Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

2014 sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A continuation of the shenanigans in Basin City.

I'm not sure if it's just that the two hours of the first movie with mostly these same characters, the stylized violence, and the neo-noir caricaturization were more than enough or what, but this just didn't work as well. And I can't figure out why Marv, Mickey Rourke's character, is even in the last story since it takes place after he died. Of course, you have to be willing to throw all reality out the window in order to enjoy a movie made by people who have thrown all reality out the window. This is a cartoon for adult, probably just adult men, except if Wile E. Coyote was shot as many times as some of these characters, he'd probably die. I'm not sure the stories are as strong or as creative in this installment, and the style, something that felt fresh in 2005, feels more like a rehash here. It's still often entertaining, especially if you like seeing cartoon characters beheaded, but you get a little bored during this one. Seems like most of the characters, at least the ones who aren't yellow, returned for this one with Powers Boothe's Senator Rourke standing out the most. Boothe's got the perfect face for this sort of movie, and his voice is even better. His villainous character helps connect everything that's going on in Basin City this time around. Rourke, Willis, and Alba return to do more of the same. Josh Brolin steps in for Clive Owen, Gordon-Levitt just doesn't feel like he fits to me, and Haysbert replaces Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute. Christoper Meloni and Ray Liotta are also around. And they're all fine, just a little stiff because of the combination of being forced to act in front of green screens and read these hyper-stylized hard-boiled lines of dialogue or narration. Of course, the real star of the show is Eva Green who plays the "dame" in the title. Her character is the best written, and she spends about half of the movie naked, it seems, so there's not a lot to complain about with her. As an exaggerated femme fatale, she and her character just work, and although at first I was skeptical that she was really enough to kill for, I was eventually won over. I think a lot of it had to do with the clever colorization of some of her features, especially those blue eyes. Still, she's naked enough times to make this feel a lot more exploitative than the first movie. The whole thing just feels like a knock-off, a copy, a cheap variation. I definitely wanted to like it a lot more, but I was a little bored with this sequel. I'd still see a part three though, but maybe not unless it came out in 2022.

Oh, I forgot how much I liked seeing Christopher Lloyd in this. I'm adding another point. I also thought I kept spotting Jim Jarmusch, but it wasn't him.

Kung-Fu Saturday: Holy Flame of the Martial World

1983 martial arts shenanigans

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Everything you need to know is on that poster up there.

That's just lazy blogging right there. It made you look at that hideous poster again though, didn't it? It probably made you look at it for longer than you would have looked at it. There were other posters I could have used, but when you've got the opportunity to use one of the worst movie posters you've ever seen, you take it. But it really doesn't tell you anything about the plot of the movie, who any of those characters are, or whether a cricket paddle is even allowed to look like that. I'm not sure I'm the person to tell you all about the plot of the movie though.

Do you prefer kung-fu movies that are plausible and sensible? Well, this Shaw Brothers production probably isn't for you. I really like this early-80's stuff, the point in kung-fu movie history where it seemed they all got bored with the genre and decided just to throw everything at the audience to see what sticks. With Shaw productions, you can expect certain things--loads of garish colors, far too much imagination, artificial sets. Holy Flame of the Martial World has loads of garish colors, far too much imagination, and artificial sets. It's also got something called "deadly echoes," this ghostly laughter that is used as a weapon by a kung-fu master full of jelly; flying swords and then more flying swords; a quartet of ghosts, I think, with colorful arms; pink and blue cartoon cave ghosts straight out of Scooby Doo, impenetrable waterfalls; caves with neon light floors that would make John Travolta start to tremble; Chinese characters flying around and attacking a guy in a cave; guys who attack with cymbals and make a great funny-sounding noise as they walk up walls; reanimated Frankenstein-esque corpses (more like Carradine's Frankenstein in Death Race though); a snake boy who I actually thought was a woman, the character responsible for something called "snake bladder blood finger power" which, to me, just seemed like a red finger; lots and lots of cheap-looking skeletons. The kung-fu itself ain't bad, but you have to have an appreciation for that brand of martial arts action where characters are flying around. You can even see a wire or two in there if you're looking closely enough, and the thing is, it doesn't even really distract from what's going on. There's no way you can watch this without thinking of wires anyway, so actually spotting them doesn't matter. The fight scenes are about as frenetic as kung-fu fight scenes can get, characters moving as fast as artificial lightning. It's all freakin' nutsy, but there isn't a single moment in this thing that isn't pure entertainment. You might not understand what the hell is happening--a brother/sister thing, people fighting over goofy-looking swords that any self-respecting 10-year-old would refuse to play with when play-fighting in his yard with the neighbor kids, some of your traditional but nonetheless confusing good vs. evil stuff--but you'll enjoy it. The film bursts with creativity, the sort of thing it's almost impossible not to have fun with.

Favorite line (probably out of context): "We'll take your balls from you."

I also liked an "energy fusing scene" that I at first thought was the most awkward sex scene of all time until it was revealed that the characters were actually sitting in giant golden cauldrons. This movie's also got one of the weirder training sequences you'll ever see, and I think a lot of it must have involved characters on a Sit 'n' Spin. Add a great death scene with a Shaolin monk who says, "It. . .went. . .right. . .through me!" after being killed by, naturally, a ribbon. My favorite line, however, is "We'll take your balls from you" which, because I'm a child, made me laugh. Oh, and how can you not like a movie that ends with characters saying "Good bye" while flying off on giant swords.

