"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

The Stunt Man

tn_railsback1My Steve Railsback double feature concludes with the odd 1980 movie-movie THE STUNT MAN.

I don’t know what I was expecting from THE STUNT MAN, but it wasn’t this. It opens with a shot of a dog licking his balls, which is appropriate because this is another movie about making a movie. Two cops are chasing Steve Railsback for crimes unknown. He gets away but, through a complicated series of events, winds up hiding out on the set of a WWII movie pretending to be a stuntman named Bert who is actually dead due to a stunt gone wrong. The identity-switch is arranged to cover the ass of the eccentric director (Peter O’Toole) and he quickly falls for the female lead (Barbara Hershey), who he considers famous because he recognizes her from a sexy dog food commercial.

The police keep hovering nearby and he continues to work on the movie as a stuntman, comparing his situation to a war buddy who stepped on a landmine and couldn’t step off because that’s how you get blown up. But strangely it never really goes back to the story of him being a fugitive. It’s just this really surreal, inventive story about his possessive love for Hershey, his friendship with O’Toole, and eventually his fear that it’s all a conspiracy to kill him in a re-try of the stunt that killed Bert. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 15th, 2009 | 16 Comments »

Turkey Shoot

tn_railsbackTime to get back to my ongoing study of the works of Brian Trenchard-Smith. This one will also be part 1 in a Steve Railsback double feature.

TURKEY SHOOT is one of the Brian Trenchard-Smith pictures I had heard of before I started going through his filmography, although I knew it under the American title ESCAPE 2000 (which is what it’s called on the Anchor Bay DVD). It takes place in a dystopian future where “deviants” have been locked up in camps to be brainwashed and abused. Not sure if this happens at all of them but at this particular one, Camp 42 I believe, they also let the inmates run around in some wilderness to be hunted by rich people. Hence the title “TURKEY SHOOT.” It’s kind of like in the U.S. a couple years ago what we would’ve called “DICK CHENEY PHEASANT HUNT.” Means the same thing.

Our heroes are naive Olivia Hussey, sexy Lynda Stoner, and defiant Steve Railsback. Railsback gets a pretty badass setup because the headmaster, Thatcher, lists all the different camps he’s escaped from, and you know he’ll be adding Camp 42 to the list soon. I love Railsback from ED GEIN, LIFEFORCE, etc. but to be honest he doesn’t have that great of a character in this one. He mostly just runs around. Not that he’s not good at running around, it’s just not that memorable a part. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 14th, 2009 | 14 Comments »

Collateral Damage

tn_collateraldamageAfter revisiting THE RUNNING MAN I decided it would be a good time to catch up on a more recent Schwarzenegger movie I had skipped before.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE is a dumb movie, and not the good kind of dumb. On paper it sounds like it has a zeitgeisty post-911 exploitation revenge premise, but it completely fails to deliver on that premise. It supposedly (according to director Andrew Davis in the DVD extras) means to subvert expectations by having a hero who saves lives instead of takes them, but that point gets muddled too. It’s not a good action movie and it sure as shit doesn’t come across as an effective drama about war, terrorism, interventionism, the cyclical nature of violence, or intercontinental travel. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 13th, 2009 | 21 Comments »

The Running Man

tn_runningman1Arnold Schwarzenegger is… THE RUNNING MAN. That’s actually what it says on the credits, which makes me feel good, makes me proud to be an American. In fact, I’m gonna make a new tag for this review called “is…” If you can think of some other movies where the star “is…” the title, let me know. But only if it’s in the actual opening credits, not just the trailer or the poster, at least for now. We’ll see how many we can find.

THE RUNNING MAN was a book Stephen King wrote in 1982 when he was on the lam and hiding out under the alias Richard Bachman. I read it back in the ’80s so I don’t remember it in much detail, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same kind of goofy cartoon shit as the movie. It was about a brutal game show of the future where contestants tried to get across the country without being killed. I think there were bounty hunters after them, but also they’d become famous through the show and regular people would try to kill them to collect a reward. It’s like American Idol except instead of participating by calling in you do it by shooting at the guy. The main character was kind of like Kowalski in VANISHING POINT, he ended up capturing the hearts of everybody at home and they started rooting for him to get away. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 12th, 2009 | 54 Comments »

Vern reviews S.DARKO direct to video…

To H. Knowles, M. Beaks, Q. Vespe and A. It Cool News:

Hey everybody,

Vern here. I have been known to review a DTV sequel or two, so somebody requested I report on the quality of S. DARKO: A DONNIE DARKO TALE, available on the DVD as of today. So don’t ever say I didn’t give back to the community.

It’s been a while, but if I remember my DONNIE DARKO right, a bunch of weird shit was going down with a bunny man and hallucinations and mysteries and what not, so there was time travel and apocalyptical type shit, turned out the bunny was a dude in a Halloween costume that got hit by a car, Donnie was killed by a plane engine landing on his house, trippiness, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 12th, 2009 | 5 Comments »

The Limits of Control

tn_limitsofcontrolIn Jim Jarmusch’s new one, Isaach De Bankolé plays a man (“Lone Man” according to the credits) on a mission. He meets some guys at an airport who give him a key and a box of matches and tell him to go to a certain cafe and wait for “the violin.”

