The Man with the Iron Fists

2012 kung-fu movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Some bad guys try to steal some treasure, and it's up to a blacksmith and a government official to stop them.

This is a kind of labor of love for Wu-Tang Clan's RZA who co-wrote this with Eli Roth, directed, and ill-advisedly stars in the thing. I suppose the directing is admirable. Man looks as good as any other modern kung-fu movie with some dazzling acrobatics, some ok special effects (not the CGI wolves at the beginning--that's one of the grossest effects I've ever seen), and a lot of bloodletting, including much spurting and even some visible viscera that could get fans of that sort of thing excited enough. The story's not awful but a bit of a mess, not the worst thing that can happen to a kung-fu movie. It was good to see both Gordon Liu and Pam Grier, the latter whom the guy who works across the hall from me referred to as his "celebrity crush" although I'm sure he's talking about Pam Grier in her prime. The former is somebody I might have a celebrity crush on, and I don't even care if it's Gordon Liu in his prime or not. When I think of kung-fu, I think of Russell Crowe, and he sneaks into this thing as an under-realized perverse anti-hero with the not-as-clever-as-RZA-thinks name Jack Knife. I had to give this a bonus point because Crowe's character refers to his phallus as "the baby's arm" when requesting to put it inside Lucy Liu's character. Speaking of Liu, she's absolutely awful here, delivering lines that I'm sure both she and RZA think are much cuter than they actually are. Her performance is worse than RZA's, but he shouldn't have been in his own movie either, at least not with a speaking role. He seems tired or high, or maybe he's both. The more traditional kung-fu hero is played by Rick Yune, and I don't like that character at all. It'd be fine if there was a cool bad guy, but we're given Silver Lion played by a guy named Byron Mann. Silver Lion looks way too much like Revenge of the Nerds' Booger to take seriously. And later, there's an even worse bad guy--Dagger! If you're watching a kung-fu movie and can't root for the good guys or the bad guys, the kung-fu movie is in some serious trouble. The most intriguing characters--other than some disappointingly only nearly-nude whores that are definitely not utilized to their full potential--are the Gemini Twins who aren't in the movie enough and really don't have that much to do. They're barely more than a deleted scene or two that made it into the movie because RZA filmed the stuff and didn't want to cut anything. There's an "Attaboy, Luther" moment when a random voice in the crowd says, "Gemini Stance!" A clumsy flashback done so poorly that it managed to be comical was probably the film's worst moment, one that might showcase the director's limitations more than anything else. A worse decision, however, was the use of Wu-Tang Klan music (Ol' Dirty Bastard if I'm recalling correctly) and other questionable choices. I'm also not sure what I thought about the use of animal growls during fight scenes, but I probably didn't like those either. There's a guy made from metal--didn't I just see that somewhere else?--and a bunch of unique weapons that show RZA's potential with this sort of thing, but he, as a classic kung-fu Shaw Brothers aficionado, really should have known better and not released something that seems like less of an homage than a tacky rehash of other recent modern martial arts flicks. The credits, by the way, seem to be a prelude to a sequel which has bird people in it, and despite the inclusion of bird people, that movie looks like it could end up even worse than this one.

The Man Who Saved the World

1982 Turkish Star Wars

Rating: 2/20

Plot: A pair of kung-fu fightin' astronauts (or are the cosmonauts in Turkey? [or did Turkey not even have anything that even remotely resembled a space program?]) land on what must be Tatooine where a demonic wizard is doing a variety of things that he hopes will result in, I believe, the destruction of the world. They battle his evil minions and try to locate a magic sword while parts of the Raiders of the Lost Ark score plays in the background.

That might be the poster of the year. Always good to start with the positives.

Seriously, this just plagiarizes music from the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. Not only that, it plagiarizes space battle sequences from A New Hope. It's not just little snippets either. This is huge chunks of film. They look odd because they're squashed into a different aspect ratio, but I still think it counts as stealing. It's strange hearing the Indiana Jones theme while X-Wings fly around the Death Star.

