Usually I'm on top of the popular horror movies, especially if and when they get to the part 3 mark. But until now I never bothered with SAW. I know there was a pretty good buzz on that first one, but I just wasn't buyin it. I had seen that fuckin puppet on the TV ads and I wasn't so sure about a killer with an evil puppet. Evil puppets in horror should always be alive, like Chucky. A killer who plays with a normal, inanimate puppet - that's just silly.
Plus, I read some essay years ago that referred to TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 as 'SAW 2, and since it takes a while to type out TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2, and since that movie tends to come up alot for a guy like me, I started to use that nickname. Me and that movie are tight, we call each other by nicknames. It calls me V and I call it 'SAW 2. Until now, because now there's a SAW and a SAW 2. These movies interfered with my relationship with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2. So I sort of resent them for that.
But yesterday I was working up a piece on this whole "torture porn" debate. As you know I think people who use that term generally don't know what they're talking about. But then I realized I really didn't know what I was talking about either unless I watched these SAW movies, since those are the movies people are talking about half the time when they use the TP word. I wanted to really understand so that's how I got in this predicament of watching three SAW movies in one 24 hour period, taking breaks to write about them.
I didn't like SAW. I thought it kind of sucked. But I guess I can see why it's popular. The premise and the structure are pretty clever. It begins with a guy waking up in a bath tub in the middle of some carefully dirtified warehouse somewhere. He's chained to a wall, Cary Elwes is chained to the other wall, a guy with his head blown off is laying in the middle of the floor, nobody remembers how they got there.
I definitely think it was inspired by that movie CUBE, where a group of strangers find themselves in the middle of a room with doors that lead to identical rooms, and basically they are trapped inside a giant puzzle and nobody knows where it is or how they got there. And there are mysterious markings and if they go through the wrong door they will be killed by fancy booby traps. They try to figure out the puzzle and meanwhile get mad at each other and talk about their lives and make discoveries about themselves. And it's kind of cool but the acting and dialogue are not naturalistic enough for you to believe it for a second so it doesn't entirely work. This is the same way, but with additional problems.
Instead of a big cube these two are in this evil bathroom the whole time, but they find little clues that lead to other puzzles and horrible offers are made like "if you kill the other guy before 6:00 you will win the game." And as they remember things it goes into flashbacks where you learn that a cop played by Danny Glover, having survived his partnership with that crazy guy and having defeated the Predator, is now obsessed with stopping this serial killer named Jigsaw. So he's out there trying to solve this case, and you find out about another victim who had to cut open a guy's stomach to get the key to remove the bear trap from her head. Not pleasant.
Well, I don't know what's gonna happen in parts 2 or 3 yet, but despite all the torment in this one I don't see where the torture porn is. The appeal of the movies, I'm gonna guess, is that morbid dude, would you be willing to cut open a guy's stomach to save your life or dude, would you cut off your own foot if you had to kind of hypothetical. It's a movie that makes you think about the questions that are important to a 14 year old boy who smokes lots of weed.
I think if the execution was different I might've liked it. It is kind of a creepy scenario. I think it's trying to be gritty, it definitely wants to remind you of SEVEN a little bit, but it's much more cartoony than that. The gorey stuff wasn't all that upsetting to me, the only part that was really intense was when the little girl was crying from being kidnapped. (Don't worry, the little girl doesn't have to saw her foot off or nothin.)But it was just too contrived for me to take seriously, the way this all ties in with Elwes's marital problems, the way they conveniently forget about things until the right time, the way it keeps flashing back and taking you out of the moment. And the two guys withhold important information from each other, which is just stupid on their part. I'm sure that's intentional, it's a cynical idea about human nature, that they would compete against each other for survival. But I don't buy it. I'm a cynical guy but I think these two would immediately try to work together and pool their information. Maybe later they would betray each other, but not from the beginning. They would just want to get the fuck out of there.
Sometimes there are obnoxious stylistic flourishes like spinning the camera around the girl with the bear trap or a laughable scene where the killer is being chased and there are fog machines and electric guitars trying to tell you how awesome he is. The guy is just corny. He says corny shit, and he plays with dolls. I know I'm not supposed to like the guy on a personal level, but I definitely think I'm supposed to think he's cooler than he actually is. Fuck this guy.
So I would have to pass on SAW, not for moral reasons but for quality control purposes.
So now I come to chapter 2 in the SAW saga. Part 2s are crucial, they can be make or break for a horror series (or "franchise" as the businessmen call them). FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 is probaly the most influential horror part 2 of all time, since it turned Jason into the killer and created many copycats. So that's a make. A break would be BLAIR WITCH PROJECT 2 which pulled the emergency brake on what everybody up until that point thought was gonna be a 15 year long money avalanche with prequels, tie-ins, spin-offs and etceteras. So this could've been the end of SAW, but they managed to make it only the beginning. There is already a part 3 on DVD and a part 4 on the way. So good job guys, I guess.
I would say this one is probaly a little better than the first one, I don't know, it's hard to measure. Although they bring in the same crap from the first one they at least are smart enough to use a different structure. This time the killer (Tobin Bell) allows himself to be caught at the very beginning. He's dying of cancer and hooked up to a bunch of machines. Before the cops can pack up his equipment and drag him downtown he reveals that he has Officer Donnie Wahlberg's son, along with various other victims, locked up in a house somewhere. They can be seen on his spooky black and white security monitors. They have been breathing in poisonous gas and they have to "play a game" in order to find the antidote. Wahlberg has to "follow the rules" too if he wants to save his son. So it switches between Wahlberg talking to this asshole madman and the people locked up inside the house.
This is a good setup, but it immediately becomes apparent that we are not in the hands of serious horror masters. Because we get the same type of cartoon criminal characters as in SEE NO EVIL, but this movie is trying to be totally dark and twisted man, so you don't get the same sense of trashy fun. From the very beginning they all yell at each other, calling each other sluts and saying "This is BULLSHIT!" Maybe they thought they were doing the classic George Romero theme, that people fail to communicate and work together during a disaster and make the problem worse. But these characters are less believable than Romero's and so are their disagreements. They seem to hate each other just because the plot requires it. It's just obnoxious.
One of the tapes they get as a clue for this "game" tells them they all have something in common that will explain why they are there and help solve the puzzle. They eventually discover what they have in common, but completely by accident. They don't even make an effort to talk to each other. "Hey, where are you from? What do you do? Do you know any sadistic puppeteers?" That's something the movie has in common with many other bad horror movies: the characters are unlikable morons. Morons you might be able to get away with, unlikable morons is harder. Especially when they don't seem like real people at all. How do you sympathize with characters you don't believe, like, or respect?
Like in the first one it is not "torture porn" per se, but alot of horrible shit happens to them, most of it more gross than scary. The most disturbing part by far is when a former junkie gets tossed into a pit full of dirty syringes, where she is supposed to dig out a key. Watching that just causes a primal revulsion, like when the girl falls on the razor wire in SUSPIRIA. In SUSPIRIA it worked better though because the whole world of that movie follows a nightmare logic, you don't have to relate it to the real world, it's digging into your lizard brain or something. This one is set in what is supposed to be the real world, so you are distracted by the fact that this cartoon Mean Drug Dealer character would toss her in there. Not really believable. Even if he was gonna be that much of an asshole that he'd force her to go in there, wouldn't he lower her in there carefully so she stands a chance?
Also, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of Avid farts in this one, and more of the annoying quick flashbacks. Avid farts and quick cuts to flashbacks are poisonous to horror. I'm sure there are different ways to make it work and somebody could find an example of a movie where those things did not make a movie less scary. But in general, Potential Masters of Horror, please avoid that corny bullshit. If you are trying to make a serious horror movie you should be trying to pull the viewer into that world, not pushing them out. You have to put them in the shoes of the victim. Oh shit, what if I was there?
That's why atmosphere is so important in horror movies. If the atmosphere is there, it creates a sense of place. You forget the world around you and focus on the movie. The place in the movie starts to bleed out of the screen a little and blend with our theater or living room and suddenly we are there and we are in danger. Occasionally a filmatist might use shock or disorientation as a tool, but the people making movies like this just don't know how to use the tools properly. With all these flashbacks and blurps and bleeps they might be shaking up some young girls at a slumber party who haven't seen this type of crap before, but those girls will then grow up and forget about it and watch LEGALLY BLONDE some more. When it comes to the real women and men who want to see quality horror you're just wasting our time. The more you jump around between time periods and say BOO! with your editing the more you suck that sense of place back into the screen and remind us that we are not there, we are not in danger, we are just watching some assholes deliver your bad dialogue in a corny music video set inside our TV and it's kind of dumb, maybe we should go check our email or read a book or volunteer to tutor at risk youths or go to the grocery store and buy some Cheetos because I don't know why but I've been craving Cheetos lately. Hey what was the score on the Mariners game?
Okay, the more I describe it the more it seems like it is even less good than the first one. But believe it or not the guy who lends a little credibility to the movie is Donnie Wahlberg. This poor bastard, he was a superstar in the New Kids On the Block when he was young, but it was kind of a Faustian deal. He made alot of money but also will always be remembered as that asshole hopping around singing crap to screaming little girls. That's a boomerang he should've seen coming back, but you gotta kind of feel sorry for him for having a little brother who outshines him. As "Marky Mark" Mark Wahlberg was riding his brother's coattails into the world of garbage music. Who the fuck would've guessed he would've gone on to become a really good actor? The guy does BOOGIE NIGHTS, THREE KINGS, some respectable performances in not very good action movies, a hilarious supporting role in I LOVE HUCKABEES, then he works with Scorsese and gets an Oscar nomination and the movie wins best picture. All the sudden Donnie Wahlberg is not only the fuckin New Kids On the Block guy, he is the lesser known sibling. It's not fair, but alot of times we laugh at the brothers or sons of celebrities who just don't make it as far. The Frank Stallones, the Aaron Norrises, the Chad McQueens, the Don Swayzes, the Kevin Diesels. But honestly I think it works for this guy. It helps him look like a burn out. He's not muscular like his brother, he's lankier, he has a receding hairline. But he looks and sounds alot like him.
I don't think he's as good or as charismatic as his brother, but he's a decent actor. And he's managed to get pretty good roles, working with Bruce as "Crazy Naked Guy At Beginning" in THE SIXTH SENSE, and with Robert Forster in DIAMOND MEN. Cary Elwes and Danny Glover from part 1 are more respected as actors, but he does a better job than them. Elwes used a cheesy acting style I didn't buy and Glover seemed like he just wanted to read the lines and leave. Wahlberg is the better lead, even if it's laughable when it turns into LA CONFIDENTIAL at the end.
Speaking of turning into other movies, when the end of this one exactly duplicated the end of the first one, I suddenly realized that in the first one they were trying to end it like THE USUAL SUSPECTS. The music turns all REQUIEM FOR A DREAM dramatic and the Avid farter in the editing room craps through every scene in the movie trying to build drama by repeating every line of dialogue and image that ties into this SHOCKING REVELATION of what exactly is going on here and who is responsible.
So the premise is kind of trying to be CUBE, the killer is kind of trying to be SEVEN, the end is kind of trying to be USUAL SUSPECTS, plus throw in a little DEAD POET'S SOCIETY because the killer is trying to make everybody appreciate living. So it's not all that original but I guess it is a weird enough combination of influences that it stands out from others in the genre. So that's something, I guess.
Now if I could critique the killer. I don't see this guy as being a great icon like a Freddy or a Jason. I'm glad he cut down on the puppetry this time. And it's kind of cool that you see what he was like before he started this hobby, he just looked like a normal guy. To me it would be more believable if he felt powerful while tormenting these people but turned into a weakling as soon as the cops got in his face. But that's not the route they're going. They're trying to make him a Hannibal Lecter type I guess, a super-intelligent prick who is way ahead of everybody the whole time and likes to sit there and smirk at them about how much smarter he is. It gives smart people a bad name, I think. And it makes you appreciate imbeciles. Give me Jason or Leatherface any day, those guys are teddy bears. You can feel sorry for them a little. But not this asshole. Fuck this guy.
So far I don't find these movies offensive really, they just aren't very good. But I guess I can kind of see what people are saying. While you are supposed to side with the protagonists and not the villain, the filmatists clearly have more passion for coming up with fucked up ways to kill or almost kill these characters than they do for making them seem like human beings. In the first one SPOILER the bad guy wins and it ends in literal darkness. And you know what, you can do that sometimes, movies don't always need a happy ending. But when they do the same thing the second time it starts to seem a little too David DeFalco. This is my reality, Roger Ebert. Is that really their view of life, that it's all hopeless and everybody's fucked, and that we don't deserve the traditional slasher movie satisfaction of the Final Girl or Boy winning, or at least escaping? Or is it just a tough guy pose? Either way, I hope all that money they get out of these movies will cheer them up. Maybe they should use it to buy a ranch, they could ride around on horses and look at the stars at night and breathe in a cool breeze and think positive thoughts.
Okay, after watching three SAW movies in a row I now have a little more sympathy for the anti-TP argument. I still don't agree with it, but SAW III is their strongest argument of the current crop of mainstream horror movies. It still doesn't fit the definition - not only is there a plot, but there's a ridiculously complicated plot, and you're definitely supposed to wince at the pain, not pop a boner - but it is pretty nasty. Especially early on there seems to be a heavy emphasis on finding the most disgustingly graphic way to kill and maim people, and not so much on characterization. In fact, I remember this one lady getting torn open like a bag of microwave popcorn but I had to think about it for a minute to remember that she was the cop from the last one.
Let me describe two different types of people to you. First there is the guy you know who is proud of how completely fuckin twisted he is, he likes to read books about serial killers and satanic cults, he knows trivia about Charles Manson, he has the daily rotten as his homepage, he can tell you which volume of FACES OF DEATH had the monkey brains on it and he likes to try to shock people by talking about shit like that. Basically, he's just a show off. Then on the other hand you got a guy like a David Cronenberg or a Clive Barker, guys who think of crazy fucked up shit that first guy could never come up with, and they're not even trying to. The first guy makes a movie where somebody gets pulled apart by hooks, like he saw in a Clive Barker movie, and he makes it even more graphic and laughs because ha ha that oughta get a reaction out of 'em. Cronenberg on the other hand is a quiet guy, but he makes movies where people fuck each other's leg wounds and grow teeth in their assholes and grow working VHS vaginas in their chests and shoot teeth out of guns. And then he doesn't laugh, because he's serious about it. Because that's just the kind of movies that come out of his brain.
The SAW guys strike me, obviously, as the first type. One way you can tell is this whole SAW business. The reason they're called SAW I guess is because in the first one the victims get hacksaws that won't cut through their shackles, but Cary Elwes decides to use it to cut through his foot. In this one Wahlberg almost does the same thing. But the thing about it is, neither of them really gives much of an effort to cut the chain. Maybe it's not gonna work, I don't know, but at least try it for more than 5 seconds before you jump to the "cut off my own foot" solution. That's how original director James Wan and especially sequel director Darren Lynn Bousman show their cards. They aren't willing to fully establish the desperation, they just want to jump straight to the limb hacking.
The first part of part 3 almost fits the torture porn definition. Because first you get the guy torn apart by hooks, then poor Donnie Wahlberg having to smash his foot to get out of some shackles, then the cop getting split apart, all in fairly rapid succession. Then it seems like the main storyline is about Angus Macfadyen having to be "reborn" by going around saving the lives of people he wants dead. His son was killed by a drunk driver and Jigsaw has kidnapped everybody involved, and put them in increasingly disgusting torture situations. For example, he has to save the judge who only gave the driver 6 months from drowning in pig guts.
If you really look at the meaning of what's going on here it's almost humanistic. He is making the ultimate sacrifice, having to put himself in the line of a shotgun to save the life of the guy who ran over his son. On the other hand it almost seems to be turning Jigsaw into a wise guru, because at the end Macfadyen has "failed the test" by not having a Jesus-like sense of forgiveness. And this sets off a cliffhanger because, wow, there is a part four on the way.
But the other storyline is a little more involving and managed to save the movie from a little game I was playing with it called "turn it off if it gets too boring." As you know from part 2, Jigsaw has an assistant now. His inoperable brain tumor is being a real bitch and he's bedridden. The assistant helps him kidnap a doctor and put an explosive collar around her neck which is attached to his heart monitor, so she can only live if she keeps him alive long enough to see the end of his "game."
This storyline brings a little bit more humanity to the proceedings, I guess. The assistant is very attached to Jigsaw and gets jealous as he's nice to the doctor (at least as nice as you could be if you have abducted somebody and made them wear an explosive collar). More importantly it's good to see that the doctor takes her Hippocratic oath seriously. I kept expecting her to turn Rambo and get revenge if she got the opportunity, but she stayed humane. Like Jesus. If this asshole made Jesus wear an explosive collar he would do the same thing, even though he could easily get out of the explosive collar, because he's Jesus. This doctor passed Jigsaw's evil Torture Porn test, but also passed Jesus's test. So good for her.
The most disgusting, most memorable and best scene as far as I'm concerned is the one where the doctor has to perform brain surgery on Jigsaw. She is not equipped with state of the art equipment so she uses some anesthesia, a scalpel, a syringe of alcohol, some clamps. Also a power drill and a buzzsaw. And she successfully removes a section of the crazy bastard's skull in order to relieve pressure on his swelling brain. Well, I guess she has a better setup than Dr. Benway in that one part of Naked Lunch (I believe) where he performs heart surgery in a bathroom using a rusty can and a toilet plunger. But still, it's rough.
I liked this scene because it was long and graphic and disgusting and yet what made it so audacious was that it wasn't about torturing somebody. It was about healing somebody. Why you gotta torture everybody all the time, why can't you try loving somebody? There is tension because as she's drilling several holes into his skull you wonder if this is a trick, if she's gonna give him a lobotomy so that she can essentially kill him but not stop the heart monitor. That would be smart and you couldn't say the guy didn't have it coming. But it would be unethical. Instead she saves the man who threatens her. Same thing Jesus would do, same thing Babe the Pig would do, same thing E.T. would do. Think about it, man. That's about as Christian a gore scene as you're gonna get outside of PASSION OF THE CHRIST.
One thing that's kind of interesting is the way the movies continue to reference and add to the first one. Sure, the ELM STREET and HALLOWEEN series will often make reference to the lead character from the first movie or whatever, but this one is almost morbidly attached to the specifics of the first movie. So even in part 3 here they show Jigsaw setting up for the "game" he "plays" in the first one. And when we see Donnie Wahlberg from part 2 shackled up he sees the still-fresh severed foot of Cary Elwes from part 1, suggesting that these crimes happened almost consecutively. The more they emphasize this, the more you realize that this crazy motherfucker would've had to have been planning this thing for like 25 years to get all the intricacies down. And he must've had a buddy in homeland security, otherwise how does he find all these people and know everything about their lives? Okay let's see, I'm gonna need to blackmail a hospital orderly into kidnapping the doctor's wife and kid, and I'm gonna need to drug the doctor and shackle him and also I'll have to drug and tackle the private eye who's been following him and once I got that going I'll leave a body somewhere with a clue that will lead a particular corrupt cop to my headquarters, and I already kidnapped his son and a bunch of people this cop planted evidence on and put them in this house I rigged with booby traps and puzzles and cameras and I already staked out a doctor and a guy whose kid was killed in a drunk driving accident as well as the driver, the judge for the case, a witness, his other daughter, and I've made all these recordings that explain the different tests he has to pass...
I mean, there's a LOT of pain in the ass planning and preparation that goes into these "games." Any psychopath in their right mind would've realized it was more trouble than it was worth and hung it up before part 1 even took place. It's a miracle this prick can keep all of it straight in his head. I can't even keep it straight and I've already seen the movies. It would've been so easy for him to forget to record one tape, or hide it somewhere too hard, and then it fucks up the whole game and he has all these people already kidnapped and he never even gets to use them.
Anyway, it's part 3 and it still weaving itself into the events of part 1, and this is probaly because they are written by Leigh Wannel, the actor who co-starred as Adam in part 1. His character seems to be about to die at the end of part 1 but he still manages to write himself into all the sequels. This type of continuity is actually very uncommon in a horror series so give them credit for that, that's one way it stands out.
So overall I would say I was not a fan of the SAW series, but they're not some plague on horror movies. They got some good ideas here and there, they're not that bad. In other words, they're not highly enjoyable to watch, like porn, but they're not torture to watch either.
People are always talking about "jumping the shark," making fun of tv shows or movie sequels for trying to come up with new gimmicks to mix it up so they don't just keep repeating themselves. In a horror series you're gonna start shaking things up pretty quick. In HALLOWEEN they tried getting rid of Michael Meyers by part 3, though they brought him back for part 4. In ELM STREET 3 they added this idea of a group of kids who can dream together and all have different super powers in their dreams, and people liked that so they stuck with it. For FRIDAY THE 13th 4 they added a little kid (Corey Feldman), not to mention they changed who the killer was in part 2. The Chucky series turned into absurdist comedy by part 4.
All of these series have time passing, they might have a back-to-back story like HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN 2 but for the most part when you get to a sequel it's been a year or more and a new group of people is here to have a run in with Freddy or whoever. The SAW series is very unusual in that this is part 4 and they are still dealing with the same killing spree, same characters introduced in previous sequels and still connecting everything to those events, and the timeline even overlaps with the last one.
Okay, to be fair there is one twist. At the end of part 3 the killer "Jigsaw" was dead. And this is not a supernatural series so he's not gonna come back as a zombie. So the opening scene, maybe the closest thing to a good scene in this movie, is Jigsaw's autopsy. It's very disgusting and graphic as two morticians take that prick's body apart piece by piece. And then when they cut open the stomach they discover a chunk of wax with a microcassette inside. Oh shit.
So that's a funny idea (especially since there was no reason to swallow the fuckin thing - what's wrong with leaving it in your pocket, Jigsaw?) and the closest thing to the glorious ludicrousness of that one scene I liked in part 3 where a lady had to perform brain surgery on him using power tools and she was wearing a large explosive collar set to go off if his pulse stopped. But if you want to enjoy the craziness too bad, you will be too busy trying to keep track of the plot and characters of this fuckin thing. You might be able to do it, but I can't. I had to go read the wikipedia synopsis afterwards to get an idea what happened.
So I will at least give them credit for finding a new way for a horror movie to suck. I don't think I've ever seen another sucky horror movie where the main problem was that it expected too much out of me. I remembered that part 3 had a cliffhanger, so I assumed they would recap what that was and then followup on it. Instead they completely ignore it and throw you into something else until the cliffhanger suddenly comes up at the end. You need to remember who all the different supporting police characters are from various other entries in the series, and what their fates were. For example this character played by Lyriq Bent, apparently he was in the other movies, now he's the main character. He's trying to find Donnie Wahlberg, who I think got kidnapped two movies ago if I remember right. Costas Mandylor is trying to find his daughter, I believe that was the aforementioned cliffhanger. I remembered that Jigsaw had a female assistant, I forgot that she died. You need to remember these characters plus recognize other cops who are now strung up in traps, plus recognize the dead bodies of other characters when they come across them, plus follow flashbacks of Jigsaw that explain why he does what he does and see how they tie in to the investigation of his posthumous work. You need to keep track of all these characters and be able to recognize them whether they're in uniform or tormented and gagged or in flashbacks. And some of the scenes are intentionally shown out of chronological order to trick you, as if that was necessary.
Remember how I was feeling sorry for Donnie Wahlberg and other less famous siblings? It sucks to be Frank Stallone or Barry Yun Fat because you're always gonna be the butt of a joke. Also it sucks because you have to say yes to returning to your successful horror series and you end up like poor Donnie, having a movie where literally all he does is stand on top of a block of ice with a chain around his neck, moaning and sweating and almost dying. Probaly wasn't one of his more enjoyable shoots is my guess.
The original HALLOWEEN started with little Michael killing his sister after she has sex. John Carpenter always says he didn't do it on purpose, but the movie slasher from HALLOWEEN to FRIDAY THE 13TH (and I guess going back to PSYCHO) tended to be very prudish and judgmental about sexuality. There's even a FRIDAY THE 13TH tie-in book from a few years ago where Jason hooks up with Christian fundamentalists who admire his tough stance on premaritial relations. The SAW movies have sort of turned out to have their own type of holier-than-thou moral superiority bullshit in their killings.
