W.

I can't remember if I've brought this up before or not, but I fuckin hate Bush. Worst thing to happen to this country including our version of Godzilla looking like an iguana. I don't think I'm the only one who'd rather not think about him unnecessarily. So when I heard Oliver Stone was already doing an all-star George W. Bush movie it seemed like a joke. It honestly sounded to me like a fictional movie they would refer to in some TV show like STUDIO 60 or one of those. A character would mention that they're trying out for the part of so-and-so in Oliver Stone's George Bush biography. And I would think come on, Oliver Stone would never make a movie like that.

I mean, there's the whole too soon factor. Are we really ready for a more humanized portrait of the moronic shitbag sonofabitch who's about to exit the White House leaving behind 2 (two) wars with no clear objectives, a Constitution that has been devalued by the government intentionally and openly violating it without any consequences, the people sorely divided for intentional political purposes, and (the cherry on top) the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression? Should we really give a shit what makes this asshole tick? Shouldn't that be a fun hobby for historians to play many, many years from now when we've managed to get some of the mess cleaned up?

And also isn't it gonna be goofy to see all these actors imitating current political figures?

And there's a too late argument to be made too. If this is an expose shouldn't it have come out in 2004? And is there really any new information? Or anybody who still needs convincing?

Well, you know the formula for a review like this so you know my answer. It's like after the passing of the "Give Him the Power To Unilaterally Declare War - You Know, Just As a Bargaining Chip" resolution of 2002, you can see where it's going: it turns out I liked this movie. I thought it was a stupid idea but then I liked it.

It's not an expose. There's no revelatory information except that James Brolin's boy Josh has turned out to be one of our finest actors. Can you believe that? I knew of the guy existing, being an actual living being. I knew he was in that obnoxious kidde movie "The Goonies," but I forgot what he even looked like until NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Then I knew he grew into a good tough guy character actor and enjoyed him in a couple other movies such as AMERICAN GANGSTER. But who knew he could do this? He talks like Bush, and delivers scripted dialogue in his voice, but doesn't come across as a joke (except in the sense of "man, what a joke of a president this bastard is"). More incredibly he looks just like Bush. Maybe this is more of a testament to the execution of the makeup and the camera angles, but holy shit, I couldn't even figure out how they were doing it. Many times it's like you're looking at the real guy. The smirk, the squint - pure movie magic.

And the biggest trick of all: Brolin makes Bush semi-likable. Just amazing what technology can do these days, isn't it? The script focuses on Bush's adult life as an alcoholic fuckup, and how this somehow led to being America's Fuckup-in-Chief. It's not making any excuses or justifying what he's done, but it shows him as this guy unhappy with being the son of a senator, never happy with any of the jobs he takes on, always drinking, always disappointing his dad. "Poppy" expects Jeb (a very good young lookalike only shown in one scene) to be successful in politics, and gets kind of upset when George decides to run for governor in the same year and gets it instead of Jeb. He spends his life fighting against George H.W., trying to prove himself to him, trying to do better than him. In fact that's why it's called W. - there is a moment when Bush Sr., trying to be respectul, calls him "Junior" and then corrects himself and says "W." He wants to be W., not Junior. Separate from his father.

He seems to have finally conquered Poppy when he gets the second term dad never got, and (he thinks) finishes the war dad left unfinished. But of course the ironic Twilight Zone style ending is that he fucks those things up so impossibly bad that he has basically left a big shit-stain across the Bush name forever and made the whole world despise him and everyone he's related to and just want to tar and feather them and then high five each other and sit down around a campfire and sing songs of celebration and give each other gifts. Oh well, at least he quit drinking, that's in the plus column I guess.

The scenes from his presidency mostly focus on Iraq - the coining of the term "Axis of Evil," the plans to ignore the UN vote, being happy with a low level of troops, being unclear on an exit strategy, approving torture. Bush is not shown as sinister, really. He's just a good ol' boy Republican dipshit who wants to spread freedom around the world and is too stupid to consider the actual consequences of his actions and too trusting of Cheney and the other people who are giving him advice, and whose motives are left to the imagination. You could never fit all the fuckups and outrages of the Bush presidency into a movie that lasted less than two or three months, so they wisely didn't try to. This is more of a character piece and they chose Iraq as the event that defined him more than his dirty elections or reading "My Pet Goat" on 9-11. They do work in a few of the famous Bushisms ("I'm the decider," "misunderestimate," "fool me once," etc.) but usually not in the original context, and that gets distracting. But it feels less like a political tract than one of those Milos Forman biopics like MAN ON THE MOON or THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT. (By the way, Stacy Keach looks alot like Larry Flynt these days. He plays a reverend in the movie.)

The supporting cast is pretty good. Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney is most important. He's kind of a hybrid between an impression of Cheney and standard issue Dreyfuss. It makes for a scary villain - eerily low key, doesn't say much, but shows with his face and voice that he would rather be shitting on your face than having to lower himself to trying to explain things to you. He manipulates Bush's mind over sandwiches in the same way Palpatine messed with Anakin's head at the opera in Star Wars part 3. (Don't lie, you fuckin know what I'm talking about, I know you own that movie.) Jeffrey Wright does an interpretation of Colin Powell, not an an impression. He's portrayed as the voice of reason who's ignored and roped into ruining his image forever with that bullshit at the U.N. ("Best speech of his career," Cheney or Rove or somebody says.)

Scott Glenn as Rumsefeld is a little too kind, I think. Not nearly addle-brained or condescending enough, but at least recognizable. But there's one truly terrible performance in the movie and that's Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice. She is the only person in the movie who thinks she's supposed to be doing some cartoonish SNL parody to make you laugh at the character's funny voice. For the first half of the movie you only hear her talk once, so you're not too worried about it. But later she starts getting lines, and you wonder how the hell she got this performance past Oliver Stone. She's so out of place it's like if the Temptations went up on stage all wearing matching suits, but for some reason Melvin Franklin was naked, covered in mud and wearing a real bird's nest on his head. I mean what the fuck Melvin Franklin, you're throwing off the whole vibe here.

Just like her counterpart, Newton did an incompetent job and clearly should've been fired. Since Condoleeza got promoted to Secretary of State, maybe Thandie will win an Oscar. And then we'll see her out shopping for shoes during a hurricane.

So it's not flawless (wouldn't that be ironic if there was a flawless movie about George Bush?) and I don't think it says a whole lot that you didn't already think of (if anything). But I think it paints a pretty believable picture of the improbable series of events that got us into this godforsaken mess. It's funny at times and it's sad but mostly it's a dire warning for us to smarten the hell up. In a movie you can like a guy for his attitude, for being kind of a funny asshole or idiot, for accomplishing ridiculous things, for having funny lines, for knowing how to look cool pounding Jack Daniel's. But it's time to stop valuing those things in real life politics. This is a guy of no substance - he got jobs because of his family connection, he didn't do a good job at those jobs, he got good at memorizing prepackaged answers to questions instead of having actually ideas and thoughts. He got in the White House by being "the guy you want to have a beer with" and even on that level he's a phony because (as he points out in the movie - finally, somebody besides me) he has to drink O'Doul's. You might think a George W. Bush could never happen again, but he lowered the bar and raised our tolerance, and already we have a vice presidential candidate who's even more obvious about being a phony and an idiot, and although it doesn't look like she'll get in she has not received the wholesale rejection that a semi-reasonable country would've given her.

In this campaign it seems like some of the old Karl Rove style tricks have started to backfire, so there are signs that we're learning our lesson and might be a little more thoughtful about this shit in the future. I hope. I liked 'W.' but how 'bout if we make sure there's no chance of Oliver Stone's PALIN?

10/19/08

WADD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN C. HOLMES

If you don't know who John Holmes is, he was a dude who had a 13" long dick. That's about it. He was one of the first porn superstars, then he was involved in some murders and died of AIDS. This is his story.

WADD is pretty much a standard documentary, lots of talking head interviews, still photos, archival footage. It uses the old format of starting with clips of comments you will hear later in the movie, and wrapping up with each interviewee saying a couple final words about Holmes. The IMDB says that the director did a couple other documentaries, one about the Civil War and one about WWII. This is basically the same thing, only the archival footage generally shows Mr. Holme's gigantic dick going into various mouths, vaginas, etc. The documentary is put out by a porn company called VCA, and the vhs even comes in a big porn sized box, so they didn't have to be shy about actually showing what the dude did in his movies.

This falls into the category of the documentaries that are not great pictures in themselves but that are definitely worth seeing just because the topic is so interesting. Obviously his life is a good story - I guess Val Kilmer is supposed to play him in a movie now, and Mark Wahlberg already did a loose adaptation with his character Dirk Diggler in BOOGIE NIGHTS. In that movie, Julianne Moore makes a documentary about Dirk Diggler's career - this is based on EXHAUSTED which was made about John Holmes by somebody named Julia St. Vincent. Dirk also has his series of movies where he plays a cop, which is based on Holmes' Johnny Wadd series, and even uses lines taken directly from those movies. Holmes, like Dirk, started out clean but grew a cocaine habit as big as his dick, and then had trouble getting the latter up. And that great scene in the drug dealer's house with the robbery gone bad, that was based on a notorious incident where Holmes was implicated in 4 murders. (I think they made up the kid with the firecrackers, though.)

The real story is still interesting to hear, and continues with a thrilling "on the lam with abused underage lover" chapter which I guess they saved for RETURN OF THE BOOGIE NIGHTS. And then he gets AIDS.

It doesn't really milk the tragedy angle all that much, though, the way the Val Kilmer movie probaly will. Part of what's interesting is how nobody really seemed to know him all that well. Some people will say he's the sweetest guy in the world and others say he was a total bastard. I definitely was left with the "total bastard" impression. Right near the beginning you find out that he got busted for "pimping and pandering" and instead of taking the rap he decided to become a snitch. So he'd go on these shoots, having already told the pigs, and then his friends would get busted.

Turns out EXHAUSTED was all bullshit - they use clips of it here and every one they show of him talking about himself is then contradicted by interviews with other people. His second wife (introduced, in a sad sort of way, as "the buttfuck queen of porno") goes on and on about what a sweetheart he was and how he always treated her right. Then a friend says that John actually treated the woman like shit, for example he'd go for a swim in the pool leaving her tied to the bed with jism on her face. He's not very sympathetic, in my opinion.

It gets even worse after that. When he found out he had HIV, he pretended it was cancer. That's his business, there was less understanding of the disease at that time and I'm sure he was afraid of the ramifications it would have for his industry. (that should be in a porn title, by the way. "RAM-ifications." They use ram alot but I don't know if they've used ramifications. Did you know they got one called "COLLATERAL RAMMAGE?" Oh, sorry, let me get back to the review.) What's not just his business, is that he then went and made more porn movies without telling people he was HIV positive. In the documentary they say they don't know of anybody who died because of it, but it's still scary - they got clips of him doing Candida Royale or somebody and he doesn't even have a rubber. (I guess maybe Magnums were too small though.) Anyway, I don't think I'll be enjoying those '80s John Holmes movies again.

His first wife (shown in shadow like they used to do on Donahue and Geraldo sometimes, but without a distorted voice) is a pretty interesting character. She's described as "really straight." He was her first love, but he completely betrayed her by becoming a porn star against her wishes. She says she's never seen a porn movie in her life, and that she stopped having sex with him when he started doing the movies, because she felt he was like a hooker or something. From then on he was only a friend and not a lover. It's hard to imagine what it must've been like for this poor gal, even just on the superficial level. I mean this was before porn, when people knew less about sex, and the first dick she ever saw was more than a foot long. Did she even know? Imagine being boyfriend #2.

For the most part the movie is well put together, but some of it's kind of sloppy. Like the mainstream film critic Kenneth Turan is repeatedly interviewed, and they never explain why. You wonder, was he just really into porn? Did he know John Holmes? Why not Leonard Maltin? What's the deal here? The answer is on the not-very-interesting commentary track by director Alan Smithee (his first commentary, I believe) - Turan interviewed Holmes for a book he wrote. But the movie just leaves you scratching your head. Maybe that's better, because for 90 minutes I was convinced Kenneth Turan was a porno fiend.

Anyway, I would recommend this picture on the merits of its story. Call up your local Blockbuster or Clean Flicks and see if they can hook you up.

