Your Stupid Minds

Rex Reed: Bad For Everyone

2012-01-26T18:53:00.007-06:00

Rex Reed of the New York Observer has been an outspoken advocate of the decline of quality criticism and the rise of the uninformed "my opinion is equally valid" Internet culture that has arrived on the scene to review film in the past 15 years. In a way, he's right: I already addressed the problems of film criticism here, in a different rant. But unfortunately Reed's own criticism is typically a poorly written caricature of a snooty film snob, to the point that it's hard to tell whether any given snooty pseudo-intellectual nonsense quote is actually from him or made up. So I made a game of it! Try to guess which of the following quotes actually come from Rex Reed or me, making things up while holding my pinky in mid-air so I can emulate Reed's style.

"Any director who wastes valuable time watching female boxing instead of learning how to make better movies has lost me already."
-Haywire

"Writer-director Nolan is an elegant Hollywood hack from London whose movies are a colossal waste of time, money and I.Q. points."
-Inception

"The Artist is an elaborate and belated apology from France for causing WWII and serving frog legs."
-The Artist

"Writer-director Nolan’s Batman Begins, with its surreal and mystical mumbo jumbo about playboy Bruce Wayne’s beginnings, remains the worst Batman movie I’ve ever seen, although the comic-book addicts disagree. The Dark Knight takes up where it left off, but if it’s a follow-up that introduces a comprehensive sociopath called the Joker, then how do you explain the fact that the Joker made his debut years ago as Jack Nicholson? It’s just one of the things that makes no sense, but hey-ho, since when did Batman and logic morph?"
-The Dark Knight

"In the pantheon of tastelessness designed to make you laugh at diarrhea, menstruation, masturbation, yeast infections, fellatio and worse, you can now add a stupid horror called 50/50."
-50/50

"War Horse is a helping of saccharine-sweet tripe that aims to transform women (and possibly men) into fawning children."
-War Horse

"In the numbing hands of pretentious filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, history does not repeat itself in any way whatsoever."
-True Grit

"It is not my cup of bitter tea laced with arsenic... "
-Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher version)

How'd you do? Only the War Horse and The Artist quotes are fake. Here's what he actually wrote about War Horse:

"Turning a beloved play into a movie is a job for either a fool or a daredevil. Mr. Spielberg is neither, but he is a visionary with unflinching faith in his own instincts."

How shocking that Reed swallows Spielberg's tripe so wholeheartedly, since his entire movie-reviewing philosophy appears to be "they don't make 'em like they used to!" Shockingly, he also loved The Artist, a movie that is, again, a straight-up nostalgia trip. Reed defends his "good old days" nostalgia by shitting on anyone with a new voice, no matter how well regarded they are: the hacks he insults are currently at the top of the film industry, and he doesn't even bother to review movies he's guaranteed to dislike like Mission Impossible or some cartoon (although why he reviewed Haywire is a mystery).

When Reed's not being catty, his descriptions of plot and story are virtually impenetrable fortresses of abysmal prose. Great, now he's got me over-writing things. From his Haywire review:

"Cut to Washington, D.C., where the overexposed Ewan McGregor is instructed by boss Michael Douglas to eliminate the two-fisted Mallory."

Look at the adjectives in this sentence; while they're certainly unexpected, they make no sense at all: how is McGregor overexposed? Is his character literally "overexposed" in the frame? Is Ewan the actor just in too many movies? Did Reed just watch The Ghost Writer on DVD the day before? Calling a character "two-fisted" is about as productive as calling them "ten fingered." Check out the adjectives from War Horse's plot:

"Joey is stubborn and willful with a mind of his own, and when the crops fail, the only way to pay the rent is to sell Joey to the military."

Joey is stubborn, willful, AND has a mind of his own? Reminds me of the parade I visited that was loud, noisy, and deafening.

He also likes to take pot-shots when they're completely unnecessary, whether it's deriding Chris Nolan for (probably) enjoying video games, or calling the (dead) writer of the Dragon Tattoo series "overrated." Or, as he did in 2005, Reed can dismiss a film because its country of origin eats something gross the way Rex did when he dismissed Oldboy by saying "What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi?" But honestly, what can you expect from a film critic who's eaten so much diiiiii-ll pickles?

Sometimes his mean, negative shit is factually incorrect, as when he said "I wanted to like this one, but Mr. Malick–who hates the press, never gives interviews, and has made only five films in 30 years (all flops)–makes it impossible," for some reason during his Tree of Life review. While this is mean and unnecessary, it's also factually incorrect: even looking past the fact that it's asinine to dismiss a director's work because it's "all flops" even when it's being nominated for Oscars or winning critics awards, the fact is not all of Malick's movies were objectively flops, unless you count 30 million dollar profits as a "flop." Days of Heaven wasn't a bomb either.

My problem is that I like movies--lots of movies, not just those that were released fifty years ago (although I like those too!). Someone, somewhere, seems to think Reed is being a hilarious queen when he writes jokes about how he almost leaves a theater (the height of humor) or insults people's work, or, more often, insults them personally. But his reviews are incoherent--he's very good at saying something is infinitely worse than it is with colorful nonsense words, but he can't actually explain why something is bad. So he's just calling things bad indiscriminately with nothing but a thesaurus and apparent authority to defend himself.

Still, in a way, I feel bad for him. It's clear from reading his reviews that the only theater experience he values is the kind where you walk out feeling nostalgic, but it's also kind of sad that he can't experience film except in this extremely limited way. He's too dumb to understand Nolan, too square to get the Coens or DA, and too heartless to get Malick. He gets paid to do a job that I literally do for free, and he can't find the same joy I have when watching Deep Red or Barberella, let alone something amazing.

For more entries in the Bad For Everyone series, see our rants on The Nostalgia Critic and James Berardinelli.

Transformers: The Movie (1986)

2011-12-12T19:13:00.000-06:00

We all know what to expect from movies based on cartoons, right? A bigger scope, a bigger budget, a new threat, an inexplicable team-up with Courtney Cox? In a lot of ways, Transformers: The Movie hits all those notes. The action is a little more intense, we're jumped 20 years into the future, and the animation quality is improved. Then, towards the end of the first act, or what would probably be the end of an episode if this were broken into separate episodes and aired on TV, Optimus Prime dies. In a summer movie made for children, the leader of the Autobots dies early on and does not return.

Spoiler alert.

In a way, it's another marketing ploy from a series that was created to sell toys; the 49 episode 2nd season had introduced hundreds of expendable robots that needed to be swept aside to create new and better toy robots. But killing Optimus Prime shows a commitment to narrative risk-taking that you would absolutely not expect from a franchise built around robots that turn into stuff. It also succeeds in actually raising the stakes- just telling us the good guy autobots are losing doesn't mean a lot to the five year old (or 28 year old fueled by nostalgia), but seeing their hero die heroically at the beginning of the film really drives home that all is not right in Cybertron. Compare that to any summer movie you've seen in the past 10 years--have the villains really won any meaningful victories that made you think "damn, I guess the good guys are really in trouble?"

You've got the touch!

As if the death of Optimus Prime weren't enough, his nemesis Megatron, a guy who shrinks down into a powerful gun, is tossed into space and left for dead by his sniveling second in command Starscream. But Megatron lucks into drifting past Unicron (Orson Welles), an evil robot that transforms into a planet (fortunately, no one confuses him with a moon). Unicron offers to restore the villain in return for hunting down and destroying something called the "Matrix of Leadership." Apparently killing Optimus Prime wasn't enough, and Megatron, re-made into Galvatron (Leonard Nimoy), is sent to hunt down what's left of Optimus' buddies including Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack), the Autobots new leader.

"I play a toy who eats other toys." -Orson Welles

Things get even worse when Galvatron chases down Ultra Magnus and steals the Matrix, but rather than destroy it, he decides to wear it as a fancy necklace as an insurance policy against Unicron. That ends up being important when Unicron starts eating the nearest moon, threatening the lives of basically all the Transformers, good and bad. Meanwhile Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) and his buddies manage to make allies of the dreaded "Sharkticons" and find their way inside Unicron. In a climactic battle with Galvatron, Hot Rod is able to take and use the Matrix, transforming himself into "Rodimus Prime" and destroying the evil planet-sized Unicron, creating a new status quo for Season 3 of the TV show.

Decepticons love gaudy jewelry.

Critics at the time dismissed the film as silly, which makes sense, since it's based on an underlying concept that is completely ridiculous and only makes sense as a means of selling toys. But despite its inherent goofiness, Transformers: The Movie, takes itself seriously and manages a few moments of genuine gravitas; the fact that it's totally fine to watch a robot get blasted with a laser and then watch the spark slowly drain out of its optical sensors allows the film to show violence on an unexpected scale. The fact that talented actors are delivering this inherently goofy dialogue also elevates it--the show always had strong voice acting, from Peter Cullen, Scatman Crothers, and others, but adding Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, and other 'names' makes the film seem like something special. Or maybe I am just biased because I saw it about 20 times as a child.

Perhaps the silliest thing in the movie: Unicron's conveyer belt digestive system.

Arbitrary Rating:

3 energon cubes out of 4.

Memorable Quotes:

Megatron: Nobody summons Megatron!
Unicron: Then it pleases me to be the first.

Megatron: Wait... I still... function...
Starscream: Wanna bet?

Grimlock: Tell Grimlock about petro-rabbits again.

Unicron: Destiny... you cannot destroy... my destiny!

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

2011-10-31T22:48:00.003-05:00

Fresh off the success of Halloween 1 and 2, producer John Carpenter had a crazy idea: what if the next Halloween movie doesn't have Michael Myers? He dreamed of a world of annual "twilight zone" tales of the macabre without a total dependence on a monster in a series of worsening films. Shockingly, it turned out even worse than my spec-script for "Saw 7" about a haunted house (with no Jigsaw or saws of any kind).

Thanks for the vital data, JJ Abrams!

Instead, we follow Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins) and Ellie (Stacey Nelkin) as they investigate the bizarre death of Ellie's father. The trail leads to the corporate headquarters of Silver Shamrock, a Halloween mask company that is conveniently located a few miles outside of town. Their whopping THREE brands of mask, combined with a brain-infecting jingle-based advertising campaign, has granted them a near total monopoly on the holiday. The town is full of Irish-accented rustics for some reason, but they eventually meet Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy of RoboCop), the CEO who cares. Cares about murder! We eventually discover his sinister scheme involves using Stonehenge shavings and microchips to make masks that turn children into bugs. Of course, it's so simple! Will our heroic doctor and his inappropriately aged partner save the day, or will they be killed by robots?

The villain's evil plan is completely dependent on all children wearing one of these three masks.

In a lot of ways, this total mess can be viewed as producer (and composer) Carpenter's first effort to convey the themes of They Live. It's got insidious technology, bad guys in suits, an evil 80s guy CEO, etc. But for some reason the villain's plan has nothing to do with greed: he just wants to make a big sacrifice to a piece of Stonehenge. The town is named after the town featured in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the original writer has stated his intent was to make a more psychological Halloween film. Somehow that turned into microchips that shoot lasers and seizure-inducing pumpkin signals thanks to some intervention from Dino De Laurentiis at Universal. But as dumb as the plot is, and as little as it has to do with the Halloween franchise that surrounds it, I can't help but wish it had been more successful. Yes, this movie is pretty awful, but I think I would enjoy a more varied "scary movie" concept rather than every Halloween movie after this one. For those that haven't seen it, the original Halloween is actually pretty solid and worth checking out; it really helped create the modern American horror genre (mostly by taking the Hitchcock + gore formula that giallos had been doing and adding unkillable guys in weird masks).

Do it yourself laser dentistry! Possible side-effects include death and turning into insects.

My favorite bit of bizarre narrative awareness: Silver Shamrock sponsoring a primetime TV showing of... Halloween.

Cochran has the decency to put on a better Halloween movie to help pass the time.

Arbitrary Rating:

1.5 virtual pumpkins out of 4

Memorable Quotes:

Ellie: Irish Halloween masks?
Challis: In California, you never know.

Challis: Why Cochran? Why?!
Cochran: Do I need a reason?

Cochran: From an ancient, sacrificial stone: Stonehenge! We had a time getting it here! You wouldn't believe how we did it! (this is never addressed again)

(During a sex scene)
Challis: Wait a minute. How old are you?
Ellie: Relax. I'm older than I look.

Cochran: It was a part of our world. A part of our craft.
Challis: Witch-craft.

Starship Troopers (1997)

2011-10-26T21:03:00.003-05:00

What it is: Starship Troopers, the 1997 Paul Verhoeven sci-fi film "inspired" by Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel of the same name.

Why you should watch it: Heinlein's novel is a straightforward and technologically innovative ode to militarized society. Verhoeven read the first few chapters and thought: "What if instead of two hours about bootcamp and civic duty I showed a bunch of prettyboys in Nazi uniforms getting their guts ripped out by giant bugs?"

Well? Do you?

You might like it if: Even if you aren't into the whole "interweaving levels of satire" thing, it's still a very entertaining movie by apolitical standards. Blood and guts, over-the-top acting, co-ed showers. As a pubescent neoconservative 11 year old this movie had it all for me.

Somebody call for an exterminator?

As my politics veered to the left in my teenage years, I dismissed it as disposable pulp. Looking back on it as an adult, I see that yes, Verhoeven was trying to make a mindless action movie on one level, but what you get out of it depends on your preexisting politics. If you're pro-military, this is a bloody ballad to serving your country. If you're a no-good peace-nik, it's a bitter satire of militaristic and patriotic propaganda. Once you have a little historical context under your belt, it's hard to ignore the Nazi inspired uniforms and clean cut Hitler Youth recruits.

Heinlein's novel introduces the idea of military service in exchange for citizenship, but doesn't really go deep into the problems that might arise (and do, in some countries). Verhoeven cuts right to the heart of it: mandating militarism for a voice in democratic society basically creates a society just like this one.

Oh no.

Regardless of the politics, the movie still has influence on science fiction today. Starcraft may as well be called Starship Troopers: The Game (with Protoss). And even with the black and white politics of this world, it does give equal opportunity to women in all facets of military service!

They even let gay Nazis enlist!

Arbitrary rating: 400,000 dead (I knew we should have bombed the planet first!)

Black Sunday (1960)

2011-10-23T14:35:00.003-05:00

Slightly altered review format this week: cutting more of the "review" aspects, leaving more commentary and information.

What it is: Black Sunday, also known as "The Mask of Satan."

Black Sunday also has suitably creepy promotional art.

Why you should watch it: It's the directorial debut of Mario Bava, one of the greats in the horror genre. It's also the debut of Barbara Steele, a large-eyed actress who would go on to star in dozens of B-movie horror before making brief appearances in people inspired by her work: people like Jonathan Demme in Caged Heat, and David Cronenberg in 1975's Shivers.

The witch's body mid re-animation.

You Might Like it if: you like atmospheric, "gothic" fiction full of spooky castles and evil witches. It's full of really poorly maintained graveyards, eerie manservants, secret paintings, giant rubber bats, and everything else you might find in a Vincent Price movie. But unlike the more standard Hammer films of the era, Bava directs Sunday with a macabre, dreamlike quality that would define his work. It is genuinely spooky and suitably gruesome. Bava's style is often imitated, as the "witch burning" scene here gets duplicated repeatedly, and some of Burton's work, especially Sleepy Hollow, is noticeably influenced by films like "Black Sunday."

Get excited!

This isn't a Hammer film, as it's Italian-produced and not in color, but it does share some aspects of Hammer's horror renaissance from the same period, so here's a link to a recent BBC documentary about the horror genre's rise from the grave, including an interview with Steele. Black Sunday appears in the doc around 20:30. Steele also talks about her work on Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum later in the documentary.

Hey where'd you guys get all those cloaks?

Arbitrary Rating: 4 secret paintings out of 4

Note: this trailer's quality does not reflect the quality of the dvd transfer

Liquid Sky (1982)

2011-10-09T22:19:00.001-05:00

A film that would need would need lithium in order to be considered "Lynchian," Liquid Sky was released in 1982 at the height of the New Wave movement. Liquid Sky serves as a sort of synecdoche of the movement, full of bizarre costumes, confused gender roles, and synth music that infects your brain. It's not exactly "good," but it holds a bizarre appeal: a good box cover quote might be "...mesmerizing..."

Corpse-chic.

In 1980s New York, an adorably tiny spaceship full of invisible aliens lands on a rooftop apartment while the principal characters hang out at a club. Glam model Jimmy (Anne Carlisle) hits up the cartoon-eyed drug dealer Adrian (Paula E. Sheppard), and when he's rejected, turns to her roommate/pseudo girlfriend Margaret (Anne Carlisle again). The two (one) young models go back to Margaret's place, where Jimmy puts on a dress and then searches for Adrian's stash, causing Margaret to kick him out. The two make amends when Jimmy reminds Margaret they need to get back to the club for a fashion show. Then why did you go all the way back to your apartment in the first place?! While the duo (uno) travel back for their weird show, Adrian busts out her "Rhythm Box" and does a little freestyle rap about how awesome it is to have a box that makes beats for you. As if that would ever catch on.

Is this your brain on drugs? I seriously don't know.

After a long and bizarre fashion show, Margaret meets a guy who is supposed to supply her with cocaine, but instead they have less than consensual sex in a stair well. The next day, Jimmy, still without drugs, meets Sylvia, his mother, and tries to goad her into giving him money for drugs. It should be noted that I am making these scenes feel more connected than they appear in the film.

Why would your telescope have a sight like this?

We're also introduced to a German scientist who provides a few big speeches to even more minor characters about what these aliens are and what they do: apparently they are drawn to heroin, but find the brain chemicals during orgasm to be even more delicious. Margaret accidentally discovers the aliens while having sex with her old theater professor. And by "discovers" I mean she thinks it's the act of some Native American god and that she has magic sex/death powers. The German scientist tries to set up an observation schedule of Margaret's apartment, but Jimmy's mother Sylvia flusters him via constant attempts to seduce him and repeated attempts to move the conversations towards the deliciousness of shrimp. Everything comes to a head at the big photo shoot at Margaret's apartment that evening, where Jimmy, Adrian and the rest all find out about Margaret's new superpower.

The aliens look at Margaret through those big clunky goggles.

Liquid Sky is tough to evaluate the way most films are, because it's completely nonsensical, with a plot that pulls the characters seemingly at random towards a bizarre but surprisingly strong final act. While it doesn't particularly stand up as a complete project, there's a handful of memorable scenes and images that you can't easily forget. Slava Tsukerman, a Russian immigrant, directs the film with a European flair, with several disorienting simultaneous scenes and borderline impressionistic scenes of alien POV shot drawn in high contrast. Anne Carlisle plays a sort of deadened addict for the majority of the movie, but she does a nice job showing the gradual changes to Margaret brought on by suddenly being in a position of power. She also contributed to writing the film's script. Her biggest work other than this was appearing as a transvestite in a Crocile Dundee movie. Talk about casting against type!

I haven't seen this many body doubles since that Brian Da Palma movie.

Liquid Sky's psychedelic update to the 60s drug movie, along with its look into New York's New Wave movement and its bizarre synth music make it a movie that influenced a generation of independent filmmakers. It's definitely not for everyone, but the combination of matter of fact outrageous camp and hypnotizing visuals was enough that I enjoyed it. And even if you aren't swayed by any of that, it has a few non sequiturs so bizarre they can't help but get a laugh.

Arbitrary Rating:

3 Pac-Man Ghosts out of 4.

Memorable Quotes:

Adrian: Hey yo! How many people want to see, uh... want to see me fuck Margaret and not die?

Sylvia: That's really quite a world you've shown me. German scientists as tall as the Empire State Building and aliens as small as... jumbo shrimp.

Sylvia: The duty is yours, the house is mine, and in my house, shrimps are more important than duty.

Margaret: You wanted to know where I'm from? Connecticut. Mayflower stock. I was taught that my prince would come, and he would be a lawyer. And I would have his children. And on the weekends we'd barbecue, and all the other princes and princesses would come, and they would say 'delicious, delicious.' Oh how boring. So I was taught that I should come to New York, become an independent woman. And my prince would come. He would be an agent, and he would get me a role, and I would make my living waiting on tables, and I would wait, until 30, until 40, until 50... and I was taught that to be an actress, one should be fashionable. And to be fashionable is to be androgynous. And I am androgynous not less than David Bowie himself, and they call me beautiful. And I kill with my cunt. Isn't it fashionable?

They Live (1988)

2011-09-30T23:58:00.003-05:00

John Carpenter's They Live opens in a modern day (late 80s) and slightly more poverty-stricken representation of Los Angeles. Nada ("Rowdy" Roddy Piper) rides the rails from Colorado looking for work, and manages to land a construction job which allows him the opportunity to remove his shirt while making money. The job gives him enough cash to afford a reasonably sized shanty in the Hooverville down the street. He notices some suspicious activity in the church across the way, which coincides with recent hackings of local television stations. Unfortunately nobody seems very keen on a sweaty bearded man's face yelling at them, so this effort often falls upon deaf ears.

Wake up from your living consumerist dreamscape and I'll give you that Super Soaker you always wanted.

