Oprah Movie Club Pick for July: Why We Fight

2005 documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An investigation of American military action in the 20th and 21st Centuries and what really drives the Uncle Sam War Machine.

You know what surprised me most about this whole thing? How reasonable and intelligent John McCain came across. I don't follow politics at all because I'm that type of American citizen. You know, an American citizen. But the snippets of McCain and decisions that he's responsible for (like, say, who his running mate should be) left me questioning the guy's integrity and intelligence. He was a voice of reason on that side of the political fence. My favorite moment in this documentary, by the way, was watching McCain's reaction to news that the vice president was on the phone for him. His eye started twitching, and it looked like he was going to have a heart attack or something.

I blame the Greatest Generation for this whole mess, by the way. I'm also the type of American citizen who, though unapologetically uninformed (probably even misinformed), likes to point fingers.

This is a ton of information, like director Eugene Jarecki backed a dump truck to my lap and unleashed. I thought the structure of it all was pretty complex. That might just be because I wasn't able to turn my mind back on completely after watching Seed of Chucky for the other shane-movies blog movie club--The Urine Couch AM Movie Club--that only the ghost of Gene Siskel, the ghost of Gene Shalit's mustache, and hookers and drug dealers are invited to participate in. And yes, I worry that there are now two too many movie clubs on this blog. Anyway, I ended up liking the structure of this documentary. I think I was expecting chronology when Jarecki was giving me themes. The ideas of revenge, imperialism, government secrecy, oil, and all that are all pretty standard stuff that even a dumb guy like me is aware of. Where this gets really dark and disturbing is when it looks at think tank the propaganda techniques used by politicians to dupe the American people, the propaganda techniques used to get poor or middle-class kids to join that American military machine, and the benefits of war to all those corporations. The idea of America becoming a "New Rome" was mentioned at the beginning and then again at the end, and that's scary. I know as much about history as I do about politics, but I know what happened to Rome--a guy on an elephant burned it down and now nobody dares speak Latin in public venues. Or something like that. So is it inevitable that somebody will burn us down and create a world in which nobody wants to speak American? This also did a good job of explaining the whole Saddam Hussein thing. I knew the bare bones of that situation, but this made it a lot more clear for me. I always suspected that Donald Rumsfeld was more evil than Hussein anyway.

Jarecki keeps returning to Eisenhower's (apparently a president) speech which nicely holds this documentary together. "God help this country when somebody sits at the desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do." Eerily prophetic, no? And the narrative that surfaces in this flood of information shows that "disastrous rise of misplaced power" that Eisenhower warned against.

Also holding things together in a very touching way: the interviews with the father who lost his son on 9/11. I really felt sorry for that guy, and you can't really blame him for any of the emotions that he had or how he acted upon them in his story. The sad irony that his son's name was on a bomb that essentially did the same thing that tore his heart out has to be something that eats at him every day. The other personal touch this documentary adds is the story of the kid who is joining the air force. I kept waiting for that to end in some big moment, but it never did. He was just absorbed. I don't know. Maybe that is a big moment.

Another irony: We live in a time when technology and the way the media works should make things more transparent to the average Joe, that plumber who Sarah Palin and John McCain kept talking about, but because those average citizens are as apathetic and naive as I am, they are somehow even more in the dark. God help this country when its citizens are too busy watching videos of kitties playing keyboards to care about what is going on with their leaders and our country's international policies.

Speaking of kitten keyboard videos, sorry for the tardiness with this Oprah Movie Club post.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Dinner with Schmucks

2010 comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: See The Dinner Game. Except this one has the terminally plain Paul Rudd whose promotion to the seventh floor might depend on how much of an idiot he can find for the dinner party. Plus, he's having problems with his girlfriend.

