Tromeo and Juliet

1996 Shakespeare adaptation

Rating: 13/20

Plot: See Romeo and Juliet but with more perversity. Or maybe less. Shakespeare was a pretty randy fellow.

 A first shot of what I believe was a hanged squirrel, Lemmy from Motorhead reciting the bard, nipple piercing, severed wiggling fingers, comical fart sounds, the "king of cold cuts," comical spousal abuse, lesbian cooks, outlandish dream sequences with penis monsters going "Rarr!", crossbow grenades, punk rockers, heads meeting fire hydrants, people carrying lizards inexplicably, guys in cow costumes, a meat factory, glass time-out rooms, bread thieves, pink bondage devices, meat hook suicide attempts, Hitler head bludgeons, guys pissing on other guys, car accidents, more severed limbs, more comical fart sounds, opium dens, hermaphroditic pig people, projectile vomit, exploding heads, incest, and a dream sequence with a spontaneous pregnancy featuring popcorn and rats that is the nuttiest thing I've seen in a long while. This ain't your English teacher's Shakespeare. There is some Shakespearean dialogue juxtaposed with the modern (well, then modern) urban slang, and that's pretty jarring. There are some lines that could be from the play. It's been a while since I read it.

"My name is Capulet. I got a corn nut for a dick. My name is Capulet. My asshole's full of worms."
"What do you think about my milkman costume, Juliet?"
"Get ready to die!" "It happens to everyone sooner or ladder." (Context is probably important for this one.)
"Now you've gone too far! Goddamn heads bouncing off of cars while families are singing 'Found a Peanut'!"
"I'm going to wipe you off the face of the earth like a piece of shit from God's ass."

A couple of those could be straight from Big Willie. That Lloyd Kaufman--independent film production company Troma's version of Shakespeare--sure is a goofball, and the ratio of gags that work and those that don't probably isn't all that good. However, there are so many ideas here that there is enough that works, and if you like John Waters or his imitators (like Lloyd Kaufman, for example), this might appeal to you. Troma fan will recognize a lot of the company's movie posters and a few costumes at a party which is either a nice touch or really cheap. If it's the latter, it matches the rest of the movie. This is not a great movie and feels much longer than it actually is, but it's kind of a cute bit of filth if you're into that sort of thing.

I might never hear "Found a Peanut" the same way again.

The Lion King

1994 Shakespeare adaptation

Rating: 15/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: Hamlet but with talking animals and a gay meerkat.

Ah, this is what the Disney magicians do best--loads of color, anthropomorphized animals, and disturbing parent death. I've not always liked this movie, more than likely because it came out while I put bicycles together at Toys "R" Us and heard "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" and "Circle of Life"--the former which I would utter breathlessly in my wife's ear while engaging in sexual intercourse with her from 1994 to around 1997--four times an hour which was torture that no Geoffrey's helper should ever have to endure. Not that the songs are bad here. I like what Elton John does there, and "Hakuna Matata," though more than a little annoying after you've heard it more than 1 1/2 times, is a fun little number. If "Hakuna Matata" would have been in the Toys "R" Us radio rotation, I more than likely would have put myself in the cardboard compactor thing and ended it all.

You really see 2-D animation differently now, even when comparing it to other 2-D animation. The colorful "I Just Can't Wait to be King" sequence is great, but it really kind of looks like ass when compared to the stuff in The Princess and the Frog. Disney was always so good with animals, and I like their movements in this and the subtle tricks the animators use to give them personalities. The "camera movements" seem stiff and computery at times.