Nada notices something isn't right, and after a vicious raid on the church by the police, he recovers a box of sunglasses the church has manufactured, presumably because this was the 1980s and it seemed like the thing to do. Nada puts on the glasses one day to reveal a black and white horrorscape of repressive subliminal advertising and a world made up of disgusting aliens disguised as humans.

The hair doesn't help.

These aliens often represent the upper crust of society: suited businessmen and austere ladies in hats and pearls. The homeless, plaid, and acid-washed Nada reacts appropriately at this discovery: by finding a shotgun and blowing away as many as he can.

Roddy encapsulates all the great things about America (despite being Canadian).

He comes across fellow "human" Holly Thompson (Masters of the Universe's Meg Foster), whose unworldly blue eyes bear a striking resemblance to that of a Siberian Husky.

Oh my.

Since this is technically a movie featuring a wrester, Nada takes Holly hostage in order to escape the ramifications of his killing spree. Holly plays along until the perfect moment, and then smashes a glass over his head and throws him seventy stories onto the rolling California landscape.

Roddy suplexes the ground.

Bruised but undeterred, Nada elicits the help of his construction friend Frank (Keith David) who for whatever reason has a violent resistance to wearing sunglasses. The two engage in a six minute fight scene in an alleyway. It proceeds with the awkward fits and starts of an actual street brawl; the actors pant and heave appropriately to fully express how exhausting such a fight would be. I assure you this fight scene continues for a very long time.

"See the truth or I'll claw your eyes out!"

Nada finally gets Frank on his side, and they proceed to a secret anti-alien terrorism meeting. It is broken up by the police and they use an alien transporter to zap to their space headquarters (or is it a television studio?). Either way, Nada destroys a fifty foot tall satellite dish with a Derringer pistol and saves the world from the eternal bliss of unbeknownst slavery.

Though They Live is often marginalized into the category of sci-fi camp, it has a lot to say about consumerism, globalization, and the influence of media on society. It distills Communication Theory 101 into a simple plot device: those things we consume every day might have a negative impact on our consciousness. Carpenter displays this through simple and obvious commands such as "OBEY," "MARRY AND REPRODUCE," and "STAY ASLEEP." The conceit of the sunglasses is an efficient means of exposing Nada to this truth, and from then on the response is clear.

John Carpenter's Subtle Social Commentary.

Though this is literally a black and white approach to a complex issue, Carpenter is under no obligation to explore the nuances of semiotics in his action/sci-fi movie. It is is a simple and straightforward introduction to these concepts, and has become a primer for how we think about media consumption.

They Live was used as an example on the first day of class of my first ever college Communication course, and its use has a profound effect on future generations for its visual and thematic unambiguity. This is a prime example of the usefulness of popular culture in introducing concepts to a previously unenlightened audience. Camp, genre and b-movies can teach as well as entertain, and their approachability helps in their effectiveness. It may not be the end-all-be-all of media studies, but it is certainly an excellent starting point.

Arbitrary rating

One Communication Degree and One English Minor.

Quotes

Frank: The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

Nada: I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.

Nada: You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957. You see, I take these glasses off, she looks like a regular person, doesn't she? Put them back on... formaldehyde face!

Clips

Original trailer:

The six minute fight scene:

And just for fun, the infamous 1987 Max Headroom TV pirating incident:

The Chaperone (2011)

2011-09-25T15:58:00.001-05:00

Despite being a 13 time WWE/WWF world champion, Triple H has never had nearly the same success outside of the wrestling business that his old rivals The Rock and Steve Austin have achieved. And when you are behind Steve Austin in your film career, you have not accomplished the level of success necessary to be a supporting villain in The Expendables. Before this year, Triple H's non-wrestling work consisted of a handful of TV appearances basically playing himself, and one supporting villain role in Blade: Trinity. That changed in 2011, as WWE films, the production company that gave us such classics as The Marine, gave Triple H the starring role in a family comedy/all-ages heist movie The Chaperone.

Pretty well sums things up.

Ray "Ray Ray" Bradstone (Triple H) is a convict trying to turn his life around. He does this by shaving his wacky lumberjack beard, calling a self-help radio show on a near constant basis, and through a series of awkward attempts to reconnect with his ex-wife and daughter (Modern Family's Ariel Winter). Shockingly enough, he is not immediately forgiven. Ray struggles to adapt to life on the outside, as the omnipresence of organic pizza restaurants and hybrid cars keep him from getting a job as a pizza maker or mechanic. He is approached multiple times by the guy who got him in prison, the somewhat incompetent Phil (The Departed's Kevin Corrigan). Phil tries numerous times to get Ray to agree to one last job, despite nearly being punched through a wall and having his car stolen. Ray is apparently the only guy who can be trusted to drive a car for reasons that are never explained. Maybe this is just a Grand Theft Auto game and Ray is the player?

Triple H smuggled cigarettes in his beard while on the inside.

Anyway, in an hilarious scheduling mixup, Ray agrees to help rob a bank at the same time as his daughter's field trip to New Orleans, after he had verbally committed to chaperone. He takes the criminals to the bank, but then abandons them, even throwing the keys in the grass for no reason to show up on his daughter's bus. But before the bus leaves, the criminals leave the bank, and after eventually noticing there is no driver, they flee on foot. In a bizarre coincidence that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the man carrying all the money stumbles over the bags being loaded into the nearby bus, drops his bag, and then runs off with nothing. That is not how these things are supposed to work! Phil and another member of his group see Ray on the bus, somehow discover that the money is on the bus, and assume that Ray is an evil mastermind who is trying to set them up and get away with their money.

I'm pretty sure most people weren't using pay phones in 2003.

It's a really far-fetched conceit to get to the actual story, but it's actually not too bad from there on out. Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) plays an overworked administrator, Enrico Colantoni (Veronica Mars' dad, also from Just Shoot Me for losers like Nick who never watched Veronica Mars) plays Ray's romantic rival. Ariel Winter does a pretty good job of not being too grating with a part that is about 75% whining. Triple H is stiff but he's only groan-worthy on a couple of occasions where he has to silence the children by growling out what's basically a wrestling promo.

Kids love the Point Break references.

September is Wrestler Month but we might as well call it Hostage Month, as it seems it is impossible for a movie to star a wrestler and not see at least one friend/loved one taken hostage. Last week it was John Cena's hot wife, before that it was the 3 Ninjas having both a friend and girlfriend kidnapped. Here, the daughter predictably gets kidnapped by Corrigan, in an attempt to set up an exchange for the money.

If I were Triple H I'd get a DNA test. Where's her beak nose and giant biceps?

Granted, I'm not saying The Chaperone is good. Even once we're past the ridiculous first act, we still have a couple of annoying teen actors given way too much agency as they are inspired to help this strange man they just met. There's a couple of groan-worthy moments that make it seem like I am watching the version of the movie that will one day air on ABC Family 2, like when Corrigan's stolen car crashes into the back of a diaper truck and diapers fall out onto his car. Because if diaper trucks existed, they would probably just be full of loose diapers.

But there is some humor, past the Disney Channel-ish made up trucks and kids outwitting adults. A bank teller is truly puzzled why someone would wear a Condoleezza Rice mask and then get mad when someone calls him out on it. Yeardley Smith is genuinely funny as Triple H's chaperone foil, as when she struggles to come up with reasons why you never tell children to "shut up" even when you need them to shut up. Triple H trying (and failing) to outwit the goofy bus driver that may as well be named Otto. There are entertaining scenes, but they're held together by a really worn-out plot. Perhaps more depressing than the talented supporting cast having nothing better to do is the fact that the director, Stephen Herek, is a real director who has done some excellent (no pun intended) work in the past, including Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Mighty Ducks, and Mr. Holland's Opus. The Chaperone is certainly worlds ahead of 3 Ninjas: HNAMM, but compared to Herek's previous work, it's still forgettable at best.

Arbitrary Rating:

2.2 World Championships out of 5.

Memorable Quotes:

Bank Teller (to Condy Rice): So... you didn't intend to be funny?

Miss Miller: We don't ever tell our children to "shut up." Even when they misbehave and act like brats.
Ray: Why not?
Miss Miller: Do you know the definition of "lawsuit?"

The Marine (2006)

2011-09-17T19:17:00.002-05:00

Ever since Dwayne Johnson's propulsion into Hollywood stardom, the World Wresting Federation (WWE) and its domineering owner Vince McMahon have culled their ranks looking for the next The Rock. But rather than give him up to the Disneys and Universal Pictureses of the world, McMahon hopes to use his own WWE Studios to reap the rewards of his fame.

Such is the case of wrestler John Cena. Akin to a hulked out Mark Wahlberg, Cena emulated Wahlberg's Marky Mark routine and spent his early wrestling career making bank on the resemblance, short of producing his own Starz series Cortège, about the hangers-on of a super star professional wrestler. Instead, Cena begins his screen career with the 2006 film The Marine, about a beefy soldier ousted from military service whose wife is kidnapped by homicidal diamond thieves. If you base the quality of a film by the number of times a hero jumps from an exploding building, The Marine is your flick.

Stepping on the flag? For shame.

John Triton (John Cena) is the sole member of a reconnaissance mission sent to investigate captured U.S. soldiers in Iraq. When the situation escalates, Triton disobeys a direct order and rescues his countrymen with the efficiency and precision you would expect from someone who can't raise his arms above his head.

You should already find about eight things wrong with this opening shot.

He saves everyone and kills all the baddies, but this apparently doesn't matter to central command, who discharges him for disobeying orders. I would like to take this time to point out that recent Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer was awarded for doing something very similar.

Triton returns home to South Carolina (which in no way resembles northeast Australia) to his smokin' hot NASCAR wife Kate (Kelly Carlson). He wastes no times carrying her into the house, carrying her to the bed, carrying her to the kitchen counter. My point is she doesn't spend a lot of time on her feet.

This'll do until we can scrounge up some foot bindings.

Meanwhile, a ruthless gang of criminals, led by Rome (Robert Patrick) rob the only diamond store in South Carolina. To make sure no one gives chase, Rome fires on a cop car with a machine gun, and token angry black gangmember Morgan (Anthony Ray Parker) finishes it off with a rocket launcher.

Screenshot from Saint's Row. I mean, this movie.

The gang comes across more police at a gas station, which of course warrants shooting the cops, knocking Triton unconscious, kidnapping his wife, and torching the entire store. Triton gives chase in an indestructible cop car, and they find themselves in the swamps (?) of South Carolina. Triton is knocked unconscious AGAIN by some methhead rednecks (he really should get a concussion test after this) and eventually saves his wife after jumping away from a few more explosions.

Oh. My. God. Gas is only $1.74???

The soundtrack retains the subtlety you could expect from an action movie produced by a wrestling organization. Returning home from war? Get out the Celine Dion tin whistle. A black man appears? Play the generic-brand Good Times theme. Sex scene? Fire up the wakachawaka guitar. Implied anal rape? Did somebody say Deliverance?

The Marine is about as subtle with its soundtrack as it is with gender politics. John's wife Kate spends about 90% of the film passed from one beefy guy to another. When she is allowed to stand on her own recognizance, she spends this time instigating or participating in catfights with the only other woman in the movie, gangmember Angela (Abigail Bianca). Outbursts of "BITCH" are not uncommon, between the scratching and hair pulling. Unfortunately they never stumble into any mud pits or wet t-shirt contests, so we are unable to see these scuffles escalate to their expected climax.

"This'll teach you to have better HAIR than me!"

The script is brisk, with a mile-wide suspension of disbelief and some Grand Canyon-sized plot holes. Why show the police car with a flat tire if it will participate in a 10 mile high speed chase immediately after? How did Triton get caught by the rednecks but the people he pursued did not? Why does every bar in South Carolina have an exclusive contract with Miller Genuine Draft?

This random act of destruction brought to you by Miller.

The Marine originally planned to shoot in 2004, with Al Pacino and Steve Austin in the lead roles. It would have been fun to watch a coked-out Pacino yell through each take, while Steve Austin squints and pretends to be human. However, Patrick does a good job with the goofy script, and Cena is attractive and personable as the hero. If he toned down the upper body a bit he could almost resemble a legitimate movie star.

Overall The Marine is a fun if moronic movie. It's brainless but never attempts to be otherwise, and despite some primitive views on race and gender, it's no more unrefined than any other Hollywood action movie or direct-to-video venture. It's an enjoyable romp through the swamps of Queensland, South Carolina and I hope Cena gets better roles in the future.

Arbitrary Rating

3 explosion jumps out of 3.

Quotes

Rome: I don't want to see any eye contact. I have severe intimacy issues and a gun.

Morgan: I hate cops. And rock candy.

Rome: You never know when you'll need a crazy son of a bitch.

Morgan: That's a creepy-ass snake!

3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998)

2011-09-06T21:04:00.021-05:00

For three months in 1997, at the height of WCW's rise from second rate wrestling promotion to the premier wrestling promotion in the world, their world heavyweight champion was MIA. The year before, Hulk Hogan had electrified the wrestling world by turning heel (wrestling term for bad guy) for the first time in 15 years. To cash in on his suddenly increased marketability, Hogan, in his infinite wisdom, disappeared from television for three months to film a 3 Ninjas sequel and a third rate action movie. The Home Alone-esque 1992 original 3 Ninjas had been a hit, but two sequels in 1994 and 1995 had seen diminishing returns. Finally, after a 3 year break that saw an almost completely new cast from the first film six years earlier, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (3N:HNAMM) was released to enormous yawns.

Sadly, "guy in leather jacket" was held down by WCW politics
and never received a championship title match.

The film opens with an extended training sequence that features an all new, all-different Rocky, Colt, and Tum-Tum, the 3 Ninjas of the title, as they proceed through their grandfather's Rube Goldberg-y warehouse that appears to exist just for ninja training. This scene exists purely as a relaxing end to the summer for the boys, who return to their normal, non-ninja lives where they watch a Power Rangers type show called "Dave Dragon" that features a giant spray-tanned man wearing some bad He-Man cosplay. Hogan was 44 years old when the movie was filmed, and spends the entire movie not wearing a shirt. Dave Dragon confides with his fans that his show has been canceled but he will be appearing at Mega Mountain, a local amusement park. Rocky thinks this might be his last year of being a ninja in a subplot that will never be addressed, when a family moves in next door. The family has a daughter in the same age demo as the ninjas, and she wins them over somehow by piloting a helicopter through a window. Somehow this leads to the four of them going to Mega Mountain.

Loni Anderson shows that people can live in the uncanny valley.

Meanwhile, Medusa (70s sex symbol Loni Anderson) and her all-star team of terrorists including a Rastafarian hacker, evil Jim Varney, and a big fat idiot, plan their cunning attack on Mega Mountain in a bizarre coincidence that explains the movie's incredibly dumb title. Except for the "high noon" part, which would make you think it was a western. Basically their plan is to take over operation of the park and do such a bad job that the park's owner will pay an outrageous ransom for some reason. I guess he is really attached to the people who ride on his amusement park rides. The next day, the villains make an incredibly elaborate entrance via jet ski/scuba combo to break through the impregnable modern day amusement park. They quickly take over the security center that somehow allows remote control of all rides, and then proceed to replace the local ~~carnies~~ highly trained ride operators to ensure no rides are accidentally safe.

Sadly we never get a rasta/ninja fight.

Meanwhile the ninjas and their klutzy genius new friend arrive at the park and meet up with some non-ninjas Rocky's age, including his crush Jennifer and an incredibly irritating little blonde boy rival with a middle part whose name may as well be "Draco." The ninjas aimlessly wander around the park for a while, but eventually realize that the ride operators have turned EVIL and engage them in an extended karate fight. In the closest thing this film has to narrative folding, the karate fight accidentally stumbles into a wild west stage show, electrifying an audience that apparently hates wild west shows and loves karate. Why did they even go to this show and not the Dave Dragon show at the other side of the park? With some help from the western actor's lasso, the ninjas tie up the goons and go to seek the aid of Dave Dragon. Meanwhile Medusa puts evil Jim Varney on the case of catching several children, but he delegates that to the big fat idiot and his less fat but equally dense friends.

Ernest gets a sword.

The plot thickens as we get more karate fights, not one but two girlfriend/sidekick kidnappings, incredibly ridiculous hacking sequences that would make Angelina Jolie's character in Hackers roll her eyes, and the world's worst S.W.A.T. team. Oh, and the Draco Malfoy character pees his pants in fear. Basically 3N:HNAMM is exactly at the level of sequel decay you would expect from a franchise that started off as a below average "kids beat up adults" movie. Oh and the music is mind-numbingly awful. Somehow the "Dave Dragon" theme music is worse than the mid-90's Power Rangers music it's referencing.

Amanda's Newton hacks into a theme park's system to save everyone from raptors.

I don't want to pick on individual actors too much, and none are particularly strong (Jim Varney is probably the best but he also has the most experience hamming it up in awful movies), but the replacement of middle child Colt really sticks out in making this movie worse than its predecessors. Max Elliott Slade played the sarcastic middle ninja in the first three movies and had a smarmy, sarcastic charm in addition to his ability to kick people and shout. He also had a real acting career, appearing as Tom Hanks' son in Apollo 13 and Steve Martin's son in Parenthood. His replacement, Michael O'Laskey II, brings little attitude but a big lisp to the proceedings, taking a bad script and making it worse with awkward delivery.

Dave Dragon suffers for the sins of amusement park attendees.

It's wrestler month, so I also need to single out heavyweight champion Hulk Hogan. Because this is a children's movie and what's more a children's movie about three specific ninja children, Hulk Hogan spends the majority of the film looking like an ineffective idiot. He is shot by a dart, revived by the children, captured by the bad guys about three times, knocked out in a fight, and generally made to look like a putz. Meanwhile, six year old Tum-Tum successfully fights like ten guys through a clever combination of running away and kicking. In my favorite heavy-handedly symbolic scene in the movie, Dragon is brought out into the crowd by the bad guys and knocked to the ground, causing a stupid young child to question Dragon's heroism. Dragon gets so inspired he endangers the child and the surrounding crowd's lives by picking a fight with the terrorists and drawing machine gun fire just a few feet from the child who has only just learned to believe again. Hogan remained a major name in wrestling for several years, but movies like this pretty well torpedoed his acting career.

Arbitrary Rating:

2.15 AY-YAAAAHs out of 5

Memorable Quotes:

Rocky: It's no good! We need a three prong outlet!

Incredibly nerdy man in starched shirt and mustache: Did somebody call for an engineer?

Lothar Zogg (Jim Varney): I'll take care of the kids myself. They're dog-meat.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

2011-08-31T22:59:00.002-05:00

After Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn both dropped X-Men: The Last Stand for creative and professional reasons, Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Rush Hour 3) was brought in due to his history of, as the X3 IMDb trivia page puts it, "making successful films out of rushed productions" (emphasis mine, to highlight the exquisite wordplay). After all the care Singer put into the franchise with the first two films, bringing Ratner in to fill in is like hiring a competitive eater as the executive chef of your five star restaurant.

Ratner cosplays as Wolverine's cousin Chet. Codename: Woodchuck.

After an obligatory prologue with creepily CGI rendered Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan), X-Men: The Last Stand begins promisingly with an epic futuristic battle between the X-Men and the Sentinels. Wolverine mugs and saunters through the scenario with his classic blase, as he finally disappears into the darkness and throws back a dismembered Sentinel head. Cool!

Logan, you so crazy!

Unfortunately the preceding sequence was merely a simulation in the famous Danger Room, and we are dragged kicking and screaming into the actual world Ratner created, primarily full of political nuances about human rights and moral quandaries. Opening a film with a massive tease is always the best way for a new director to ingratiate himself to a devoted fanbase.

Instead of a spectacular dystopian wasteland with robots pitted against mutants, we instead get Cyclops (James Marsden) sulking around the compound looking for the fastest way to opt out of his franchise contract. He ultimately chooses to follow the voice of his deceased ex-girlfriend Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) to a lake and then yell at her to stop talking. Instead she shows up! And wants to remove the sunglasses that prevent him from accidentally exploding the moon. She controls it for a while but then decides killing him is much more fun.

Bryan, take me with you!

Meanwhile, a well-intentioned yet naive doctor (Michael Murphy) creates a mutant "cure" because his disgusting deformed son grew up with beautiful angel wings (Ben Foster). The film never explains why resembling an angel or having the ability to fly would ever be interpreted as bad things by anyone. A more likely scenario is Angel retains a small but devoted fundamentalist Christian following in a West Texas polygamist compound.

Dad I looked up "angelic" in the dictionary and the Webster's people seem to think it's a good thing.

Mutants run the gamut of emotions in response to the "cure," particularly the humans' decision to weaponize it into tiny projectile deus ex machinas. Rogue (Anna Paquin) is intrigued because she is a QUITTER, while more hardcore mutants like Magneto are outraged and register their concern through petty acts of terrorism and turning on their own kind. After Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) takes an anti-mutant bullet for Magneto, he immediately abandons her, citing that she's "not one of them anymore."

Thanks for saving my life you JERK!

