(June 26)

——Uno Bianca (2001)——

If you want to see a pretty slick 3 and half hour Italian TV movie about two cops trying to bring down an unstoppable gang, than this is the movie for you. But before I get into the film’s specifics I want to take a minute to throw shame at the usually great DVD company, NoShame. This DVD sucks! What the hell? No anamorphic widescreen? What, were you booked that day? And what is with all of the digital artifacts in the picture? How is it that they can make an obscure cult film from the 1970’s that no one has even seen a print of in years and make it look flawless, and then take a movie like this from 2001 and screw it up so spectacularly? I’m guessing that they just copied the transfer from an Italian release of the DVD. How lazy.

With that said, this is actually not that bad a movie. There is nothing spectacular about it other than the fact that it takes a very thorough look at the case of the White Fiat gang from start to finish without making you feel bored at any moment. Apparently this was based on a true story in Italy too, about this gang that knew police procedure too well and used that knowledge to start a robbery and murder spree across the country. There is nothing particularly amazing about the movie (surprising, as it came from Cemetery Man director, Michele Soavi) but it does what it aimed to do remarkably well, pushing what could have been kind of boring right along. For fans of the genre it is worth a peek.

(SEE)

——An Inconvenient Truth (2006)——

The most controversial thing about this movie is how utterly uncontroversial it all is. There has been a swirl of controversy in the air surrounding it in the media since before it was about to be released. Why? Gore doesn’t use any of Michael Moore’s infamous left wing shock tactics to scare us into thinking that Global Warming is real. He just uses facts. Lots and lots of facts. And if you can seriously sit through all of these facts and still not think something is wrong with this picture than you have some major issues. You’re in an extraordinary state of denial about what is going on, because global warming is happening, right now. What’s scary is how bad it is. Oh yes, it is much worse than you thought. I could get into a lot of the details but let’s face it, Al Gore tells it better. The movie is basically just one of his lectures, filmed. Whoa there, I know you are all now rushing out to see this, but calm down and let me tell you a little more. This is the Al Gore that should have run for president and would have won even with all of the voter fraud and ballot rigging. He’s funny, intelligent, thought provoking. And even with all of the scary facts he does make well the case that we can do something about it. We can reverse global warming if only we act now. The government can make a difference if they just get out of big oil’s pocket. Remember the hole in the Ozone layer that no one thought would go away? The US government passed some legislation and surprise, the hole disappeared! If only we could do the same thing again to save our livelihood. We only have one home. This is probably the most Must See movie that I’ve ever reviewed here. See this, now.

(MUST SEE)

(June 27)

——Marathon Man (1976)——

I didn’t quite see this movie for the classic status that it has thus already attained. It was alright, pretty interesting. It didn’t knock my socks off or anything though. Dustin Hoffman is a graduate student also training to be a marathon runner. His brother (Roy Scheider) says he works for an oil company, but really he is part of a secret organization that brokers deals with Ex-Nazis for information. When Scheider gets in over his head and gets killed by the agency and one such Nazi (Laurence Olivier) that he works for, they then want to know just how much of the Nazi he mentioned to his brother. Thus begins a chain of torture and paranoia as Hoffman literally runs for his life.

The whole thing amounts to a lot of prototypical 1970’s gritty American filmmaking, some great acting and a so-so plot. I wasn’t completely on board for it. And hey, if you want to see a great 70’s Hoffman going over the edge movie, just see Straw Dogs. It’s a lot better and has aged well. I’d pass on this one.

(MISS)

——The Howling (1981)——

Made the same year as An American Werewolf in London and simultaneously coming up with some of the same amazing makeup techniques for the werewolf transformations, Joe Dante’s The Howling makes for a very interesting side by side look with John Landis’ film. That said, if you do look at them side by side American Werewolf comes out far better. Some of the special effects are pretty darn impressive, but the story never really stuck to me like American’s did. It follows the model of traditional horror movies too closely to really be all that scary or original.

