I think it was my colleague in Badass Studies, Mr. Jeff McCloud, who first recommended MR. MAJESTYK to me a year or two ago. When he said that Charles Bronson played a watermelon farmer in it, I knew it was my type of movie. What better way to fulfill the criteria of the THEORY OF BADASS JUXTAPOSITION than to grow a field of watermelons? I mean I guess maybe if they were flowers it would seem more sensitive, but this business of a dude growing watermelons is definitely not the obvious choice for a Badass. Which is why it’s such a good choice.
So I was an idiot to put off watching the movie as long as I did. What really did it was I was lookin through a used book store (seriously, I read books) when I saw the book MR. MAJESTYK by none other than Elmore Leonard. I pulled it out. The dude on the front was definitely not Charlse Bronson. But I read the back, and sure enough, it was about a badass watermelon farmer. (read the rest of this shit…)
Sometimes a movie comes along without much of a push, and without much commercial appeal, and not very many people go to see it or even hear about it. But most of those who do are pleased to find that it is an unusually good picture. They tell their friends about it, they write rave reviews of it. Then your connection in the home video industry, Pornographical Jerry, hooks you up with an advanced preview cassette of the picture and you give it a shot. And holy shit, it turns out to be the best movie you’ve seen in a long fucking time. Now you can’t wait to use your power and responsibility as an acclaimed Writer on the films of Cinema to promote the movie, so you try to time your review to come out on the day it is released so that all the little Outlaws out there will storm into their chain video stores and say look asshole, where is it? Where is Jesus’ Son fer cryin out loud, don’t give me that never heard of it look, this is a highly acclaimed movie. “Oh, you mean the one on Vern’s sight? Right over here, sir.” 
Well I’ve been on a documentary kick the last couple weeks and I been meaning to see this one since it first came out, for reasons that do not need to be explained. If you’re stupid, well I’ll just explain it to you then, it’s because this documentary is about people who Write for the world wide web type medium. You know what I mean? Do I have to spell it out for you?
Supposedly this is the highest grossing student film of all time. It’s only about 50 minutes long and it’s a documentary about one of the shittiest and most unlikable rockstars who ever lived. But it’s great entertainment. The film was directed by Todd Phillips, who went on to do a controversial HBO documentary called Frat House and then the teen comedy Road Trip. In that one there was some dude who put a mouse in his mouth and that was supposed to be the ultimate grossout. Well obviously the individuals who said that haven’t heard of Hated.
Now this is what I call a fuckin MOVIE. I forgot about it until seeing it on Bravo today but it is even better now that I’m older and now that I’ve done my own bid. First though, a word about Bravo. This is the “film and arts network” they CLAIM, but they don’t have the balls to live up to that slogan. You know how Sam Peckinpah movies always have the real slick opening credits with the freeze frames and the atmosphere and what not? They show these in widescreen and your thinking, “Look at that! Look at that rectangular screen! That atmosphere! THIS is a fuckin MOVIE.”
First of all I gotta thank my man with a plan Jeremiah for sending me a screener of this movie. Unfortunately Jeremiah is no longer able to send me free porno dvds, but he has more than made up for that unfortunate situation by sending me this very enjoyable obscurity in Badass Cinema.
Alot of you know that I am a big fan of the surrealist movement. Well actually I do not know a whole lot about the history of the movement but among respected film Writers I’m pretty damn sure I am the biggest supporter of Jean Claude Van Damme’s surrealist period, which is best represented by his collaboration with Tsui Hark and Dennis Rodman, Double Team. Well someone pointed me towards Louie Bunuel the famous surrealist and I was able to catch one of his later works, the discreet charm blah blah blah, on the Bravo network.
You talk about striving for excellence – to a guy like me, Sergio Leone is just about the highest level of excellence any director could aspire to. He took the western genre, which had grown stale and conservative, and injected it full of his Leone brand cinematic steroid and turned it into an unstoppable super soldier version of the old beast, one so powerful it became its own genre that is still worshipped and studied by cult movie watchers to this day. All he did was five westerns bookended by a gladiator picture and a gangster epic. But those westerns contributed so much to the Badass Cinema I worship to this day that they might as well be considered its legal guardians.
This is the story of Frida Kahlo, a famous Mexican modernist known for her great painting and sexy monobrow. This is a gal who means many things to many people. An important artist, but also a feminist, a revolutionary, an unashamed bisexual. And you could probaly guess, since there’s a biography movie made out of her, that the poor gal had to be either alcoholic or disabled. In this case she was disabled, unpleasantly impaled in a bus accident, sporadically confined to a full body cast. But since she’s an artist she paints pretty butterflies on it.
There are about three kinds of Jean-Claude Van Damme pictures in my opinion. There are the real experimental, artsy type like Double Team and Knock Off (the best kind), the real cheap and crappy ones like Cyborg and Double Impact (the worst kind), and the more expensive ones where he’s trying to become a more respectable mainstream action star (the kind that Sudden Death is).
