"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Benny’s Video

BENNY’S VIDEO (1992) is a disturbing psychological drama about a teenager whose fascination with violent videos blooms into actual sadistic violence. And you know how it always seems like parents have no idea what their little brats are up to? Well, when this kid’s parents find out about it they don’t have what most would consider a healthy or ethical response. The movie is very dry and unnerving, well made, and easy to read as a judgmental statement by someone who’s completely full of hot air – all trademarks of writer/director Michael Haneke’s early work. I don’t mean to diminish his filmography as a whole, which mostly does not deal with this theme of violent media’s connection to real violence. But this is his sophomore film, coming three years after his acclaimed debut THE SEVENTH CONTINENT and five years before the similarly themed FUNNY GAMES.

It opens with real video footage of a pig being killed with a bolt gun. After it dies, the video rewinds and replays in slow motion. As with FUNNY GAMES, I got the feeling Haneke was saying, “Isn’t it disgusting that you sick fucks watch this shit that I put into a film and advertised and encouraged you to watch?” But in the case of FUNNY GAMES, I gotta concede that I would indeed watch violent movies like that on my own accord. I would not have purposely sat down to watch a video of a pig dying. So you definitely don’t have the high ground on this one, professor. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 24th, 2022 | 17 Comments »

The Toxic Avenger

THE TOXIC AVENGER (1984) is a classic of ‘80s smartass b-movies – the ones that carried the drive-in exploitation model of boobs and blood into the VHS era, but did it with a wink. It was directed by Michael Herz & Lloyd Kaufman, founders of Troma Entertainment. Kaufman had been peripherally involved with respected ‘70s classics including ROCKY, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, but as a filmmaker and distributor he specialized in sex comedies (SQUEEZE PLAY, STUCK ON YOU!, THE FIRST TURN-ON!!) with the occasional horror movie (SILENT NIGHT BLOODY NIGHT, MOTHER’S DAY). But when he combined a little bit of those genres with super hero action he came up with a cult classic, a video hit, a figurehead for the studio, and a house style that he and other low budget smartasses would try to duplicate for decades with – according to my calculations – mostly poor results.

It’s a movie that’s crude in every meaning of the word, it’s in very poor taste, it also makes me laugh quite a bit, and it’s so dorky it feels kind of sweet and well-meaning, despite all kinds of ignorant jokes and requiring a “WARNING: THE TOXIC AVENGER CONTAINS SCENES OF EXTREME VIOLENCE” disclaimer at the beginning. Or maybe that’s all nostalgia because I loved this movie so much growing up, after me and my friends somehow managed to rent a copy while we were in middle school. (I seem to remember it being in an adults only section.) We’d never seen DEATH RACE 2000 and didn’t have driver’s licenses, so we thought the bad guys purposely running over people for “points” was one of the funniest things we’d ever seen. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 23rd, 2022 | 16 Comments »

Fistful of Vengeance

FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE is a new Netflix movie that’s a sequel to the show Wu Assassins. I think I watched two episodes of the show. It stars and is produced and choreographed by the great Iko Uwais, so it had good fights, and it was cool seeing him have a good lead role even speaking English. I also liked the idea of this kind of fantasy in a modern urban world of Triads and stuff. But I spend so much time reviewing movies I have a hard time watching whole shows, and the complicated mythology kinda lost me. Still, I decided to give the movie a shot, and thankfully the references to events from the show are not confusing. It works as a stand alone.