I'm only half-kidding about the Hamlet comparisons. Clearly, Scar isn't having sex with Darth Vader's wife, Nala doesn't drown herself, and Simba doesn't die at the end. That would probably be too much for a Disney movie. Of course, Scar's the type of villain who also might be too much for a kiddie flick. He's a very adult villain, the sarcasm and venom wonderfully voiced by Jeremy Irons. His song's not very good though. The token gay characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are funny, but they and the "Hakuna Matata" song, so fun and colorful and playful almost seem inappropriate after the darkness of the previous scene. And I've always wondered about how Simba ages during that scene. Were they really singing for that long? Yoda monkey's a fun little character. I got my picture taken with him at Disney World, and I had an unfortunate and obvious erection in the shot. It was the same situation with Mary Poppins at Epcot. My favorite character is Ed the hyena. That mo-fo needs his own prequel, maybe something called The Lion King 1/2. The bird's unnecessary, and his "Morning Report" song is about the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. That includes Holocaust movies. I think it was added for a "Special Edition" thing, left out of the original for very good reasons. Simba's dad is kind of a dull character, and I think the feminist would have problems with how little the female characters do in this. I wouldn't want James Earl Jones as a father though! If he's not cutting off his kids' hands, he's letting monkey's hold his newborn children on rocky precipices! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that that inspired new fathers to hold their babies up like that on the roofs of hospitals similar to how people who get on boats have to imitate that whole "King of the World" thing from Titanic. Not a fan of the big fight at the end of this, a scene bathed in far too much red and using too many slow-motion swiping shots.

How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog

2000 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An impotent and misanthropic playwright hasn't had a stage hit in a decade. And that's not his only problem. His wife is pressuring him to knock her up, the neighbors have an obnoxious dog, and his new eight-year-old neighbor won't leave him alone. Oh, and he has a stalker. It's enough to make a guy as moody as Hamlet.

I had my doubts about the comedic stylings of Kenneth Branagh, but he's got a nice character to play with here. And really, all he needs to do to pull off surly and misanthropic is have an accent. The character is the type of character that I usually like, but the movie meandered a little too much, and there were a couple-few scenes where Peter went from likably mean to just plain mean. The little girl (Suzi Hofrichter) was fine, but her character was a little too much like an eight-year-old girl to actually be likable. Far from the documentary on how to kill dogs that I thought this would be, it was an almost-funny way to pass some time but nothing I'm going to remember seeing in a week.

The Taming of the Shrew

1967 Shakespeare comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Katharina is a shrew, and she needs tamed. Enter brazen Petruchio, money hungry and chauvinistic. He's also a snazzy dresser. He essentially bullies her into a marriage and a life as a homemaker in a shabby castle. Then, he's real mean to her and unfortunately, as far as I could tell, never gets to see her naked.

My only issue with this comedy is that I didn't buy or maybe even understand the transition from shrew to obedient wife, but I blame Shakespeare, universally known as a lousy playwright. The dialogue's juicy and randy, and both Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton know how to bounce lines off each other. I really liked the ever-changing settings and their abundance of colors. More than likely this has essentially ruined any future stage production of this that I might accidentally see, and I can't imagine these characters confined to a stage . There's some nifty period details, too, like the guy in a cage with the drunkard sign. This is lighthearted, as fluffy as one of Kate's dresses. I don't recall whether this is one of the bard's most acclaimed comedies, but I enjoyed its characters, its outdated and politically correct ideals, and all the dirty puns. A lively and delightful way to pass an afternoon.

Cory, obsessed with all things delightful, recommended this one. He's got a thing for Elizabeth Taylor, presently.

Theater of Blood

1973 Vincent Price movie mayhem

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart doesn't handle criticism very well. In fact, after being overlooked for a critics award, he crashes their little party and leaps to his death in the Thames. Only he doesn't die, instead hooking up with the motley crew of homeless folk who pull his body from the river and getting his murderous revenge, offing the critics one at a time using methods inspired by some of The Bard's most violent deaths.

Released a couple of years after one of my faves--The Abominable Dr. Phibes--this Vincent Price horror/dark-comedy has more than a few similarities. But that's fine with me. Vincent Price is always Vincent Price, pound for pound one of the most entertaining actors ever, but this is the Vincent Price I really love, the one who walks into every single scene with two handfuls of rancid pork products and facial hair with a life of its own. Vincent's performance in this is all over the place in this one. He does Shakespeare, and plays an effeminate afro-headed hair stylist, a murderous chef, a demented surgeon, and in a completely surprising moment, a trampoline-bouncing fencer. Sure, he's always Vincent Price with that inimitable voice and overall presence, but he really shows quite the range here, and I think he's having a blast in this role as Lionheart. And watching him beat an egg, or more accurately, diabolically beating an egg? Nothing short of movie magic, and quite possibly the first scene I'd show people in an effort to prove that Vincent Price is one of the greatest of silverscreen geniuses. The murders are extremely gruesome. When a decapitation is only the third or fourth most disturbing death in a movie, you know you're in for some fun. But I guess that should be expected from a murderer who's inspired by the deaths in Shakespeare's work. What's not expected is that it will all be so funny. This is a creative pot of colorful insanity, fun and fastly-paced, with that amazing tour de force performance by one of the finest actors ever. Recommended for those of you with a sick sense of humor.