By part 4 I'm starting to wonder if I'm supposed to actually agree with this prick in his "tests" and "lessons." His whole m.o. is that he sticks his nose in everybody's business and then tries to make them feel bad about their failures by forcing them to cause others horrible machine-inflicted torture and death. In this one he's going after a cop who he thinks needs to learn that he can't save everybody. It's true, he has become too obsessed with this case, and it's ruined his marriage. So Jigsaw is real concerned. He's like a Yankee Dr. Phil.
I don't know though, that one seems kind of vague. I wonder if in part V he will "play a game" with a cop who puts himself down too much, or doesn't know how to accept a compliment, or doesn't open up about his feelings enough. You know one thing I like about Chucky, he is a killer doll trying to transfer his soul into a human body. You get what he's up to. He's an asshole but at least he's not on some self righteous moral crusade.
If there really are people out there who like these movies and are willing to put in the hours of research and careful study to understand what in fuck's name is going on I hope one of them will put together a timeline to show all the planning and preparation this asshole had to put in to play these "games." When did he do what? Show us what kind of preparation and setup would be involved in building these machines, recording these tapes and videos, kidnapping the victims and leaving the trail of clues that gets people into the right places at the right times. They're already doing two more installments, so there is even more that we don't know about yet. This guy was a hell of a planner, just imagine what he could've accomplished in urban planning or wedding planning or one of those types of industries.
Anyway in the last scene there is a shocking discovery when they finish the autopsy and it turns out there's another tape stuck up his ass. And it has a note on it that says to disregard the other tape, he changed his mind after he swallowed it so please listen to this tape instead.
Nah, just fuckin with you. Actually there is some kind of cliffhanger twist at the end, but I know I won't remember it when part 5 comes out, because I finished watching half an hour ago and I already forgot what it was. Sorry guys, you lost me.
8/30/08
SCARFACE
Shit man, there's no other movie like SCARFACE, is there? Even the original SCARFACE, I bet, is nothing like SCARFACE. We got several high quality American gangster epics, but they're always about gangsters of the Italian American persuasion and usually in New York, New Jersey or Las Vegas or somewhere. This one feels so unique because it's about Cuban-Americans and it takes place in Miami. It has a real strong sense of place. Its wicked heart pumps the tainted blood of that godforsaken Floridian peninsula, even though they got chased out of there and had to film most of the movie on neutral territory in L.A.
This is the perfect exaggerated painting of the 1980s and the cocaine wars. The good old days. And it even makes you root for this psychotic egomaniac shithead, Tony Montana (Al Pacino [Scarface]). 'Cause first you see him as an immigrant getting hassled by the man, working as a dishwasher and tough talking his way into bigger work, dropping off some money for some cocaine. His higher ups (small time hoods themselves) don't believe in him. But when the dealers pull a cross on Tony and his friends and it turns into an insane bloodbath (literally, come to think of it, because alot of the mayhem takes place in the shower), all involved must admit that he handles it with, uh, flair. He leaves with the money and the yayo (a term now popular because of the movie), tells the middlemen to fuck off and brings it all straight to the area boss, who is very impressed. This is typical of his quick rise up the totem pole. Initiative, elbow grease, bootstraps, etc.
Then of course you got the usual gangster/mogul/rock star story arc - good times, lady trouble, betrayal, paranoia, addiction, the straw that breaks the camel's back, big awesome shootout. (that last part was the main thing missing in THE DOORS in my opinion.)
Al Pacino of course is legendary for playing this character. His accent is way the fuck over-the-top but it works. He exudes such a ridiculous confidence that you have no trouble believing this little dude can take on all comers. He says he purposely made the character 2-D and not 3-D, but that's okay. He's perfect. As cartoonish as he is you definitely believe he's a real guy.
You also gotta like Steven Bauer (a bonafide Cuban American actor) as Manolo, best friend and right hand man. He's so loyal and supportive you feel like he's your best friend too. Not that Tony Montana appreciates it.
This is obvious but I think part of what makes the movie so vivid and tense is the occasional bursts of outrageous violence. It's not always just the guns you usually see in crime movies - they tried to mimic the type of maniacal shit that was going on in drug cartels and they got a couple genuinely shocking scenes. My favorite part is when Tony and his asshole colleague Omar are visiting their hot shit supplier in Bolivia. There's tension between Tony and Omar and then you know something's going on when the big man leaves to take a phone call, and you see him and one of his thugs talking and watching our guys coldly through the window. They politely arrange for Omar to take a flight back to talk to his boss and come back the next day, leaving Tony behind. You know something's fishy but you don't know if this is bad news for Tony or for Omar.
The big man tells Tony how much he likes him but that he doesn't like Omar, as he casually looks through binoculars at the helicopter... where they are cutting up Omar. Then they tie a noose around his neck and toss him out the fuckin helicopter! You see the body fall and jerk and then flail around. I couldn't believe I was seeing that shit, and it looks so real. (Turns out they used a real stuntman - don't ask me how. I don't know.)
Of course the director is my man DePalma, but other than being well crafted and uncompromising, this doesn't feel all that much like your typical DePalma picture. The one scene that's vintage DePalminator is the infamous chain saw scene. Tony's first big coke buy goes sour and him and his guy end up cornered in the bathroom, his friend shackled to the shower rod about to get brutally power tooled to death. So right as the massacre starts, the camera lazily floats out the window and down to the street where we see that the two back up guys waiting in the car outside are busy flirting with some blonde chick in a bikini. Then the camera floats back up to the apartment bathroom of horrors, which is now noticeably more red and wet than a minute ago.
And during this ingenius camera maneuver I'm pretty sure you can just make out, real quiet, some screaming and sawing sounds from inside. Mixed in with the dialogue and sound effects from some movie showing on the TV set.
DePalma handles the material just about perfect, but alot of the credit I think should go to Oliver Stone for his script. Remember back then he was in an insane coke haze that caused him to accidentally type out a couple great genre scripts including this one and CONAN THE BARBARIAN. I guess this was written for Sydney Lumet, who wasn't so interested when he read how it turned out. I think that makes it all the more admirable that Stone came up with this fucked up nightmare instead of making the more socially acceptable version Lumet was interested in. The world is yours.
For the most part I wouldn't say this movie was dated. Like I've said before, I consider the 1980s to be a dark and evil time for art, culture, humanity, etc. But this movie seems more like a period piece, a document of a time and place, than some cheesy movie from the '80s. The one exception is some of the music. The mostly keyboard score is made by some guy Giorgio Moroder, who I thought I recognized as a respectable name but it turns out he's some guy who wrote songs on TOP GUN and crap like that. Anyway I think most of his score fits for these asshole cokeheads. Occasionally the fake drums and shit get on your nerves but not too bad. The one major failure on the musical front is the montage near the end set to some god awful pop song, or top 40 as it was called in those days. I could do without that horseshit.
The twentieth anniversary edition of the DVD has a couple notable extras on it. First you got this documentary where a bunch of famous and not so famous rappers talk about how much they love SCARFACE. For some reason, all rappers want to be Scarface when they grow up. This featurette is actually pretty disturbing because alot of them either really believe, or pretend to believe when the cameras are around, that Tony Montana is a good role model because he came from nothing and made lots of money. This materialistic attitude is a sad trend in modern music and if you ask me it is pretty much a 180 degree misreading of what the movie is about. I mean seriously, who is the better person in this movie: Tony, because he makes millions of dollars, kills alot of people including close friends, gets addicted to coke and gets murdered, or his mama, who won't let him in her house because he's a bad influence on his sister? I know it's not a preachy movie and that's good, but at the very least it's a tragedy. Did they think he looked happy with all that money and the pile of cocaine on the table? Maybe they never got all the way to the end.
Discussing the scene where Tony murders his best friend for a dumb reason, Eve says, "Honestly, I think he overreacted." Most of the interviewees agree, but one of them actually argues that Tony was justified!
Anyway, a better special feature is something I've been wishing for on alot of other DVDs: clips from the ridiculous TV version of the movie. They compare scenes from the actual version to the bastardized cut, which includes such great redubbed lines as "How'd you get that scar, eating a pineapple?" and "This city is like a big chicken, waiting to get plucked."
Anyway, if you haven't seen SCARFACE, get to it. If you know Method Man or somebody they would probaly loan it to you.
THE
SCORPION KING
Well, I gave up on Stephen Sommers after the rhythmless THE MUMMY so I never
watched THE MUMMY RETURNS. But I have since learned to enjoy The Rock so today
I finally got around to watching the prequel/spin-off THE SCORPION KING. It's
directed by Charles NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 Russell, so I didn't have to
break my Sommers boycott. And I'm glad I finally watched it. This is probaly
the best riff on the CONAN THE BARBARIAN type of movie I've seen. Not as stylish
or violent as 300 but a little more fun. And a hell of alot better than KULL
THE CONQUEROR.
The movie got me from the opening scene where Tyler Mane and a horde of barbarians
have some hapless dude who they call "an Akkadian" tied up. They
are very proud of all the races and nationalities they've murdered but they
never bagged them an Akkadian before, so this is a big day. But the Akadian
says, "May the gods have mercy on you, because my brother won't."
His brother, is, of course, The Rock (registered trademark of World Wrestling
Entertainment) as Mathayis, a long-haired, giant-muscled, bow and arrow toting,
sword slinging, rope swinging, cuthroat motherfucker who storms in for a Rock
vs. Mane Smackdown, and fires an arrow into Mane so hard he flies out the
side of the building and lands five years later in the remake of HALLOWEEN.
After the opening we get a narrated explanation of the mythology of what was
going on out there in the desert exactly 3,000 years before Christmas of 0
BC. Some prick named Memnon was the king, he was good with swords and could
catch arrows shot at him by Al Leong and he had a sorcerer who gave him visions
that made it easy for him to slaughter the fuck out of everybody. So a small
band of rebels hires what's left of the mercenary Akkadian race (Mathayis,
his brother and a couple other dudes) to kill the sorcerer and take away Memnon's
power. Mathayis hates that asshole so even though he's a sleazy killer for
hire he offers his services pro bono. Giving back to the community.
When he goes in for the kill though everything goes wrong. First of all the
sorcerer turns out to be a girl, so obviously he falls in love with her. Then
Memnon kills his brother. So now it's all about revenge, swords, etc.
The tone of the movie is goofy but straight-faced. The Rock gets to say "Die
well, my brother" and "I've come for the woman... and your head."
Michael Clarke Duncan gets to ask "Will you stand alone before the fury
of his armies?" When the sorceress tells Mathayus he's destined to die
he says, "I make my own destiny," they kiss and it dissolves to
the next morning with them in bed together. It also has that lovable barbarian
brand of machismo, so at first Mathayis and Duncan's character Balthazar talk
shit to each other, but then they fight and earn each other's respect and
become allies.
In my opinion the science
is questionable. He gets hit by an arrow poisoned with scorpion venom and
they manage to nurse him back to health, but they say the scorpion venom will
be in his veins for the rest of his life. And I guess that must be why he's
the Scorpion King. In my opinion that diagnosis may not hold up to scrutiny
by modern doctors, but maybe it's for the best because it's a pretty tough
name.
There's a little bit of bad comedy. Grant Heslov, the Academy Award nominated
co-writer of GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, plays the wacky horse thief sidekick.
He's lame but not as painful or racist as the comic relief in THE MUMMY. There's
also some cheesy effects involving snakes and big fire ants (before KINGDOM
OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but not as good) but I forgive them because they don't
lean on them too heavily, there's much more emphasis on sword fights (choreographed
by the great Al Leong) and punching. There are alot of shots of dudes reacting
to axes stuck in walls very close to their anatomy. Mathayis flies around
on ropes, falls off buildings, catapults himself, there's even a character
who manages to invent gunpowder so they can blow shit up.
This is a world where almost
everybody is a fierce fighter, including the sorceress and the sexy ladies
in the harem. There's even a little street moppet who gets involved in the
battle and it doesn't get too cute. Grant Heslov might be the only character
in the whole movie who can't kick ass, but he is a trickster so he has some
skills such as being able to escape from being buried up to the neck in the
brief moment when you have your head turned.
The Rock is great. He has such charisma that he can play a musclebound barbarian
and still seem like your buddy. In the climactic showdown they put their weapons
down and it becomes a WWE wrestling match complete with something thrown in
the eyes (cheating), falling off a ledge into the 3000 BC equivalent of folding
chairs, etc. There are alot of good badass moments, like when Mathayis takes
an arrow in the back to save his girl - I thought he was gonna die, because
I figured he must be a mummy in THE MUMMY RETURNS - but he manages to pull
the arrow out of his back and fire it at his enemy. Way to recycle.
I realize this benefits from low expectations, being kind of the Hollywood studio version of a B-movie. But man, this is how you make a fun dumb movie. Let me count a few of the ways it's better than THE MUMMY. First of all, an appealing star. The Rock may or may not be this generation's Laurence Olivier, but he's not any worse than Brendan Fraser. Meanwhile he he's way more likable, his voice is not annoying, he knows how to deliver jokes properly and sounds like he understands the meaning of the sentences that he says, and obviously he's a more interesting physical specimen. He's both a larger than life cartoon and a down to earth dude you would want to hang out with. And then there's the action. In THE SCORPION KING it's all better orchestrated. It doesn't feel much slower paced than a MUMMY movie but it has rhythm to it. It builds to crescendos. It doesn't feel like the same BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG for the whole movie.
The Scorpion Kingdom (or whatever this place is called) is a land where you become king by proving yourself as a warrior. Too bad, because in a democratic society I would totally vote for Mathayis for Scorpion King. Long live the Scorpion King! And I'm sure if I ever watched THE MUMMY RETURNS I would root for him to win. But that ain't gonna happen any time soon.
8/16/08
Producers of violent horror movies like to claim their movies are "controversial." Here's a more mainstream-acceptable horror movie that actually is controversial among movie fans. It was hugely popular at the time, but it seems to me like most horror fans today look down on it or sent it. Like it or not, SCREAM was an important landmark in the ongoing history of the horror. It singlehandedly resuscitated the rotting corpse of the slasher movie (at least in its whodunit form inspired by FRIDAY THE 13TH, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, PROM NIGHT, TERROR TRAIN, etc.) It made horror big business again, paving the way for an onslaught of low (and medium) budget horror that otherwise wouldn't have happened. But alot of horror fans see themselves as outsiders, so it bugs them when a horror movie is popular with people who aren't as into stabbing and monsters as they are. And in my opinion there is a certain amount of sexism there, because they get mad about teenage girls liking the same movies as them. (Don't tell them that HALLOWEEN is about teenage girls, they might cry.)
But the real problem with SCREAM is that it cursed us with a smart-assy self-referentialism that to this day still pops out like a screeching cat to ruin many a would-be tense moment.
So watching SCREAM in late 2008 comes with baggage. You watch it and can't help but think of all the mediocre-to-bad movies it inspired and the things the cast have done (or haven't done) since. Hey, that's the guy from the SCOOBY DOO movies. That's the lady that Robert Rodriguez left his wife for. That's Jamie Kennedy. Hey, I forgot about the guy that looked like Johnny Depp. Didn't he do a movie with Cuba Gooding Jr.? Is he in TV now? Or does he play Jack Sparrow at Disneyland?
Also you can't help but think about the writer, Kevin Williamson. Wes Craven obviously pulls his weight as director, but this one's definitely a writer's movie. It seemed to many people like such a re-invention of horror that everyone wanted to see what he would do next. Well, he wrote a few similar, lesser horror scripts (I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, THE FACULTY) some terrible ones (TEACHING MRS. TINGLE, later CURSED)and mostly is just known now as the creator of the teen soap opera DAWSON'S CREEK. At the time the style of writing in SCREAM seemed new, now it's got that DAWSON'S CREEK scent all over it. The soap opera elements stand out more. The gimmick of the characters knowing the cliches of horror movies was a clever way of making them relatable, but the main character begins the movie already a media figure at the center of a highly publicized murder trial and wrongful conviction controversy. So I doubt many kids are watching thinking "That could be me."
Some of the horror references are kind of intrusive. Why would Sydney, who says she hates "scary movies," mention THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN?
Also, that mask, such a good choice because it was a real Halloween mask with a very simple but creepy design, has been overexposed due to the popularity of the movie. It's lost its power, meaningless now like Mickey Mouse.
But you know what? Despite all that this is still a pretty effective movie. Craven is a director who can get into a groove more often than most, and his many cat and mouse scenes get your heart pumping. The killer's habit of calling on the phone, making you guess where exactly he's hiding, has a primal effectiveness. And there are a couple other good gimmicks to keep you on your toes, like the hidden camera with the 30 second delay. So you know the killer was standing behind the couch half a minute ago, but you don't know where he is now. Somewhere nearby.
Despite all the joking and referencing, the main emphasis of the movie is on serious slasher business, and on that level it works - especially in the scene with Drew Barrymore, who does a good charming and then a really good terrified. Definitely better than you often get from a slasher movie non-survivor. A classic scary setup, and that's the opening scene of the movie. Think about how many horror movies start off with some character getting killed to set up the rest of the movie - usually you forget what that character even looked like by the time you get to the end. So an "opening kill" this memorable is an achievement.
Even some of the postmodernist shit still works, I think. When the killer calls Sydney (Neve Campbell) and quizzes her about horror movies she says she doesn't like them because "What's the point they're all the same, some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door, it's insulting." But later she's being attacked and she has trouble getting out the front door so what does she do? She runs up the stairs. I thought that was great because it always bugs me when people criticize horror movies by saying the characters are dumb because they didn't do the one perfect strategic thing that they are confident they would be smart enough to do in that situation. Obviously, you or I would stay completely calm and focused and not panic or shit our pants, right? When Sydney runs up the stairs we understand why. It shows that sometimes you have no choice but to run up the stairs. It's fight or flight, man, and she's not ready to take on the ghost with the knife.
I must say though that if I did get called by these guys I think I would do pretty good with the horror trivia portion, for example I wouldn't fall for that trick question about who the killer is in FRIDAY THE 13TH. And I would know other things like John Laroquette is the narrator on TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and Larry Fishburne was in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 and the Michael Meyers mask is a William Shatner mask painted white and with the sideburns cut off. So I could take these guys on in my opinion. Look out scream killers, you met your match.
For alot of people this movie marks the transition into modern, not as good horror. The early '90s were pretty light on horror, then this started a new wave of "who is the killer?" movies and other horrors featuring youthful casts from TV. After that it was BLAIR WITCH and THE RING's brood of PG-13 ghost movies and remakes of Asian horror. Then there was SAW and all the remakes which they call "nu horror." In terms of horror's evolution it doesn't seem like that long ago, but watching the movie it does just because of technology: cell phones are scarce (and sometimes brick sized), nobody has caller ID, and it's hard for cops to check phone records.
A buddy of mine named Thomas jokingly suggested they should remake SCREAM. I wondered what that would mean exactly. At first I thought it would only reference horror from the SCREAM era, like URBAN LEGEND and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. "What's your favorite scary movie?" "FINAL DESTINATION." Then I thought only remakes. They specifically make references to the Rob Zombie HALLOWEEN or Michael Bay's remakes. Then I thought oh yeah, it would be from Platinum Dunes, so it would inexplicably take place in the '70s. Thomas decided it would be in the '70s without movie references, they would follow rules from some old book. They would remake that story about kids stalking their schoolmates but without all the pop culture and media elements that everybody remembers. It would be deadly serious with no irony or meta-anything. But it would be really good and act as a sort of spiritual cleansing of modern horror, atoning for everything SCREAM caused and setting us back to a pre-SCREAM moment in horror.
But I don't know if that's necessary. If you see SCREAM as one movie, not a movement or a template, it's pretty good. For some reason we take the goofy shit more personally than we do in some of our classics. We can accept P.J. Soles saying "totally" in HALLOWEEN or wearing her painter's cap over a hair dryer in CARRIE, but we can't take a couple pop culture references in this one. We don't watch HALLOWEEN fuming about the terrible holiday-themed slashers it spawned, or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET mad that the dream-killer gimmick is too clever. But with this one for some reason we sometimes can't separate the solid slasher movie from some of those little things. Why should we care if this movie inspired later movies to cast people from TV shows we don't remember that aired on a network that no longer exists? What relevance is it now? But for some reason people will still talk bitterly about "the WB" when they talk about SCREAM.
Oh well. That's not a battle worth waging. I just want to give credit where credit is due. It's no ELM STREET and I prefer THE HILLS HAVE EYES but I think Wes Craven can still be proud of this one.
10/28/08
THE SECRET
"People around the world have been talking about a movie so powerful that it can change the course of your life. " --oprah.com
"If you're talking about DIE HARD I agree." --geocities.com/outlawvern
I am so happy and grateful
now that I saw THE SECRET, because I can warn you not watch this shit.
Not too long ago I used to run into this drunk Native American gentlemen at
bus stops who would tell me to go see WHAT THE COCKSUCKER DO WE KNOW, a movie
that would change my life. Actually he called it WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW,
but the title on the poster had a %$#^! type gibberish curse on it so I figured
it was up to interpretation. Anyway, all the new agers and people you never
knew were new agers were raving about it, and it played for months on end
at one of the smaller Seattle theaters, making it the new NAPOLEON DYNAMITE.
But I wasn't sure if that was due to genuine demand or if the theater was
rented out by the Ramtha cult. The movie features this crazy gal from Washington
who makes lots of money pretending to channel the ancient wisdom of some Hagar
the Horrible type warrior named Ramtha. That sounds like a funny movie, obviously,
but I never gave it a shot.
Well, now another cult/new age/self help/horse shit phenomenon is sweeping
the nation, and this one is even more mainstream. It used to be you had to
set up your own tent to sell snake oil. Instead of that, these people went
on Larry King, Ellen Degeneres and two episodes of Oprah. So now it's #1 on
Amazon. You don't need a drunk dude hyping your movie at bus stops if Oprah
keeps talking about it on TV.
The movie's called THE SECRET,
it never played theaters but it's on DVD ($34.95). The back of the box tells
you how there's this amazing, amazing secret that's been passed down for hundreds
of years, all the great minds from Einstein to Benjamin Franklin to Bruce
Springsteen or somebody (maybe not Bruce, I can't remember) have used this
secret and it has made them great and rich and have huge dicks forever and
get laid constantly and invent electricity and now thank the fucking Lord
or the magic viking crystals that finally somebody put The Secret
on DVD so that you can pay money to have the secret that has always been secreted
away from you. UNTIL NOW. Because of THE SECRET.
I'm assuming you already sent in your $34.95 to the archaeological society
that dug this shit up so, while it's in the mail, HERE IS THE SECRET EVERYBODY:
<SPOILER>
Think positive thoughts. Don't think negative thoughts. Think about a pile of money and and it will MANIFEST itself using THE SECRET. Hooray! The end.
Or as Oprah.com puts it:
"The Secret is defined as the law of attraction, which states that like attracts like. The concept says that the energy you put into the world — both good and bad — is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day."
They may call it the Law of Attraction, but I call it the Law of Bobby McFerrin - don't worry be happy. I will pause while you go find your mind, because I'm sure it just got BLOWN the fuck away.
Yep, that's some powerful
shit right there. And obviously, The Secret/Don't Worry Be Happy is NOT something
that can fall into the wrong hands. You can't let the British or the Pharaoh
or some asshole like that get ahold of this type of get rich quick magic.
So the opening shows some dramatic scenes of people throughout history frantically
hiding or burying a scroll (they didn't have DVDs back then so it was only
available on scroll). They say that the secret has been "suppressed"
for hundreds of years.
Luckily some blond Australian lady found out about it. According to the dramatization,
her little daughter left her an ancient manuscript with a post-it note on
it. It's not clear how her daughter dug it up from the sands of Egypt or wherever.
Maybe they will elaborate in part 2. ($39.95.)