TRIVIA: There's a John Frankenheimer movie that uses a bunch of Johnn Cash songs on the soundtrack, and it's called I WALK THE LINE. That probaly explains why this one dropped the 'I'.

WALL-E

By now you've heard of WALL-E. Lovable robot, etc.

I'm no cartoon fetishist, but I'm not blind. Pixar is America's most consistently great studio, and on first glance this is probaly the best they've done so far. You never thought you'd see something like WALT DISNEY'S 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, but that's what the first act of this feels like. This movie is deep. There is a poetically tragic beauty to it that has never been captured in any cartoon all the way from PINOCCHIO to BARBIE'S FAIRY MERMAID CASTLE 2 or even (arguably) OSMOSIS JONES.

Here is this godforsaken shitpile of a planet, literally covered in garbage, the sky brown with garbage dust, a ring of space litter surrounding the atmosphere. Humans left this place behind 700 years ago, and the only things still moving around are one cockroach and the one remaining robot that was left behind to clean up the garbage.

So there WALL-E is picking up garbage, crushing it into cubes, and building structures out of them. I'm not sure whether this is what he was programmed to do, or whether he is using his crushing/stacking job to create art, but either one is interesting. He's been doing this for 700 years and had to cannibalize all the other dead WALL-E's to survive, so either he's Will Smith in I AM LEGEND, finding his way in an abandoned world, or he's the robot at the end of A.I., missing his mommy thousands of years after humans have gone extinct. Cleaning up garbage is what he was built for, so maybe he doesn't know that nobody needs him to do it anymore.

At any rate he has no idea that the planet is a shithole, this is just what he was built to do. To him garbage might as well be oxygen. But he does have these little quirks that are most likely not part of his programming. He finds things in the garbage that amuse him, and adds them to a collection. He especially likes the movie HELLO DOLLY which he found on a beat up VHS tape that he converts to digital, runs on an iPod and watches through a giant magnifier. One society's garbage is another machine's individuality.

So here is a world with no humans, no life at all except for one roach and one tiny sprout. A dead world. The planetary equivalent of an apartment somebody gets kicked out of and they don't clean anything, they just leave all the shit they don't want or can't carry piled on the filthy carpet. And yet there's still humanity there! The garbage that lives in the garbage has a spark of humanity. It's a dystopia but it ultimately has an optimistic view of humanity. If that rose could grow from a crack in the concrete like Tupac talked about then why couldn't an obsolete keep the concept of love alive? Humanity will prevail.

Somebody pointed out to me that if Pixar puts out a movie like CARS that's amazing in alot of ways but not as appealing as a TOY STORY or something then everybody gets mad and says they lost it. But if the other companies put out something like KUNG FU PANDA people bend over backwards to compliment it just for being watchable and mildly amusing. It's easy to imagine a KUNG FU PANDA type non-Pixar movie that would have some of the later human parts of this movie in it, and people would go nuts for it. Once you get to the animated humans in this movie there's some broad satire about rampant consumerism and laziness. People are so obsessed with their computer screens they forget there is anything else to look at. They don't know about the other people around them. They're so fat they can't stand up and their bones have disappeared. The babies are all corralled together and they leave it to your imagination how exactly mating works in this world, but you know whatever it is it's some fucked up shit. In a Brand X Animation Studio movie all this would seem shockingly subversive. That would be the part that people always talked about and what made it a decent movie. In WALL-E though it's easily the weakest part of the movie!

I would say that's the movie's one weakness, and something weird about it. The second part of the movie is the type of excellence we've come to expect from those Hawaiian shirt wearing nerds. But the first part is something even better, it transcends the normal Pixar movie. I bought into that world so much that it was not animation in my head, it was the real world, so once you got to animated humans it was a bit jarring. But still pretty damn good. Alot of this part seemed deep to me too, like the way Wall-E accidentally inspires a robot revolution, the misfits in the repair shop decide to stop following their directives and provide the much needed chaos within a rigid system to literally save the world. When a cleaning robot becomes confused about whether to follow the laser he's programmed to follow or the mud tracks he's programmed to clean up it's a funny visual joke that gently destroys the notion of being able to get through life just by following the rules. Sorry, Forrest Gump.

(isn't it funny when a reviewer bitterly attacks some other movie out of the blue and you think "where the fuck did THAT come from?" I thought I would throw one of those in there.)

It's cool because there's no bad guys really, there's just machines that are programmed to do something we disagree with. The course of humanity is decided by this mistake somebody made 700 years ago. In a world of rules, only one machine, his girlfriend and a fatass can change the course of history forever.

Obviously the story is saying something about consumerism and the environment, but it never seems preachy because the characters themselves don't even know about it. The captain of the ship does figure out that it's bad and try to do something about it ("I don't want to survive, I want to LIVE!"), but the main characters WALL-E and EVE actually never know that there's anything wrong with the world or that they need to do anything. They're too busy falling in love. Please note that computer animated humans kissing in FINAL FANTASY was terrifying, but two buckets of bolts romancing each other in this one is heartwarming.

I got no doubt in my mind that this will still be considered a classic when we're all dead. Its biggest flaw is to end up merely EXCELLENT when it starts out TRANSCENDENTLY BEAUTIFUL. It's true, I would be happy to watch 2 1/2 hours of this robot sifting through garbage, and there is a certain poetry that comes from the absence of the humans. But at the same time it's inevitable that he's gonna see where he comes from, meet his maker. It's like in a mystery movie there is an indefinable feeling that comes from not knowing what the answer is, and you're always gonna lose a little something when the mystery is solved at the end. But hopefully it will come together well, and in this case it does.

Shit, I'll take WALL-E warts and all. And these are some small warts. This is one of the all time great robot love stories, way better than HEARTBEEPS.

7/12/08

But there's no computer world involved so on second thought this is not at all like THE MATRIX in any way. I doubt these filmatists even know about THE MATRIX. This is probaly one of those "yeah, people told me afterwards it was like THE MATRIX, but honestly I never heard of it, it's just a weird coincidence" type deals. Plus Morgan Freeman plays Morpheus instead of Laurence Fishburne. Totally different. 100% new and original creation.

Okay, I have to admit that I somewhat enjoyed this dumb ass movie, but I think I'm still within my rights as an action fan to bust its movie balls, because there are rules. Once again I must refer to my "action movies are like the blues" comparison. In the blues there are traditions, there are standards, you don't have to be shockingly original, you can follow a traditional sound and then put your own spin on it, express yourself from within that framework. But you don't blatantly copy one specific person's unique style. You don't copy Jimi Hendrix's approach to blues, for example, or if Muddy Waters' 'Electric Mud' had caught on you would've looked like an asshole if all the sudden you came out with your acid rock blues album.

In an action movie there are books and books worth of cliches that are open for the taking. But when a specific movie comes along and is really original, or has a big impact, you look pathetic when you imitate it. When the Wachowski brothers made THE MATRIX it was cool, because nobody had made THE MATRIX before. When you're the fourth or fifth guy to make THE MATRIX it's not as cool. Plus THE MATRIX had this subtext to it with this rebellious response to modern life. WANTED tries to do the same thing by hollowly aping FIGHT CLUB and OFFICE SPACE without feeling as sincere or authentic. It comes across more like "Hey, you kids like this nihilistic stuff right? Me too! Do you want to come over to my apartment and play videogames? I'll let you smoke. Don't tell your mom."

Okay, I'm probaly out of line to imply that the movie is gonna make an inappropriate pass at you. But you could argue it is a little sick in the head. It ultimately seems to argue that yes, there are certain people who are fated to be murdered and it is a good idea for this guy to kill them in order to improve his self esteem. Which, in my opinion, I disagree with. I'm not worried that it's gonna harm society or nothin, I'm just saying it's a stupid movie. I don't get the idea these people are necessarily smart enough to even have thought through what exactly they were trying to say. It's like how EQUILIBRIUM was trying to be 1984, and then going backwards trying to figure out what it's saying about society, and never fucking getting there. These guys started with the shiny surface of FIGHT CLUB and THE MATRIX and then never got any deeper than that. And didn't even do the surface as good. But okay I guess.

By the way, I'm happy to report that Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive" does not appear anywhere in the movie, not even a new version featuring L'il Wayne over the end credits.

The movie actually starts with the feel of some comedy. Macavoy is in an office, the music is cheesy comedy rock and he's narrating about how much he hates his life. His boss is a cartoonish fat lady who he thinks is mean to him and he glares at her as they're eating birthday cake. I am 100% sure that director Russian Guy Who Did Those Nightwatch Movies I Still Haven't Watched saw OFFICE SPACE but with bad Russian subtitles and thought the "somebody has a case of the Mondays" secretary lady was the boss. Because otherwise I have no idea why this is supposed to be a universally relatable dilemma that your boss is a flamboyantly made up fat lady and your way of sticking it to the man is to make fun of her for eating donuts. Or maybe plus sized ladies rule the corporate world in Russia, I'm not sure. They didn't cover that in ROCKY IV.

During the training is when the FIGHT CLUB comes in. He gets the shit beat out of him and smiles as blood drips out of his nose and mouth and through narration we learn how it improves his image of himself and inspires him to go into work and get violent revenge on the co-workers he doesn't like. It's so blatant that when Edward Norton rolls in his grave so do Eric Bana and Lou Ferrigno.

You know what it is? Copying THE MATRIX and FIGHT CLUB is like being one of those dudes who wore the Michael Jackson "Beat It" jacket after that video came out. Maybe that guy is still your friend but you're gonna make fun of him for years. It's hard to respect that guy or this movie. Somehow it would be much more dignified to just be a little DIE HARD, a little DIRTY HARRY, some kung fu. But whatever. If you stick with it long enough to be able to look it in the eye it is fairly entertaining. One of the saving graces is the action scenes. Yes, they're derivative of THE MATRIX, and not as good. But they do come up with some good over-the-top action ideas. My favorite is when he causes his car to flip over another car so he can shoot into the sunroof. And that badass shot from the trailer where she does a 360 skid in her car, scooping Macavoy off the street into the passenger seat. There's alot of focus on computer animated bullets as they fly through the air. They add a few unmatrix touches like the bullets colliding with each other in mid-air and also having words and elaborate designs engraved into them, that was kind of cool. And there's a pretty crazy train crash scene (where, my buddy Mr. Armageddon points out with glee, about a hundred people had to have died, but they never even bother to mention it).

I wouldn't say any of these are classic scenes, but they're well done. I came looking for some ridiculousness and I got it. There were moments that made me think of SHOOT 'EM UP. That one went further and had alot more clever ideas in it, but the scenes weren't staged as well, the editing was choppier and the camera too closeup. So these ones worked a little better for me on a gut level.

The best thing about the movie though is Angelina Jolie. I've honestly never given her much thought before this movie, but now I understand why certain people drool over her. There are hundreds of actresses that are hot, but not as many that are scary-hot. So hot it's kind of scary and so scary it's kind of hot. Jolie has it, to the point that for BEOWULF when Robert Zemeckis needed an animated character who was a terrifying demon and yet tempting enough for two kings to give up their kingdoms in exchange for sticking it in her for a minute his solution was to just scan Jolie into a computer. She used to be cute and all but she's turned into some weird exotic creature with sexuality threatening to explode out of her lips. And her eyes look down on you like she's planning to suffocate you with a pillow and throw you in the garbage afterwards. But you and Beowulf both figure it would probaly be worth it.

I've never been that into her but it's great to see her drop the serious actor/UN ambassador bit for a minute to just kick ass and look sexy in a lowbrow stupid movie like this. Why not have a little fun after you played the wife of the real life journalist who was beheaded while on assignment? I never saw that movie but it couldn't have been fun to concentrate on something like that for a year, so she's earned the right to slink around on top of a moving train and shoot bullet curveballs around corners.

Like fellow babe turned serious actor turned slumming super hero Charlize Theron in AEON FLUX, Jolie seems completely dedicated to the attitude and physicality of this character. There's a pretty funny scene where Macavoy's soon to be ex-girlfriend is yelling at him calling him a loser and Jolie decides to walk in and kiss him just to freak the girl out. They did a good job of casting it because the ex looks like a regular blonde girl you might know. She thinks she has this power over him, then she sees Jolie and instantly melts into a puddle of inadequacy. Jolie looks almost as unreal as she did in BEOWULF when she actually wasn't real.