I need to take Kung-Fu Saturday more seriously. I love these movies but for whatever reason don't watch them much.

All Is Lost

2013 survival story

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A sailor finds himself in a little bit of trouble after he wrecks his boat out in the middle of nowhere and later runs into a storm. He fights to survive while the odds are stacked against him.

Robert Redford hasn't been in nearly as many movies as I would have guessed. It's something like 42, but one of those was an uncredited role as a "tall basketball player" which doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not going to pretend this is like a performance to end all performances or anything, but it's impressive to watch a guy carry an entire movie devoid of any other characters. None. Well, unless sharks and fish count. His role is nearly wordless although there's one terrific "Fuuuuuuuuck!" that he gets to utter at one point. This really is a study in Hemingwayian grace under pressure or stoicism. I know I would have screamed "Fuuuuuuuck!" more than a few times if I was in this guy's rubber pants. I can't even drive to work without screaming "Fuuuuuuuck!" a dozen or so times. This had to have taken a physical toll on a guy in his late-70's, and Redford apparently insisted on doing almost all of his own stunts for this. The film's got a realism that I liked a lot, and part of that is what seemed to be the gradual weathering of Redford's face and hands. At that age, he started out slightly weathered anyway. His performance is a good one, all subtle expression and body language, but it's really the ocean that's the star of this show. I don't know how much of this was special effects wizardry, but it certainly looked real to me. And if a lot of it--shots of storms, boats passing by, schools of fish darting around, circling sharks, and other things I can't mention because they'd be spoilers--is the kind of stuff where you can't quite figure out how it was even filmed. The ocean's so expansive, which I realize is kind of a dumb thing to say, but there's something about the way it's filmed here that makes it seem even more obvious. A lot of the shots of Redford are right up in his grill, almost claustrophobic. You're right there with the guy as he tries to be resourceful and survive this experience. And then there's the background which is just an endless blue void. It's enough to make a guy feel small, even somebody who played Jeremiah Johnson. There's almost nothing at all sentimental or artificial about this guy's experience, and he's not a big action hero who has all the answers and is capable of saving himself in a way that only people in Hollywood can. He's an everyman; he's even called "our man" in the credits. And that helps the audience connect his experience to stay alive with its own.

The ending: If you've seen this, what do you think happens? If you haven't seen this, you should probably stop reading. Seems ambiguous to me. He's quite obviously given up as he's decided to Leonardo Dicaprio into the depths of the Indian Ocean. The last shot we see before the screen goes blindingly white is a hand grabbing his, but that hand just doesn't feel like it could actually happen, does it? Are we supposed to take that at face value, or is that light supposed to be, you know, The Light? Am I reading into things too much because I always secretly hope nature wins in these man vs. nature stories?

The ABCs of Death 2

2014 horror/comedy anthology

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A second anthology of 26 shorts that find the horror and comedy in death.

My brother will be interested to know that Laurence R. Harvey, that guy in The Human Centipede sequel, is in a post-credits scene. Masturbating.

I feel a little dirty and juvenile for even watching these, but I really like the idea. These are up-and-coming directors except for a few familiar names, and the results are exactly what any reasonable person would expect. There are a couple really good ones, a bunch of mediocrity, and a few that you wish you didn't have to watch. There are nine decapitations, quite a bit for 26 short films, a high number of jugular spurts, and some references to urine. There's not as much nudity as the first one, as I recall, but there is one disturbing sequence where a man is sans penis.

Here, I'll go through them all for you, hopefully without ruining anything.

A is maybe one of the best ones, almost clever and fairly well executed. It has some hyperkinetic edit grossness which, if something like this is any indication, is the thing now. Somebody named E.L. Katz did this one.

B is silly and underdeveloped, kind of a found footage thing with a badger. C is for Completely Pointless apparently, a look at capital punishment.

D is one of the too-few animated ones, and I'd like to see more by director Robert Morgan. It's animated grossness with some interesting ideas and visuals, kind of like a cheapo Quay Brothers without the subtlety or anything genuine about it. Interesting to look at anyway.

E starts with a fart and has some interesting transitions in its lone beach setting, but it has the feel of an extended commercial or something and isn't nearly as funny as anybody thinks it is. F has an unclear message and is silly when it probably could be saying something interesting. There's also yet another close-up of excruciating pain if that's your thing. It seems like a lot of these directors' thing.

G will make you open your eyes a little wider. I thought it was pretty funny although it was trying very very hard to be pretty funny. "Look! Can you see anything I can wank with? Can you?" This one had jugular spurting but was shocking for far more creative reasons. A guy named Jim Hosking directed it. Unfortunately, I don't want to see anything else directed by a guy who looks like this:

Although now that I look at it again, it sort of looks like somebody I really like.

H, I thought, was a cheap Plympton knock-off, but then it turned out to be Bill Plympton. It was probably something he did in his sleep though. I was some Japanese weirdness with some dumb-looking special effects and a story that wasn't fleshed out enough to really make any sense. J was a little hard to watch with an oppressive message about homosexuality and a wild exorcism scene.