Watching the credits, I noticed that Turkish people already have good Star Wars names, so that makes things easy. I also noticed that the company that produced this beast is named Kunt Films.

This actually looks like the type of movie that would be produced by Kunt Films. And no, I'm not really sure what that means. But wouldn't this thing be in a Kunt Films production:



That's the Darth Vader of Turkish Star Wars, an evil wizard. Of course, this differs from the Star Wars trilogy because the Turkish Star Wars Darth Vader dies which means he won't end up being anybody's father if there's ever a sequel to this thing. And that, dear readers, is how you spoil two movies in one sentence. Although I doubt anybody reading this hasn't seen the Star Wars films, I still should probably apologize. Hopefully this other image from The Man Who Saved the World will make up for it:

Yeah, that picture is random, but so is most of this movie. After the initial Star Wars space battle scenes, there's a lengthy scene where the hero and the other hero ride on horses to the Raiders theme. The horse-riding scenes are chopped up with shots of monsters. Now what I can't figure out is why the makers of this thing decided to show us close-ups of these growling beasts.

Toilet tissue mummies, obligatory tinfoil "stormtroopers, an absurdly-large and unwieldly magic sword, chaotic fight choreography, trampolining, the most maddening sound effects I've ever heard, metal hands, sliced furry things, exploding decapitated heads (Seriously, what the hell? A mummy thing is decapitated. The head is thrown at another mummy. Explosion. Does that make sense in Turkey?), blue robot lasers. It's all pretty brilliant. And this ends in what has to be the worst special effect I have ever seen. I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's the evil wizard's head chopped in half vertically. If nothing else, this movie has inspired me to look for the Turkish Titanic movie. Oh, snap! These guys:

The Start of a New "Man" Movie Streak: Winnebago Man

2009 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Jack Rebney's his name although nobody knew that when they laughed through a collection of outtakes and bloopers on the Youtube featuring the guy cursing up a storm and throwing hissy fits while trying to extol the features of the Winnebago for the company. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer decides to dig the guy up and see how he feels about his Internet fame. He discovers a complicated man.

I never really liked Jack Rebney here, but I was intrigued by him. He played a character here, knowing that the camera was on him and that he would possibly be seen by dozens of people watching this movie, but the character he played was so inconsistent. The original footage that gave Rebney his Internet fame is funny enough and there are plenty of other humorous moments in this, but there are also some really touching moments. Rebney really is a complex figure, one who will not be worthy of a documentary for a lot of people who stumble across this, and I never really could pin him down. I thought the director kind of got in the way a few times and kind of wished he had less screen time. Made the whole thing seem self-indulgent or something. In fact, he got in the way so much that the climax has a sort-of forced feel to it, made Steinbauer seem more like a wrench-happy handyman than a chronicler of events. Rebney would have taken this in one direction that might not have been as interesting, but Steinbauer manipulates things and takes it in the direction he wants to go. Not that it doesn't work out just fine because it does, but it seems a little more forced than it should have. There's a little insight on the nature of unwanted fame, so easy to find with our 21st Century resources, and it made me wonder what Warhol would have to say about the Internet and our 15 minutes of fame. I also wonder how many idiots are going to go bug this guy after figuring out where he lives.

Tetsuo, the Iron Man

1993 mind warper

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular man accidentally runs over a guy who likes to stick metal rods into his legs. Later, metal starts growing from him including an awesome penis drill. He begins to become more metal than man, and not only will it hurt his relationship with his girlfriend, it might ruin his entire life.

"You want a taste of my sewage pipe?"