Magneto isn't the only one who falls victim to inconsistent character development. The normally evenly-keeled Xavier goes through strange bouts of childish scolding when Wolverine attempts to question his strange medical treatment of young Jean. Wolverine too spends most of his time quivering his manly-yet-sensitive lower lip and lusting over an emotionally unstable Jean who is clearly just not that into him.

The mutant cure scientists hole up in Alcatraz, which they describe as the safest place they could find on such short notice. Despite the folly of using the most famous prison in the world to represent their human rights wedge issue, I sincerely doubt a tourist trap in the middle of an urban center is the safest location imaginable.

Magneto concocts the most efficient plan to get to Alcatraz: lift up the entire Golden Gate Bridge to transport a few hundred mutants. The X-Men are weakened by Xavier's death (oh by the way that happened too. Also Kelsey Grammer is Beast) and line up for their last stand with the Brotherhood.

Some suckers about to get served (above).

While X-Men: The Last Stand is not the worst comic book film to grace the silver screen, it certainly illustrates some of the worst ways to make a comic book sequel. Singer had already done the heavy lifting with the X-Men origin story. Ratner was given the freedom to explore the world and try something different. Instead he interweaves some of the better known storylines into a confusing web of new characters and muddled themes. Each storyline possesses the potential for emotional depth, but when smushed together into one film it rings hollow. It feels like more of a series of X-Men vignettes than a cohesive film, and many X-Men fans shunned the film not for any egregious flaws, but due to the strange unworldly feel Ratner bestowed upon the characters.

Scott and Logan's infatuation with Jean, who in the previously films did next to nothing, is a narrative short hand so Ratner can cover a lot of ground at the expense of logic and emotional build. The nuanced characters we once empathized with are now catchphrase-spewing automatons whose sole mission is to get through the three dozen interweaving plot lines as efficiently as possible.

X-Men: The Last Stand has some hints of ingenuity. Though Angel saving his father from a gang of mutant thugs was inevitable and tacked on, I appreciated the scene for its unexplored emotional breadth. The concept of a mutant cure is intriguing, but Ratner never fully explores the world. I even enjoyed the wildly inappropriate "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" line for its level of commitment to something so stupid.

Arbitrary Rating:

Four Last Stands out of Three

Quotes:

Magneto: Couldn't you just make them say yes?
Xavier: Yes I could, but it's not my way. And I would expect you of all people would understand my feelings about the misuse of power.
Magneto: Ah yes, power corrupts and all that.

Dr. Worthington: This site, once the world's most famous prison, will now be the source of freedom for all mutants who choose it.

Beast: Oh my stars and garters.

Magneto: It's time to end this war (throws flaming car).

Clip:

The admittedly pretty cool trailer.

I had to post it.

The Punisher (1989)

2011-08-24T21:33:00.010-05:00

The Punisher presents an interesting meeting point between the "super hero" and the "one man vs. the world" movies that came into prominence in the early 1970s. Unlike most comic heroes, the character was originally presented as a villain to fight Spider-Man whose most noteworthy feature was the world's coolest bandolier. The Punisher films have similarly veered back and forth between being "comic book movies" in the goofiest sense of the word and regular "action movies" in the also pretty goofy sense of the word. The first film in the Punisher oeuvre, perhaps due to its release date that occurred towards the tail end of the action movie's high point and a decade before anyone cared about "comic book movies," finds itself on the "action" end of the spectrum. And while it's decidedly a B-action movie, more Blind Fury than Die Hard, it's actually pretty entertaining. Plus, Dolph Lundgren is pretty believable as a one man army.

Movie poster or high school graduation photo?

Our story begins with a clunky exposition-y news report that feels like it's straight out of Dark Knight Returns, shoulder pads and all. We're told that Frank Castle has been presumed dead for the past five years, then the second story is reminding the citizens of... somewhere (the character is set in New York but this was filmed in Australia and nothing looks even vaguely like New York. For one thing, where are the huge black men with boom boxes?) that 150 mobsters have been murdered in the past five years. While this is a pretty clunky way of getting viewers to speed, especially since slowly crawling text had already been perfected, it is pretty great at launching us straight into the story. As lame as 99.9% of super hero origin stories are, the Punisher is one where it's especially clear from the start that his family being murdered is just an excuse for him to murder hundreds of mobsters, so kudos to this movie for not even bothering to give us 30 minutes of mopey Dolph Lundgren dyeing his hair. Anyway, this leads to a mobster being interviewed, who doubts the existence of the Punisher. Again, he's murdered 150 guys at this point.

This brutal revenge film features Punisher using an RC truck carrying
liquor to lure a wino informant into the open. Yes, really.

We almost immediately get a nice little action set-piece as the mobster goes to his home and his goons are killed one by one without ever showing the Punisher's face; we just see his arm hang a goon and his boot kick a guy over a balcony. He kills the boss mobster and this feels like it would be the conclusion of a much worse movie, but we're not even ten minutes in! The real story, it turns out, is a Yakuza boss makes a move to take over ____ City's crime scene, taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the Punisher killing a hundred guys. At first, Punisher seems cool with the Yakuza killing more mobsters for him, showing that he hasn't really thought this "Punishing" thing through. However, when Punisher discovers the Yakuza boss has kidnapped innocent and irritating mobster children, he decides to make room in his busy schedule to karate kick tiny Yakuza guys.

There's a lot of riding a motorcycle through sewers... that can't be good for the paint job.

At the end of the day, The Punisher is a pretty entertaining B-movie about revenge and the late 80s/early 90s completely irrational fear of Japan taking all our best mafia jobs. Little did we know that Russians would end up taking all those jobs after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's about as brainless as all these revenge action movies, and Punisher's actual reasons for getting involved start off pretty flimsy until his ex-partner gets involved, and it has a couple of sub-plots that quite literally go nowhere, probably a result of New World Pictures' financial troubles. It's even the perfect B-movie length: it ends abruptly at the 89 minute mark. But for all that, I did enjoy myself. There's a few good one liners, the action scenes are well put together, and the plot has solid momentum behind it. I wish the villains were better, but we get a pretty generic Yakuza lady and a few mobsters straight out of central casting. Dolph does a pretty good job being scary and not talking much, which is really all you need to play a vengeance-seeking sociopath. Louis Gossett Jr plays the cop who is Punisher's old partner, and he does a solid enough job with a really weak part.

Punisher tries to be reassuring.

The movie was known to be particularly terrible in the comic book community, probably because it's not really a comic movie. Punisher in this movie doesn't use much in the way of weapons, relying on martial arts for extended sequences, and most notably, he doesn't have a cool bandolier that looks like the teeth that match his skull shirt. He doesn't even have a skull shirt! We don't see a single character from Punisher's famous supporting cast like, uh... that one guy Garth Ennis created in 2001. It doesn't even include useless little references that only comic book nerds get! The nerve!

It's an entertaining enough little diversion with a surprisingly decent script and above-average direction, as the director went on to be a hugely successful editor and the writer wrote and directed major projects for Disney, including Remember the Titans and Prince of Persia. Honestly I probably just like it because I'm completely sick of comic book origin stories.

Memorable Quotes:

Franco: There's a limit to revenge, you know.
The Punisher: I guess I just haven't reached mine yet.

Lady Tanaka: You Americans have a great capacity for violence, but it's wild, unfocused. You will learn.

The Punisher: You're a good boy, Tommy. Grow up to be a good man. Because if you don't... I'll be waiting.

Arbitrary Rating:

150 murders out of a possible 300.

Trailer:

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

2011-08-18T22:16:00.003-05:00

After 1978's Superman was a box office smash, Superman II and III garnered diminishing but still profitable returns. It wasn't until 1987's Superman IV that the franchise completely imploded, both in financial success and thematic coherence. The franchise was sold to Menahim Golan and Yoram "Golden" Globus, the Israeli B-Movie producers responsible for YSM favorites The Apple and Over the Top. Rather than an appropriately paced and grandiose film, Superman IV features only remnants and signifiers of this once great spectacle. Chopped down from 134 minutes to an incoherent 89, the film speeds through the plot faster than a locomotive, makes frequent thematic and logical leaps over tall buildings in a single bound, and flies over the audience's heads with Superman preachily declaring world peace in front of the UN.

Superman urges the world's children to brush twice a day.

After a brief stint in space saving some Cosmonauts and speaking Russian, Superman (Christopher Reeve) visits the old farm in Smallville. Clark refuses to sell the farm to a commercial developer and retrieves a green crystal which holds the the echoey floating heads of his Kryptonian ancestors.

"Right across the plate, Scout."

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) smashes rocks in a prison chain gang. He is rescued by his moronic but also scientifically gifted nephew Lenny (played by Jon Cryer, showing off those acting chops that won him the Emmy), who traps the guards in his remote control hot rod and drives it off a cliff. Cryer maintains a surfer voice but is dressed like a post-punk mohawked 1950s throwback, which straddles the line between deliberately stupid and actually stupid.

1 and 1/3 men.

Superman receives a letter from an adorable little boy asking him to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Why he needed a 4th grader to think of this idea is unclear.

Heeeyy. I don't remember saying that.

After a belittling speech at the UN, Superman gets to work rounding up all the nukes and placing them in a giant net which he presumably made himself.

All the world's nuclear weapons are concentrated in a flimsy space net. Now we're safe.

Luthor celebrates his newfound freedom by doing what he does best: implementing a ridiculously elaborate plan to destroy Superman for no reason. He crashes the Superman exhibit at the Metropolis museum and steals his super mega strong strand of hair.

Luthor owns the world's only pair of Kryptonite bolt cutters.

Luthor doesn't want the hair for its inconsistent strength properties, but so he can clone Superman! Through his unexplained military resources and a nuclear missile launched at the sun, Luthor creates Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), a creature of limitless power, except for when he isn't directly in the sun, at which point he becomes completely immobile. It's nice when a film introduces a character and explains his inevitable downfall in the exact same scene.

Jazz hands!

Meanwhile, Superman/Clark Kent maintains a poorly-executed love square with Lois and his new hot boss Lacy (Mariel Hemingway). Lacy loves Clark while Lois loves Superman, and he agrees to an uncomfortable Three's Company-like double date that he could have easily avoided by saying he was busy that night. Instead he switches between Clark and Superman. At one point Clark jumps into the back of a limo and immediately emerges from the other side as Superman, as if anyone watching for more than three seconds would never discover the ruse.

Nuclear Man shows up and scratches Superman with his super-manly claws, and the Man of Steel is forced to use the green crystal to regenerate. Superman traps Nuclear Man in an elevator car and takes him up to the moon to duke it out, and he does away with his foe and the remainder of the run time with ruthless efficiency.

Superman knows his priorities.

While Superman I-III are far from perfect, Superman IV did an amazing job of pinpointing its flaws and minimizing its strengths in the shortest duration imaginable. No plot element is given enough time to develop, and the brevity only helps in portraying the hero as an aloof and unsympathetic goober. While a filmmaker could portray Superman burning Lois's dinner and tossing her like a rag doll at 30,000 feet as charming, in Superman IV it's callous and bizarre. And while Superman's quest for peace is noble, in this universe a majority of threats to the earth are from people trying to destroy Superman, so he can hardly call the human race destructive compared to the amount of mayhem he's vicariously caused.

Furthermore, while the first two Superman films create a unique world with its own distinctive look and feel, Superman IV does away with any care or meticulousness its predecessors. Large chunks of the script are hacked away to the point of incoherence. Nuclear Man becomes infatuated with Lacy for no reason and carries her off to space, apparently bringing a pocket of oxygen substantial enough for her to survive the ordeal. Metropolis is no longer a thin representation of New York, but New York itself. At one point Nuclear Man picks up the Statue of Liberty and carries it around. And the film invents new absurd powers for Superman, like the ability to magically reconstruct the Great Wall of China, and giving Lois an amnesia-causing brain tumor that makes her forget he's Superman every five seconds.

Though Superman IV is unrepentantly awful, its brevity may be its greatest strength. It at least respects its audience enough to not drag it out, unlike Singer's self-fellating 154 minute love letter to the franchise. It enjoys itself enough to ignore the history or nostalgia of the character. Superman IV is bad, but with a slightly bigger budget and fifteen more minutes, it could have been good.

Arbitrary Rating:

Forty cakes (that's as many as four tens).

Quotes:

Luthor: Lenny, I've always considered you the Dutch Elm disease in my family tree.

Lacy: All men like me. I'm very very rich.

Lacy: You ever thought of wearing contacts?
Clark: Uhhh they erm... make my eyes itch.

Lacy: How can one man be so square and so delicious?

Luthor: Goodnight sweet prince. Parting is... inevitable.

Clip:

Superman repairs the Great Wall using his... powers.

Captain America (1990)

2011-08-09T20:34:00.018-05:00

With the success of Captain America: The First Avenger this summer at the box office, it's easy to forget that Marvel has tried to cash in on its most patriotic creation more than once. In 1979 they made a TV movie starring Cap on a motorcycle with a clear plastic shield, and in 1990 they tried again with a feature that flopped so badly it didn't even get released until a direct to VHS deal in 1992, two years after it was made. And for good reason.

That "A" doesn't stand for France!

Our story begins in Italy of the 1930s, where a child prodigy is playing the piano until Nazis show up to murder his family and promptly turn him into the Red Skull, thus raising red flag #1: why is the Red Skull Italian now? Anyway one of the doctors that make Red Skull feels super bad about creating a fascist super soldier, so she replicates the process in America, selecting all-American California-native and Polio sufferer Steve Rogers (Matt Salinger, J.D.'s kid). That's right, instead of being sickly and from Brooklyn, he's now a pretty buff dude with kind of a limp and a nice tan. The process makes his ears super plasticky but otherwise cure his polio and turn his hair blonde, but the scientist is promptly killed.

I'm sorry, were you talking? I was lost in your eyes.

Cap's very first mission is a daring raid on Red Skull's castle, where he is promptly caught and strapped to a rocket. Oops. Red Skull makes a bunch of jokes about how excited he is for a chance to practice his English while bragging about launching Cap straight into the "Casa Bianca," or "White House" as us Yanks call it. Cap grabs Skull in an attempt to delay the launch, but Red Skull calmly slices off his own hand to make sure nothing slows him down. Couldn't you just, you know... slice off Cap's hand? That's what I'd do.

GOOF: the image in the lens should've been inverted! Geez!

The scene inexplicably switches to downtown Washington D.C., where a young boy announces that when he grows up, he will be president. In this movie, this is foreshadowing, not just a dumb thing that a kid said. The boy sneaks out to take photos of his future residence (the White House), presumably for his planned re-decorating in 45 years, when he notices a rocket-shaped object moving towards him. His camera's zoom manages to catch Captain America heroically tied to a rocket, still fully conscious: apparently the Super Soldier Serum means he doesn't need to breathe oxygen. Cap waits until he is practically on top of the kid to make a last ditch effort to kick the rocket off course, causing it to crash land in Alaska (!!!). Because not only are intercontinental rockets totally a thing, you can easily make them go thousands of miles off course with a bit of a kick. The boy shares this story with his fat school paper friend, who says the hero described couldn't be Sub-Mariner or Human Torch, other heroes who in this universe are apparently far superior to Captain America, who completely failed in his first and only mission.

I am also always running into punks at the beach.

We then get a newspaper montage showing the past 45 years of history, along with audio clips talking about the little boy as he joins the military in Korea, goes to law school, joins the Peace Corps, then becomes a Congressman before finally winning the presidency. He apparently ran on an anti-pollution platform, narrowly defeating Captain Planet villain Looten Plunder. When the new president plays hardball with a country-fried general, the general's response is to go to Italy and enlist the services of the Red Skull, now a world-level terrorist with crazy make-up who sets up assassinations. Skull refuses to kill the new president, electing instead to make him a pawn of evil. Insert political joke here. Oh also the president is played by Ronny Cox, a veteran character actor mostly known for playing evil corporate villains in Robocop and Total Recall, so it's a bit odd to see him as the radical-left-wing environmentalist guy.

Oh no it's late 80s fear of Japanese manufacturing!

Meanwhile, Captain America is unfrozen and wanders off after saying the word "Nazis." This prompts a blurry photograph that causes President Cohaagen to call his childhood fat friend Sam Kolawetz, played by Ned Beatty in a Deliverance reunion, to go find this guy from 50 years ago. Naturally the reporter doesn't hesitate to jump to the president's commands, like all loyal journalists would! The Red Skull also reads the Juneau Gazette and the National Unquirer, so naturally he jumps to the conclusion that Captain America is out to stop his fiendish presidential scheme. He asks his surprisingly cute daughter to see to the American personally. Where's this girl's mother, anyway?

Cap leads the Von Trapps out of Austria.

Skull's daughter Valentina takes the next flight to Northern Canada, as our next scene features Nazis attacking Cap on dirtbikes. Our brave hero heroically runs away through the woods like a red white and blue Sasquatch before getting himself shot. Does he not know how to use his shield or what? Sam the reporter saves him as he has apparently hurried to Northwestern Canada, rented a car, and drove aimlessly through the woods hoping to find Captain America.

Evil Nazi fathers just DON'T UNDERSTAND!

Cap is suspicious of Ned's "MADE IN JAPAN" audio recorder and his Volkswagon truck (do they make trucks?), and takes him for a Nazi Spy, even though Sam explains he is only interested in information about the Red Skull. Cap heroically steals Sam's car, then drives it until it runs out of gas and leaves it to hitch a ride on an 18 wheeler back to SoCal, illegally re-entering his own country in the process. Seriously is Cap an anti-hero now? I mean so far his greatest act of heroism was trying and failing to fight the Red Skull, while he has broken numerous laws while being pursued by Skull's henchman despite having literally zero clue what Skull's plans might be.

Cap finds his way to his old girlfriend's house after a terrifying run-in with some punks and a girl in a bikini, all set to Randy Newman-esque warbling about what's on the screen. He sees a young woman that looks a lot like his girlfriend and puts a hand on her shoulder, causing her to knock over our hero with some water bottles. The girl yells for her parents, causing Cap's girlfriend, now an old lady, to come out and instantly recognize him despite his lack of polio, blond hair, and stubborn refusal to age for 50 years. It's a good thing she never moved in the last half century! The movie explains that improbable behavior by stating that she waited over a decade for Cap before settling for the loser she married, who moved into her house and never moved because clearly he is a loser.

Cap's greatest foe? Horrible mise-en-scene.

Now that Cap has met her more age-appropriate daughter, his 40s girlfriend should better start counting the hours. While Cap and Sharon (Kim Gillingham) go to the library to learn about JFK and MLK, Sam the reporter shows up, followed closely by Red Skull's daughter, who flew back to California after flying from Canada to Italy to be chewed out by her father for her previous failure. She's really racking up the miles on her jet! She shoots Sam then tortures Cap's old girlfriend for information. I'm sure Ned Beatty was relieved there was no squealing involved. Cap swears vengeance, but still hasn't had the bright idea to check that castle where he fought Red Skull last time, where the president is now being held after being kidnapped (off screen). Our story continues as Cap tracks Red Skull down and learns about his parents-murdering origin, then has to save the president and the world from the horrors of Red Skull's nuclear piano.

Cap meets his biggest (and only) fan!

Super hero movies, like sci-fi and other "genre" films, have to make a commitment to make us believe that what we're seeing could actually happen in some semblance of the real world. Because most of your audience genuinely wants to believe, this isn't all that hard: you just need some basic world-building early on in the movie that establishes the "rules" of that universe. Not only does Captain America not show what, exactly, Cap is capable of, he spends 9/10 of the movie looking like a loser or an idiot. The new Captain America film attempts to make the viewer connect with the character, then has a scene designed to showcase his strength, his shield-using prowess, and his ability to look great without a shirt. In the 90's movie, we get none of this, as his first important fight is with the Red Skull, who easily defeats him. He also does nothing heroic for about 2/3 of the movie, and isn't particularly interesting or likeable as a character.

Honestly I think he looked better with the skull.

And it's like the whole film takes place in some alternate universe where Rome is only a 5 hour flight from California, considering Red Skull's daughter makes the trip about 4 times. Plot points are brought up so hammily and re-enforced so mercilessly by the script and the pandering score that their key demographic must be people in some form of suspended animation. This also explains why we get newspaper headlines summing up the past 40 years (and video footage in the library scenes) of major events. Cap of course never deals with any of this loss; his reaction is general befuddlement. Sharon is nominally his love interest but there is literally no charisma between them, they're just the only age-appropriate, non-evil pairing in the movie. And frankly Red Skull's daughter is way hotter.

I also need to point out that Captain America, despite being called a "symbol of America," is a pretty awful role model. From his failures and lameness to his illegal entry into his own country and repeated criminal acts to his approach to stopping the Red Skull. Namely, he distracts him with a recording of Skull's family being murdered, then throws his shield at him while he is lost in thought. While our country may not always be perfect, we deserve better in a national symbol than a dull loser in a silly-looking halloween costume.

Why does Cap even support the environment? Without global warming, he'd still be frozen!

