City of God

2002 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The true story of how the Brazilian equivalent of the Boy Scouts of America was formed.

This movie starts with chickens. Chickens are haunting me this year. Sure, you expect to see some chickens in a documentary about chickens. But it seems that chickens find their way into about half of the movies I'm watching this year. Herzog doesn't like chickens.

 

See? The beginning of this movie is a stunning look at a chicken being de-feathered and eviscerated and chopped into pieces. Spliced into that are very quick shots of a large gleaming knife being sharpened and a bunch of people who are looking forward to eating a chicken. And then you have a shot of a scrawny chicken watching the proceedings and waiting for its turn, and that chicken gives one of the best performances I think I've ever seen by a bird in a movie. The chicken trembles, gives this "Oh shit!" look at the camera, and eventually makes its escape. Somehow, the camera follows the chicken through the streets. Watching it all unfold is invigorating for some reason, and the scene, one that starts the movie but actually takes place later in the story, really sets the stage for everything that happens in the titular slums. For the protagonist, a poor guy who just wants to take pictures and lose his virginity, this is a place that can be overwhelmingly frightening and seemingly impossible to escape. This movie is entertaining with a vibrantly told story and colorful characters, but its most effective at disturbing you with the harsh realities of this particular spot in our world and really making you feel what some of the characters are feeling. Lots will disturb unless we're all desensitized to seeing a movie with about half of the scenes featuring children holding guns and occasionally shooting each other in the face. Those faces themselves are disturbing, so callous as they go about their violent business. More disturbing is seeing Li'l Ze (actually, Lil Dice at this point) in action for the first time. It's a laugh that, if you don't remember anything else in any movie you've ever seen, you'll likely remember forever. That crazed character is probably more interesting and surely more complex than Rocket, the main character. It's fascinating to watch all these youngsters bounce off each other, dangerous little unpredictable firecrackers in a vibrating cube. It's a world dominated by children--I believe parents are shown in this movie during exactly one scene--but they're not children. They've been shaped into something else. And you think, "I can't believe that people are like this in any part of the world," but then you think about the part of the world you live in and see enough similarities. Your world's got chickens, too. This is flashy and fresh, with a twisty narrative that almost reminds you of Tarantino but with every ounce of hope slurped out. City of God (I think that might be ironic because I didn't see God in this place) is a great film, but it's almost hard to be entertained by it because these characters seem more real than movie characters, and you just know there's not much hope for some of them.

 

 

There were other movie posters for this, but I picked the one with a chicken on it. 

The Tree of Guernica

 1975 war movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: There's a war in Spain.

This was Fernando Arrabal's third movie after Long Live Death and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, a pair of movies that I didn't enjoy or understand. So I'm not sure why I bothered with this one because I didn't enjoy or understand it either. The thing's steeped in metaphors, some that I didn't understand and flew by like non sequiturs and some that were so obvious that they seemed juvenile. Also juvenile was a lot of sacrilegious imagery Ok, Arrabal, we get it. You don't like the church very much. I don't need to see any more characters wiping their ejaculate on a statue. There's a lot of war footage and its grotesque imagery mixed into the barrage of often disturbing imagery. There are also a lot of little people, one with a naked guy who later gets a sex scene while other little people towel him off. And there's a bullfight scene with one of the little people tied to a cart with a bull's head on the front, a scene that I swear lasted ninety minutes. And there's a scene with two guys tongue-wrestling that looked like something that could have been in a Will Ferrell movie. Oh, and a giant ear knife on wheels (I have no idea how else I could describe it) with naked children running around it and a lady saving herself from rape by hurling snakes. It's that kind of movie, and I actually started hating myself in the middle of it. A lot of this has the feel of a snuff film, and although I'm sure there's a point being made with the whole, it was well over my head and I really couldn't connect to anything that was happening enough to even care that I was missing out on something. I would not recommend you watch this although it is a little funnier than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

Dead Ringers

1988 twin movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Twin gynecologists have this great system worked out where the more extroverted one finds women and has a sexual relationship with them before growing tired of them and passing them onto the introverted one. It works great until an actress comes along and not only finds out what they're doing but becomes the object of one of the twin's obsession.

In my head, I always think that Cronenberg's movies are too bleak. And then I think, "Wait a second! A lot of my favorite movies are pretty freakin' bleak!" So I don't know if it's the bleakness that turns me off. This one is as bleak as the others, and it's also cold, clinical, but there's still a lot that I like about it. First, you've got a pair of performances by Jeremy Irons that are just stunning. Unless Jeremy Irons actually has a twin brother who plays opposite him in this movie. I'm too lazy to look it up. The differences in Beverly and Elliot are subtle, but I had little trouble telling them apart because of the nuances of Irons' performance. And when he pukes into a shrub? Or when he says, "And some orange pop!" near the end of the movie? It's just the sort of acting perfection that you don't get to see very often. The movie's score by Howard Shore is also great, kind of a throwback to classic movies. And I like a lot of what Cronenberg does with color, especially those striking red surgical outfits that stand out in a movie that otherwise seems tan or blue. But so much of this movie is kind of boring and feels heavy. It feels like you're carrying something bulky and wet around with you for a couple hours, and although the story is shocking, emotionally complex, and eventually tragic, it just doesn't really inspire you to feel much of anything. This is worth watching because of Irons' performance and the mysteriously haunting (and apparently true) story. And those gynecological instruments were pretty sweet, like something you'd see in, well, a Cronenberg movie.