(Then again, maybe that's why she was willing to do this role - she just let them use the computer version while she was off feeding orphans and disarming landmines and shit. Expect HACKERS 2 any time now.)

Rapper and noted hat collector Common is a member of "The Fraternity" and looks pretty cool, but don't get excited. He doesn't do anything in the movie. I heard Angelina Jolie had her character's dialogue trimmed in order to make it cooler - a good idea. Maybe Common also had his dialogue, and action, and purpose in the story slimmed down. Very humble of him. I was also surprised when Terence Stamp showed up but I don't mind giving it away since he doesn't end up doing much of anything either. They got THE LIMEY in the movie but they think he's the guy from ELEKTRA. Also it would've been cool if Morgan Freeman did a flip or something.

I've seen a few reviews that in my opinion give this movie too much credit. Maybe I'll change my mind after watching NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH, but I can't see how a director could be a visionary at all and make a movie that leans this much on blatantly copying other movies. Maybe for your low budget start but not for your big budget American sellout movie anyway. But I do admit this guy has some chops in the action directing and the balls to try some clearly illogical and absurd concepts (for example this entire movie is about people who have a loom and they look at the fabric it weaves with magnifying glasses and read codes based on the threading to find the names of strangers who they will then assassinate). So with some reservations I endorse this as a fun time at the movies. If you've seen all the actually good movies out there right now it's not a bad choice I guess.

6/30/08

WAR OF THE WORLDS

Sometimes for scientifical type purposes I try to predict what bad puns the hack critics will use in reviews of upcoming movies. For WAR OF THE WORLDS I was leaning toward an "out of this world" or "worlds away from E.T." type thing. Somebody suggested "Bore of the Worlds" but I was saving that for "Fantastic Bore" and "Fantastic Snore."

But then I saw WAR OF THE WORLDS and you know what this is? The scariest PG-13 movie of all time. Fuck dinosaurs. Fuck a guy eating monkey brains. This is as hard as Steve Spielberg is gonna get. This is a well put together piece of work in my opinion. Usually making a movie PG-13 when it could be R is a copout, but in this case it's almost subversive. Sorry about taking the guns out of E.T., to make it up to you I'm gonna give your kids the worst nightmares from now until they turn 16.

So now I'm thinking the pun headline should be CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE KIND WHERE YOU ALMOST SHIT YOUR PANTS. Or maybe E.T. - THE EXTRA-WE'REFUCKED-STRIAL.

This is, you probaly know, unless you're stupid, the story of aliens invading earth, etc. They drive around in death machines with three giant spindly legs, vaporize people, grab people with tentacles, suck the blood out of people, and that sort of thing. They do not, at least as far as we know in the movie, eat reeses pieces. Or get drunk or dress up like a girl. Maybe on the extended dvd.

What's really smart about the movie is that it's from the point of view of the poor saps on the ground. Usually in an alien invasion movie you sit in the halls of power with the world leaders and the military strategists and whoever else has a big screen with maps on it to point to. And you see scenes from god's point of view, all over the world, famous landmarks getting destroyed. And you're right there with the biggest hero in the world when he figures out how to stop the aliens. This is the opposite. You get none of that shit. You just get what happens to some guy in a leather coat. How he happens to survive. What he sees. Which is the same as what everybody else sees: some fucked up shit. Bodies floating, those things walking over, people dying, buildings dropping.

It all starts innocently, watching a weird storm from the backyard. After a little bit of set up, most of the movie consists of two things: 1). running. 2). hiding. Fuckup weekend dad Tom Cruise, angry teenage son and precocious/horrified daughter run and hide from the army of tripods. And if they don't see something happen, we don't see it either. The things are all over the place so we get good looks at them, usually in the distance. But you always feel like they might turn and see you. So you hide inside some basement somewhere and hear all kinds of horrible rumbling and exploding in the distance. There are lots of scary sounds in this movie. The tripods like to make this horrifying HOOOOOOOONNNNNNKKKK foghorn/lion roar type sound, which I suspect is their equivalent of american soldiers blasting Bon Jovi at Noriega or Eminem at some random dude they locked up in Abu Ghraib. They're just fucking with us. Or maybe it's their eqivalent of a car horn that plays "La Cuca Racha."

Or they could be communicating with that sound, it's up to you to decide. See, the other smart thing about the movie, it doesn't feel the need to explain every god damn thing. I mean, there is a little bit there (Morgan Freeman even narrates the beginning and end with text probaly from the book - don't worry, he's only the narrator, not some wise old man in the movie). But there's alot of shit that would be overexplained in your standard summer movie that Spielberg trusts you to be on your own with. So when Tom Cruise finds the wreckage of a huge jet in the front yard, you don't have to have someone explain how exactly it got there. There's a couple examples of weird, horrible things they see that I don't want to give away. Let's just say there aren't scientists making speeches about how everything works. Just a line here or there to offer theories. There isn't even TV reports to explain much because the electricity is out for most of the movie.

And it almost seems like they're taunting the audience, putting little things in there to make you expect the usual hollywood bullshit and then not giving it to you. For example the introduction of Tom Cruise has him operating a crane, with lots of closeups of his hands on the joysticks. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking "Oh jesus, he's gonna drive an alien spaceship." Never happens though. And they also make a big deal about the son always stealing his dad's car even though he doesn't have a license. But he doesn't drive an alien spaceship either. If this was INDEPENDENCE DAY, both of them would've driven spaceships. And there woulda been some reference to TOP GUN I bet. But WAR OF THE WORLDS doesn't play that shit.

There's alot of the usual Spielberg stuff (divorce, kids) but the tone is much grimmer and more serious than he's been for years. I liked his last couple sci-fi movies better than most people did, but in A.I. he threw in the Chris Rock cameo and in MINORITY REPORT there was the jetpack roasting the hamburgers incident. Here the tone is consistently horrific. It's the scary parts of JURASSIC PARK and not the jokey parts. It has equivalents to the raptors coming in the kitchen and the t-rex nuzzling the car but no jokes about evil lawyers getting eaten on the shitter. And instead of Sam Neill barely able to walk because he's so awed by the dazzling sight of real live dinosaurs, you get Tom Cruise barely able to walk because he just watched a weird machine come out of the ground and kill a whole bunch of people, and he's covered in what's left of them. Even John Williams manages to make a subdued, eerie score instead of his usual majestic anthemy business. I actually didn't think it was him until I checked IMDB. (A popular web sight where you can look up movies.)

The effects in the movie are real good too. They never make you want to cheer, they make you want to duck. They did a good job of capturing those "oh shit am I really seeing this?" moments people experience during natural disasters, terrorist attacks and specials on Fox. Also there are good "what the hell is that sound?" moments. This movie proved to me that yes, the guy who did Jurassic Park IS the same guy who did Jaws.

I've heard some complaints about the ending, that it ends in reasonable happiness. By the way the aliens are killed by germs. (If that was a spoiler, I better not mention that dorothy gets home by bangin her slippers together and goldilocks ends up fucking everything up at the bear house.) I guess it's a legitimate point, it might've been even better if there was more of a toll on main characters. But it didn't seem disappointing to me. I knew going in this was Steve Spielberg, it's not like I was expecting a Texas Chain Saw ending with Tom giggling crazily in the back of a pickup truck.

One dumb little thing that did take me out of the movie though. Early in the movie when Tom Cruise walks down the block to find out what the hell is going on, he runs into a couple of his buddies, and one of them is an actor named Rick Gonzalez. I had to look him up because I just know him as the wacky afro-puff dude from BIKER BOYZ, OLD SCHOOL and I guess COACH CARTER. He doesn't seem like a guy Tom Cruise's character would know, he seems like a guy who gets work in lots of commercials because he has a quirky hairstyle. I mean nothing against him personally, I'm sure he's an all right guy, but he's a guy you expect to maybe see in the Fanta commercial before the movie, but not during the movie, if it's a serious one like this.

BIKER BOYZ wasn't that bad though. But this one is way better.

 

SEE THE MOVIE THAT CRITICS THINK THE WORLD OF

"WAY BETTER THAN BIKER BOYZ!... You almost shit your pants. It's out of this world!" --Vern, Then Fuck You Jack

p.s. Be sure to stay for the credits, because at the end the little E.T. on the Amblin Entertainment logo turns to you and swears his people had nothing to do with this shit, please do not invade. He just came down and road bikes with kids and shit like that, please don't lump him in with those other guys from space.

I gotta be honest. As good as THE WARRIORS is it's not quite the amazing masterpiece I like to remember it as. What makes it good is mostly on the surface: the different gangs and their gimmicks, the bleak rawness of everything from the cinematography to the John Carpenter-ish analog keyboard music, and the dead seriousness of all the characters in the face of this exaggerated world where thugs patrol the streets in baseball uniforms and gangs seem to outnumber law abiding citizens by a thousand to one.

This is all more than enough to make it some kind of minor classic, but my memory was being pretty charitable to the storytelling. I always loved the mythological simplicity of it: Cyrus calls a meeting to try to unite all the gangs, some prick assassinates Cyrus and blames The Warriors, now these 9 guys have to cross New York on foot to get back home before the other gangs kill them. It's a good old fashioned odyssey or a guantlet or whatever.

But watching it this time I don't think Walter Hill keeps the momentum of that journey from point A to point B. Or the simplicity. He splits up the group. They don't even realize at first that everyone's after them. And half of them keeping getting distracted by the eternal search for pussy. This is pretty funny when they try to hook up with the girl gang called the Lizzies and they don't seem to notice the obvious fact that the Lizzies are not, you know, into guys. If only that homophobic prick Ajax was there, he calls everybody "faggot" all the time so maybe he would've picked up on it. Anyway, there's some meandering, it doesn't really build like it could, when they get to the beach on Coney Island to face off with their enemies maybe you should feel more like they've been through Hell and back.

But I'm kind of nitpicking. I like the whole tone of this movie. Everybody looks so serious all the time. Warriors rarely smile. They're macho like Spartans, they have a code they stick to stubbornly. Like the scene where they have to go through Orphan turf but there's a whole political negotiation first. And it's decided that all they have to do is take off their vests, they can't go through in uniform. But they refuse. They'd rather fight and maybe die than take off their colors. It's not clear if they'd be allowed to just turn them inside out like they made kids do with their Spuds Mackenzie shirts in the '80s. And if it had been the Baseball Furies or the mime gang would they have had to clean off their face paint?

One of my favorite touches is the DJ played by Lynn Thigpen, only seen as a pair of lips talking into a microphone. She's in cahoots with the Riffs so she dedicates records as coded messages to the gangs about the mission to kill The Warriors. For example she plays "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide" at the beginning. She plays alot of white rock music, I guess in deference to the multi-culti makeup of the gang. Unfortunately there was no song called "Sorry We Fucked Up and Had Everybody Trying To Kill You (Tonight)" so she had to play something a little less direct at the end, I'm not sure what it's called.

That's probaly why the government is always worried about terrorist suspects sending coded messages through the media - they've seen THE WARRIORS.

The Warriors are anti-heroes. They're not good people and they're not any more heroic than most of the other gangs. But you can side with them because of the odds against them. You can tell it's hard out there for a Warrior. Watching the movie again I realized my life these days is really nothing like the Warriors, for example I generally wear a shirt. But I think all of us can find some part of our life to relate to their predicament.

Let me tell you a story. This has very little to do with THE WARRIORS but it will be cathartic to write it, so bear with me. Right after I watched the movie I went across the street because I had to mail a bill I'm late on. I live in an apartment building but I have to move out pretty soon because it got bought out by some asshole company that's "renovating" the apartments and jacking up the rent, pricing us all out. So there are always these young rich couples moving in. As I was coming back in the building I saw this couple having trouble carrying a dresser up the stairs. For some reason the man was at the top and the woman was on the bottom and I felt like I would be an asshole just to walk past them. So I asked if they needed help.

"Would you really do that?" the woman asked gratefully. So I helped her lift her end, which was empty and not as heavy as I thought it was gonna be. But suddenly there was a loud metal clang as a bunjie corded hand truck fell from beneath the dresser, the tape they had across the drawers gave, some of the drawers fell open and my fingers got crushed between I don't know what.

My first thought was to apologize, but I didn't because my second thought was why the fuck are these people carrying a dresser with the drawers still in and facing down and then being surprised when they fall open? I thought they were just carrying a dresser up the stairs like a normal person would do, it didn't occur to me they would be trying some weird scheme where you roll a dollie up some stairs so you don't have to take the drawers out. So maybe I should've been looking closer, but I feel that those sorts of carts are durable enough to take a fall and nobody should be crying about it.

