31 Days Of Horror Day 28: The Unseen 48: The Kingdom

(Note this pertains only to the first season of The Kingdom)

Why’d I Buy It?: Picked It Up at the Hollywood Video is burning down sale.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Let me put this as delicately as I can. Lars Von Trier is considered to be one of the most important cinematic voices working today. And I more or less think he’s full of shit. (Mostly)

My problem with Von Trier, is simply I have not seen a single frame of a single one of his films in which I did not believe that he was just fucking with me. I may think that Michael Haneke makes glorified Skinner Boxes instead of films, but I believe he at least is upfront about the terms of his experimentation.

Von Trier on the other hand never makes films that are about what they are about. Dogville isn’t really about American hypocracy. It’s about Von Trier getting to gang rape one of the most famous women in the world. Dancer In The Dark is about Von Trier getting to torment another, not the story at hand. Some find the closing shots of Breaking The Waves to be among the most transcendant in cinema. I see it as little more then a giant floating middle finger pointed right at the audience.

Whether this failure is Von Trier’s as a director or mine as a viewer, I’ll leave as an open question. The point is I get very little to nil out of Von Trier’s films and feel I could live a full and happy life without ever seeing another one. So I don’t exactly go out of my way to watch them. Particularly when my first exposure to the material is the well meaning, ahead of its time, and completely disastrous Kingdom Hospital. A show that featured a wise cracking Anteater who was also the lord of the dead.

How Was It?:



Grr… It was actually pretty good.

Yes, though I can’t say it’s changed my opinion towards Von Trier as a whole, there’s no denying that The Kingdom is a seriously creepy, seriously strange, and seriously affective piece of horror filmmaking.

With it’s eccentric cast, bizarre subplots, and absurd perpendicular sense of humor, The Kingdom resembles Twin Peaks more then the full on horror film I expected.

Many of Von Trier’s best scenes involve nothing supernatural at all. Like the part in episode one where the Head of the hospital, joining a secret society, is solemnly made to swear to be an enemy of the occult and a servant of reason, before participating in a ritual so arcane, so sublimely silly, that it almost beggars description.

It gets as much mileage from subplots involving office politics (Operation Morning Air) severed heads and diseased livers, as it does from the ghost ambulance that pulls up to it’s door’s every night.

Some of the old Von Trier Bullshit does creep up. Particularly in a down syndrome greek chorus/kitchen staff, who are literally magic and also omniscient. Luckily these are cases are few and far between.

Of course when The Kingdom does want to scare you, it comes prepared. And it’s that quality, the ability to put away his subplots and sick games, and face his subject head on, if only for a few scenes, that I find so lacking in the rest of his work. And that makes The Kingdom such an unforgettable ride.

That Von Trier. He ever finds something that engages him, he might make one heck of a film someday.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 13: Misery

This is going to be a much shorter review then normal.

Not because the film, doesn’t warrant a long and dedicated review…

But here’s the thing, I have mild, very mild claustrophobia. It doesn’t crop up often in my day to day life, where a fear of heights is much more likely to make me its bitch. But like my weirdly specific OCD involving using cleaning products (If I don’t wash my hands the second I’m done with them I get the screaming memes. Don’t ask me why) it does crop up…

Particularly when it’s represented in fiction, either literary or cinematically.


Ah, you see where this is going now don’t you?

It’s the reason I didn’t go see Buried. It’s the reason that why, though I like and respect both Danny Boyle and James Franco I will not be seeing 127 Hours. Because although it will be part of the cinematic conversation I’m fairly sure the other theater patrons wouldn’t take kindly to the sounds of me alternating between sobbing and screaming.

It’s the reason that significantly Misery is the one Stephen King novel I have never been able to finish.

And it’s the reason that though I sat down to view Reiner’s respected adaptation with the best of intentions. Ready to praise James Caan and Kathy Bates for their committed performances, and Rob Reiner for his creative dynamic use of a limited mise en scene. My brain instead just started to emit a high pitch wailing keen when the movie started that didn’t subside until several hours of laying awake in bed afterwards. And which sounded a little like this

“OhGodwouldn’tthatbefuckawfulpleaseohpleaseneverletanythingremotelylikethateverhappentomeawfuckthehobblingsceneisherealready?I’veheardrumorsANDAAAAAAHHHH”,

Which doesn’t make for the most insightful of criticisms.

So there you go. When I’m brought before St. Peter in Horror Heaven and have to account for the movies I couldn’t take, it won’t be Reogarrio Deodato, Jorge Buttgeriet, or John McNaughton who takes the honors.

No, it’ll be Rob Reiner. The man behind The Bucket List, Rumor Has It, and The Story Of Us.

Well played sir.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 5: Vampires

I’d written off Vampires without seeing it. It’s no secret that post They Live Carpenter is spotty, if you want to be polite about it (Cigarette Burns, and hopefully The Ward, excluded). Vampire’s promised to be no exception.