The Urine Couch A.M. Movie Club...it's just me and the ghost of Gene Siskel! Last night's film: 'Dinner for Schmucks' with one of America's most versatle actors, Paul Rudd.
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Larry: Synchro! I just watched that last night too. I had zero expectations and they were met!
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Shane: but you watched it with the ghost of Gene Shalit's mustache...different Gene=different movie club! How many times did you chortle during the movie? I'd like to compare numbers.
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Larry: I'd say 3 real, and 4 for forced chortles. Disappointed by Zack G's performance, subdued.
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Larry: I also didn't know ZG was in it, and 5 minutes into the movie I wished he was, and lo and behold!
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Shane: ‎5 minutes into the movie, I was hoping something would happen...movie was almost DOA. It picked up a bit with the Schmuck's arrival. Got kind of funny with Jermaine Clement...I like that guy!
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Shane: but yeah, about 3-4 real laughs for me and several because I was watching with Siskel and he kept looking over at me to see if I was having a good time...he picked it, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I tried to make sure my nipples were at least partially erect whenever he'd look over at me
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Larry: I don't like comedy lesson movies so much. I'd rather it just be mean spirited sometimes.
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Shane: Have you seen the original French version? It's better but probably not by that much. I'm not sure if I want my cliche characters learning lessons or not, by the way...a lot of times it just seems forced. Like they were thinking that if they didn't have Paul Rudd's character learn the predictable lesson that he was going to learn, then it would just be laughing at these unfortunate characters in a mean way. Which is what I do for entertainment nearly every day, by the way.
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Shane: I'm just going to copy/paste this for the blog, by the way...so step up your game!
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Larry: It's like that movie where Gwynth Poultry is friggin' huge yet Jack Black sees her as skinny. 90 minutes of fat jokes disguised as a lesson
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Shane: ‎'Fat Barry'...ok, I don't remember what that movie's called. I saw part of it once when I was in a situation where I could either do that or talk to somebody...I don't think I got to the message in that movie, but I bet it had something to do with inner beauty...that or how fat women are excellent in bed?
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Shane: The lesson should have been that Jack Black should be in less movies.
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Kent: Had hopes, all dashed.
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Kent: I too long for more Jermaine Clement. He's the Kiwi Jeff Goldblum. (I saw Rio, the bird cartoon, and he stole the show via voice)
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Shane: How many laughs?
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Shane: I would like to do some statistical analysis.
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Kent: In Rio, 69.758 percent stolen, not including the musical number
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Kent: in which he sings " I poop on people and I blame it on seagulls"
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Shane: I saw that he was in 'Rio'...no desire to see that one. Kiwi Jeff Goldblum...I can dig it.
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Kent: It was better than I thought it was going to be. Just enough whimsy. Not enough frontal mail nudity.
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Shane: Why do I think you're making fun of my overuse of the word "whimsical" every time you use it...I know "making fun" can't be a possibility.
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Shane: wait...bird frontal nudity?
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Jen: feeling like I must clarify.... the urine couch is not at our house!!!
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Kent: ‎.....anymore.
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Jen: haha... never!
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Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #17: Astroboy

2009 cartoon

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Robot scientist Nicolas Cage's son dies, so he makes a robot version to replace him. It doesn't work out nearly as well as you would think.

Life is short, and I wasted part of it watching Astroboy. I got really bored early, fought to keep my mind from wandering, and ended up liking next to nothing about this movie. I liked the part where the kid died, I guess. Apologies to anybody who really wants to read my detailed thoughts on Astroboy, but I can't waste any more time with it.

Sins of the Fleshapoids (plus The Secret of Wendel Samson and The Craven Sluck)

1965-1967

Rating: n/r

Plot: Sins of the Fleshapoids takes place in a far distant future after a nuclear holocaust. The titular Fleshapoids are the robot slaves of the survivors. The titular sins involve Fleshapoids falling in love in copulating. In The Secret of Wendel Samson, the titular protagonist struggles with his sexuality. And I don't really know what The Craven Sluck is about.

The Craven Sluck? What a title! These three shorts (they add up to an hour and a half of mayhem) were artfully constructed by the Kuchar twins, writer/director/actor siblings who were apparently an influence on John Waters. They're fascinating little cheapos, like B-movie art films. There's a nifty mix of deranged ideas and the sort of filmmaking where you can sort of see an artistic vision that isn't quite allowed to surface due to the budget constraints or general ineptitude. With Sins, you get the longest title screen I've ever seen and some opening credits with drawings that look like they're straight from Napolean Dynamite's notebook. Then, the movie, and you quickly realize that this movie is going nowhere quickly. There's an enthusiastic narrator who makes the whole thing sound like it's a documentary, but the characters don't talk at all. Well, that's not true. They talk but not audibly. Instead, the Kuchars utilize (first I've ever seen this) talking bubbles! You know, those comic strip bubbles with wonderfully written gems like "Obey me or I'll wet you and make you rust!" Or, check out this great dialogue:

Guy Fleshapoid: We are robots yet we are in love.
Girl Fleshapoid: Let us now make love.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, that's pretty hot on its own. But the ensuing sex scene with finger lightning? Oh, my! The most beautiful bit of narration in this, so poetic that it'll make your heart melt: "Beings of nuts and bolds would feel the pangs of love in their aluminum hearts." The Kuchars sure are good with costumes. I really like the number that a character named Gianbela wore--a woman's bejeweled hat (he's a man, by the way), leather gloves, my grandmother's vest, a flower coming out the side of his head like he's a Dr. Seuss character. There's also a character (an astronaut, I believe) who is wearing a football uniform (an astronaut suit, I believe). There's a great scene with a fruit dump dance and a naked Fleshapoid with Adam and Eve-style giant leaves and paper flowers covering the naughty bits. But my favorite scenes involve Xar (played by the late Bob Cowan who also narrated), the Fleshapoid with helmet who makes these really jerky movements that made me wonder if he was supposed to be broken. I think it was just Cowan doing robot movements. If nothing else, Sins taught me about what paradise is--fruit and fish baskets, Clark bars, and guys eating ice cream without a shirt.