Like Eraserhead at twice the speed, a comical nightmare, or vile outsider art, this is very likely the strangest movie I've ever seen. That's saying something. There's not much dialogue in this, something else it has in common with Eraserhead, but at one point, a character says, "What's going on here?" and then, while breaking into tears, "What the fuck is this?" I can imagine that the majority of viewers would be thinking the same exact thing, and honestly, a lot of them would also probably feel like crying. I give it bonus points for sheer audacity, but there's also a thrill in the innovative camera work and effective imagery and atmosphere. Director (and star) Shinya Tsukamoto manages to create something that uniquely creates these moods that you really have trouble labeling. It's foreboding and troubling, but always with some dark humor built in. I'm not familiar with anything else he's done, but with what I'm guessing isn't much of a budget, he auteur-istically brings his wacko vision to life. Chases with lobster-clawed women, rocket heels, metal phalluses, metallic chewing noises, chipmunk laughs, hulking metal men, robot porn. It's demanding stuff, a movie a lot of people wouldn't be able to watch much of, but if you're in the right frame of mind and enjoy the wildly experimental, this could be your favorite movie ever.

Cory, don't watch this one. I'm putting it on the anti-five list.

Little Man -- "Man" movie #137

2006 comedy

Rating: 4/20 (Jen watched nearly the entire movie but said "Nuh uh" when I asked for her rating. I think she might have really enjoyed it!)

Plot: Calvin is a diminutive con recently released from the big house. His brother (I forgot his name but he's played by Tracy Morgan so his character's name is probably something like Tracy Corbin) picks him up, and they're immediately up to no good, stealing big ass diamonds and rapping. The diamond somehow winds up in the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, and Calvin has to pretend to be a baby in order to get it back. And yes, it's just as stupid as it sounds. I can't figure out Jen liked it so much!

The bottom of the barrel seems like a good enough place to stop. Who knows what the hell you'll find if you managed to break through the bottom of the barrel and start tunneling through the earth. I suppose Jingle All the Way and Clifford with Martin Short and Charles Grodin is down there somewhere, worms maneuvering through the vacant eye sockets. The body of E.T. might be in the late stages of decomposition too, but only because some punk kid stole him, threw him in the back of a pick-up truck, kicked him around in an improvised soccer-like game played without goals and with more tackling, and then dumped him in close proximity to the barrel. The creepy Polar Express is down there, hopefully without a grave marker so nobody will ever find it again. But I definitely don't want to go beyond the bottom of the barrel, so we're stopping this "Man" movie experience at movie one hundred and thirty-seven, what I believe to be blog post (actual movie post and not any of that other perverted nonsense) number one thousand. I am 100% convinced that I now own the record for watching the most movies in a row with "man" in the title, but I'm also 100% that there will only be four and a half people, my faithful readers, who will ever know about it. I've wondered many times about how tedious this might be for my faithful readers and nearly abandoned the "man" movies to watch something like Space Balls or How Stella Got Her Groove Back, but I pressed on and on and on and finally reached what can only be described as a magical moment. No, I take that back. It can also be described as the greatest achievement in the history of mankind. I'm half serious. Come on, Ebert and Maltin! Let's see you pull this off! I don't even think you watch all the movies you review, Leonard, and there's no way you're going to put off watching the latest Werner Herzog movie to continue a "man" streak of this girth, Roger. That's right, bitches, I'm calling you out, throwing down the gauntlet, thrusting the pelvis. I might not be able to write a single meaningful word about a movie that I watch or know even a little bit about what I'm talking about, but let's see you watch even ten "man" movies in a row. Ten! And I watched one hundred and thirty-seven of them, some which I even paid attention to and didn't fast forward over. I won't pretend it was easy, especially with He Was a Quiet Man, Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story, Madman, and The Pumaman, but the really good ones (Man from the West, The Man Between, The Thin Man, Big River Man, Little Big Man, Fred Tuttle: Man with a Plan, Odd Man Out, Batman and Robin, The Elephant Man, Man in the Glass Booth, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Wicker Man, Dead Man Walking, The Invisible Man, The Weather Man, The Man Who Would Be King, The Man Who Came to Dinner, A Man for All Seasons, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Cameraman, and Dead Man) made it all worth it. There are sure a lot of good movies with "man" in the title.