I dislodged my fingers, we pushed the drawers in, turned the chest sideways and the woman angrily thanked God that nothing was damaged. The guy said "You can set it down." I was ready to go but I thought maybe he needed to rest.

I stood to the side for an excruciating half minute or so as they stared me down and I realized that they were blaming me for this incident. I was ready to carry the damn thing to wherever they needed it, it would only take a couple minutes, I could probaly do it by myself if they're gonna just stand there. But "It's okay, you don't have to help" he said impatiently. "We'll figure something out."

"I can help, it's not a problem, but--" I trailed off as I realized what he meant was they were waiting for me to leave.

I ducked into my apartment in disbelief and undeserved shame. What the fuck? They didn't even get it into the building, they weren't allowing me to help. A total stranger trying to help some yuppies move into the same building he has to move out of because he doesn't make as much money as they do. And I really like this place too, I wish I could stay. Even if it had been my fault - and even if harm of some kind had been done - sure, it would be awkward, you don't have to say "thank you," but show some fuckin manners. Don't put it on the good Samaritan. At worst I am a well-intentioned Samaritan. But at least in Samaria we take the damn drawers out before hauling the shit up the stairs.

Man, that bummed me out, put a wicked hex on my whole night, even though I had just watched THE WARRIORS! Thanks alot. Welcome, neighbor. I hope you enjoy paying $500 more than I did. Just so you know - they got rid of the on-site manager when they bought the building. Last month some drunk puked right there where you won't let me move your dresser from. Nobody cleaned it up, we just waited for it to rain. True story.

At first I thought damn, that was a Larry David moment right there. But then I realized no, that was like THE WARRIORS. Blamed for a crime I didn't commit. And blamed by the people who actually did it. We've all been in that position of having the hammer come down on us and we didn't even do anything. That's why I am a Warrior. And you too are a Warrior. We all are Warriors. Except personally I am against "runnin a train" on some lady, I don't know about you guys but that seems pretty wrong to me. Otherwise I am a Warrior. The Baseball Furies are also pretty good although it would be a pain in the ass putting on all that face paint. So I am a Warrior. And I will come out and play.

NOTE: This review is based on the original DVD release of THE WARRIORS. I made a point not to watch the director's cut special edition, where Walter Hill went back and added cheesy comic book frames as transitions.

I enjoy a good pervy Larry Clark movie, but I don't know many people who do. But never fear. I am here to tell you that this is his most accessible because it's a whole movie based around how likable the characters are instead of how despicable they are. You actually root for these guys. It's incredible.

I'm not gonna lie to you. You still gotta get past the fact that Larry Clark is a creepy, dirty pervert. This movie opens with a video interview of one of its young stars that has the vibe of that infamous Calvin Klein kiddie porn commercial (in other words, this is a film by Larry Clark). The interview itself is great because the kid, Jonathan, is a non-actor talking about his life and some of the things he talks about we end up seeing re-enacted in the movie later. But you might be a little uncomfortable with the fact that he's sitting on a bed with no shirt on talking to Larry Clark. Not the most savory individual to be hanging out in a kid's bedroom.

And then the movie starts and you get a bunch of shots of these teens waking up in their boxers, lifting weights. There is an extreme closeup of one kid's mustache that then goes down to show one hair growing out of his nipple. You know, to illustrate his burgeoning manhood. Totally legitimate. There's not nearly as much of this kind of stuff as in his other movies, but I wish he would've left it out completely this time, because it's not as much what the story's about. You could make a good argument for all the ass and crotch shots in BULLY putting the viewer into the minds of the characters (I probaly argued exactly that when I reviewed BULLY back then). But this is a different kind of story so the sleaziness seems out of place. This guy could do MARCH OF THE PENGUINS 2 he'd still figure out a way to a show a close up of a young person's ass or crotch.

And later there's a scene where a gay fashion designer tries to spy (through a keyhole!) on Jonathan while he pees and the guy is punished by falling down a flight of stairs, possibly to his demise. And you can't help but think Larry, Larry, Larry. Who are you to point fingers? You think I haven't seen a PAL-DVD import of KEN PARK where you filmed that 18-year-old-playing-a-kid jerking off to a tennis match and cumming all over himself? You're dealing with a professional here Larry, you can't pull the wool over my eyes.

But then, a bigger crime than kiddie porn, the man disses Clint Eastwood in this movie. There's a brief appearance of a guy who is clearly supposed to be Clint Eastwood, but is a racist murderer. AND he looks skinny and soft compared to the real Clint, adding insult to injury.

But you of all people know what Jesus said about forgiving so after forgiving all that stuff, I am prepared to say that WASSUP ROCKERS is a real good movie and I think Larry Clark's best. I still think BULLY is hilarious but this has the unexpected bonus of heart. ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, his movie about a gang of junkie armed robbers, is the closest he's come to a movie where the characters aren't all despicable scumbags. Until now. This is a movie completely built around the charisma of this group of seven Latino skate punks.

The stars of the movie are a group of real friends from South Central L.A. who don't fit into their neighborhood because they wear tight jeans and play in a hardcore band called The Revolts. The title is what people in their neighborhood say to them because they have long hair. They do drink beer a little and are very interested in sex but they're much nicer and more innocent than your standard Larry Clark characters. They mostly hang out and ride their skateboards. There are long scenes of them taking turns jumping skateboards down stairs and they wipe out way more than they land, and when they have conversations they're clearly not scripted. More than his other movies, this almost-documentary feel makes you feel young again, just a young dude hanging out with friends, laughing at each other's pain. There is one scene where the boys decide to pick up one guy like a baby and toss him around to each other for as long as they can, and they all laugh. That is the kind of stuff this movie is about. Don't expect a murder mystery or nothin.

Then they all pile into a car to go to a skate spot, but nobody has a license so they get pulled over by bike cops and have to give up the car. ("I bet you guys are happy to get a car.") The rest of the movie is about them being stuck in Beverly Hills trying to get back to South Central and dealing with all the white cops and rich people they encounter. There are two reoccurring bits of dialogue that made me laugh. Every time they encounter somebody 1. one character says "We're from the ghetto," and 2. they get called Mexican and have to explain that they are Salvadoran and Guatamalan.

So it's been compared to THE WARRIORS and some movie called THE SWIMMER. At this point the movie turns more cartoony as they get into trouble with various rich Beverly Hills people, some of it is surprisingly over-the-top and some of it is hilarious. There are some rich white kids in Beverly Hills who don't even have to do anything, you just laugh every time they're shown with their blazers and spiky hair and shit. There's also a crazy cameo by Janice Dickinson as a drunk rich lady who tries to seduce one of the kids. I know that bitch is supposed to be crazy but either they really got her drunk or she's real good at playing drunk.

Long ago I accepted the harsh reality that normal people hate Larry Clark and I'm never gonna be able to convince anybody to see BULLY, much less enjoy it. But I'll give it another shot with WASSUP ROCKERS. I really believe this is a unique and joyful enough movie that you people should see it. These are characters you don't usually see in movies, and you'll enjoy rooting for them. Seattle was just as harsh to the movie as their neighborhood is to the Wassup Rockers. There were no print ads, it opened in the $3 second run theater out in the suburbs, and it got replaced by NACHO LIBRE after one week. So I'm guessing most of you will have to see it on DVD anyway, which will make it convenient if you need to fast forward through the pervy parts. Let's just hope they don't release an unrated version.

You know what, I got me a new theory. Look out people. If this theory pans out its gonna be in the textbook for Badass Cinematical studies for now on. It is about the difference between '70s Badass filmmakers and '90s Badass filmmakers.

The difference is, the '90s boys went to college. Or read alot of books. Studied alot of movies. The '70s boys traveled the world, drank alot of whiskie, got in fights and drag races. The '70s boys had a natural knack for the poetry of Badass Cinematics, while the '90s boys had a great knowledge of technique and equipment and approaches to witty dialogue. Now obviously there are many exceptions to this rule, but it is a good sweeping generalization to ponder. The '70s masters like Peckinpah and Leone and Siegel and Mr. Eastwood had an effortless feel to their films, like it was just something that came out of their pores. The '90s ones, even the really good ones, usually seem like they put a whole fucking lot of thought into it. Drew alot of schematics and diagrams. And figured out how to do it just right.

Of course, some of the best have a little of both. Mr. Quentin Tarantino for example is world reknowned for having sat on his ass watching hundreds of bad '70s movies on video in order to learn his skills. However in my opinion his movies have more of that '70s feel than anyone else. The quiet realism and the authentic swagger that is key to a successful Badass picture. At the same time, Tarantino's pictures are much more talkative and postmodern, with characters jabbering on dissecting and psychoanalyzing and reinterpreting the icons of past television and music. "Like a Virgin" and Get Christie Love and the Fantastic Four. Obsessing over hit that may not even EXIST in the world that Clint Eastwood usually lives in. (although there are jazz records.)

Way of the Gun is the directoring debut of Christopher McQuarrie, the academy award (Oscar) winning writer of The Usual Suspects. Now don't get me wrong, I think Usual Suspects is a good movie. But it is the perfect model of the '90s style academic approach to Badass film. Suspects is a great work of telling-a-story, and from beginning to end feels like the work of a born Cinematist. Director Bryan Singer of course went on to use this natural talent in Apt Pupil and to revive the career of the aging Clint Eastwood as young Hugh Jackman in X-Men. Was it Singer's strengths that managed to make this script work, even with McQuarries indulgent bag of tricks? All the knowing plot twists and novel character traits and novelistic voicovers and turnarounds and whatnots? Or was it indeed this gimmicky style that made the picture so enjoyable?

McQuarrie claims to have been at odds with the gimmickry of The Usual Suspects, and therefore sort of reluctant to come back to the Badass genre. At times in Way of the Gun he seems to have consciously broken free of the restrictions of his own intelligence. Thank god. The movie opens like some drunken bar story, with a pointless fight outside a club which has no literal connection to the story (although in retrospect it works as somewhat of a parallel to the rest of the story - McQuarrie the graduate student leaking through) and then proceeds as a modern day western. The protagonists are two men with no names, Ryan Phillipe and Benicio Del Toro. We don't know where they are from or what their past is and we never really find out much about them, except that they are criminals with very few qualms who stumble upon a surrogate mother who they think could make for some valuable ransom. So they kidnap her and get mixed up with some shady criminals. How many times are they gonna shoot their way out? How are they gonna get their money? And good god what if little Ryan starts growing a conscience in the middle of all this?

The gunfights are great. Not graceful like Mr. Woo's, which are always referred to as ballet. These are more like ultimate fighting. Loud and chaotic. Like a war zone. And the motherfuckers never stop shooting. You know something is fishy early on when the bodyguards shoot the shit out of a parking lot just to go after the attempted kidnappers. The title of the movie implies something of a criticism of gun violence and there is definitely a feeling of Peckinpah's moral outrage in the way these fights are depicted, with all the slow motion money shots left out and the prone corpses of innocent civilians left decorating the battle zone.

There is also a feeling of that poetic Peckinpah vitality just in the filmatism, in the many scenes where the details are told visually instead of through a bunch of bullshit and talking. In fact I gotta be honest there is so much visual storytelling in this picture I couldn't even understand all of it, it was like they weren't talking but they were still talking to fast for me to follow. I don't know what exactly Benicio was doing with that convenience store clerk (watching a porno is my guess?) but it was funny anyway. I haven't seen this Del Toro since his classic role as the fat guy in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I don't know WHAT in fuck's name they did to slim down that sweaty freak and turn him into some kind of edgy male model with dark patches under his eyes. But hell if I was young I think i would wanna be this motherfucker. There is very little characterization in this guy, I don't know shit about him but he sure does know how to stand around cool and smoke cool and squint his eyes cool. A great Badass performance and I look forward to seeing more from this individual.

In fact the whole cast is good, especially James Caan as a muscle bound tough guy with his nipples showing quite clearly through his shirt. And this other old guy who is introduced at home playing a casual game of russian roulette. Most of the pieces for a great crime movie are here, and there are some note perfect type Badass moments where everything is just right from the performance to the staging to the photographing. The music by some dude whose name I did not happen to read should be noted for its excellence. It sounds like some kind of western or something and right before any big action scenes its got these dramatically building drum rolls that tell you oh jesus, here comes the good part.