K was one of my favorites, even though it kind of dissolved into weirdo Japanese-style horror imagery. But the inky snow globe surreal imagery followed by a Rear Window-esque series of violence was fun. Not sure why it was called "Knell" though. This one was directed by a Lithuanian woman named Kristina Buozyte.

L is, I hope, the worst thing I watch all year. Laughable effects (straight out of Birdemic) and with a monster that looked as silly as any monster I've ever seen. The setting is Africa, and a Nigerian named Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen directed it. This cat somehow has 73 director credits on his filmography.

M has Rupert (a Hoosier, I'm proud to say) from Survivor in yellow-stained tighty whities attacking people in the streets. It turns out to be a lame joke with a punchline that I probably should have predicted. I do like the word "masticate" though. N is clumsily edited and has terrible acting by all involved. It was almost interesting but turned out to be strangely unpleasant for reasons I can't even identify. O was another Japanese one, but who needs to see more zombies?

And then there's P, the one that seems to be overwhelmingly the least favorite if you only research the imdb message board. This one seemed to have the production values of a Christian church play and was so weirdly stupid that it actually became likable. Distorted face match blowing, a creepy toothed baby. It didn't make sense at all, just incomprehensible slapstick, but it almost made me laugh. I kind of liked it. Turns out that Todd Rohal directed it, and I know him from the interesting and wonderfully-titled Catechism Cataclysm which I also thought was funny.

Q has a gorilla costume. R had a story with a piece I must have missed, some Russian roulette game that goes for mysterious but ends up obscure. S had a cool use of split screen but ended up just being really nasty. Like a lot of these, its twist didn't totally work because there wasn't enough room for any development. T was degrading and stupid, the kind of thing you probably could expect from something called "Torture Porn." U was for Utopia. I don't know what the commentary was exactly, but this had fire effects that were at least as bad as the ones in the "I" short. V is a found footage thing with the kind of acting that makes this sort of stuff just not work at all. I think 14 year olds must have been responsible for writing this one, and it's woefully unpleasant.

W was one of the more interesting ones, something that appealed to the 80's kid in me. It's a fun action figure kind of thing, and although the special effects weren't very good (probably intentionally so), it felt like a perverse juvenile delinquent cousin of the Power Rangers and has a "Fantasy Man" with something very David Carradine about him.

X? Well, they went with one of the three words in the English language that starts with an X and decided to see how they could push the boundaries with it. It's not pleasant either. Y is more insanity from Japan.

It finishes strong enough with Z and a 13-year pregnancy, a deadbeat dad, and some impressively gross effects. I'm not sure what the short was saying or if it was even saying anything, but I liked it even if it made me a little uneasy.

There will likely be another of these in 2016, and I'll probably watch it, too, just because it's the type of thing I like to waste my life with.

Big Hero 6

2014 Best Animated Feature

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 16/20; Buster: 90/20)

Plot: I don't feel like writing a plot synopsis for this one.

The story's a little predictable here, and I"m surprised that for such a geeky movie, there's this complete disregard for science. However, Big Hero 6 has enough exhilarating animated action sequences, likable characters, and pathos to whisk along as a piece of quality family entertainment. I think my favorite thing about this might be the world building. The story takes place in San Francisco, but it's a weird Tokyo-influenced modern San Francisco. So there are familiar sights like cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge, but the city has this parallel universe vibe that gives the whole thing life. The background details for the settings are beautifully done, and this is the kind of thing I'd actually like to see again just to ignore the story and characters and absorb all the stuff back there. The movie really sounds good, too. I like the sounds of Baymax's squelching vinyl and the cacophony of robotic whirrs and clankings. Don't get me wrong though. It's not that I didn't enjoy the characters. Baymax, voiced by Scott Adsit from 30 Rock, was adorable and made me laugh a few times both with the slapstick antics and some humorous lines. He kind of reminded me of a big clumsy silent movie character. Well, except he talked and made noise. Hiro's the kind of stock teenage character you get in movies like this, but his arc is satisfying enough. The others? Well, I can't recall any of their names. There's a stoner guy. There's a couple women. There's a black dude. They add some flash, but they don't have the depth of the characters in The Incredibles or even the other Marvel superhero movies. The villain looks really cool with his army of microbots and his kabuki mask, and he's at least got some dimensions as a bad guy rather than just wanting to take over the world or wreak havoc or be vaguely villainous. Of course, anybody who's ever seen a good vs. bad action movie like this will more than likely know who the villain is way before the big dramatic reveal. It's about as sneaky as a Scooby Doo episode. It's really not great storytelling, sort of matching that formula that all the other Marvel movies seem to have. Still, this is vivacious fun, where it seems like the animators really wanted to challenge themselves to do some special things. I was particularly blown away by a scene near the end with all this purplish weirdness, like I imagine a trip through Syd Barrett's head circa-1968 would have been like. I'm sure we'll get some sequels with these characters, and I'll actually look forward to them.

St. Vincent

2014 comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: The touching story of a kid from a broken home, his busy mother, a pregnant stripper/prostitute, and Vincent, a cantankerous, drunkardly, gambling shell of a man.