OK, so I didn't finish that Jack Frost movie. We'll go with one hundred and thirty-six and one-third as the official count. Still, I'd like to see Gene Shalit's mustache even come close to that number. And I bet I could kick Gene Shalit's ass in a fight simply because I've watched more kung-fu movies than him.

Thanks again for putting up with this, faithful readers. Now back to movies without "man" in the title.

Last Man Standing

1996 gangsta flick

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Yojimbo but with guns and fedoras and Bruce Willis instead of swords and kimonos and Toshiro Mifune.

This gangster film, apparently shot on a used but abandoned B-Western set, is a convoluted rehash of the "Man with No Name" idea, most recently rehashed in Sukiyaki Western Django and Lucky Number Slevin with none other than Bruce Willis, stolen thirty years ago with Clint and Leone for A Fistful of Dollars, and first used in Kurosawa's excellent Yojimbo even though he borrowed imagery from the American Wild West and a central character from Dashiell Hammett. So as the kids are saying today: It's all good. This nearly works but I kind of got lost in the plot, probably because there are far too many gangsters and none that I really cared all that much about. By the time Christopher Walken rolled in, I had already gotten to the point where I was checking my watch, the same point where I realized I didn't even have a watch on. It was probably shot off my wrist by one of the characters in this movie during one of the gangster's dozen (same amount as a baker's dozen for you squares out there) scenes where there's nothing but a flurry of gun fire mayhem and thick dust. There are a few times when characters are shot and fly backward fifty feet, some of them disappearing onto the set of Yojimbo where Kuwabatake Sanjuro looks at him in confusion before trying on his shoes. I know even less about physics and guns, especially firearms from the Prohibition Era, than I do about movies, but it seemed a bit ridiculous. Good thing they didn't have their backs to me because I'm not sure my trash guys will take dead bodies. They won't take old furniture! I like movies with beat-up, dusty towns like this and Bruce Willis, although he looked a little fatigued, was just the right guy for this, but this doesn't have nearly the character and voice that Kurosawa and Leone had. And unfortunately, it's just begging to be compared to those films.

I bought this for fifty cents early in the "man" movie challenge. It was probably worth that much.

The Man Between

1953 post-WWII thriller

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Former-Nazi Ivo Kern works for the Commies in post-war Berlin, aiding in kidnapping and transporting folks from the West to the East. They should have put a freakin' wall there or something! Kern wants out but finds it impossible. Meanwhile, Claire Bloom arrives from England to stay with her sister. A romance seems to develop, but Kern might be using the girl for shady reasons. Or will the two find love and hook up? Oh, those crazy kids!

I liked the second half of this film a lot better than the first, the part of the film where I had to think way too much. Things really get exciting when the characters are sneaking around the shadows of dilapidated Berlin buildings. There's a great score, brilliant cinematography with Third Man-esque broken-tripod camera angles, and terrific shots of a city landscape torn to pieces by war. The cinematography alone makes this worth the price of admission, but moody James Mason and innocent Claire Bloom are good leads. It all builds to one of those endings, a memorable final shot on a snowy street. The story, though parts are a bit confusing taken out of the historical context, is essentially a timeless one of love doomed by place and time. This isn't quite the film that The Third Man or Odd Man Out are, but Carol Reed sure knew how to make "man" movies. That's especially surprising since he had such a sissy name.

This movie supports my theory that films are better when the most of the shots are askew.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

2000 horror-comedy

Rating: n/r

Plot: Well, apparently a mutant killer snowman from a first movie is brought back to life after a laboratory accident. He travels, naturally, to a beach resort to get revenge on some really boring characters. After travelling as water, he manages to collect a carrot and charcoal in absurd ways and eventually, I'm guessing since I couldn't finish the movie, becomes an entire mutant killer snowman.

