I don’t remember it seeming weird at the time for Jim Jarmusch to do a western. It just felt natural, somehow, for him to move the deadpan absurdity, casual pace and odd characterization of his previous five indie features into a different time period and genre template. The combination gives DEAD MAN an aura of existential contemplation that seems to me to have made it soar above the other Jarmusch films in the film buff popular imagination, or at least bring him to a different crowd.
It’s the story of William Blake (Johnny Depp between DON JUAN DEMARCO and NICK OF TIME), not the poet, but a Cleveland accountant who’s never heard of the poet when he takes the risk of going west for a job at Dickinson’s Metalworks in the town of Machine. He received an offer by post from one John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum in not quite his last film, though he died in ’97), but things will not work out for William as hoped. (read the rest of this shit…)
Somehow HEAVY METAL was not Canada’s only rock-soundtrack-animated-fantasy-feature of the early ‘80s. ROCK & RULE (1983) combines the sci-fi/fantasy genre with a story about rock music, as the main characters are a band and the villain is (at least according to the opening text on the American version) a “legendary superocker.” The opening credits list all the bands on the soundtrack before the cast.
This was the first feature film from Toronto-based animation studio Nelvana Limited, who actually turned down an offer to animate HEAVY METAL because they’d been developing this since the late ‘70s. Previously they’d done TV specials like A Cosmic Christmas and The Devil and Daniel Mouse, but I know them for their weird, rubber animation on the Star Wars Holiday Special, which led to them doing the Ewoks and Droids cartoons.
ROCK & RULE takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where (again, according to the text in the American version, unexplained in the original) “The War was over” leaving only dogs, cats and rats alive, and “a long time ago” those evolved into “a new race of mutants.” In other words, it’s a “funny animal” cartoon, where humanoid animals rule the earth and either humans don’t exist or maybe they’re being milked on a dairy farm or something off camera. (read the rest of this shit…)
Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy THE DEAD DON’T DIE is… I mean, it’s a zombie comedy by Jim Jarmusch. Which is unexpected. When the trailer came out I couldn’t tell if they were trying to mislead us or if Jarmusch had made something totally different from his other movies. The answer is in the middle, leaning toward the first one. It feels closer to normal Jarmusch than to, like, SHAUN OF THE DEAD. It’s high on oddness and quirk, low on concept, plot structure or traditional resolution. Compared to ZOMBIELAND or TUCKER AND DALE or something the humor is bone dry and the pace is molasses slow.
But by LIMITS OF CONTROL standards it’s an action packed thrill-o-rama. It has a whole bunch of zombies digging out of graves like Thriller or RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, pulling out people’s intestines for a snack, and getting their heads chopped or blown off. They’re respectable zombies, too – o.g. slow shambling style, some personality to them, one played by Iggy Pop (DEAD MAN, THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS). There’s one pretty distinctive touch in that they emit puffs of dust from their wounds. I imagine Jarmusch worked with more FX people on this than on all his other movies combined. (read the rest of this shit…)
a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on
August 30, 1996
I don’t remember ever hearing anybody say nice things about THE CROW part 2, CITY OF ANGELS, so let me start out with one: this is a gorgeous looking movie. Part 1 production designer Alex McDowell (LAWNMOWER MAN, CRYING FREEMAN, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, WATCHMEN) returns, this time with cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier (GUMMO, GOOD WILL HUNTING), to tweak and expand on the aggressively stylized gotholopolis look he created for Alex Proyas’ THE CROW.
This time it looks more real, and has a yellow tint on its foggy (maybe it’s smoggy?), trash-strewn streets, representing the heat of Los Angeles, I hope, and not the piss that it clearly smells of. I don’t know my skylines, so I’m not sure I would’ve understood that they changed the location from Detroit without the subtitle or the cool shot where a row of palm trees burst into flame one-by-one as the crow (the bird that seems to be responsible for resurrecting murder victims, not the vengeful harlequin ghost he enables) flies past them. There’s a great tracking shot of the bird flying over the (model) city, and a profile shot of the ghost speeding on his motorcycle, his feathered friend right in front of him. The movie definitely achieves on levels of technical craftsmanship. (read the rest of this shit…)
TANK GIRL is a messy, silly, winkingly obnoxious version of the ’90s expensive b-movie, one of those weird ones that doesn’t exactly work but is kind of charming just because they had the gall to try. John Waters producer/FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE director Rachel Talalay somehow convinced MGM to pump money into this adaptation of a cult British comic book about a smartass punk girl driving a tank through post-apocalyptic Australia. (Other MGM releases in 1995: FLUKE, SPECIES, GET SHORTY, also distributed THE PEBBLE AND THE PENGUIN, HACKERS, SHOWGIRLS, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, GOLDENEYE, CUTTHROAT ISLAND.) The movie’s story of facing off against a typical bad guy, even fighting him to the death on a raised catwalk for the climax, is too half-assed and conventional to work, but the frenetic style and goofy tangents are a successful extension of the main character’s personality.