Wendel Samson's tale, after I watched the whole thing, was still a secret to me. The characters do talk in this one although it might be with the worst dubbing I've ever heard. It's like they added reverb for some reason. This has some of the worst dialogue ever, but the editing might be worse. You get a characters inviting each other to have coffee before an abrupt transition and a character saying "Boy, this coffee is great" before an abrupt transition to a scene where there's a guy without a shirt enjoying coffee in a bed. Kuchar's must like filming shirtless men enjoying desserts and beverages. But who doesn't? Speaking of abrupt, the soundtrack to all three of these films are very strange. There are dizzying changes from genre to genre. My favorite bit of music in this was this wildly trippy moog stuff with Superman television samples thrown in. And no, it didn't really match what was going on in the movie, a scene that led up to [Spoiler Alert!] a maddening scene with a firing squad and some cartoon laughter.

The Craven Sluck might be my favorite film title ever. I think I decided that the Kuchars were making a comedy, but I can't be sure. This one has a narrator (also Cowan) who introduces the cast over pictures of a pin-up. I like how he says marmoset. He even spells it for us and lets us it's just like the South American tree monkey. Sluck's got pooping dogs and people drinking out of toilets, and it ends with some bitchin' flying saucer effects that you would not have expected had I not spoiled the whole thing for you. My favorite scene: the main character (the Sluck? What's a sluck?) says, "It's been years since I've had someone I could talk intellitigently [sic] to" with the next shot being her on her hands and knees bouncing up and down and displaying some rather oppressively trembling udders.

Teen Wolf

1985 werewolf comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Scott Howard has no identity. He's a mediocre basketball player on a terrible high school team. The object of his affection doesn't know he exists. He's even got a really boring name! That all changes when he turns into a werewolf, the transformation suddenly giving him this dynamic personality and superhuman abilities. Becoming a wolf, however, has its price, and the price for Scott Howard is his true self.

Here's the deal. Since 1985, I've had recurring nightmares where I die after an accident while surfing on my friend's van. The dream is generally the same with slight variations. I'm surfing, and my friend starts turning into a wolf, gets really freaked out by the sight of his wolf fingernails, and swerves wildly. I spill off, the Beach Boys music stops, and a steamroller rolls over me. My last words are almost always, "Learn to fucking drive, Alex P. Keaton!" For the past 25 years or so, I've been convinced that I will die while surfing on a van and have done my best to avoid the activity.

Recently, as most of my readers know, I've been working at the dumpiest motel on the face of the earth, an establishment crawling with drug dealers, prostitutes, and drifters. Lately, it seems that it's unlikely that I'll die while surfing on a van and will probably die while working a night shift at this motel.

So in retrospect, it was probably a terrible idea to watch Teen Wolf while working a night shift at the motel. I'm not supposed to sit on the couch in the lobby and watch television anyway. Well, I don't think I am. It's never been addressed officially, but it seems like a really strange thing for my manager to pay me to do. If he knew, I can imagine having a conversation with him that had the words "Do you think I pay you to sit around and watch Teen Wolf?" which would probably make me start laughing which would make him ask "What? Do you think this is funny?" which would make me say (of course!) "I am an animal! Woooo!"

The perfect end to that story would be for my manager and I to take advantage of the sweet van the motel uses to shuttle people to the airport (illegally, it seems, since we're told to take off the sign on the door that advertises the inn because "we're not allowed there") to ride the waves. It's the perfect vehicle for van surfing! We would go out on the highway and pull over on the shoulder. My boss, a little Indian fellow, would start to get out, but I'd stop him, look him in the eye, and say, "These waves are mine." And then I'd probably die.

But I digress. My manager isn't Stiles, and I doubt he'd ever take me van surfing. Watching the most dangerous movie of all time in the most dangerous motel of all time? I defied the odds by surviving the experience. It's like I stared Death in his scary skull eyes and chuckled. And I got paid like 15 dollars to watch Teen Wolf on a couch that smells like somebody urinated on it. That, my friends, is a win-win situation.