There's some so-incompetent-it's-funny humor to be had here, but it's basically the same kind of humor you can mine from pretty much every Marvel movie pre-Blade. They cut every corner in directing, casting, props, music, etc., and ended up with this weird mess that was so bad it was shelved for two years. This is made especially humorous by an ending credits plea to vote for a 1990 environmental protection act; I'm not sure what's more absurd, that this movie thought it would have that profound an impact on its audience, or that they believed people of the legal voting age would voluntarily watch it. Also I'm not even sure what they're endorsing? The Clean Air Act of 1990 is the closest thing I can find to an Environmental Protection Act in that year.

Arbitrary Rating:

Equally embarrassing to Captain America's legacy as a Rob Liefeld cover:

Memorable Quotes

Red Skull: You are a perfect symbol of America my brother: weak and self-pitying. You have even failed to teach me English. But, I am much practicing while you sleep. "Where is the big bomb going?" "The big bomb is going to the..." How you say "Casa Bianca"?

Red Skull: Tell me... do you think I could be President of the United States?
Captain America: No...

Young Kimball: When I grow up, I'm gonna be president.
President Kimball: I've been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Captain America: Gee whiz!

Red Skull: We are both tragedies. And now I send our tortured souls to rest!
Red Skull: Fifty years ago you were Dr. Vaselli's ridiculous idea. You remain a clownish symbol that no one cares about.
Captain America: I care.
Red Skull: You care? Then come to me, my brother. Let us see if this heart of yours is stronger than my hate.

Spawn (1997)

2011-08-08T00:23:00.001-05:00

Back in the 90s during the EXTREME Liefeldian comic book trend of guns, muscles, pouches and seemingly interchangeable character models, Image Comics emerged and marketed itself as a viable third party comics opportunity for those wanting a change of pace from DC and Marvel's tired gimmicks, rote storylines, and shameless exploitation of decades old characters. Unfortunately, Image often differentiated itself by simply ripping off existing DC and Marvel properties.

Spawn was unique to this new crop of heroes. Instead of emulating a single character, he attained the powers of every single superhero. It comes as no surprise that such an unimaginative model would create an equally lackluster film. General audiences didn't gravitate toward another superhero origin story with awful Doom 2 special effects.

"My Spidey Sense is tingling! I have that, right?"

Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) is a super soldier sent to exotic locations to engage in top secret spy missions. He excels at his job, due mostly to his innate ability to kick and shoot people without considering the consequences. In the opening scene, Simmons murders everyone inside an air traffic control tower at the Hong Kong Airport. After using high-tech infrared computer-targeting night vision goggles, he spots his subject and lets loose a rocket to take him out. Of course, since it's a rocket, it also blows up everyone that isn't his target. And aside from a high vantage point, a control tower serves no significant tactical advantage, at least enough of one to justify murdering a dozen people.

Target destroyed. Everything within a half a mile of the target also destroyed.

When Simmons refuses to go through with a mission that kills slightly more innocent people than he's comfortable with, his boss Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen, bearing a striking resemblance to Charlie Sheen today) shoots him, exposes him to an experimental gas, and sets him on fire. Like all deaths-by-immolation, this sends Simmons straight to hell, where he does some things he doesn't remember, and he's spit back up into the real world to wander around groaning and holding his head in his hands like the Phantom of the Opera lamenting the monster he's become.

"Why did I insult that gypsy's beef jerky recipe? WHY?"

Five years later, Simmons gets his act together enough to crash his daughter's birthday party, where they've hired the SCARIEST CLOWN EVER (John Leguizamo), presumably because the kindergartener is a big fan of Violent J.

Did he have an ad in the yellow pages?

The disgusting wisecracking clown takes Simmons under his wing and explains through sloppy narrative structure that he's dead, went to hell, and now he has to lead a demon army. Simmons reacts with more groaning and head-holding, and the clown spouts off catchphrases, fart jokes, and lines from better movies.

Fart jokes = Funny. Atomic fart jokes = Hilarious.

Eventually Spawn settles into a by-the-numbers origin story akin to Highlander/The Empire Strikes Back/Pretty Much Everything: Simmons befriends kindly old man Cogliostro (Nicol Williamson) who somehow knows everything about Spawn's powers and how to control them. At first Spawn is not very good but slowly over time he gets better, until unlocking all abilities and achieving level 60.

Crashing parties the Batman way!

Spawn has an unlimited power source he uses to do nearly anything. This includes but is not limited to:

Flying
Healing
Claws
Swinging Chains
Wall-Climbing
Camouflage
X-Ray Vision
Telekinesis
Impenetrable Armor
Long, Scary Cape

Tack on Ghost Rider's origin story and a clown as a primary villain, Spawn has basically ripped off every single superhero in some way, shape, or form. The only thing missing is time travel, talking to fish, and shooting fireworks out of your hands (though he could probably do any of these if he wanted to).

In the canon of superhero movies, Spawn is a mediocre entry in a massive collection featuring a lot better and a lot worse. Many single out Leguizamo's performance as refreshing in an otherwise dull outing. Leguizamo does, in fact, say his lines very enthusiastically, but unfortunately the screenwriter gave him awful things to say. Most of his lines are variations of dialogue from other movies, as if to validate Spawn's overwhelmingly derivative vision. When the only bright spot is an obese demonic clown with radioactive farts, there's something inherently flawed in your film. For some reason Roger Ebert gave Spawn 3 1/2 stars, saying it's best to look at as an "experimental art film" rather than an action movie. Kind of like how I view Roger Ebert as a lazy populist hack than an actual film critic.

Unfortunately the CGI couldn't fully render in time for the premiere.

The CGI is worth noting in that it's especially awful; Malebolgia (the devil) is rendered like a mid 90s arcade cut scene. The only people who should be proud of their work are the costumers and make-up artists, who create incredibly vivid and memorable pieces in a film that is mostly routine. Aside from this one bright spot, Spawn is another bit of late 90s nostalgia which should be placed in the time capsule next to the Hanson album, Pog collection, and autographed photo of Will Fridle.

Arbitrary Rating:

3 out of 47 Limited Edition Variable Comic Covers.

Quotes:

Spawn: You sent me to Hell, Jason! I'm here to return the favor!

Clown: You're dead. D-E-D dead!

Clown: Oops. A wet one. I hope I didn't stain my underwear. Look at that, skid marks!

Deadfall (1993)

2011-07-25T20:06:00.013-05:00

Like the end of the month itself, we close July with a Nic Cage performance so intense it will melt children's popsicles if they sit too close to the screen. In 1993, we finally got an encore performance of a Coppola directing an Estevez, in the grand tradition of Apocalypse Now and, uh... The Outsiders. It's... not great.

A taut 90's photoshop.

The film starts with a drug deal while the narrator (Michael Biehn) talks about "marks." Shockingly enough, it turns out to be an elaborate and confusing con. The narrator's father (James Coburn), is accidentally killed and his right-hand man Pete (Peter Fonda) advises narrator Joe to get out of town. If you can't trust Peter Fonda, who can you trust? Joe decides to avenge his father by tracking down his long lost Uncle Lou (James Coburn).

Seriously, this is worse than his wardrobe in Snake Eyes.

He finds his way to a cafe when a local madman Eddie (Nicolas Cage) shows him a card trick. Despite apparently suffering from a speech impediment or learning disability, this madman is actually Lou's right hand man, and introduces him to Lou, who, shockingly enough, is the exact duplicate of Joe's father. Eddie takes Joe out for a night on the town running classic cons, but Eddie's jealousy goes out of control and he tries to get Joe killed by a strip club owner named Baby. Unfortunately the plan backfires and Joe becomes friends with Baby and proves his worth to Lou. As if that weren't enough, Eddie's girlfriend/scam partner Diane (Sarah Trigger) comes to Joe's hotel and seduces him, although it's made painfully clear that all is not as it seems.

Cage (and the viewer) are bored during a scene he's barely in.

Joe attends Uncle Lou's birthday party where he meets Lou's wife Betty Boop, I mean Blanche (Gigi Rice) and ingratiates himself further into the man's operations. Meanwhile Eddie goes to the strip club, where he learns that he had been conned by Joe. His response? To shout "Fuck" about 20 times then karate chop someone. It's pretty great. He then survives an attack from an assassin disguised as a homeless man.

Eddie then goes absolutely nuts, threatening Diane and deciding to try to murder Lou, blaming him for the botched hit. Joe saves the day, causing Eddie's wig to fall off before shoving his face into a fryer. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is Nicolas Cage free.

Cage gets his wig split.

Joe gets sucked into doing a rehash of the over-complicated con we saw at the beginning of the movie and starts to feel like someone's pulling the strings. And obviously they are, because this is a con movie and what good would it be if there weren't two or three ridiculous swerves before we get a super predictable ending?

Cage goes full retard.

The film in general is not very good, and was probably deservedly ignored by critics and fans when it was released. But Cage's mega-acting tries like hell to save every scene he's in. While this style might distract from something good, it takes something bland like this and elevates it; kind of the reverse of Matchstick Men, where his spazzy over-acting distracted from Alison Lohman and Sam Rockwell's awesomeness and a strong script. Here, he is a splash of color on an old-time-y photograph. His presence is so much greater that for some reason he gets his face centered on the posters, even though he's a supporting character. It probably also helps that nobody remembers who Michael Biehn is (he was the boring time traveler in Terminator) and Cage's brother is the director.

This movie's also notable for the sheer amount of crazy involved in the project. From Cage's legendary antics on-screen and off, to a brief appearance of noted crazy person Charlie Sheen, to Sheen's "Two and a Half Men" co-star Jon Cryer's ex-wife Sarah Trigger, who is perhaps just as crazy as the two men based on her mug shot taken in connection with an arrest under suspicion of felony child neglect. The film is sort of a perfect storm of genuine insanity. Unfortunately, only Cage's insanity manifests itself into anything constructive. Sheen just wears a smoking jacket and does his cool guy routine, and Trigger is one of those British actors who is visibly devoting half their brain to maintaining a generic American accent, and what's left is pretty forgettable.

Arbitrary Rating:

1 CageHead out of 3

Memorable Quotes:

Lou: You could learn a lot from just... watching people.

Eddie: I'm not gettin' off! I'm not gettin' off!
Diane: Jesus Christ Eddie you're disgusting with that shit!
Eddie: I'm not gettin' off! (Laughs hysterically)

Lou: What is this Eddie?
Eddie: "Oh what is this Eddie" that's good... that's a good poker-face- PICK A CARD!

Eddie (to Lou): You wanna fuck? Eh? You wanna fuck?! We fuck now!

Eddie: HI-FUCKIN'-YA!
Morgan "Fats" Gripp: One of the rare occasions where one... plus one... equals one.

Wild at Heart (1990)

2011-07-23T18:56:00.001-05:00

It's natural for one of Hollywood's most fearless actors to team up with one of its most fearless directors. What's surprising is that it took until 1990 for Nicolas Cage to collaborate with David Lynch, only to never do so again. Cage brings his signature manic delivery, Elvis infatuation, and snakeskin jacket to Lynch's ultra violent Wizard of Oz referencing psychotic surreal romantic road movie Wild at Heart.

You! Guilty!

In order to properly orient his audience for the journey, Lynch opens with a severe and brutal death scene, wherein a hired killer brandishes a knife at Sailor Ripley (Cage) and Sailor reacts by smashing the man's head repeatedly against the marble floor until he's dead.

Medic! Oh wait I killed him.

After a brief stint in prison, Sailor is released and picked up by the love of his life, 20-year old Lulu Fortune (Laura Dern) and the two get out of dodge and head toward California. They begin their journey with hours of marathon-style sex and a visit to a nice speed metal bar, wherein Sailor interrupts his slamdancing to pick a fight with an innocent mosher who got too close to Lulu. After silencing the hardcore metal band on a dark dance floor with a slight wave of his arm, he reasserts his claim on Lulu and resumes his relaxing night on the town.

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog, moshin' all the time.

Meanwhile, Lulu's mother Marietta (Diane Ladd, Laura Dern's actual mother) hires lover Johnnie (Harry Dean Stanton) to track down the couple to get Lulu away from Sailor. Meanwhile, she also hires all-around mean guy Marcelles Santos (J.E. Freeman) to kill Sailor, but Santos also wants to kill Johnnie, so he hires two other killers through the help of a Mr. Reindeer (William Morgan Sheppard) and a pair of silver dollars. The two killers devote their time to Johnnie, while Lulu and Sailor head to Big Tuna, Texas hoping to catch a break from old friend Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini), but instead gets roped into a robbery plot with Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe). Everything goes horribly wrong and Sailor sings "Love Me Tender" to Lulu from atop a convertible.

This is how not normal you have to be to be considered not normal in a David Lynch film.

As you might expect, there is a lot of plot shoved into a two hour film. Lynch wrote the first draft in a week and shot in the two months following the Twin Peaks pilot. The result is a lot of stray Twin Peaks cast members, and similarities in look, feel, staging and plot. Lynch's signature nostalgia lens and 50s fetishization is evident here, but lacks the innocence of previous projects. He hopes to illustrate the brutality and hardships that young love often must endure, but even the enamored couple is not immune to Lynch's cruelty. The characterizations of Sailor and Lulu shift wildly from connection to alienation, empathy to psychosis. Sailor is relatable at times, but his manic outbursts and creepy over-the-brow staring do nothing to clarify the plot. Kyle MacLachlan does a much better job of grounding Lynch and keeping his more incomprehensible tendencies in check. Even as he speaks to a backwards talking midget in Twin Peaks, or witnesses Frank Booth's brutal sexual outbursts in Blue Velvet, he maintains an unchanging innocence that allows an audience to endear itself to a surreal world.

You want one of these?

Nicolas Cage, despite his best efforts, does not maintain this innocence, which probably has more to do with how he was written than his performance. He does his very best to relate to the content, but even as he mimics a hate crime or swoons Elvis tunes in a snakeskin jacket on a speed metal bar dance floor, he doesn't feel 100% right. He embraces Lynch's direction a little too enthusiastically, and as a result it doesn't feel as sincere as Dern's or Dafoe's performances, who clearly thought a lot more about where their characters fit in this universe.

SPIDDAAAHHHMAAAANNNN.

Lynch's imagery is predictably disturbing and well-shot. He is a master of static composition; complementing and contrasting each shot with thoughtful decisions in tone, rhythm, color, and shape. Lynch also shoehorns a lot of Wizard of Oz references into the film, though it rarely seems appropriate.

Sorry for the shoehorn joke.

Wild at Heart won Cannes's top prize, the Palme d'Or, when it premiered at the festival in 1990. As the French like to approach all things in life, the film received a mixture of boos and cheers. Roger Ebert accused Lynch of being insincere, of essentially trolling his audience to make them the butt of some elaborate and incomprehensible joke. Lynch has never made an insincere film, but occasionally his mixture of dark imagery and innocent nostalgia does not altogether fit. The occurrences in Twin Peaks, though through a much subtler lens, are just as strange as Wild at Heart's, but the show gives the audience enough time to ingratiate itself to the characters. Wild at Heart doesn't feel strange because of Lynch, but with how little care he put into guiding his audience.

Arbitrary Rating:

One CageHead.

Quotes:

Punk: You look like a clown in that stupid jacket.
Sailor: This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.
Punk: Asshole.

Sailor: You ain't gonna start worrying about what's bad for you? I mean, here you are, crossing state lines with a real murderer...
Lulu: A manslaughterer, honey, not murderer. Don't exaggerate.

Sailor: I'd like to apologize to you gentlemen for referring to you all as homosexuals. You taught me a valuable lesson in life.

Clip:

A bit of the old ultraviolence in the very first scene:

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

2011-07-15T09:03:00.011-05:00

BL:PoCNO, apart from having the most cumbersome title of any movie I've reviewed for this site, also has the distinction of being maybe the best film I've reviewed here. This means it edges out Death Bed: The Bed that Eats and Kazaam. Despite its long and confusing name (which resulted in a lawsuit from another movie called Bad Lieutenant), and a long-awaiting re-uniting of Ghost Rider stars Nic Cage and Eva Mendes, BL is actually really good. It's surprisingly funny, consistently entertaining, and uses Nic Cage's trademark quiet/LOUD acting to full effect.

Not only is this woman not a suspect, she's not even a witness.

Cage is Terence McDonagh, a New Orleans cop who makes Lieutenant after rescuing a man from a flooding prison during Katrina. He's given a major murder case by the chief, who questions McDonagh's prescription drug usage. It doesn't take long to see Vicodin is the least of Tery's vices, as he takes any number of illegal drugs, makes ridiculous wagers on LSU football, and is in a committed relationship with a gorgeous prostitute (Mendes). The film starts looking like a Greek tragedy when our triply tragically flawed hero starts getting in deep water from all of his vices. As if that weren't enough, a nurse complains when he draws his gun on her while asking her questions (in front of the nurse's assisted living patient). But most Greek tragedies don't feature Nicolas Cage going mad-eyed and screaming about how he should murder people for not being forthcoming in a murder investigation.

BL Tip #257: if you randomly threaten people with arrest, you can make them do anything.

The film is built around Cage's performance and really fits what Cage always does anyway, when he's not doing his Elvis impression. He brings a manic-ness to Tery's personality that actually makes sense in his chosen profession. Like Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock ever pretended to be Moriarty's friend so he could plant DNA evidence linking Moriarty to a crime. It's over-the-top and funny, but also surprisingly earnest, thanks to a few scenes where we see Tery not just as a drug addict but as a pretty okay guy, when he's not high on cocaine. The film is also inter-cut with a few surreal sequences, most involving lizards, but considering this is Werner Herzog, it's surprisingly accessible. Basically people should watch it, which is why I'm not giving away any real spoilers here. Honestly it's too good a movie for YSM, except for its unbelievably dumb title and the presence of Nic Cage, mega-actor.

"What are these damn Iguanas doing on my coffee table?"

Arbitrary Rating:

Three Cageheads out of three.

Quotes:

Terence McDonagh: I'll kill all of you! To the break of dawn. To the break of dawn, baby!

Big Fate: What about them murders? You don't give a fuck about them?
Terence: Look at me. Look at you. I never did.

Terence: You don't have a lucky crackpipe?

Terence: Wait a minute, you want me to get wet on account of you? Hey man I've got on Swiss cotton underpants. Yeah, that's right. It cost me $55 a pair. You think I want to get all of this brown water and shit all over them. That don't come out.

Terence: Fuck Duffy! Just fuck him.

Terence: TWO DIMES! On Louisiana... against... Georgia!

Terence: (to an old woman) Drop dead you selfish cunt! You're the fuckin' reason this country's going down the drain!

The Wicker Man (2006)

2011-07-07T22:06:00.005-05:00

There are many things you could say about Nicolas Cage--loud, insane, unselective, brash, bird for hair--but safe is not one of them. He is never afraid to put himself out there, to commit fully to a character, and, especially in the case of Neil LaBute's The Wicker Man, look like a complete jerkwad. The Wicker Man is the story of police officer Edward Malus (Cage) who travels to a strange island of nature-obsessed pagan women in search of a missing girl. Malus's descent into madness is much like Cage's acting method: the more he commits, the more manic he becomes.

How do you even pour bees?

After a strange incident on the highway when he retrieves a little girl's doll, resulting in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, Malus receives a strange and impeccably calligraphed letter from old beau Willow Woodward (Kate Beahan), claiming her daughter is lost and on an island just off the coast of Washington called Summersisle. Malus wastes no time accepting the bizarre invitation from a girl who broke his heart, which might have something to do with the handfuls of painkillers he shoves down his throat on an hourly basis.

Cage once again steals the Declaration of Independence.

Malus comes across what you might expect from a quaint bucolic island in the Pacific Northwest: strange elderly women and mute men carrying a dripping bag which may or may not contain a shark. After enticing Malus to look into the bag, the contents give an unearthly snarl and he runs away, giving the audience no satisfaction or resolution to the bag saga.

It's a midget covered in bees. Mystery solved!

The women of the island are cold and off-putting to the phalliced stranger, and Malus feeds their already negative views of men by being dismissive, loud, rude, condescending, and malicious (Malice, Malus?). He chugs a fresh pint of mead from lesbian bartendress Sister Beech (Diane Delano), mansplains to everyone that he is the law, and then chases his old lover upstairs, presumably to bang her against a fireplace.

How is every woman on the island not jumping his bones right now?

His streak of confidence doesn't end there, as he disrupts Sister Rose's Feminist Theory class to call everyone little liars and yell at the teacher. I should point out there that all the women are acting extremely weird and hippie-like, which would raise the blood pressure of any normal American, chauvinist or not, but all this pales in comparison to his reign of manic terror in the final act.

"Emily DickenWHO? Whatever. You ever see Con Air?"

After a run-in with his his mortal enemy: bees (FEMALE bees no less), conditions on the island come to a fever pitch. Determined to find the little girl, Malus brandishes his firearm to anyone who disobeys him, flings pagan animal masks off the faces of little girls, comes across a woman with a bee beard, punches the lesbian, steals a bear suit, and makes a perilous attempt to rescue the little girl.

This woman may or may not exist and may or may not turn into bees.