This is not just a movie that I couldn't finish. This is a movie that forced me to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. After shutting this one down, I sat in a motionless, depressed funk for what I thought was a week and a half but turned out to be only seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman

2005 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Efficiently proficient and prolific, Albert Pierrepoint followed in his father's bootsteps and hanged people for a living. When he's not delivering groceries, that is. And probably only people who had it coming. He didn't seem like the type to hang random people. Pierrepoint executed just over six hundred during his twenty-two years, and that was just when he was supposed to be delivering groceries! Eventually, the so-called "Babe Ruth of Hangmen" reconsiders his stance on capital punishment.

The director certainly takes a languid approach with this one, not only showing seemingly every meticulous detail in claustrophobic settings but showing these meticulous details over and over and over again. It delivers the point home and comes as close as I imagine it can come to helping a guy watching a television screen understand some of the feelings of the increasingly-troubled titular hangman, and Timothy Spall, without any of the pomp or tricks that people usually see in great acting performances, has a quiet magnetism. His performance is half the picture, and he gives Pierrepoint's story a realism and poignancy in a very natural way. Plus, I dig his cheeks and wonder if implants were involved. Still, this visually sucks you into a gloom, and after a while, the movie starts to seem much longer than it actually is. Its interesting subject matter and gripping internal conflict make this worth checking out.

The Man with the Golden Arm

1955 drug movie

Rating: 16/20 (Mark: 12/20; Amy 11/20)

Plot: Frankie Machine, a poker dealer just released from prison, dreams of drumming in jazzy night clubs to make ends meet and take care of his injured and whiny wife. He's got a friend who is half-man/half-turtle, a new suit, and his own brushes. He's also got the scrumptious Kim Novak. And pretty eyes. Oh, and a heroin addiction. I almost forgot about that one. When things don't work out with his drumming aspirations, mostly because he's not very good, he decides to become a James Bond villain and forges a gold cast around his left arm to use as a bludgeon.

I liked the way the camera moved in this one, a sneaky bit of style that never got in the way of the storytelling but added a little cool to the proceedings. Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak are fine; Eleanor Parker ain't; and there's an odd assortment of supporting characters who give this a quirky flavor, including a sluggishly-sauntering pedestrian extra with a hat who I swear I saw in nine different scenes. As a drug movie, this is understandably a little dated, but I still like it twice as much as most modern drug movies. Yeah, Requiem for a Dream, I'm looking at you. I thought the scene with Frankie Machine fighting through withdrawal rang true and liked the amount of edginess that they were allowed to have in this mid-50s production. This movie might also wind up winning the 2010 shane-movies award for "Best Use of a Dummy" which I'm sure would make Otto Preminger pee on himself in his grave. This movie goes on a little longer than it should, and I'm not sure I bought it all, but I definitely liked it a little more than I expected. Bonus point for some nice poker scenes.

Zatoichi and the Doomed Man

1965 Zatoichi movie

Rating: 15/20


Plot: Zatoichi meets the titular domed man in jail. The man, soon to be executed, informs him that he is innocent and pleads with the blind swordsman to get him some help once he's released. Zatoichi is sick of getting into trouble every time he helps somebody out, but eventually finds himself involved anyway.


Good entry in the Zatoichi series has plenty of swordplay but also has a more comedic tone than most of them. It's been a bit since I've seen this blind mo-fo in action, and I'd almost forgotten how much I like watching his movements, not just in the swift sword swipes and pouncing pirouettes, but in Shintaro Katsu's actions portraying a blind guy. And this reminds me of a dream I had and immediately forgot about. In the dream, Shintaro Katsu, not as Zatoichi but as himself, rides to my front door in a rickshaw. I'm sitting on a chair that I don't have that is on a porch I don't have. I'm wearing booty shorts and smoking an absurdly large red and yellow pipe with a goat's head carved into it. Orange smoke billows from the pipe, and I keep wondering how bad I smell, so bad, I fear, that the neighbors across the street might be able to smell me. Katsu tells me not to worry about it and points with a cane (again, he's not Zatoichi but does still have his cane sword) at my shorts. He says, "Your worries lie in those tight, lime-green shorts." When I don't say anything, he explains. "Don't come crying to me if somebody tries to rape you." Then, just like in all these nocturnal meanderings of my subconscious, the dream ends with my dream self weeping uncontrollably and my real self waking up in a puddle of my own urine.

