C'est Non Un Blog

(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)

(June 19)

——Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)——

Louis Malle does it again, and oh is this one a heartbreaker. Just try and make it through that last poignant scene without a tear in the eye. Come on, try it. I dare ya. Like Lacombe, Lucien this is another story of occupied France in World War II, but this one pertains to two boys in a Catholic Boys school during the war. The main character leaves his over affectionate mother in Paris at a train station (showing shades of Murmur of the Heart’s Oedipus complex) and starts school mid-semester with the other boys. At first he is picked on by the others as an outcast, but one of the boys slowly warms up to him after discovering that they have common interests. He slowly begins to discover something else. This boy is treated different by the teachers and clergy. Why? Because he is Jewish.

The majority of the film is a very well made coming of age movie about how boys will be boys. Malle picked some wonderful child actors for his leads and pulls amazing performances out of them. It doesn’t hurt that the script and direction are top notch too. And then when the war finally makes its way into their little community…well, I don’t want to give anything away. You should absolutely see this movie for yourself. Get the whole Malle boxset from Criterion. Each film in it is gold. God bless you Criterion. You’ve done it again.

(MUST SEE)

——Nacho Libre (2006)——

Stupid computer ate my first swing at this. Anywho. When I first saw the trailer for this I couldn’t wait to see it. The movie looked hilarious. The comic timing and rhythm was dead on. Unfortunately this is one of those cases where all of the best parts of the movie made their way into the trailer. There really isn’t much more in there. Even the good parts from the trailer don’t seem all that funny in the movie, because the giddy rhythm of the trailer is gone. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some laughs to be had. Nacho’s theme song on the soundtrack in particular delighted me to no end. The bad part is that they seem to have come up with a lot of really funny ideas on paper but failed to follow through with the funny. It’s a shame, since everyone involved is so damn funny.

Jack Black is an orphan who grows up to become a member of the clergy at the orphanage, except that the other Fathers won’t let him do anything other than cook. What’s really bad is that he is given next to nothing to make the food, so all of his meals suck. Enter a really hot latina nun who he feels he has to impress and a lot of hungry orphans. Ever since he was young he wanted to be a wrestler and when he sees a chance to make some money to buy food for the orphans and impress the nun, he goes for it. He sucks at wrestling though. That’s one of the things I really didn’t like about the movie. Sure, it’s funny to see him suck at first. But he just keeps on sucking, never winning. Depressing. Not exactly the feeling you want to have in a comedy.

The whole experience was rather blah. I just kept waiting for the funny to come and it never did. Sometimes a movie just has it, sometimes it doesn’t. This one, sad as it is to say, doesn’t.

(MISS)

——Get Carter (1971)——

Michael Caine is Jack Carter, a slick London mobster, who travels home to Newcastle after hearing of his brother’s tragic suicide, except Carter knows his brother better than that and doesn’t buy the whole suicide story. And the more he digs into it, the more it seems that he’s right about a cover-up. Although the story is a little confusing and slow at first, it picks up quite a bit a steam the more it moves forward as the plot begins to unravel.

Caine is delightfully badass in this film. He has no problem with busting the heads of the hooligans who think they can muscle him out of Newcastle and then minutes later sleeping with the landlady of the flat he is renting to keep her quiet over the trouble he is causing. Caught naked in bed by more tough guys, he still manages to turn the situation around by walking them out of the building at the point of a shotgun, still naked, right onto the street. He’s out for revenge at any price. It’s a slick kind of noir fable. For those who like their noir grim and gritty, or just like seeing a badass Michael Caine in his heyday, this would be a good choice for you.

(I just recently saw a trailer for I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, the new film by director Mike Hodges starring Clive Owen, which seems like exactly the same movie as this one, oddly enough.)

(SEE)

——Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005)——

Sarah Silverman is a funny lady. I like her. Then why do I find this movie so unfunny? It could have something to do with the extremely lame musical numbers that were added into what is really just a film of one of her standup acts, added into it to pad the time to feature length. Or it could be that the tone of the film is filled with so much negativity and hate. That is Silverman’s style, I should add, but what’s missing is that most of the time you never get that “I’m just kidding!” vibe from her. Some of the time, but not often enough. You all know I’m not a prude. A lot of her material I find really funny. But I don’t know, you get the idea (accentuated by skits with her friends that she absolutely hates) that she’s not having as much fun as she should be. That she’s just being mean to get a rise out of people. It didn’t gel with me.