Bay of Blood

1971 Italian horror movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A bunch of people murder each other in an effort to inherit an island. The island isn't very happy about it.

This was on my radar because of its bitchin' alternate title--Twitch of the Death Nerve. Apparently, this has more alternate titles than any other movie which I guess is something. Here they are:

Carnage
Bloodbath (or Blood Bath)
Bloodbath Bay of Death
The Odor of Flesh
Before the Fact
The Antecedent
The Last House on the Left, Part II (Note: It has nothing to do with The Last House on the Left.)
New House on the Left
Ecology of a Crime
Chain Reaction


Ok, most of them are in other languages, but trust me, there's a lot of them. And that's not counting a few working titles--The Stench of Flesh, Thus Do We Live to Be Evil, and That Will Teach Them to Be Bad. This movie's also notable as being a hugely influential slasher film, spawning films (for better or worse) like Halloween and the Friday the 13th franchise. The latter, which I've never really had much interest in, apparently borrows a few murderous acts from Bava shot-by-shot. What makes this movie a little more interesting than a lot of crappy slasher flicks that follow it is in one of those alternate titles--Ecology of a Crime. One could look at all the violence of this thing and wonder what's wrong with people, but the real villain might be a little sneakier than just something like human nature or greed. There are mysterious forces at play here, right up until the shocking conclusion which works as black comedy perfection and a final karmic exclamation point. This is very cheaply produced, but there are some great stylistic touches, like the slowing wheelchair wheel in the aftermath of the first murder. There's also some first-person stuff that predicts the opening sequence of Halloween. Oh, and there's German actress Brigitte Skay playing Brunhilda, a character you get to see every inch of if you're into that sort of thing. Lots of this is gruesome with its fair share of decapitation, impaling, slicing, and dicing. This could use better pacing, but Bava does a lot with a little and adds a little depth to the violent genre. And that ending!

Meet the Feebles

1989 puppet movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The titular Muppet-esque creatures desperately try to get their variety show ready on schedule, but a variety of issues threaten to derail the whole thing.

This is one of those movies that I want to like more than I actually like. It starts out well enough with a bit glossy impressive theme song. The puppets look great, like creations Jim Henson's people just barely decided to discard. There's a ton of color and personality on the screen as we see the characters on stage for the first time. Then, the whole thing stumbles for about an hour and a half. There's way too many subplots, Peter Jackson (yes, this is what he did before he got Hobbititis) trying to juggle way too many ideas in a movie that is far too weak on main plot. For certain types of people, it'll be a hoot seeing these puppets, like bizarro Muppets, engaging in really bad behavior. The first clue that this thing isn't for children is the first sex scene featuring a little walrus-on-cat action. They're interrupted, and the walrus exclaims, "I was just about to pop my cookies!" It's ridiculously filthy, but it does force you to imagine interesting animal pairings. How would an elephant and a chicken do the deed, for example? For the rest of the movie, the creatures show off their waxy nips, puke, fornicate, smoke, die, shoot up, eat each other, curse, gorge themselves, drool while peeping a rabbit ménage a trois, engage in S&M acts, sniff panties, bleed, perform opera, eat fecal matter, have Vietnam flashbacks, make pornography (nasal pornography), contract sexually-transmitted diseases, projectile vomit, attempt suicide, and perform songs about sodomy. Again, I want to remind you that these are not puppets that you should watch with your children. I can't recall a Muppet ever dying. Lots of the Feebles die, and they die in grotesque meaty ways that only Peter Jackson at this stage in his career can dream up. If a director who seemed to be trying to see just what kinds of lewdness he could get away with doesn't completely scare you away, this might be worth you time. You'll probably never look at puppets the same, however.

Humanoids from the Deep

1980 horror movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Damn science! Once again, scientists dick around and accidentally create rampaging monsters. In this case, it's fish men who go around slicing up men with their deadly claws and violating women with their hideous reproductive organs. I guess they should have all listened to the Native American.