Lori Petty (BATES MOTEL, POINT BREAK) pours every drop of hyperactive tomboy playfulness in her voice and persona into the character of Rebecca, who is never specifically called Tank Girl but does steal her would-be namesake when she escapes imprisonment by the wasteland’s fascist oppressors, Water & Power. This militarized corporation hordes the last of the water and cruelly attacks anyone who finds their own source. In my opinion they are not a good company to work for; when they fire employees they kill them with machines that harvest their body’s water content. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Alex R on Mortal Kombat II: “Is there… a difference? Haha sorry for pushing the envelope, I just can’t help but show people how twisted this…” May 16, 11:46
renfield on Dead Man: “Man that detail on how Neil Young made the soundtrack is so cool. I also heard that RZA tricked out…” May 16, 08:54
Mr. Majestyk on Risky Business: “This is a really edgy argument, Guy Who Time Traveled From 1978.” May 16, 05:07
Mr. Majestyk on RRR: “I’m sorry, the batteries in my sarcasm detector must be dying because I’m not getting a reliable reading on this…” May 16, 05:05
Curt on Mortal Kombat II: “(Other countries, not companies)” May 16, 04:31
Curt on Mortal Kombat II: “Zed, that was an interesting essay, but I was depressed by the author’s assumption that movies are made by “empires”,…” May 16, 04:29
Dan on Risky Business: “I began reading the article and stopped after about the second paragraph. The person that wrote the article made a…” May 16, 03:44
Timo on Mortal Kombat II: “This was so disappointing. It’s not terrible, but not enough of a course correction from the first. McQuoid is just…” May 16, 03:39
Neddy Smith on RRR: “Bollywooders have been making these fight and shoot actioneers ever since the first “Agneepath”, but traditionally Bollywood has excelled at…” May 16, 03:14
Zed on Mortal Kombat II: “Unrelated to MK2 but related to the summer of ’96 series: Vern, I’m not a fan of Independence Day either…” May 15, 23:32
PJ on The Stunt Man: “I couldn’t disagree more about Railsback. He was by far the worst part of the movie. He just simply wasn’t…” May 15, 21:26
Wolfgang Jahn on Talk To Me: “Nobody mentions Colin EGGLESTONs LONG WEEKEND (1978), an abolutely fantastic Aussie outback horror thriller, which remake done in the early…” May 15, 14:01
Wolfgang Jahn on Talk To Me: “Nobody mentions Colin EGGLESTONs LONG WEEKEND (1978), an abolutely fantastic Ausie outback horror thriller, which remake done in the early…” May 15, 14:00
VERN on You Can’t Win (2026): “Thank you! I’m glad to know those IMDB external links are still worth submitting. At the time I posted this…” May 15, 13:32
VERN on Mortal Kombat II: “Thanks for the course-correction-sequel brainstorming. I feel stupid for not thinking of THE SUICIDE SQUAD. That’s a great one. I…” May 15, 13:29
May 10, 1996
It’s the story of William Blake (Johnny Depp between DON JUAN DEMARCO and NICK OF TIME), not the poet, but a Cleveland accountant who’s never heard of the poet when he takes the risk of going west for a job at Dickinson’s Metalworks in the town of Machine. He received an offer by post from one John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum in not quite his last film, though he died in ’97), but things will not work out for William as hoped. (read the rest of this shit…)
Somehow 
Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy THE DEAD DON’T DIE is… I mean, it’s a zombie comedy by Jim Jarmusch. Which is unexpected. When the trailer came out I couldn’t tell if they were trying to mislead us or if Jarmusch had made something totally different from his other movies. The answer is in the middle, leaning toward the first one. It feels closer to normal Jarmusch than to, like, SHAUN OF THE DEAD. It’s high on oddness and quirk, low on concept, plot structure or traditional resolution. Compared to 
TANK GIRL is a messy, silly, winkingly obnoxious version of the ’90s expensive b-movie, one of those weird ones that doesn’t exactly work but is kind of charming just because they had the gall to try. John Waters producer/