"I'm not a fag. I'm a werewolf." I think that line was in Universal's Wolf Man, wasn't it?

Rango

2011 animated Western comedy

Rating: 16/20 (Emma: ?/20; Abbey: 13/20)

Plot: A Chameleon with No Name (well, actually he does have a name) is accidentally abandoned by his human family. The desert he winds up in is not the safest of places, and the Wild West style animal town called Dirt he eventually stumbles into is probably even less safe. He exaggerates his prowess, lucks his way through a fight with a troublesome bird, and ends up the new sheriff of Dirt. He tries to get to the bottom of the town's lack of water.

Well, I like quirky animated movies with talking animals and spaghetti Westerns, and I seem to like a lot of what Gore Verbinski does (the underrated Mousehunt, The Weather Man featuring our summer star Nicolas Cage, that first Pirate movie). Previews for this made it look really good, too. So I wasn't entirely surprised that this is actually really good. It's really got the whole spaghetti vibe down with the wonderfully withered town of Dirt and the ugliest collection of characters you're likely to see. Some grizzled voice work (Ned Beatty should be in every animated movie; it should be a new law or something) gives them personality and color, and although there's not really all that much character development with any of them other than the titular chameleon, they work really well to give the setting the texture it needs. I really like the animation in this. There's a great blend of natural and realistic settings with these strange looking cartoonish animals, and the action scenes have this frenetic energy but still somehow make sense. There are lots of nods, predictably, to Western greats, but this also has a Hunter S. Thompson spotting which I thought was an awesome touch. That, and the protagonist is supposedly modeled after Don Knotts, probably meaning that I should go ahead and give this a Don Knotts bonus point. Oh, and similar to the movie Keoma that I just reviewed, there's an owl mariachi band in this that sings a bunch of songs about what's going on with the plot and how Rango is probably going to die. They work a lot better than the drunken pair in Keoma though. This works as an action movie, a kids movie (actually, maybe not), a Western, a comedy. It's not flawless--the plot's a little sloppy--but it's a wonderful hour-and-a-half of entertainment and definitely something I'd not mind watching over and over if any of my kids had actually liked it. My rating would probably go up, too.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #16: Rumble Fish

1983 movie made by Nic's Uncle Francis

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Rusty James is the younger brother of legendary gang leader [The] Motorcycle Boy, a 20-something who is on sabbatical in California. Upon The Motorcycle Boy's return, Rusty James is trying his best to keep the gang and its various activities going. Meanwhile, he's balancing love and hedonism and knife fights with a rival gang. But time's are changing, his older brother just doesn't seem into it all anymore, and it might be time for Rusty James to grow up. Rusty James!

I wonder if the name "Rusty James" is said more in this than "Man" is said in The Big Lebowski. I'm surprised I liked this one as much as I did. It's got dimensions, one of those you can enjoy on a lot of different levels. There's style to spare--black 'n' white and smoke machines and greasy shadows in dank settings and time-lapsed cloud drift and fish color splashes and shots straight out of German Expressionism. It's enough style to take this out of realistic territory and place its goings-on firmly in this imaginary movie land. I suppose that could distract, but I dug it as a sort of experimental film for teeny-boppers. I really should have seen this movie in high school. The largely rhythmic soundtrack by Stewart Copeland (apparently, a policeman) perfectly compliments the experimental tone and this streetwise otherwordliness. I could play it for you, and you'd guess it was from an 80's movie, but it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth like so many other soundtracks from that era. In fact, I think I'm going to illegally download it! I enjoyed the leads, Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke, the latter just exuding coolness, although I don't think I'd go as far as saying either of their performances was really good. I don't know; maybe I would. You've got a nice collective of performers playing the periphery characters as well. Dennis Hopper is really good in a small role as the boys' dad. Sofia Coppola is also in this briefly, making it a real family affair. Chris Penn, Laurence Fishburne (playing a character named Midget), our hero Nicolas Cage play Hollywood thugs. Even author S.E. Hinton's got a cameo as a whore. Of course, the real treat for me is seeing Tom Waits and Nicolas Cage on the screen at the same time. Waits plays, naturally, the owner of a pool hall, growling at the teens who don't use his furniture appropriately and getting a nifty monologue about time that sits near the heart of this movie. Speaking of time, there sure are a lot of clocks in this movie. I think there's a shot of a clock in every single scene which makes perfect sense (along with those clouds I mentioned before) since this has so much to do thematically with time and how it passes us by. Rumble Fish is a treat for the eyes and ears, and although Coppola takes a lot of chances with the way he shares the story, he doesn't sacrifice its heart or central message. Cool flick!