This feels tired from the first minute and then languidly stumbles along predictably for another hour and a half or so. Very paint-by-numbers stuff here but with performers trying some different things. Unfortunately, none of those things work. Melissa McCarthy takes on a more human character and is fine although any female actress at all could have substituted for her without anybody noticing. Naomi Watts can't pull off the Russian-whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, something that would be a cliche if I could think of a single other example of the character type. And Bill Murray is just awful in a movie that he just didn't need to be in. He's got a wavering Brooklynite accent that, even at it's very best, doesn't quite sound like something Bill Murray should be doing. Murray seems to be going through the motions here, almost like he's trying to see if his face wrinkles can handle things on their own. And then, a little over halfway through the movie, the writer finds a way to make his performance even worse by giving the character a life-altering medical issue. Moments become laughable but for exactly the wrong reasons. Murray does get a nifty dance scene, but it's to Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love," a song which already had all the laughs squeezed out of it for a Jim Carrey movie. At least the kid was good. Murray's always worked well with kids, and Jaeden Lieberher and he have a good rapport. The dialogue they were given doesn't always help them out much although I did laugh once during a conversation about Hitler. Surprisingly, it was Lieberher's delivery that did it though, not Murray. This movie reeks of sentimentality, goes exactly where you think it will go at each step of the way, and is about as deep as a kiddie pool after a brief rain shower. And it's got Wilco songs (well, Jeff Tweedy), and Wilco is a group I hate even more than I hate the fucking Eagles (man).

Fantomas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine

1913 first of a serial

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The villainous Fantomas robs a hotel, abducts a guy, and gets himself arrested.

This isn't terribly interesting, an under-hour first in a series of French Fantomas films that feels much longer. There's intrigue and mystery, but the storytelling suffers from this stiffness, the characters never really come to life, and there's none of the ingenuity of early cinema that usually gets me overly excited. I might watch the four subsequent films, but I don't think I'll be in a hurry to do it.

Here Comes the Boom

2012 comedy

Rating: 10/20 (Josh: no rating; Jeremy: no rating; my students: no rating)

Plot: A former teacher-of-the-year who just doesn't care anymore becomes inspired after it's announced that budget problems are going to cause Fonzi to lose his job. He decides to become a mixed martial arts fighter to help save his school.

Henry Winkler is probably the best thing about this movie, but it's kind of sad that he seems to play nothing but wide-eyed dumb characters at this stage in his career. I don't really know if that's true because I'm not really sure what he's done.

We used to watch movies every once in a while at my school, but that practice kind of stopped after somebody realized that piping movies into every classroom in the building was probably illegal. But this was standardized testing week, so exceptions had to be made. 8th graders like when portly fellows fall down, when anybody is kneed in the head, and especially when somebody vomits on somebody else. We actually didn't get to see the end of the movie, but I knew what the end of the movie would be about five minutes in. You know that Kevin James, always strangely likable even though he never seems like the type of guy who should even be in movies, will get the girl, win the big fight, save the school, become that inspired teacher again. You know that the student who likes music will end up changing her father's mind. You even know that the guy training Kevin James will earn his citizenship at the end of the movie. If only the ride to get to all those stops was a little more fun. This wasn't really funny at all unfortunately. I did think that Kevin James looked pretty good in the parts of the movie where he was required to be athletic. Guy could throw a punch convincingly.

Co-workers and Bad Movie Club guys Jeremy and Josh and I opened up a Google Hangout so that we could discuss the movie. I forgot to ask them for their ratings.

Also, because of a nutty schedule, one of my classes this week was an hour and ten minutes longer than my other classes. I found various ways to waste that time and showed them Sherlock Jr. today. They seemed to like that one even though there isn't any projectile vomiting scenes.

Bad Movie Club: Nukie

1988 science fiction adventure movie with talking monkeys and a perverse computer

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Libby: 1/5; Josh: 3/5; Jason: 1/5; Fred: 1/5; Kristen: 2/5; Jeremy: no rating)

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Two aliens crash land on earth and end up in Africa and Florida. They try to reunite with the help of a computer, a pair of African brothers, a nun, and a guy who has a helicopter that can apparently make the trip from Florida to Africa. .

"What do you think of my shirt?" A monkey says that line, probably three times. A monkey! Yes, this is a movie with a talking monkey, played by Charlie the Chimpanzee in his only role. Unfortunately, this movie is so bad that it destroyed a monkey's career. And that makes me a little sad. So does the sight of the main character:

Somebody get Nukie a fucking Kleenex! Are you bad with names? You'll be able to keep track of our two main characters because they say their names more than late-80's rap acts. Here's a sampling of this movie's dialogue:

Miko: Nukie!
Nukie: Miko!
Miko: Nuuuukie!
Nukie: Miiiiiiiikooooo!
Miko: Nukie!
Nukie: Miiiiiko!
Miko: Nuuuuuukiiiiiieeee!
Nukie: Miko!

That exact bit of dialogue is actually in the movie 73 times. It's like the screenwriters (Sias Odendal, who had his word processor taken away from him and was never allowed to write another screenplay, and Ben Taylor, who for some reason was) needed to pad their screenplay and inserted photocopies of a page of "Nukie! Miko! Nukie! Miko!" in random places in there. Or actually, what probably happened was they just had their deaf neighbor watch E.T. the Extraterrestrial and Mac and Me back-to-back, try his best to read the characters' lips, and quickly write down all the dialogue in shorthand so that Odendal and Taylor could insert the photocopies of their "Nukie! Miko! Nukie! Miko!" dialogue in there. Actually, here's what the movie is like: It's like Mac and Me--all juiced up on Coca Cola and Big Macs--lured E.T. into a dark alley with some Reese's Pieces and then brutally raped and impregnated it. Then, during a complicated pregnancy, E.T. chain-smoked and drank nothing but alcohol. And 17 months later--Nukie was born. Or Miko.