So he flies there, checks into the hotel, goes to the cafe, waits around, nothing happens. Goes back to the hotel, stares at the ceiling until the next day, comes back, waits. He goes to the art museum, where he sees a painting of a violin. Is this the violin he’s supposed to be waiting for? Not sure. Goes and waits some more. Eventually a guy with a violin comes (SPOILER), talks to him, they trade boxes of matches. Inside his box is a scrap of paper with a code on it, which he reads and then eats.

Basically, the whole movie is him doing variations on this routine again and again, all of it nicely photographed in Spain by Christopher Doyle. He goes to different places and meets different people. At every cafe he orders two espressos in separate cups. Every contact says the same thing to him at first, then talks to him about some interest of theirs (movies, music, molecules). He doesn’t respond and usually doesn’t look like he’s listening. Then they give him the same kind of matchbox with the same kind of note in it which he always eats. In between he checks out some art such as paintings, music or dance. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 11th, 2009 | 18 Comments »

Star Trek (2009)

tn_startrekNever thought they’d be able to pull a trick like this, but somehow they made STAR TREK cool. I’m not even sure if I can say cool again. I guess when the first couple movies came out it passed as cool. Anyway, this is some top grade movie magic here because it takes this pop culture phenomenon that has for generations been the #1 cliche nerd obsession and makes it into something that we, as a society, can share peacefully and enjoy together.

Going on opening night of course I saw it in a sold out crowd that must’ve contained some hardcore Trekkos (that’s what they prefer to be called – the word “Trekkies” was made up for the classic documentary and to true Trekkos is considered ten times worse than the n-word) but I never even felt a twinge of that nerdophobic uncomfortableness I felt when I went to see SERENITY. Midnight show in Imax might’ve been a different story, I don’t know, but my point is this thing is reaching far outside of the nerd audience. They said we weren’t ready for a black president, and they were wrong. They never said we weren’t ready for a cool STAR TREK, because nobody was even gonna argue that one. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 10th, 2009 | 99 Comments »

NINJA trailer

In case anybody missed the link Jake generously provided in the Summer Movies comments, here’s the trailer for the upcoming movie NINJA, which is in my opinion about a ninja.

NINJA marks an exciting moment in DTV history for me, because Isaac “UNDISPUTED 2” Florentine and Scott “Weapon XI” Adkins are a director/star team with a body of work good enough that I’m honestly looking forward to this as much as I would a theatrical film. I’m also happy to hear the return of cheesy action movie trailer narration, especially when it’s talking about the deadly ancient traditions of the ninja.

That’s the other thing – this is part of an upcoming glut and/or renaissance of ninja films. It’s in competition with the McTeigue/Wachowski joint NINJA ASSASSIN for top of the heap, but there’s also another DTV one called THE LAST NINJA and a recent made-for-cable called MASK OF THE NINJA. I didn’t finish that one though and was disappointed that Casper Van Dien played the cop and not the ninja. There was an okay part where his undercover role in a drug bust was as guitarist in a bar band, but he didn’t even use the guitar as a weapon or do an awesome solo.

May 9th, 2009 | 27 Comments »

VERN’S 2009 SUMMER MOVIE EXPLODETACULAR

tn_summer09A Preview and a Pep Talk

With WOLVERINE: X-MENS in theaters and STAR TREK: NOT THE MOTION PICTURE BUT JUST STAR TREK hitting tomorrow, the ribbon on the 2009 summer movie season has officially been cut. Doesn’t matter that it’s early May and greyer than your grandma’s hair outside my window – I’ve seen with my own eyes they got Wolverines and Terminators on the Slurpee cups, and that means it’s summer. Come to think of it, the summer movie season keeps getting earlier in the year, just like Christmas decorations. Anyway, since I got a blog now and I can just blog about anything I want to blog about here on my blog, I might as well get back to the standard movie nerd shit I used to do in the old days. So here’s my SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW plus a little venting at the end. By the way, blog is short for weblog, that is why you say blog, it just sounds so good to say it instead of weblog. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 7th, 2009 | 72 Comments »

Mister Lonely

tn_misterlonelyHey guys, good news: I got another review of a weird little inaccessible arthouse movie from last year! This time it’s MISTER LONELY, the most recent movie about a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris who meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who convinces him to come live in a commune where other impersonators live inside a Scottish castle, raise sheep and build a stage where they hope to put on a show. And you can imagine where it would go from there.

In my opinion MISTER LONELY writer/director Harmony Korine is a weird dude. He wrote KIDS for Larry Clark when he was 19, became a director with GUMMO and later did JULIEN DONKEY BOY. His movies are freak shows of improvisation, arty photography and the complete rejection of any mainstream idea of what a movie is supposed to be. As much as I have tried to push the idea of him directing a mainstream movie like a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE it doesn’t seem to be something he’s interested in. Instead he hangs out with Werner Herzog, gets involved in that whole Dogme 95 deal, and makes weird books with titles like A Crack Up At the Race Riots. He’s also known for his bizarre interviews like on Letterman when he was younger or with a fan websight who he instructed to meet him in the projects, then spoke to them by phone for a while, then showed up and made them listen to Beyonce on a laptop while he sat in a lawnchair petting his dog. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 6th, 2009 | 9 Comments »

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