A reporter follows a lead to meet a serial killer in LA, but when he attacks her (what did she think was going to happen?) she becomes so traumatized by the event that she is sent to a communal retreat in the woods in order to recuperate. Of course, the serial killer is a werewolf who originated, you guessed it, at the retreat. What a coincidence that is! I think you can pretty much plot out the rest of the movie on your own now. Like I said, if you like horror and cool makeup effects, you’ll enjoy this movie. Otherwise, this is a

(MISS)

——The Breakfast Club (1985)——

I thought that I had seen most of this on TV a couple years back, but it turns out that I didn’t really see much more than the last half hour of the movie. So watching it this time was like basically seeing it for the first time. Which was fine by me, because that meant I got to completely rediscover this movie as I saw it. What a great movie. This movie probably gets the truest of any film that I can think of to accurately showing what life is really like for a teenager in high school. Here you have five different kids from all walks of life who have never talked before because they belong to different clicks, and yet the are incredibly similar as people. This is one of those things that you discover after you leave high school and are forced to make friends with people you like instead of those that you grew up with. These guys learn that in detention (Saturday detention? What the hell is that?)

Is it just me or does anyone else think that Ally Sheedy looked way hotter before Molly Ringwald prettified her? Can’t be just me. And how come there is no girl for the nerd? What’s that all about? What does he get? To write a frickin’ paper for everyone else. Man, what a reward. You’ve all probably seen this before and know what I’m talking about, so I won’t waste too much time here, but if for any reason you haven’t seen this movie yet I’ll just let you know that it is definitely,

(MUST SEE)

——Weird Science (1985)——

Part Two in the John Hughes-athon, or as I like to call it, John Hughes’ apology to the nerds of the world. Seriously, his nerds always get left behind in his movies. Take the Breakfast Club, above. What about Duckie in Pretty in Pink? And the nerd in Sixteen Candles, sure he gets a hot chick but how realistic is that scenario anyway? Not that the basic scenario in Weird Science is any more realistic. Two geeks create the perfect woman (Kelly LeBrock…meow) using the most powerful Apple computer in the world one rich kid can get as a birthday present (made all the more impressive by its sheer 80’s-ness). Lisa is awesome, but deep down at heart she just wants to see her guys grow a spine and show the world how cool they are. And in that respect it is realistic how the guys get their girls at the end (neverminding the whole magic house and mutant biker gang stuff). The girls have dipshit boyfriends and when they see how cool these nerdy guys are, they fall in love. Awww. Isn’t that cute?

This movie is so much frickin’ fun. I remember watching it one night in college and everyone was having a ball with it. It’s worth repeat viewings. John Hughes can do no wrong.

(MUST SEE)

(June 28)

——Waiting… (2005)——

I saw the trailer for this last summer and thought it funny enough that I wanted to see it. It had a kind of Office Space/The Office feeling, only in the restaurant business. The movie came and went so fast though that I never had a chance to see it. Turns out there was probably a reason that this movie came and went so fast: it’s not that good. It has the “all the best parts are in the trailer” curse. Obvious jokes look like setups for bigger jokes but the bigger jokes never happen. You become depressed when you realize that you could have written this movie, no problem, and it might have even had a little more depth than this. Talk about hitting on all of the obvious points. Gee, is our main character going to realize that he should probably get his head out of his ass and get organized so that he isn’t a waiter the rest of his life? Hmm…I wonder. Does waiting tables for obnoxious people suck? Turns out, it does suck. Yawn. I could really care less how this movie ended. If the characters were any more one-dimensional you wouldn’t even be able to see them. Big ol’ miss for this one.

(MISS)

——Masters of Horror: Deer Woman (2005)——

Finally, a genius episode of Masters of Horror! You’ve got to hand it to director John Landis; this guy really knows how to make a horror movie that is both hilarious and scary and disturbing at the same time. After watching An American Werewolf in London for the first time this February it became an instant classic for me, and so to is it true for Deer Woman. Everything about this episode is amazing.

A down and out detective, demoted to the state of only handling animal attack cases, gets a strange call out to a truck stop where another trucker has found an unidentifiable lump of meat in the back of a man’s truck. It’s determined that the mess is actually the trucker, beaten to death by deer’s hooves while in the state of arousal. When the case is deemed a homicide and not an animal attack he is taken off of the case, but it is so weird that he just has to follow up on it. Did a man beat him with a deer leg? If it was an animal, what kind of mutant deer would be big enough to do that to a man? The whole thing doesn’t make any sense, which is why the case suddenly awakens him from his self-induced coma. More attacks occur and in each one a very attractive woman is seen with the man before he is killed. When a Native American overhears them talking about the case and tells them the legend of the deer woman, he takes him seriously as crazy as it might sound.