It all comes to naught when the women reveal this was all part of an elaborate eight-year plot to get him to impregnate one of their cult members, lure him to the island under false pretenses, lie and act generally weird and creepy so that they may cripple, torture, and burn him to death as a ritualistic pagan sacrifice to save their honey harvest. Malus is, as you might expect, not pleased by this revelation, and goes to his death kicking, screaming, and cursing their names.

In his final act of defiance, Malus emits the longest and harshest belch of his entire life.

There are many ways to interpret The Wicker Man. Many people see this film and LaBute's work in general as misogynistic, since he retools the original 1973 film into a battle of the sexes. To call LaBute a sexist is to completely oversimplify what is a nuanced, variegated, and insane paranormal detective story. If LaBute hated women, he could have made Malus a lot more sympathetic than the character who appears on screen. Malus confirms every stereotype feminist have about men, and when you take his actions at face value (or in an out of context YouTube video) he is especially awful, punching and drop-kicking women left and right.

Malus has entered a world he does not understand. Summersisle is a society where he is no longer at the top of the food chain, and the more he learns about the place, the more it angers and confuses him. His final stand is a testament to his complete misunderstanding of their culture, and shows that in his heroic trek to this strange world, he learns that not all women need saving.

And yet, despite this seemingly pseudo-feminist message, I still find myself sympathizing with Malus. His violence toward women is only shocking in a world of female helplessness and moral high ground. If an all-male pagan island commune reacted with similar bizarre and cultish behavior, his violent rampage would have been heroic. Even when inserting our own perceptions of gender relations, the cult is definitely the less sympathetic of the two forces. They bear his child and lure him to an island because of a loophole that the sacrifice must be someone of their own blood.

The original theatrical ending shows Sisters Woodward and Honey (Leelee Sobieski) trolling for future male sacrifices, as a sort of pagan insurance policy. If they truly committed to these beliefs they would have sacrificed one of their own. Instead they seek out and deceive people who don't share their faith, spending many years and resources destroying their lives for the sake of a ritualistic technicality. At least Malus commits to his own beliefs of right and wrong, even when it's clear it will cost him his life.

And like Malus, Cage too dedicates himself entirely to the role, even when it's clear the director is placing a wicker basket on his head to pour bees on his face. That's commitment.

Arbitrary rating:

Three CageHeads out of two.

Quotes:

Edward Malus: What's in the bag? A shark or something?

Sister Rose: Will you tell us what man represents in his purest form?
Girls: Phallic symbol phallic symbol.

Malus: I'm a policeMAN. See my badge?

Malus: You little liars.

Malus: How'd she die?
Rose: She'll burn to death.
Malus: What? What did you just say?
Rose: Precisely what I meant to. She burned to death.

Sister Summersisle: Men are a very important part of our little colony. Breeding, you know.

Malus: Step away. From the bike.

Malus: KILLING ME WON'T BRING BACK YOUR GODDAMN HONEY!

Malus: OH NO NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAHHHH! THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAGHGHGHGHHH! AAAAAGHGHGHGHGHHGHGHGHGHHHH!

Steel (1997)

2011-06-27T20:18:00.008-05:00

In 1997, Shaquille O'Neal scuttled his (to that point) successful film career by starring in Steel, the comic book movie that really should not exist. It's a testament to DC Comics' total lack of diverse characters in important roles that they gave a movie to a character who had been a supporting Superman character with the exception of a forgettable series in the mid-90's. I mean imagine if Aztek the Ultimate Man was given a feature film, and you get an idea how insane this concept really is. And at least Aztek can boast being created by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar! But Shaq wanted to be a superhero, and apparently Steel was the only one available. This means DC passed over such deserving characters of color as Black Lightning, John Stewart (the other Green Lantern), and... I can't think of a third.

This opening titles sequence can be re-used for a PBS special on how Steel is made.

Fortunately, the writer and director spare us this completely forgettable character by jettisoning all but the most basic piece of his origin and inventing new bad guys for him to fight, as well as moving him from Metropolis to South Central. John Henry Irons (Shaq) is an army lieutenant weapons designer and giant who is bffs with sassy Susan "Sparky" Sparks (Annabeth Gish, from Mystic Pizza), another designer with, I assume, big dreams. The third member of their team is smarmy Nathaniel Burke (Judd Nelson), a man so villainous it's amazing he hadn't considered a political career. Burke tries to impress a Senator, presumably to get his foot in the door of Congress, but his reckless showboatery causes a ridiculous sonic accident that kills the Senator and leaves Sparky paralyzed.

Pull my finger is still popular among the paralyzed.

Irons leaves the military to go home to South Central, while the disgraced Burke also heads to LA to form a partnership with an evil arcade game seller/arms dealer. Maybe it's me, but the idea of a millionaire arcade game seller is maybe the most ridiculous thing in this film. We get like 15 minutes of Shaq trying to make a difference, including getting hit on by his old girl from the neighborhood, who is now a cop. But on the way to a meeting on gang violence, a gang blows up their car using Irons' weapons. Irons tries to stop the gang, but after a lengthy chase, they make like Kobe and leave him winded and nursing a hurt back.

Not content to knock-off Superman and Batman, Steel ups the ante by having a knock-off Die Hard cop.

After getting blown off by his former commanding officer, Irons realizes he's got to take the law into his own hands as only a 7'1" man can. First, he recruits the now wheelchair-bound Sparks from a slummy VA hospital in the dilapidated cesspool that is St. Louis, where he has to teach her to believe again. Mostly that involves carrying her wheelchair out of the hospital against her will. But he takes her to his secret junkyard crimelab, where he puts her in charge of R&D for his secret superhero project, financed by Shaq's uncle Shaft, I mean... Uncle Joe (Richard Roundtree). He finally gets his Steel outfit, and let me tell you, it looks tuhrrible.

"Bite my shiny magnetic metal ass!"

After that we get some Batman-rip-off scenes of Steel vs. the police, a showdown with mercenary and gravel-voice-having Kevin Grevioux, a very smart man and a very poor writer (he wrote Underworld and a dreadful version of the comic book New Warriors), and of course, a final confrontation with the Breakfast Club. Will Shaq rid South Central of Judd Nelson's evil? Will Sparky ever outfit her wheelchair with missile launchers? Tune in to Steel for the answers, true believers. Same Shaq time, same Shaq channel.

SPOILER: Sparky's chair does in fact shoot missiles.

Honestly, as a film, Steel is just awful. Shaq's not particularly talented as an actor, but he gets unfairly singled out here. Judd Nelson is equally awful and the villain is thinly written and uninteresting. The script is poor enough that it's just bad casting in both their cases as much as it is a case of simple bad performance. The set designs are bland, the music is atrocious. The film tries to be grounded in reality with its urban theme and boring police chases, yet the plot revolves around sonic superweapons smuggled into arcade games. Also, Shaq is just too big to have an alter ego. He gets positively ID'ed like 5 minutes after going out in public, and why not? I mean a giant weapons designer couldn't have anything to do with a giant superhero carrying experimental weapons. His secret ID makes Bruce Wayne look like a master of disguise. For one thing, Bruce Wayne isn't 7'6" and a noted designer of Batmobiles.

That said, it's still not quite silly enough to be successful camp, and the constant in-jokes to stuff like Shaft makes it clear they were going for "all ages fun!" and ended up with "lame for kids AND adults." I'd recommend Batman and Robin over this, because at least the set design was fun and most of the cast knew they were in a re-imagining of the Adam West Batman.

Arbitrary Rating:

A Ben Wallace free throw (one of the only players ever to be worse at this than Shaq)

Quotable Quotes

Lamont: That's your laser kid!

Neo-Nazi Thug: (about the Internet) Yeah, we can pick up all kinds of good crap. Not just porno.

Uncle Joe: I did the metal work! I especially like the Shaft!

Burke: Eat the hot dog, don't be one.

Martin: (about an arcade) This place is hip! I'ma own a spot like this one day!

Martin: (about a grenade) Up there! Throw it! (points to a small hole 10 feet in the air)
Steel: I never make these!

Space Jam (1996)

2011-06-21T22:14:00.005-05:00

Back in the 90s when basketball players could pretty much do anything, naturally this skill on the court translated to acting talent. The next obvious step is to act alongside wisecracking cartoon characters and Wayne Knight, thus Space Jam.

If this came out today Jordan would have had to resign.

Our tale begins in 1973 with a young Michael Jordan shooting hoops in the middle of the night as "I Believe I Can Fly," a song which doesn't exist yet, plays over the scene. We are reminded that Michael Jordan had dreams, ambition, and drive, in case we forgot. A quick 3 1/2 minute opening titles roll later and we're in to the meat of the story. In a galaxy far, far away is the alien amusement park Moron Mountain. When its owner (voiced by Danny DeVito) decides the park must be at least 87% loonier, he sends his diminutive minions to kidnap the Looney Tunes and place them into forced labor camps for fun and profit.

"Moron Mountain" considered an alternate title for Your Stupid Minds.

Bugs and the gang concoct a devious plan to trick the aliens by challenging them to a basketball game, due to the invaders' small stature. No one in toon land has ever played basketball before, begging the question, why basketball? Why not a rocket skate race? Or anvil lift? Or hell, why not a "being tall" competition?

How about a Carrot Eating Competition? You're clearly good at that, Bugs!

The aliens beat the toons at their own game by heading to earth (the only planet, as far as I know, that has basketball) to steal the talent of some of its greatest stars. Patrick Ewing's sweat magic disappears, Charles Barkley becomes turrhable, and Muggsy Bogues is "just another short guy." The aliens entrap their talent into a glowing basketball, and the players now stumble around the court shamed and scared. They're really the most tragic part of the film.

:-(

Desperate, the toons do some kidnapping of their own, lassoing Michael Jordan in the middle of a golf match with Bill Murray, personal assistant Stan (Wayne Knight), and Larry Bird. He whips the toons into shape in time for the big game. Luckily they already have some talent in Lola Bunny, the franchise's own hip Poochie last minute addition.

How is she independently good at basketball on a planet full of talentless maroons?

Bugs tricks his teammates into thinking water is some special potion, and they play wonderfully and win the game. The moral of the story? Fake juicing beats real juicing every time (if you're a cartoon character). Also Bill Murray is there.

Bill Murray (see above).

Space Jam is a movie so steeped in nostalgia I can barely remember it existing in the present. I only have vague glimpses of $80 Six Flags fanny packs and engraved limited edition McDonald's collectable mugs. I even craved a Quarter Pounder as I watched it! Now that's effective marketing!

This has nothing to do with the previous paragraph. I just find it funny.

Despite its dated faux cool extreme lameness, padded plot, and nearly nonsensical internal logic, there is a lot to enjoy. The computer effects are dated but the 2D animation is done with a lot of care. I found myself laughing a lot more than it really deserved, and there is some charm in what is essentially the biggest athlete in the world not only starring in such a film, but using it to poke fun at himself and career decisions. Also the basketball player cameos are pretty hilarious. Charles Barkley will always be funny no matter what he does.

Arbitrary rating:

1/2 off admission when you bring a can of Coke

Quotable quotes:

Player: That was a strikeout, Mike? That was a good looking strikeout. Real good!

Stan: Come on Michael it's game time! Get your Hanes on, lace up your Nikes, grab your Wheaties and your Gatorade and we'll pick up a Big Mac on the way to the ballpark!

Sylvester: Sufferin' succotash! They're MonStars!

Jordan: It's a man's game. And you can't play.
Bill Murray: What if I try really hard?

Murray: It's because I'm white, isn't it?
Jordan: No. Larry's white. So what?
Murray: No, Larry's not white. Larry's clear.

Stan: Let me help! I may not be tall… but I'm slow!

Bogues: At least you guys are still tall. I'm nothin' now! Just another short guy.

Charles Barkley: It was this girl, five-feet-nuthin'. Blocked my shot!
Psychiatrist: When did you first start having this dream?
Barkley: It wasn't a dream, it really happened!

Shawn Bradley: I've got other skills. I could go back and work on the farm. Or maybe... I could go back to the jungle and be a missionary again.

Clips:

Trailer.

Space Jam theme song.

The Air Up There (1994)

2011-06-13T21:08:00.023-05:00

The NBA Finals may be over already, but Slam Dunk Fun means no amount of embarrassing performances from LeBron James can kill our spirit. This week, we change gears from films that star famous b-ballers to focus on a random movie where Kevin Bacon plays basketball in Africa in between super-serious performances in A Few Good Men and The River Wild. Next week I promise you we'll be back to mocking athletes trying to act.

Spoiler alert: there are slam dunks and also fun.

Our film opens on Jimmy Dolan (Kevin Bacon), a St. Johns assistant coach trying to wow a prospective player. The large (white) player makes laughably outrageous demands, namely that the school give him a car, that he have a contract in writing that guarantees he starts as a freshman, and mentions his dealings with his "agent." Seriously, what? Doesn't this kid know booster clubs handle this, and you specifically can't get these deals in writing? The student's braggadocio is so out of control that he challenges the apparently famous assistant coach to a game of one on one, where the much smaller Dolan embarrasses the kid. The defeat is so humiliating that the blue chipper abandons going to St. Johns, presumably because Bobby Knight lets him win at pickup games.

I think we can trust the big fat guy with the gold watch who wears a shirt and tie for no reason!

The coach gives Dolan a dressing down for not being a team player as a coach, but the hot-head refuses to listen to this sagely advice, instead presumably learning it through a series of events and possibly a montage in the next 90 minutes.

Dolan confuses Africans with Vulcans.

Later that day, the coach makes a Phil Jackson-ish announcement that he's retiring next year. Dolan hits the bar during an educational film about a missionary school in Africa. He sees a giant African and remembers that Dikembe Mutombo and Hakeem Olajuwon are also from that continent, so naturally he should go there right away!

Playin' the Lord's Bingo!

We cut to Africa, where Dolan apparently took the express plane, and is now riding a bus. He is unable to get a bus to the tribal village, so he has to wander around the local town. He runs afoul of the local Kingpin, a gangster named Nyaga who trains his goons to play b-ball for no apparent reason. The kingpin thinks Dolan is here to recruit a man who is obviously in at least his late 20's, then becomes decidedly less friendly when he realizes Dolan didn't just show up here unannounced to sign one of his hired goons.

Kevin Bacon turns on the charm.

Dolan finally gets to the village and meets the giant young Saleh, but is disheartened to discover the kid has very little in the way of core basketball skills, but is slightly more heartened to discover that the kid has been messing with him, and, like all Africans, is automatically awesome at all non-water sports. Dolan promises Saleh he will live like a king: presumably that means he will have a huge amount of hype but then choke in any meaningful games. Dolan is told Saleh is the chief's son, because we're barely into Act 2 and there's no chance Saleh could easily just go to the school and the next 60 minutes is just him spearing the other team's mascot or something.

Dude's ears hang low. He should tie them in a knot (or a bow).

Dolan can't convince the chief, so he agrees to work with the tribeman to show he's serious. Fortunately, it's not like he's got to work a 12 hour shift at the nuclear plant, so he's able to get by with only a few hilarious setbacks. Dolan's help causes him to run afoul of Nyaga, causing him to ruin Saleh's sister's wedding. This of course leads to a final showdown on the b-ball court, where the bad corporate guys are the shirts and the noble savages (and Dolan) are the skins. If the bad guys win, and Dolan is forced to put up with whiny prima-donnas as an assistant at some other school, the village mining rights are sold, and puppies are killed indiscriminately. The good guys win, and Saleh comes to America, Jimmy Dolan is a head coach at St. John's, and the AIDS epidemic is curtailed. Just kidding, that last one is still a major problem that not even high stakes b-ball can solve.

Presumably Dolan died moments later in a tragic high fiving incident.

The movie is a reasonably entertaining, completely formulaic exercise. Kevin Bacon brings his usual performance, and the b-ball scenes are pretty well-done, although the scene where Nyaga stood in front of a green screen projecting his team looked pretty awful. But the guy playing Saleh is pretty freakishly tall, and the evil team seemed to have some real players, too. All in all I'd say the actual depiction of basketball wasn't half-bad, especially compared to the disasters you see in otherwise serious melodramas like American History X. On the other hand, it did end with a freeze frame of a high five while the music played "Higher and Higher." So there's room for improvement.

Arbitrary Rating:

2.237 out of 5.

Memorable Quotes:

Jimmy Dolan: Don't talk to me about places not worth shitting on! I'm from Buffalo!

Tribesman #1: I defend like a Buffalo!
Tribesman #2: You smell like a Buffalo!

Double Team (1997)

2011-06-07T22:00:00.005-05:00

There was a time in America when the basketball player was our nation's superhero. By the 1990s, the powers that be decided that if these titans could excel on the court, surely they could achieve greatness at everything else, be it acting, comedy, selling products, or rapping.

Of course superheroes need their villains, and Dennis Rodman epitomized the Jordan antithesis. His raucous on court persona often overshadowed his amazing defense, and would take every opportunity for the sake of victory.

In 1997, he punished his fans as much as his competitors by teaming up with Jean Claude Van Damme in the action/comedy/martial arts buddy action comedy Double Team. Directed by John Woo wannabe Hark Sui (Once Upon a Time in China 1, 2, 3, and 5), Double Team is a love story between super spy Jack Quinn (Van Damme), the woman he loves (Natacha Lindinger), himself (Van Damme) his unborn child he also loves (unnamed), and the goofy giant tattooed arms dealer Yaz (Rodman), whose eyes he looks into deeply in times of great stress.

Go pound it.

Quinn is brought out of spy retirement to take down international terrorist Stavros (Mickey Rourke) once and for all. For too long Stavros has done a lot of bad things, mostly unnamed, but he has a non-American name and lots of bombs. Quinn and his super team of elite spies confront Stavros in the second best place for a shootout: a carnival. Needless to say the sting takes an ugly turn, resulting in an intense firefight and multiple explosions. The maelstrom doesn't faze carnival attendees, however, who continue to partake in the attractions.

Truly a pre-9/11 world.

Quinn and Stavros immediately transition to the best place for an actual shootout: a maternity ward. Stavros cowardly sets off a bomb in front of a baby, which Quinn shields with his bulging back muscles, knocking him unconscious.

It's just you and me, baby.

Quinn's failure results in his decommissioning. In the spy world this means either death, or a spy retirement community known as "The Colony," an island among a tropical spy retirement archipelago.

Truly a fate worse than death.

When Quinn learns that Stavros has kidnapped his wife and unborn child, he concocts an elaborate plan to escape past the underwater lasers. I won't bore you with every single detail, but it does involve completely trashing his room during the training process, unbeknownst to his supposedly professional handlers.

The path to escape is littered with bathtubs.

Also cutting off his own fingerprint (apparently there was no rubber cement around).

Thumb/Off.

Quinn makes it beneath the supply boat, and the brave scuba guard shoves a bag over his head, a spy move known as the "double suffo-drown."

Hey dawg we heard you like drowning, so we put a bag over you underwater so you can drown while you drown.

Our hero finally makes it to Stavros with the help of Yaz, only to be caught in an elaborate trap, this one involving land mines and a tiger in the middle of the coliseum.

No caption necessary.

Quinn and Yaz double team Stavros, explode the tiger, and survive by shielding themselves behind a monolith of product placement.

Coke is the true hero.

"Dumb" does not begin to describe Double Team. It is a bloated hunk of nostalgia, an unnecessary product of a decade already overflowing with excessive stupidity. Rodman and Van Damme's moments together aren't so much scenes, as samplings of catchphrases disconnected from any possible reality, logic, charisma or purpose. Mickey Rourke acts circles around everyone simply by existing. Where is Rodman's trademark agility and spontaneity? He trips through every moment, resting on his Freak Flag laurels, and rarely does he ever say anything not expected of Dennis Rodman, or someone donning a Dennis Rodman persona.

And yet, Double Team is still fun. A carnival was an appropriate setpiece, since it maintains similar sideshow appeal. At no point was I expecting it to be any better than it was, and there is some honor in that.

Arbitrary Rating

One bloody thumb up.

Quotes

Quinn: Who does your hair, Siegfried or Roy?

Yaz: I may not have reindeer, but I have the best elves in the business.

Quinn: Offense gets the glory.
Yaz: But defense wins the game.

Female Spy: With this I can shoot the dick off a hummingbird.

Quinn: I thought I killed him in Tulsa (pronounced "TOO-sla.")
Goldsmythe: Apparently not well enough.

Yaz: You die, you get a full refund.

Yaz: You're crazier than my hairstylist!

Yaz: These monks have been collecting info on Rome for 500 years. The system has been really updated. CyberMonks.

Media

Trailer.

Rodman tearing it up on the court.

Suspiria (1977)

2011-05-31T21:45:00.004-05:00

Reviewer's note: Originally I was going to review The Cat O' Nine Tails, Argento's second film, however I rented the film through Netflix, which unfortunately has chosen to do business with independent distributor Westlake Entertainment. The version of CONT that I saw was sub-DVD quality: it looked like someone had copied an old VHS recording onto a DVD. It was also the American cut, so it was nearly 30 minutes shorter than the restored Anchor Bay release. Because my copy was missing entire scenes and was poorly edited to get an American release in the early 70's, I am not reviewing the movie in the form I saw it in. If you rent any of the films mentioned on this month's YSM reviews on Netflix, be warned that you may be getting a vastly inferior quality DVD.