Uwais plays Kai, who on the show was a chef who found out he was a supernatural chosen one called a Wu Assassin who has to kill some magic warlords or whatever. I remember that he would turn into Mark Dacascos sometimes at the beginning of the show, but that doesn’t happen here. He works with a non-supernatural badass named Lu Xin (Lewis Tan, TRUE VENGEANCE, DEADPOOL 2, Into the Badlands, MORTAL KOMBAT) and a smartass former Triad guy named Tommy (Lawrence Kao, MAX STEEL, HONEY: RISE UP AND DANCE) to, I guess fight supernatural threats or something. In the opening scene Kai and Lu Xin are strutting into a cool dance club while Tommy is on a rooftop having champagne with a woman and boasting about himself and his friends, providing us the exposition that they’re trying to find out who killed his sister Jenny. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 22nd, 2022 | 19 Comments »

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

“He needs special care, he doesn’t do well outside, you understand.”


TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022) – not to be confused with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) – is the new TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE movie released on (but not made by) Netflix. Like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986), LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III (1990), TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION (1995) and TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D (2013) it’s a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece, seeming to ignore all the other installments.

As in the original film, we have a group of young people driving from Austin to a remote Texas town where they don’t fit in. But instead of a pretty casual day trip it’s for a business venture: chefs Dante (Jacob Latimore, SLEIGHT, DETROIT) and Melody (Sarah Yarkin, HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U) purchased a small ghost town at a bank auction, with plans to open a restaurant and turn the town into some kind of hipster enclave. Along for the ride are Melody’s younger sister Lila (Elsie Fisher, EIGHTH GRADE) and Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson). (read the rest of this shit…)

February 21st, 2022 | 107 Comments »

Kimi

KIMI is the new straight-to-HoBoMax Steven Soderbergh joint. This one is a tight little thriller written by David Koepp (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, SNAKE EYES, PANIC ROOM) with all the breeziness and smarts you expect from Soderbergh, plus that knack he has for style that simultaneously seems retro and more of-this-very-moment than anything anybody else is making. Like, it seems like it’s shot pretty run-and-gun with modern, lightweight digital cameras and natural lighting and stuff, but the staging, framing (and credits) sometimes remind you of how the ‘70s suspense classics were crafted.

We could call it a techno thriller because the titular “Kimi” is a Siri or Alexa type device through which our heroine, Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz, THE BRAVE ONE, ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT), accidentally hears a murder. Her job is to listen to recordings of times Kimi didn’t understand what people were asking for, figure out what the miscommunication was (a regional term, a pop culture reference, a word used incorrectly) and add new information to improve the algorithm. When she hears something disturbing in the background of a recording she does some sleuthing, tries to navigate the company’s dense protocols for handling such a situation, and becomes a target. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 17th, 2022 | 30 Comments »

The Sword Identity

THE SWORD IDENTITY is a 2011 period martial arts movie that’s the debut of writer/director Xu Haofeng, based on his own book. He’s directed a few more movies since then and notably wrote THE GRANDMASTER for Wong Kar Wai. I adore that movie and all its poetic musings about kung fu styles and secret moves, so I tried this one out and, though it’s in many ways THE GRANDMASTER’s stylistic opposite, I was not disappointed.

From the title I guessed it would be kind of a sword forensics thing. Maybe someone recognizes a famous sword in someone’s hand and has to learn of its history to identify the person or solve some mystery about them. It could also just be Jason Bourne with swords, which I would also be down for. It’s closer to the first option. It’s sort of about a sword causing a mistaken identity. When two men come into the town of Guancheng carrying swords of an unusual design they are mistaken for Japanese pirates, causing a citywide ruckus. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 16th, 2022 | 4 Comments »

West Side Story

WEST SIDE STORY – it’s very clear when you see it – is a film by Steven Fucking Spielberg. That’s why I saw it. Usually when I write about a remake of a beloved classic I like to be somewhat knowledgeable about the source material, but this late in the game you’ve had plenty of time to read reviews from people who know the musical or the earlier Robert Wise movie forward and backward, can tell you all the things that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (MUNICH, LINCOLN) added, cut, updated, etc., and the significance of those alterations. Or at least from someone who has seen the original. I have not. I would’ve, but Spielberg didn’t direct it.