Actually, we weren't sure why the movie was called Nukie because Miko is easily just as important. See, here's Miko getting ready to have what I believe is cinema's first cybersex scene with a computer:

Nukie doesn't interact with a computer. He just wanders around Africa scaring giraffes and talking to surly monkeys. That's before he befriends a pair of African boys.

See, there's some parallelism with the brothers and Nukie and Miko's attempts to reunite, and it's all so sweet that you'll shit yourself right about the same time as Nukie tries to fly a helicopter, a decision that doesn't make much sense at all since Nukie can actually fly. The brothers are named Tiko and Toki. So, Nukie, Miko, Tiko, and Toki in a movie that is really Sucky. One of those brothers was actually in another movie--Terminator Woman. Oh, and you see that nun up there? That's Glynis Johns from Mary Poppins. Somebody needs to make a sequel to Saving Mr. Banks called Saving Mrs. Banks about the making of Nukie. Miko is played by a woman who didn't have any other roles, and Nukie has to be played by two different people, I believe because one of them died tragically either after catching on fire during a scene or being eaten by stock footage of a lion. Neither of the guys who played Nukie did anything else either, probably because they couldn't get the stench of Nukie off them. This movie with about 15 minutes worth of plot is worth the time for bad movie aficionados because of the terrible costumes, the gross sentimentality, African tribesmen Benny Hill-ized, some of the most pointless narration since The Beast of Yucca Flats, that randy computer, those talking animals and a liberal use of stock footage, Charlie's shirt, a nun with a wedding ring, and some killer special effects. Once again, none of my fellow Bad Movie Club jockasses seemed to enjoy this one nearly as much as I did.

Oprah Movie Club Selection for February: The Black Klansman

1966 early blaxploitation movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Well, it's sort of on the poster up there. A light-skinned black man infiltrates the KKK in order to get revenge after his young daughter is firebombed to death.

Maybe this is just the white guilt speaking, but I thought the ending of this was very unsatisfying. I know that, at least on a cinematic level, the way the entire plan nearly falls to pieces at the end adds some dramatic tension and some suspense, but it was all so clumsy. I wanted blood. I wanted the bad guys to suffer. And I wanted more of those bastards to meet an undoubtedly very disappointed maker.

This is also known as I Cross the Color Line, by the way. And look at this poster:

That looks like an entirely different movie, one that focuses on sexy Andrea who, even though she's an important enough character, is not really a main character. She might be the worst actor in the thing though. Her "Little Mary? Not Mary!" overreaction after the main character gets the bad news about his daughter being set on fire is the type of thing you probably shouldn't laugh at. Later in the movie, she gets to play drunk. She's played by Rima Kutner, and this was Rima Kutner's only role.

Ted V. Mikels is not known as a great director. And this  isn't a good movie. But it's an interesting movie and a movie that's sort of daring for the mid-60's, pre-blaxploitation and a couple years before MLK Jr. was assassinated. The conflict's stirred up once segregation is made illegal. That's not popular with Southern whites ("Black boy, you done tored it!" is one of my favorite lines in this), and the Ku Klux Klan reacts with their general intimidation tactics, a lynching and murder, and then a firebombing that goes either horribly wrong or horribly right depending on who you ask. There's social commentary there, probably because you can't make a movie where a black guy becomes a member of the KKK without some sort of message, but the whole thing is so clumsily delivered. A couple cops talk very briefly, almost like it was a scene added during post-production to give the whole thing more of a message, about how they're making a big mistake "not treating these. . .people like human beings." There's the main character, played by Richard Gilden who wasn't really in anything else of note unless playing a "Hebrew in Dathan's Tent" in The Ten Commandments is notable, who alternates between complete rage and something very different at the end. I'm not sure what his plans were exactly during the climax of the movie, but it seemed like he was leaning toward compassion to me. There were also a pair of guys who represented more of a violent response to racism and inequality. I never caught the main guy's name, but his mute sidekick muscle was called Barnaby. The speaker sure did try to Act (with that capital-A) the hell out of that role though. Notice the bravado when he gives a pep talk in the bar. I was actually pretty close to pausing the movie to go outside and kill a white person or two myself. Anyway, they represent the more Malcolm X philosophical approach to Civil Rights, I suppose, but their story doesn't end well at all. So there's probably a bit of a message there, but it, like the rest of this thing, is a little muddied. Gilden's not 100% hero in this. There's a terrifically awful scene after he gets the phone call about his daughter being killed where he starts choking his blonde girlfriend while saying, "White! White! White! White! White!" It actually made me laugh out loud and pee a little bit. After that, he runs down a tunnel while the dialogue from the previous scene is repeated, all echoey. It's trippy stuff. "You know who did it? The Klan! The Ku Klux Klan!" I'm never sure exactly how the guy's wig works, but the character was smart. And when he said, "Hang onto your socks, Chuck!", you knew he had white-guy talk down.