Looking for Richard

1996 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Aging actor Al Pacino pretends to appreciate Shakespeare as a ploy to get into Winona Ryder's pants. It works, but the joke's on him because all he really needed to do was front a 1990's alternative rock band at least as good as The Lemonheads which probably would have been much easier than gathering together all of these actors (pronounced here so that the second syllable pretentiously rhymes with "bores" instead of "burrs") and literary scholars (pronounced in the normal way). She also ends up stealing a few of his props.

It was great watching Pacino's enthusiasm for Richard III here. I'm not sure how much this succeeds in making the play more accessible or relevent to the (m)asses. In fact, this particular ass was just as confused as ever about what was going on in this play, especially the first act. There are so many characters, and I'm so far removed from the historical context. But it is still a highly entertaining glimpse at the heart and soul behind the scenes of putting on a production of Shakespeare's work. I would have liked to see more interviews with regular folk and, oddly enough, less of the Shakespeare since the play has the look of a really cheap PBS production. I did enjoy watching the performers showing off their acting chops, however, and Pacino's ever-shifting hunchback and gimpy arm was pretty funny. I also liked seeing somebody doing Shakespeare with a backwards baseball cap.

This was a Cory recommendation.

Legend of the Black Scorpion

2006 Elizabethan martial arts

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Just like Hamlet if was set in 10th Century China and the main character was the mother instead of Hamlet.

Whatever-this-movie-is-called looks pretty good (and really expensive), but the style--lofty and pompous--left me flaccid. Grand and operatic, it felt like the equivalent of reading something that people say is great literature and thinking, "Yeah, this sort of resembles great literature" but not really digging it. The story's fine (it is Hamlet after all), but the story-telling is clunky and strangely dispassionate. It's probably silly to complain about the dialogue since that could be entirely due to translation, but a lot of this stuff was difficult to wade through. The fight choreography is cool as expected from the always-reliable Yuen Woo Ping. Even though the blood looks cheesy and there's too much reliance on the fantasy fighting rather than anything remotely realistic, the movements and costumes (the armor, masks, flowing robes) make the action sequences look almost like ballet instead of violence. It's a fine enough example of wuxia but definitely nothing earth-shattering enough to get excited about.

Here's what the back of my head looks like when it's not really excited:

Ran

1985 Kurosawa samurai

Rating: 18/20 (Abbey: 1/20)

Plot: see King Lear. . .or, samurai try to survive in 16th century Japan after a nuclear holocaust. . .or, two of three sons (the two dumbasses) betray their father in an attempt to have the best picnic locations in all of Japan. They fight over robes and decide in the end to put a stop to the madness (the "chaos" in the title) like all real men put a stop to madness--an epic masturbation contest!

Surprise surprise! Another masterpiece from the greatest director who ever lived. I can't imagine the care and time taken to paint this epic. Such a striking use of color and both natural (i.e. rolling hills) and man-made (i.e. burning castles) imagery. The scene with the biggest chunk of violence completely captivated me, a scene with almost no sound, startling images (men holding their own severed arms, lots of blood and arrows), and no extraneous effects. It is a little disarming getting a glimpse into the director's old age worldviews and ideas about life, an apathetic God, lost humanity--ideas so depressing, cynical, almost hopeless. Absolutely stunning stuff.

Here's a still from the controversial "Masturbation Contest" scene:

And here I am with Abbey. She watched about an hour of this with me, asking me what the subtitles said when she couldn't catch all the words. When asked what she would rate it, she said she'd give it a 1 out of 20. I asked her why and she said, "I'd give it a one because it was stupid."