Argento month is brought to you by the human eye.

Suspiria is such a success that it hardly qualifies as camp filmmaking to look at the recognition its received in the past 30 years. The Village Voice named it the #100 movie of the past century, it regularly appears as a token Italian entry on "best horror" lists, and even got referenced in a subplot in an episode of The Office this season. But while the movie is an incredibly creepy supernatural success story, it still fits solidly in the camp-friendly world of Argento's oeuvre. From the creepy children to the emotionally stunted female protagonist to Argento's appearance as a black-gloved figure, it's everything we've come to know and love from the filmmaker.

Argento protagonists are definitely a type.

Our story begins as young dancer Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) makes her way to a school in Germany on a stormy night. Outside the incredibly creepy school, she sees a near-hysteric girl shouting something that's obscured by the thunder. We follow this freaked out newcomer as she stays the night at a friend's apartment. But before we understand exactly what she's so scared of, she's brutally murdered in a way that involves some serious window-smashing.

Is it too late to call this movie "Deep Red 2"?

Suzy comes to school and meets the staff, including the incredibly stern Miss Tanner and the interim head of the school Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett, a veteran actress who had been appearing in films for 60 years). Suzy meets the other girls, including the unpopular Sara (Stefania Casini), and moves into a flat with an older girl. She rejects an offer from the staff to move into a recently opened up room, but after a bizarre run-in with the stern-faced cook and Blanc's incredibly creepy nephew, Suzy feels out of sorts as she's dancing, culminating in her passing out, hemorrhaging blood.

I've got a good feeling about that kid!

Suzy wakes up in the dorm that had been offered earlier, and finds her stuff has been moved into the room. She feels fine and learns a little about the school's bizarre hierarchy from Sara, when maggots randomly start falling from the ceiling. This forces all the girls to sleep in the gym. The staff volunteers to spend the night sleeping on cots too, but Sara's not sure of their motives.

No jokes: this is just excellent cinematography in action.

What follows is a paranormal trip down the rabbit-hole: two more characters are gruesomely murdered, a bat gets punched, and Suzy must discover the school's secret, with a little help from a paranormal psychologist played by Udo Kier.

This isn't a spoiler: it's in the trailer!

Honestly I don't have that much to say about the plot. It's not reinventing the wheel from a narrative perspective, but Argento movies aren't great because of their plots. Argento is far ahead of his time from a cinematic point of view. The lingering creepiness and unnerving quality of the dance academy calls to mind The Shining, a film that was released three years later and with a far larger budget. Suspiria sucks the viewer into this bizarre, terrifying universe, full of bright colors, creepy staff members, and terrifying children.

Udo Kier appearance!

The film holds the distinction of being the last film to be colored in the old "technicolor" style. Argento takes advantage of this by having a number of impossibly saturated colors, particularly reds, that make the whole film feel like a bad trip. The Goblin score perfectly fits the unnerving narrative, and the main theme is incredibly catchy. It's stylish, it's scary, and it does so while retaining all of the tropes we associate with our favorite creepy Hitchcock!

Memorable Quotes:

Psychiatrist (Udo Kier): Bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.

Blind Man: I heard you! I'm not deaf! Get it?! Not deaf!

Pat Hingle: Secret ......................... Iris!

Argento Trademarks:

Black gloves? Yes! Look for them in the scene where Sara climbs through a window!

Goblin? Yes! It's Argento's second collaboration with the band, and maybe their most memorable theme.

Cruelty to animals? A dog is driven to madness, and a bat is squashed with a stool.

Window-related death? Yes, in incredibly ornate fashion.

Creepy children? Yes, the only child in the film.

Nepotism? Barely! Daria Nicolodi appears at the airport, but her biggest contribution is a screenwriting credit, as the film is at least in part inspired by Daria's grandmother, who fled a dance academy when she learned it was run by witches. Daria also voices an important character late in the film.

Overall Argento-ness? 6/6. Any more Argento-ey and it would have an angel tattoo on its groin.

Phenomena (1985)

2011-05-23T21:56:00.002-05:00

Dario Argento has essentially made three types of films throughout his career: 1. Giallo, gory detective story, often involving a foreigner coming to Rome and investigating a murder (Deep Red, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Tenebrae); 2. Supernatural Thriller, such as the Three Mothers films, where an unwitting (often female) protagonist falls victim to strange unworldly or demonic influences (Inferno, Suspiria); or 3. Some combination of the two.

1985's Phenomena falls into this third category. American schoolgirl Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly) goes to Switzerland to an all girls' boarding school, which is beset by a series of murders of girls her age. Using her supernatural ability to communicate with insects, Jennifer takes it upon herself to investigate the murders herself, only to fall into the murderer's trap.

Even at 14, Jennifer Connelly's eyebrows were amazing.

The killer's first on-screen victim is young Vera, played by Argento's daughter Fiore, in his ongoing pattern of victimizing family members on screen. After missing the bus, she wanders into an abandoned house, only to be stabbed through the throat and pushed through a window.

This could be a shot from any Argento film.

Soon after, we see Jennifer in her new girls' school doing what normal girls do: playing with bugs, eating baby food, sleep walking, sleep witnessing a murder, sleep getting picked up by some weird Swiss guys, and sleep following a chimpanzee home.

Dario Argento's Diddy Kong Racing.

The chimp guides Jennifer to the home of entomologist John McGregor (Donald Pleasance) who strikes up a friendship with the young girl due to their common interest in disgusting things like flies that eat dead people and primates with large bulbous asses.

Back at the girls' school, the headmistress (Dalila Di Lazzaro) reacts reasonably to Jennifer's sleep walking by hooking her into an neural imager and implying she's a schizophrenic epileptic drug user. Jennifer is taken aback by these accusations, which increases the headmistress's steely resolve to get the young girl committed to an insane asylum as soon as possible.

"She flinched when we stuck this needle in her head! She must be deranged!"

Jennifer goes back to Professor McGregor's home since he's the only person in the country who doesn't hate her for no reason. McGregor encourages her to use her strange gift to track down the murderer, using his sarcophagus fly to find the bodies. In Argento's world, sending a child to root out a vicious killer with zero police involvement is not only acceptable, but an admirable venture.

This bee is bringing his "bee" game.

Back at the school, the headmistress foments hatred against Jennifer amongst the other girls in an attempt to push her to insanity or some sort of eating disorder. The girls relentlessly pick on Jennifer until she is rescued by her insect brethren. When the headmistress sends off for the booby hatch, Jennifer escapes and tries to fly home.

Girls, are we trying to bully her to suicide or endanger the entire school in the event of fire? Use your head.

The final 15 minutes feature set-piece after surreal set-piece including but not limited to a creepy house, covered mirrors, deformed child, attempted drugging (no chloroform though), a body pit, lake fire, decapitation, and chimp-related disfigurement.

This will not end well.

Many die hard Argento fans consider Phenomena one of his weaker films, while Argento himself has defiantly declared it his favorite. I tend to side with Argento in that Phenomena is probably his most Argento-y film to date. Where Opera took his stylistic embellishments and elaborate camera work to its most extreme, Phenomena is an amalgamation of all his most prevalent themes: amateur detective, grisly murders, a young female protagonist, pointless bullying and objectification, supernatural abilities, fish out of water, and animal participation.

Some may scoff at the pure unfettered absurdity of the drawn out conclusion, but it is not far off from most Argento endings, simply longer and more elaborate. Argento's films aren't exactly "scary" in a traditional sense; more creepy with intense, uncomfortable scenes of murder and mutilation. The ending features one shock after another, both as a means of overwhelming the audience into visual submission, and satisfying horror fans with its bombastic nature.

Quotable Quotes:

Jennifer: He won't hurt me. Insects never hurt me. I love them.

Jennifer: I am not schizophrenic, epileptic, or stoned!

Headmistress: She's not normal. She's diabolic! The Bible also refers to the devil as Beelzebub, which means "Lord of the Flies." Look at her, the Lady of the Flies!

Argento Trademarks:

Black gloves? Yes!

Goblin? Yes! The soundtrack features two former Goblin members Claudio Simonetti and Fabio Pignatelli, as well as more inappropriate butt-rock from Motörhead and Iron Maiden.

Cruelty to animals? The killer throws a chimp off a moving car, and Daria Nicolodi swats at a bee. Is that good enough?

Window-related death? Yes! Two!

Creepy children? Too many to count (including the protagonist).

Nepotism? Yes! His daughter Fiore and (soon to be ex-)lover Daria Nicolodi.

Overall Argento-ness? 8/6. I added double for the window death and nepotism.

Tenebrae (1982)

2011-05-18T09:56:00.001-05:00

Last time I reviewed Inferno, the supernatural follow-up to Suspiria. After Inferno, Argento returned to true Giallo, creating Tenebrae, perhaps his best contribution to the form. Not only does it work as a tightly plotted, gory mystery, Tenebrae is also an exercise in narrative folding, serving as a sort of commentary on Argento himself and his relationship to his audience.

Spoiler alert: a girl gets her throat slit.

The film starts with a pair of black gloves burning pages of a book as they read a passage, apparently from the novel, about the revolutionary freedom a murderer feels. We're then introduced to Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosca), an American mystery writer whose latest work is due to debut in Italy. To promote the novel, he takes a trip to Rome, although he is the target for an unseen figure destroying something in his luggage. Meanwhile in Rome, a sexy shoplifter tries to steal Neal's new book, but gets caught and kicked out of the store. She is attacked by an amorous homeless man, but escapes back to her apartment. Unfortunately for her, she was apparently followed by a different creepster, as her throat is slit and crumpled pages of the book she tried to steal are forced into her mouth. The killer then takes photographs of the murdered woman, presumably for a ghoulish scrapbook.

Lots of people read books while wearing black gloves.

Neal arrives in Rome and is immediately approached by the police, who wonder if he has any insights as far as the bizarre murder that happened during his flight. Neal has no leads, but when he receives a letter from the killer at his apartment, he agrees to work with the police. He also meets with his assistant, Anne (Daria Nicolodi), and continues to be harassed by an unseen figure: both Peter and Anne believe his mentally unstable ex-wife Jane has followed him to Rome.

Maybe our killer is just an heroic vigilante who punishes shoplifters?

The next day, Neal meets the press, and is called a misogynist because women in his books tend to die. He's also praised by a man with a really creepy mustache, who he's due to meet with later.

Later, we see the female reporter who called Neal a misogynist back at her apartment, where she is insulted by her chesty lesbian lover. This leads to a scene that is monumental in its excess, as a crane shot goes over and around the entire apartment before tracking the killer as he murders the mean lesbian. The reporter is also killed in a way that is spoiled by the film's cover.

"Ah, but what is 'abnormal'?"

After meeting with the inspector and his female partner, Neal decides to solve the mystery himself and heads to the creepy reporter's home. He and a young accomplice stake-out the man's backyard. We see a figure speak with the reporter briefly, but a moment later, the reporter is murdered by an axe. The young assistant is sure he saw something important, but can't quite put the pieces together.

No busty Italian can stand between "POO" and his high score.

I don't want to go too much further into the plot because Tenebrae's mystery is very good, and I don't want to ruin it for first-time viewers. But I will say the movie is worth a second viewing, if only to see how well the pieces fit once we know the result.

Who says post-modern art doesn't have a point?

The movie has a few frustrating scenes, a result of Argento trying to one-up previous murder set-pieces, so they occasionally go on far too long and feature tertiary characters as they are pursued by homeless people or terrifyingly focused dogs. But if you can get past that, this has not only a great story, it has a lot of meaning within it.

In hindsight, this was a really dumb thing to do.

Peter Neal's status as an outsider (and an American) visiting Italy parallels Deep Red, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and countless other stories where a foreigner visits a new location and becomes embroiled in a murder mystery. But unlike these other works, Neal's character functions both as an audience stand-in and a stand-in for Argento. Neal is a writer of the sort of movies Argento makes, and defends himself from critics that accuse him of misogyny and excessive violence. This doubling also becomes important in the film's final scenes.

The moral is: Don't mess with dogs or you'll be horribly murdered somehow.

Something else worth talking about is the incredible sets and set-ups used throughout the film. Whereas Deep Red created a creepy vibe by setting much of the action in and around an old turn of the century house, Tenebrae exists in a world full of "post-modern" architecture, including dangerously sharp sculptures.

Argento also takes us on a sort of voyeuristic tour of depravity: like many of his films, we get references to cross-dressing, homosexuality, and other unusual genderized roles. This might not seem as revolutionary today, but in 1982 it was still a major taboo that Argento's films regularly showcased. Here, a major story point involves a violent sexual encounter where a young man is assaulted and humiliated by a woman. We see the scene as a flashback, but its final meaning remains hidden until the end.

Like his other Giallos, Argento focuses on a theme of impaired vision. The inspector laments that he can never solve mystery novels, trained as he is to go with the most likely scenario. While he's able to predict the mystery in Neal's new book, he isn't able to discover what's really going on until he's too late.

The "seeing" of something important without context is also explored as Neal's assistant tries to remember what he saw and heard before he witnessed a murder. This is extremely similar to the device used in Deep Red and several other Argento films: the truth is shown the first time, but so fast or so obscured that it's not until later that we can ascribe meaning to it. What I like about this style of filmmaking is that if it doesn't exactly play fair, it at least gives the appearance of playing fair. All the pieces to solve the mystery are given to the audience extremely early, but without context these clues don't become important until later on.

Arbitrary Rating:

5 violent murders out of 5.

Memorable Quotes:

[First lines] Narrator: "The impulse had become irresistible. There was only one answer to the fury that tortured him. And so he committed his first act of murder. He had broken the most deep-rooted taboo, and found not guilt, not anxiety or fear, but freedom. Any humiliation which stood in his way could be swept aside by the simple act of annihilation. Murder.

Peter Neal: I've been trying to build a plot the same way you have. I've tried to figure it out, but, I have this hunch that something is missing, a tiny piece of the jigsaw. Somebody who should be dead is alive, or somebody who should be alive is already dead.
Detective: Explain that.
Peter Neal: You know, there's a sentence in a Conan Doyle book: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Argento Trademarks:

Black gloves? Yes, in the opening scene no less!

Goblin? Yes! The band even re-formed at Argento's urging!

Cruelty to animals? Barely! A girl bats at a barking dog with a stick. She is later hunted down by said dog.

Window related death? A strangled girl crashes her head through a window. A door is also important in a death late in the film.

Creepy children? Not really, although maybe in the flashback?

Nepotism? Daria Nicolodi gets a major part, and is one of a very select few to even make it to the final scene.

Overall Argento-ness? 5/6. Only Suspiria can top it!

Stand-out Scene:

Opera (1987)

2011-05-13T18:28:00.001-05:00

Dario Argento is not a subtle filmmaker. His most famous films--Deep Red, Suspiria, and Tenebre, to name a few--feature a bombastic color palette and ludicrously elaborate death scenes, and by the late 80s he had attained a reputation as a director of gluttonous horror excess.

1987's Opera is both an admission of and response to these excesses. Argento chooses to wrap his indulgences in the equally lush framework of Verdi's operatic adaptation of Macbeth. He tones down the narrative twists and turns and instead opts for visual extremes; the camera swoops around the elaborate opera set pieces and gruesome murder scenes like the ravens of the stage performance. He dares the audience to look away, and mocks their squeamishness by portraying the most extreme of voyeuristic crescendo: taping needles to his protagonist's eyes and forcing her to witnesses extreme visions of violence performed by a masked killer.

Quoth the raven, 'murder more.'

After the opera's prima donna star storms out of a rehearsal and is hit by a car, understudy Betty (Cristina Marsillach, with a striking resemblance to Katie Holmes) must fill in and portray Lady Macbeth in the singer's first major role. Despite her nervousness and a falling stagelight disrupting the performance, Betty hits it out of the park, and celebrates with an awkward lovemaking session with stage manager Stefano (William McNamara).

Variety declares: "Betty boffo in bombastic b.o. busting MacBee."

The sex becomes even more awkward when a masked killer breaks into Stefano's ornate mansion-like apartment, ties Betty to a post, and forces her eyes open with razor-sharp needles. After murdering Stefano, the killer lets her go and she stumbles into the rain-soaked Italian street (I presume the film takes place in Rome, or some other Italian city where opera is shown live on television) to anonymously call the police and go about her business as usual.

This is how I get my friends to watch Argento.

She is picked up by the opera's director Marco (Ian Charleson). He is unaffected by her gruesome tale, and agrees with her very Italian distrust of the police and overall sloppy handling of the situation. They both attribute these hiccups to the cursed reputation of the opera, in no way helped by their repeatedly uttering its name in the theater when discussing the curse.

She further exacerbates her danger by stumbling around post-murder, more than eager to serve as recurrent spectator to the killer's systematic acts of brutality. She is again tied up and forced to witness the murder of the wardrobe mistress, and allows an unidentified police officer to roam around her apartment at will, as the killer blasts a bullet through the peephole, killing her agent Mira (Daria Nicolodi).

Why you should always tip your pizza man.

Marco and Betty finally hatch an actual plan to catch the killer (without the police), by continuing Macbeth's regular performance under the assumption that the killer will attend. Halfway through, Marco will release the play's conspiracy of vengeful ravens (again, without police involvement) to seek out and blind the killer.

Have you picked up on the eye theme?

Naturally the plan works. The ravens find the killer and rip out his eyeball in front of the entire audience. Marco and Betty celebrate their victory in her unlocked dressing room, only to have the killer drop in and resume his spree, minus depth perception. He manages to tie Betty up again, to then be consumed by a fire he set moments earlier (or did he?).

Marco and Betty try to forget the entire affair in the Swiss Alps, only to learn that the killer faked his own death, using a mannequin in place of his own body (did the coroner have such a backlog of autopsies to perform that he couldn't cursorily tell the difference between a human corpse and a smoldering pile of hollow plastic?). Will Betty fall victim to another of the killer's voracious murders? You'll just have to watch it to find out!

Ruuunnn toooooo theee hiiiilllllsss. Runnn fooorrr youuurrr liiiiivvveesss.

Argento's musical choices are predictably sporadic. Opera jumps from melodic arias to instrumental score to Iron-Maiden-inspired 80s speed metal. The effect jarringly contrasts the beauty of the opera with the brutality of the killings. Though not as fun as Goblin's music, the soundtrack still serves Argento's intention to create a disruptive dissonance between setup and payoff.

Marco is a pitch-perfect stand in for Argento himself. Critics trash horror film director Marco's operatic adaptation, and he is often perceived as a depraved sadist who portrays violence to satisfy his perverted fascination with it. Police Inspector Santini (Urbano Barberini) consults Marco on the murders, claiming that his films would make him an expert on the subject. Marco reminds him not to confuse movies with real life, as I'm sure Argento would agree. Argento's violence is merely a means to an end; a way for the director to flesh out the audience's deepest fears. By confronting our fears head on, as Betty is forced to with her needled eyeballs, we may better understand them.

While Argento has worked frequently with camera movement in his previous films (Tenebre immediately comes to mind), in Opera the camera swoops and tilts, pitches and pans. Rarely is the frame ever completely stationary, and most shots are incredibly long and dynamically elaborate. Where he once made several quick cuts in the murder scenes of Deep Red, Opera's camera lingers on each stab and slice.

After seeing the sloppy execution of last week's Inferno, Opera is a comforting return to form. Though Argento never really improves as a director throughout the decades, his greatness shines when he is given the proper funds and cinematographer to bring his vision to life. A co-screenwriter also helps.

Quotable Quotes:

Stefano: One of the stagehands died.
Betty: What?
Stefano: Yeah it's pretty weird. Leave your costume there. Marco said it needs a few alterations.

Killer: Take a good look. If you'll try to close your eyes, you'll tear them apart, so you'll just have to watch everything.

Marco: Trouble in love?
Betty: Love? Love? Whenever a woman has a problem, men always presume it's love.
Marco: Well you sopranos are famous for, um...
Betty: Whoring around?

Opera Review: "Doubts regarding the direction. Advice to director: go back to horror films. Forget opera."

Argento Trademarks:

Black Gloves? Yes!

Goblin? No, but plenty of inappropriate butt-rock.

Cruelty To Animals? Yes, violence performed upon and by ravens.

Window-Related Death? Does being shot through a peephole count?

Creepy Child? Yes, the little girl who crawls through the vents of Betty's apartment building.

Overall Argento-ness? 4/5. Molto bene.

Inferno (1980)

2011-05-02T22:05:00.022-05:00

In my previous review of Deep Red, I introduced Argento as the creepy Italian Brian De Palma. The more Argento I watch, the more this statement turns out to be exactly correct. Also like De Palma, I really like some of Argento's work, while some of it I just find incredibly frustrating and poorly done. Even at his best Argento's plots are so reliant on visuals that they sometimes make little sense, at his worst the viewer is left completely baffled. Nowhere is this frustrating conflict between talented visual storytelling and incompetent plot better represented than Inferno.

On the plus side, it does live up to its name.