(MISS)

(June 20)

——Chopper (2000)——

Mark “Chopper” Read was a real life killer who gained tabloid celebrity by sheer force of personality and went on later in life to write several best selling books about his life. Eric Bana plays him with a cool and collected sense of humor, which after watching the interviews of the real life Chopper Read seems to be really dead on with who the guy was.

The film starts off with Read in prison for some bullshit charge, but using his time to make a name for himself. He’s having a bit of a war with the other half of the inmates in his block, but they don’t want to really fight. So he stabs his counterpart in the other gang repeatedly in the face for no reason, only to apologize to the guy immediately afterwards as he falls down, dying. This really freaks his friends out because they think that he’s gone off the deep end, so his best friend stabs him over and over in the chest, to which Chopper doesn’t even flinch in one of the best scenes in the movie. He just keeps talking to his friend, telling him he forgives him for doing it. He doesn’t die from his wounds, but his friend makes up some bullshit charge that Chopper attacked him and he was only defending himself. After healing his wounds they send Chopper back to his old block, which he knows means death for him, so he gets someone to chop off his ears and then laughs at the police all the way back to the infirmary.

Once out of jail Chopper starts working for the cops as an informer, while at the same time extorting money out of drug dealers. All of this makes him extremely paranoid though. He doesn’t trust anyone, including his girlfriend, and his behavior gets more and more neurotic. When he actually confesses a murder he has committed to the cops he works for, they don’t even believe him.

The movie isn’t perfect, but it’s interesting, and Bana does a bang up job with the role. This one is worth a rent.

(SEE)

(June 21)

——The Right Stuff (1983)——

This movie didn’t originally interest me until I read a Great Movie review of it in Ebert’s latest book. So I got it, check it out, and low and behold I actually had a great movie on my hands. It’s a really interesting film for discussion too. The film is about the first NASA astronauts from the Mercury space program, and yet the film begins and ends with Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot who never stepped a foot in the NASA program. So why is he in the movie? Well, he is in the book, written by Tom Wolfe. Roger Ebert brings up in his review that director Philip Kaufman apparently had a huge fight with the screenwriter, who wanted to focus the movie on just the Mercury program. He didn’t see the need for Chuck Yeager, whose story had nothing to do with those of the astronauts, but Kaufman couldn’t have disagreed more, thinking him the real heart of the story, like Wolfe did. The fight was so bad that the screenwriter left the film and only Kaufman’s name rests under the screenwriter’s credit. My sister, who watched the movie with me, likewise wondered why Yeager reappeared at the end (it should also be noted that my sister was not pleased about the film’s almost three and half hour running time). She didn’t see why Yeager needed to be in the movie.

I’d have to agree with Kaufman’s choice though. Yeager IS the heart of the film. Even though he has nothing to do with the Mercury program, if we didn’t have him the movie would just be about a couple of guys who went into space. You’d never really understand what kind of guts it took to be those first guys who took a big risk doing all of that. Yeager actually has the best line in the film. When some of his fellow test pilots start joking around that the astronauts are just simply monkeys being rocketed into space, Yeager chastises them for their comments, noting that the difference between them and the monkeys was that the monkeys had no idea how many tons of explosives they were sitting on top of. By having Yeager you get to see what a test pilot is and was and what they did, and then it has a bigger impact in the scenes where the astronauts ask for a window in their capsules and controls in their pods. They’re not monkeys, they’re pilots taking huge risks. When John Glen has problems during his mission and safely flies himself back to Earth, you see the importance of why these guys should be called pilots.

Yeager, it should be noted for those who don’t know, was probably the greatest test pilot the world has ever seen. He was actually the first one to break the sound barrier when no one thought that it could be done. The big shame of it all is that so few people actually know his name, because most of his accomplishments were kept secret from the public for fear that the Soviets would know what we were doing. Once Sputnik went up into space things changed. NASA became very public so that funding could be properly allocated to beat the Russians in the space race we were quickly losing. But Yeager kept doing his thing in private, almost being the first man to fly a plane into outer space. That’s the image Kaufman leaves with us. It baffled my sister who just wanted to the movie to end already, but I got it. And really loved the movie.

(MUST SEE)

(June 22)

——16 Blocks (2005)——

I originally reviewed this one when I saw it in the theater March 7. So, because I’ve already got like a billion other reviews to write, I’m skipping out on this one. Just go see it!

(SEE)

——Cemetery Man (1993)——

This is one of those movies that fits into the category of best movies that you’ve never heard of. It reminded me of quite a bit of different horror movies at different times, but never did the film feel unoriginal. It actually felt unbelievably original and I loved every quirky second of it.