Note: I'm currently reading The Outsiders for teaching purposes. Tom Waits is also in Coppola's version of that Hinton book, but Nicolas Cage is not.

Correction: Stewart Copeland was a member of a band called The Police. He was not an actual policeman.

Santa Sangre

1989 Jodorowsky funk

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A boy is traumatized by some horrible experiences that took place during his young life with the circus involving a tattooed woman, his knife-throwing daddy, and his mother who worships a no-armed woman with the religious cult across the street. Following his release from an asylum, he tries to put his life back together again. That's made difficult when he runs into his no-armed mother who controls him and demands the use of his arms. His childhood sweetheart and a little fellow try to help him out.

It's really the type of movie that makes a plot synopsis pointless which explains the half-hearted effort I gave it up there. This is a psychosexual Freudian (aka Freddian) horror-comedy that is probably unlike anything you've ever seen or in some cases unlike anything you'll ever want to see. My plans were to make Santa Sangre my Oprah Movie Club pick before I got depressed about that whole thing and passed. I'm sure it would have been dug by all. This is Jodorowsky's third best film after Holy Mountain and El Topo, and although it's not as bizarre as those two, it's pretty bizarre compared to everything else. I still chuckle a little when I see this labeled as one of his most accessible. Jodorowsky seems to have had more of a budget to work with in this one, and he uses it to compile some artful visuals and utilize his vivid imagination. Not that he needed much money to help him out anyway. Drenched in film-school symbolism and saturated in cartoon colors and Part-Fellini (probably just the circus thing), part-Psycho, part-Bunuel, and all Jodorowsky, there are scenes throughout this that will linger in the mind for a long time. There's an elephant funeral that has to be seen to be believed, and the choreography and timing required for the scenes where the mother "uses" her son's arms is impressive. There's also a great little person, Jesus Juarez as Aladin. And you get a scene where some actors with Down Syndrome visit a prostitute. Exploitative? Yeah, probably. Original? Definitely. Oh, and there's a scene where a guy peels off his own ear. I'm sorry. I should have warned you all about spoilers before typing some of that. It's a challenge, but it's a thoroughly entertaining one. Shame about the dubbing though. It's also a shame that this guy can't get financing so that the rest of us can see his dreams. I keep reading that he's making a movie, but then I'll see where the Russian producers "just disappeared mysteriously" and then there's no movie.

By the way, I follow Alejandro Jodorowsky on Twitter. Highly recommended despite 95% of his tweets being in a language I don't speak. I think probably Canadian. He's like an advice columnist. One follower asked him, "Any advice for mental clarity?" and he answered, "On Sundays, lock yourself in the house and repeat, incessantly, one word: ass." It's sound advice.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

1977 mass murderer animated biopic

Rating: 16/20

Plot: All his neighbors said that he seemed so normal, but young Christopher Robin had more than his share of dark secrets. It all started with an unhealthy attachment to a stuffed bear which he called Pooh. Pooh was purchased with pants, but Christopher Robin, one afternoon when playtime got a little out of hand, removed and set them on fire along with his own. That should have served as the first warning for his parents. Classmates would laugh at Robin and his "silly old bear," and his elementary school teachers would say, "Christopher Robin, I've told you before to keep your Pooh out of here!" His peers would laugh and point, and eventually something inside of young Christopher snapped. He assembled a small army of deadly stuffed animals and embarked on a murderous rampage of revenge during which many of the classmates who ridiculed him would wind up eviscerated. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh chronicles his early life.

Disney does English kiddie lit really well, previously evidenced by their extremely erotic version of Mary Poppins. Now there's a movie that makes me horny just thinking about it. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh fails to make me horny (at least not anymore), but I still think it's an underrated Disney classic. It's obviously animated with a limited budget, but I think that adds to the charm. It's simple and extremely innocent, just like its source material. A.A. Milne's stories are great on their own, so Disney didn't really need to sprinkle too much of its magic all over this and overly complicate things (see the cgi Winnie the Pooh animated television series). The voice work is wonderful, especially Sterling Holloway as the titular bear and Paul Winchell as Tigger. After the feature, there was a little documentary where you get to see Winchell doing the Tigger voice. I'll admit that that footage DID make me a little horny. I really like how Tigger says rubber. "Their legs are made out of rubba!" Oh, and Ron Howard's brother Clint does the voice of Roo in this. I also like Sebastian Cabot's playful narration. The narrator and characters talk to one another which, even as a kid, I thought was kind of neat. This movie also frequently reminds the viewer that it's from a book, using turning animated pages and words cleverly. You get to see Pooh hopping on words or flying on a balloon from one page to the next. There's some music, simple childish music that kind of gets stuck in your head. I'm not sure how I feel about the Pink Huffalumps on Parade sequence that was straight out of drunk Dumbo's subconscious or the added gopher character who just seems extraneous. I asked Jen, "Why's that thing in this? He's not in the book." As if on cue, the character said, "I'm not in the book." I guess that's kind of funny.