Man from the West

1958 Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Link Jones don't want to be an outlaw no more. But after being abandoned in the middle of nowhere with two others by the train they were riding following a failed robbery, he finds himself face-to-face with his old boss and forced to once again join the gang. He tries to balance feigned loyalty to his posse and concern for his fellow train passengers.

What a pleasant surprise this "man"/Mann Western was! I wasn't expecting much since I had never even heard of this one, but it's solid stuff. I've liked other Anthony Mann Westerns, but in this one, he's second to no one, not even Ford, in using landscape to help tell the story. Link, played stoically by a fatigued-looking Gary Cooper, is one of those characters who is in control in a situation there's no way he can control. As things look bleaker and bleaker, the landscape reflects that, becoming harsher and harsher--from civilized town to a rickety train to a dilapidated farmhouse to a ghost town to miles and miles of brown jagged rock. It's all beautifully photographed, as are the characters. Lee J. Cobb's Dock Tolbin looks like he just rolled off the set of a movie in which he's been shot at by Clint Eastwood while Leone looks on, and there's something raw and tense about his performance. I also liked Jack Lord as another of the baddies. They're definitely not the bad guys I expected to see in a late-50s movie. I think that's what I really liked about The Man of the West actually; it's not a glossy Hollywood Western but one not afraid to get some dust on the lens. There's a great scene with the death of one character. In other Westerns, other good Westerns even, this unfortunate character (second from the bottom on the cast list) would have caught the bullet, fallen down, and died. In The Man of the West, the camera follows him as he stumbles around and moans in extreme pain and then lingers on him from a few moments after he finally, almost mercifully, expires. Harsh stuff. There's another great scene with Julie London's character, a woman thrust into a damsel-in-distress type situation, in an uncomfortably humiliating moment, and Cooper, with a knife drawing a trickle of blood from his throat, forced to watch. Another Western would keep Link 100% chivalrous. Link would grit his teeth and curse the mean guys under his breath. But here, you read something else on his face. There's conflict, a part of the old outlaw Link who really might enjoy what is going on. There's a tense and introspective flavor and an unexpected darkness to The Man of the West that anticipates future Westerns. I liked it a lot.

The Man from Earth

2007 science fiction My Dinner with Andre

Rating: 8/20

Plot: At a professor's going-away party, he makes a startling announcement, revealing to his pretentious friends that he is 14,000 years old. They're not sure whether he's crazy or telling the truth.

Despite a fantastic, intriguing premise and the delivery of a science fiction movie without a single action scene or special effect, I hated almost every second of this movie. The biggest problem is probably that I just didn't want to hang out with a bunch of smarmy college uber-intellectual professor types for an hour and a half. There wasn't a single character I would want to spend any more time with no matter how many years they've lived on earth. Unfortunately, the actors playing them weren't very good either. It's probably unfair for me to criticize the production values of this thing, but from the opening shot, I thought I was watching a car commercial. Behind the dialogue, there's this nearly constant music, stuff that I would describe as light adult techno. The story's cool and the script is intelligent, but don't get me started on plot holes, plot holes that somehow manage to exist without there even being a plot. The dialogue is heavy with historical allusions, intellectual name-dropping, and after a while it gets tedious. By the time a bomb is dropped, the only reaction that makes sense is "Oh, puhleeeze!" I did enjoy some of this film's ideas, specifically the connections made between the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, but this should have been a lot better.

Our Man Flint

1966 spy spoof

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Controversial super-agent Flint is called upon to save the world from super-terrorists who want to use an earthquake machine to wreak havoc.

Shane, of shane-movies, really has nothing to say about this movie. He apologizes for the inconvenience.