The dialogue (written by John’s son, Max) is genius and incredibly hilarious. The idea of a deer woman is so utterly ridiculous that it just lends itself to funny writing. One of the best scenes has the detective home in bed using all of the clues to try and construct some sort of scenario in his head that actually makes sense, with each successive story being more ludicrous than the last. The actor Landis got to play the detective is Brian Benben, one of those actors you vaguely recognize from somewhere but wish you saw more of, because he is just so damn brilliant at what he does. His attitude alone makes the movie. If ever a performance made a movie must see, it was Brian Benben in this movie. His cynical deadpan attitude is perfect for this character. The movie is so good that so far I’ve even forgotten to mention the actual deer woman herself, a Brazilian model who has one of the most stunning bodies that you’ve ever seen and is frequently naked, to boot. If me forgetting to mention stunning breasts in a review isn’t reason enough to make you go out and see this movie, then I don’t know what will make you see it.

(MUST SEE)

(June 29)

——Smokey and the Bandit (1977)——

Do you realize that there is now a generation out there that has to have explained to them what the heck a CB radio was? It seems novel to think that back in the mid-1970’s CB radios were all the rage. Everyone used them. To a kid nowadays though, what to think? Just tell them it was like a cell phone and a chat room all in one unit.

This movie’s not bad. You’ve got to give it some credit, if just for making Sally Field into a sex symbol for me for the first time ever. The movie is a load of fun too. It’s nothing special or spectacular, but if you love car movies or road movies this one is pretty must see for you. The plot goes as follows: Burt Reynolds is the Bandit. He takes on a bet from some rich morons that they can’t get a truck full of Coors from Texas to Georgia in less than 28 hours. (Do they not have Coors in Georgia? Seriously, what’s the deal?) The trick is that moving booze east of Texas is considered bootlegging, so they are taking a serious risk in doing so. Bandit loves a challenge though, so he and his buddy take a truck and a slick Trans Am to Texas.

The first half of the trip goes easy as pie. But on the way back they come across Field in a wedding dress on the side of the road. She’s just escaped her own shotgun wedding and wants Bandit to get her the hell out of Texas. She’s being chased by Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) though, who isn’t going to let a silly thing like jurisdiction stop him from taking Bandit down. So begins the interstate car chase. The car chases aren’t anything special for anyone who has ever seen a car chase movie before, but the movie is very lighthearted and filled with fun, so you’ll have a good time anyway. This is one of those great summer Saturday afternoon movies. Worth checking out.

(SEE)

——Masters of Horror: Sick Girl (2005)——

Of all of the Masters of Horror, Lucky McKee is definitely the one least experienced. I’d never heard of him. He’s made two horror films already, but only one of them has actually been released for public consumption so far: May. After seeing his take on the mini-movie Masters of Horror series though, I went on Amazon and immediately ordered up a copy of May. Sick Girl is right up there with the best of the series.

Sick Girl is one of those wonderful examples of how great casting can make or break a movie. This is a take off of the 50’s big bug genre, but if you were to rate the movie alone on how scary the bug was you’d probably be really disappointed. Lucky for us, the movie is about a lot more than that. It’s actually a lesbian love story. And that’s where the great casting comes in. The lead is shy, gawky and very goofy entomologist (played by Angela Bettis, who is also in May, one of the other reasons why I really want to see this movie) who loses every date she gets when she tells them that she works with bugs for a living. She then meets an artist in the lobby of their building and the two of them fall in love. Meanwhile a new bug that is delivered to her gets loose in her apartment and starts doing some really weird shit. How the bug affects her girlfriend becomes a big metaphor for how people can frighteningly change in a relationship.

But let’s get back to Angela Bettis. This girl is brilliant! Why haven’t I seen her in more stuff? Every second that she is on screen is magic. She has the weirdest frickin’ voice; it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. You can’t help but love her. Couple that with a great script, a cheesy looking bug and some solid direction and you’ve got a nice little Masters of Horror episode on your hands. I fully encourage you to

(SEE)

(June 30)

——The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2003)——

Director and star Asia Argento (daughter of director Dario) tries very hard (and does quite a good job) to make the most depressing movie ever made. Watch out Requiem for a Dream. There’s a new kid in town. Now while I don’t think that this movie takes the crown away from Requiem, it still does a pretty darn good job at it. If you feel bright and cheerful after watching this then there is something seriously wrong with you in the head.