Anyway, THE SECRET worked
for this Australian lady. All she did is sit and imagine that she would make
millions of dollars by getting Oprah to help her sell worthless garbage to
her army of gullible, unfulfilled viewers. If she had polluted the mindscape
with negativity like "Nah, Oprah has morals, she would never take advantage
of vulnerable people like that" then it wouldn't have worked. But she
stayed positive and now we gave her our money.
It takes about 3-4 minutes to figure out the entire contents of this movie,
and then the rest is a full 92 minutes of repeating it in different words.
To make it somewhat watchable they throw in alot of funny dramatizations featuring
an army of guys with torches, a shirtless genie, and a dude in a bathrobe
who really wants a sports car. Maybe the craziest part is about a standup
comedian with low self esteem. His co-workers at his day job make fun of him
for being gay by putting a banana on his chair. He sits on it and squashes
the banana and they all point and laugh. It's like a scene out of some terrible
children's movie from Pakistan or somewhere that doesn't quite translate.
A banana? I don't get it. Well, using The Secret this guy got better at telling
jokes and everybody at work was afraid of him so they stopped playing crazy
fruit tricks on him and I guess he probaly invented a banana-proof chair.
But most of the movie is
interviews with various "philosophers" and "doctors" and
"visionaries" - every damn one of them sounding suspiciously like
salesmen and infomercial hosts, but I'm sure that doesn't mean anything, forget
about that - greenscreened in front of cheesy animated parchment with fake
Leonardo Da Vinci sketches and spinning skeleton keys and shit. They say lots
of funny things like "You are the masterpiece of your life," and
"the universe will correspond to the nature of your song." One lady
refers to her female heroes as "sheroes." They talk to the asshole
who wrote the MEN ARE FROM MARS books, the asshole who wrote the CHICKEN SOUP
FOR THE SOULS books, and a feng shui expert. (If you ever seen the PENN AND
TELLER'S BULLSHIT episode about that one you know what to make of that.)
Everybody knows about thinking positive. I'm sure Mr. T taught us that one
at some point. But the new twist of ancient wisdom that these wise millionaires
put on it is that they literally say that thoughts are magic that
create things for you - preferably money, cars, or mansions. They even have
a special effect showing magic white thought waves firing out of people's
heads. They do not say there is literally a genie, the genie is a metaphor
for how we, as users of The Secret, ask the Universe for a car and the Universe
says "Your wish is my command." I suppose if we visualized that
there was a genie then the universe would have to make us a genie, and then
we could stop visualizing cars and just straight up ask the genie for a car.
That would be cool. We should try that.
When I say that you are supposed to ask for a car I am not being cynical,
they literally spend a long portion of the DVD/scroll asking you to visualize
that you are driving in a nice car, and if you do it good enough the car will
appear on your lawn or something. Or you will realize that it is worth going
into debt to buy it. Mine was Blade's car, I hope he doesn't mind if I manifest
his car.
Don't worry though, kids can learn The Secret too if they pay the $34.95.
There is a nice little skit about a poor kid wishing for a bike until his
grandpa buys him one. Magic! They also show an adult with a bike.
I don't think it's the same kid grown up because he lacks the ancient Ben
Franklin wisdom. They say he manifests negative magic energy into the universe
by worrying about his bike getting stolen and locking it up. So when he comes
back, the bike has been stolen.
This is a good point: locking up your bike does cause an ancient curse that
causes it to get stolen. It happened in the Pee wee movie and it will happen
to you. Anybody who lives in the city is familiar with the sight of one bike
wheel locked to a pole. If there are any cyclists out there I'm sure you could
attest that bikes get stolen all the time even if they're locked. But have
you ever tried just leaving your bike unlocked somewhere, and thinking
about honesty and cuddly bears, in order to manifest a society of trust and
honor? Probaly not. That is why your bike was stolen, idiot.
And it's true, the movie really does blame you for your bike being stolen.
If you have sat around wishing for a giant pile of cocaine and it has not
appeared, this is why: negativity. For a minute there you must've been thinking,
"This is ridiculous, how could cocaine magically appear here? Oprah lied
to me." That's what fucked it up, that thought there. Start over.
Every once in a while they show an out of context quote from Alexander Graham
Bell or somebody, written in a fancy calligraphy font and read in a creepy
whisper. There is no evidence offered that any of these people agreed with
the moronic horse shit - I mean, ideas - presented in this scroll, since most
of the quotes are clearly talking about something else. But there are other
documented cases that are not mentioned in the movie.
First of all, the Little Engine That Could. That motherfucker knew that What
You Visualize You Materialize. They shoulda interviewed him
for this movie.
Also there is little Charlie Bucket from Willy Wonka. He was poor as dirt.
He wanted to win that contest even though he could only afford one candy bar.
But then he thought positive thoughts and he found money in the street I believe,
so he bought one more candy bar and won the contest and then also Willy Wonka
gave him the factory for free. Because of The Secret. If you pause it on just
the right frame during the fizzy lifting drinks scene you can see the white
thought waves coming out of his head.
Then of course there is Jesus. He kept thinking negative thoughts so they
nailed him to a cross. You asked for it Jesus. Shoulda used The Secret.
Okay, all of that is very convincing, but I know of at least three documented
cases that would seem to contradict the information given in this educational
product ($34.95). Number one case is John McClane. He overcame incredible
odds to save Bonnie, kill the terrorists and reclaim Nakatomi Plaza. You could
say he did it by thinking positive, but that's just not true. The guy keeps
swearing and talking negative all throughout the movie. He thinks he's fucked.
He is definitely putting out negative energy beams. But he still makes it.
Case number two is Gollum. I thought of him during the montage of the dude
staring at the expensive car, and the kid staring at the bike. I thought they
should show Gollum yearning for his Precious. He made a wish from the universe
and what did it get him? He fell in lava, that's what it got him. He did get
to bite a hobbit's finger, which was awesome, but he didn't get his Precious.
The third case happened only yesterday, when I was watching the movie and
was wishing it was almost over, but there was fucking forty minutes left.
It's almost an hour in when they start talking about using The Secret to get
something other than money, cars and mansions. Like, I don't know... happiness
or fulfillment or some stupid bullshit like that. They explain how if you're
sick, you shouldn't talk about being sick because that makes you sick. A guy
who the screen tells us is an actual M.D. (and a bunch of other letters, and
a "visionary") claims that all diseases come from stress. I always
thought some of them came from viruses too, but that might be some old dark
ages superstitious shit. There is a lady who explains that she had breast
cancer but she watched "funny movies" and was completely cured without
treatment in 3 months. They offer no documentation, details, or even a doctor,
friend or actor wearing a doctor costume to back up her claim. Just some lady
claiming she had cancer once and then cured it without doing anything. Sold!
That kind of shit I think makes it personal because I think most of us have
at sometime known somebody who died of cancer. And the implication is that
if only they would've laughed and stopped being so grouchy all the time they
could've easily cured themselves.
Let me tell you a story. This takes place when I was a young man and I was
after a girl. When a young man is after a girl he will do things he wouldn't
otherwise do, and convince himself that it's a good idea. I'm not talking
about chasing pussy necessarily, I'm talking about you foolishly decide you
love some girl and try to convince yourself that yes, you like looking at
the pretty sunset and listening to Peter Cetera or whatever horrible thing
she likes to do. You haven't figured out yet that there's girls out there
who do some of the same things you do, you don't have to paint yourself into
a corner like that.
And plus you gotta do respectable shit to impress the girl's parents. That
way when dad catches you on top of his little princess one night he has more
complicated emotions, lowering his marskmanship and allowing you a window
escape.
So picture me in a moment of weakness, I decide that yes it's a good idea
to go with this girl to church every Sunday. Only it's not in a church, it's
in a cabana room in some apartments and it's less than ten people, desperate
people like ex-drug addicts and alcoholics who need to constantly binge on
Jesus or their life will turn into a shambles again. They were Holy Rollers,
they spoke in tongues and I'd never seen anything like that before. At first
I figured they must be speaking Latin.
One week they had a guest preacher, not the normal guy, I don't know where
he came from. This was a slick motherfucker with a fake orange tan, pomade
in his hair, a seersucker suit and shiny watch and rings like P Diddy would
wear. Now days you would figure this guy was from the Jesus Channel, and he
was pretty obvious about being a con artist. As part of his sermon he bragged
that people around the country bought him cars because Jesus told them to.
The climax of his routine was the audience participation. He pulled out a
little vial of magic Jesus oil that he would rub on your forehead or the back
of your hand as he shut his eyes tight and looked up to God and prayed for
you like he was giving you an exorcism. He'd ask each person what ailed them,
they would say I have a bum knee or I don't know, I don't hear
that good in my left ear or whatever. And he laughs and says that's
easy, the Lord can take care of that and then he does his little show.
Eventually he comes to this girl of mine's mother. And I was dreading this
because I knew what ailed her. I don't remember how he worded it, but he asked
her what God could help her with. What health problems did she have.
"Well, I have cancer," she said.
You might think he would swallow hard and his voice would crack, but I guess
he was used to this sort of thing coming up. He didn't miss a beat. "No
problem! We cure that all the time." And he rubs the oil on her and does
a big dramatic prayer and people are crying and clutching each other and speaking
in tongues, and it kind of made me sick that he would try to get her hopes
up like that, but even I was probaly pitching in. If it might cure cancer
give it a shot.
Well, I don't know if that woman bought what this guy was saying, or liked
getting her head oily. I do know that she loved Jesus. Religion seemed to
be her main activity. And she didn't seem desperate like some of the other
ones. I don't think she found religion to try to cure cancer, she already
had religion, and she kept it despite what life threw at her. But I heard
a couple years later that the cancer got her.
So why didn't the prayer work? Well, like The Secret it had an escape clause.
If this lady wasn't praying hard enough, if she didn't love Jesus enough,
then she wasn't gonna be able to cure the cancer. She blew it.
And that's the same thing THE SECRET is telling you. Your negative thoughts
are what attract bad things to your life. Why can't you be like this lady
who cured her own cancer?
In the dramatization they show her watching what looks like a Charlie Chaplin
movie, and I don't know about you but I don't buy it. KINGPIN maybe could
cure cancer in 3 months, but that has sound. A silent film I would think would
take at least 6.
But I'm no doctor, and the doctor/visionary they have explains that "I've
seen kidneys regenerated, I've seen cancer dissolved, I've seen eyesight improve
and come back."
You know, if this guy was my doctor I think I would look into finding a new
one. I got a rule: no doctors who believe you can grow kidneys with your mind.
This is where it gets dangerous, they are actually telling people to deal
with their health problems by ignoring them. Isn't that how Jim Henson died?
I wonder if there's Kermit blood on those cars that Oprah gives out.
Just ignoring it is also their answer for how to make the world a better place.
They tell you to deliberately be ignorant. Negative thoughts clouds the magic
thoughmatrix or whatever, so it's best not to know about it. They show a guy
waking up to his clock radio, a news report talking about police corruption.
This is bad, nobody should know there is police corruption. It will cause
police corruption.
One guy talks about how the anti-war movement actually causes wars. Why? Because
they are thinking about what they don't want (war) instead of what they do
want (not war). He asks why people can't stop being anti-war and start being
pro-peace.
This is awkward, but somebody should tell the guy that there is such a thing
as the peace movement, and peace activists. There is even a peace symbol you
can draw on your signs or your flags, and a peace sign you can flash with
your fingers. The song is "Give Peace a Chance," not "Don't
Give War a Chance." Even all the chants they do at these marches are
Secret-compatible: "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!",
"This is what democracy looks like!", etc. The one I like best,
"Move, Bush, git out the way" is visualizing that Bush will git
out the way. Maybe if you would listen to your clock radio every once in a
while you would know these things, but you don't. You are visualizing a world
where the peace movement causes more wars, and you are going to manifest that.
They even take a swipe at people who are trying to conserve the world's resources,
saying that some other source of fuel always shows up so don't worry about
it.
So they're asking you to ignore the problems of the world and the lump in
your nuts, that's the dangerous part. But the part I'm most uncomfortable
with, as someone who lives by a Vow of Excellence, is the idea that you don't
even have to fucking do anything to become rich. That PURSUIT OF
HAPPYNESS movie seems to be implying that any homeless person can become a
millionaire with hard work, but at least they require hard work. This movie
actually tries to tell you that you are silly for thinking hard work is involved.
One lady laughs about how "I grew up truly believing that life was difficult,
that it was hard, you had to struggle."
Now, I am obviously not somebody who knows jack shit about having money, but
I do know about Excellence, and that requires Striving. That is the Law of
Excellence: Blood + sweat + tears/elbow grease mixture = EXCELLENCE. Don't
sit around trying to pretend there aren't problems in the world, that's what
THE MAN wants you to do. The Secret is exactly how Bush and Rumsfeld and those
other psychos fucked up Iraq so bad. Ignore the problems and think positive
and, hey, that's weird, we're still in a quagmire. Why didn't those soldiers
manifest some body armor? Oh well, negativity attracts negativity. I blame
the troops.
On the extras there is a "summary" of the secret, which is really
just one of the guys blabbering for ten minutes and trying to get you to buy
"teaching aids" from their web sight. He actually starts talking
about the Holocaust for some reason. I'm not sure exactly what his point was
because I got distracted wondering how The Secret fits in with the Holocaust.
Did the victims of Auschwitz "create the circumstances of their life
with the choices they made"? Should they have been able to escape the
concentration camps by thinking happy thoughts? And what about Holocaust deniers?
Aren't they doing the right thing, according to THE SECRET? You have to stop
talking about these bad things, it only creates more bad things.
You know what, if you want to see the REAL The Secret, it has been on DVD
for a long time and it won best picture in 1976 and it's called ROCKY. Nobody
believed Rocky could last even a round with Apollo Creed, they thought he
was crazy. But he set out to achieve, and he trained like hell. He punched
the meat, he ran all over the place, the guy threw an orange to him, and he
fucking did it. He didn't win but he never got knocked out.
According to the philosophy of THE SECRET, Rocky is a loser. Instead of working
hard, he should've sat and pictured himself winning. He should've drawn a
picture of himself with the belt and hung it on his ceiling. He could've sat
around eating the meat instead of punching it, as long as he thought positively.
"I am so happy and grateful now that I knocked out Creed in the first
round." Then he would've won instead of being some loser who struggles
and has a difficult life and then doesn't even win.
I say fuck THE SECRET. Go with ROCKY. All copies of THE SECRET should have
their discs taken out and replaced with ROCKY. I'm gonna visualize that and
see if it materializes.
p.s. Salon had a good article criticizing Oprah for promoting this crap
SEE NO EVIL
NOTE: This appears on The Ain't It Cool News, but the formatting is all fucked up there and I liked this one so I am re-posting it here.
Urgent Breaking News!
Vern Says SEE NO EVIL Is `Completely F#*king Awesome!!'
Hi, everyone. "Moriarty"
here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
What could I possibly add to a review this good?
Boys--
This is kind of a weird question, but have you ever thought there should be
a movie about a big bald retarded muscleman with extreme religious views running
around an abandoned hotel banging people against walls and plucking their
eyeballs out? If so, today's your lucky day, and SEE NO EVIL is your movie.
The retarded muscleman is played by Kane, not the rapper Big Daddy Kane but
apparently a famous wrestler of some kind, making his acting debut. According
to the credits he is playing "Jacob Goodnight," a name they unfortunately
never say in the movie. Like the character, the movie is big, dumb, almost
definitely using steroids, and also way more fun than you would think.
SEE NO EVIL is the first film from the prestigious WWE Films. WWE is what
we used to call WWF until they got sued by the World Wildlife Foundation.
I guess people must've been donating money to Hulk Hogan thinking he was gonna
use it to save the pandas, but it all went straight into his 24" pythons.
I was hoping the WWE Films logo would be accompanied by rockin guitars and
clanging metal hammers, then it would explode and spray sparks and flames
everywhere, and maybe some skulls and demonic goatheads. It turns out their
film division is a little more high-minded than the wrestling division though,
so it's a simple logo with the sound of an orchestra tuning. I mean I'm talking
100% class. Then the last shot in the movie is a dog peeing into a dead man's
eye socket. By the way this review contains spoilers.
The victims/heroes of the movie are a bunch of tough talking twentysomething
juvenile delinquents straight out of a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel, brought
in to clean up a filthy abandoned hotel as part of their community service.
They are accompanied by two surprisingly lenient correctional officers, one
of them being a kind of cool stoic cop with an artificial arm. This guy is
the most interesting character and, of course, the first to die. (At first
it seems like they're going for a funny twist where all the nice people die
first and most horribly, and the assholes come out alive.)
The kids do almost no cleaning before they wander off to take part in various
leisure activities:
1) Kicking back in unsanitary hotel rooms. They make themselves comfortable
even though the walls are covered in filth and we keep seeing cutaway shots
of squeaky rats crawlin around or roaches fuckin each other doggystyle.
2) Going up to the fire damaged penthouse to enjoy some of the ol' illicit
drugs and/or sex. It is hard to say what will happen to these characters.
3) wandering through secret tunnels to find a lost treasure one character
read about on the internet
For our entertainment, these activities are all interrupted by Kane, who will
suddenly stomp out with a huge ax or a long chain with a hook on the end.
A big bald dude just doesn't have the same iconic presence as a Jason or a
Freddy, but he's a pretty entertaining villain because he really knows how
to manhandle somebody. He is constantly dragging people by the hair or lifting
people up by the neck, sometimes throwing people long distances or banging
them against a ceiling or that type of thing. But he's bad at judging distances
so his victims always get a limb or a head closed in the elevator doors, or
he clumsily bangs em against a wall going through a doorway.
Sometimes he's treated like a t-rex, you hear him stomping in the distance.
Other times he makes an entrance like he probaly does in wrestling. Like when
he's behind a two way mirror and suddenly appears in a dramatic pose, silhouetted
holding a giant ax.
Director Gregory Dark (WHITE BUNBUSTERS, NEW WAVE HOOKERS, DEEP INSIDE VANESSA
DEL RIO, BLACK THROAT, BETWEEN THE CHEEKS... yeah right, like I gotta explain
to YOU guys who Gregory Dark is) unfortunately slathers the movie in the obnoxious
style some call "nu horror." Constant avid farts, whooshy camera
move sound effects, random bleeps and blurts and buzzes and vibrating cameras.
There's alot of Kane's-eye-view shots where everything is shaky and blurry.
Ironically, the guy who collects eyeballs apparently needs glasses. One pretty
hilarious show offy camera move is when a guy gets scared and takes off running
with a steadycam attached to his face. For a minute it's like Spike Lee did
a slasher movie.
Having one of the Dark Brothers (actually now days I guess he's both of the
Dark Brothers) direct the movie is fitting because there's a theme about sexual
repression. This Jacob Goodnight character has a corny backstory about how
he was raised in a cage by a crazy Christian extra-super-fundamentalist mother
who made him look at porn magazines and then punished him for it. A person
with a more open upbringing would just go home and jerk off to a Dark Brothers
movie but this poor bastard has to jerk off to a real girl locked in a cage.
So yeah, it's the same "sexually repressed killer gets riled up by teenagers
screwing and smoking pot" thing we've seen in HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH
and SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT movies. But there's a funny twist. This guy
is so paranoid somebody might screw in his abandoned hotel that he has all
the bedsprings hooked up to a system of strings and pulleys that rings a bell
and tells him what room the fuckin is going on in. When it happens, he gets
an outraged "What the fuck!?" look on his face. As if he never foresaw
the possibility that these bells would ring some day. We have a code red.
As far as maniacs go he's kind of a lovable oaf by the end, and Kane sometimes
does a good job with the facial expressions (thankfully he barely talks).
Other times he does wrestling style "make sure the guy in the back row
can see it" acting. When he gets mad he puffs his cheeks out like a cartoon.
Although the characters, dialogue, story, camerawork, etc. are all incredibly
fuckin stupid, there are a couple things in it that could be considered clever,
including at least two really spectacular death scenes. I saw this at a free
screening that was mostly empty. That's something you don't see too much,
'cause people would watch a documentary about picking boogers if you gave
them a free hat and poster. But this small audience laughed throughout the
movie and especially at Kane's climactic, uh, smackdown. When I saw the ridiculous
teaser trailer I thought this looked like a bad straight to video movie, but
I was wrong. This is something you gotta see with an audience. Definitely
the funniest and most consistently entertaining bad horror movie I've seen
in a long god damn time.
I do have one complaint: there's a scene where the bitchiest character gets
force fed her cell phone. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear the phone ring
from inside her. It's obvious, but it's a wasted opportunity. It also would've
been nice if the talk button got bumped inside her stomach and it cut to her
friend on the other end saying, "Hello? Hello?"
That last shot I mentioned before, with the peeing dog, is a brilliant post-credits
bonus shot. Except for some reason they got the idea that the type of people
who would pay money to see a slasher movie starring a professional wrestler
are not the same type of people who would stay and watch the credits. So they
put it near the beginning of the credits, which kind of weakens the effect.
Still, you gotta respect a horror movie that not only doesn't show the killer
come back to life at the end, but also shows his mutilated corpse being crudely
defiled by animals. Like I said, 100% class.
That said, I swear on Jacob Goodnight's piss-smelling grave that I would pay
money to see him undead in a sequel.
I would like to congratulate WWE Films, the Dark Brothers, and everybody that
goes to see this movie in the theater. That's what this world needs more of:
heroes.
thanks boys,
Vern
SEED OF CHUCKY
Well judging from the low turnout for this picture in its first couple weeks, I might be the only one. But DAMN if I don't love BRIDE OF CHUCKY. THat was the amazing slasher sequel landmark where the former Hong Kong director Ronny Yu knocked the CHILD'S PLAY series off into a weirdo direction where the killer doll suddenly gets a killer doll wife and it turns into a silly comedy, but with occasional moments of visual poetry courtesy of future oscar winning cinematographist Peter fucking Pau.
Now if you're like me you remember the very end of BRIDE OF CHUCKY, suddenly a little sharp-toothed baby chucky pops out. It's like the traditional sudden-jolt-ending used in every horror movie since CARRIE, but at the same time it's a funny joke because you just KNOW it means we're gonna get a SON OF CHUCKY some day. Or SEED OF CHUCKY it turns out due to the ambiguous gender of the baby.
SEED OF CHUCKY is the first movie in history to open inside Chucky's penis, in a computer generated sequence about the actual Seed of Chucky having a go at the Egg of Tiffany, then growing into a baby. Then we skip forward and find the baby at the World Ventriloquism Championships in London. It turns out some random British punk rock fake-ventriloquist found the seed of chucky in the cemetery after BRIDE OF CHUCKY ended. The poor little doll is now living a Charles Dickens style childhood in a cage in London. His name is Shitface and he has the voice of LORD OF THE RINGS hobbit Billy Boyd as he tells us about his sorry existence in a hilarious voiceover.
It turns out the Chucky and Tiffany dolls have been somehow repaired (no explanation needed or offered) and are being used as puppets to star in a movie about their lives. The baby Chucky finds out and journeys to Hollywood where he accidentally does a voodoo spell to resurrect them, and also speaks Japanese to them (long story).
If you didn't figure it out during the ventriloquism championships, it is at this point that you will notice that this is even more of a comedy than BRIDE OF CHUCKY. Clearly nobody involved in this movie has any illusion that Chucky is scary anymore. So instead writer/direct Don Mancini (who wrote all the chucky pictures, but never directed before now) gives us a weird ass comedy about killer dolls trying to raise a sexually confused child. Also trying to impregnate Oscar nominee Jennifer Tilly with a turkey baster full of Seed of Chucky (long story). Also rapper/deodorant expert Redman, playing himself, is trying to have sex with Jennifer Tilly while pretending he might cast her in his directorial debut, a movie about the Virgin Mary. Method Man was unavailable for comment.
Jennifer Tilly has a dual role as the voice of Tiffany and as herself. She seems to have a good sense of humor about herself, her career, and the movie BOUND. John Waters also has a small role, and the actual effects guy for the movie plays the effects guy for the movie within the movie, and he gets his head chopped off in a pretty spectacular manner. Good job effects guy.