Rupert Everett is a moody young man, very Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead II, who runs a local cemetery in Italy. But besides just taking care of the grounds and doing the occasional burial, he also has to take care of the living dead problem. For some reason, at this cemetery, within five days of being buried the dead come back to life and Everett is there to shoot them in the head and bury them again so that no one in town is any the wiser. He does so in a rather detached manner. He isn’t exactly a people person and doesn’t really seem to care about anything. That is until a young, beautiful widow shows up in his life, who he falls in love with and gets to fall in love with him using their mutual admiration for all things morbid. They have sex on her husband’s grave, which as you can probably guess turns into a poor location when her husband rises from his grave and bites her. She dies of fright (oddly enough, not from the bite, which doesn’t turn the living into the undead) and comes back to life and they briefly make love before his hunchback monosyllabic helper kills her while trying to take a bite out of his neck.

Everett is now really depressed, that is until he sees a girl that looks just like his dead lover and starts a relationship with her. That’s when things really start to get fucked up. I don’t want to ruin things for you by giving you more of the plot because there are really a lot of cool twists and surprises in this movie. It is technically a horror movie with lots of gore, but you can’t take any of it too seriously because it is just so damn hilarious. The movie is filled with classic instantly quotable lines. The writing is witty as fuck. The direction is great and Everett is so awesome as the lead in this. He sells the movie like no one’s business. And the ending, well the ending is one gigantic head fuck that will have you talking for weeks. If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to see this one. It is fan-freaking-tastic. I promise you that you won’t be disappointed. My sister even sat through the whole thing, and she hates horror movies.

(DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH)

(June 24)

——The Beast (1975)——

[WARNING: The following review is not for the faint of heart.]

OK, hands up: How many of you have been looking for a movie where a wolf creature screws a girl in the woods with his gigantic erect phallus, complete with amazing amounts of onscreen ejaculate? Yeah, I knew that all of you would raise your hands. Actually, that’s about all that is interesting with this movie (if interesting is the right word…) Apparently this was actually a short film before it was a film, the short film being the infamous 14 minutes of the Beast attack that becomes a young girl’s fantasy at the end of the movie. I’m not really sure that a movie needed to be erected around that. Mainly because there doesn’t seem to be a movie here.

The amount of worthwhile new material in this could only fill another short film. The rest of the film involves a rather banal Bunuel-like chamber drama, involving a duplicitous father trying to marry off his weird son to a beautiful American girl, but her family will only approve the marriage if the family’s Cardinal ordains the marriage, which he won’t because they are all pagans. Got that? 75% of the movie is just them waiting for the Cardinal to show up. Zzz.

To make sure that you don’t walk out on the movie ten minutes or less into it, Walerian Borowczyk makes the interesting decision to film for us a stud horse giving his money maker to a female horse in all of its carnal glory. I really don’t think you’ve ever seen a movie start off this way before. You see WAY more than you ever wanted to see about life on the farmyard. Then there is a subplot where the black servant is constantly called away from doing the master’s daughter before they finish, so that the poor horny girl has to rub herself on the bedpost like a cat in heat. Interesting, but doesn’t really go anywhere. Finally, we have the American bride, who has carnal fantasies after seeing the horses having sex, which leads us to the dream/fantasy sequence, which is honestly one of the most fucked up sequences in film that I have ever seen.

OK, so I know you are all dying to know what happens (because I guarantee that none of you will actually see it unless I force you to). In the 1800s a girl plays a harpsichord in an outdoor veranda when she notices a baby sheep break its tether and run off into the woods. She follows it. The happy music continues. The Beast slaughters the sheep and leaves its remains all over the road for the woman to find. She is frightened. The Beast comes out of the woods and chases her. She runs, gradually losing most of her clothes as she goes. The Beast’s giant phallus grows as he chases her down. She tries to climb a tree but falls out, hanging from the branch. The Beast comes upon her and licks her up and down while her feet unintentionally fondle his manliness, causing the first of many orgasms for him. She runs. He catches her and starts going at it. She’s horrified at first but then, hmm…that’s pretty good. She really gets into it. The Beast must not have had sex in a thousand years, because he’s having the time of his life, if you get my meaning. Soon she’s doing all sorts of things to the Beast that you only see in porno movies. Perhaps not even in most porno movies. This is surreal to the extreme. This sequence is bizarre enough to justify watching the rest of the craptastic movie, although not by much, and definitely not for everyone. In fact, unless you are one of the one percent of the population out there as weird as me, this movie is definitely going to be an avoid for you. (The rest of you sick fucks are probably ordering it as you read this.)