This is also, as you can tell from the poster called Monster. But that's not nearly clever enough for a movie made by people who can afford three monster costumes, the amount that is shown on screen at the same time. Yes, this is a cheap production as you'd expect something from Roger Corman to be. But it made up for its cheapness with the half-man/half-fish rape scenes. I mean, you never saw Jaws rape anybody unless you saw that titular beast as the phallic symbol that he was and saw the whole movie as some sort of rape allegory. I kind of liked how the monsters looked in this thing. They had these enormous heads and elongated arms, the latter which I imagine made groping teenagers a lot easier. This movie also has a fantastic ending, one that only sort of looks like it might have been stolen from another (more famous) movie that came out the previous year. And there was a random ventriloquist dummy in this thing as well as a splinters joke that I'm definitely going to be using if I ever get my hands on a ventriloquist dummy. This isn't the worst of these low-budget sci-fi horror hybrids, and the climactic scene where the monsters unleash their fury at a carnival that for whatever reason wasn't cancelled has its moments. And those monsters really do look kind of cool in a very ridiculous way. But this just feels like something we've all seen several times before.

Cloud Atlas

2012 epic

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Six semi-connected stories about human beings spanning from the 1840s to the 24th Century. There's a lawyer on a boat, a slave on the same boat, a bisexual composer, nuclear physicists, a reporter trying to uncover a secret, a publisher in a nursing home operated like a prison, that guy's brother, a clone, a bunch of other clones, a tough-guy rebel, Forrest Gump, a visitor from a distant and technologically-advanced society, and a guy with a hat. I'd like to apologize to any characters I may have left out.

This is the best thing that Tom Tykwer or the Wachowski siblings have ever been associated with, and I can't figure out why it A) wasn't critically lauded and B) the recipient of countless awards. I went into this thing expecting to hate it, partially because I thought it looked kinda stupid in previews and partly because of its almost three-hour running time. And it is an exhausting experience, one that I started too late at night and ended up watching in two installments. I still wasn't thrilled about the length, but when you essentially have six movies packed into three hours, you really can't complain. That's six movies for the price of one, people. This is also exhausting because it does take a little intellectual effort from the audience. The individual plots aren't that difficult to follow unless you, like me, are confused by science fiction. What might be frustrating to a lot of viewers is how these six stories are portrayed--in disjointed snippets, some lasting barely longer than a few seconds. There's a jumpiness that at first I didn't like or understand, but once I got used to the rhythm and started finding connections between the individual stories, it made sense. And a lot of the transitions between these time chunks were pretty brilliant. Also connecting the stories were that the characters in the different eras were played by the same actors. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, and Hugh Grant play six characters each while Jim Broadbent and Ben Whishaw play five each. Nobody gets away with just playing one character, and some of these performers brilliantly play people of drastically different ages, different races, and even different genders. A lot of times, they're unrecognizable. Well, not Tom Hanks. He's pretty easy to spot. Maybe it sounds cheesy or gimmicky, but it works with the movie's themes and it's all so well executed. Tom Hanks is mostly very good, but he and his forehead were a little distracting. I almost wished those parts were played by somebody not as easy to recognize. Don't get me wrong though--I'm not trying to put down Tom Hanks. I would never do something like that. Hugo Weaving plays villainous dudes, and he plays villainous dudes so well that you suspect the guy tortures small animals in his spare time. I found this whole thing enormously entertaining. There were several of those big memorable moments where you think to yourself, "Man, this is something special." There are fragments of dialogue that are very beautiful. There's action, romance, some humor. There's historical and science fiction, a story that plays like a political thriller and one that is nearly slapstick comedy. And there's a message that, while maybe simple when compared to the complex layout of this beast, is also beautiful. I really liked this! Epic, enthralling, and ambitious, this is a movie that I think people will finally be ready for in ten or fifteen years.

I fully expect at least one of my 4 1/2 readers to disagree completely. I'd love to hear why I'm wrong about this one.

This Is 40

2012 comedy

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: Pete and Debbie reach the titular age and deal with problems with finances, their sex lives, their parents, and their businesses.

What are people's opinions on Megan Fox? Does she have some degree of likability? I haven't seen a lot of Megan Fox movies--Transformers where I barely noticed her because it made my head hurt and Jonah Hex which I didn't like--but I almost always like when she's on the screen, and I know my wife has the hots for her. Is the consensus pretty much that she's hired for her shape? I like a lot of the talent in this. Apatow's wife (Leslie Mann) looks better than she sounds (didn't care for her voice) and has good chemistry with Paul Rudd. I always sort of like Rudd, despite the size of that chin of his. Apatow's daughters play their daughters. Albert Brooks and John Lithgow play the dads, the latter still looking a little confused from that Planet of the Apes thing. Apatow-regulars Segal and Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd are all funny in these, I'm guessing, largely-improvised scenes. Or at least they're based on improvisation. The humor does have a spontaneity to it that I like even though these comedians' streams-of-conscious too-often take them right to the scatological or genital to get laughs. Best of all might be Graham Parker playing himself, and I don't believe he makes a single dick joke. The problem with this movie is that there's way too much story. I like the relationship of the leads and their struggles to work through things even though things frequently got uncomfortable. But this movie's plot was the perfect storm of crappiness, and it was a lot to juggle, both for the storytellers and the audience. I guess that's why the movie had to be over two hours long, likely too long for a comedy like this. After a while, you're checking your watch as much as you're laughing. I really think about half of the subplots could have been dumped without making a difference, and that might be a clue that they're completely unnecessary. An editor was probably needed. That or somebody needed to finish the script. I was also a little annoyed at all the contemporary allusions, a thing I generally hate in movies because it pretty much ensures that people won't be interested in them in twenty or twenty-five years. I will say that my biggest laugh might have been the mention of John Goodman's name, however. This is funny enough and has a lot of recognizable situations for a nearly-40-year-old married guy like me to be worth watching, but it's unfortunately just way too long with far too many cheap laughs.