To be frankly honest - and believe me, it hurts to say this my friends - oscar nominee Brad Dourif starts to get a little grating as CHucky, impersonating Jack Nicholson all the time. It does set up a pretty good joke though, where Chucky recreates the "Here's Johnny!" scene from THE SHINING but manages to NOT say "Here's Chucky!" For that single act I think the oscar people should retroactively give this kid that supporting actor nomination for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. After all these years he's finally earned it.
There are actually a whole bunch of references to famous horror movies, and they did a pretty good job of them, making them identifiable but not usually TOO obvious. They got a good HALLOWEEN scene in there, they got a couple PSYCHOs (one is the shower scene, sure, but they also do the falling down the stairs shot) and I think they even got DRESSED TO KILL in there.
This isn't a horror movie, it's a horror comedy, with an accent on the comedy. Nobody could be scared by this movie. But there's some good chopping and cutting, so don't whine. Still, what's really good is when they get away from that and actually get interested in the characterization of these dolls. Chucky and Tiffany debate about whether to raise their child as a killer doll or not. Tiffany sees their killing as an addiction and tries to get the monkey off her back. She tries her best to raise her kid as a regular non-killer type doll. Meanwhile, after 16 years and 5 different attempts to move his serial killer soul out of his killer doll body and into a human, Chucky finally has an epiphany, and accepts his status as "Chucky, the killer doll."
And I'm proud of both of them.
There are a few reasons why this is not as good as BRIDE. Of course, it doesn't look nearly as beautiful as Mr. Yu and Mr. Pau made their movie. It's got a good look to it, sure, but none of that gothic poetry.
More importantly it doesn't have that surprise factor. CHILD'S PLAY was a genuinely good killer doll movie, parts 2 and 3 were formulaic slasher sequel retreads. But suddenly BRIDE comes along, it's a total reinvention. You've never seen a movie like this before. All the sudden it's completely absurd and it's more about the puppets and the crazy things you can do with them. I believe this movie set the stage for JASON X and FREDDY VS. JASON which are maybe not as good as BRIDE but all three are more entertaining slasher sequels than anybody had made in many years.
But there is one major way that SEED is kind of better than BRIDE: it's even more about the puppets. In BRIDE you gotta go along with these hollow teenager characters who Chucky and Tiffany hitch a ride with. You don't have the same problem here. The only human characters you have to know are Jennifer Tilly and Redman, and it's almost like you already know them anyway. I mean, I remember just the other day, Redman and his friend Method Man jumped out from behind some bushes and told me about a particular brand of deodorant. They seem like a couple of helpful guys, I really appreciated it. And let me be the first to say this about Redman, that any celebrity who is willing to play themselves and then be horribly disemboweled is a cool guy. (spoiler.) If they ever get to make another one (yeah, right) I hope somewhere they have a "REDMAN R.I.P." graffiti mural like you might see of Tupac or somebody.
Plus you got this new puppet, the Seed of the title, who is either called Glen or Glenda depending on which parent you ask. Billy Boyd does a great job, seeming totally sincere.
I don't want to give everything away. This is just a funny god damn movie. I'm sure alot of people can't get into this, but I don't know what to tell you. If you liked BRIDE I think you will like this one.
One last thing, I want to commend these filmatists on some wonderful end credits. I'm sure somebody's thought of this before, but I don't remember ever seeing it. They credit each of the actors next to a freeze frame of their character's horrible beheadings, guttings, etc. It brings a real sense of class to your night out at the movies, one that is much needed today. Good job everybody.
SERENITY
It's all Laremy [name removed to protect the innocent*]'s fault. I know, sounds like a made up name, but this is apparently a real guy, a fellow Seattle movie reviewer who emails me all the time. As you know I am one of them lone wolfs they got, so I don't want any part of no critical community or nothin. So I've made kind of a sport of dodging this guy's kind offers to go to critic's screenings with him. He sees alot of the same movies I do, but weeks early and for free. So I really oughta go but I told him look bud, I like to see the movies with my man Joe Public. (Joe Public actually is a made up name, it is symbolic of regular individuals such as you or I and not critics. Just to be clear. I think you knew that though sorry)
Anyway, Laremy gives me a heads up on alot of these, and he has a pretty good track record. He told me about 40 Year Old Virgin, he warned me that Lord of War was not as good as hoped, and a couple other ones. So I took him seriously when he said "SERENITY will be HUGE. Nice flick, nice laughs, nice action, well done all the way around. Summer Glau is highly doable as well." When I asked him if that was that one space ship movie he got a little more thoughtful and warned not to get too excited because "it's better with no expectations, like peyote."
Well I gotta agree with Laremy again although I'm not sure which one it was that somebody was gonna "do." This is a well put together space movie, all made out of familiar elements but not feeling like your typical hollywood space picture you would expect to see in a theater these days. The story is about the crew of one medium sized spaceship (a little smaller than Hans Solo's ship) which is called Serenity. That is why the movie is also called Serenity, it is the name of the spaceship. Anyway there's maybe 7 or 8 people on this ship but the important ones are 1. the captain, who will serve as our rogueish hero and 2. a babbling/maybe retarded teenage girl named River who is wanted by the space government because they made her into a psychic/kung fu killing machine and she may or may not know their secrets.
And then the other most important character actually doesn't have a name for me to forget, but he is a super secret black ops type deadly assassin motherfucker who works for the space government. And he has a sword. Not a light saber, a sword. He's trying to kill the retarded psychic but they won't give her up on account of morals so he starts massacring everybody they know. Alot of innocent people die in this movie.
This is a weirdly old timey kind of future. Yeah they got spaceships and planets and what not but they still use bullets and knives. They punch alot. And they talk this kind of cowboy talk like "reckon" and what not. But it's also kind of current because they still have silk screened t-shirts, vibrators and other modern conveniences, not space-ified. This is maybe the first ever non-porno space movie to have a reference to a vibrator. Unless I missed something in 2001.
Also this story is based on the civil war, only in space, and not about slavery, so the south are the good guys. The captain and another member of the crew were veterans of the war, on the losing side, before they became smugglers or whatever it is they do now when not running from the nameless space assassin sword guy.
I like the idea behind this movie because it's real different from the STAR pictures. Unlike STAR WARS it's not a huge epic. No princesses or chosen ones. I admit they do take on the government and accomplish something big, but they really do seem like regular space joes. They just stumble upon it. And it's not like STAR TREK because the "federation" (I think it's called the alliance here) is the bad guys. Not comic book Darth Vader bad guys but bureaucratic government asshole bad guys. The movie does a good job of explaining this with the opening narration which tells about the war between the civilized worlds and the savage outer rim planets. And then you realize the narration is biased, it's a history lesson being told to a classroom of rich kids. And history is written by the victors. Stupid victors.
Also, the heroes aren't goodie two shoes. They shoot first, they like to kill, and they start off the movie by pulling a payroll job. They're the heroic criminal types, which is one of my favorite types.
And maybe the most surprising thing for a modern sci-fi movie: not a single alien! Everybody is human earthlings that speaks English and Chinese. They do got these bastards called Reevers though, named after Keanu Reeves I believe. They're roving bands of self mutilating cannibal rapist space savages. They've gone completely crazy so not only do they rape and pillage and eat people alive, they decorate their space ships with body parts and they roar like snorks. Or whatever those inbred troll guys in Lord of the Rings were called.
So you got some genuine threats in here. I don't think anybody ever had to worry about getting raped in space before, although that Harvey Keitel robot in SATURN 3 was a real pervert and I didn't trust him. Anyway there's lots of tension which is good for a movie that is basically a series of chases. It's a well paced movie with a good build escalating into a fun action/character climax.
But more importantly you got some good characters, likable and reluctantly heroic, played by good actors you never seen in anything before, except one guy I think was on Barney Miller. It's a little bit scarier than a STAR WARS picture but it's light-hearted and has some funny lines I think, although I'm not totally sure because of the trenchcoat wearing ponytail motherfuckers in the audience laughing over every god damn punchline cause they'd already seen the fuckin thing 3 times earlier in the day.
Which brings me to what and why it's all Laremy Legel's fault. Actually, it's Laremy's fault I saw the movie but in truth this one's on me. Laremy gave me a chance. I could've seen it with a safe group of critics you never heard of before. But no, I had to stand up on some abstract outlaw critic code of honor, I had to pay money to see it myself. On opening night. With nerds. Stupid bastard.
You see, I'd rather not go into it because they explain it in every review, but it turns out SERENITY is based on a failed tv show. Actually nobody could miss this fact because it's the whole emphasis of the advertising. "The cult phenomenon beloved by millions" I believe is how how some breathless narrator described it on the trailer. I checked imdb - this filmatist worked on shows like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE and ROSEANNE, so I guess that's where he gets the fanatic following. The newspaper ads are all about how now YOU can be A PART OF the NEW SCIENCE FICTION PHENOMENON. You will be able to tell your grandchildren that YOU WERE THERE, you saw SERENITY. Fuck the Berlin Wall coming down this is god damn SERENITY. The cult phenomenon beloved by millions.
I thought that was just some pathetic horse shit cooked up by some marketing wackos, but then I waited in line to see this movie. I ain't seen a collection of nerds like this in years, and that includes Star Wars 3 and the time the International Math, Chess, Video Game, Role Playing, Rennaissance Fair, Lord of the Rings, Robots, Virginity and Matrix Convention came to town. To be fair there were no sword fights, but there were many costumes, pins, novelty hats, suspenders, home made t-shirts. They say if you're going to see Skynyrd or whoever, you don't wear the band's t-shirt to the show. Not the case with SERENITY. You want people to know you fucking know. Alot of people were talking about how many times they'd seen it already and whether or not there were enough people in the line. I got a sense they were doing their part for humanity, voting with their dollars by seeing the movie as many times as they could take. I'm sure they're nice people (they passed around pizza) but I can't quite comprehend these evangelist types. They have a dream for their children and grandchildren, and that dream is SERENITY PART 2. I mean I guess I would understand if it was DIE HARD. Or BLADE. Or GHOST DOG. I mean that would be different. But this space shit--
I don't know. Maybe if it was THE LIMEY or POINT BLANK. LONE WOLF AND CUB. The MARIACHI series. Maybe KILL BILL. Something with DMX. Or anything with Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Bruce Lee or Toshiro Mifune.
Oh my God, I think I almost do understand now. I better stop thinking about this before it's too late.
I consider myself a brave man but more than once I found myself eyeing the fire exit. I was planning my escape and it wouldn't have been a daring one like in the movie, it would've been more like when Old Dirty Bastard fled the hospital without checking out.
Inside the theater was worse. There was a singalong of a folk song about the characters. There was people trying to talk in space cowboy talk. There was a trailer for DOOM, the new movie by the director of CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE, and these people were laughing harder than I've ever head anybody laugh, ever. It was like laughing gas was being pumped in through the A/C vents and only I was immune. I thought, are these assholes belittling my man The Rock? Until I realized that DOOM is based on an old videogame, and between this audience literally hundreds of thousands of hours of DOOM had been played. It's a video game thing, I wouldn't understand.
When the movie started it was troubling too because everybody would laugh HARD at every god damn thing anbyody said, often before they said it. It was like a movie with a laugh track. And no matter how good a movie is it's hard to watch with a group of people that are clearly enjoying it WAY more than you are. I guess they love these characters and want to show their support. It's an image projected onto a flat surface using light, though. I don't think they can hear you. I could be wrong.
The director of this movie, who must get around because they all seem to be on a first name basis with him, I think he hates these people too. Because he makes sure some of their favorite characters get it bad. But he does appreciate them enough to make a decent movie for them. That is a sure sign of respect because I'm sure he could've just done a movie of himself taking a crap (in space) and they would've still gone to see it more than once. To support him.
Anyway I'm not trying to belittle these freakos. Like I always say, don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to The Rock. They are obviously happy. Very, very, happy. All I'm trying to say is, those ads are no joke. I didn't pick up on it until it was too late, but those ads are a warning to non-members. See this movie, but for God's sake not on the opening weekend. Believe me, you don't want to be a part of this science fiction phenomenon/cult/beloved etc. You just want to see the movie and then go home.
*If you are googling Laremy please understand that he's a nice guy and should not be associated with my anti-social behavior, etc. just because my review came up when you typed in his name. I don't like having to change my review because of you judgmental potential employers, landlords and stalkers. I vouch for Laremy, or don't vouch for him, whichever is more impressive to you. If you need a letter of recommendation or something let me know.
SEVEN POUNDS
Seven strangers. One man connects them. Or some stupid bullshit like that, is what the commercials said. They had a hard time explaining what the hell this movie was supposed to be about, and didn't make me curious to find out. That is, until somebody gave away the ending.
I'm gonna go ahead and make you have to highlight this one, because it's at the end of the movie, it's a pretty huge spoiler. But if you have no interest in the movie yet you can go ahead and highlight this to see what it was I heard Will Smith's character does at the end:
| Suicide by jellyfish. No shit! When you hear a movie includes suicide by jellyfish what choice do you have but to give it a shot? That shoulda been the main focus of the advertising. In fact that should've been the title: SUICIDE BY JELLYFISH. |
Whether or not you go in knowing the ending like I did, you're pretty much just thrown in there without an explanation of what's going on, and it takes its sweet time getting to solid ground where you feel like you've got your footing in the story. Smith is on the phone with a blind meat salesman (Woody Harrelson) chewing him out for no good reason, trying to pick a fight with him. Why is Will Smith being such an asshole? And what is he babbling about when he gets off the phone? He starts yelling out a list of names and knocking over furniture. The guy is obviously traumatized.
We see some glimpses of his past. He had a wife or girlfriend, apparently not with him anymore. He was rich, now he's in a dingy hotel. He was the head of an astronautics corporation. Now he's going around saying he's an IRS agent, talking to various people in debt because of health problems, butting into their lives.
Honestly I went in thinking this movie was gonna be Nic-Cage-ludicrous and I was gonna get some laughs out of it, but it quickly defeated me. Even though I had heard pretty much what he was gonna be up to, all this careful of withholding of information was successful at creeping me out. Is he really an IRS agent now, or is he making this shit up? He seems like he's stalking these people. You and I both know Will Smith is not playing a crazy stalker, he's obviously gonna try to help these people. But then he's telling Rosario Dawson that he's cutting her a break on the money she owes to the government, and we suspect he doesn't really have a say in that. What is the dude up to?
And he seems so miserable. He's going around doing these incredibly nice things for strangers but then all the sudden he'll turn harsh and upset them. He might turn out to be some kind of angel or some shit, but not the cuddly kind.
You ever been to a movie where some annoying person keeps asking their boyfriend or girlfriend questions the movie purposely hasn't answered yet: why is he doing that? Where is he going? What is he trying to do? And you want to tell them for God's sake, it will answer the question when it's time to answer it, your boyfriend doesn't know either because he is not in the future, he's watching at the same time you are, and to be honest we're mad at him for not telling you to shut your dumb mouth? Well this would be the all time worst movie to see with one of those people in the theater. And I guarantee you it happened somewhere. Anybody out there who suffered through that, I feel for you.
It's an unusual movie and a real ballsy one for somebody like Smith to make. While it gets most of its mileage from making you wait to find out what exactly he's up to it also takes a left turn and becomes a love story with Rosario Dawson, who has a good chemistry with Smith and seems genuinely charmed by him. He falls in love with this girl who's fighting to live past her life expectancy, and if she does she wants to be with him. But she doesn't know that he's been hinting he's gonna die and that he gave away his house to a stranger. This could get ugly.
It's the same guy who did THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS, and it's similarly well directed. That one was a very effective crowdpleaser type movie but I still had that nagging feeling that it was bullshit, telling us that a dude should raise his kid in a subway bathroom so he can have a shot at becoming a millionaire investment banker. SEVEN POUNDS has more selfless motives than that. The cynic in me still felt like kind of a chump getting choked up for the love story, but then it really got me with the last scene. And this is a bigger spoiler than the last one:
| Smith has sacrificed himself to save Rosario from her heart condition. She has his heart now and she's recovered nicely. Some time later she comes to some kind of a children's music recital. Woody Harrelson is the teacher. We have long since figured out that Will was gonna donate his eyes so Woody could see again. But what I didn't see coming was Rosario walking up to him and staring lovingly into his eyes... Will Smith's eyes, transplanted into Woody's head. |
That last scene is such a weird combination of romantic, tragic, and disgusting.
I've never seen anything like it. If you ask me that's a brilliant ending.
Never occurred to me I'd see something like that. I'm sure many people will
laugh this one off like I expected to, but it worked for me.
And here's something stupid to think about: SEVEN POUNDS is the anti-SAW.
SAW is about a brilliant engineer who feels he got fucked over, so he tries
to get his revenge on humanity. SEVEN POUNDS is about a brilliant engineer
who knows he fucked up, so he tries to redeem himself by helping humanity.
The guy in SAW concocts elaborate schemes to prove people are immoral so he
can kill them, the guy in SEVEN POUNDS concocts elaborate schemes to prove
people's morality so he can reward them. In SAW they get tortured by convoluted
Rube Goldberg type machines, in SEVEN POUNDS he pulls a maneuver like that
on himself. In the SAW movies he's dying of cancer and can't stop it, in SEVEN
POUNDS he ought to live but wants to kill himself. The guy in SAW is a real
prick who thinks he's better than everybody else, the guy in SEVEN POUNDS
is a charmer who hates himself. And I'm sure one of the SAW movies must've
had some reference to "seven pounds of flesh," but I can't remember
for sure. Plus they both start with the letter 'S'.
I guess we'll just have to see if they put out a SEVEN POUNDS movie once a
year for the next half a decade, but so far I like this series better than
SAW.
3/31/09
SEXY BEAST
In any earth-shattering journey you're gonna run into some unanswerable questions, some intractable dilemmas, some jokes without punchlines or words without letters. In my case I have encountered a catch-22 like you would expect to find primarily during time travel. On one hand, I have vowed to myself that if I see a movie with plans to write about it, but then I don't feel like I have anything very interesting to say about it, then I won't write a review. On the other hand I've vowed to myself to try to review every movie on the BADASS 100. In this case I've decided to betray one aspect of Excellence and side with vow #2. Please forgive me if I made the wrong choice.
I know when SEXY BEAST came out everybody said it was good. I didn't trust it though because I got burnt by SNATCH and nobody else seemed as sick of that type of shit as I was. They were right: except for some computery music this wasn't much like a Guy Ritchie picture. The story centers not on hipsters but on old guys. Ray Winstone plays a retired gangster who's not really supposed to be cool, unless it's in a "this guy doesn't give a fuck about anything" type of cool. The overly long opening scene is mostly gross-out shots of him oiling his horrible red belly while sunbathing by the pool.
The movie is mainly about an asshole not-retired gangster (Ben Kingsley) coming to Winstone's house and trying to force him to do another job. He just doesn't want to take the risk, or to damage the happy legit life he has with his wife. But this is a guy you do not say 'no' to.
Kingsley is, of course, great. He probaly got extra mileage since he's Gandhi playing a cold-hearted bastard. Not just a violent gangster but a petty-minded, childish bully who can't step onto a plane without getting into a war over a cigarette. Just a complete prick. And he's got a comedic side because you realize his stubbornness is not as much about Winstone doing the job as about having a thing for Winstone's friend's wife. But the funny parts don't take away the threat. He's genuinely scary.
And I would guess that Kingsley's performance is 100% of the reason my colleagues in the World Badass Committee voted this movie onto the list at #81. I am not ashamed to have him join the pantheon with Yojimbo, John McClane, the Man With No Name and Ghost Dog, but to be frankly honest I don't agree with it. It's a good character and a pretty enjoyable story. Some funny and unique conflict, some decent caper business at the end, but I guess I just don't get the level of acclaim it got. The filmatism is a little flashy/cheesy - director John Glazer seemed way more skilled on his second movie, BIRTH. And I gotta admit, I don't understand at all why it starts showing flashes of some monstrous bunnyman. If that was literal and one of these guys was some kind of wererabbit that wasn't explained very well. If it was symbolic it was just kind of stupid. I'm not sure what he was raching for with that shit, but I don't think his fingers touched it. I guess the only good thing about it is it leaves it open for SEXY BEASTS. How you gonna deal with a whole herd of bunny monsters?
I suspect that to really appreciate this as much as everybody else I'd have to travel back in time and convince my past self to go see it in a theater. Then I could go more out of the novelty of Killer Gandhi because I wouldn't have heard about it for years. I could have a breath of fresh air from the type of British crime movies of the time. I wouldn't expect as much from Glazer, since he'd be a rookie. It would be an all around more pleasant experience. Only problem is my other self would end up getting impossible expecations, not from the hype but from the circumstances of seeing it. Any time your future self travels back in time to tell you to watch a particular movie I figure you're gonna expect a hell of a movie. So that's another one of those paradoxes.
I guess the way to do it would be to sneak around in the shadows, trying to manipulate myself into seeing it wihout revealing myself. Leaving a ticket on the ground, for example. "Free movie," I would think (would have thought) and have low expectations. Still, it's time travel. There's always that risk of fucking something up with the ol' Butterfly Effect. Let's say I dig the movie, I decide to go rent some of Kingsley's other works. Next thing you know I decide to write a guied to the SPECIES series, I never write Seagalogy. You don't wanna fuck with timeless. It's bad news.
Shit, come to think of it, maybe that's where the Sexy Beast came from: time travel. You remember DONNIE DARKO, there's bunnyman involved in time travel, isn't there? I forget how it works.
Anyway, bottom line: SEXY BEAST is pretty good, but not great. Maybe just not my thing.
3/19/08
SHADOW MAN
SHADOW MAN, I'm sorry to say, is the most boring movie Seagal has made so far. At least on my first viewing. To be fair, both THE FOREIGNER and THE PATRIOT seemed alot more fun the second time I watched them. In some ways maybe Seagal movies are like operas, you gotta understand the plot first before you can appreciate all the pageantry. But still, this is not one of my favorites.
(No, I've never seen an opera before, I'm just guessin.)
When they first announced this one it was called SHADOWS ON THE SUN, and it was supposedly gonna be something very different for Seagal, a drama where he's a doctor working at a clinic in post World War II Japan. Now the movie comes out and it is not anything new for Seagal, he is not a doctor and he's not in Japan or the past. The box says he has to save his kidnapped daughter AND stop a deadly virus, an exciting double whammy plot. But again, what we receive is not quite what we were promised. His daughter does get kidnapped, but by some lady that's actually trying to protect her (don't ask me to explain because I don't really get it), and there is a deadly virus, only he just has to hide the blueprints from everybody. It's not out there yet. He's not gonna get to go up in a helicopter and toss it in the water like he did with the suitcase bomb in BLACK DAWN.
Why is the movie called SHADOW MAN? Good question. But it's a question with no answer, like those riddles the zen guys collect. They don't call him a Shadow Man in the movie. Nobody says "first you see a shadow, then you're dead." He's just the usual ex-CIA aikido instructor type and his name is Jack. There is one thing that's unusual though. He apparently runs a Fortune 500 company. I don't know which one, or what this has to do with anything, but that's what the CIA guys say in part of the movie. At least I think they're talking about him, because I'm not sure who else they could be talking about.
It's the same sort of overly complicated, not badass enough plot that Seagal usually does these days. Like SUBMERGED they mention MK-Ultra, although this time they pretend it's a virus that gives you cancer instead of a mind control program. Also like SUBMERGED, we get to hear Seagal's now familiar voice double. He's not in there as extensively as in some of the movies, but the first time he shows up the opening credits are still rolling. So you know from the beginning it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
SHADOW MAN definitely sets a new low for the use of doubles. Not stunt doubles, I'm talking about shots where "Seagal" opens a car door and things like that, which I'm pretty sure he can do safely without a stunt double. I guess they didn't get all the shots they needed while Seagal was still on set. The funniest one is when Seagal and his female co-star come out of a building, only it's not Seagal, it's just some other dude with a ponytail and long coat. Okay so it's not a closeup or anything but you can still clearly see this guy from the front. If I knew how to do screen grabs I'd show you, you'd get a good laugh out of it.
Another funny part that is turning into a reoccurring motif in Seagal's DTV era, there's a random sex scene where he's with a much younger woman who drops her robe to show a big round ass, then he goes over and hugs her. You never see that girlfriend again but later there's another scene where the female lead is in her underwear and he hugs her. He is turning into a serial hugger.