Dang it. Why did I have to mention Mary Poppins? Now I won't be able to get anything done all day.

Keoma

1976 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Keoma, an adopted half-Injun (is that politically correct?) returns after the Civil War to find that his daddy is no longer the town big-wig and that his three corrupt half-brothers are in-cahoots with the mean guy who's the new town big-wig. Plague victims are shunned and sent to die. Keoma rescues one of them, a pregnant woman, and pisses off everybody. A whole lot of people die in slow-motion.

Another filthy cool spaghetti Western featuring the great Franco Nero with perhaps an overuse of Peckinpah-style slo-mo spills from horses or rooftops and a great tone. But I'm going to start with the bad or ugly in this otherwise good film--the music. There's a song performed by a woman who screeches like an inebriated Joan Baez and a guy who sounds like a guy who liquified and then drank a bunch of Leonard Cohen records. The song runs intermittently throughout the movie's duration and works kind of like a Greek chorus where the "singers" tell you exactly what just happened in case you somehow missed it or maybe what the characters are thinking. It's unnecessary and annoying. "Now Keoma has to ride into town to face his brothers." Yeah, Joan Baez, I know. I'm watching the same movie you are! Maybe if I was vision impaired, I would have appreciated that sort of thing. Or maybe I would have just shoved pencils in my ears. Other than that, this is good stuff. I like the mysterious tone, and Castellari, a director I've never heard of, uses sound effects and classic Western shots that take advantage of great scenery to create wonderful atmosphere. He uses some unnatural shots that show the characters framed by debris and dilapidated buildings, and during a climactic shoot-out--one of several--he eliminates all of the sound except for a moaning woman and the wind. Awesome. Keoma the half-breed (wait, why isn't this an offensive word?) is a cool character, not invincible and tortured not only by all the stuff that happens to him in the numerous flashbacks but by his future. And I like how he does this pointing thing that must have inspired Hulk Hogan as he was creating his wrastler persona. There's also this cool shot you'd only get in a spaghetti Western where Keoma tells his four enemies that he has four bullets. He holds up four fingers to illustrate. Then, he counts and drops his fingers to reveal the characters he's about to shoot. This movie also has a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders, and a scene where a guy with the whitest teeth in the Wild West gives a black guy's boot a golden shower. Definitely worth watching for fans of the genre even though that song will make you bleed from the ears. And not in a good way.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #15: Face/Off

1997 action movie

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 10/20)

Plot: Carousel, Nic Cage with a mustache, blood on the horse, Oh snap!, loose balloons, flash forward, bomb placement, priest-dance-f-bomb-butt-grab-ecstasy-groan, unapologetic coattail flapping, airplane tongue suck, peach bragging, chicken with a damn jet, bad guy gets it, face lifts required, boom--face lifts, vegetable resurrects, Oh double snap!, second face lift, face/off!

You just have to read that tag line to figure out how good this movie is. Go ahead; read it.

"In order to trap him, he must become him."

Let that sink in for a moment. Now, read it again, more slowly this time. What's your hurry anyway? Take it nice and slow.

"In order to trap him, he must become him."

Face/Off has two actors with hammy tendencies who get a chance to act as each other's characters. At some point in the movie, you've got Nicolas Cage acting like John Travolta acting like Nicolas Cage with John Travolta acting like Nicolas Cage acting like John Travolta. Those are the kinds of layers that can melt your freakin' mind! The performances start goofy, turn into something ridiculous, manage to top themselves somehow, and then turn into works of genius. Ridiculous genius. Nic gets some great lines, most of them referencing peaches. "You know, I can eat a peach for hours." That's the type of pick-up line that could destroy a woman, right? I'm also fond of this gem and its delivery: "Someone took my face. . .but it's cool. We're going to deal with it." I don't remember if Cage said that as Travolta's character or if Travolta said that as Cage acting like Travolta who thought he was Cage. The dialogue in this movie took my face, I think. But it's cool. I'm going to deal with it. Other brilliant pieces: "Bra-fucking-O," a line that only Cage can really nail; prolonged laughter (at least five minutes) preceding the words "I've got to go to the little boy's wee-wee room"; and a scene with a mirror that reminded me of Vampire's Kiss (What is it with Cage and mirrors?) where the title of the movie is clumsily uttered about forty-seven times. As the characters engage in what must have been the fifth or six climactic fight scene, they keep saying "Die!" to each other.

