"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Christian Bale’

The Machinist

Wednesday, April 13th, 2005

Not sure if anybody else has noticed this, but this guy Christian Bale is a good actor in my opinion. AMERICAN PSYCHO would have to be up there with Eric Bana in CHOPPER as one of my favorite maniac performances of the last 2-7 years. (Now they’re playing Batman and the Incredible Hulk. They shoulda got the guy from DAHMER for Superman.) Mr. Bale was also pretty good in SHAFT 2K and REIGN OF FIRE, where I wouldn’t’ve even known it was the same guy if I didn’t know how to read and recognize names.

Well here in the machinist he gives another great performance but this time with a special nauseating gimmick: the guy lost a bunch of weight for the movie. He looks like a fuckin skeleton with a pair of pantyhose pulled over it. You know how DeNiro and Del Toro ate a bunch of donuts for RAGIN BULL and FEAR AND LOATHING and that was supposed to be so brave? Well Christian says FUCK THAT, eats nothin but grass and grapeskins for like three months or something, turns his muscles into fuckin corn husks. When I heard about it I figured he gets skinnier over the course of the movie, but no, he looks like this from the beginning. That’s the character. (read the rest of this shit…)

Reign of Fire

Friday, July 12th, 2002

I heard a rumor, or actually I just saw it on the ad, that REIGN OF FIRE is supposed to be the perfect summer movie. And in a way I think it is. Because it takes a good special effects extravaganza premise – the world is obliterated by firebreathing dragons and a small community of survivors fight back in postapocalyptic england – and treats it much smarter and more dramatic than you’d expect.

Yeah, this is a movie with computer animated dragons, and a bunch of people fighting them. But the emphasis of the story is not on the fighting. It’s always on the drama. After a prologue and a MAD MAX-like dragons-take-over-the-world explanation montage, you get basically a DAY OF THE DEAD setup. Here is this community of survivors living in spruced up castle ruins using what limited resources they can find to survive. You find out about their whole system – how they eat, their security system, how they use birds for lookout and what they teach their kids to do if they see a dragon. There’s also a little I AM LEGEND in there because they treat the dragons scientifically. They are not magical. They explain how they breathe fire, how they reproduce, the best way to kill them. (read the rest of this shit…)

Shaft (2000)

Friday, June 16th, 2000

Going in I didn’t know WHAT to expect. A remake? A sequel? The ads made it look silly and ridiculous. Like not so much a remake as a big screen adaptation of the Shaft theme song.

But then I never thought Shaft was the god damn word of the lord or anything. He’s a cool character and I like his work and what he accomplishes with the ladies but I never thought his pictures had the same emotional depth of Superfly or The Mack or Blacula. Maybe it’s because those are movies about outlaws instead of a law enforcement figure like a private eye. Or maybe not. I think you kind of had to be black at that time to know what it meant to finally see a black James Bond character like John Shaft. But at the time, just as now, I was a white man.

So I was open to some noodling and fiddling with the Shaft character, but to my surprise it is a surprisingly faithful update with hardly any shenanigans. It is a pretty serious story of Shaft trying to catch a racist murderer rich boy bail jumper played by none other than the American Psycho from the film American Psycho starring Patrick Bateman. The tone of the picture is a very strange and enjoyable cross between gritty police stories like Clockers and the Homicide television program and the more corny ’70s tv shows like CHiPs. So the violent scenes are grim and disturbing but you still got a foot chase or two with Shaft chasing a dude up and down fire escapes fueled only by wah wah guitars.

The reason I like this picture is mostly the ’70s feel. The only Isaac Hayes song they used is the main theme, but the score is all extrapolated from the style of that piece. And Shaft is a character with a combination of qualities you just don’t see all at once anymore. He is the guy who always looks cool, always knows how to trick somebody or kick somebody’s ass something good, is single and open to sharing his charms with many ladies, and who also is sensitive and supportive to the point of sainthood. During the court room scene, he is sitting behind the mother of the victim, rubbing her shoulders and telling her everything is gonna be okay. You almost think he is a guardian angel. (read the rest of this shit…)

American Psychos

Monday, April 17th, 2000

This week I decided to take the day off from my World Badass Studies to give a nod to my boys in the horror community. You see back when many of the movie type newsgroups rejected me on account of my harsh language and telling it like it is, etc. I posted a review of the “Sleepy Hollow” over there in the horror newsgroup and you know what happened? Those motherfuckers welcomed me with the openest arms you ever seen on the internet. Those were some of the nicest motherfuckers ever in my opinion. I don’t know what the deal is, they watch the gals getting their tongues ripped out and zombies eating a guy’s balls or whatever, then when they’re ready to call it a day they go online and there’s ol’ Vern and they treat him like just one of the boys. Bunch of sweethearts if you ask me. (read the rest of this shit…)

American Psycho

Saturday, April 15th, 2000

I got mixed feelings about this piece because it works on one level but then in my opinion it oughta work on another level too. This is the movie version of the controversial book about Pat Bateman, the yuppie who is obsessed with designer clothes and mutilating women.

In the movie, Pat says right upfront that he has no insides, but I don’t think he really believes it. I think some part of him believes that because he has this secret life stabbing homeless dudes and chainsawing women, he is a little bit different from all the soulless, materialistic businessmen he keeps getting confused with. He has something that makes him stand out. And not to give anything away, because I’m not sure I really understood the ending otherwise I would give it away, but I think it has kind of an ironic Twilight Zone type ending that all this may have been a delusion so he doesn’t even have THAT to make him unique. The sap. (read the rest of this shit…)