In a narration-heavy prologue we're told about three witches with vast power that reside in Rome, New York, and some school in Germany (a reference to Suspiria, arguably Argento's best film). The witches had fancy buildings built for them, and the reader of the book where this exposition is coming from has reason to believe she's currently renting a flat in one of these evil dwellings.

This girl goes exploring in her building's basement, when she drops her keys and they fall through a crack in the floor. Turns out under a section of the basement is an entire room flooded with surprisingly clear water. The girl dives in, finding the room to be unusually deep, with her keys sitting a portrait reading "Tenebraum." Somehow her diving into the room causes a rotted corpse to get released, where it sort of nudges the girl and freaks her out, though she still manages to reach the surface and move on with her day as though something incredibly bizarre didn't just happen. It's just the way emotionally stunted Argento protagonists act, okay? This girl is downright well-adjusted compared to the protagonist from Opera.

Just another boring day in music class.

Next we cut to Italy, which is enough to make me wonder why we're even bothering with a pretense of setting this movie in New York, since it's obviously filmed in Italy and features a cast of Italians. The girl's brother Mark, a bland music major whose most defining attribute is having a mustache, notes that he has a letter from his sister. Instead of reading it, he just leaves it in class after he gets distracted by a good-looking and almost assuredly evil chick checking him out.

His friend Sara reads the letter since it's just sitting there, and she's so freaked out about the sister's secret flooded ballroom corpse adventures that she immediately goes to her local library to read up on these Three Mothers. After being stalked for a few minutes she finally gets out of the library where she meets up with the guy that played the drunk guy in Deep Red, and the two of them go back to her place. Unfortunately both are gruesomely murdered by an unseen figure. Mark shows up and finds the corpses and his sister's letter. On the way out from the crime scene, the same girl from the school is staring at him from a taxicab, just in case someone watching this didn't put together that this girl was bad news.

If my apartment complex had an unexplained body of water in its basement,
I don't think I'd swim in it under any circumstances.

Mark's sister explores some more, only to be guillotined by a window after wandering around aimlessly and making zero progress on the plot.

After Mark's sister goes missing, Mark shows up at her place to... I don't know? I don't think he has any plan or any personal reason for going to New York other than he thinks his sister's cracking up and then when he gets to New York she's already gone missing. He's the protagonist by default even though we know nothing about him except he has a mustache and had a weird sister.

Arriving at his sister's place, he meets the creepy residents, including an old mute quadriplegic and his spooky nurse, a crooked caretaker, an antique dealer who hates cats, and a countess.

The countess is played by Daria Nicolodi, Argento's long-time collaborator and mother of their crazy child Asia Argento, who thankfully saves us the embarrassment of challenging anyone to an arm wrestling match. I've found that my resentment towards Nicolodi as an actress is directly proportional to how much screen-time she gets before she's gruesomely murdered. In Deep Red, where she's on screen all the time and is never murdered, she gets on my every nerve, but when she's introduced as a minor character in the second act who will almost assuredly be murdered, I'm fine with her.

No arm wrestling contests this time.

The Countess and Mark investigate his sister's disappearance by exploring a hidden passage in the building, but Mark just falls over suddenly for no reason. Basically he has a witch-induced heart attack. That's not fair OR interesting to watch. The Countess tries to help but is chased by a masked figure and then is eventually attacked by about a dozen cats (?) before being finished off by the cloaked figure. Seriously the movie really started losing me as I still had no idea what was going on and neither did any of the protagonists. Suspiria worked because it was a mystery that the protagonist was constantly trying to discover. In this film, the witch is just killing people for no apparent reason because otherwise they might figure out what on earth is going on. It might make sense as a strategy but it doesn't make for a very watchable movie.

Somebody off-camera has a cat launcher.

I don't want to get too much more into the plot but there's one scene so absolutely bizarre that I have to comment on it. The crippled antique dealer, without any knowledge of the cats' role in the countess' murder, puts all the cats in a burlap sack, limps out to the middle of a stream leading into the sewers, then tries to drown the cats by tossing the bag into the stream, but falls in trying to nudge the bag under water, whereupon he's attacked by rats. After screaming for help, a hot dog vendor hears him and comes running across the park only to STAB HIM IN THE NECK FOR NO REASON. It was the hot dog guy all along! In a movie that doesn't make much sense this scene raises the bar by being completely unnecessary to further the plot in addition to being completely incomprehensible. I don't understand the actions of any character in this scene, including the rats. I guess the witch is subtly controlling at least one of these parties? Obviously not crippled guy, since he's killing the evil cats, but he doesn't even know they're evil!

While Suspiria gained wide release and attention in the US, Inferno was limited in release and generally disliked by critics, which inevitably caused it to have something of a cult following of fans who apparently decided Suspiria was a movie only posers liked while real fans liked Inferno. This is one of those instances where the critics were right the first time: Inferno's just not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.

They are never gonna lease this room.

The death scenes, while not terrible, lack the grotesque imagination seen in Deep Red or Suspiria. The music is standard stuff as Goblin wouldn't work with Argento again until 1982's Tenebre. The music might have been fine by itself but it's incompetently used from scene to scene, sucking out tension rather than adding to it because it never, ever lets up.

The setting of New York makes no sense at all and it just adds to the camp value. Why would Argento set a film in a place he's a) not from and b) seems to know nothing about? It would be like me making a movie set in Florence and then filming it entirely in West Texas and peopled entirely with Texans phonetically reading Italian.

Since so much of the plot revolves around one specific apartment building, we get almost exclusively interior locations that lack the psychedelic colors of Suspiria, and just end up looking dull. The plot is incredibly dumb but it hardly seems fair to criticize that since even the best Argento is going to have a dumb plot if you're not actually watching it, but since it's visually dull in addition to being dumb there are times when I just tuned out entirely.

Apologists of the film say that this is a good thing because it is surreal and encourages thought, but most of my thoughts were along the lines of wondering how bored I was or why I should care about beard guy or Italian girl or any of them. It does have a few cool shots, but so much of it takes place in this poorly lit building to people you know nothing about. Also, the lighting just looks really amateurish to the point where it's hard to tell what's going on in a number of scenes.

In short, if you are a big Argento fan and love his peculiar blend of camp, difficult to follow plots, and gruesome murders, Inferno is worth a look. Maybe you'll get sucked into it more than I was. But if you've never seen an Argento movie, do not start with this one. Watch Suspiria first, and if your reaction was "man, this movie rocks, except it's too colorful and makes too much sense and I wish the music was worse," move on to Inferno.

Arbitrary Rating:

2 bags full of cats out of 5

Memorable Quotes:

Sara: Have you heard of "The Three Sisters?"
Carlo: You mean those black singers?

Mark (about Sara): She writes poetry.
Nurse: A past-time especially suited for women.

Argento Trademarks:

Black Gloves? No, but Argento does put on a pair of monster hands.

Goblin? No.

Cruely to Animals? Yes, specifically, cat-throwing and cat-drowning. Live ants are sprayed with bug spray.

Window-related death? Yes, by guillotine.

Overall Argento-ness? A meager 2/4. No wonder I don't like it.

Over the Top (1987)

2011-04-24T19:11:00.018-05:00

By 1987, Hollywood was cranking out roughly 7.3 movies about boxing every year, with Stallone's Rocky sequels serving as a prototype for the brainless summer action sequel 25 years before that was standard practice. Stallone therefore ventured forth to bring another underdog story from a sport nobody cares that much about home to middle America: he came back with competitive arm wrestling. Because what could be more cinematic than watching a grown man make a pained expression while standing perfectly still?

I feel like this sums up the movie pretty well: freakish arm, truck crash, hawk decal.

Even though we're promised a movie about competitive arm wrestling, we inexplicably begin with a montage of Stallone washing down his truck and a military school graduation. We eventually learn that Lincoln Hawk (Stallone) (or is it Lincoln Hawks?) is an absentee father who hasn't seen his son (David Mendenhall) in... a long time. The child's mother (Susan Blakely) instructs Hawk to pick up his son and take him to the hospital where she is having a major operation for... something.

Young Hawk isn't impressed by his trucker father and tries to run away, then lectures Hawk on the dangers of cholesterol poisoning. Because that is a thing 12 year olds in military school totally care about. At a truck stop, Hawk the Younger witnesses his father win an arm wrestling contest against a random angry man who insisted on challenging Hawk while he tried to poison himself by cholesterol in peace. Young Hawk calls his father a "hustler" for accepting another person's challenge, then beating them. The two bond when, the next day, Hawk insults a 15-year-old hooligan playing pinball at a truck stop arcade so that his son will have to arm wrestle said hooligan. Young Hawk is able to defeat the larger boy thanks to a pep talk about how he is spoiled and needs to believe in himself.

When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way!

Meanwhile, Hawk's father in law, Jason Cutler (Robert Loggia), is so opposed to father-son bonding that he contracts his henchmen to go and kidnap his grandson for him. The goons manage to grab the son and take him for about a half mile before Hawk crashes his rig into their car. The failed kidnapping attempt is never brought up later when the rich old man threatens to unleash his lawyers on Hawk if he doesn't relinquish his custody.

Look, Optimus Prime thinks he's people!

The sullen Hawk gives up his son in order to follow his dream: he sells his rig and uses the proceeds to bet on himself in the big arm wrestling tournament. Meanwhile, Little Hawk finds a cache of letters, birthday cards, and uncashed checks that prove that his father always did love him and that his grandfather is a mean old man. The twelve year old steals a car, then purchases airline tickets, then gets to Las Vegas in a testament to how lazy airline security was 25 years ago. Seriously did this 12 year old in 1987 have a credit card or did he just carry wads of twenty dollar bills around?

Stallone month constantly reminds you to drink more Pepsi.

At this point the movie bizarrely turns into a cinema verite arm wrestling show, complete with colorful wacky characters and promos delivered directly to the camera. Hawk is pretty much the least interesting guy in this competition: the most colorful thing about him is he turns his hat around and makes a face when he gets "in the zone." We finally get a big showdown where Hawk has to use his right arm against his arch-rival Bull and his other arch-rival his father-in-law, not necessarily in that order. Will Hawk and Son reunite? Will Hawk be able to win the contest and his son's love? Will the 15 year old from the arcade ever get his re-match? To find out, you'll have to watch the movie.

"You're my son and I believe in you! But you're also weak and
whine a lot and look like you're going to cry when someone
beats you at arm wrestling." -Father of the Year Lincoln Hawk

All in all, this movie is one of the lows in a career that has more valleys than peaks: it's about a sport that's visually boring and nobody over 11 cares about, features a maudlin plot and an annoying child actor, and Stallone is as boring and terrible as he always is. In my Demolition Man review I mentioned that Wesley Snipes was the reason to watch: here, no villain has significant screen time and the two antagonists are an evil rich guy and a big strong guy who mostly just growls. Neither provide much in the way of an entertaining diversion from a whiny brat child or Stallone's mumbling. With a 93 minute run-time, the movie is in such a colossal hurry we never figure out why exactly Stallone abandoned his infant son, something that ordinarily is the kind of thing you should probably explain to your son when he asks about it.

I am pretty sure that is a shaved bear.

The film also splits its energies so awkwardly between arm wrestling and father/son bonding that neither element has much of an arc. Seriously it made me nostalgic for JCVD's Kumite tournament way back in Bloodsport, where the opposing competitors had enough personality that I knew who they were . Also, since it was martial arts, all those guys had distinct styles and weren't a bunch of almost identical "burly white man with beard and huge biceps." All of the arm wrestling contests are so dull and brief they are about as engrossing as watching someone play Battleship for 30 seconds at a time while desperately trying not to crap themselves.

Also like Battleship, Over the Top is simply too manly for women to appreciate.

Memorable Quotes:

Bull Hurley: Being number one is everything. There is no second place. Second sucks.

Bull Hurley: What are you doing with that guy?
Michael Cutler: He's my father.
Bull Hurley: Too bad.

"Mad Dog" Madison: I'm not so enthused about people coming up and patting me on the back saying "you're the best". I don't need people to do that to me. If I win, its because I wanted to be the best one time in my life.

Pinball boy: Kid, if I couldn't beat you, I'd KILL MYSELF.

Lincoln Hawk: What I do is, I try to take my hat, and I just try to turn it around, and it's like a switch that goes on. And when the switch goes on, I feel like another person, I feel like a, I don't know, like one of these (gestures to truck). Like a machine.

The Drinking Game:

Drink every time someone shouts "Hawk!" Chug every time they say "Hawks!" This happens way more than it should:

The Expendables (2010)

2011-04-18T23:01:00.005-05:00

After Stallone touted the virtues of American jingoism, violent conflict resolution, and arm wrestling, Stallone entered the 2000s fresh out of ideas. Rather than challenge himself as an actor, writer and director, he instead rehashed some of his most popular characters and removed any possible political or emotional relevance.

Rocky Balboa is now a shell of his former glory; John Rambo is not just a man without a war, he's a man without any discernible enemy or purpose; and to cover Stallone's catalog of generic 80s action schlock, he brings out The Expendables, a fun action movie hiding within poor lighting composition, a needlessly complex plot, and indiscernible slurred ad libbing by its overwhelming cast of has-beens, might-still-bes, and never-wases.

A pretty good summation of the movie.

The Expendables consists of a rugged team of mercenaries hired out to do the jobs no one else wants. The film opens on a boat taken over by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Much like the opening of Cobra, Barney Ross (Stallone) has little patience with the greedy psychotic gang of foreigners. He has slightly more patience than drug-addled teammate Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), who decides the pirate's torso is a little too attached to the lower part of his body than he'd like.

Avast!

After kicking Gunner out of the group for being too violent for a mercenary, Barney takes on a new mission on the Caribbean island of Vilena. Hired by a mysterious unnamed man from "The Agency" (Bruce Willis), they are to assassinate the island's leader, General Garza (David Zayas) who rules the tiny nation with an iron fist and help from sleazy businessman James Munroe (Eric Roberts) who uses the island who grow cocoa plants for the drug trade with his henchman Paine (Steve Austin) and The Brit (Gary Daniels). Barney and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) go to the island to "check it out" and see if they should take the job, leaving behind fellow teammates Yin Yang (Jet Li), Toll Road (Randy Couture), and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews).

As the previous paragraph hints at, one problem with The Expendables right off the bat is there are too many goddamn characters with ridiculous names. Every scene is a romp through the Wal-Mart DVD dollar bin, and even in those movies most of these actors would get third or fourth billing.

Barney and Lee fly to the island at their own expense to see if they should take the job. Why only the two of them? Were Sly and Statham the only ones in the cast available for location shooting? If you have a team of five dudes, why a scouting party?

Not surprisingly, the island is in ruin, and they ruin it even more by eviscerating its meager army with anti aircraft rounds and immolating the poor soldiers beyond recognition. Barney uses a wrinkle in time to jump onto the plane to safety.

Back on dry land, Christmas discovers his on again but mostly off again girlfriend is dating some jerk (with HAIR) who also beats her up. Confronting him on the basketball court in front of all his domestic violence condoning buddies, Christmas pummels the gang and shows them the error of their ways and folly of their brodom.

Bros 4 Lyfe.

Originally planning to turn down the job in Vilena, Barney has a change of heart after talking to Tool in what I assume Mickey Rourke thinks is a modern remake of First Blood, giving a moving speech about the horrors he witnessed in Bosnia. Did no one tell him this movie is a joke?

"And that pile of goo was YOUR BEST FRIEND'S FACE!"

The Expendables would be a fun shoot-from-the-hip action movie if not for a few small problems, the first being that it's a complete mess. Stallone's direction is incompetent to the point of incoherence; the film vacillates between muddy night scenes and extreme close ups, as if haphazardly splicing Andy Warhol raw experimental footage over a Bergman film. Most of the actors don't appear to know what they're doing or saying. Eric Roberts looks like Sir Lawrence Olivier compared to the rest of these dinosaurs, based solely on his ability to enunciate. And poor Jet Li, once a proud international action star, is relegated to Chop-Chop coolie Asian sidekick stereotype.

Stallone's composition: "Darkly Dressed Old Action Star Under New Moon at Midnight."

Not even the title makes sense, as Stallone, in a use of the rarely used "Super-Irony," makes a movie titled The Expendables, overcasts it with a legion of nobodies, and then doesn't kill any of them! Not even Gunner, who is shot through the heart, is killed. He inexplicably shows up at the end right as rain, and completely forgiven for betraying the group and attempting to murder its leader.

Lou Lumenick of the New York Post referred to The Expendables as "the brain-dead male equivalent of 'Sex and the City 2.'" I have yet to find an apter comparison.

Arbitrary Rating

37 main characters out of a possible 120,000 (Source: Screen Actors Guild website)

Quotable Quotes

Gunner: It's good to hang pirates.

James Munroe: (after shooting a prisoner) Now we can see inside him, and what I see is lies.

James Munroe: Being wealthy is very good. It allows people to be the real asswipes nature intended them to be.

James Munroe: First of all I don't feel comfortable talking business with a giant carrying a shotgun.

Gunner: You shot me.
Barney: Don't give me that, you were gonna kill him.
Gunner: I was just gonna scare him.

Demolition Man (1993)

2011-04-13T21:44:00.055-05:00

The late 80s and early 90s was a golden age of goofy action loosely connected with sci-fi themes: from the hugely successful Terminator 2 to Total Recall to Robocop, it was the zenith of combining Phillip K. Dick plots with explosions. It was at this cultural high tide that Demoltion Man was released, introducing Stallone's first foray into the genre.

His frozen body is forced through a rigorous exercise routine.

We begin in the terrible future Los Angeles of 1996, where we're just shy of Escape from New York/LA dystopia, including an inexplicably burning "Hollywood" sign. Heroically named John Spartan (Stallone) is sent in to stop the villainous Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes with a blonde mohawk), playing the "Joker" to Stallone's grim, window smashing vigilante. Spartan is finally able to bring in his nemesis, but somehow the cop, not the psychotic murderer, is blamed for the deaths of a bus full of hostages. As punishment, Spartan is frozen in ice and implanted with subliminal knitting instructional videos.

Simon Phoenix: all around bad role model!

Meanwhile, in the even more distant future of 2032, ridiculously named Lenina Huxley (the adorable Sandra Bullock), named after a Brave New World character AND the author of Brave New World in case you didn't get it, is bored by her everyday life in the LAPD. In the future, crime no longer exists outside of the occasional curfew breaker or bad-word-user. In one of the best running gags of the film, all cursing results in an animatronic voice announcing a fine for inappropriate language use. Her wish for excitement comes true when Phoenix breaks loose at his parole hearing, having somehow learned the release code for his handcuffs and how to kick people really hard. Phoenix goes on a murder spree, killing several cops and the prison warden before disappearing off the grid.

When will people learn? Retinal scanning just encourages eye injuries!

Huxley, along with a wise old cop (character actor and Morgan Freeman stand-in Bill Cobbs), convince the chief to reluctantly unfreeze Spartan, whose chiseled biceps have inexplicably remained rock-hard throughout suspended animation. Spartan has trouble adjusting to the prissy and effeminate future, but his cop instincts take over and he is able to quickly track down Phoenix in time for a big dumb action set-piece at a museum.

For greater authenticity, all of the guns in the museum
are kept loaded and surrounded by ammo.

After the action scene, Spartan is invited to dinner with the founding father of this new world order, at the greatest (and only) restaurant in town: Taco Bell. His chalupa is ruined though when Dennis Leary shows up as a violent rebel who basically just does his stand-up routine in lieu of acting, so I'm not going to use his character's name. The plot thickens as Spartan discovers that while he's been given super-knitting skills as part of his rehabilitation, Phoenix was made even more dangerous and psychotic, and his escape was a planned action against Leary's freedom fighting resistance.

Taco Bell introduces their new five cheese escargot chalupa!

We get a few big action scenes and a final showdown, but without going into too much detail I can say someone's head is kicked off from their body as a final "Chekhov's gun" reference to a character saying they'd "lose their head" if it wasn't attached.

Stallone month is brought to you by PEPSI.

Honestly, except for the camp humor that was obviously intended, there isn't much about Demolition Man that belongs on this site. It's a fun popcorn movie, the kind that you might not seek out but would definitely watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Stallone projects are built to minimize his glaring weaknesses as an actor, so he rarely talks, or emotes, or does anything that isn't shooting or shouting or looking befuddled. Sandra Bullock has a breakout role one year before her mainstream breakout role in "Speed," as the adorable buddy/cop/love interest/clutzy comic relief. There's plenty of good observational comedy mostly gleaned from other sci-fi, from the germaphobia carried to ridiculous extremes, to the absurd contraptions.

Rob Schneider and Academy Award Winner Sandra Bullock share a laugh at Stallone's expense.

The real star of the show though is Wesley Snipes as Phoenix. Most of that comes from the fact that it's a great part, a deranged lunatic that kills people for fun because he is just a bad guy. But even a part like that can be ruined by the wrong actor (Travolta in Broken Arrow), and Snipes just looks like he's having a good time as he throws future citizens through plate glass windows, beats up the police with a smile, or shoots a cartoonishly over-sized gun without much accuracy. Movies like this live and die with their villains, and Demolition Man has a great one. Snipes does a great job, and only the most squeamish will be offended by the portrayal's potential racial implications. It's not like he goes around with a giant boombox on his shoulder with a bucket of chicken fresh from Taco Bell.