The story is about a boy in foster care who is taken away at age 7 from the only parents he has ever known to go live with his real mother, a junkie/whore/stripper/overall bad parent. Very early on in the movie there is a heartbreaking scene where we actually see him kicking, screaming and crying not to be taken away from his parents by the social workers. I think you’ll know really quickly if this is the sort of movie that you can sit through after watching this scene. Knowing that only bad things will happen to this kid will leave a lump in your throat. The kid doesn’t want to be with his real mom, but she quickly takes care of that by convincing him that they didn’t really want him because he was bad. Using a really fucked up mind trip, she makes him love her as his mom. And that’s when the real fun starts.

They take off across the country, listening to punk rock as mommie gets wasted and fucks all sorts of new daddies in front of him. He gets left alone for days on end with no food and when his new daddy comes back without his new bride he goes and sexually abuses the kid and dumps him in the woods. Nice. From there he goes to live with his mom’s family, who ironically (or not, depending on how you think about it) are hard-nosed Born Again Christians. The boy keeps bouncing between two extremes, doing all sorts of things that would make your skin crawl just to survive. Asia injects the film with just the right amount of humor and style to keep you from actually putting a gun to your head. Not that you won’t think about it. It will make you feel like crap to think about how some other people must live. As you can probably already guess, this isn’t a movie for everyone. If you’ve got a strong enough stomach though, this movie is worth at least a

(SEE)

(July 1)

——Equinox (1970)——

This is actually a really crap, amateur film. The acting sucks, the script really sucks and the direction is merely OK. Why would Criterion of all people release it then, and better yet, why should you want to watch this? The answers to both of those questions are: because of the special effects done in the film by a very young Dennis Muren. Anyone who has ever watched a documentary on special effects or watched the Oscars before probably is familiar with this guy, because he is the main man at ILM who created some of the amazing special effects in Star Wars and Jurassic Park, of all films. And for a movie with no budget you’ve got to admit that a lot of the work in this film is as finely crafted as anything done in the original King Kong. In fact, Muren actually INVENTED some of the techniques that he uses in Equinox to create some really dynamic and interesting shots. It’s so weird, because you could be ready to fall asleep because the movie is so lame and then all of the sudden the ape monster comes on screen and you are just glued to what is happening. Holy crap, some kid made that? In his garage? It gives hope to us all, that all you need is a little talent and a dream and you too can make a movie.

The story is very similar to that of Evil Dead. Some kids in the woods come across an evil book that brings forth evil monsters from another dimension. That’s it. If it feels like it was written by high school kids, well, that’s because it was. I found most of it rather dull and dry. But man, those special effects. If you are really into that sort of thing, I think you should see this movie. Otherwise, for the rest of it, this one is more of a

(MISS)

——Satan’s Blood (1977)——

Man, was this Mondo Macabro DVD a disappointment. Let me give you a little context with a quote from the back cover of the DVD: “In 1970’s Spain, certain films were released with an “S” classification – S for Sex. These were films with an unusually high number of scenes of sex and sadism. Satan’s Blood was one of the first of these “S” films and is still one of the most notorious.” I know what you are thinking: Man, that sounds awesome! I know, me too. But aside from a pretty good amount of nudity, things were quite disappointing on the sex side. There is an orgy, but all that really consists of is a montage of four bodies rubbing against each other. Where’s the actual sex? Heck if I know.

A young couple go driving in the city when they are flagged down by another couple in which the guy says that he knows the other guy from college. The other guy doesn’t really remember him, nor does his story really check out, but nonetheless they agree to follow the strange couple an hour out of town to a creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere. Immediately things are odd about the whole situation. The couple has an unnatural attraction to the occult. Weird people wander the grounds that are never explained. Their dog goes missing. The young couple are about to tell their hosts that they are leaving when suddenly they are put under a trance and convinced to take part in a satanic orgy. When they come out of it, more and more weird stuff start to happen. Not much of it is really all that compelling.