The old face-switcheroo plot is silly, but it's submerged beneath so many improbable shoot-'em-ups and 'splosions that you might not even notice if you're a real dumb guy like me. Jen had problems with the science, asking questions like "If their blood types are different, wouldn't their bodies reject the new faces?" What the hell, Jen? You can't ask questions like that during Face/Off! Flow with the beaucoup pseudo-science or cuckoo-science and the assaults on common sense and appreciate John Woo's use of slow-mo, operatic violence, and that unapologetic coattail flapping and slow-motion bird flapping and hope your spine doesn't fall out. John Woo's the only director I can think of who can nearly eviscerate you with his action sequences. After the scene at the beginning where Travolta's character (while he still has his own face with that stupid chin of his) captures Cage's character, I wondered if I had somehow fallen asleep and missed the entire movie until the end. But nope, there were logic-defying action scenes aplenty right around the corner. It's beyond stupid, but it's so much fun.

One question. There's this very strange sentiment that Travolta does with the faces of his loved ones where he places his hand near the top of their foreheads and runs it all the way down to the bottom of their faces. I noticed it the first time and thought it was just a Scientology thing. But then it happened two more times and I realized it must have been in the script. So I started counting them. Do you know how many Travolta face-gropes there are in this movie? Eleven! Eleven, counting one flashback face-grope and one attempted face-grope that fell a little short.
I tried to touch my son's face like that, by the way, and he recoiled in fear and asked me what I was doing. Maybe if I had John Travolta's chin then it would have gone better?

Lilo and Stitch

2002 Disney flick

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A destructive extraterrestrial escapes a death sentence and winds up in Hawaii. He hides at a dog pound where he's adopted by Lilo, a lonely girl living a troubled life with her older sister. As they try to prove to a social worker (an African American!) that their living conditions are acceptable, strange alien thugs try to figure out a way to capture Stitch.

I never loved this one despite appreciating Disney's efforts to work outside of the folklore canon and come up with an original story like with the dreadful Treasure Planet, The Emperor's New Groove (or is this based on a folk tale?), the dreadful Home on the Range, and the dreadfully dull Brother Bear. Oh, and the dreadful Atlantis. Maybe they should have just stuck to princess movies. Or finally adapt Baba Yaga to the big screen! The humor in this doesn't work for me, and the music, instead of going for their flashy theatrical musical thing they'd been unleashing with inconsistent results, seems to be written in to pander to tweens. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen a Hawaiian. If they look like these characters, I'd probably remember. I like the Stitch character fine, probably because he reminds me of my penis for reasons I won't get into here. I've got to keep this PG-13 after all. This hammers a message about acceptance and unconditional love and family into your noggin until you're ready to puke blood, but the story and characters are colorful and fun enough to keep it entertaining. It's not upper-echelon Disney, but the kids will probably like it. Unfortunately, it might have the undesired residual effect of causing youngsters to jump on the furniture, chew on banisters, and tear out the pages of library books.

If I start a "Do a version of Baba Yaga, Disney!" petition, will you sign it? If I can get everybody on this blog to sign, I can mail that son of a bitch off with five and a half names on it!

Horrors of Malformed Men

1969 malformed men movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy wakes up in an insane asylum with no idea who he is or how he got there. Clues surface, including a beautiful folk song that he links to an island. He assumes the identity of a dead man and sneaks his way on the island. And what's on the island? [Spoiler Alert!] Malformed men! Oh, snap!

Artistic trash, surface B-grade horror but with arthouse sensibilities that makes it the type of thing you should watch in your basement while stroking either your goatee or your girlfriend's goatee. It's sort of a Dr. Moreau as David Lynch would see it if he watched it through goggles he ordered from a Japanese pornographic comic book. It's also got this surreal noir flavor, a bizarre nightmare mystery that is likely only completely unpredictable because you won't be able to keep the characters straight and be confused anyway. All kinds of psycho-psychological stuff going on here; the characters who survive the experience will need years of counseling. I wonder if any of this malformed man business has to do with the bomb droppings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When this movie eventually gets to the island where the deformity is on full display, things get really interesting. Probably because that's where the mad scientist character played by Tatsumi Hijikata boogies onto the scene with moves that would anticipate the most demented chunks of the disco era. You get the impression that his fingernails could kill you. Haunting and perversely poetic, it's horror that doesn't necessarily scare you as much as it troubles you. Not for everybody--a lot of people would probably just want to wake up from this nightmare by popping it out of the dvd player. I thought it was a treat of grotesque visuals though and enjoyed it despite a clunky story and characters I couldn't keep track of.