Unfortunately the gears get gummed up in the middle portion when the picture abandons our protagonists in a hotel in mexico and starts jabbering on and on about all the other people involved in this mess. This is when the '90s approach comes into play.

You got the rich guy who is paying the surrogate mother a million dollars, but what is his background? You got the rich guy's wife, why is she always snooping around? And the two bodyguards - who are they loyal to? And the bagman played by James Caan - who is he loyal to? What is his stake in all this? And the doctor. Who is he related to? Who is he screwing? What relationships do any of these characters secretly have with each other? What are their plans, and their motives, and their secret conspiracies and collusions and blah blah fucking blah. At first its intriguing, then at a certain point you think jesus McQuarrie, if you were trying to get away from The Usual Suspects you REALLY fucking blew it my man. Bring us back to mexico and AWAY from all this fucking intrigue!

It sort of reminded me of how in Magnolia every character is lonely and pathetic and for a while it is sad, and it gets sadder and sadder and eventually it's so damn sad that you no longer feel sorry for these people and you are not touched by their desperation and you just want to go watch a musical or something. McQuarrie overloads that middle section with his bag of tricks. You gotta show a little restraint there buddy. After wondering about the secret motive of EVERY character I eventually have to say fuck it, I don't care what ANY of these fuckwits are up to even if that means by the end I will not be entirely sure what happened because I will have lost track of who was in it with who and was trying to do what and why.

Sometimes all this complication works out. There is a type of moment in a good Badass film which I will call the OSIO moments. That stands for oh shit, it's on. There is a great one in this movie where the Mexican cops show up at the hotel where Del Toro and Phillipe have been keeping the kidnapped gal. And then the two bodyguards come to get the pregnant girl back. And then out comes this old crazy guy who was left by the bagman James Caan to keep an eye on things. And Phillipe and Del Toro are up on the hill with an assault rifle and a scope and there is a bit of a language barrier going on down there and everybody has guns and different agendas and you're watching all this and you just smile and you think oh shit, it's on.

But there are other complications that really don't pay off and things get so complicated that you just don't give a fuck what they are plotting about and for the time being oh shit, it's off.

But in that aforementioned OSIO scene the movie gets back to our no names in mexico and it starts feeling like The Wild Bunch and it starts falling back into that natural rhythm again, the rhythm of the Badass Cinema. There are themes of redemption in the movie that I think are a little too self conscious and literate to work in that simple Unforgiven way ("god damn it I don't want to kill anymore but these situations keep coming up where I keep having to kill motherfuckers") but I guess I'll give McQuarrie points for trying to put some soul under the swagger. I like the way all this mayhem and greed and conspiracy surrounds the pure human act of a mother giving birth. I mean what could better describe human nature than a bunch of assholes killing each other and fighting over huge bags of money while a baby is being born?

Is this what the Badass picture of the 2000s will be like? A mutant crossbreed of the poetic approach and the intellectual approach? Or is this just a halfway there picture that represents the beginning of a return to the good old days? Or is my theory a bunch of bullshit anyway and I should just end this essay. yes I will go with the third one I guess, sorry.

pretty good movie though just not great

When I read that the unrated DVD of THE WICKER MAN REMAKE has a SHOCKING ALTERNATE ENDING!, I was a little confused. Because if you've ever seen the original, good version of THE WICKER MAN you know this can only SPOILER end one way: an outdoor barbecue featuring Nic Cage in a central role. What could the SHOCKING ALTERNATE ENDING be? He doesn't get burned alive?

The movie is a pointless and weird re-jiggering of the original. It's not really the crazed spectacle I was hoping for, at least not from beginning to end. If you've seen the original you know where it's going, and it's not all that exciting to see him wander around a weird farm colony island looking for this missing girl and getting frustrated that nobody is cooperating. But oh boy does it have its moments.

I heard this movie was completely misogynistic, but I'm undecided on that one. Sommerisle in this version is a matriarchy with Ellen Burstyn in place of Christopher Lee. They are all intimidated by the male presence of Nic Cage and he's freaked out by them. He gets stuck in a well and probaly other vaginal symbols that I've forgotten. Most of the characters in the movie are women and they're all evil except for a nice lady cop at the beginning (this movie's equivalent of a Tony Shalhoub token good guy Arab character). It definitely plays out like a woman-hater's paranoid fantasy, but there are some signs that it might just be a big joke on gender relations. Cage is frustratingly lax about asking the women to explain what's going on, but then whenever he does he interupts them and doesn't listen to what they're saying at all. He's also pretty belligerent, yelling at people sometimes for no reason, tearing off kids masks, and when he goes into a classroom he thinks nothing of erasing a chalkboard covered in meticulous notes just to write down one name that he has already said out loud.

They could've gone a more obvious route and have him just be a chauvinist or a womanizer. This way it's more subtle and maybe not intentional. Either way it's pretty hilarious to watch this asshole freak out at the end yelling "YOU BITCHES! YOU BITCHES!" Nic Cage definitely punches out more women in this movie than any since at least PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. He actually fights Leelee Sobieski, throwing her over a table and kicking her so she flies against a wall. He punches out a butch inn keeper so he can steal her bear costume. Then, while in the bear costume, he punches out another woman.

Now, in any other movie where Nic Cage punched out a lady while wearing a bear costume, it would be the most awesome thing ever. GHOST RIDER would've been almost watchable if it featured this turn of events. NATIONAL TREASURE would have somehow seemed forgivable. LEAVING LAS VEGAS... he probaly would've gotten two Oscars if it had had a bear suit punch-out. I mean, almost any character on film - that would add some layers to. What is it about this treasure hunter that he would not only punch out a woman, but would do it for a bear suit, or while wearing a bear suit? That is a dark character, that is a psychology worth exploring. In this movie, unfortunately, they put it in a context where it almost makes sense. But it's good. I'm not sure any major actor has done anything this weird since the days of Marlon Brando's ice bucket hat.

You will believe a man can put on a bear suit and punch a woman in the face.

In this version the Sommerislians make honey instead of apples, and their colony is based on a beehive. So Burstyn is the queen bee, the men are called drones and they just do work and don't talk. And just like bees in nature, these women like to find a well-meaning cop who's allergic to bees, seduce him, carry his seed, abandon him, then years later trick him into coming to the island and send him on a wild goose chase and then break his legs, pour bees on his head and burn him alive in a giant wicker man full of livestock. (I am assuming that is what bees do in nature but I have not checked wikipedia to be sure, sorry, no time.) Like in the original DOUBLE-SPOILER they succeed, and hopefully this sacrifice will help bring the honeybees back to all the hives everywhere, not just on Sommerisle.

One of the production companies involved is Emmett/Furla, familiar to fans of the Steven Seagal DTV era. Like those films this is full of weirdly amateurish storytelling that makes the whole movie feel off balance. The best example is a scene where Cage sees some guys loading wood onto a cart. He comes over and offers to help, but as he helps lift one piece of wood he knocks the entire cart full of wood out and onto the guy. So then he helps the guy up and leaves. Now the guy has to pick up all the wood again, and Cage just abandons him as if he's satisfied with the amount of help he has provided. Weird storytelling ineptitude like this is normal in low budget movies that are put together on the fly and that nobody is expected to ever watch, but it's unusual in a nicely photographed mainstream studio movie with a movie star and a well known director (Neil Labute).

Things get weirder in the PG-13 theatrical cut. The SHOCKING ALTERNATE ENDING! is actually the same but a little longer and showing some of the things that you only heard in the PG-13. The one major difference is that they put a weird helmet on Nic's head and dump bees into it. The bees give him a beard and sting the hell out of him as he yells "OH, NO, NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAA! OH NO, MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAAAAA RRRRRRRRGHHHH!!" (You'll be quoting it for months.) This entire sequence was missing in the original release, but they still left in a shot of him with a face swollen by multiple bee stings. So that must've been a little jarring.

(The SHOCKING version also drops the original epilogue that had cameos from James SPIDER-MAN TRILOGY Franco and Jason FREDDY VS. JASON Ritter.)

In GHOST RIDER Cage's character was obsessed with jellybeans and monkeys. In this one the must've-been-a-Nic-Cage-suggestion touch is that he buys a self help tape called Everything Is Okay. You never hear him listening to it, but the significance is that later it gets stolen from his luggage, signifying that in fact everything is NOT okay.

Cage does use his overacting super powers a little bit. The movie is best when he flips out and either yells at somebody for no reason or punches somebody for a good reason. There's no way to do justice to it in writing, but if you've seen the movie I think you may agree that "HOWDIT GETBURNED!? HOWDAGEBURNED!?" may be the greatest overacting of Cage's career. Which is saying alot.

And I don't really think he's overacting here, but for some reason it's pretty amazing to see a guy like Nic Cage crying "Oh my god! Oh my god!" as women are about to burn him alive. You just don't expect to hear that kind of whimpering from a star of his caliber.

I have to admit, I am a little fascinated with this movie. Even after listening to some of the commentary track it's an unsolved mystery - I got no idea what they were trying to pull. Apparently Johnny Ramone was a huge fan of the real WICKER MAN movie, and told Nic Cage to watch it, and then as a tribute to Johnny Ramone they bought the rights and then remade it into this unrelated, completely ridiculous movie. What a stirring tribute to a guy from a rock band people like.

But as much as I am glad I saw it, I cannot really recommend this movie to normal people. Instead, I say check out the highlights that are available on youtube. You will get most of the good parts and they're probaly even better out of context.

Sometimes in a man's life, he decides to move from Hong Kong to America, do a movie with Jean Claude Van Damme and then spend the rest of his life struggling to regain what he once had. Fighting to just be John Woo again. Hoping to recapture that innocent time when he was the guy who did THE KILLER and HARD BOILED and not the guy who wants to produce a computer animated movie about ninja turtles.

Maybe you read about all those teenage Iraqi christians who went on a long journey hidden between boxes in the back of a truck to escape persecution and find freedom in America, and Uncle Ashcroft thanked them by throwing them in prison on unspecified "immigration violations" with no charges or plans to ever release them. Well this isn't as bad, but I think most americans are still pretty ashamed of how we rewarded all the Hong Kong directors seeking asylum in Hollywood with the Curse of Van Damme. Anyway, if anybody could've overcome it we all thought it would be John Woo.

And there are different schools of thought as to how much John Woo has Totally Lost It at this point. I think I stand in the majority in saying that FACE-OFF could proudly sit on a shelf not exactly alongside his Hong Kong work but, you know, not that far below it. Maybe across the room or something but still, within the same basic section of the house, in my opinion. It was a movie that brought american style action to ridiculous new levels, while backing it up with way more sincere emotion than most americans thought they wanted. And you also gotta admire some of the gutsy choices he made, like doing this ridiculous face switching concept in a not-futuristic setting, and casting Joan Allen in a role that any other director would've given to a young blonde model who wants to try acting. She even gets a buttshot with suggestive bass guitar. It was definitely a John Woo movie, but it also tried some new things he hadn't done before, like sci-fi concepts and actors playing multiple roles. I think Nic Cage was more impressive here than in the one he won the oscar for, NIGHT OF THE DRUNK or whatever it was.

But then there was MISSION/IMPOSSIBLE. I am still amazed that one hollywood blockbuster series based on an old tv show could get Brian DePalma, John Woo and David Fincher all to do one. It shoulda been great, but Woo just didn't work out. Maybe he didn't know how to work with that kind of studio involvement. It's a really dumb movie but at least he put some John Woo moments in there, like the car chase that was like a dance or the scene where the bad guy disguised as Tom Cruise takes his Tom Cruise face off and underneath he is crying because his lady friend betrayed him. I figured Woo missed on this one, but he still had it in him. I didn't agree with the people who said he had finally lost his soul.

But WINDTALKERS doesn't help my argument. This is his World War II drama, about one of those "little known chapter in american history" type deals. Turns out Navajos were used as "code talkers", broadcasting american military orders in coded Navajo language so the Japanese couldn't translate it. The premise is that Nic Cage is assigned to protect one of the codetalkers, or more specifically, protect the code. If the codetalker Ben is in danger of falling into enemy hands, Nic is supposed to kill him.