If he's not 100%, that's fine because the villains are 100% bad. The KKK violence in this is pretty harsh like KKCaricatures,. They sure like burning their crosses, and there's a tiny burning one and a quick zoom after a quartet of Klansfellows shoot down a character. And then they firebomb the wooden puppet version of the little girl. It's harsh stuff. I actually learned a lot about the KKK from this movie. For example, they like their K-words nearly as much as burning crosses. They use words like klavern, konklave, kludd, knights. I'm surprised that the subtitle after the initiation scene said "congratulations" instead of "kongratulations" actually. Turns out, they have a very formal initiation process. And they have the title of Grand Cyclops which helps make John Goodman's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou? make more sense. Well, makes him something other than an allusion to The Odyssey anyway. The Klansguys say things like, "A hangin's more excitin' than throwin' a bomb," and they say them in cartoonish voices that sound like they belong in a Disney movie. And one chubbier Klansman gets really excited following the initiation sequence and starts shaking enough to make me wonder if he was related to Chris Farley. Anyway, I was a little shocked with how hard it seems to be to even get in the Klan.

My favorite character was played by Whitman Mayo of Sanford and Son and D.C. Cab fame. He was Mr. Rhythm in the latter. Here, he plays an old man even though he was only 36 when this was released. He was Redd Fox's old friend in Sanford and Son, too. He's a bartender in this, and gets to be a bad ass. Samuel L. Jackson should play Alex in the remake. "Now I'm gonna ask you kindly to get your motherfucking ass out of my motherfucking bar."

Man, is the opening to this something else. The credits appear over a shot of a cross burning while the type of theme song you'd expect to hear in a 50's Wild West film plays. "The Ku Klux Klan killed my little girl," croons the singer, poorly. "So he'll get vengeance as the first black Klansman." It's really a beautiful thing. This ends with a pretty terrific ending, too, the guy wandering up a hill in a forest before there's a halcyon shot of clouds and a John F. Kennedy quote that I didn't bother reading.

This movie would have been a little more violent if it had appeared in the 70's. The white bastards would have gotten theirs a decade later. Still, I'm glad I watched this rather unusual film, probably Ted V. Mikels' best movie.

Anybody else watch it?

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

2010 sleeper hit (sleepy, I mean...not sleeper)

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy dies. Oh, but before he does, he recalls his past lives. Not the way the guy in Mr. Nobody did though. Boonmee recalls his past lives differently.

Two things you need to know before you read what I think about this movie:

1) I didn't understand the movie. I suspect that the reason is because it has a lot to do with the culture and history of Thailand.

2) It would more than likely--if I made a list--be one of the top-five most boring movies I've ever seen.

Having said that and that, this is a movie I enjoyed. Trust me, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a name to remember. Oh, you can't remember that? Neither can I. I kind of like typing it though. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I nearly named my firstborn Apichatpong which would have made it easier for me to remember.

Anyway, I know I've said this before and will more than likely say it again, but a lot of my favorite movies are ones that take the place of dreams that I never remember. For whatever reason, I don't remember any of my dreams--maybe two a year if I'm lucky. When movie makers use the medium to put dreams on the screen, I'm appreciative. This movie is dreamlike, but it's the dream of a somnambulist. A lot of the movie is naturalistic. Characters have mundane conversations or sometimes just sit there and exist with each other. There are numerous shots of trips through Thai jungles, rests by waterfalls, and spelunking adventures. Characters watch television or receive medical treatment. An old man talks about death although, interestingly, his death doesn't take place on screen. There's some kind of beautiful black ox. And then, there's the unexpected, though it sneaks up on you so quietly that it also seems naturalistic. There's stalking monkey ghosts with red eyes that pierce through mist and layers of dusk. There's ghost visitation and ghost snuggling. And there's a scene featuring catfish cunnilingus. At least I think that's what was going on. The character on the receiving end didn't fit with the rest of the narrative, so you can only assume that either she or it was one of Uncle Boonmee's past lives. I will say this about that title: I didn't see a lot of past lives here. Maybe it's a case where Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives but chooses not to? Oh, and then there's a completely bewildering final scene, the kind of thing that you barely notice because you're a little bored and weren't paying attention as well as you should have been. I also want to mention that there's a very dry humor beneath all this, too. My favorite bit was a question directed toward a monkey ghost about why he'd grown his hair so long. Trust me--it's hilarious in context.

This one deals with reincarnation, the Buddhist kind; transformation; life, death, and all the stuff that comes in between; bees, much to Nicolas Cage's chagrin; monkey ghost men; losses and the stoicism in dealing with losses; and how oppressive crickets can be in a movie without a score. It's a very human film, but it's dealing with the part of being human that is abstract and quiet. Its meanings aren't easy to hold onto at all, and it's likely open to multiple interpretations, but I suspect a guy with a name like Apichatpong Weerasethakul would be ok with that. There's definitely plenty of room within all these Jarmusch-esque still shots for a person to insert his or her own experiences into the thing. It's slow, but it's beautiful. I think this is one that will stick with me, but unlike the last difficult movie I watched--Mr. Nobody--I doubt if subsequent viewings would even uncover anything new.

Do not watch this when you're sleepy. It's boring. Apichatpong Weerasethakul made a boring movie.