Well, I’m glad I did see it. Vampire’s isn’t great, but it’s not the full born travesty that Ghosts On Mars and Children Of The Damned is either. It’s fun enough. If I had to compare it to one film in Carpenter’s oeuvre, it’d be Prince Of Darkness. It’s a film that tries for some interesting stuff, but has a lot more to offer in potential then in practice. A film that is perhaps half of what it should be. But at least it has a kick ass John Carpenter score to its credit.

James Woods stars as the leader of a crew of Fearless Vampire Killers, hired by the Vatican who ends up on the business end of a very pissed off Original vampire. These being pre Twilight Vampire’s, they enjoy ripping the throats out of people and drinking their still steaming blood, rather then sparkling and serving as abstinence metaphors. In short order Wood’s finds himself on the receiving end of a Vampiric Beat down stick, with an unreliable ally in his Vatican Bosses, and what little remains on his of his old team quickly turning equally unreliable.

In true Carpenter fashion only his righteous badassedness can save him.

The film begins promisingly enough, with a team of vampire hunters methodically taking apart a nest of vamps, in a tense well put together set piece. It’s followed immediately by a full on retaliatory massacre by the head vamp, which features some tremendous pre CGI gore effects.

That’s when the movie just kind of stops.

We get about a half hour of skullduggery and hugger mugger. Followed by Mythology and subplots that are just powerfully uncompelling. Things do pick up a bit at the end. Including a pretty decent set piece in which our remaining vampire hunters attempt to lure the pack out of their stronghold.

James Woods brings the full brunt of his skeevy charm to the role of Jack Crow, vampire hunter extraordinaire. But he’s dragged down by his partner, played by one of the lesser Baldwins, who’s what we refer to as a drag on the ticket. And Sheryl Lee who spends the majority of her time looking utterly befuddled. Together, they participate in one of the least engaging perfunctory romances in recent memory. They stop the film dead whenever they appear onscreen. Which is with unfortunate regularity. Things aren't helped by a villain who is closer to the Big Daddy Martian Zombie end of the spectrum then Lo Pan.

Unfortunately they’re responsible for most of the film’s boring ass middle section. And while things do pick up for a good final set piece, the final part of the finale is one of the most egregious anticlimaxes this side of Desperado.

On the whole Vampires isn’t a disaster, just kind of a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong it definitely has its moments. But it’s even more frustrating because of the flashes of brilliance it shows.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 1: The Blair Witch Project

I had a tough time picking an opener for the third 31 Days Of Horror. Ideally I like to start things out with a personal favorite. Not simply a classic of the genre, but a film that embodies what horror means to me. Originally I was going to open with I Walked With A Zombie, but then was given the opportunity to screen it, meaning that I’ll instead be writing it up on the 30th. Then, I was going to move on to write up the original Halloween, but as JD’s John Carpenter Blogothon is going to make the first week of 31 Days Of Horror plenty Carpentercentric enough as it is.

But then I thought about it and realized that the key word in it was personal. It’s the key word for a lot of horror, just witness Andre Dumas’s genius “Willies” experiment. I knew just what film I had to cover.

Now that the hype and backlash cycle have finally worn down, it seems most people can agree that the The Blair Witch Project, is a pretty fucking scary film. But it becomes even scarier when I recognize the fact that I lived through the dynamic that powers the film several times.

The world of independent film is a world based on favors. So every so often you find yourself and a few friends of friends banded together for a day of shooting, the reasons for which you agreed to this becoming increasingly unclear as the day goes on. Things begin often earlier in the morning then your accustomed to; with a sense of friendly bonhomie. Things end, more often then not, twelve hours later, with you more or less wishing everyone you’ve spent the day with would just go ahead and die already. A day of missed shots, cramped cars, heavy equipment, shoddy directions, difficult personalities, cheap food, caffeine, and cigarettes, will put a strain on even the healthiest of relationships, let alone virtual strangers. And for the most part film crews don’t have to deal with a psychotic something in the woods that’s distorting reality, making them walk in circles, and periodically killing/ and or fucking with them mercilessly. And the way that the central cast devolves from good natured, even elated fucking about, to complete and utter contempt and hatred, is one I can’t help but watch with a shiver of recognition.

It goes without saying, that said psychotic witch in The Blair Witch is the thing that makes The Blair Witch a horror film and not say, a comedy of manners ala In The Soup. But that in it’s way almost exactly the point, remove the witch and it could be. All horror films, all good ones anyway, base themselves in the fears and anxieties of day to day life. It’s maybe not so specific as The Blair Witch, but it’s not hard to see how fears of suffocation from all points of the triangle in the nuclear family feed into The Shining. Or how the literalizing of class warfare powers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hills Have Eyes. Or the shifting in social mores gives The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby their kick.