(AVOID)

——Ilsa: The Wicked Warden (1977)——

The last of the Ilsa movies has a new director this time, Jess Franco, and likewise follows a new formula, different from the other two movies. This Ilsa is decidedly darker and more disturbing, but unfortunately not nearly as fun. It’s also not Ilsa. Sure, Dyanne Thorne is back as a sadistic warden in a South American mental facility for sex fiends/revolutionaries, but this time she’s known as Greta. Maybe after the Nazis fell in Europe she fled to South America and changed her name to avoid persecution, I don’t know. Anyway, she’s back and as sadistic as ever. And her death in this one is particularly gruesome. The metaphor involved in her death is a tad bit overplayed by Franco, but still, what a delicious way for a villainess to die.

The plot (“HA! PLOT!” you say) involves a young woman with a sassy Bettie Page haircut going undercover into the hellhole/institution in order to find out what happened to her missing sister. I think it is pretty safe to say that she doesn’t find very many happy answers. Franco pumps up the T&A quotient by having the girls shower often and wear uniforms that consist of a single button down shirt that just barely covers their money maker when standing upright and nothing else. Greta/Ilsa has two bodyguards again this time, except they aren’t hot and (thankfully) don’t get naked. Instead she has a lesbian mole that likes being hurt to find out information on the crazies/girls for her. Fun! Well, not enough, unfortunately. This one has its good moments but is really more for completests (you sick fucks know who you are. Wait, that’s me!) than for casual viewing.

(MISS)

(June 25)

——Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)——

The final Lethal Weapon movie is, yes, the weakest. You can tell the writers are running out of ways to tell the same story all over again. Joe Pesci is finally starting to get on your nerves. Chris Rock is really only in the movie to do one of his angry black man routines. Jet Li is pretty damn awesome, but he has one of the all time worse mullets. Buzz shaved head, three feet of skinny tail in the back. And did anyone for even a second believe that Danny Glover had suddenly become a crooked cop? I mean, come on, where the hell did that plot line come from? I think the writers just had to come up with an excuse for how his house and boat could be hilariously destroyed in every movie only to be miraculously rebuilt better than ever in the next film.

Despite all of its shortcomings, Lethal Weapon 4 still manages to be a nice sendoff for the series, one every fan of the first three movies will have to see just to see how it will end. Richard Donner keeps on delivering the action/buddy comedy goods. I’m still amazed at how hard an R this movies are. Imagine one of these movies being made today. It would totally be watered down to a PG-13 to cater to a larger audience. But nope, here you will see people get shot and hear the F-Bomb get dropped a thousand times. What I really like about these movies though is how much fun everyone seems to be having. The films have an almost cinema verte (I know I’m spelling that wrong but am too lazy to look it up. Or am I? Damn brain!) style to them, where the movies are less about plot and more about just following Riggs and Murtaugh around with a camera to catch all of the funny things that happen to them. It seems just a coincidence that a plot finds a way to slide itself in there.

In short: If you haven’t already seen these movies, go out, buy the boxset of all four of them, and sit back, relax and have a hell of a good time.

(SEE)

——Super Troopers (2002)——

I didn’t see this for a while until a friend gave it to me last year and told me that I had to watch it. I’m glad he did. I don’t know why the other Broken Lizard movies are so unfunny and this one is so genius, but that’s just how it is. It helps a little bit that this is mostly stoner humor and takes place in Vermont (the main highway might as well be Route 7), but that’s not all of it. The movie is just stone cold funny. The Broken Lizard comedy troupe came up with gold when they thought this one up. Chugging maple syrup? Hilarious. The highway games? Genius. The opening scene alone, where they pull over the stoned college kids and fuck them up good, has become a cult classic. It doesn’t hurt that everyone making this movie seems to be having a blast, up to and including a marvelous Brian Cox. I didn’t even catch the first time that I watched this that Lynda frickin’ Carter was the Governor! That’s right, Wonder Woman! Sweet!

This meowvie gets me too worked up and excited. I’ve got to stop. Go buy this and watch it over and over. Now.

(MUST SEE)

JANUARY

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Lethal Weapon
Grizzly Man
Videodrome
Knife in the Water

FEBRUARY

Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess
Coup de Torchon
An American Werewolf in London
The Virgin Spring
The Matador

MARCH

Naked Lunch
Amadeus (Director’s Cut)
Rififi
Big Deal on Madonna Street
Being There

APRIL

Lethal Weapon 2
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Murmur of the Heart
Crooklyn
Leaving Las Vegas

MAY

In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
The Vanishing
Mission: Impossible III
Brick

JUNE

Cemetery Man
Tom Yum Goong
Body Double
Masters of Horror: Deer Woman
Cars