I don’t really gravitate toward Broadway musical type stuff, but I do have a thing for great filmatism, so this thing knocked me out. As even I kind of knew, it’s the story of two gangs, the Jets (white guys) and the Sharks (proud Puerto Ricans) stubbornly fighting over territory in a dilapidated Manhattan slum that (this part is new, I believe) is on the verge of redevelopment. In the opening, Janusz Kaminski (COOL AS ICE)’s camera hovers over what remains of the neighborhood, climbs up the side of a structure under construction, past a billboard advertising the fancy apartment building and entertainment center it will become (featuring the sort of upper class white people who will inhabit it), then hangs out a while next to the wrecking ball waiting to get the process started. Meanwhile, the percussion section (David Newman [CRITTERS, ROVER DANGERFIELD, CONEHEADS, THE SPIRIT] arranging Leonard Bernstein’s music) playfully percolates like the build up to a heist sequence.

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February 15th, 2022 | 22 Comments »

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

To me, I suspect, the phrase “Resident Evil” will always mean the Milla Jovovich sci-fi-action-horror series that spanned six movies and fourteen years, kicking off at the start of the 21st century zombie movie revival, swerving into mimicry of MAD MAX and THE MATRIX, and ending somewhat disappointingly, but also somewhat admirably, with yet another look and feel. It’s a unique pop culture creation, a pleasingly lowbrow mix of styles, sampling a wide range of gimmicks and trends (zombies, nu metal, wire fu, 3-D, speed-ramping) and teaching me to really like Paul W.S. Anderson after all. But in 2016 they called it quits and moved on to MONSTER HUNTER.

I personally wasn’t looking for a reboot (in the original sense of the word – actually starting over fresh) as a straight horror movie. But it makes sense, since, from what I understand, that’s what the video games that inspired the movies were like. (In fact, George Romero directed a commercial for the video game and was attached to a movie version well before Anderson.) And I’m happy to report that in contrast to the first RESIDENT EVIL (one of the only entries in the series I didn’t much enjoy) this new one called RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY is actually a pretty good little horror movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 14th, 2022 | 31 Comments »

Dark City

One night an amnesiac (Rufus Sewell, EXTREME OPS, JUDY) wakes up confused in the bath tub of a gloomy hotel in a gloomy city. The phone rings and some Peter-Lorre-sounding weirdy (Kiefer Sutherland, RENEGADES, MIRRORS) tells him he needs to get out of there because someone’s coming for him. Then he notices the dead lady with the spirals carved into her. Shit!

In the tradition of such films as FEAR IN THE NIGHT (1947) and NIGHTBREED (1990), Murdoch is unsure if he’s really a murderer. But we’ve seen stories like this before, so we figure he’s not. And it’s pretty clear that something unusual is going on here when the people the guy on the phone was warning about show up. They’re not cops, but “The Strangers,” a group of mysterious, pale, bald dudes in black coats and fedoras like a gang of Detective Nosferatus. They move strangely, have odd facial expressions and are a range of heights that make them look interesting walking around together. I’ll try to list them from tallest to shortest: (read the rest of this shit…)

February 10th, 2022 | 19 Comments »

Alphabet City

ALPHABET CITY is a unique, stylish little 1984 crime drama directed by Amos Poe, a New York City legend best known for co-directing the 1976 punk documentary THE BLANK GENERATION. This one’s only about 70% story and 30% ambience, but I kind of loved that about it.

It stars Vincent Spano (already in OVER THE EDGE, THE BLACK STALLION RETURNS and RUMBLE FISH, but still very young) as Johnny, a hot shot drug dealer who zooms around in a white Trans-Am (25th Anniversary Daytona 500 Edition according to Wikipedia) lording over the small area of the East Village named after its Avenues A through D. His license plate says “CHUNGA,” and I don’t know what it means, but it’s also his password when he knocks on the door at the crackhouse. (read the rest of this shit…)

February 9th, 2022 | 2 Comments »

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