My point is, that great horror movies don’t work because of Tits, gore, and a liberal helping of beer. As great as all of those things are...

No great horror movies work for the same reason all great cinema works. Because we see something of ourselves projected on the screen.

The cast of The Blair Witch Project make it very easy to do that. Vulnerable and paniced, they look and act like people who have been trapped out in the spooky ass woods for a several more days then they would like to be. It’s helpful that that was what they actually were.

But it would be a mistake to write off The Blair Witch Project, as just an improv act, the way the film’s first detractor’s did. Now that the “found footage” aesthetic has kicked off in earnest ten years later, it’s a lot easier to see just how much method there is behind Myrick and Sanchez’s madness. The movie is relentlessly paced, scouted, and designed. Scenes as relentlessly effective as the final trip inside the house, and the stumbling upon of the wooden figures, and makeshift cemetery don’t happen by accident. They happen because the filmmakers understood how to create a situation, and then maximize it with the tools they had. Something like Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and even moreso with a later film like The Last Exorcism, clearly approaches things from the technique first. It’s an approach that says, “I can chop my budget and shooting schedule in half making this movie this way. What’s a clever way for me to get away with that.” (One thing that The Blair Witch Project does that those other films don't is solve that eternal "Why don't they drop the camera?" question, by making it a matter of psychology rather then "Well if we didn't then we wouldn't have a movie?)

Meanwhile something like The Blair Witch Project, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not found footage technically sure but definitely the genus’s spiritual father, seem like to borrow the phrase, “Snuff Films shot in hell.” The style is derived from the content, not the other way around.

And unlike so many of the found footage "documentaries" this seems like it could actually be one. From simple things, like the way that the urban legend, has splintered The Blair Witch into seemingly three different entities (The crying child trying to cover her mother’s mouth as she attempts to relay her share of the mythos to the camera a perfect touch) to the way it grabs at that primal animal fear of being alone in the woods with no way out.

Blair Witch isn’t a movie that does all the work for you. It requires a fertile, and willing, imagination to strike sparks off of. More then that, it requires what all great horror requires of their viewers. A tremendous sense of empathy. Perhaps no horror film since Hitchcock so nakedly demands us to put ourselves in the place of the protagonists.

We horror fans are often accused of being desensitized. I think just the opposite is true. It wouldn’t scare us. If we couldn’t feel it.

The 25: Part 16/17: Aguirre The Wrath Of God/ A Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorsese

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)

So the I was around fifteen, I’d explored world cinema, the American classic style, and even had begun to dip my toe into the wild world of cult movies. I was beginning to feel pretty cocky about my vocabulary. What more was there to see?

There is no more dangerous time for a cinephile then the time when he first begins to fool himself into thinking he knows something. It’s a pattern I’ve seen countless film fans fall into, the happy complacency with a few hundred films to revisit. Only occasionally making room for the odd contemporary film.

It’s death for a student of film. And if you’re extremely lucky you get to see a few films that let you know just how small your palate is.

And that’s why no matter how disparate these film’s might appear, in my mind their intrinsically linked. No two films so violently expanded my horizons. And thanks to them, the day I stop seeking new experiences at the cinema, the day I’m convinced I’ve seen all it has to give, will be the day I’m lying cold in my grave.


Of the two, Aguirre is perhaps the easiest to understand as a shock to the system. I had just fallen under the tutelage of Ebert’s grandfatherly prose, and was drawn to the film by his Great Movie essay. I don’t know what I expected… No that’s a lie, I do know what I expected because the Hollywood version of Aguirre The Wrath Of God is depressingly easy to imagine.

One can picture it now, the scenes of the frightened conquistador’s trembling in the jungle being picked off one by one by an unseen force. A Predator-lite, with plenty of ambient sound, tense low angled shots, and frenzied character actor’s screaming “WHERE ARE YOU!!” into the jungle, a handsome, perhaps gone slightly to seed leading man in the role of the charismatic Aguirre, desperately trying to lead what remains of his conquistador’s out of the jungle, as a budding romance kindles between him and his deceased captain’s wife, and his plucky daughter learns to live in a man’s world. This is before the climatic battle between himself and the Indian tribe in which he gains their grudging respect. Ending up cleansed in his struggle for survival from his nasty imperialist impulses.

You know, some horseshit like that.

What I got was a mixture between holy man’s vision, and delirium induced vision of ants crawling out of one’s skin. A meditive journey into death and madness, filled with unforgettable images, and “ecstatic truth”. To say it was nothing like anything else I’d ever seen before, would be an understatement. As our doomed legion drift’s farther down the river each either reverts to base and cruel animal nature, or into philosophic abstraction. Until the unforgettable ending scene in which Kinski struts around a sinking raft amid a pile of corpses, talking about marrying his (dead) daughter, while he squeezes monkey’s in his fist.