Looper

2012 time travel movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: There's time travel in 2074, but it's only used by the mob. They send people who need to be disposed of back 40 years so that the titular assassins can take them out and incinerate the bodies. Apparently, it's impossible to get rid of a body in 2074. The loopers are paid handsomely, especially when they have to kill their own older selves. Joe faces a problem when his older self doesn't really want to be killed and instead wants to run around 2034 looking for some kid who's going to turn out to be an evil warlord or something.

I might give this movie a higher rating if somebody can convince me that it makes any sense. Time travel movies are tricky anyway, and they require you to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy the things. The makers of Looper seem to realize that and just assume that you're going to let things slide and not think too much because it's all very entertaining. "Shut up and let us entertain you!" the movie seems to say. But I'm not sure this makes any sense, and the more I think about it, the more the apparent paradoxes annoy me. It's kind of a cool premise. But does the premise even make sense? Why couldn't they kill a person in 2074 and just send back a dead person to be incinerated? And why pull guns on people--especially the ex-loopers--in the future if the victims know they would prefer not to use the guns? This all builds to the exact climax I predicted as soon as Bruce Willis darted off in 2034 even though writer Rian Johnson tried to use a little postmodern trick to throw me off. The whole thing just gave me a headache even though there were things I liked about it. Gorden-Levitt is pretty good even though I do think he's a little too pretty and reminds me of plastic for some reason. But I like how you can see the Bruce Willis in him. Some of that's special effects, I guess, but he also nails the mannerisms and the voice. The whole thing where Bruce Willis--the future Joe--is angry at his younger self seems authentic. I mean, who doesn't look back at his younger self and get a little pissed off? The plot really toys with your emotions, making you wonder just who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. You struggle with which Joe to root for which makes sense, I guess, since they're actually the same person. I liked Jeff Daniels as Abe, and a scene where a guy is losing fingers, a nose, and eventually limbs is very well done. That's the kind of imaginative stuff that works in time travel movies. Unfortunately, this breaks apart when you dive in brain first and can't survive its paradoxical storytelling. And it morphs into a big dumb action movie by the end. I was happy to know that there are still hobos in the future though.

Another question: Why did they have the loopers kill themselves? Couldn't that create all sorts of problems? Wouldn't it be easier to have another looper take care of business? See, I keep thinking of these sorts of questions.

Much better time travel movies: Timecrimes and Time after Time.

Halloween

1978 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lunatic escapes from an asylum, returns to the childhood home where he murdered his sister, and starts killing off teenagers who are having sex. Donald Pleasence chases him around.

Carpenter is so skilled at doing a lot with not much at all, and that gift's on display here. This is cheap and doesn't even really have a story that is all that intriguing. It does deliver the scares, mostly the things-jumping-out-at-you kind of scares, but it's more effective at delivering a creepiness, creepiness with a barely-discernible sense of humor below the surface. This definitely has a little style. The long shot at the beginning with the first-person perspective works really well. I'm sure that sort of thing had been done prior to 1978, but I'm not enough of a cinephile to know when. This also has so many wonderfully choreographed sequences, like one where Jamie Lee Curtis and her friend are talking with the latter's cop father and then pulling away while Pleasence walks up and introduces himself before Michael Myers drives past in the background. It's all one shot and so perfectly timed, and it's got this gritty effortlessness. Myers is very creepy when lurking around, but should psychotic killers really drive around in station wagons? And at what point did they decide to make him freakishly strong? I really liked a shot where the camera lingers on Myers while he's standing and admiring his work killing Bob, the guy with giant glasses. Following that, Myers pretends to be a sheeted ghost, and I still can't decide if that's the stupidest thing I've seen recently or one of the coolest. Jamie Lee Curtis? I'm not seeing any acting potential here ("The keeeeeeeeyyyyys. The keeeeeeeeyyyyyyss!"), and she looks like she's about thirty years old. Her character is worse at killing psychotic killers than Curtis is at acting the part. Why does she keep throwing the knife away? The character is good at locking herself into places. Either that, or she doesn't fully understand how doors work. That's one of the many horror moves in this that either were already clichés or that would become cliches. Also, I wouldn't hire Jamie Lee Curtis to babysit any of my children. Donald Pleasence is his usually awesome self here and lends a certain elegance to the whole thing, best exemplified in his delivery of the line "He came home." Pleasence is taking this movie so seriously, even when his character is parking in a handicap space, and if I see the sequels (I never have, by the way), it'll be because of him. The music, as famous as those "Tubular Bells"-sounding piano tinkerings in the theme are, is occasionally grating. I didn't remember a clicking sound in the theme and thought something was wrong with my device. When I found out it was supposed to sound like that, I was annoyed. What I did like were the cheesy sound effects accompanying some of Michael Myers' moves. Loved that kung-fu electronic springy sound when Myers leaps onto a car, and although I can understand the argument that the sound effects were goofy, I was glad there was a sound effect every single time the killer appeared in the movie. Something else I liked was the complete lack of enthusiasm in whoever was the voice of a teacher during one scene. I haven't been able to put a name to that off-screen role unfortunately. This movie works as a cautionary tale, like a lot of slasher pics do, a warning to teenagers that premarital sex can be deadly. This movie predates AIDS by a few years, but when my peers and I first stumbled upon these horror movies where teenagers were having the sex, the disease, in its abstractness, was almost more terrifying than any Michael Myers could possibly be, no matter how many times he seemed to be dead but got back up. For us, it was almost like Michael Myers put a face on the disease. I think that's why nobody I grew up with had sex before marriage.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror

1981 Italian zombie movie

Rating: 12/20 (Libby: 4/20; Fred: 6/20; Carrie: 12/20)

Plot: Couples look for a good time at a creepy mansion but encounter zombies.

Don't get me wrong. The zombies in this are as creepy as zombies get. They're in various stages of decay, and a lot of them have wiggling maggots on their faces. They move like zombies should, feast on human flesh, and shamble out of unexpected places beautifully. But they are nowhere close to the creepiest thing about this Italian schlocker. No, that would be Peter Bark, the "unnerving Italian midget thespian" (according to imdb.com) who plays a twelve-year-old boy in this movie. His countenance and dubbed voice are creepy enough, but when he begins to sexually assault his mother? It's the stuff of nightmares. The problem with this movie isn't a lack of horrifying or suspenseful moments because once it gets going, really early in the proceedings, it's filled with horrifying and suspenseful moments. The problem is more with the storytelling, mainly that it doesn't have very much of it. The zombies aren't explained until the end with a quoted "profecy" that has more than one typographical error. And it's not exactly an explanation either. The human characters are a lot dumber than the zombies which doesn't make any sense. These are zombies that can use power tools. The humans? I'm not sure they can. I know one doesn't seem able to use a pitchfork. This festers with a lot of really nice horror movie moments including one that involves monks, and anybody popping it in for the gore will probably be satisfied. For me, it's the "unnerving" Peter Bark that I won't be able to shake out of my head.

Directed by Andrea Bianchi. It's a movie I liked enough to check out something else by him, maybe Strip Nude for Your Killer which was released six years earlier. That title's got some serious potential.

Is There Sex After Death?

1971 sex comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Dr. Rogers from the Bureau of Sexological Investigation roams about in the Sexmobile and interviews experts in sexual matters, talks to everyday people on the streets, and visits key sites to answer the titular question and others.

Prankster Alan Abel and his wife created this now-dated look at sexuality. It's funny forty-some years later, but after a while, it gets a little tedious. There are plenty of naked people, but if this makes any points at all, it makes them early. The wad is shot, so to speak, and then it keeps going. Abel himself plays the roving reporter and does it as a sort-of straight man. It's amazing that he keeps his composure while sitting so close to so many naked people or hearing an actor say, "For the vegetable, it was exquisite," or a "Professor of Dildography" talk about "millions of miles of unused orifice," or an x-rated magician ask, "Is that not your urine sample?" or an expert claiming that "you'd be up to your ass in dwarfs" if one of eight didn't die during sexual intercourse. In between all that, Abel takes us to a sex Olympics, a nudist colony where they sing "Dinah Won't You Blow Your Horn" and later dance in a way that makes nudity seem like a pretty terrible invention, a perverse art gallery, and a pornographic opera. Oh, and there's a brief penis puppet show. Robert Downey Sr. makes a pair of appearances, but he's nowhere as entertaining as Earle Doud who plays the x-rated magician or Marshall Efron who plays Vince Domino, the "master of filth and excretion" who talks about making a pornographic film with a goose and a donkey. This is nothing revolutionary, some bits fall completely flat, and it's not always even all that much fun, but it's an interesting enough little time capsule item nevertheless.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Surf Nazis Must Die!

1987 surf nazi movie

Rating: 7/20 (Fred: 12/20; Libby: 12/20; Carrie: 6.5/20; Josh: did not rate)

Plot: Gangs struggle for control of beach territories following an earthquake. The titular Nazis kill the wrong old lady's son, and she decides it's time to take the Nazis out, just as surfing Hitler realizes his dream of being "Fuhrer of the whole beach."