Mr. Nobody

2009 sci-fi thing

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An old guy--the last living mortal on earth actually--recalls his past lives as the universe decides whether or not it wants to collapse upon itself. Meanwhile, a Brazilian man boils an egg.

This is a hard one to classify. It definitely has sci-fi elements, but there's a philosophical bent, a layered romantic angle, and general life drama that makes you, for most of the proceedings, almost forget that it's a sci-fi story. There's multiple dimensions, all disjointed, so you've really got all these fragments of stories within stories within other stories that makes this whole thing very difficult to completely understand in one viewing. It's definitely the kind of film where you have to accept that you're going to feel it a lot more than understand it, at least entirely. Jaco Van Dormael, the writer and director, has an almost oppressive amount of ideas here and you could probably argue that the movie is either way too long or feels way too long, but I can't imagine anybody coming away from the experience of watching this without leaving with something. For the abstract scientists (is that a thing?) in the crowd, you've got The Big Crunch, chaos theory, string theory, and parallel universes, enough to make a Doctor Who fan spontaneously jizz in his pants. For people who wasted time and money getting philosophy degrees, there's all kinds of fun here as this tackles all sorts of meaning-of-life shit and, most obviously, how the choices we make or are forced to make in life all. For cinephiles, there are more than a few nods to great movies, including Harold and Maude, one of my personal favorites. It's either an homage or a rip-off. It's always hard to tell. You're not going to find another movie with this many layers, but you wonder if it's too much. It's like a beautifully-decorated but far too-thick cake. You admire it aesthetically and want to take yourself a bite but wonder, "How the heck am I going to open my jaws that wide?" It's a lot to digest, the kind of thing that begs for subsequent viewings, and while I was watching it, I was wondering if it was anything I'd be willing to dive into again. By the time it ended, however, I was making personal connections, the kind of thing that great art should really force you to do. It's certainly the kind of movie that holds up that proverbial mirror, more on a personal level than a societal one. It's one of those little handheld mirrors. Again, it's not that this movie isn't without its flaws. The performances sometimes suffer from that sort-of stilted stuff you get in sci-fi movies, maybe because a lot of what the audience is seeing and experiencing isn't something that the actor or actress saw during the shoot. Jared Leto, right before he decided to take a break from acting, ranges from very good to just sort of being there. I did enjoy his old guy cackle though. There's a spectacular moment of acting with Sarah Polley as one of Nemo's (I hate the main character's name, by the way) love interest where she shifts gears in an almost haunting way. It's a scene you really notice. I also liked what Rhys Ifans did, creating an almost cartoonish troubled father character. The futuristic stuff is subtle enough to not get in the way for people who aren't into that sort of thing while the science and philosophical mumbo-jumbo was easy enough for a dumb guy like me to understand enough. It's as dense as Cloud Atlas and just as pretentious, sometimes in a way that will make you want to gag.

Honestly, this is something I feel like I'd need to see again before determining if it's some flawed modern masterpiece or a tedious, weird, and pretentious misfire. I like what it has to say and it's just stuffed with all these magical moments--both of the realistic and surrealistic variety. A shot of fleet of helicopters depositing rectangular chunks of ocean is the sort of tiny detail that you'd think would matter more in a film. In something this size, it's just something minor that they probably spent a ton of money on for reasons that go over my head.

And I'd like to live in argyle world, at least for a little bit.

Oh, one more thing--that poster up there is awful. Any of these might be better, but it's hard to know which ones are real since people making their own posters is apparently a thing now:

Better. I like the minimalism. But it won't make sense until after you've seen the movie.

Also better, one that recalls one of the coolest visual tricks in the movie. 

Yuck.

My favorite, but I don't think this one is real. 

Wrong movie.

Earth to Echo

2014 kiddie sci-fi adventure

Rating: 10/20 (Abbey: 11/20; Buster: not rating)

Plot: Thanks to a new highway project running through their neighborhood, a group of friends are forced to scatter. They decide to have one last adventure together after their cellphones go wacko. They meet a new little buddy and decide to help him. . .well, return home.

Does that all sound familiar? Look at that poster up there. Now, look at this one:

They're not even trying to hide the fact that they're wanting to make a 21st Century E.T. update, are they? I had no interest in watching this, and to be completely fair, I'm just not the audience for a movie like this. This is for children who are the age I was when E.T. or Goonies came out. There's a little of a found footage thing going on here as the trio of boys and eventually a girl--almost as an afterthought, like the writers thought, "Whoops! Why would girls want to see this movie? We should probably put one in the movie."--do all of the camera work. It's all so modern--Youtubing, spy glass cams, text messages--that it's bound to annoy a curmudgeon like me. The child actors are just as good as you'd expect them to be in something that's supposed to be as realistic as this, and the story, especially when the villain (Jason Gray-Stanford, who manages to out-bad-act the kids somehow) finishes materializing, doesn't feel original at all. You know how it's all going to end, and there's not enough going on to make you really care how it all gets there. I thought the special effects were really good. They consisted mostly of random things flying around while the children and any other characters in the vicinity reacted loudly, but they meshed with the realism of the found footage stuff pretty well. The biggest problem may have been that the alien thing, eventually named Echo, looked like a trinket you could find in the clearance aisle of a toy store after Christmas more than something with a smidgen of humanity or anything that makes certain viewers fall in love and want to root for him like an E.T. or a Mac. Echo just sort of feels like a prop. There are definitely less-annoying movies you can watch with your children.