While most of the humor is organic, some of it comes from the inevitable aging of a sci-fi movie that dates itself with its premise. The only real unintended humor comes from the prediction of 1996 Los Angeles as a war zone, or the references to the "2010" earthquake, or the ridiculously antiquated computer terminals. Conversely, the "President Schwarzenegger" joke has actually become more funny with time, even if Schwarzenegger is unlikely to ever actually become president.

As Stallone movies go, it's one of the few that I'd consider genuinely "good" in the normal sense of the word: it's not regarded with quite the same status as Rocky or First Blood, but it's far from the "so bad it's great" qualities we see in Rocky V or the Rambo sequels or Cliffhanger.

Memorable Quotes:

Phoenix: Spartan? John Spartan? Aw, shit, they let anybody into this century! What the hell you doing here?

Spartan: Look, Huxley, why don't we do it the old fashioned way?
Huxley: Eeeew, disgusting! You mean... fluid transfer?

Huxley: You are even better live than on laserdisc!

Cobra (1986)

2011-04-04T22:02:00.006-05:00

In the 1980s, Los Angeles was out of control. Minorities were walking the streets with no fear, left untouched in bars and clubs, and parking in legal designated spaces without any sort of hassle or intimidation.

That all changed when Lieutenant Marion "Cobra" Cobretti (Sylvester Stallone) came onto the scene. Part of the LAPD's infamous "Zombie Squad" (named as such because they are "the bottom line," whatever that means), Cobra drives through the mean streets in his 40s-era Batman car (license plate "AWSOM 50"), matchstick in mouth and pistol in waistband. He's everything our society values in a police officer: carelessness, violence, and a complete lack of administrative oversight.

Surprisingly not from a gay porno.

We are introduced to Cobra's devil-may-care attitude in one of LA's many random grocery store hostage situations. The shooter seems less concerned with harming the customers and more senselessly unloading into as many milk jugs and Doritos bags as possible. He fires into cartons of liquor bottles, which of course, given 1980s action physics, explode.

"NOOO!! My secret nitro glycerin-based whiskey formula!"

Hiding behind an ornate Pepsi™ display and calming his nerves with a refreshing can of Coors®, Cobra shows off his negotiating skills by assuring the gunman that he's going to kill him the first chance he gets. Cobra of course fulfills his promise, blowing the gunman away and adding in a "drop it!" a full 1/15th of a second before pulling the trigger.

"Alright Cobra, just stay cool. Cool like a nice cool glass of Pepsi: The Choice of a New Generation™."

Cobra's amoral attitude toward law and order makes him the perfect foil to the Axe Gang, a nihilistic group of psychopaths who kill indiscriminately in an effort to bring forth a new world order. Exactly how many people need to die before the world realizes the need for societal change? Thirty? Fifty? 3.2 million? The Axe Gang never specifies. Nor does its leader, only known as "Night Slasher" (Brian Thompson) resembling a chainsaw sculpture as viewed through a fun-house mirror.

Anarchist meticulously cuts eyeholes out of pantyhose disguise.

After a successful robot pimp photo shoot, Amazonian fashion model Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen) drives home and has the misfortune of witnessing one of the Axe Gang's latest crimes. Actually she doesn't witness much of anything, but she does see the Night Slasher staring creepily at her in the middle of the road. That's reason enough to experience the full wrath of the gang's psychotic fury.

"Bender honey we love you!" "Shut up baby I know it!"

After their first failed attempt to clandestinely snuff her out in the photography studio garage (using axes, the stealthiest of weapons), the gang pulls out all the stops, using every tool in their arsenal to kill her and anyone that might be within a 50 foot radius of her, including Cobra (BIG mistake).

Coors, Pepsi, and now Coke? What the hell am I supposed to drink, movie?

While the Axe Gang is a wonderfully pure representation of evil for evil's sake, its vague philosophy makes for some unclear motivations and poor planning. It would be a much more terrifying gang if it wasn't so terrible at being a gang. Despite seemingly unlimited resources--guns, manpower, vans, cars, motorcycles, spies, axes--it fails to kill a single witness, even long after its forces swell beyond any and all practicality. The gang members want to kill Ingrid because she saw Night Slasher's face, but what about the witnesses to their numerous public displays of violence and destruction as they attempt to kill her?

They are even awful at using axes--their collective nom de guerre--clumsily swinging them into steam valves and sprinkler systems with about a 5% success rate.

They must have a deal with a hardware store.

The Axe Gang represents that terrifying contradiction known as "The Enemy," a force terrifyingly stupid and unstoppably inept. This is fortunate for Cobra (representing "The Us") who is really not that much smarter than the gang. In one scene Cobra insists the Axe Gang has a spy inside the police force feeding it information, and then immediately accepts a female police officer he's never met into the inner sanctum of his witness protection plan (guess who she's working for?). In fact, the entire police force doesn't seem terribly on the ball; they squabble over Cobra's antics but still go along with whatever plan he concocts. Protect a witness? Do we have protocol for this? Nah. Just drive her upstate or something.

Cobra represents a bizarre shift Stallone made in the 80s from violent yet thoughtful character pieces (Rocky, First Blood) into works of sloppy fascist chest-thumping. Clocking in at 82 entire minutes by the end credit roll, Stallone probably managed to crank this out in a fortnight and still have 6 hours left over each day to work on his glutes.

Arbitrary Rating System

Body count: 52 (according to IMDb; I didn't actually keep track).

Quotable Quotes

Supermarket Killer: Get back! I got a bomb here! I'll blow this whole place up!
Cobra: Go ahead. I don't shop here.

Cobra: You know that's bad for your health?
Minority: What?
Cobra: (pulls cigarette from his mouth) Me.

Night Slasher: You want to go to hell? Huh, pig? You want to go to hell with me? It doesn't matter, does it? We are the hunters. We kill the weak so the strong survive. You can't stop the New World. Your filthy society will never get rid of people like us. It's breeding them! WE ARE THE FUTURE!

Clips

Cobra exchanges witty repartee with a local street urchin.

Red Sonja dances with robot pimps.

Caged Heat (1974)

2011-03-29T21:52:00.001-05:00

Caged Heat is a first for Your Stupid Minds, as never before have we reviewed the movie of a director who went on to win an Oscar (for those of you living in the future, this was before Uwe Boll swept the 2015 Oscars). In 1970, B-Movie icon Roger Corman opened New World Pictures as a studio devoted to making exploitative genre movies on the cheap. Corman hired several young up-and-comers including Jonathan Demme, who, after writing two films for Corman, took a shot at directing Caged Heat in 1974 at age 29. 17 years later, Demme would direct Silence of the Lambs, earning a best director win on his very first attempt. His output since then has been mixed, but 2008's Rachel Getting Married was one of the best movies of 2008. And he got his start right here, directing chixploitation!

Yeah they never wear these outfits and very few of their desires are "white hot."

We start at a drug bust, where Nick's giiiirlfriend Erica Gavin (star of Vixen!), aka Jacqueline, gets busted. Her eyebrows look less crazy, but her jaw has visibly narrowed, something that doesn't tend to happen outside of eating disorders, drug addiction, or being Russell Brand. Gavin struggled with two of those three problems and would not work again in film for 34 years.

Jacqueline apparently dreams of being a moll from the 1930's.

Jacqueline enters the prison where she is strip searched in an obligatory Women In Prison (WIP) scene. Then, instead of seeing a brutal gang beating, everything is actually pretty chill. The women seem to get along, and put on an amateur improv show, even inviting the doctor and the warden (Barbara Steele). The warden is an incredibly good-looking woman confined to a wheelchair, wearing Lynda Carter glasses and a tight bun so we know she's a repressed NERD. The warden leaves when the show gets too bawdy, and has a dream sequence where she dresses like a magician's assistant while explaining the evils of sex to a cheering prison population. This movie has a lot of bizarre dream sequences.

Spot-on dude impressions.

Apparently I spoke too soon about the prison not being so bad. The warden gives Pandora, the creator of the improv show, solitary confinement and suddenly things turn mean. This leads us to some obligatory scenes, namely a shower scene, and a new girl gets attacked for no apparent reason. The warden then gives her the standard straighten up/fly right speech to Jacqueline.

Nice glasses, Warden NERD.

Shockingly enough, it doesn't take. Maggie, the bully who picked a fight and Jacqueline are in the kitchen together when a prison guard prank causes the bully to start a fight and a fire, leading to a total failure of an attempted breakout. In the meantime, Jackie tries to save the guard from the fire, but is rewarded for her efforts with electroshock therapy before Jacqueline can even talk to the warden. She should file a habeus motion!

Wait a minute she's not a nerd at all! Also for a quadriplegic she's got really nice legs!

Instead, she is released back into the general population looking shell-shocked. The unlikely duo of Maggie and Jacqueline team up to escape the repressed warden and her unethical doctor lackey, but will they find true friendship out on the road, or will they end up back in the slammer? Will Pandora and Lavelle ever do an encore improv show? Will the warden shake her hair loose and suddenly recognize she is incredibly hot? (No).

Maybe it's just the comedy level, but the girl with the boner reminds me of MadTV's Debra Wilson.

Caged Heat is an interesting paradox. It reflects the low production values and a number of the ridiculous stock scenes expected of the genre, but it does them with little relish compared to the rest of the film. It brings in about three bizarre dream sequences in the first act, then never really comments on them again: I was half sure the roach/fire misunderstanding was a dream until it kept going. The acting ranges from decent to forgettable to hilariously poor, but Barbara Steele is a stand-out as the warden.

He's used to this sort of thing.

The warden is a surprisingly interesting character, and not just because Barbara Steele is gorgeous. She's repressed and sometimes cruel, but there isn't any of the "corrupt warden" we all picture ever since that one Tim Robbins movie, nor is she the lecherous voyeur (although that role is filled by the psychopathic doctor). Instead, she's a believer in rules who does her best and is surprisingly sympathetic: the fact that she's in a wheelchair helps, too. I think it's one of the biggest flaws in the film that she never gets a "come to Jesus" moment where she comes to understand the central characters in their friendship with one another. Also they send a character named Pandora into solitary (a box), then never make a joke about it? Come on, movie!

I love Juanita Brown's delivery on so many lines, but this is my favorite.

Also I think this movie sets the record for chixploitation month for least amount of sexual content. There's a couple of shower scenes and two different dreams and a scene with implied masturbation before it's revealed Pandora is playing dice, but there's not a single conscious sex scene. And while the story encourages sororal friendship, it is a friendship sans benefits. Additionally, hardcore fans of the WIP genre may not enjoy this as much, as there's not really any of the humiliation and bizarrely specific fetish staples (like spraying girls with a fire hose) outside of a couple of nods to the genre early on.

Overall, it's a lot of fun, with occasional flashes of brilliance. Unfortunately the flashes show a lot of wasted potential, something that's not particularly surprising when dealing with a very limited budget, a genre story, and a bunch of actresses of varying quality.

Quotable Quotes:

Maggie: If she rips me off one more time I'm gonna open a bag of kick-ass all over her butt!

Maggie: I'm gonna knock your pretty little teeth so far down your throat you're gonna get a picket fence around your asshole!

Maggie: Say, can you read lips?
Guard: What?
Maggie: (mouthed) Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Youuuuuuuuu!

Lavelle: (To an old woman) I won't hurt you! *accidentally kills her*

Policeman (while smoking a cigar): Hey punk! Where's the john?!
Station Mechanic: Right around the corner! Just follow your snout.
Policeman: Smartass punk!

Crazy Alice: My name's "Crazy" what's yours?
Bernice: I'm B-Bernice.
Crazy Alice: Two choices, Bernice. You start doing exactly what we say right now, or you say goodbye to the world!
Bernice: I'll take the first choice.

Where to Get it:

It was released this very week on Amazon as part of a two-pack called "Roger Corman's cult classics" found here.

Superchick (1973)

2011-03-21T20:35:00.001-05:00

Just after the 1960s militant feminist movement and before the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, Superchick exists in that awkward gap between free love and consequences known as the 1970s. Joyce Jillian is Superchick, mild-mannered stewardess (not flight attendant) Tara B. True during the day. In her ample downtime she is Superchick, a catsuit wearing blonde-locked nymphomaniac with three different boyfriends across the country.

Just imagine the Love Boat theme as you look at this.

In New York, Tara swings with Ernest (Thomas Reardon), a germaphobic surgeon with Victorian interests in bubble baths and candelabras. because of his phobia, the two engage in radar sex from opposite ends of his valuer couch. He doesn't even know her psychocardiogram!

Terrified of the germs of a beautiful woman, but not wallowing in his own filth, or placing a hallowed out bear carcass in his apartment.

In Miami it's Johnny (Tony Young), a beach bum who lives in a shag furnished house boat paid for with his modest gambling habit. He pays off his bookie by eliciting Tara's services to smuggle some guns onto an airplane without her consent.

With these gangsters, no shins are safe.

He doesn't seem terribly worried that a) her life and the lives of everyone on board are put in danger, b) Tara will inevitably find out he used her when she finds guns in the package and not seashells, and c) she might stop having sex with him. Considering that he actually owns a house boat, he's clearly not the best at making rational decisions.

Anchors aweigh!

In Los Angeles Tara makes it with teen idol Davy Charles (Timothy Wayne Brown). In a completely unrelated note, Davy Jones was lead singer of The Monkees and a teen pop sensation of the Justin Bieber variety. But this character is completely different so I don't know why I brought it up.

Davy is having trouble writing a new hit song, despite the infinite number of words that rhyme with "baby." He eventually finds his muse: Tara's vagina.

Davy popularized that "Super Mario Golfer" look before everyone started doing it.

Did I mention that Tara is also a black belt in karate? Must have slipped my mind. Luckily it does actually come into play in what little plot there is in this movie. When the aforementioned hijacking robbery is underway, Superchick, working for the airline, had to discipline her body to defeat those evil goombahs. She saves the day and there is a moment at the end where all the boyfriends discover each others' existences.

A requirement of all stereotype-challenging protagonists of the 1970s.

Compared to some of the previous chixploitation films this month, Superchick is surprisingly progressive. It doesn't exactly shatter gender conventions, but it does tap on the glass a few times. The title shows how women can so easily use their own superpowers (sex, and sometimes karate) to overpower men and do their bidding. Tara uses men the same way a playboy uses women, and her blasé attitude counters the double standard women must endure when it comes to sex. Johnny is the most upset about Tara's supposed infidelity, even though the film makes a point to show him sleeping with a big-tittied woman right before picking up Tara from the airport.

Superchick simply treats sex the same way most men do, which makes it both frustrating and alluring to the gentlemen in her life. It's always nice to see female protagonists that aren't pining for some dingus boyfriend, seeking man-hating revenge, or getting slapped around. Tara makes her own decisions, and couldn't care less about what society thinks of her. There's even a bit of folding when Tara walks in on a porno shoot and briefly considers starring in her own skin flick!

There are plenty of lame 70s aw-shucks-look-into-the-camera-and-gulp-loudly kind of moments, mushroom haircuts, awful paisley fashion decisions, and Love Boat-style music. If you cross your eyes hard enough--ignoring the massive cheap airplane cabin set, purple carpet seams, sloppy camera movement, fingerprint glass smudges, and near absence of plot--it almost seems like a real movie. I thought it was made for TV until the first titty appeared. I don't know if that's a compliment or not.

Arbitrary Rating:

3 Kryptonite condoms.

Quotable Quotes:

Ernest: I'll think about you during surgery.

Tara: The only place there's no lie is between a man and a woman... in bed!

Tara: Last one in bed gets no head!

Tara: In the words of Shakespeare: let's not louse up a good thing.

Sims: A few sticks of dynamite grass, a gallon of wine and a chick like you. What more could a man in a clothes closet full of clothes ask for?

Cop 1: Isn't this illegal search and seizure, and illegal entry without a warrant?
Cop 2: You watch too much television.

Flasher: You were supposed to be shocked. Indignant. I wanted a reaction, not a review. Sick! That's what you are! Pee-vert!

Biker: Why don't we knock off the motorcycle movie talk and gangbang her?

Switchblade Sisters (1975)

2011-03-14T23:14:00.018-05:00

The year was 1975: The Hippies had lost. Nixon had resigned. Rock and Roll was still a pretty big deal. In the midst of this tumult, Jack Hill, director of Coffy and Foxy Brown, released The Jezebels (also known as Switchblade Sisters), a story about a girl gang and its conflict with society and each other. A story about attractive white people who form violence gangs.

We begin our story in a run-down apartment on the wrong side of town, as Lace, leader of the Dagger Debs, gets ready for her day. She observes her mother paying a collection agent, and somehow gets to the elevator before the man. He flirts with her in a crude way, then the rest of the Debs get on the elevator at the next floor and promptly beat and rob him. We're very briefly introduced to the main girls, including Donut, the slightly overweight member of the group who gets picked on mercilessly by Lace (and everyone else).

If she does this to her friends, imagine what she'll do to people she doesn't like!

With their newfound wealth, the Debs head over to the local burger place, following well-known gang customs (see also: Black Belt Jones). They meet with their affiliate male gang, the Silver Daggers, but before they can spend Lace's mother's money, Patch, an eye-patched member of their gang, gets in a fight with new girl Maggie and gets pummeled by the newcomer. Before the gang can settle things with Maggie, they get arrested, and Maggie gets arrested for... being a girl, I guess.

Maggie's kung fu is pretty strong.

The girls are sent to juvie, where they have to put up with an old militant lesbian who runs the place. Maggie gets singled out as a new girl, but Lace and the others save her. Maggie eventually gets released when it turns out she had nothing to do with anything, and gives a message to Dominic, leader of the Daggers. Dominic likes what he sees, because he goes to Maggie's place and forces himself on her. That was not very empowering of him.

Later the rest of the Debs are released and we learn about the ongoing feud between the Daggers and Crabs, a local politician/gang leader. Maggie is tasked with getting a ridiculous necklace from him, so she goes undercover to meet him. He looks like Quentin Tarantino and is clearly on drugs: no wonder QT loves this movie. She manages to nab the necklace, but Crabs' gang responds by shooting a member of the Silver Daggers and dragging a Deb into the back of a van full of gang members. Okay that was not empowering either.

They even have the same haircut.

The Dagger gangs plan a counter-attack at the roller disco, but unfortunately Patch has grown jealous of Maggie and Lace's friendship and betrays the group, resulting in a disaster that gets Dominic killed. In the meantime, Lace has revealed she's pregnant with Dominic's baby, but Crabs punts her in the stomach at the roller rink after murdering her baby daddy.

Shootout at the roller disco!

In the final act, Maggie steps up the gang's presence and forms the Jezebels as an independent girl gang, while Lace is cast as an incredibly annoying Othello to Patch's Iago. Will dissension destroy the gang? Will any of them pass Mr. Clutch's final?! You'll have to watch and see!

The adorable face of evil.

I like this movie as a sort of spiritual prequel to the camp classic The Warriors. That movie was more clearly a comic book come to life, but both featured over the top theme gangs full of white people. Jezebels doesn't take itself too seriously when Lace isn't crying over her lost fetus, and it has plenty of good action and good looking women. Jack Hill does a fine job blending in other exploitation genres: the girls get help from a goofy Black Panther type group, and the scenes in juvie wouldn't be out of place in a women in prison movie.

Jezebel: an evil, scheming, or shameless woman!

The performances tend to vary pretty hugely in quality. Some of them are good, although most of the cast looks about a decade too old to be in high school. And then there's Lace, the incredibly irritating lead. Her greatest and only fame came from playing high-pitched characters on Rainbow Brite, and sounds like she belongs in a magical land of fantasy when she's not screeching. On the other hand, Joanne Nail as Maggie really nails (pun intended) her performance: she's hot, she's dangerous, she looks like a trashy Charlie's Angel. Monica Gayle, a B-movie veteran, plays against type as Patch, a wispy, good-looking girl who is incredibly evil... and has an eye patch. The Kill Bill character with an eye patch is taken entirely from this. Also, Don Stark, a.k.a. Donna's dad from That '70s Show shows up, looking pretty much exactly the same.

Donna's dad is not amused.

It's camp exploitation fun, maybe not on the level of The Warriors, but it at least belongs on the DVD shelf nearby.

Memorable Quotes:

Lace: Everybody's gotta be in a gang.

Maggie: Get your hands off me you fat pig dyke!

Lace: Everything was great before Maggie! She ruined everything!
Dominic: Everything was lousy! You were lousy! The whole ****-ing gang was LOUSY!

Lace: If you go, it's gonna turn out baaaaaaad!
(Dominic leaves.)

Cop: Let me give you some advice-
Maggie: No! Let me give YOU some advice, cop! You can beat us, chain us, lock us up, but WE'RE GONNA BE BACK, UNDERSTAND? And when we do, cop, you better keep your ass off our turf or we'll BLOW IT UP. Jezebels, cop: Remember that name!