We went with Troma for our Sunday night bad movie viewing "pleasure," and although it's got a great title, some ridiculous characters, and a sex scene that involves what I'll describe as butt gnawing, this isn't one of their better efforts. In fact, there was really only a little bit of effort involved, I think. First, I want to point out that that poster is a little misleading. You don't get to see any surf-sawing action. There's some violence, but there's not all that excitement, and aside from an only slightly-doughy throat cut, a decapitation, and a scene where a boat splits open a Nazi noggin, it doesn't have quite the gross-out buffoonery of other Troma classics. It does have some of their typically great writing though. ("Slime-sucking neanderthals." "Take the head off a honky at 20 paces.") Peter George directed this, and he's only got one other film to his name--an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown." That doesn't seem quite right to me. The characters are interesting enough that this movie really could have been a lot better. My friends and I liked the grandmother, played by Gail Neely who was in a Naked Gun sequel, Earth Girls Are Easy, and a bunch of Philips Milk of Magnesia commercials. Hitler (Barry Brenner, a coroner in both Maniac Cop and Maniac Cop 2) had a disappointing mustache, but Hook and the demented Mengele were both fun characters. There's even a Clockwork Orange reference in there. Of course, there's also a ton of surfing montages and barely any plot at all, both which can be frustrating. This isn't higher echelon Troma, but there's enough in there to make fans of the company happy enough. There's also plenty for you history buffs out there! 

Weird thing I noticed: Graffiti on the wall saying, "Give a hot beer injection to a lifeless corpse." Is that a reference to something or a non sequitur?

American Animal

2011 artsy comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A dying man throws a hissy fit when his roommates gets a job.

Hard to do a plot synopsis with this one since it was pretty much sans plot. This is an interesting little movie actually, but I'm not sure there's a high percentage of people who would make it all the way through it. Matt D'Elia wrote, directed, and starred in it, and I'm having a tough time figuring out if this is bordering on awesome tour de force insanity or if he's just a poor-man's Russell Brand or if he's somewhere in between. Whatever, he's comically unhinged, and the whole movie feels like random acts of insanity shoved into a tiny drawer. There are repetitious snippets that go on too long, the repetition of a word that goes on exactly one second longer than it should but seems like a month longer or what seems like endless giggling. It pushes boundaries, a movie that almost invades your space. And D'Elia's character says things like "You think I'm being a dick? Sabadoo dabbadoo" which I know I spelled correctly because I watched this with subtitles. But then he says, "Why on the name of this earth would I not put on the ritz when I can put on the ritz. If I were to not put on the ritz when I'm perfectly capable of putting on the ritz, wouldn't that make me fucking crazy?" And it makes you wonder if you're watching something that is maybe a little bit of genius. There's also a great poem. Of course, there's also a monologue at around the hour mark when the guy, after a small transformation, tries to rationalize his behavior and almost ruins the thing. The friend's acting doesn't work well for me. Loads of movie references make this kind of fun, but I can't believe how many monologues this has. It might break a monologue record. This if flawed and a little annoying, perhaps intentionally, but it's an interesting little experiment.

My theory: There's a Tyler Durden thing going on here.

Ted

2012 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Marky Mark refuses to grow up, spending all his free time smoking pot with his childhood friend--the titular teddy bear who was magically brought to life after the fairy from the Pinocchio story felt sorry for him because he was a loser and brought the stuffed animal to life. This puts a strain on his relationship with his girlfriend.

This is just a big game of "Let's see what crude things we can have a teddy bear do!" and I found it pretty annoying. I've never been a fan of The Family Guy, so I'm not really sure why I thought this might be funny. I guess it was knowing that there would be a teddy bear saying a lot of crude things and maybe, I predicted, having a sexual encounter with an adult female. I know, I'm not a genius for predicting that or anything. We all saw the previews, the perfect case where those could have just been repeated about thirty times to produce a similar result. I didn't anticipate the storyline being so predictable. And predictably lame. It's definitely too predictably pedestrian for a movie that features a talking teddy bear should be. I don't like Marky Mark anyway, and although I'll credit him with having a nice rapport with a CGI stuffed animal, I didn't like him here either. I also didn't like Mila Kunis's voice at all. I think she's supposed to be sexy or something. This is filled with gags that I am not going to remember in a year, and a lot of the targets it pushes around won't be around long enough for this to need to be seen in twenty years. It's nowhere near as funny as Gooby, another talking bear thing. In fact, I don't believe I laughed a single time. I laughed during Gooby just to try to keep myself sane.

This is about as well written as Ted, but I have an excuse: Rapid fire!

Disco Godfather

1979 disco anti-drug movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: The titular hero, a platter-spinning cat at a discotheque, declares his own personal war on PCP after his nephew runs into trouble.