Now tell me that's not a premise John Woo should be able to hit out of the park. You got the violence, you got the cultural sharing, you got the bonding, honor, betrayal - all that John Woo shit. Obviously Nic is gonna try not to get too close to Ben, then is gonna get too close, then is gonna get in the situation he was afraid of when he tried not to get too close in the first place. You kinda know what's gonna happen, but you don't REALLY know what's gonna happen because who knows where John Woo is gonna take you? Well, that's what I thought. But John takes that and instead of giving us a John Woo picture he gives us your every day mediocre american war picture.

The movie starts out with Nic's bad war experience before he gets the codetalker assignment. He follows an order that he probaly shouldn't have and it ends up getting all his buddies killed. So this sets up that he's got something to prove and in the very next scene, they're already zooming in on him and you hear all his buddies yelling in agony. Like we might've assumed he was thinking about something else as he sits in a wheelchair at the veteran's hospital. Half an hour into the movie I think there were already 3 different types of flashbacks used.

Now let me say that although it was wasted, I appreciate that they even used this topic. A while back I was trying to explain to my correspondent Andrew from New Zealand that in american popular culture, native americans barely even exist in a contemporary type situation. With the exception of SMOKE SIGNALS and an occasional big guy in a prison movie, it's like a meteor came down and killed all the natives when John Wayne started playing cops. In New Zealand it sounds like most people are aware of issues involving descendants of the natives vs. descendants of the settlers. And not just 'cause a Maori guy played Django Fett. But here white people seem to forget that natives even exist outside of casinos and firework stands. Here at least is a movie acknowledging the existence of natives in the 20th century, and they also show that a native can be raised catholic and believe in the US of A and all this business.

Unfortunately there is nothing in this movie that is a surprise, except the part where Christian Slater gets graphically decapitated. Not to give anything away. To illustrate this concept, let me give you a brief quiz.

1. There is a macho character who makes racist comments about "injuns" and picks a fight with Nic's Navajo partner Ben.

TRUE OR FALSE: This character ends up being saved by one of the Navajo and immediately admits out loud that he was wrong about them.

2. In the inevitable climax, Ben is injured and it is Nic's duty to kill him before he is captured. Although Ben was angry when he learned of the "protect the code" orders he is now resigned to do his part, and yells for Nic to "Do it! Kill me!" What happens next?

a) Nic kills Ben and must live knowing that he has done right for his country but wrong for his friend. The audience is left to mourn the loss of Ben and contemplate whether to trust your country or your conscience.

b) Nic suddenly puts the gun down, announces "No one else dies!", and dies heroically saving Ben. In an epilogue, Ben brings Nic's dog tags to a scenic landscape and performs a traditional Navajo ritual with them.

ANSWERS: duh.

SCORING: 1-2 correct: Spielberg eat your heart out. Hold the popcorn, you're a Hollywood expert! 0 correct: Move over, Schumacher. Don't quit the day job fuckwad!

And I'm afraid this doesn't work on an action level either. First of all, I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure this "world war 2" was an actual war. So it's hard to get as excited about the action as you do say in HARD BOILED when it's a total fantasy, and they're riding around on gurneys or sliding down banisters shooting through thug after thug.

In the past though that didn't stop John Woo from achieving. BULLET IN THE HEAD for example has that whole Peckinpah "outraged by the violence I am depicting so beautifully" type feel. I mean that's what the whole movie is about, a dude who still has a bullet lodged in his head, as a constant reminder that this shit isn't really so fun. There are some incredibly brutal scenes in a Vietnam POW camp. In fact I saw a double feature of this with HARD BOILED afterwards and a couple people actually walked out in the middle and missed HARD BOILED completely, because they couldn't take it.

Well the war is pretty brutal here too, with lots and lots of bayonet stabbing, people catching on fire, also I don't know if I mentioned this but Christian Slater gets his head lobbed off with a sword and you see it laying on the ground there for a second. (Spoiler.) The problem though, is fucking Jerry Goldsmith. This asshole did the score, and he won't fucking shut up. You know how that gal Lauryn Hill from the Fugees, she does some songs where she's covering Dionne Warwick or whoever, and she's singing, and the rapper Fugees have nothing to do. But they don't want to feel left out so they're on stage too going "1 2, 1 2, yeah, yeah." They don't know how to restrain themselves. Or another example, some bands they got a guy on guitar, he's always gotta be fuckin soloing, he can't just do some rhythm to back up somebody else every once in a while. They always gotta be in the spotlight.

Jerry Goldsmith is that guy. All through the battle scenes, all you can think of is TURN THAT FUCKIN MUSIC OFF. There is no way to get involved in the reality of these scenes because Jerry is so busy rubbing up against you trying to show off how triumphant he is. Later on there are a couple scenes where he starts trying to be a little less bombastic and a little more on the majestic side, but even here it pulls you completely out of the movie. This is a problem that only the American John Woo could have. The Hong Kong John Woo would have no problem dealing with Jerry Goldsmith. "Hey Jerry, I want to show you something in this room over here. Sit down Jerry. Oh, hold on, I forgot something. Wait here." Then he locks the door. They can do that over there, because they don't worry as much about unions and insurance and shit.

Anyway, it's not a terrible movie. I've seen worse. But I'd rather John Woo stay home with his kids than go to battle just to make movies that Rob Cohen or somebody coulda made.

NOTE: actually turns out it was James Horner who scored it, not Jerry Goldsmith. I would change it in the article but I am too busy. Sorry Jerry.

WOLF CREEK

THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS.

First off, I gotta address a couple points. Number one, regarding the reputation of this movie. I think it's getting a bad rap. One Seattle critic wrote about walking out instead of reviewing it. Another one ("shout out" to Andrew Wright as the kids would say) mentioned the other critic walking out and said he didn't blame her (his review was "a recommendation, I guess"). Roger Ebert gave WOLF CREEK zero stars and pretty much condemned it as a failure for the human race. Even some of the horror fans who liked it are talking about it like it peeled off their skin and made them eat it and despite the unpleasantness of the whole ordeal they begrudgingly had to admit that it did a good job of forcing them to eat it.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's a little more of a fun slasher movie than people are saying. Yes it's more brutal and more realistic than many. You take the killer seriously because he's just a guy, not Jason. Not some supernatural mutated retard with a scary mask. And yes he's a rapist. But the audience gets off easy on that count. He doesn't molest a woman with a gun like in THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (3 stars --Roger Ebert) or force young girls to piss their pants like in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (3 1/2 stars). I was expecting one of those unpleasant movies that makes you stare at humanity's filthy ass and you feel kind of guilty and unhealthy for liking it, like a HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (3 1/2 stars). I was expecting to have to endure a bunch of horrible shit that I probaly didn't want to see, but it's really not that kind of movie. I haven't seen IRREVERSIBLE (3 stars) but if it's how they said it was, with a long rape scene to torture the audience, it's not like this one. The violence is more sparing here, it's just that the execution makes it hurt.

I'm not trying to call Ebert a hypocrite or nothing. I think he was right about all those movies. Maybe his tastes are changing and now he would be the guy who is offended by HENRY. It seems to me he's punishing the movie for being well made. HIGH TENSION, for example, he hated that too but at least it got a star and he had fun joking around in the review, despite it having a higher body count, way more gore, a dead kid and even a homophobic subtext if you want to get political. This one, he acted like it ate his dog. He is punishing it for being realistic, for not having a silly twist ending, for having a genuinely scary villain. If the guy was dressed up as an evil clown or had supernatural powers or something, I bet it would've gotten that one star.

On his show, Ebert tried to explain the difference between WOLF CREEK and DEVIL'S REJECTS. He said something like "a reasonable person can see that DEVIL'S REJECTS is a film, with performances." As if somebody tricked him into thinking WOLF CREEK was a live broadcast of an actual event.

I guess I just don't understand why he thinks this is the one that "crossed the line" when to me it seems tame compared to some of those that he liked as recently as last summer. But I'm not saying it's a rollicking day at the park with the kids buying some balloons and eating hot dogs, and to be frankly honest I sort of wondered why some of the sick fucks around me were laughing at certain parts. But this is not a portrait of a serial killer, this is an australian chainsawless massacre. Two roadtripping girls and a guy get stranded out in the Australian booneys and a maniac bushman chases them and does things to them that I personally would consider to be morally inappropriate. There's some gruesome torment and what not, because "you must taste blood in order to be a man" says Sam Raimi of his EVIL DEAD pictures (3 stars for part 2, I don't think Ebert reviewed the first one). But the emphasis of this picture is not on sitting there watching somebody get tortured, like the reviews made me think. The movie is energetic. It's all about the running, the being chased, the trying to fight back, the thinking you might get away, the suddenly realizing you're fucked after all. Hell, there's even a car chase. Made me think of MAD MAX.

It helps that the movie is Australian so you don't get the genetically engineered Hollywood kids we usually get. There's one cutesy scene that I got to admit I thought was pretty amazing, where two characters who have unspoken crushes on each other awkwardly kiss and then start laughing. It's hard to explain but it was such a real moment it went a long way toward making these poor bastards seem like actual people.

A brief side note about characters doing stupid things in slasher movies. I'm not necessarily against it. Alot of people complain about that shit, but I think the filmatists have to find the right balance. When people endanger themselves in movies, that causes tension. That in fact is what horror is is that moment when you're horrified of what's gonna happen to the character. There's a scene here where people were yelling at the screen telling the characters what to do. The characters totally blew it, but I thought it was a realistic blowing it. I believe that these people would not have the werewithal to take care of business in this type of situation. There are other scenes where the mistakes are maybe too stupid to be believed, but not too many. And there's only one scene I wish they would've cut out, where she stops to watch home videos she finds of the victims. This part is ridiculous. She even pauses a tape that shows the killer's truck parked near them when they stopped to get gas. That would've been a great detail for some freak to notice when he watches it again on DVD, but don't rub my face in it. Come on. The reason this scene sticks out though is because the rest of the movie seems so different from your standard bad horror that you don't expect it to ever stoop to that kind of nonsense.

I think the best scene in the movie is the scene halfway through where it officially turns from road trip to horror movie: (spoiler spoily spoiling) a girl wakes up bound and gagged in a shed, manages to get out and hears her other friend screaming in pain. The apparent perpetrator has just spent several hours towing their broken down car out to the middle of nowhere. You have to picture yourself in her shoes (or bare feet at first, but luckily she does find her shoes). The only way she can survive is if she turns around and runs like hell for about two weeks and hopefully finds somebody to help her. (And hopefully not the gas station attendant/cook from TEXAS CHAIN SAW or Captain Spaulding from HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES. You know, there are alot of Bad Samaritans out there.)

But you can't run, because that's your friend in there, you can't just leave her. The movie plays off these kinds of hopeless situations and off the fears and weaknesses of city slickers. If these people knew anything about buying a good used car or fixing a car engine, if they knew how to load guns or how to use knives, maybe they wouldn't be in this mess. (There's also a humiliating run-in with some tough guys in a roadhouse, but I don't think that has as much bearing on their predicament.) Also it would help if the knucklehead boyfriend didn't make fun of a stranger by quoting Crocodile Dundee. Australian rednecks take that shit personally. At least he didn't bring up part 2 or 3, I guess.

I like it when they use class tensions to jack up the discomfort in horror movies. Hopefully the characters are likable, but you still convince the audience that they are poking their nose where it doesn't belong. Or at least they are being annoying tourists. The scene where the bushman gets offended is great because you feel like our hapless protagonists are asking for it. But they're really not, because this guy didn't tow them all the way out there to fix their car. But still, throw some guilt in there to make us squirm.

Okay, so that was my first point, it's a well made slasher movie, not some horrible rape and torture festival. The second thing I gotta bring up is this bullshit about "BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS." Yes, this movie is based on actual events, because people actually have been murdered in Australia before. Also, the whole STAR TREK series is based on actually events, because there really is outer space.

I got a pet peeve lately with the way they're marketing horror movies. It could be fucking ANYTHING they're gonna claim it's based on actual events. It doesn't even matter if it's supernatural, they're still gonna tell you it's real. There was the WHITE NOISE trailer with its "actual recordings" of ghosts. And I think it was the same narrator trying to convince us that THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE really happened. And that "what happened in Amityville has never been fully explained" (unless you count the time when that lawyer admitted that he and the new owners of the house made the whole thing up). I even saw an infomercial interviewing "real" "voodoo" "experts" explaining how you use a lock of hair to do a certain spell and also Kate Hudson stars in SKELETON KEY. I guess I'm a paranoid dude because I almost want to tie this in with the current anti-science stance in our government, where instead of actually doing tests you just make up numbers that fit what big business wants to do, and instead of teaching just science in science class they want to throw in some religion. ("Intelligent design" should be called "Cool Ranch Creationism" if you ask me.) I bet spoonbending will make a big comeback pretty soon.