There's a sequence involving a truck in this that might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen, by the way.

As Above, So Below

2014 horror movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: An expert in alchemy and her team of explorers venture into the catacombs below Paris to search for the Philosopher's Stone, something that I think Harry Potter already found. Weirdness ensues.

Somebody on Twitter raved about this movie, and I'm not tired of the found footage genre yet, so I decided to check it out. It's a movie that's got more than enough ideas, and filming within the creepy catacombs rather than on sets worked very well. Unfortunately, the story doesn't make a lot of sense, and things feel redundant after a while. Eventually, this is just about characters howling with fright and blubbering like that gal in The Blair Witch Project. You kind of get the impression that there's a lot of improvisation going on, like they all went into the catacombs looking for areas in which creepy things could happen and then tried to decide what happened there. There are some effective moments, but the surreal subterranean storytelling grows tediously nonsensical as the thing goes, and at least for this viewer, it was really unclear what was even going on. I hope they don't make a thousand of these, but I suspect they will.

Bad Movie Club: Hollywood Cop

1987 action thriller

BM Rating: 5/5 (Mark: 2/5; Russell: 4/5; Josh: 5/5; Kristen: 1/5; Fred: 2/5)

Rating: 4/20

Plot: A "Hollywood" "cop" uses his "amazing" "police" "skills" to go after some "dastardly" kidnappers led by a "Mitchum."

Note: I tried to simplify the rating system, but I'm still not sure people understand how it works.

Oh, Amir Shervan. As soon as I found out that this was helmed by the man behind the gloriously inept Samurai Cop, I was in. No, I didn't think it could live up to that bad movie masterpiece, but another example of this Iranian's take on American 80's action movies has to be worth watching, right? I'm happy to report that although this isn't quite as good-bad as Samurai Cop, mostly because of the performance of Robert Z'Dar, this could easily be considered classic good-bad movie fare.

By the way, you are aware that somebody is making Samurai Cop 3: Deadly Vengeance, right? It's not Shervan since he's deceased. However, both Robert Z'Dar and one Tommy Wiseau are involved, so that's one that needs to be caught on the big screen. If your fucking testicles can handle it!

I love that the opening credits for this have the performers' names in Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. That's clearly presumptuous and more than likely completely insane. This is the second James Mitchum movie we've seen in the last few months for Bad Movie Club, and the guy's becoming a BM favorite. I'm not sure he's actually got a legitimate Hollywood star yet. Turns out that he's just as unlikable playing a bad guy as he was playing a good guy. You wonder how the guy got to be the head of this inept crime syndicate and wonder if it's because of his intimidating flab. And yes, he does get an awkward scene where he engages in something resembling foreplay (Mitchum Play) in his tighty whities. If that's your thing. The most interesting bad guy is a thug named Animal who apparently was influenced by watching Ogre in Revenge of the Nerds and middle school bullies. But here, you can check out his (not spoiler-free) work for yourself:



Brandon Angle plays Stevie, the kid who ends up kidnapped. Bad child acting stands out in quality movies, but to still manage to stand out with this much bad acting around him takes a special kind of talent. He's a living and breathing child, and I guess that's all that Shervan was looking for, but I'd like to imagine that he came as a package deal with either the goat or the dog that were in this movie. The goat and the dog were by far the best performers in this movie. But you assume some farmer said, "Sure, Mr. Iranian big shot director, you can use my goat in your movie. But you have to cast my boy, too! Haw haw haw!" And then there's the Hollywood Cop himself, a guy who gets more nicknames than an action hero of his stature deserves. Turk? Turkey? Turquoise? Turnover? Hollywood Cop? Turkey seems most appropriate in a film like this. He's yet another one of those guys starring in an action movie who has no business starring in an action movie, a recent new bad movie motif favorite of mine.

The best thing about all of this are the action sequences. There are car chases that don't make much sense and shootouts that don't make much sense, and you start to wonder if the whole thing is a parody of 80's action movies but have this warm feeling inside because you know it's not. One action scene starts with an attempted rape and a foot chase complete with a cop secret buddy handshake and ends with a dude in a stocking cap who swings a switchblade like he's in the middle of a stroke, a lopped-off hand, decapitation, and projectile vomiting. If you're paying attention, future action movie directors, that right there is the way it's done. The shootouts really are ridiculous. You have no idea where half of these characters even come from and wonder how many of them die multiple times while wearing different shirts. There's a death scene that almost rivals this one as the worst death scene ever:

But actually, the best thing about this movie might be this forced sentimentality. There's some touching father/son stuff, including some "blood cancer" that feels about as legitimate as Wiseau's future mother-in-law's breast cancer in The Room. It's the sort of stuff that elevates this into great-bad movie territories because you just know that Amir Shervan is trying extra hard. Except when he gets distracted by the opportunity to have one of his characters participate with a pair of barely-clad women in an oil-wrestling match. Then, it doesn't seem like he's trying at all. Regardless, God bless the man. Killing American Style, Gypsy (apparently too obscure), Young Rebels, and of course Samurai Cop should all be future Bad Movie Club events.