This is Rudy Ray Moore but not with his Dolemite character. It does have plenty of tackiness, 70's jumpsuit sequin action, and a few terrible kung-fu scenes though. Oh, and a Rudy Ray Moore sex scene, of course. The best of those fight scenes (and by best, I'm really meaning the worst) are a pair with some telephone repairmen, the second of those accompanied by this "One Way Ticket to Hell--Shermanizin'" song that made me want to get my own jumpsuit, preferably a crotchless one. Interesting that this has such a strong anti-drug message since I assume the only people who would really like this movie would have to be on some sort of drug. Maybe Angel Dust. PCP must be a hell of a drug, apparently one capable of transforming a disco into Night of the Living African American Dead and turn Rudy Ray Moore into a skeleton. This whole thing starts with a ton of disco dancing mayhem with a great entrance by Moore in this blue outfit and a whole lot of cries to "Put some weight on it!" whatever the hell that means. Moore apparently thought that little catch phrase would be huge because the credits point out that he did copyright it. Things really get interesting when this turns into a 1970's black version of Reefer Madness. Moore's performance is something to behold--the early delivery of a "Where is Bucky and what has he had?" line, the mispronunciation of the word clandestine, and a scream at about the hour and twenty-nine minute mark that might be the best acting I've ever seen. My favorite moment might be during one of Rudy Ray's curse-filled ramblings about PCP that ends with a reporter asking, "Can I quote you on that?" The most exciting moments are during the PCP freakouts, scenes that almost reminded me of an urbanized Coffin Joe or something. And when animation is added to the freakouts, it was suddenly like outsider art or something.

Notable moments: An awesome performance by John Casino--Kurt Russell's stuntman for the last 25 years--as a cowboy. His death scene is one of the more ludicrous things you'll ever seen.

Best line that isn't "Put some weight on it!": "She claimed the ham was crying and didn't want the ham ruining her party."

Samurai Cop

1989 action movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: The titular cop and his sidekick battle organized crime in Los Angeles.

Matt Hannon plays that titular cop and is pretty dreadful as an actor but not too bad as an action hero. He's no worse than an Arnold or a Stallone really although he doesn't have that special whatever that either of them have. Still, it's strange to me that he wasn't in a single movie after this one and only had other straight-to-video release. Jannis Farley, who plays his love interest Jennifer, also had no other movies after this one, and I would have figured that her posterior alone would have gotten her more work. The bad guy is played by Robert Z'Dar whose had plenty of work including the sequels to Hell Comes to Frogtown and Beastmaster, Tango and Cash, and that awesome Soultaker movie with Joe Estevez. So with a cast like this, how could it possibly miss? Well, it was apparently written by an individual with some mental problems. Amir Shervan wrote and directed it. And Amir Shervan might have written this without first hearing other human beings speak to one another. Most of these are likely worse in context, spoken from the mouths of people who can't act very well:

"I will bring his head, and I will place it on your piano." (This is right after the gang leader guy said, "I want you to bring me his head and place it on my piano.")
"I can relieve you of this gift, this black gift." (This is a reference to the castration of Samurai Cop's black sidekick.)
"You lost. . .you lost face." (Spoken by the protagonist after he beats a guy up. No, it doesn't make more sense in context.)
"Hey, wait a minute. I want to talk to you." (This isn't a bad line on its own, but it's the exact thing spoken by four extras in a row during an escape from a hospital.)
"I feel like somebody stuck a big club up my ass. And it hurts. We have to figure out a way to get it out of there." (This is the police captain. He's got a few gems as almost nothing he says makes sense.)
"Oh, shoot!" (Right after the cops run over a guy they just shot. What?)
"Shoot! Shoot him!" (Said repeatedly during a car chase scene. Then, a "Yeah! You got him!" Spoken like a true sidekick.)

This sexy bit of dialogue:

Girl cop: Ok, Joe. Just keep it up.
Cop: Oh, it's always up. You just keep it warm.
Girl cop: It's warm and ready.
(Then, later--following the car and helicopter chase they're involved in during the above exchange) Girl cop: I'll be home later.
Cop: I may stop by, so (pause--tongue click) keep it warm."

And then there's this conversation between a sex-crazed Samurai Cop and a nurse who is only in the movie to have this conversation:

Nurse: Do you like what you see?
Cop: I love what I see.
Nurse: Would you like to touch what you see?
Cop: Yes, yes, I would.
Nurse: Would you like to go out with me?
Cop: Umm. Yes, I would.
Nurse: Would you like to fuck me?
Cop: Bingo.
Nurse: Well, then let's see what you got. (Checks groin area) Doesn't interest me. Nothing there.
Cop: Nothing there? Just exactly what would interest you--something the size of a jumbo jet?
Nurse: Have you been circumcised?
Cop: Yeah, I have. Why?
Nurse: Your doctor must have cut a large portion off.
Cop: No, he was a good doctor.
Nurse: Good doctors make mistakes, too. That's why they have insurance.
Cop: Hey, don't worry. I got enough. It's big.
Nurse: I want bigger.

And that's it.