Before the movie they showed 4 trailers for upcoming horror movies. Three were remakes (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, PULSE) and the other (HOSTEL) claimed to be "based on actual events." (They also threw in a CURIOUS GEORGE ad for good measure.) Okay, so I know that "misleading advertising" is one of those oxymorons, but this shit pisses me off because everyone in the audience is either being tricked or having their intelligence insulted.

Another thing that's misleading, there are no wolves in this movie. That's the name of a place. Sorry, wolf fans. Also there's not a creek. I guess some people might be bummed out about that if they are really into creeks, but I'm not so I didn't have a problem with it.

Well, now that I have made my two points that I wanted to start out with, it turns out I'm almost done with my review. This is a really well made movie that I would recommend to all serious horror fans. If you are an amateur you can stay home and jerk off to HOUSE OF WAX but all pros, come with me to the WC. Still, there is one thing that keeps dub-C from being a classic and it involves the end, so read on with caution motherfucker. The movie has a clever structure where the three victims get separated. One of them seems to be the dominant surviving girl that you get in most slasher movies, but after a while she, uh... fails. We'll put it that way. Then we switch to the other girl and follow her as she puts up a fight, but she doesn't make it. Then finally we follow the dude, who is not in too good of shape. It feels weird already because almost all slasher movies have a female as the last survivor. Oh well, change is good. But after we've seen the other two put up valiant efforts but not make it, we are ready for the big climax. It could be a showdown where the hero manages to kill or maim the Crocodile Dundee guy. Or there could be a long thrilling chase where he just barely escapes by the skin of his teeth, or where he almost escapes, or of course there could be the Bad Samaritan ending like HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES. I was personally kind of hoping for a Reverse Bad Samaritan where the eight foot tall motherfucker who sexually harassed them in the roadhouse shows up seemingly as a co-conspirator but then he fucks up the killer. That would be some good old fashioned male bonding right there.

There are many exciting directions the movie could go at this point but instead, the dude just limps away and the killer isn't around. The end. Oh-shit-it's-on-interuptus. Maybe it's true to life but it's not true to the thrill ride of the rest of the movie. And this part of the movie has no relation to the "actual events" it is very loosely based on, so you can't pull that real life shit. Anyway, realistic schmealistic. This movie brilliantly builds to a climax that never happens and I couldn't help but be disappointed. It's like if in HALLOWEEN, Laurie gets out of the closet and says, "Huh, looks like he must've left" and then safely leaves the house and the movie ends.

Still, the abrupt ending doesn't erase what came before it. I checked, it's still there. And before I go I got to mention John Jarratt is the name of the guy who plays the killer, and this guy is spectacular. Before he shows his true colors, he's not menacing. He seems like a cool guy. Then he just takes so much delight and pride in what he's doing. There's a whole lot of horrible movies with killers cracking jokes, but this guy's sense of humor made me genuinely uncomfortable. He reminded me that this movie comes from the same country that gave us CHOPPER.

Maybe that's what the ads should say:

Sorry, I know I always suggest quotes for movie posters, I don't know what my problem is. Maybe I was some marketing asshole in a former life. Because there really are former lives, I saw a movie about it. Anyway, if you're into slasher movies, don't miss WOLF CREEK.

WRESTLEMANIAC

Legend has it that in the 1960s the president of Mexico (whoever that was) was obsessed with wrestling. He was humiliated that his country couldn't beat Russia in the Olympics, so he began a secret program. Scientists took three of the best lucha libre guys and Frankensteined them into one: El Mascerado, the greatest wrestler who ever lived. But after a while something went wrong. He went insane in the ring, poking people's eyes out and mangling people (both of which are illegal in Mexican wrestling). So they took him away to some small town to put him down and nobody knows what happened. Now, a vanful of American douchebags have accidentally stopped in a ghost town where El Mascerado secretly resides. And they're about to learn that he's not exactly retired yet. He hasn't switched to ringside commentator, he's still in the game. And still undefeated.

How can you go wrong with a premise like that? Well, they try their best to go wrong. After a nice lucha libre montage under the credits they introduce the obnoxious lead-trespasser, Alfonse, talking about that stupid concept called "the Dirty Sanchez." I'm not gonna explain what it is because it doesn't exist, it's just some stupid bullshit some prick like this guy made up because he impresses himself by yammering about this type of stupid shit. Basically it's a made-up sex act that would give no sexual pleasure but would be demeaning, racist and disgusting, so Screech did it in his porno dvd.

Why would it exist? Why would it have a name? And why do I want to watch the adventures of some corny wannabe redneck with stupid facial hair who thinks he's cool for knowing about this type of bullshit? I know, you're not supposed to like him. (Other than in SCARFACE if they show a character snorting coke it means you're not supposed to like them.) But there's a fine line between funny assholes that are entertaining to watch and stupid assholes that make you regret renting the movie (or turning to the Sci-Fi Channel, which is often the case with a character like this).

Why are they in Mexico? Well, of course, to make a movie. I'm thankful at least that they're not making a horror movie. I'm so sick of that one. These guys are making a porno, but it doesn't seem like they've done it before. They just use one handheld camcorder, no lights, and they have the guy dressed as a plumber, as if their only idea of porn is from a parody of '70s porn. (let's retire the plumber porno joke please, thanks fellas). I guess you can interpret that they're not pornographers, they're just some dumbasses with a get rich quick scheme, they think if they just make a sex video they'll be Larry Flynt. But I don't know, at least one of these girls looks like a pro. She's got the fake tits, fake hair, fake eyebrows, fake nails, the whole creepy bit. Not sure why she'd be hanging with these naive first timers.

Anyway El Mascerado (played by authentic masked Mexican wrestler Rey Misterio Sr.) shows up and starts grappling people to death. I'd like to see some more wrestling moves, but he does throw people against walls and he has a makeshift ring where at one point he jumps off what passes for a turnbuckle and does an aerial move. Then once he considers them defeated he removes their masks, which is to say he tears their faces off with his bare hands. And squooshes them on his wall like a kid playing with fruit rollups.

The characters and dialogue are shitty enough to keep it from being a real standout movie, but it's not without its moments. Once Alfonse is killed it becomes more watchable. There are some nicely handled scenes like one where El Mascerado beats the shit out of an intruder in his wrestling room, but you just hear the screaming as the camera slowly moves down a hall toward the closed door of the room. Then the door slightly opens so one of the other victims can crawl out.

The final girl is the exact same character as the Hot Girlfriend in MICHAEL BAY'S HASBRO'S TRANSFORMERS: bad acting, dumb sounding, big-boobed girl in cut-off jeans, but her dad was a mechanic so she knows how to fix an engine, which means she is a strong female character, possibly even a feminist icon for all your daughters to look up to. She lookes more Vivid than Maxim though, so it's kind of goofy to see her running around at the end. But it's justifiable because she is supposed to be a porn star, it's not like CANDYMAN 3 where a blond gal from Baywatch is supposed to be an artist descended from Candyman. And there's kind of a goofy/clever part where to hide in an oven she does what might be described as an immodest contortion.

I also gotta give WRESTLEMANIAC credit for not ending the way you expect it to. You know, in wrestling alot of times the guy that's supposed to be the bad guy is the one everybody cheers for. Let's just say the guy you're cheering for goes home with the belt. Or not. Nobody knows. Don't want to give anything away.

It's too bad how many horror movies like this think they can get away with such stupid and unlikable characters doing such stupid and unlikable things. It's lazy. But in this case, I guess they sort of can get away with it, because overall I enjoyed the movie. Some people might say "it's about a killer wrestler, what do you expect?" but of course to me that's a fucking fantastic concept, so I think it's fair to hope for true greatness. This is not the classic it ought to be with that premise, but it is pretty fun. I liked it.

So I'm definitely hoping for a sequel and I would like to request that the sequel be about this: El Mascerado has been travelling from border town to border town wrestling people to death. Racist immigration vigilantes try to stop him and fail. An elite team of American soldiers corners him somewhere in Texas and tries to take him out, but they fail too. Now there is only one hope: the brother of one of the dead soldiers, a retired wrestler and Navy SEAL (Jesse Ventura [or Mickey Rourke]). Completely washed-up, his knees worn out from steroid abuse, he must overcome his physical limitations to defeat El Mascerado in the grudge match of a lifetime.

Or shit, what about this: a group of washed up old school wrestlers are in Texas doing a favor for some small time local promotion and they all have to take on El Mascerado to protect the good name of the sport. And they would try to get Roddy Piper and guys like that to play the wrestlers.

Well, whatever it would be about, I'd watch it.

10/29/08

THE WRESTLER

Wrestling is so weird. It's boxing, circus sideshow, cheesy stage play and soap opera all in one. The big time wrestling leagues try to drown the show in pyrotechnics and flashy computer animation on giant screens but alot of the appeal is still very old fashioned. It's the circus. I went to a match one time and saw Andre the Giant. It wasn't so much like seeing a star as like seeing a Greek god. Or maybe a sasquatch. There was a reason they called him "The 8th Wonder of the World." These guys are not human, they're super heroes.

Or it seems that way when you see them up close. But actually they are human. Greek gods might be able to toss lightning around all day without spraining anything, but not humans. God or evolution did not equip humans to break metal chairs over their heads every night, or break tables with their ribs. Wrestlers make their living by not following the proper care and maintenance instructions for the human body, and they always pay the price.

Although I've been talking up wrestling documentaries like BEYOND THE MAT and HITMAN HART: WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS for years now I've barely watched any wrestling since the commercial heyday of the WWF in the '80s. I guess I'm not that into watching it but I'm obsessed with the idea of it. It's just such a fascinating world, larger than life entertainment, kind of surreal in its contradictory fakeness and realness (we know it's an act, but also that it takes a serious physical and mental toll on those poor sonofabitches). And both of those movies showed the sad side of it. Many professional wrestlers struggle with what Roddy Piper calls "The Sickness" in his autobiography. Using painkillers and steroids as part of their daily regimen, drinking and partying almost as often, damaging their bodies every time they work and being away from their families while on the road, living up to an exaggerated persona - this is not a lifestyle that is likely to lead to a happy ending. Online there are lists of professional wrestlers who died young and they are long and heartbreaking.

But I never would've thought a fictional movie would ever paint a believable portrait of wrestling. Darren Aranofsky's new movie THE WRESTLER is almost too good to be true. He uses a Hollywood actor and a fictional universe of wrestlers - two things I would think could never work - and creates a movie that at times feels as real as those documentaries.

Of course, the secret weapon here is Mickey Rourke in pretty much the most perfect casting that anybody has ever done ever in the history of human life. There is no other non-former-wrestler actor in Hollywood who could've done this role (scary to think they almost gave up and went with Nic Cage when nobody would finance the Rourke version). Rourke looks so much like a veteran wrestler - he has the muscles, he has the facial damage, he has the charisma, and he has the look in his eyes of a guy who has punished himself for many years. Everybody points out that Rourke's career had sort of hit the skids (until fairly recently) and therefore he fits the role of this washed-up wrestler, but then again you could say that about John Travolta before PULP FICTION or Robert Downey Jr. before IRON MAN, but those guys could never have played Randy "The Ram". That's why this movie is kind of a miracle. It's just amazing that Mickey Rourke exists to star in this movie. Maybe he's the 9th Wonder of the World.

If you saw BEYOND THE MAT, and Koko B. Ware dancing with his parrot in that shitty hotel room, you know that wrestlers who were once international superstars eventually find themselves wrestling in high school gyms for a few hundred bucks. With admirable minimalism and restraint the movie paints the portrait of a wrestler marching bravely through that stage of his life. There are no flashbacks, just an opening credits montage of magazine articles from the '80s, followed by "20 YEARS LATER" and The Ram sitting "backstage" after a match in what appears to be a nursery or pre-school class room.