Man of Marble

1976 Polish movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A female film student works on her dissertation, a documentary about Birkut, a Polish bricklayer used in propagandii as a Socialist symbol. It's a swift rise and a painful fall, the filmmaker discovers as she interviews individuals from his past and searches for Birkut himself.

This is really long and as dry as marble, so a lot of patience is required. I suppose this could be a case where the movie is much better than I think it is, but I'm not Polish and I'm not a Communist and I'm not opposed to Socialism and therefore lack the context for this to make complete sense to me. I'm not qualified to write about most of the movies I write about, but I'm even less qualified to write about something like this. It do kind of like the structure, an almost Citizen Kane-esque gradual unveiling of a character. Except there's no sled. The scenes with the director aren't terribly exciting, but I do really like how much fake news footage, propaganda films, and other footage is mixed in. The stuff looks authentic, and the guy who plays the titular man does a really good job. It really gives it a sort of fake-documentary feel and a different flavor. So did the soundtrack, reminiscent of 70's blaxploitation funk. Some of the music is so bad that I'm sure there wouldn't be a lot of people who would oppose removing it and replacing it with something better. I'm far too lazy to look it up, but I do wonder how a movie this critical was even allowed to be created and shown to people.

Special shane-movies trivia: This is easily the least humorous Polish movie I've ever seen.

Nothing But a Man

1964 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A transient black railroad worker decides to settle down when he falls for the daughter of a preacher man. Like a lot of black men living in the 1960s South, he struggles in his efforts for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The title immediately brings to mind of the line that is in most versions of the ballads and tall tales about John Henry, probably not coincidentally another black railroad worker. To paraphrase: "A machine's nothing but a machine, but a man is a man." Here, we have a moving and realistic portrayal of a man, a man caught in a machinery of racism and prejudice in the deep South, and I really like how honest that portrayal is. This isn't a platform for director Michael Roemer to whine about conditions for blacks in the South during the early 60s; instead, it's an honest examination of both those conditions and a flawed man trying his best to pursue happiness within that context. This has, I think thankfully, more to do with relationships between blacks living during this time period, pervading low standards and a lack of male role models. Duff truly is nothing but a man--working as hard as he can to get buy, desiring more, making mistakes, growing because of those mistakes, moving on. It's a hard look at a struggling young marriage and a father who has pretty much abandoned a son. This is low-budget, having the feel of a 70s or 80s television movie, and the acting is really raw. It gets in the way and keeps this from being a true masterpiece, but I did like and appreciate this one more than Killer of Sheep. I really liked opening shots of railroad work with harmonica accompaniment and a scene showing a wild church service.

Zebraman

2004 superhero movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Teacher and big-time loser Shinichi spends his nights perfecting a Zebraman costume, his tribute to a thirty-year-old television show that only aired for seven episodes but that he is nevertheless obsessed with. After meeting a new friend, he starts to develop actual powers. Just in time, too, since aliens are trying to blow us up. Can Zebraman stop them in time or will the little green guys kill us all?

This usually doesn't trip me up, but the special effects in Zebraman, especially the computer animated stuff in the final third, fill the screen with such ugliness and ineptitude that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Almost literally. I finished this movie, and it felt like I had eaten bad special effects. A ludicrous and incoherent climax combined with those awful colors, swirls of runny action, and garbled bombast stomps all over all the good stuff from the first two-thirds of the movie. And there is a lot to like in the first two-thirds. I always like Miike's sense of humor, here not quite as sick as in some of his previous work, and the almost-but-not-quite satirical quality kept me asking, "Is this for real?" Broken down, it's a pretty straight comic bookish superhero tale though. There's a lot of heart, a
likable protagonist, and an off-kilter funk that gave this a unique flavor, even when scenes showing the original Zebraman television show reminded me of the Power Rangers, and the low-key moments clashing with goofy action sequences reminded me of Big Man Japan. But then Miike makes us watch absurdly cartoonish bobbleheaded aliens and green newborns, and it all just gets gross. I'm probably aware that the grossness is intentional, but it didn't make it any more fun to watch. This was a great idea, but one poorly executed.