And then there's some great dialogue with dubbed (I think) voices that are pretty much unintelligible, like gangsters just growling at each other. And two conversations about how black the Samurai Cop's sidekick's ass is. The greatness of the dialogue is nearly surpassed by the greatness of the action sequences in this bad boy. During a car chase where the film was speeded-up but still seems to involve vehicles that never top 30 miles per hour, a van drives into a pile of dirt and naturally explodes before the driver runs out on fire while the cops panic and yell about how he's burning and how they need to do something. Then, it cuts directly to the first of a few awkward sex scenes. Another great action scene involves the cop throwing a samurai sword (really the only time he uses that weapon, I think) and chops a guy's arm off. The black sidekick's response? "Damn!" There's some kung-fu fighting with some strangely echoing utterances that would likely embarrass Bruce Lee, and a final shoot-out that makes up the final redundant 30 minutes of this thing that feature some of the best (and by that, I mean the worst) death scenes I've ever seen. Oh, and at one point, you can hear an audible gun click. It's all wildly entertaining and really funny if you're looking for a movie bad enough to make you laugh.

Special mention goes to Joselito Rescober who showcases some of the best acting I've ever seen as a waiter.

The Libertine

 1968 sexy Italian movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A widow discovers that her late husband had an apartment rented solely for extracurricular shenanigans and decides to use it to explore her own sexuality.

I'm now a big fan of Catherine Spaak and her versatile hair. She's really good here though there's not nearly as much nudity as you'd expect from this. Or maybe from these other posters:

I really need to check out more Catherine Spaak movies though. This isn't really a funny movie at all. It's cute, more than a little dated. It's got a little bit of style but looks cheaply produced. There is a really cute little song that runs throughout the movie. Aside from Spaak's nice performance, a guy named Renzo Montagnani is really good as Fabrizio. I'm not sure what the message for women is here, probably because I'm not a woman living in the late-60s, but I'm sure there's some kind of feminist idea here. Or maybe not since a male wrote the original story, a male wrote the screenplay, and a male directed the thing.

This has nothing to do with the Johnny Depp movie, by the way.

Amelie

2001 romantic comedy

Rating: 19/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: An awkward, introspective waitress in Paris decides to become a good-deed doer, and after she gets the hang of that, she decides to help herself.

This little feel-good movie of the century seems impossible to not love. It's refreshing, like lemonade washing over you without any of the stickiness. Amelie is as cute as a peach, and Tautou just nails this quirky and lovable character. The direction is as flamboyant as you'd expect and want from something Jean-Pierre Jeunet had anything to do with, and although the surface of this story is as simple as it can possible be, its diversions are so much fun. This is definitely a case where the "Where the characters go" doesn't matter nearly as much as "How the characters get there," the latter keeping this movie fresh no matter how many times you watch the thing. Along the way, there's a tiny bit of animation, fun camera play, some narration, a lawn gnome, and a sex montage that is as much a whimsical treat as my favorite scene in Delicatessan. Oh, and I just love the music of Yann Tiersen here. Even though it wasn't written specifically for this movie, the music matches the visuals so well. Another of my favorite little things about this movie: Amelie and Nino don't have any face-to-face dialogue in this movie. There's just something so precious about that. Ah, precious! That's a good word to describe this one. It's almost a fragile little movie, so delicate that I fear somebody with big clumsy hands might come along and accidentally break the thing. This is definitely not a movie for people with big clumsy hands.

As far as I know, this is still my brother's favorite movie.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

1971 blockbuster

Rating: no rating

Plot: In a land governed by children, kids run around abusing adults and drawing X's over things.

The only thing I really knew about this movie is that the band Stereolab grabbed its title for one of their album titles. I'm not sure what it's about. It's a frenzy of worn black 'n' white shock images, a lot involving children doing things they're not supposed to be doing. I'm sure director Shuji Terayama is saying something here, but it's going to be next to impossible for most viewers to see it through some really shocking visuals. The imagery invited Holocaust comparisons and thoughts about censorship and totalitarian governments, but none of it was cohesive enough to make a point that a dumb guy like me could fully grasp. No, I'm the type of viewer who's content in being entertained by a scene of a little person emerging from a hole while wearing an army helmet and what appears to be a diaper, running to another hole where he extracts a chicken that he takes an ax to, an act accompanied by a too-loud screech and some scattered applause. There's no real dialogue, but there's some words thrown in (found sound or stock sounds, I assume), none of it that I could understand because I don't speak whatever language it's in. There are also some words that appeared in white on the screen that I wouldn't be able to read even if I could read German. The music is nice if not all over the place. Like many foreign avant-garde productions, I'm missing way too much context to fully appreciate this or even understand it. This might have loads of interesting ideas but it's distracted by its own imagery.

Note: There's a 70-something minute version of this and a much shorter 20-something minute version that I'm guessing only shows the highlights. Like a Michael Bay movie with just the explosions maybe.