My favorite thing in the movie, and it's nothing too special, is that Jack has a trademark move. It's an aikido hit that causes a person to fly several feet back and hit a wall. He explains in his first scene that you can use it either on external organs or internal. To demonstrate the internal, he does it on a watermelon. One of his students says, "Sifu, I was very impressed with the way you broke the watermelon. Can you teach me? Can you give me a lesson?" And I thought, isn't he already giving you a lesson? If not, what are you doing in his dojo listening to his lesson and wearing an aikido outfit? Is this only a coincidence? Are you just passing through on laundry day? Seagal rewards his dumb question by hitting him through a wall.
There's other good bits too. He builds an elaborate MacGuyver type bomb. He pokes a guy's eyes causing the guy to scream "My eyes!" and feel around on the floor for them. Also he kicks a guy in the nuts and then shoots him five times.
One thing that is notable is that the movie co-stars Imelda Staunton, Academy Award nominee for VERA DRAKE. She's not the lead villain or anything but she is in multiple scenes as the Ambassador. She's gotta be the most distinguished Seagal co-star since Michael Caine in ON DEADLY GROUND. I was surprised to see her name on the credits, and impressed. Not by the production's casting coup, but by her willingness to follow up such a highly acclaimed performance with a Steven Seagal picture. I hope somebody told her that's what it was. Because if so she must be cool.
Also, in one scene Seagal wears his reading glasses to examine a nano-chip. I think this is the first time he's worn them on film. I saw him wear them while signing autographs, and like I said, he probaly uses them to examine samurai swords. Speaking of which, no swords in this movie. There is a reasonable amount of martial arts though, compared to SUBMERGED or something. There's an extensive car chase but it's pretty ridiculous, half of it is shots of Seagal and the woman he's chasing making intense driving faces in front of an obvious greenscreen background.
Overall it's watchable, but disappointing to this Seagalogist. Note to Joe Halpin, who seems to write all Seagal's movies now: why don't we try a simple plot next time? You look at the classics and they're premises you can explain in one sentence. He gets framed and put in a coma, so he has to prove his innocence and kill the motherfuckers responsible. Terrorists take over a boat and he's on it so he kills them off one by one. Terrorists take over a train and he's on it so he kills them one by one. A dumbass from the neighborhood kills his partner so he tracks him down and kills him. Those are the types of plots you need for a Seagal movie, because the plot is the skeleton. It's not the whole movie. You don't need Seagal's widow's father is a rogue CIA agent who secretly plants a nano-chip on him and fakes his death in a car bombing but at the same time a taxi driver whose dad was in the CIA kidnaps Seagal's daughter to keep her out of the way of the Russians who want to buy the deadly virus and Seagal has to team with a CIA guy he doesn't trust who betrays him, but actually he likes Seagal and... whatever else happened in this movie. I honestly don't remember anymore and didn't catch it all in the first place. Because it's too god damned complicated. If you spend all the time trying to explain that type of shit (or not explaining it and leaving everybody confused) there is no time for the actual star of the movie, which is Steven Seagal's persona, his natural charisma, and his kicking of ass. You're letting the plot get in the way of the movie.
My point is you want to make HARD TO KILL, not SYRIANA.
Think of it this way Joe. I used the blues analogy for slasher movies before but I think considering Thunderbox, etc. it is an appropriate analogy here too. A good blues song is not gonna be fancy and not even necessarily gonna be original. It's gonna be classic.
Ba DA da BUMP. Well
I woke up this morning.
Ba DA da BUMP. And I wanted to eat some scrambled eggs.
Ba DA da BUMP.
It's a simple, driving structure and then the master bluesman or action hero (Steven Seagal in both cases here) puts his stamp on it, his flourish. He plays a simple song but he plays the hell out of it. That's what you want to see him do. You don't want to see him play a fuckin Eddie Van Halen ten thousand note guitar jerkoff solo and start juggling.
Keep it simple, Joe. We can do this.
SHAFT
SHAFT was never one of my
favorite blaxploitation pictures. Despite the reputation and legendary theme
song I always thought it was kind of boring. But revisiting it in 2008 I feel
like I finally get it - I really enjoyed it this time. The lyrics to the theme
song are so over the top and have been goofed on so much that maybe you expect
something bigger than what the movie actually is: one part detective story,
one part straight up BADASS. The music by Isaac Hayes, the shots set up by
director Gordon Parks, everything is designed to pay tribute to Richard Roundtree
and his character of John Shaft and document what a Bad Motherfucker he is
as he navigates the underbelly of 1971 New York. And it's really not what
we think of as a blaxploitation story, it's a P.I. story. A detective hired
by a gangster to rescue his daughter from the mob.
Have you seen AMERICAN GANGSTER? At the beginning of that movie the kingpin
of the black mafia, Bumpy Johnson, dies. Denzel's character Frank Lucas takes
over the empire. Well, that's who hires Shaft in this movie. He's called Bumpy
Jonas instead of Johnson, but he's based on the same real life underworld
figure. And that's one of the many ways the movie backs up the claims made
in the theme song. He makes an appointment with Bumpy, then shows up late,
deliberately keeps him waiting. Then he's rude to him. Then he makes prima
dona demands for his hiring. And before Bumpy leaves he threatens him. You
might think he's just trying to act tough, but when Bumpy leaves the room
he just laughs. Clearly not scared at all. That Shaft is one bad mutha shut
yo etc.
The greatest scene for establishing how badass Shaft is is when some mobsters
are staking out his apartment from a bar across the street. They don't know
what he looks like so he goes in and takes over for the bartender, and does
a whole scam where he gets them into a conversation by giving them free drinks
and having some for himself. This is a great scene because it shows
1. he is charismatic enough to talk a bartender into letting him do this
2. he knows how to tend bar
3. he outsmarts the mobsters and
4. he ends up picking up a woman at the bar while in the process of outsmarting and capturing these mobsters. That's some serious multitasking.
Of course, we also learn
that Shaft's one weakness is his treatment of women. He's said to be real
good in bed but a bummer afterwards - for example, when he coldly tells the
girl he picked up at the bar that she has to leave now. Actually, I don't
think this was necessarily supposed to be seen as a weakness. But I'm against
it. Be nice, Shaft.
By the way, I know Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and a thousand less talented
comedians have done alot of exploration of the topic of what black people
are like and what white people are like, but I'm not sure if they have covered
the turtleneck issue. I think this movie demonstrates that a black man can
look tough wearing a turtleneck. Roundtree successfully sports black turtlenecks,
red turtlenecks, white turtlenecks. Throw a leather jacket over any color
of turtleneck and the guy looks great. A white man wearing that sweater looks
like a sissy or a square, a black man wearing it looks like Shaft.
Let me give you an example here:
Case closed, right? Game, set and match.
Nah, actually I have to admit, that is kind of a loaded comparison. That second picture really did come up on the first page of results typing "turtleneck" into Google images, and I think it is a pretty good example. But to be fair if I was looking strictly at '70s pictures I could find alot of white dudes pulling it off better than this guy. I wouldn't have to go any further than Steve McQueen.
Maybe complexion has something to do with it. It's basic color theory, you need contrast. There are some things that just don't look as good next to a pale face (for example, nobody lighter than Ricardo Montalban should be wearing a white suit). But maybe I shouldn't have brought race into this. Regardless of race, Richard Roundtree just looks good in the damn things. I gotta give credit where credit is due. And it has to do with the specific outfit, too. Put anybody in that jacket and sweater, it's gonna look better than the dorky green one with the baseball hat. I mean if the white dude was wearing Shaft's outfit and Shaft was wearing those stupid pants it might be a tougher call which one was cooler there.
On the other hand:
Same outfit,
different vibe. Food for thought.
Although this is one of
the movies that started the blaxploitation genre, people who see that term
as derogatory say it's not blaxploitation. It's actually a pretty classy detective
movie. Gordon Parks wasn't a Roger Corman guy or anything, he was an acclaimed
photographer, writer and poet. His one previous movie THE LEARNING TREE was
adapted from his own autobiographical novel.
What I like best about SHAFT is the way it gives you a feel of early '70s
New York as Shaft walks through it. One of my favorite scenes is the montage
of Shaft going around talking to different people on the streets trying to
find a lead to where the kidnapped girl is. It's set to an Isaac Hayes tune
called "Soulsville" that's a laidback lament about living through
tough times, a little more like Curtis Mayfield than like that theme song
we all associate the movie with. Parks took a standard piece of every detective
story and made it into a poem about the poor people of New York.
My fellow action scholar and geocities
neighbor Ryan Kenner says that characters like Shaft are part of
what changed attitudes toward blacks in white America, setting the stage for
President Obama. I'm not sure what I think about that, especially looking
specifically at Shaft. Because this is a character who empowers black people
by fulfilling a white racist's nightmare. This is a guy who can and will steal
your woman. He'll charm her pants off, rock her world and actually be kind
of bored doing it. And then if you try to confront him about it I bet he wouldn't
even remember which one you were talking about.
Obama is not that guy, he is seen as the nerdy, stable family man with a loving
wife and kids. If white people thought Obama was Shaft... well, I guess some
of us would've been even more excited to vote for him, but he would've scared
the shit out of alot of people. He would not only be a secret Muslim and a
socialist, he would be this slick motherfucker who looks great in a turtleneck
who comes over to your house and smiles at your wife and he leaves with her.
I guess what I'm realizing as I write this is that this character was empowering
but also promoted certain stereotypes. There are worse stereotypes than that
but still. I should acknowledge the stereotype while also admitting that if
there is reincarnation and time travel and some sort of reality/fiction blending
magic I would like to be reborn as Shaft in my next life. Just putting that
out there.
But I do see a little Obama in Shaft, because he's the guy who bridges the
gap between the different groups: the black mob, the black militants, the
cops. He's not really any of them, but he works with all of them. He also
has white friends including a hippie dude and a gay bartender. The only people
he doesn't really seem to get along with are the Italians, who he calls wops,
but maybe when he's not on the job he would be nicer.
In conclusion, Shaft is a sex machine to all the chicks who would risk his neck for his brother man, would not cop out if and when danger is all about, is a bad mother[unintelligible] and yet at the same time is a complicated man. Not sure if I agree with Isaac Hayes about Shaft's woman understanding him, though if he specified which woman we might be able to clear this one up. Anyway, this movie grew on me. I'm glad I'm to the point where I can dig it.
1/1/09
SHAFT'S
BIG SCORE
The first Shaft sequel has a very similar feel to the original, except that
it turns more action packed in the last act. Once again it's more of a straight
detective story than the crazy blaxploitation movie Shaft's reputation might
imply. It all begins with a distressed phone call from an old friend. Next
thing Shaft knows his buddy is dead and he's caught protecting a lady in the
middle of a fight to find 200 grand gone missing from a numbers racket.
Of course, Shaft is still a bad mother et al and, proving that he really is
the black James Bond, he really starts to show his skills as a womanizer in
this one. When he gets that call for example it just so happens that he's
in bed with that guy's sister! At first that seems like a hell of a coincidence,
but then when you consider Shaft's lifestyle you realize that the chances
of it happening are actually pretty high. In fact, here's an even better example
of how much Shaft gets around: In the theme song for this one there's kind
of a "shut yo mouth" moment where you hear a woman say, "He's
trouble, he's been to my house!" Can you believe that? Even within his
own theme song you can find at least one backup singer whose heart he's broken.
And I wouldn't be surprised if there was a gal on percussion who just didn't
want to say anything.
The music this time isn't by Isaac Hayes. Well, he did one song, but most
of it is composed by returning director Gordon Parks himself. And this sequel
has pretty much all the same strengths and weaknesses as the original. It's
a little dryer than you expect, but Roundtree's performance, the shots of
New York and the funky music all combine chemically to create badass.
This one also has a montage to rival that classic "Soulsville" sequence
from the first one. This time it's of a funeral, and set to jazz music. There
are some Bruce Lee style zooms on Shaft and the police detective Bolin (Julius
"Sho Nuff" Harris) as they spot each other. It's one of those potent
combinations of photography, music and especially editing craftsmanship that
reminds you why you love movies. It's weird how much art there is just in
ending and arranging different shots. The editing can really add energy to
a movie or it can knock the whole rhythm off if you do it wrong. This movie
does it right.
Shaft meets Bumpy Jonas again, he talks trash to him (including pre-emptively
telling him he's not invited to his funeral) but they kind of work together.
The real bad guy is a white mobster who prides himself on playing clarinet.
I really respect Mr. Parks for including a really long scene of the dude just
sitting there playing clarinet. Not alot of movies like this have the balls
to try the audience's patience with weird touches like that. I'm not being
sarcastic, I thought that was cool.
Without the shock of the new SHAFT'S BIG SCORE is in some ways a little weaker
than the first one, but for some people it might be more exciting because
it turns into a great action movie at the end, and that's where it really
gets James Bond on that ass. I am in favor of chases that involve three different
modes of transportation. This one includes land (car), sea (boat) and air
(helicopter). Also, John Shaft shoots down a helicopter on purpose long before
John Rambo did it on accident in FIRST BLOOD.
Now let me call out a SPOILER ALERT. SHAFT'S BIG SCORE is such a badass title,
but I believe in the end it turns out to be kind of ironic. When you hear
SHAFT'S BIG SCORE you figure maybe Shaft is falling on the wrong side of the
law this time, getting involved in a caper of some kind, but whatever he's
up to he's gonna go home with a satchel full of cash, right? Wrong. The money
was to build a children's center, he tried to steal it back, and unless I
misunderstood he ended up leaving it sitting on the ground somewhere. So as
cool as Shaft is this is kind of a sad commentary on his life if this is Shaft's
big score. Breaking hearts and losing money. But looking real good in three
different colors of turtleneck.
1/11/09
SHAFT IN AFRICA
The third and final episode of the original Shaft trilogy is a little less classy without the direction of Gordon Parks, but it's a hell of a fun sequel. After you've done one chapter that's a good variation on the first one, might as well get crazy and fly off to another continent for part 3. You know Shaft has really earned his black James Bond stripes when he gets to go on an international adventure.
Early in the movie Shaft comes home to his building and somebody tells him some Africans are looking for him. He sees a guy in an African robe and ducks out of the elevator and seems proud of himself as he goes unmolested into his apartment. He hits his punching bag once and struts in but before he can relax the door is kicked down and there's that huge African dude ready to beat his ass.
Next thing you know Shaft has been imprisoned, tormented, tested, and forced to go on a mission to Africa to uncover a modern day slavery ring. I would kind of expect Shaft to be a righteous, Afrocentric type of dude, but their plan to guilt him with America's heritage of slavery doesn't work. He doesn't give a shit. (But he'll learn.) Shaft learns some language, an accent, customs and fighting style and goes undercover so he can get inside the slavery ring and bust that fucker open.
While SHAFT honestly wasn't an exploitation movie, this one almost dips into the world of the old softcore pornos. Not that it's particularly graphic, but it keeps setting up goofy reasons for Shaft to get laid. He has two beautiful Shaft girls. First is Vonetta McGee (the '70s Beyonce), daughter of the African leader who hires him. He convinces her she has to have sex with him before her scheduled female circumcision, to know what she'll be missing. Sure enough she immediately decides to keep the clitoris after all. Then there's the white girl, Neda Arneric as the villain's nymphomaniac girlfriend. The bad guy doesn't seem to appreciate her, he makes her give him a blowjob in the car and acts about as excited as if a doctor was making him cough. But she has a thing for the black men her man enslaves, we know this because she has an orgasm watching shirtless black men do road work. She gets sent to seduce Shaft (and get it on tape - there is a Shaft sex tape out there, people) and says "Oh my GOD!" when she sees his, uh, namesake. She seems to join his team, then in the very next scene gets a knife in the chest.
Arneric, who was 20 at the time, was real good looking, and is shown naked. In 2000 she was elected to Serbian parliament.
Director John Guillermin was less of an artist than Parks, more of a workman. He'd been around since '49 making comedies and Tarzan movies and shit, and later did THE TOWERING INFERNO and the '76 remake of KING KONG. The real strong addition to the team though is composer Johnny Pate. This is a guy who did arrangements for Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, and he has a pretty great instrumental album called Outrageous that was re-released last year by Dusty Groove. This is a unique trilogy musically speaking because they never re-use the theme song. Each movie has a different composer and style and yet each score is equally awesome. And as of today SHAFT IN AFRICA is my favorite. It has the percussion, bass groove and wah wahs you hope for in a blaxploitation score but also the most overwhelming, knock you on your ass funky horn section of any major theme song. There's really no way to put it into words so you're just gonna have to hear it:
"You
Can't Even Walk In the Park"
And that's just the theme for Shaft to go jogging and then catch some kids
stealing his hubcaps - just wait until you hear the theme for him flying into
Africa. There's also a macho vocal song by none other than the Four Tops,
who ask Shaft rhetorical questions like "Are you man enough? Big and
bad enough? Are you gonna let 'em shoot you down? When the evil flies, and
your brother cries, are you gonna be around?" They ask him "is it
in your heart to care?" Basically the Tops are challenging John Shaft
to step up his game, to take it to the next level, by proving he is more than
just the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks and all
that. Yeah he's man, but is he man enough? And the only way he can
be man enough is if he is willing to be there to help his African brothers
who are being exploited by the fucking Europeans again.
I love this movie, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed by the
African fighting stick they gave Shaft. See, it has a hidden compartment in
the top with a camera, but I could've sworn the guy also told him it had explosives
in it. I waited the whole movie and when he never used it to blow anything
up. I had to go back and check the scene again and sadly all he said was that
the camera had 36 exposures. And I mean that's cool too, but you
know, when you're expecting the stick to be used as a grenade launcher or
something it's a bit of a let down. So I offer this as a warning, please be
aware that the stick does not have explosives in it, and you will enjoy this
movie.
1/26/09
SHAFT (2000)
Going in I didn't know WHAT to expect. A remake? A sequel? The ads made it look silly and ridiculous. Like not so much a remake as a big screen addaptation of the Shaft theme song.
But then I never thought Shaft was the god damn word of the lord or anything. He's a cool character and I like his work and what he accomplishes with the ladies but I never thought his pictures had the same emotional depth of Superfly or The Mack or Blacula. Maybe it's because those are movies about outlaws instead of a law enforcement figure like a private eye. Or maybe not. I think you kind of had to be black at that time to know what it meant to finally see a black James Bond character like John Shaft. But at the time, just as now, I was a white man.
So I was open to some noodling and fiddling with the Shaft character, but to my surprise it is a surprisingly faithful update with hardly any shenanigans. It is a pretty serious story of Shaft trying to catch a racist murderer rich boy bail jumper played by none other than the American Psycho from the film American Psycho starring Patrick Bateman. The tone of the picture is a very strange and enjoyable cross between gritty police stories like Clockers and the Homicide television program and the more corny '70s tv shows like CHiPs. So the violent scenes are grim and disturbing but you still got a foot chase or two with Shaft chasing a dude up and down fire escapes fueled only by wah wah guitars.
The reason I like this picture is mostly the '70s feel. The only Isaac Hayes song they used is the main theme, but the score is all extrapolated from the style of that piece. And Shaft is a character with a combination of qualities you just don't see all at once anymore. He is the guy who always looks cool, always knows how to trick somebody or kick somebody's ass something good, is single and open to sharing his charms with many ladies, and who also is sensitive and supportive to the point of sainthood. During the court room scene, he is sitting behind the mother of the victim, rubbing her shoulders and telling her everything is gonna be okay. You almost think he is a guardian angel.
One of the writers was actually Richard Price, the white individual behind both the novel and the screenplay Clockers. So that is why there is a cameo by Mekhi Pfeiffer, the actor who got his start starring as the yoohoo drinking fellow in Clockers. In fact there are many cameos in this film. Sonja Sonj, the poet and love interest from Slam appears as a friend of Shaft's who is going to go home and screw him. Bonz Malone also from Slam appears briefly as a character named Malik who gets his ass whooped by Shaft. Gordon Parks also has a cameo. Not sure what he has to do with Slam but he did direct the original Shaft so why quibble?
The one guy who doesn't get a cameo is Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft. And that is because he gets an actual supporting role. I suppose he is only in a handful of scenes but he plays Shaft's "Uncle J." And the big mystery is, is this supposed to be THE John Shaft, the uncle of Samuel Jackson John Shaft? Or is he just an uncle whose name begins with J and Jackson is playing the one and only John Shaft that ever existed in the universe of this picture?
Well the answer is in the end credits which calls Richard Roundtree "(Uncle) John Shaft". So what we are dealing with here is a picture that alleges that John Shaft has a nephew who is just as cool a private dick as he is. And that is one of my favorite aspects of the picture.
You see, all the great cinema icons have nephews. I am talking about individuals like Mickey Mouse. Individuals like Popeye. And etc. I will be looking forward to the next Shaft film which hopefully will have Shaft's three nephews John Shaft, Don Shaft and Han Shaft.
But seriously gang it is nice to see the original Shaft not just brought back for a condescending cameo but actually helping out the new Shaft. And wearing the same black leather coat and white turtleneck. Apparently he had other scenes that were cut but I really hope he will be back for the next one.
I suppose the big question is, does Samuel Jackson pull it off? And the answer is yes. This is one cool individual, and his bald head and immaculate leather outfits ain't hurting. In the beginning I was a little worried because he was a cop. And there is some pretty touchy stuff in there where he is framing people and beating them and all the garbage that cops do in real life, but it's supposed to be cool.
Fortunately, the writers paid attention to the theme song and remembered that Shaft is a private dick. So he quits the force in one spectacular courtroom scene and then the movie starts smokin.
There are definitely things you could quibble about. I thought Jeff Wright, the individual playing the Dominican drug lord, was a little too over the top and phoney in his portrayal of a Latino. I know the dude has been getting rave reviews, but jesus. And by that I just mean "jee-zus." There is even a scene where he's yelling "Vaminos! Vaminos!" to his henchmen.
Also there are some things that I didn't think made a whole lot of sense. Like why would Christian Bale threaten the witness when all he did so far was beat a guy up. And why would he have a New York accent during all of the scenes at the bar but not in the rest of the movie. And if Peoples is just "a two bit, two block drug dealer" then why can't they arrest him when they find his buddy dead outside his broken apartment window with People's beloved icepick in his chest?
But I mean jesus. The point is this is a fun and unique and badass picture. It has alot of funny shit and a pure sense of melodrama and larger than life machismo that you don't really get very often these days. I would highly recommend this picture, if you don't watch it I don't know what is wrong with you fucks. thanks.
SHALLOW HAL
In Hollywood they have a saying that goes something like, "if you can't think of anything funny, put a movie star in a fat suit." On some magazine I saw on a news stand they had another saying that goes, "Fat suits: the new blackface."
It's true too. I mean the less acceptable it becomes to make fun of the gays, the more people need somebody else to pick on. So they start pickin on these big folks.
I don't know why but for some reason people think it's hilarious to see a celebrity made up to look all fat. They did it on Big Momma's House. They did it on one of those sitcoms that is popular now, I believe it was either Friends or Cheers. The one about the kids in the apartment who have relationships, etc. Also Eddie Murphy did it. He thought it was so funny he based two movies around it. And within each movie he had to play four or five different fat characters in order to try to fill the whole movie with laughs.
Well to be fair SHALLOW HAL is not really that same kind of movie. NUTTY PROFESSOR was a movie where they have fat joke after fat joke, and then in one scene they tell you to feel sorry for poor Eddie because everyone makes fun of him for being fat. Then in the very next scene he's stuffing a fistful of M&Ms in his mouth and you laugh at him for being fat again. Also there is farting.
I think SHALLOW HAL is the opposite though, not only because there's no farting but because it has a sincere message to care about some gal's "inner beauty" and not her outer fat suit. The story is about some asshole (jack black) who gets trapped on an elevator with the tall dude from the infomercials, and he gets hypnotized to only see people's inner beauty. So next thing you know he meets a really smart and wonderful gal named Rosemary who to everyone else weighs 300 pounds but to him is skinny little Gwyneth Paltrow. There are only a handful of fat jokes and even those are arguable, because whatever humor is there comes more from Hal's confusion at what is going on and not from poor Rosemary's size. For example she strips for him and, to his amazement, throws him a giant pair of underwear. So he says, "Get over here, Houdini!"