The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka (with The Emperor's Nightingale)

1951 Czech animation that none of my 4 1/2 readers will care about

Rating: n/r

Plot: Contains five short films and one feature-length film based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

The Emperor's Nightingale, narrated by none other than Boris Karloff, was boring. I watched it last, and maybe by that time, I had had enough of the puppet films of Jiri Trnka, a guy who needs to buy a vowel. The shorts though? Well, it's Czech animation, so it's up one of my favorite alleys. The first, "Bass Cello," is from the same Chekhov story that John Cleese used in Romance with a Double Bass, a cute little skinny-dipping tale. The puppets, like in most of these movies, are simple in a charming way, but Trnka still manages to make the characters expressive. I also like his backgrounds, how he simulates cloud movement and water reflection. With the wizardry of Henry Selick and other modern animators, there's not much in this that's going to drop your jaw, but Trnka's work does show off a technical genius. The wild west romance adventure parody called "Song of the Prairie" used sparse backdrops and more of those expressive but simple puppets for some funny moments. Nice touch with a playing card at the end during the villain's death. "Merry Circus" was more cut-outs than puppet stop-motion, little paper talented seals, mischievous clowns, a monkey, trapeze mayhem, a performing bear, a one-man band, a woman on a horse. Cirque So-Bear! Abbey watched this one with me and really seemed to enjoy it. These are less experimental/surreal than Svankmajer/Barta (although "The Hand" was sort of an existential nightmare), more in the vein of Mr. Roger's puppet friends than copulating animated meat. The weirdest one might have been "A Drop Too Much," a short about drunk-drivin' Bill that was like a creepy public service announcement. Worth watching if you're into this sort of business, but trust me--you don't really need to watch The Emperor's Nightingale no matter how much you like puppets or Boris Karloff. Maybe it needed a puppet Boris Karloff?

Bronson

2008 Clockwork Orange for the 21st Century

Rating: 17/20 (Kent: 16/20)

Plot: Based on the story of Michael Peterson, England's most notorious and violent prisoner. At nineteen, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for armed robbery, and because of violent behavior in prison, his way of "making a name for himself," he's spent more than thirty years in prisons and asylums, most of them in solitary confinement. He is not a good role model.

Watched this with good buddy and blog reader Kent about a month ago. I had to do a search for the cliche "tour de force" on my own blog to make sure I haven't overused that phrase. Using cliches is bad enough, but when you overuse them? Well, make no bones about it, I know there's more than one way to skin a cat (proverbially) and that it's a good rule of thumb not to use cliches as a writer, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but the day I start using cliches is the day pigs fly. I've used the words "tour de force" twice in the previous three-and-a-half years I've done this blog--once for Vincent Price in Theater of Blood and once to describe the performance of a camel. So although I don't really want to use the words again, I can't think of a performance where it's more appropriate than with Tom Hardy's here. Kent tells me that Hardy, for all you Nolan Batman movie fans, is going to be a Mexican wrestler in the next movie. I also noticed that he's going to be the titular character in a Mad Max movie that supposed to come out in 2012. I guess Mel Gibson is either too old, too crazy, too busy talking to a beaver puppet, or a combination of those. This Bronson performance is powerful stuff. He's witty, frightening, hilarious, completely unhinged, tragic, overly-theatrical, deeply human. For the most part, the script calls for a playfulness with this really violent persona, and Hardy plays him with just the right amount of bravado. It's that type of performance where you worry about the actor a little bit, wondering if he's every going to be able to come back down and be normal again. He's in (perhaps literally) every single second of this movie, and he hoists the production on his back and carries it like a fiend. Terrific stuff. The movie itself is flashy and gritty, and it really does remind me of A Clockwork Orange just like the quote on the poster says. You've got theatrics, classical music, ultra-violence, very dark comedy. And that aforementioned playfulness. This movie never takes the tragic tale of Peterson seriously while managing at the same time to say a little something serious about society and what we expect from our celebrities. There's even some animation thrown in. Bronson's also endlessly entertaining, one of those movies I felt like I could have immediately watched again. Probably not Kent though. He actually fell asleep. It was his third or fourth viewing of this monster though.

Shane-movies trivia: I think this movie might be responsible for a sebaceous cyst on my back exploding and leaking a smelly yellow pus all over the place. I can't prove it, but that is the type of movie this is.