The different ways that Randy's life is fucked come out a piece at a time and with just the right lack of detail. He gets locked out of his trailer for not paying rent. He works part time at a grocery store where the manager makes fun of him and he's embarrassed to be recognized. He needs so many painkillers he has to go in debt to pay for them. He has a hearing aid, but never comments on it. He has a scar on his face that is never mentioned. He has a huge bottle of hot sauce next to his bed. (Okay, I have no idea the significance of that one.) Rourke's most brilliant touch, so real I'm not sure if he's faking it or not, is the constant sighs and grunts that leak out as he goes through his daily life. He doesn't talk about it much but he is clearly a man in constant pain.

One subplot that seems inspired by the sad story of Jake "The Snake" Roberts in BEYOND THE MAT is Randy trying to reunite with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood of SKANDER HALIM'S PRETTY PERSUASION fame). We know he was never there for her and that she hates him. We don't know what happened to the mom, and there is no Hollywood style reason for why he left. He fucks up in a way that happens in a million different relationship dramas, but more like real life he doesn't figure out a way to make it better.

The one little thing that came off as a bit of Hollywood bullshit is Marisa Tomei as an over-the-hill stripper. I've never been much of a fan but when they show her naked her body is so impossibly good that the idea of her as a stripper past her prime seems a little far-fetched. I mean, they could've made her look more ragged. But she's good and the character is a little better than the usual hooker or stripper love interest. So this is a minor nitpick.

And the one thing that was a little art movie bullshit to me was focusing on a tattoo of Jesus on the Ram's back after his most punishing match. We already got a Jesus parallel when Tomei's character compared his career to THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (already going a little too far I thought) and this was too much. But it's a rare misstep in an almost perfect character drama.

The "hardcore wrestling," by the way, is pretty god damn gruesome. I don't know much about this phenomenon but it is a real thing, wrestlers (including his opponent in this scene, Necro Butcher) who make their reputation through dangerous and painful feats involving broken glass, barbwire and high jumps off of ladders onto tables and metal chairs and shit. I'm not sure they ever combine as many disgusting stunts into one as they show in this match but the movie cleverly shows how the part that's even worse than willingly getting shot with staples is taking the staples out. It's pretty hard to watch. Top that, Mel Gibson.

Aranofsky is a director who seems to have gotten a little too much credit for his early movies and then way too much of a backlash as revenge. He is very skilled at a slick, show-offy type of style and that makes the stripped down minimalism of this one all the more admirable. The score for REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is so bombastically emotional that it was used in the trailer for LORD OF THE RINGS and has been a trailer cliche ever since. But this one just has quiet, bluesy guitar played by Slash. The whole thing is very careful, very underplayed, very tasteful. And I think by being so thoughtful about wrestling in his movie he will trick other people to open their minds toward it as well. While WWE was busy making BEHIND ENEMY LINES: COLOMBIA Aranofsky was making the first fictional movie to look into a wrestler's soul and show the world why they should care about him.

If Mickey Rourke doesn't win an Oscar for THE WRESTLER, AMPAS president Sid Ganis should have to shave his head. (Or remove his mask if he wears one, I don't think he does though.) In fact, they should introduce a best actor belt this year instead of the usual statue. It may not be in the bylaws but it's obviously the right thing to do.

As a semi-respectable writer on the films of cinema who specializes in badass works I am very grateful for a year in which two of the very best dramas were about mixed martial arts (REDBELT) and professional wrestling. And shit, Van Damme had one of the more impressive performances of the year too! Did I dream 2008? This is crazy.

THE WRESTLER is a timeless classic not just about this bizarre industry but about the universal feeling of obsolescence and failure. Randy takes the staples for our sins, but we feel his pain.

1/17/09

"Montani semper liberi (Latin, "Mountaineers are Always Free")"

--West Virginia state motto

I'm always searching for DTV gems and this one has gotten some talk so it's about time I got to it. But the truth is I didn't like the first WRONG TURN. I know a few people who like it, but to me it was a big bag of mediocrity, forgettable enough that I apparently forgot to ever review it. So now I can't read my review to refresh my memory about it. But I do remember that it took one of my favorite horror setups (tourists intrude on crazy backwoods inbred/mutant/cannibals, savagery ensues) and then hardly bothered to riff on it. Too slick, not enough mayhem, not enough imagination. THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake has problems and nobody besides me seems to like it, and I hated the sequel to it. But even in that one you at least get a couple OH SHIT adrenaline moments, some uncomfortable laughs. You don't know what that ugly crazy fucker is gonna do next. WRONG TURN was the clean studio version of that. TV stars in some Ontario woods running from guys in monster makeup. Just no rush, no grit, no nothin.

My verdict on part 2: it's worse and yet better. The characters are dumber and cheesier than in the first one. But it does have some of those things I thought the first one was missing. The killers are now explained as a family who refused to leave their home and suffered severe birth defects due to chemical contamination in the area (Hey! I guess I wasn't the only one who liked the HILLS HAVE EYES remake after all!) but I think they have more personality, they do more interesting things and their makeup is more disturbing - they look like real deformed people now instead of monsters.

But to get to the good parts of the movie you gotta tolerate a bunch of bullshit. They chose bad modern horror premise #4, the Reality Show (see HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION, worst of the HALLOWEEN series). The characters are in the West Virginia woods to play an apocalypse-themed survival game with overly complicated rules and not enough apocalypse. (They're told they will run into "post apocalyptic crazies," but when they run into the mutants they know they are real, and then there is never any mention of any fake ones ever being planned as part of the show.) I think I speak for the world when I say enough with the fucking reality shows, both actual ones on TV and fake ones in movies attempting to comment on TV. You watch this and at first you wonder do they seriously think reality shows are still in need of satirizing? but quickly you realize there is no satire involved here, they are just presenting this show at face value, which is arguably worse. Then, to add insult to injury, two of the apparently-meant-to-be-sympathetic characters say that they hate reality shows. So that way they can waste our time with a story about reality shows while also distancing themselves from them. I guess we're supposed to think hey, these filmatists are like me, they don't like reality shows! But they still spend their time re-creating them on film! Just like I spend my time watching them being re-created on film! We are like brothers!

The one thing that's good about the reality show idea is that it's hosted by Henry Rollins, one of America's top 3 or 4 punk rock bodybuilder spoken word artists. He's playing a former marine drill instructor or something and he's got the muscles and commanding presence to be a good action hero (unlike the other character with military experience, the by now standard Female Iraq War Veteran). Rollins elevates the movie and does stick around long enough to get into some shit, including firing dynamite arrows into inbreds. I wouldn't say he's wasted, because he's in a good chunk of the movie. But it's plain as day that the movie should just be about him and dump all the other so-called characters.

And that's what prevents the movie from being as much fun as it should be. All of the other good guy characters are your typical bland soap opera actor types playing annoying people given one or two obvious character traits. The female lead is supposed to be "the goth girl" who just whines bitterly about being vegan for most of the movie. One of the other leads is supposed to be "the funny guy," and Henry Rollins claims on the commentary track that the guy was hilarious and always cracked everybody up. Unfortunately this doesn't come across in the movie. Every time the camera is pointed at him he tries to force out a joke, and he never even comes close to making up a real one. He just keeps saying he wants to have sex with the Female Iraq War Veteran and then saying, "Oh, come on, you know it's funny!" but, even setting the sexual harassment issue aside, no dude, actually what I know is that you are not funny.

Let's say you are Uncle Joey from whatever the show was with the Olsen Twins. Even you will think this guy is coming on too strong. You will tell him to Cut. It. Out. Or how about if your name is Frank R. Zindler, and you are acting president of American Atheists. I guarantee you that within the first ten minutes of this movie even you, Frank R. Zindler, will be on your knees, speaking in tongues praying for this stupid character to get eaten. But since you don't believe in God it will take a long god damn time. Thanks alot. He survives a good 2/3 of the fuckin thing.

Yeah, sure, annoying one-dimensional characters you want to die are pretty typical of the dumb-fun type of slasher movie. They're not necessarily a dealbreaker for a movie like this. What makes it extra annoying in this one is you get the feeling the movie has delusions that we actually care about the characters. That feeling is confirmed when you listen to the DVD commentary. The moment on there that really explains the movie is when the director admits that the "director of the reality show" character in the movie is sort of based on himself. The character is a complete tool who wears a BATTLE ROYALE t-shirt to imply hipness (real life director says it's his favorite of all time).

I don't want to judge somebody I don't know, I'm sure he's a nice guy, but on the commentary he's just trying so hard to impress you while always doing the opposite. I didn't even listen to the whole thing but heard him reference p.t. Anderson, Paul Greengrass, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, Toshiro Mifune, spaghetti westerns, "'70s zooms," William Friedkin, Sam Peckinpah, David Fincher. He calls Wes Craven by his first name. When asked a question about horror movies he (having just finished his first crappy movie) speaks as if on behalf of all horror directors. He compares his sequel to ALIENS. He mentions his "off Broadway stuff" and raves about the variety of acting techniques in his ensemble cast from "theatrical" to method. When the climax of the movie is a rehash of the classic dinner scene from THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE he starts talking about how you do "these dinner scenes," as if it's a broad category like chase scenes or love scenes. As if a family of giggling cannibals tying a woman into a chair and forcing her to watch them eat human meat in a grotesque parody of American family life is a common ingredient to many movies and that by adding barbed wire to her wrists he has completely re-invented it and made it his own.

Worst of all he's self conscious, he repeatedly mentions "commentary track cliches" and points out that he is overpraising his unspectacular achievements. The old "if you point out that it's a cliche it doesn't count as a cliche" trick. Also he's convinced that he has made some kind of crazy fucked up movie and repeatedly jokes about how he should get therapy because of these crazy fucked up shit he thought of in the movie. Oh man what a wacko, he put some dead bodies in a horror movie, ha ha ha this guy is a nut!

I don't hate the guy but he does seem like he's a little much. Let's just say it's not surprising that this guy would be the director of this movie.

But I promised there was some good shit to find after sitting patiently through this crap, so I will say some nice things now like a true gentleman. There are some moments of inspired lunacy here and there. One is the opening scene where a "reality TV star" (I didn't realize it but apparently it's some gal from American Idol playing herself) literally takes the wrong turn, runs over one of the cannibal dudes, and when she checks on the body gets into some trouble. There's a shot where you just see her legs in the foreground and he swings an ax down at her and you just see the two legs drop to the ground and a bunch of entrails spill out. And within the same shot the two inbred brothers walk away dragging the perfectly bisected halves of her body. Pretty hilarious. A more cartoonish spin on that better-than-the-movie body-dragging teaser for HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE 2.

Another part I liked - not enjoyed, but liked - is the scene where one of the cannibals is spying on a girl and jerking off. His deformed girlfriend (I guess it's supposed to also be his sister) finds him and kills the girl he's spying on in a fit of jealous rage. But you know those two lovebirds will work it out and sure enough the protagonists come across those two ugly sonofabitches in the woods going at it missionary style. I mean we've seen this a million times, Jason or one of his sexually repressed colleagues come across some kids fuckin in a tent, a sleeping bag, a car, a cave or what have you, and he kills them. But have we ever seen the people finding the killers fuckin in the woods and that's what gets them killed? It's a total reversal. It's like if one of the Elm Street kids pretended to be a topless girl in order to seduce Freddy. You just don't see it. I think this may be a first.

Also, in DTV you gotta appreciate some unintentional laughs or goofiness, because you take what you can get. It's better than nothing. So I got a kick out of the scene where two girls who you're supposed to like bust into a house they find and rudely demand to the seemingly empty room that they be allowed to use the phone. Then they see pictures on the wall of deformed people and get grossed out. Then they realize there is a natural birth going on in the other room, deformed women delivering an even more deformed baby. Okay, I don't blame them for wanting to throw up, but jesus, you are intruding on a special moment. Sneak the fuck out of there, man. Instead they scream and run into the other room and bar the door shut and bust through the floor to escape. At this point they don't know about any cannibalism or anything. They are just prejudiced against people with birth defects. Haven't they ever seen THE ELEPHANT MAN, or that movie with Cher and Eric Stoltz? Talk about some insensitive bitches.

At the end of the commentary the director, Joe Lynch, says "See you for part 3!" No, you won't. He got replaced for part 3 by the director of some movie called SNAKEMAN starring Stephen Baldwin. But oh well. A DTV sequel that has several good parts is actually above average, so way to go BATTLE ROYALE t-shirt dude.

8/27/08