And in the end, which I'm just gonna give away, he does find out what's going on, and the hypnotic spell trance is broken, and after some initial fear he realizes that he does love that big old gal and he goes for it. I mean they don't try some bullshit where she magically becomes thin or he becomes fat or who knows what some fuckwad in hollywood coulda come up with for this one.
Still you gotta wonder, would they really trust an audience with this kind of ending if it WASN'T Gwyneth Paltrow under the suit? I mean, what if they got an actress who really was that size to play the real Rosemary? Sadly I think people would be disgusted by it and wouldn't care about the love.
Or how about this. Why does Gwyneth have to be so homely in the fat suit? What if, when Hal finds out she's fat, he realizes that she's still kinda hot? That's something you don't see.
By the way it was good to see the infomercial dude in this movie. I'm surprised more informercial stars haven't crossed over to the big screen the way wrestlers and other TV stars do. I'm sure if she doesn't go to jail for fraud before her 15 minutes are up, Miss Cleo will get a few roles. Did you know that she still swears to be a shaman born in Jamaica, even though it's well documented that she's a stage actress from Seattle who ripped off a community center by telling her friends she needed to borrow the center's money to treat herself for bone cancer and/or sickle cell?
You know who really fuckin creeps me out is that skinny bodybuilder dude. You know the guy I'm talkin about. He's advertising some exercise machine for the abs and his whole chest is totally chiseled. But he has a skinny little veiny chicken neck. He looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger as ethiopian heroin junkie. I mean this guy just does not look natural. I know I just watched Shallow Hal and should be looking for the inner beauty, but this freak should only be allowed to advertise on radio.
Anyway, back to the fat suit issue. Although this was marketed as just another fat suit movie, I think it is actually sort of a response to them. Not only are there not many fat jokes, but every time something happens to Rosemary because of her weight it is portrayed as absolutely humiliating to her, and the audience is made to empathize with her. There are not really jokes at her expense. But ultimately the problem is this. This picture is not funny. Not like it fails at being funny, it's kind of like THE WASH, it just doesn't have many jokes, like it's not even trying to be funny. Not enough to make it worth watching, anyway. So as a public service here are the funny and/or mildly amusing parts so you don't have to watch it:
1. Hal is introduced to a man who is obviously of Hawaiian descent. Hal says, "Oh, we had a Hawaiian guy in our high school. He went out for hockey, it was fuckin hilarious!"
2. Hal's best friend, played by Jason Alexander, appears to have painted over his bald spot with spray paint or shoe polish or that shit they have the infomercial for, but nobody every says anything about it.
3. Mr. Alexander's character admits to Hal that he is very self conscious because he has an unusual birth defect. "I have a tail." Hal says, "You mean you have a story?"
4. One minor character is some Baywatch style hottie, but her personality is bad so when Hal looks at her he sees an old hag wearing a baby doll shirt with the Playboy bunny logo on it.
I guess you had to be there. Don't bother, though.
SHAOLIN DOLEMITE
Every so often a picture comes along that is so good as a concept, who the fuck cares if it works as a picture. This is a type of picture that may not be that great to watch, or may even get boring as hell by the end, but you are so happy it exists that you want to own it, memorize it, hang it up on your wall, make it into a t-shirt. You want to tell everybody it's your favorite movie even though you'd be lying your ass off, because you fell asleep at the end and didn't even feel compelled to rewind and see what you missed. But still, you loved it.
That picture is, of course, Shaolin Dolemite.
This piece is from 1999 but yes it's the same Dolemite from the '70s, Rudy Ray Moore the famous toast artist and standup comedian who created the classic films Dolemite and The Human Tornado as well as Petey Wheatstraw the Devil's Son in Law and Avenging Disco Godfather. If you're not familiar with Dolemite this is one of the icons of the blaxploitation era. He is more underground than Shaft and Superfly because his pictures were lower budget and sloppier and he directed some of them himself. But he had a strong type of appeal because he drove around in limos with a gang of beautiful women on each arm, but he was kind of this little chubby guy. He would kick everybody's ass using this real slow, awkward fat guy karate. I mean worse than Steven Seagal.
What Dolemite had going for him was the same thing that the better rapping artists have today, which is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. If you can do a good job of SAYING that you're cool, then that means you ARE cool. And Dolemite was cool. He could rhyme up a storm about funny stories or how he's gonna kick your ass and that was what made him a badass, the verbal techniques as opposed to any traditional badass qualities such as asskicking, etc. Because when he did kick somebody's ass it looked so funny it would have been (more) laughable if the guy couldn't rhyme so good.
Well what Dolemite is doing in this picture is a little different, a little more experimental. And it is not modernized. In fact he is going back to before his heyday to borrow from the pop art movement, where these weird motherfuckers like Lichtenstein, Warhol etc. would take something (soup can, comic strip, etc.) and recreate it bigger or a little different or whatever, hang it up in a museum, and make you look at it from a different perspective. So what this Warhol, I mean not that I'm into art or anything but what Warhol is doing is not creating a painting, but creating a perspective. He's not taking credit for the Campbell's soup, but hell, let's give him credit for showing us how to look at it and go, "Yeah, yeah that's a pretty decent label in my opinion, that's not a bad label, they did a good job on the Campbell's soup."
What Dolemite though is doing is taking a martial arts picture and making you look at it in a different light, where you pretend it is actually a Dolemite picture. What he did was he took some karate movie about the wu tang clan and he splice himself into a couple parts and calls it Shaolin Dolemite. It looks like a pretty old picture to me, like from the '70s, but from what it says on the DVD it sounds like the footage might have been made in the '90s though. Like one of the actors is Toby Russell, son of Ken Russell the director of the movie Whore. And another actor who is also the director they claim is the guy who invented wire fighting.
The main plot is that the Wu Tang Clan takes in an outsider from Japan and trains him to help protect them from the ninjas. There is also a black guy named Twopack of the Dolemite Clan who is after them, and a woman in purple named Phantasm, but the credits call her Ninja Ho.
Also Monk Ru Dee of the Dolemite Clan (Dolemite) came to China to make fun of their statues and seek wisdom, and every once in a while (but not nearly enough) it will cut to him watching one of the fights and he'll say something like "Whooeee, that mothafucka is outta sight!" There are only two scenes where he appears with other characters but they aren't characters from the rest of the movie. Something fishy is going on here in my opinion but who the fuck cares.
My favorite scene is where an old drunk is stumbling through the woods sucking on a wineskin singing to himself. Dolemite comes along and says, "Sam the Spliff, you mothafucka you out here in these woods beggin? You oughta get yo ass a job! You know it's ninjas EVERYWHERE?"
Then Dolemite leaves and the ninjas jump out. "What the fuck? God damn, I oughta kick these mothafuckas ass." And Sam the Spliff does some drunken kung fu and beats these ninjas down. And then we never see the dude again.
Other than that Dolemite isn't in the picture much, but his touch is sometimes felt in the dialogue. I mean it seems like just your regular period piece martial arts with magic and flying, but then something happens like this wu tang gal throws an exploding bell into the air and breaks a magic trance. Twopack says, "Which mothafucker did that? Huh?" When he finds out who it was, he calls her a "skanky ho."
"You have brought tragedy to the Wu Tang Family and shame to the Dolemite Clan! It's time for you to die, do you understand me?"
There's another good scene that Dolemite isn't even in at all, where Ninja Ho is taking on the Japanese guy. He starts to defeat her so she opens her shirt, and he just stands there like a jackass staring at her titties. This is the danger of these monks, yeah maybe they are very disciplined but unfortunately they are also sexually repressed, and here you find this guy getting his ass whooped just because he's never seen a pair of nipples before. She starts fighting him topless which is something I don't believe I've seen before on a woman and I gotta admit, I'm not complainin. I mean not to take anything away from Ninja Ho, she didn't need to be topless. She's good as hell at fighting and she might have beat him even if she didn't knock him down on the ground and start slapping his face with her tits.
Funny thing is this guy is so out of touch as soon as he's on his feet he starts kicking her in the tits. He must be thinking "These fleshy orbs are the source of her power - must destroy them." Sorry bud, doesn't work on Ninja Ho.
Then at the end I'm not sure WHAT the fuck happens but still this is one of the greats. I hate to say it Black Mask but if I had seen Shaolin Dolemite back when I announced the Outlaw Awards, you would have had some competition in the Best Picture - Karate category. But that is the nature of awards and of film critics, they are fallible. Unlike Dolemite.
SHAOLIN SOCCER
Well I'm way behind on this one. The nerds of the internet have been talking about this one forever, more evidence of a vibrant nerd culture thriving out there somewhere. Like the aztecs and mayans with their fancy calendars, the nerds were ahead of ol' Vern on discovering SHAOLIN SOCCER. But then, I work on my own schedule.
Soon all americans will know about the power of SHAOLIN SOCCER, because Miramax is doing one of their trademark trim jobs on it and releasing it here. But if you haven't heard of it yet this is what it is. Shaolin kung fu + soccer = this movie. Duh.
The director, Stephen Chow, plays a penniless shaolin master known for his "Steel Leg", who believes in applying shaolin principles to all aspects of life, from parking to hedge clipping. He's always trying to come up with ways to promote the shaolin techniques to the general public, like combining them with music and dancing. But these type of ideas don't go over very well, everybody wants to beat his ass after he demonstrates them and he doesn't believe in hitting back.
Then he meets a crippled soccer coach. This dude was the best player in the game until an ugly incident where he missed a penalty kick and the fans jumped him and snapped his leg. Now he's pathetic, mistreated by the corrupt rival who set him up for his "accident", who runs a soccer tournament where the winner gets a million dollars.
But when he meets ol' Steel Leg they decide to round up the young man's washed up shaolin partners (all of them working shitty jobs and not putting their kung fu to use) and turn them into a soccer team. Each of them will use their different kung fu specialties to kick the ball around and what not.
And you can pretty much imagine where it goes from there, with the Shaolin team working their way up to the championship. Now look, I'm american so obviously I don't know this for sure, but I don't think this is an accurate depiction of soccer. In this movie most of the teams are gimmicky like the racers in DEATH RACE 2000. For example there is one team that is all women with mustaches. The team to beat is called "The Evil Team", they wear all black and they use american steroids to play like super robots.
Let me tell you what's really remarkable about this picture though. When you imagine a movie combining soccer with kung fu, you picture something really ridiculous, action packed and over-the-top. Most filmatists, I think, would not be able to create a movie living up to what you imagine them doing with that concept. Here that is not a problem. The games in this movie are like soccer between gods. Like Superman vs. Hercules. Nobody would call soccer boring if it was really like this. Typical moves for the Shaolin team include jumping over an opponent holding the ball between your ankles, or jumping 15 feet in the air, flipping, kicking the ball all the way across the field into the goal. In the championship game especially it turns mythic. The ball will send ten people flying through the air at once. It will spin so fast it creates a wind that ripples across the field and fills the air with a shower of grass blades. It flies so fast it burns the air, spins in the goalie's hands and shreds off all his clothes.
Like the players in the game, this movie combines different styles that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see together. There are many homages to kung fu films of the '70s (shaolin temple style fantasies, a goalie who looks like Bruce Lee) but the games themselves are loaded to the brim with computer effects and even matrix style bullet time shots. It's a serious story of friendship, redemption, overcoming evil, blah blah blah but it's also a real funny comedy. There are lots of goofy moments like when a substitute comes in for the injured goalie and right before they kick the ball at him he pulls out a cell phone and calls some woman to say that he has always loved her.
This is a great fantasy, a great sports movie, a good time.
I don't know if Sylvester Stallone forced them to step up their game, or if they all got together and had a meeting and decided to start putting more effort into this shit or what but lately all the old '80s and '90s action stars who are in exile on the small screen have started doing a better job. Seagal's had a couple good ones in a row, Dolph's have been watchable, Van Damme had that movie where he was a heroin junkie. None of these are yet matching the full potential of DTV, but at least they're getting there. The latest in the trend is Van Damme's double-titled THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL.
I will go ahead and give the credit for this one not to Van Damme but to the director Isaac Florentine. I will have to investigate the guy's works further but if he has anymore as good as this one and UNDISPUTED II then I think he must be one of the top DTV directors. He's an Israeli martial artist who came to the U.S. and directed POWER RANGERS shows for years and then got into DTV movies like US SEALS II. And as far as the DTV directors go he has a real good style. His movies have hard-hitting martial arts scenes that are well staged, he uses some energetic but not hyperactive editing and camera angles to keep things moving and he has some odd touches here that suggest a sense of humor.
In this one Van Damme plays a New Orleans cop who has just transfered to the New Mexico Border Patrol. He's introduced driving a car, shaving, and sharing carrots with a rabbit. His name is Jack and that is also the name of his rabbit, who he carries in a cage with him for much of the movie. So he's got some little quirks that make him different from your standard issue Van Damme character. Also he looks funny in the uniform. The villain also has some eccentricities. He was a soldier in Afghanistan who got disillusioned after watching a suicide bomber explode, and now he leads a gang of ex-special forces soldiers in smuggling drugs over the border. Because of his experiences he uses suicide vests and explosive collars in his work. In one scene there are a bunch of topless babes in a pool and he keeps lighting small sticks of dynamite with his cigar and tossing them into the pool. A fun time.
Some of the writing seems terrible. There's lots of badly delivered exposition dialogue. And unless I misunderstood something there was one pretty funny screwup during a border patrol briefing. They show a picture of the bad guy and say that the smugglers are all former American soldiers who have served with "this man", but they don't know his name. How do they not know his name if they know they all served with him? Or how do they know they all served with him if they don't know his name? So in that sense it's a bad script but in the sense that it's a story that has lots of fun goofy touches and that doesn't always go in the direction you expect it is actually a good script. And since I enjoy pointing out some ridiculousness in my DTV I will forgive that part and say that this is in fact a good script.
So these two characters are sort of facing off, and various adventures happen. Van Damme's character doesn't drink, but he does like to go to the bar for a Coke and cheeseburger, so of course he gets in a fight and some chairs are damaged. He also ends up in a Mexican jail where he is forced to fight their mixed martial arts champion just like Michael Jai White was in the Russian prison in UNDISPUTED II. And he has flashbacks that reveal his true motives: his daughter was killed by drugs, so he's on a DEATH WISH 4 style crackdown against drug smugglers.
The soundtrack is going
for a Mexicano flavor, and they even (unwisely I think) use the same song
"Don't Look Back" that was used memorably in another bordertown
bar fight scene in DESPERADO. But it's funny because the movie was filmed
in Bulgaria so they never get that hot, dusty feel the music seems to imply.
There's even snow on the ground sometimes! One of the characters makes a joke
about it: "Bet you didn't expect to freeze your ass off in New Mexico."
I think the movie reaches its peak in the middle section when the villains
are disguised as priests, trying to smuggle their dope over the border in
a bus full of real nuns and priests. When a border guard gets suspicious seeing
a scorpion tattoo on the finger of a priest they press a button and mounted
machine guns come out of the top and sides of the bus! So it turns into a
big chase and shootout, and nuns get shot and everything. At this point I
thought it might be the rebirth of Craig R. Baxley. Finally a DTV director
who can do decent action scenes and combine them with a lunatic spirit and
do it all with a straight face. The movie doesn't manage to keep escalating
and live up the "instant classic" promise of a scene like that,
but it does continue to be entertaining, so good job fellas.
One complaint I do have - and it's pretty obvious to anyone who watches the movie - the secondary villain is way better than his boss. Scott Adkins, the badass martial artist who played the Russian champion in UNDISPUTED II returns to the Florentineverse and has a couple great fights in this one. When Van Damme has finally defeated him he's beaten to hell, covered in blood and he sits down on the ground looking like he's about to pass out from exhaustion, and suddenly the main bad guy is standing there and he realizes he has to fight him too. It's a great "oh shit" moment but since that guy isn't much of a fighter and he doesn't have to actually combat him like he did with Adkins it's anticlimactic. Hopefully Adkins will get some more respect one of these days.
Before I finish up I want to address the title. I'm not sure why it's called that. It kind of sounds like it's part of a series, but it seems like BORDER PATROL would be the series. At first I was real confused because why the fuck is Van Damme a shepherd? Is he shepherding the bunny? But I asked about it in a talkback and was pointed out the obvious that The Shepherd is the bad guy, shepherding drugs across the border. So why does the bad guy get the title? I don't get it.
Anyway, this is a fine DTV production that fulfills its promise of showing Van Damme fight more than he usually does these days and manages to throw in other good touches along the way. Especially if you like bunnies.
4/2/08
SHIVERS
I cannot in good conscience recommend SHIVERS to everybody. In fact, I saw it a long time ago and didn't get into it, but recently I felt like watching the early Cronenbergs again and this time around I enjoyed it. It's Cronenberg's first feature film and it is also known as THEY CAME FROM WITHIN, but should be called ZOMBIE PERVERTS or even FUCKED BY ZOMBIES.
Well, they're not technically zombies. It's about a sexually transmitted disease. I didn't do this on purpose, but this is yet another apartment complex based horror. It takes place at this upscale complex called Starliner Estates, which is actually on an island so it's isolated and has its own medical facilities and armed security. The lead is not your typical horror movie lead. He's a middle aged doctor, head of the Starliner Medical Department, and he has some of the mannerisms of Gary Shandling. When the movie starts the infection in the apartments has already began: a former teacher of the doctor is attacking a woman in a school girl outfit. And he kills her and burns her with acid. Not cool.
It turns out the killer doctor is being influenced by a weird parasite slug inside him that makes him super horny. Late in the movie an infected character explains the feeling: it makes you see that everything in the world is sexual. "That disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. That even dying is an act of eroticism. That talking is sexual. That breathing is sexual. That even to physically exist is sexual." So you want to stay away from these motherfuckers. If they see you they get a crazed look in their eye and they come after you. And even if you were into them it would be trouble because you would get the disease.
So that's why I call them zombies. They get into a frenzy and they act like zombies. They mob people but instead of eating their intestines they try to get it on with them. This movie would be the ultimate nightmare for Edward Woodward's prude character in the original WICKER MAN. Worse than being burned alive by pagan nymphs. Although there are some attractive people in the movie it's far from erotic. It plays off of not just fear but discomfort and disgust. Everybody likes sex but nobody wants to see all of their neighbors constantly going at it. Well, maybe it depends on the neighbors. But this disease breaks down all the barriers we put around sex. There's an old man making out with his daughter, for example. Everybody wants to do everybody, all the time. Not hot.
There's a character in the movie who's the partner of the first killer doctor. He explains the project the guy was working on which we can assume created the killer fuck slug. The guy was trying to create parasites that would help people. For example if you have a bad kidney they give you this bug which will devour your kidney and then live in its place, but it will do the job of the kidney. It's no surprise that Cronenberg of 1975 was thinking of ideas like this. It kind of makes sense but it's creepy as hell. Who wants a parasite for a kidney, even if it doesn't turn into a killer fuck slug? That's worse than a baboon heart.
To me the coolest part of the movie is that the hero treats it as a medical emergency, not as a horror movie. There are a few infected people who get shot (they just die like normal people, no supernatural powers) but the drama is about "how do we survive this?" not "how do we kill these things?" It's also interesting that this was made before DAWN OF THE DEAD. DAWN is about ninety-eight times better, but they do have some similarities the way they strategically combine a zombie sort of story with a very modern, maybe a little satirical '70s location. Cronenberg's version is much cruder, but also more surreal. In one part the doctor is running down some stairs when he hears barking. He stops and sees two little girls on leashes barking like dogs. So he runs the other way. That motherfucker is weird, is what I'm saying.
So SHIVERS, like its killer fuck slugs, is a unique specimen, a weird unnatural hybrid up to no good. It was made for the Canadian equivalent of Roger Corman, which is funny because I can't imagine the American Roger Corman letting somebody make a fucked up movie like this. So we should be glad Cronenberg was born in Canada. If you like David Cronenberg and want to see where he came from it's worth checking out.
The
Dolph Lundgren vs. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Saga
SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO
(1991) and BRIDGE
OF DRAGONS (1999)
As I continue to learn about the works of Dolph Lundgren (no, sorry, I'm not
writing LUNDGRENICS, I'm just trying to become a more well-rounded individual)
it's refreshing to find that he has many movies where he is a charismatic
action hero and not just some grunting oaf. SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO is one
people have been recommending to me for years because it has him teamed with
Brandon Lee, which is a pretty big deal for somebody whose most notable co-stars
are often talk show hosts like Jerry Springer or Montel Williams.
Basically this one is a cop buddy picture with Dolph as the line-crossing,
bushido practicing white cop on the Little Tokyo beat who by the way is out
to avenge the deaths of his parents by a samurai, but that's neither here
nor there. We know Dolph is a bad motherfucker right away because he single-handedly
busts up an illegal underground fighting circuit by rappelling in from the
ceiling in the middle of a match and then taking on those who disagree with
his decision. Later he's in a cafe when he happens to see some of the same
Yakuzas bullying the old lady owner for protection money. In the middle of
the brawl that ensues he's introduced to his new partner, Brandon Lee.
I feel like an asshole saying it but I kind of have mixed feelings about Brandon
Lee, the O.G. Mark Dacascos. He was a good martial artist, a decent actor,
obviously it was such a tragedy what happened to him, and it was cool that
Bruce Lee had a legacy in him. But he was maybe too good at playing an uptight
nerd like this character. It's a funny idea that Dolph knows more about Asian
culture than he does, so I'm not complaining. I'm just saying for all the
hype Brandon Lee gets I'm not sure he had the presence of a superstar. He
was more of a foil or a sidekick. You definitely like Dolph better than him
in this one. I don't know, maybe that's blasphemous to say. I'll watch some
of his other movies and hopefully I'll be wrong and I'll repent.
The head Yakuza turns out to be Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who played lots of bad
guys in the '90s, including in KICKBOXER 2, THE PERFECT WEAPON, NEMESIS, MORTAL
KOMBAT and THE PHANTOM. He's pushing a powerful new drug (another constant
of the era) which is secretly manufactured in his brewery. I wonder if that's
what's up with all these microbrews around here, I should check for Yakuza
symbols in their logos. The movie also has Tia Carrera as a singer/love interest,
yet another trademark of '90s movies. I never was into her but she had a good
run there I guess. Hopefully she saved some money from WAYNE'S WORLD and TRUE
LIES.
Tagawa is one of those guys that gets typecast as villains because he just
seems so convincingly cruel. In this one the "just how evil is this guy?"
scene goes to new levels of depravity. When a junkie comes to him begging
for leniency he convinces her she has to have sex with him to pay off her
debt. In front of his friends. But when she's stripped down to her lingerie
instead of having sex with her he has somebody hand him a sword and cuts off
her head. And he videotapes the whole thing. Kind of a pervert, in my opinion.
Worse than R. Kelly.
The director is Mark L. Lester, who did COMMANDO, so it's nice to see Dolph
pickup a car and put it on its side to use as a shield. He never carries a
log on his shoulder, though. But there's lots of good craziness here. Dolph
jumps over a car that comes after him, much like Mario jumping over a barrel.
He fights some guys while holding a cup of tea, much like Dirty Harry foiling
a bank robbery while eating a hot dog, but more classy. A Yakuza commits suicide
by breaking his own neck while in police custody. At the end he sword fights
Tagawa to the death in public, then Brandon Lee jokes about it. I knew Dolph
could take the starch out of that guy's collar.
Lester also did the movies CLASS OF 1984 and CLASS OF 1999 that I reviewed
recently. So that's four pretty distinctive movies by this guy. That can't
be a coincidence. I have looked over his filmography and I doubt he has any
others as good but it's worth investigating I think.
This is a fun movie and as an added bonus it's only 79 minutes long. I mean
I like a good long movie but you gotta respect a good short one too. It just
gets in there, does what needs to be done, and then gets out. Like a ninja.