Man of a Thousand Faces

1957 biopic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The life of silent film legend Lon Chaney, father of talkie film legend Lon Chaney Jr., from his childhood growing up with deaf parents to his career as a make-up maestro in Hollywood.

I can't say I ever really bought this one. Cagney does an admirable job, and I liked the behind-the-scenes reconstructions of Chaney playing some of his most famous roles. But this never really feels like an accurate portrayal of the man, and so much of the film seems incomplete and boring because the director breezes over so much. The fact that I was far more interested in finding out more about the life and work of Lon Chaney before I started the movie than I was halfway through Man of a Thousand Faces is telling. Also telling--halfway through this, I started wishing I was watching a Lon Chaney Jr. movie instead, maybe Hillbillys [sic] in a Haunted House or Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told. This is melodrama that never grips, and storytelling that rarely moves.

Teenage Caveman

1958 Corman clunker

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A twenty-something-year-old teenage caveman with a stylish haircut breaks his tribes rules by venturing beyond the river, meeting dangerous creatures and putting his people at risk. Oh, snap!

Teenage Caveman is a crappy movie, made with a budget of ten dollars and fourteen cents and a director who apparently had a time frame of four and a half days. Most people, I reckon, are going to be offended because Robert Vaughn as the "teenage" caveman has better hair than them. I didn't realize cavemen used hair products. Corman makes an attempt to give this some depth. There's all this talk about the three gifts to man that had me scratching my head, and there's a pretty nifty twist ending that, if you decide to see this, I might have ruined for you just by telling you there's a twist ending. There's also a classic Corman monster, one that rivals the muppet from Creature from the Haunted Sea. Heck, given the amount of footage that seems lifted straight from other crappy movies, Corman might actually have used the same monster. This probably isn't a B-movie I'd recommend to B-movie aficionados.

Big River Man

2009 documentary

Rating: 17/20 (Dylan: 20/20)

Plot: Fifty-four year old Slovenian national hero Martin Strel has swum the Danube. He's swum the Yangtze. And he's swum the Mighty Mississippi. Now it's the Amazon's turn. This documentary covers his 66-day swim of the almost 33,000 mile river with the help of two bottles of wine a day and a funky mask. Along the way, he loses his mind and enters the 4th dimension.

I learned a lot about Slovenia from watching Big River Man. They enjoy horse burgers there. Horse burgers are a little like chicken burgers but made from horse. Slovenia itself is shaped like a chicken. Slovenia is the DUI capital of the world. There's a "Learn the English Language" recording that teaches Slovenians to say "I am a drug dealer." This is a documentary you'll watch and wonder if it's real or not. Strel seems fatter than life, and the film just seems too funny to be legitimate. In fact, Dylan and I stopped watching this to do a little research and found out that the guy is real and has completed these amazing swims. He's just got more than the average amount of crazy, the type of fellow that Werner Herzog wouldn't mind following around with a camera for a while. This documentary blends hilarity and adventure so well. You get the impression that Strel's navigator, a guy with no real training in navigation, and Strel himself are hamming it up a little for the camera as they gradually lose their minds, but there's something eerie as well as hilarious in the way the swimmer's mind is completely gone in the last stages of his Amazonian swim and in the time following the feat. I still have no idea what he was talking about when he claimed he had entered and was stuck in the fourth dimension, and there are great scenes where he fashions a goofy mask to protect the skin of his face from the sun, runs off with his navigator and is later found naked and unresponsive on a beach, smears mayonnaise on his head and tries to use jumper cables to electrocute parasites that have attempted to burrow into his skull. He also references an Amazonian penis fish that enters the body via the urethra. And when they do, according to Strel, "no more penis." This is an adventurous journey into dementia with some nice hippie environmental messages built in, and it's one of the most bitchin' documentaries I've seen in a long time.