows a picture of a hot dog.
p.p.s. Mr. Zombie, I have to say I thought the ending was kind of stupid. Obviously from the beginning everybody assumes Captain Spaulding is evil, so it's the opposite of a surprise when he turns on the girl. I almost thought you were going for an actual surprise ending and having him actually be a non-evil clown. Now that woulda been cool. Oh well thanks Zombie.