No time for fucking around. No time to stop and get a bottle of water out
of the refrigerator like Steven Seagal in BELLY OF THE BEAST. It is not a
guest that overstays its welcome. It's a guest that comes over and makes everybody
laugh and then says something funny just as it jumps out the window and everybody's
still in a good mood afterwards and wants to invite it over again.
BRIDGE OF DRAGONS isn't too bad either. It's more proof that
Isaac Florentine may be the most dependable and promising director to come
out of DTV action. This is an earlier film by the director of UNDISPUTED II
and THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL and like those movies it has some dynamic
camera angles, good martial arts scenes and some weird touches to the story
that make it less generic than your, uh, generic DTV. It's also another charismatic
performance by Dolph.
Although there are no dragons or even bridges this is kind of a fantasy film.
It takes place "somewhere between the future and the past" (wouldn't
that be the present? I'm confused) so Dolph uses modern military gear and
there are helicopters but most people dress medeival and use swords and horses
and there are princesses and shit. There are lots of Europeans but the general
and princess are Asian, the soldiers wear Nazi-esque uniforms and the helicopters
say "666" on the side of them. Which sounds evil but I'm sure it's
just a district number or some innocent squiggles or something.
This time Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays a brutal general about to marry a princess.
She doesn't want to marry him, especially after her nurse or nanny type lady
tells her that this guy actually murdered her dad, the rightful king. Like
in SHOWDOWN he is a good swordsman in this one. But not good enough for Dolph,
I bet.
Dolph is "Warchyld," the most elite and feared soldier who was plucked
out of a camp by the general and trained to be the ultimate badass. He's loyal
to the general and when Princess Halo tries to run away on her wedding night
he tracks her down and brings her back. But then when he sees the general
slap her he quickly changes his mind, starts kicking everybody's asses and
takes off with her to join the rebellion. Also by the way these two fought
each other in an underground pole fighting contest but they were wearing masks
so they didn't recognize each other at the time.
This is not really one of the better action movies, but I enjoyed it. Like
anything the most interesting action is the hand-to-hand. The gun battles
do give you a nostalgic feeling though because it's the kind where they just
keep showing explosions that cause stuntmen to fly through the air in slow
motion. I don't think there are any digital effects at all. Reminds me of
all those post-RAMBO jungle war movies. But a little more watchable.
The story is all cliches but I was surprised how effective it was anyway when
it got to the scene where Dolph basically stages a coup during the wedding.
All the soldiers have to search their hearts to decide on the spot whether
to team with the asshole general or the traitorous soldier. It reminded me
of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED when the soldiers who you assume are
with the coup give a fist in the air salute to the crowd of protesters.
Although this is not entirely a martial arts movie Florentine betrays his
past as a Power Rangers director by doing lots of WHOOSH sound effects when
people turn their heads or remove their hats, or even when the camera is a
POV shot and represents the turning of a head. So it's pretty cartoony or
old school kung fu theater. I don't like those whooshy camera moves but when
it just means somebody's whipping their head around it's goofy enough to win
me over.
5/24/08
SHUT UP AND SING
This is a documentary about the Dixie Chicks. Now, you probaly won't be surprised to hear that I got no interest in the music of the Dixie Chicks. But you may or may not be surprised to hear that I liked the movie alot.
Of course the title refers to the main subject of the movie, the controversy that came in 2003 after Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines ad-libbed the dangerous sentence, "We're ashamed that the President of the United States comes from Texas," during a concert in London. Because of that one sentence (and some mild anti-war, pro-human life comments on the eve of the invasion) right wing web sights organized call-in campaigns to country music stations across the country, causing the corporation that runs the computer that programs every radio station to not play Dixie Chicks songs anymore. Meanwhile, idiots with bad handwriting made signs and stood outside of Dixie Chicks concerts reinforcing all the worst stereotypes about lower class white southerners.
This political context is the hook that makes the movie interesting, it's obviously what got me in the theater, but thankfully it's not the whole show. What really makes the movie work is the charisma and humanity of these three woman in the band. We see them doing alot of things: answering criticism in interviews, performing, writing new songs, giving birth, discussing security after death threats, calling Bush a "dumbfuck." What we don't see them doing is fighting. Maybe it's selective editing, I don't know, but it was refreshing to see a music documentary where the whole band supports each other for the entire running time. They don't always agree, but they never seem to get mad at each other. Diane Sawyer tries to bait the two backup Chicks to turn on Natalie for having the nerve to say one honest sentence while performing. But they don't do it. More than anything this is a story about them standing united and not backing down. In the end they have switched out some of their old fans for new ones, they aren't being played on the same radio stations, and they have had to scale down their tour a little bit. But they have kept their integrity and their dignity. And it doesn't hurt that they were obviously right about the war, as hinted by occasional appearances by the notorious "Mission Accomplished" banner, vintage statements about weapons of mass destruction, etc. Although I'm sure they'd rather have been wrong about that.
Another thing the movie wisely avoids is preaching. The discussion of the war is kept brief and simple. Same goes for the discussion of free speech and expression. The situations speak for themselves. The whole thing is very smartly put together by Barbara Kopple and rookie co-director Cecilia Peck. It's not 100% pure Maysles style direct cinema, because I think they or at least the idiot protesters speak directly to the cameras now and then, but this is the type of documentary I like. Less explaining, more showing, more cinematic. Not like these Robert Greenwald documentaries and what not, it works as just a movie, not just as a message.
Because you get to see alot of interesting and unusual things. There's a funny scene where they discuss their predicament with a publicist or image consultant type dude who warns them they need to consider how they will look in a week when the war has been won and the soldiers are coming home with all their limbs, flowers in their hair, still bouncing off the walls from all that candy. (Okay he doesn't say it in those words, but he does say "this war could not be going any better.") You also gotta enjoy the meeting with their tour sponsor, Lipton Tea, right after the controversy broke. The Lipton guy seems pretty supportive. The Chicks give him an opportunity to back out. Natalie says "We don't want it to effect tea."
There's a funny little part about the Dixie Chicks having a feud with the popular asshole country singer Toby Keith. I think he started it by showing a photoshopped picture of Natalie Maines with Saddam Hussein in a slideshow during his concerts. She didn't diss him on a mixtape like a rapper would do, but she did go on some awards show or something with a shirt that said "FUTK." I remember reading that at the time but in this movie you see the genesis of it when their manager jokingly dares her to do it and she decides to accept that dare.
Now, I wasn't sure about this but it turns out that yes, Toby Keith is the guy who wrote that moronic "Boot In Your Ass" song. I have mentioned this stupid song in some of my columns and what not, but many of my readers are not Americans and hopefully don't know what I'm talking about. The song starts out talking up the brave soldiers that fight for freedom and what not and how his dad lost an eye in the war. Then he starts talking about 9-11 and how "Soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye, man we lit up your world like the 4th of July." He was talking about that first war where we sent the Taliban running, set up the pipeline and the opium fields, then took off for Iraq, never caught bin Laden and after a while pretended like we never were trying to find him anyway. I read up on it, and Mr. Keith actually says he's not pro-war and was against the Iraq war and wrote the song while he was angry. But that didn't stop him from releasing it as a single and promoting it into an anthem for the start of the Iraq War. A handy rhyming version of the "Iraq is connected to 9-11" lie. And if he's against the war too then shouldn't he be in that picture with Saddam and Natalie?
Here's the worst part: "Justice will be served and the battle will rage, this big dog will fight when you rattle his cage, and you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A.,`Cause we`ll put a boot in your ass, it`s the American way." (audience cheers and starts jerking off onto a flag).
In SHUT UP AND SING we hear a clip of Toby Keith defending himself from Natalie Maines's (unheard) criticisms of the song. He incorrectly says that she's not a songwriter, then says, "She says anybody could write 'boot in your ass,' but then, you know... she didn't." That got one of the biggest laughs in the movie.
But to be fair to Mr. Keith, we can now recognize him as ahead of his time. Back then I would've agreed with Maines that the song is ignorant and makes country singers look like a bunch of bloodthirsty redneck idiots. He talks about American symbols like the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the eagle and somebody named "Mother Freedom" but instead of them actually standing for freedom or democracy he uses them as things that are gonna kick somebody's ass. I mean what kind of a dumbass considers sticking a boot up somebody's ass (literally or figuratively) to be what America is all about? Well, I'm still against it but now it's true. With the passing of the Military Commissions Act into law, sticking a boot (or electrode) up somebody's ass really is the American Way. Hey man, that's the system, you gotta accept it.
There's also so much irony all over the place that if it was fiction I would think it was too corny. After the show in London their manager says, "Mission accomplished!" (before the notorious Bush banner). In their first conversation about the backlash, the manager talks (maybe half joking) about how great it would be if people started smashing and burning their CDs.
There is some obvious sexism going on through the whole thing. I got no doubt that they would've gotten similar treatment if they were men, but maybe not as intense. Protesters call them "Dixie Sluts" and "Dixie Bitches," Pat Buchanan calls them "bimbos" on TV, the famed obscene phone caller Bill O'Reilly says they "should be slapped around." Nobody quite gets to the point of saying they should shut up and have babies, but I wish they did because a good portion of the movie is about them having babies.
There seems to be kind of an escalating "culture war" battle going on. Natalie Maines briefly mentions that she's against the war, so right wing web sights organize a letter writing campaign to radio stations, so country fans get mad at the group, so country stations systematically stop playing them, so they have no choice but to look for other avenues for their music, so THEN the same stations that made a gimmick out of not playing them feel betrayed that the Chicks don't come back begging to be played. PLEASE play our music that you don't want to play. PLEASE. We pledge allegiance to whatever you want. Oh please daddy we didn't mean it! Just one more chance baby, please, we love you! TAKE US BACK! YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE US OUT HERE!
But at the same time the movie shows how the Dixie Chicks are not some kind of "Hollywood liberals" or whatever the stereotype is. Well, Natalie Maines is married to the actor Adrian Pasdar from NEAR DARK. But one of the other gals (sorry, I don't know their names. If they had descriptive names like the Spice Girls I could remember, but they don't) is married to a rancher who talks about how he hates even being in L.A. to visit her while she's recording. Then his son sprays him with a hose.
In fact the whole middle section of the movie is about them as people and as musicians more than as Bush-critics. They get cast out so they go to the foreign land of L.A. to record their first post-country-radio album. They have a friendly "how do you guys split your publishing" conversation with the drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There's a really funny scene with producer Rick Rubin, the freaky genius with the giant beard who has done everything from founding Def Jam Records in his college dorm room to producing Johnny Cash's last five albums. He sits cross-legged on his couch, wearing pajama pants, listening to their songs and announcing which parts he likes: "I like the melody. Good change up. I like the words," etc. And the Dixie Chicks smile.
Forget the politics, forget the music. I liked the movie because I like good documentaries. I'm not sure it tops DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY, but this is definitely one of the best documentaries I've seen in 2006 and one of the more enjoyable movies period.
SIDEWAYS
So there's these two middle aged dudes, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (some dude from a sitcom they used to have). Jack is an ex-soap star who's about to get married, Miles is a depressed middle school english teacher who can't get his novel published and is obsessed with wine. Together they have to stop a criminal mastermind who is poisoning the wine supply in the San Fernando valley and turning wine drinkers into an army of zombies.
Actually I made that last part up but what it's actually about is they go on a trip into wine country the last week before the wedding. The idea is for Miles to show Jack "a good time" which to him means going around tasting wine and showing off that you know how the grapes were grown and what year it is and stupid crap like that. I mean in this movie you got people talking on and on about Pino this and 1961 is peaking and all this shit, they might as well be talking backwards, you got no idea what these idiots are blabbing about. Except when they start talking about how fragile the grapes are or something, and it is obviously a parallel to their own emotional state or their dreams or something. But I'm sorry, metaphors are not a good enough excuse for that kind of talk. Anyway, it works for the movie because they are good characters. You are not supposed to think their wine talk is cool.
But Jack notices that Miles is depressed and he wants to help him, by getting him laid. They end up hanging out with a pair of female wine fanciers who they really like. Jack tells them that Miles' novel is about to get published, and Miles doesn't tell them that Jack's getting married on Saturday.
So okay, it seems clear where the movie is going. You got the whole falling in love deal, along with the keeping a secret torment, the eventual revealing the truth misery, the begging for mercy humiliation and the sudden, exhilirating proving love and making up ending. And by the way this is an Alex Payne picture. This is the guy who did CITIZEN RUTH, ELECTION and ABOUT SCHMIDT and they don't call him payne for nothin. He's real observant and honest about the kind of things that make a dude feel miserable and uncomfortable.
What keeps the movie going, well it sounds dumb, but obviously it's the two characters and their relationship. Everybody knows by now that this Giamatti knows what he's doing. He's got this everyman schlub quality where you relate to him enough to forgive how bad he fucks up. I mean right at the beginning of the movie he's literally stealing money from his mom's panty drawer. That's alot he's gotta overcome. But by the time he's getting drunk and calling his ex-wife from a payphone, you start feeling sorry for the asshole.
And part of the trick is that you relate to him more than to Jack. This guy's about to marry some beautiful rich lady, and for some reason he's goin around screwin these waitresses and wine pourers he picks up. And he puts Miles in the position of having to lie too because he can't say, "By the way, I should've told you from the beginning that my buddy is getting married this weekend, he's screwing your friend over."
So Jack is a jerk, and kind of a dumbass, but he's also right about alot of things. Miles is always talking shit about himself, saying his novel will never be published, that no woman will ever want him, etc. Jack seems to genuinely care about him and try to get him to be more optimistic. He's a good character because he captures that quality of the longtime buddy who you now realize is an asshole but still hang out with and get in uncomfortable situations. But also he's kind of a good guy, in a way. So he's got some dimension to him.
Mr. Payne is real good at making characters and situations that remind you more of things that have happened to you than of things you've seen in other movies. But obviously this movie does get stuck in the formula I mentioned before, where the guy lies for a while then is found out and has to make up for it. And I have to admit at a certain point I was thinking okay, these are good characters and everything but this just isn't as good as the other movies the dude made. Luckily, about 2/3 of the way through Paul Giamatti's lie is found out, the movie seems to abandon that formula and goes off in an unexpected direction. Suddenly he has to go off and do something for his friend, I won't say what it is but I was thinking okay, now that's what I want, I did not expect this to happen in this movie.
We need more movies
like that, where the movie ends and you are not at the place you expected
to be when the movie started. For me this is one of those good movies where
it seems better the more you think about it.
(I would not want to hang out with these people though. Or be in the same room with them. Might as well be talking about fucking anime the way they talk about wine. Keep it to yourself, winos.)
SIGNS
There are bigger fans of M. Night Shymalan than me. He seems a little too nice to me, trying too hard to please everybody. They call him a new Spielberg but if so he's a new Spielberg who skipped over the young vital years of Spielberg when he made shit like DUEL and JAWS. Still, I really like this young man's style. He seems to have a couple of trademarks already. He treats supernatural themes very seriously and in a unique style that tricks mainstream audiences into thinking they are not watching a genre picture. He populates his stories with precocious child actors and movie stars who give uncharacteristically quiet performances. His stories have themes of tragedy and loss, and they are much more about character and suspense than about actual action. SIXTH SENSE was about discovering what's goin on with these ghosts, not running from them or fighting them. And UNBREAKABLE was a super hero movie without a single scene of somebody swingin on a rope or shooting a laser or something.
And I really like what this fella does with the ol' camera. He knows how to communicate crap visually. None of this "people talking to each other" bullshit. I mean, that's there too, but it's not the only thing he knows. All three of these movies (I'm not including that Rosie O'Donnell catholicism thing because I haven't seen it) take full advantage of the star's faces, letting the camera linger on them to show their reactions to all this supernatural business. Especially in this movie, most of the fantastic things happen just off screen, and instead of us seeing it we see Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix standing there staring at it.
In SIGNS, the new one about crop circles and trying to make the new CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD TYPE, Mel Gibson plays a former reverend who lost his faith after the death of his wife. And now there is weird alien shit goin on all over the world, and his live-in brother, his two young kids, and other residents of the small town he lives in seem to want him to tell them, from a religious type perspective, that everything's gonna be okay. Problem is though he doesn't believe it is. On account of he lost his faith.
This picture was originally written for Badass Laureate Clint Eastwood, who wasn't able to do it because of his schedule on BLOOD WORK. Knowing that it's hard not to wish Clint's wrinkly face was in there in all those closeups showing how scared it is of aliens. But Gibson, a 1999 Outlaw Award Winner and former Mad Max, does a good job. Early on there are enough Shyamalan Reaction Shots to suggest he's gonna get the Bruce treatment - in SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE Bruce didn't have as much dialogue as usual, and he said most of it in a near whisper. But soon enough Mel's character starts yammering away just like most people do in movies these days. This one's a little more talky. But I think Gibson works in the role, especially in the more emotional scenes.
By the way did you know they have another Culkin now? It seems like every year there is a new picture with a new model of Culkin doing a critically acclaimed role. There was the original one, and there was the FREAK THE MIGHTY one, and then there was the YOU CAN COUNT ON ME one and then I'm pretty sure this is a new one. And they all look and sound the same. I think we all know what's going on here, let's not be naive. This Culkin kid is a robot, or a clone, or a vampire, or a leprechaun or something that doesn't age. "Macaulay Culkin" the teenage actor is actually a teenage girl in a costume hired to create this illusion that the Culkins age. But all the Culkin kids, from UNCLE BUCK to SIGNS, are the same damn vampire. He just changes his name every couple of movies to carry the illusion.
Which is kinda stupid because hasn't he ever heard of Gary Coleman.
Anyway I like the way Shyamalan tells his stories. He doesn't give you the whole backstory at once. It takes you a minute to figure out that Mel is a former preacher, then all the other important information is slowly given to you a piece at a time - what happened to his wife, why that made him lose his faith, etc. In most movies they'd either tell you this right from the beginning or save half of it for a surprise twist in the middle. Shyamalan gives it to you in installments, makes you piece it together your self. At times this made me confused. At one point Shyamalan does his usual cameo and the kids look at him and they say "Is that him?" and if I knew who they meant, it woulda been a very emotional scene. But I gotta be honest, I thought they were saying he was the alien.
I do think this is the weakest of the three well known Shyamalan pictures though. There is alot of humor in the movie, and it kept the audience laughing, including yours truly, but it also seemed to take away some of the tension. There is a great, contrived suspense scenario where Shyamalan in his extended cameo tells Gibson "don't open the pantry, I trapped one in there" and then he drives away real fast. And we don't know for sure what he means by "one of them" but we have a pretty fuckin good guess. I love this idea because you know if you were in the same situation, you SHOULDN'T go look at the pantry. But you would.
The problem is he goes and he stands on the other side of the pantry and he pretends to be a police officer, but doesn't know how to do it so he says silly things. It's funny but it's not true to life enough to be a real reaction to the situation and it makes it less scary than it should be.
And not to give anything away, but let's face it if you're reading this already and you haven't seen it you blew it. So I'm just gonna say it. This is Mr. Shyamalan's first try at the creature effects and his creatures aren't too bad but they're not good enough to be worthy of his directational skills. He's in a tough spot because all these ufo people always draw the pictures of the close encounters/communion types with the big eyes. The filmatists always want to stay close to the ufo literature because they think that makes it more realistic. But they've done it so many times that you CAN'T do those aliens anymore, because they're a cliche.
So what does he do to make it the same but not the same? He makes it the same, but muscular. And the whole reason those fuckers used to be scary was because they were so skinny and weird. It doesn't work to give them steroids. And it's cgi too, so it doesn't look like it's really standing there in front of you. He uses some good shadows that make it creepy at times but this is not gonna be a memorable movie creature.
And let's face it the young vital Spielberg never settled for that. Even the old Spielberg doesn't. He gave you Jaws, he gave you E.T., he gave you Jurassic Park, he gave you the aliens in A.I. with the tv signals in their bellies. This is a dude who does not settle for the same old crap. So there's one strike against Shyamalan the new Spielberg.
I also think the world of SIGNS is much less believable than the one from the ol' JAWS. It doesn't seem like Shyamalan really knows what it's like to live in a rural town like this. "The Wolfington brothers" - jesus. Most of the other people in the town are your stock small town characters with accents. And the kids acting is so stylized. They talk like the god damn peanuts. It worked in THE SIXTH SENSE but the more he does it the more it pulls me out of the movie. I preferred what the original Spielberg did in E.T., where the kids were so realistic Drew Barrymore was allowed to say that she didn't like E.T.'s feet. But this Culkin is a total fantasy kid, he says clever things about dogs licking their buts, he buys one book about UFOs and becomes the expert because he's memorized it and everything in it magically applies to what's going on across the world.
Still there are so many nice touches in SIGNS that I'd definitely say I agreed with the picture overall. Like the international approach to the invasion - not america-rules-the-world independence day crap. Most of the news reports you see are from India or Mexico, and the people who figure out how to fight back are in the middle east (although, unfortunately, their methods are referred to as "primitive"). I liked how most of what the characters know about what's going on is through the tv, and then when the alien is actually in their living room standing in front of them we mostly just see it reflected in the tv.
But what really makes the picture is the sincere and not even all that corny theme of spirituality and, the old favorite, acceptance of tragedy. As soon as you find out that Mel has lost his faith, you fuckin know he's gettin it back at the end of the picture. Just like you know that a Culkin with asthma is a Culkin who will soon be without his inhaler, and that when a certain character is said to have a certain object it will be used as a weapon. But the way it all fits together is very satisfying, and Shyamalan ties it all together with his trademark visual storytelling. The first shot in the movie begins on the farm and comes into the house, distorting its view through those thick old uneven windows we used to have. The last shot shows the farm clearly through the same window, now broken, with wind blowing through, the universal movie symbol for a spirit being set free. So you know, because the camera told you, what has been accomplished during this story. And it has nothing to do with aliens or crop circles.
SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT and SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT PART 2
Well the Christmas season is upon us and what better way to celebrate Christmas than to put ornaments on a tree and put presents under it? I don't know but while we ponder that let's also talk about evil Santa movies.
Silent Night Deadly Night is a mid-level entry in the holiday-themed slasher movie genre. It's not a classic like Halloween but then again it's not completely retarded like the Leprechaun pictures or Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Massacre which is not a real movie but would probaly be pretty stupid, in my opinion. Unless they got the right director but even then, I don't know about that premise.
Basically what the movie is about is, they wanted to make a movie about a killer dressed as Santa Claus, so they went back and figured out all the psychological traumas that might lead to such a scenario. So they show how this kid named Billy is told by his crazy grandpa that Santa Claus punishes kids who aren't good all year, and then right after that he sees his parents raped and killed by a criminal dressed as Santa, and then he goes to an orphanage where an abusive nun further instills the dogma of punishment and sexual repression into him, and then he gets pressured into being Santa for a toy store and gets drunk at the office party and rejected by a girl and next thing you know he's go around with a fake beard and an axe yelling "punish" and impaling Linnea Quigley on a pair of antlers.
The movie gets less creepy and more ridiculous as it goes along. My favorite scene is when young Billy, forced by mother superior to sit on Santa's lap, punches St. Nick out. Santa goes flying out of his chair along with the classic sound effect used when Poncharella or Hunter or somebody punches somebody out. Then Santa gets up, blood all over his fake beard, and yells "What the hell is wrong with that kid?"
Some day I hope they will put these movies on DVD and do a double feature of parts 1 and 2. This would be redundant because most of part 1 is actually included in the body of part 2. The story follows Billy's younger brother Ricky as he talks to a shrink about the events of part 1. The first 40 minutes is all scenes from part 1 with narration.
Unfortunately they leave out the punching-out-Santa scene, otherwise I'd recommend just skipping straight to part 2. The only advantage to watching them both is being able to spot weird continuity changes. For example: near the end of part 1 the police try to gun down the killer Santa in front of the orphanage, but they find that they killed the wrong Santa - it was Father O'Brien, dressing up as Santa to bring gifts to the children.
In part 2 they replay this same scene of the police shooting the Santa that they think is Billy. Then Ricky says "Just one problem... it wasn't Billy. It was old man Kelsey, the janitor."