The movie does get some bonus points for actually being kind of creepy at the end, but unless you are a really big fan of weird films from the 70’s there isn’t really much point in seeing this. Keep this one off of your shelves.

(MISS)

(July 2)

——Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)——

This is a documentary for film fanatics like myself. Z Channel was a pay cable station like HBO that sprung up in LA at the start of the cable era, and when run by visionary Jerry Harvey it became the must have television network for any fan of film. Jerry would show anything he thought was good, from more mainstream fair to the truly obscure. You have to imagine a time before you could go to the local video store and pick a movie, a time where if you missed the very limited window that an art film showed you just never saw that movie. Jerry championed those movies that no one ever got a chance to see and in quite a few cases made a classic out of a film that was otherwise doomed to obscurity. Films like Oliver Stone’s Salvador would be out for a week, get little attention and then disappear. Suddenly Jerry starts showing it on Z Channel and the film is nominated for several Oscars that year.

Also, if it weren’t for Jerry we probably wouldn’t have the director’s cut as it is now known today. Jerry would hear about films that were butchered by the studio in the editing room only to then be released and tank instantly, ruining films and men’s careers. He would also hear about an uncut version of that same film and demand to see it. That version of the film then made it onto Z Channel for everyone to see, giving renewed hope to trashed films. The most memorable example is Sergio Leone’s epic, Once Upon a Time in America, a movie that was taken away from Leone by the studio only to be chopped to pieces by one of the guys who edited one of the Police Academy sequels. The movie sucked. Famously, the reviewer for Time, I think, placed OUATIA on their worst of the year list when the film came out, only to put the director’s cut on their best of the decade list when it finally came out, in part thanks to Jerry Harvey.

Another story runs in parallel to that one though, which is the story of Harvey himself, a manic depressed man with plenty of issues who finally one day killed his wife and then himself. As much as it is a celebration of film, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession is also a tale of a gifted man’s gradual slide into madness, adding a slice of poignancy to this tale. If the above sounds interesting I suggest you give it a rent.

(SEE)

——Marebito (2004)——

Japanese horror films are great for two reasons, which Hollywood almost always misses when they eventually remake them: their homemade quality and general ambiguousness as to what really happened. I wouldn’t call Marebito great by any means but it has those two qualities in spades, which makes the film curious enough for some to want to view it. The movie is just too weird for its own good, but I do like the premise enough to think that it would be a great film for an aspiring new filmmaker to try to remake.

I don’t know what Marebito means, so don’t ask. The story is about a cameraman who is obsessed with filming everything. When he tapes a man killing himself in the subway, though, he watches the tape over and over and becomes obsessed with knowing the terror that he can see in that man’s eyes. (Why anyone would want to know what that kind of terror feels like is beyond me.) He goes deep into the tunnels and finds a hidden subterranean world (huh?) where he also finds a naked girl chained to a rock. He takes the girl back to his apartment to learn more about her, but she doesn’t speak and just gets weaker and weaker over time. Only finally does he realize that she doesn’t eat or drink human food, just human blood. In his madness he even goes so far as to start killing others to feed her, letting her drink from a bottle like a puppy. Don’t even go and ask me what the ending means, because I have no idea. This movie is capital W, Weird. It was an interesting movie, but I don’t know if I would go out and recommend it to anyone.

(MISS)

——Rize (2005)——

This is a cool documentary about Crumping, which is for those not in the know, a dance style invented on the streets of LA after the Rodney King riots that involves a very ritualistic, violent and blindingly quick movement of the body. There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the film mentioning that nothing you are about to see has been sped up, because you’ll need that disclaimer. Several times I truly believed the film was sped up, they were moving so fast. Whether you know it or not though, you’ve probably already had some experience with crumping in one place or another, it has so infiltrated pop culture. What you will have no idea about unless you live in LA is what crumping or clowning is and how it all got started. This movie does a great job introducing you to this world and showing you all of the different styles that have sprung out from it. It’s so prominent in LA that it has actually become the main alternative for those who don’t want to be a part of a local gang. And the dancing is amazing to watch. Director LaChappelle has done a wonderful job filming everything, shooting most of the dancing as if they were actually in a music video. It looks beautiful and amazing while telling some real tales about real people. This documentary is definitely

(MUST SEE)