I don't want to insult the handicapped but there is no other way to describe it - this is an absolutely retarded movie. This movie drools and smells like piss and says weird things to you on the bus and you just smile and try to be nice to it. It is the movie equivalent of one of those cheating episodes of tv shows where they just show a bunch of clips from previous episodes. It's lazy and it doesn't make sense because Ricky was only there for a couple of the scenes he flashes back to, and in one of them he was a baby.
When Ricky finally strangles the shrink and goes on an overacting rampage, he actually goes into a movie theater and watches Silent Night Deadly Night Part 1 - including a scene he already flashed back to as the traumatizing event that drove him insane before he could even pee in a toilet. This may sound postmodern or Fellini-esque or something the way I describe it but that's just because I'm a great Writer. In the movie, it's just retarded.
In one scene Ricky sees a woman being felt up against her will, so he runs the date-rapist over with a truck and kills him. And the girl thanks him.
His luck with women doesn't continue, though. He really upsets his girlfriend when he hooks a car battery up to her ex-boyfriend's tongue and makes his eyes explode. In the orphange they never taught him how to work through differences in a mature relationship. So he just strangles her with a car antenna.
The guy who plays Ricky gives one of the worst acting performances I've ever seen. Usually, I like bad acting. I mean who cares. Good acting is overrated. "Look at me, I'm naturalistic." Whoopty doo. But this guy, trying to look crazy, is an embarrassment.
I highly recommend this piece of idiotic garbage. I will probaly be watching the rest of the series, especially the one directed by Monte Hellman.
SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT
Well I made a promise long ago and now I'm gonna prove what exactly ol' Vern is made of. Ol' Vern is made of honor. And he is made of his word. In other words he (i.e. yours truly) is a man of his word, and a man of honor. So I watched the Silent Night Deadly Night sequel directed by Monte Hellman.
As you know if you read alot of the crap I Write here on this sight, I do believe the french theory of the auteur, that they made up. What it is is that if you like movies like COCKFIGHTER and TWO LANE BLACKTOP by Monte Hellman then that means you gotta watch his other movies, even if they're - no, especially if they're - Silent Night Deadly Night sequels.
Now no offense to the french, but I don't believe this one was worth it. It was really pretty boring, and not in the Monte Hellman way. Movies like TWO LANE BLACKTOP are very slow and quiet, and that's part of why they work, for those that they work on anyway. This is more of a standard, unimaginative slasher movie, and that's why it's boring.
And now you're asking Vern, that surprises you? What did you expect from Silent Night Deadly Night 3? Well I see what you're sayin there bud but my point is this. I am an idealist. I am a daydreamer. I believe that it is possible for somebody like Monte Hellman, or somebody better, to decide one day to make a sequel in the middle of a series of bad movies, and blow everybody out of the fuckin water.
Let's say for some reason between FULL METAL JACKET and EYES WIDE SHUT, Stanley Kubrick had decided to lobby to do PIRANHA 3. Most people would assume that Stanley had lost it. But what if he knew what he was doing? What if he wanted to make a Piranha movie, the Stanley Kubrick way?
What if Martin Scorsese did BONES 2?
The point is, I know Monte Hellman was slumming. But he could've made the best of it. He could've made a surprisingly good movie. Like John Sayles wrote ALLIGATOR. And I think Monte tried to do something a little different, but he didn't get too far.
The story takes bits and pieces from familiar horror motifs. It starts out in a lab where a blind girl has little wires hooked up to her and a scientist is studying her dreams. After NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET it seems like everyone in hollywood thought dreams were the most important scientific frontier there was. Of course, many of the dream scientists are corrupt, using dreamers as guinea pigs. This asshole is no exception, using the blind girl (who by the way is a psychic, that was probaly what I should've mentioned instead of she was blind) as a way to communicate with the killer from SILENT DEADLY NIGHT PART 2, who is in a coma because he had his head blown off.
Then the blind girl, her brother, and her brother's girlfriend go to Grandma's house for Christmas eve. And the killer in a coma gets up and uses his psychic connection to follow them to grandma's house, killing people along the way, with a cop and the scientist also trying to get there. Just like HALLOWEEN.
If you aren't idealistic enough to have hope for this as a Monte Hellman picture, you might hope for a hilarious piece of garbage like PART 2. The first glimmer of hope is that the killer, having had his head blown off in part 2, has survived because doctors reconstructed his brain. So now he has a glass dome on his head with an exposed brain soaking in liquid, and a goofy metal antenna sticking off the top. It's a funny image but not funny enough to keep you smiling much after its first appearance.
Whoever the idiot was who played Ricky in part 2 has been replaced by Bill Moseley, who I guess must specialize in head injury killers since he played Chop Top in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. Chop Top is the goofball vietnam vet with the metal plate in his head, who heats up a coathanger with his lighter and uses it to pick off pieces of skin from around the plate and snack on them. He has many great lines like "Lick my plate, dog dick!" and "Leatherface, you bitch hog, you ruined my Sonny Bono wig!" Bill Moseley was fantastic in that movie, riffing on the spirit of Edwin Neal's insane hitchhiker character from the first picture (supposedly Chop Top's twin brother) and bringing the series into new black comedy domain.
But Moseley doesn't get a chance to show off here. He plays the fishbowl headed character as a Frankenstein's monster type, stumbling around looking confused and occasionally moaning "llaaaaaaauuuuuuuurrrra." This new subtlety is I guess one Monte Hellman addition to a series renowned for its overacting.
The only other touch that I will attribute to Hellman is a scene where the blind psychic girl's non blind or psychic brother has sex with his girlfriend in his grandma's bath tub. I mean that shit is just not right. You don't do that, unless you're in a SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT picture, or any of a variety of other post HALLOWEEN, sex=death slasher movies. And you know what it means, out comes the killer and the naked people get mutilated.
But then they get out of the bath tub, and they go look around for the missing Grandma. And I'm thinking ah, it's a twist, you think they're gonna die in the tub but actually they die when they get out.
But then they still don't die. It's like in DEEP BLUE SEA how you kept thinking LL would be the first one to die, but he escaped the super-intelligent sharks 3 or 4 times before the other characters in the movie even knew they were loose. This is the same thing, because the brother doesn't get it until way later and, if I remember right, the girlfriend survives. And a while after the brother is dead, the sister is still upset about it, talking about how much she loves him. So there is an attempt, anyway, not to trivialize the death.
But it doesn't really work, and I think Monte is trying to say something about medicine interfering with nature also, by having the killer so unnaturally surviving from injuries that should've killed him, and walking around basically on built-in life support, killing people without understanding what he's doing. But if that was supposed to be a satirical point I bet I was the only one that caught it.
Well, nice try though Monte, I won't hold it against you buddy.
SIN CITY
There's alot of comic strip books turned into movies but usually they Hollywood em up alot. They change the story and the super hero clothes and turn brits into americans and alot of the fans are fundamentalists so they get pretty upset. Batman doesn't have nipples because bats don't have nipples, Super-man isn't supposed to wear that shade of blue it is actually a different shade of blue, that kind of thing.
So what Robert Rodriguez did for this comic strip SIN CITY, he actually brought in the writer/cartoonist from the comic, made him co-director, and apparently pretty much used the comic as storyboards and script. He used his cool digital movie cameras and convinced a great cast to come in and fuck around in front of green screens and used computers for almost all the backgrounds. According to my team of expert nerds, there are scenes and lines from the funny pages that they cut out here and there and they mixed things together a little bit at the beginning in order to combine three stories into one. But for the most part the shots are based on the drawings and everything written on the page is said out loud in the movie. An obsessive level of faithfulness never thought possible even by Harry Knowles himself. Maybe the most faithful movie adaptation of anything ever, including plays, novels and trading cards.
So what this is is a very ballsy and ridiculous experiment, like Gus Van Sant's PSYCHO. Like most experiments in science, it's a big failure. But you gotta fuck up in order to invent cancer or whatever. I'm glad these guys did it anyway even though it really doesn't work.
Based on my detailed research beforehand, I was a little skeptical going in, and I think my hunch was right. See, the comic strip is drawn in stark black and white in order to look like film noir. But then the movie is done with high tech digital effects and makeup in order to look like the comic. Not like film noir. You see the problem here? It's like a snake eating its tail, or I guess probaly a tail shitting out a snake's head. The whole concept don't make sense.
And that's the problem here. It would be the greatest, most fucked up hard boiled film noir of all time, if it just felt like a film noir. But it doesn't, it feels like a cartoon. It's like they pulled that movie Dick Tracy into the side of a van and beat it unconscious with a brick. Then they sucked all the color out with a rubber tube, shot it full of PCP, tossed it on the side of the road, then dumped cold water on it and burned rubber. So this fucked up zombie Dick Tracy wakes up all confused and then goes on a rampage. That's what Sin City is. It's pretty funny and cool to watch Dick Tracy running around crazy like that, and it makes you think about noir and hard boiled and pulp. But you can't quite shake the feeling that it's still stupid Dick Tracy.
Let's try that in one sentence. Dick Tracy is to Sin City as Nick Nolte is to Nick Nolte mug shot.
The movie is basically three pulp novel stories, each one about a narrating bad motherfucker who gets into some shit. In backwards order you got my man Bruce as Hartigan, a retired cop who saves a little girl from being molested, but gets blamed for it himself, then has to fight some mutated yellow dude. You got Clive Owen as Dwight, a dude with a goofy overcoat who stops Benicio Del Toro from fucking with his girlfriend, a fight that escalates to involve a severed head, the mafia and an army of heavily armed hookers (one of them a ninja). And then you got Mickey Rourke as Marv, a huge, hulking, ugly, schizophrenic lug who wakes up next to a dead hooker (the only woman who was ever nice to him) and knows that getting revenge on the killer will mean his death, and that it will be absolutely worth it.
I really liked all three characters and the actors playing them. They're all narrating pretty much nonstop, which usually doesn't work in movies, but works pretty good here. They talk mean as hell and they sound like they mean it. In concept, my favorite is Marv, a fucker so tough (SPOILER IN THIS SENTENCE) he says, "Is that the best you pansies can do?" after a jolt of the ol' electric chair. But there's a problem, a real big problem. They want him to look like the drawing in the comic book, so they got Mickey Rourke under all this makeup. He looks like the amazing human Hellboy.
And that's what I'm trying to say, that's the whole problem of this movie. I have talked to my nerd research team and I have even gone so far as to browse the comic strips with my own two eyes. And this is what I discovered. When you're reading those things all you got is drawings, so the drawings become a real world. You're looking at this drawing of Marv, and that's Marv, that's the real guy, in a real world. Even though there's pictures, it's like books. You gotta imagine stuff. But when you see the movie, what you see is what you get. And what you get is a dude in cartoony lookin makeup. You don't think of him as a real guy who looks like that. You think of him as a fuckin muppet. And muppets just aren't all that gritty.
I liked the stories, although the third one didn't make alot of sense. My team tells me in the comic book it's more clear that the girl is in hiding and that's why Hartigan can find her but the bad guys can't, and it's explained how he got out of prison and also I guess the yellow bastard has his dong hangin out the whole time. But I didn't read the comic, I saw the movie, so I wish it made more sense. Other than that the stories got a good pulp feel with nice details and twists and lots of great tough guy lines, especially in the narration.
And I liked pretty much the whole cast. Other than the three main anti-heroes my favorite was Benicio of the Bull, who talks in a scary gravelly voice but it gets higher when he gets his throat slashed. Britney Murphy's pretty funny too. The whole crowd laughed at her melodramatic delivery of the line, "Dwight ya fool - ya DAMN FOOL!" Marv got the crowd going too. He got the best lines and the best violence.
If you put it all down on paper you would figure I'd have to love this movie. It's got revenge and intrigue and mayhem and extreme violence. It's got people run over by cars, people jumpin through windshields, two different people with their heads dunked in toilets. It's got hookers, a whole bunch of severed heads, a whole bunch of impalements and cut off hands and trunks full of chopped up bodies. Guns, swords, axes, knives, explosives, bows and arrows, a hungry wolf, some razor wire. It's got sinking in tar and jumping off ledges and punching into walls and Elijah Wood from the hobbits movies as a mute, cannibal serial killer martial arts expert. Marv's parole officer is Carla Gugino, Karen Sisco #2 herself, and she spends most of the movie naked. They got corrupt politicians and religious leaders and they even got em played by Powers Boothe and Rutger Hauer. And it's shot in real nice black and white with some nice select uses of color (a pupil here, some blood there). And it's got Bruce Willis with a big scar on his head punching a guy until his face is mush. I mean how could this movie not be a god damn masterpiece?
I'll tell you how, because they treat this comic book shit too literally. And it was brave and it was cool and it usually looks great, but it just doesn't work as a movie. They got all these striking shadows, they got a jail cell straight out of German expressionism, they got weird white silhouettes and neon white blood but they also got Mickey Rourke and Nick Stahl wearing Dick Tracy makeup, they got all this violence that looks like a cartoon. Body parts chop off like butter and people jump off buildings like Batman and when people get punched you don't feel like they're really getting punched. They're just getting vibrated on a green screen.
They did a good job on the cars. When they're driving around in cars or standing on a dock, it looks like Sin City is a real place. But most of the rest of the time they look like they're doing just exactly what they're really doing, which is standing in front of a computer drawn background. You don't really buy this as being a real world. Most of the time it seems like they're performing a play with fancy video effects.
In a real film noir they'd have a set, they'd have a soundstage, it would seem like a real place. A real dark, shadowy black and white place. Sin City is not a place most of the time. It's a background.
So more than anything I think what they've accomplished here is they've proven sort of a suspicion I've had for a long time but never thought would be proven so scientifically. And that is that you can't just translate something 100% literally and expect it to work. You gotta recognize that books are books and movies are movies and you gotta be true to what's good about each one but you can't expect them to be identical twins. Because if they are they'll be fucked up identical twins like those pervert gynecologists with the weird tools. What's gruesome and badass in a drawing might just be silly in a movie. We know that for sure now.
I wish there was a movie exactly like this but not cartoony. It can be over the top and fantastical but as long as it feels REAL. It's hard to be gritty and grimy when you're made out of pixels. I think they were trying to make a movie that was much more tough and hardcore and brutal than this ends up being just because it all feels so phoney and cartoony.
But oh well. As much as it's a failure, there's still nothing like Sin City. This is a weird fuckin movie that will probaly scare away many people and fascinate many others. I might even go see it again on the theory that once you have accepted somebody's flaws you can then get to love them for their true self. Who knows, it might even grow on me. But for now it's a weird, fucked up, half badass, half cartoon network oddity.
THE
SIXTH
SENSE 
This is one of Bruce's more gentle movies where he is not a Badass. There is not exploding in this one and he never says a funny line after he kills someone because, to be frankly honest, he never kills ANYONE in this movie. However despite this disappointment I think alot of motherfuckers will like this movie if it catches on on the videos.
Bruce plays Malcolm Crowe, a psychologist type dude who just won an award for his work with the children. Unfortunately a naked guy is in his bathroom and shoots him. Turns out naked man was a former patient of his and lets face it, SOMEBODY dropped the ball on this kid he ends up in Bruce's bathroom, waving a gun around, WITH NO CLOTHES ON. I have known a lot of motherfuckers who shot people or broke into their houses, some with no shirts on. This is pretty popular in fact for guys with big muscles or tattoos of any kind. Even a guy who has just a Tasmanian devil tattoo wants to show it off for some reason, I mean jesus christ these tattoo guys and their vanity. Anyway sometimes guys do it with no shirt on, and sometimes guys do it in their boxer shorts, when it's on short notice and they didn't have time to put pants on. You know, crimes of passion. But in another mans' house WITH NO CLOTHES let me tell you that's a whole different ballpark in my opinion.
A year later or something Bruce has a new patient who reminds him quite a fucking bit of the naked man when he was a kid. You start to figure out right away that Bruce is trying to redeem himself by solving this case. I have never been into the psychologist scene so I'm not sure but I bet he was embarrassed about the whole no clothes thing I mentioned. I mean people start snickering and you gotta do something, you gotta prove that you know how to help a kid.
So that's what he tries to do but there is something VERY fucking weird about this kid and I don't want to give anything away but he sees ghosts. So the movie is about ghosts and Bruce starts to believe it and he has to teach the kid not to be afraid of the ghosts, since he is the only one to hear them maybe he can help them.
This is a very nicely done movie about the ghosts. There are some very creepy images, great acting and all the Writing and directing is very elegant and understated. This is not like your typical horror, there is no onscreen violence and it is very middle class and character driven. It is a very universal type of story about relationships between parents and their chilren, husbands and wives, children and their fears. Also the two main characters wear ties and speak clearly so it appeals to the mainstream and upper class. It is something that both horror fans and pussies can enjoy in my opinion.
The kid is very good although like Bruce he is not really allowed by the story to kick ass or anything. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes the ghosts although again I gotta stress this is not Die Hard in my opinion, it is about ghosts.
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
Sometimes it almost seems like there's a whole genre of "INDIANA JONES-TYPE" pictures - movies that look back nostalgically to those golden days when George Lucas looked back nostalgically to those other golden days. THE MUMMY is one example of this horrible type of picture.
I bet some individuals consider SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW to be in that same category, but I think it's different. It doesn't have that same third generation xerox feel, because this movie actually feels alot more like the old serials and pulp novels and crap that influenced the genre than the STAR WARS pictures and what not do. The technology used is very modern (apparently it was all shot with actors in front of blue screens and everything else is computered in there) but there's not a whole lot of modernizing going on here. It takes place in some alternate 1930s where THE WIZARD OF OZ exists but the Hindenburg never blew up and some British fighter jet hot shot named Joseph Sky Captain defends America and the world from evil science with his "army for hire" and wacky inventor sidekick.
I know what you're thinking: what the shit kind of dumbass 2004 idea is it to do a whole movie with actors and bluescreens. Well I thought the same thing but watching the movie, you don't really think about it that much. I think what makes it work is that it's not trying to look completely real, it's trying to look old fashioned. So you don't really care that it looks artificial. It's like the modern equivalent of a movie shot all on a soundstage, like MARY POPPINS but flying in jets instead of umbrellas. It doesn't have to look real, it just has to look good.
And because the whole movie is computers, they are able to cram alot of things in there. I mean this movie has every single god damn thing little boys like. We're talking giant robots left and right, an island of dinosaurs, jet planes of course, a rocket ship, some monsters, some capes, a jetpack or two, a laser gun, a tough lady with an eyepatch, some underwater business. Okay there might not be cowboys in there or pokemon. Or pizza and gameboy. But there's everything else. All done with the computers.
And it's so sincere about its corny old fashionedness. It's not fuckin around. When an army of robots attacks New York, they don't shoot it like ARMAGEDDON or AMERICAN GODZILLA would. They shoot it like the old days. When Gwyneth Paltrow is walking underneath the robots, she doesn't turn into Linda Hamilton or the gal from THE MATRIX. She just waddles along on her pumps like Lois Lane on the old spider-man cartoons or whichever one she was. But somehow she gets away.
The opening of the movie, which involves zepellins and a mysterious unseen villain following a scientist with a heavy accent, is so retro it's almost like they hired Guy Maddin to do a summer event movie.
There is no bullet time in this movie. There is no pop music in this movie. There are no celebrity cameos except for Laurence Olivier, which I can forgive since the dude is dead. Not every day you see a zombie of Laurence Olivier's caliber.
Now I gotta be honest, there are things I don't understand about Sky Captain. Like, how is one guy in a jet supposed to be such a great hero. I know he punches people once or twice, and figures things out occasionally, but it seems like his main thing is flying a jet. But that's part of why it's so cool, because it's so uncool, the guy is just a plane flyer. Flying a plane. That's his whole thing.
[review never finished - SUCKERS!]
SLACKERS
I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me. Here I am battling the IMDB for a prestigious award, I'm trying to prove myself worthy and this is all I have to offer you. Fucking Slackers.
I couldn't tell you how it happens. Every time I set out to see a particular movie. I mean there are three movies in particular I want to see right now. There's Little Otik, the Czechoslovakian cartoon about some folks raising a tree stump as their baby. There's Brotherhood of the Wolf, where the frenchy who directed Crying Freeman mixes French history with kung fu and, I guess werewolves maybe. Who knows. And there's also Storytelling from the pervert who made Happiness.
I mean how could I have not known. Even when "Slacker" came out, what, ten years ago or something the word musta been already played out. So I'm heading to the theater and what do I see, some shitty teen movie actually called "slackers". I mean in some ways this is better than your average movie that is below average. For example the casting is pretty good. The four main actors are all good. But still. Slackers! Jesus.
You know how in a movie like say OCEAN'S 11, you got some dudes that are supposed to be so cool and good at what they do that anybody would fantasize about being them? I mean they are dressed so slick, and they walk around in slow motion and look cool smoking, and they have an elaborate bank heist planned and they use little gadgets to do it. This is the same exact crap except for losers in college. So instead of a bank heist they have an elaborate scheme to cheat on a test, but they still use gadgets, and have a camaraderie and consider themselves a team. And they have their own college loser way of dressing cool, which is to have giant sideburns and wear a t-shirt and a dog collar over a button up shirt.
But the kid from RUSHMORE notices them cheating. He is a nerdy weirdo who is stalking a cute girl played by some famous model. He spies on her and likes to go home and wear her underwear on his head and talk to a doll he made out of samples of her hair he's collected over time. He makes a deal with them that he won't tattle on them if they use their extraordinary cheating powers to help him get together with the model chick.
The problem with a movie like this is that at this point, even people in movies should have seen enough movies to catch on not to try to pull this kind of crap. Because we all know, and Devon Sawa from FINAL DESTINATION should know, that as soon as he gets to know the girl as part of a scam he's going to fall in love with her. I don't care what movie you're in, as soon as you lie to a girl you know you're going to fall in love and eventually have to admit that you lied and get her mad at her and then have to pull some kind of crap to prove to her that you love her and make her forgive you and then there will be smiling and laughing and she'll forget forever that you tricked her into liking her by spying on her and violating her trust, etc.
The other problem is the main characters are all assholes and weirdos who cheat and lie to everyone and fart and watch porn and do puppet shows with their dicks like that one australian movie. But then Devon Sawa is a little more normal looking so you're supposed to think yeah, he's the good one. He does the same shit but he's not as bad, he's a good guy we can relate to.
I mean you've seen this crap a million times. They even got the subplot about how the girl volunteers at a hospital and a homeless shelter, and they get the stalker kid to also volunteer there so he can know her.
Let me let you people in on a secret. No hot girl volunteers at a hospital. It doesn't happen. I mean did you know ANYBODY in college who volunteered at a hospital? I didn't go to college but I went to prison and I didn't know anybody that volunteered there, unless you count making license plates and computer chips and, I guess, wearing lipstick and getting fucked in the ass. Anyway the point is the chances of some model you have a crush on volunteering at a hospital is gonna be pretty fucking slim. So you're gonna have to try some other scheme, slick.
So where were we. Oh yeah, they throw in a couple of touches I haven't seen before. There are three jokes about these dudes having sex with old ladies. There is even a pretty graphic scene where the Rushmore kid sponges Mamie Van Doren's tits. And keep in mind she's a little older than she was in, like, the '50s. There are some little music-video style fantasy sequences that are sometimes amusing. The kid from Rushmore isn't wasted. He gets to make up stupid little songs and talk to his hair doll and jack off and shit.
But otherwise it's the same old crap. The finale is especially bad, with about seven layers of contrivances that make it almost as painful as that talk show at the end of MALLRATS. (Devon Sawa interupts the model girl's test to win her back by admitting that he is a phoney; the T.A. allows him to make a big monologue in front of the whole lecture hall; the class not only doesn't mind but applauds; the other characters come in to pull off a stunt that will wrap up various loose ends, etc. I mean I almost would've preferred the old "sing a song to her in public" routine. And that shows you I've seen too many of these fuckin movies.)
I was left wondering about one loose end though. Now that he's happily together with the girl because he's decided to stop lying, is he going to admit that he got a blowjob from her stepmom in an earlier scene? I guess the movie's not all bad if it leaves you something to think about.