And Oh Kinski, what have we here, bulging eyes, and thick, sensuous, rotten lips drawn into a rictus, remembering you’re supposed to have a hunchback perhaps 40 percent of the time.

But it wasn’t just the madness, it was Herzog, whose style of filmmaking was so different from anything else I’d ever seen that it may have well as been. To say Herzog lacked the concerns about the norms of narrative filmmaking would be an understatement. But his films were so unabashedly narrative.

Cinema wasn’t just a language, it was a language vast enough to contain a foreign one. It was simply put a rush.



But while Aguirre was an attack on the conventions of cinema I held. Almost as much of a threat as a promise. A Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorsese, on the other hand, presented a perfect example, and articulation of what I considered and consider cinema to be. A quasi mystical passing down of experience through the ages. A retelling of the experiences of common humanity and ideals, occasionally ugly common humanity and ideals, through the ages.

Unlike all other art forms, I would argue that the cinema is primarily not a reach inward, or a reach outward, but a reach forward.

A Personal Journey Through American Movies, proved a warm illustration of this. With Scorsese acting as the ideal tour guide, opening up the history of film as a nourishing buffet. Cementing Scorsese as the ultimate master, the ultimate teacher from whom I would always try to learn.

The filmmakers who this film introduced me to are almost innumerable, but just off the top of my head there’s, Sam Fuller, Raoul Walsh, Vincent Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, Griffith, Von Stroheim, Wild Bill Welleman, William Wyler, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, and Robert Aldrich.

That is, if I may be vulgar, that’s a shit ton of movies.

Simply put no single act of cinema going expanded my vocabulary and palate more. No single act of cinema going so made me a better film fan. It was a gentle quantum leap. A mellow but firm reminder that I was only a student. That there was always more to learn,

I can only hope that this will always be so.

Way Of The Gun

(This look familiar to anyone else? Looks Like Tarantino had some sticky fingers.)

The first time I saw The Way Of The Gun I hated it. I wrote it off as just another Tarantino wannabe, a particularly noxious mix of over stylized wannabe Peckinpah ultra violence and pop nihilism. To my surprise the movie gained a huge cult following over the past decade, one of the few in recent times that was completely organic rather then forced. This alone made me want to give the film a second look and when someone brought it up in protest when I mentioned that I thought The Town was the best crime film since Heat, I figured it was perfect timing. I’m always happy to be proven wrong, but still I was cautious, after all The Boondock Saints was a from the ground up cult hit too.

Some of my issues with The Way Of The Gun stand, whatever Studio Exec decided to cast Ryan Phillipe as a hardcore badass needs to be fired. Phillipe never gets past the whole kid playing dress up stage of his character and his overwrought voice over nearly ruins the whole damn movie. It also stars Juliette Lewis who I get along with like Superman does Kryptonite, a shrill braying piece of Kryptonite who keeps inexplicably turning up in movies I otherwise like and making me want to cry.

The film plays fast and loose with its internal logic something that always annoys me. The Less then dynamic duo makes the transition from dopey conmen slinging spare sperm to hardened killers way too quickly. And the dialogue crosses the border into arch at every opportunity. Despite all this there’s no denying this movie is at least trying to be legit. It stands out now from the pale Tarantino imitators, in one very important way, It’s not trying to be ironic; it’s trying to tell a hardcore crime story that Jim Thompson could be proud of.

And a surprising amount of the time it succeeds. The story follows a pair of stupid thugs who kidnap the surrogate mother of a mafia couple. This goes about as poorly as can be expected, and the next thing you know Parker and Longbaugh are south of the border shooting it out for their lives. It’s the kind of concept that you’d half to be a complete moron not to get some friction out of it, and Christopher McQuarrie, though many things is not a complete moron.

Though the film loses focus among too many subplots we don’t care about (So the wife of the guy who has sent the mob bosses is sleeping with zzzz…). But it really shines when it focuses on the cast’s two actual tough guys, Benicio Del Toro and James Caan. Seriously if the whole movie was as good as their scenes I’d be running down the street screaming “Merry Christmas Bedford Falls” passing out free copies of the film to passersby. The film climaxes with a spectacularly choreographed apocalyptic gunfight which is damn near note perfect. While there’s a lot of stuff to nitpick in Way Of The Gun, I do think it’s a genuine shame that he never really got a chance to direct again. He has obvious talent. The film is more then the sum of its parts. If not much more

Magnolia

(Moon In The Gutter is running a pretty fantastic blogothon on PT Anderson. This post is proud to be part of it)

Please don’t work your stuff/ Because I’ve got problems enough

What a lonely and sad movie Magnolia is. But how tender. Magnolia is a film that remains underestimated until it’s watched again. People remember it, but in parts not in whole. It’s the show stoppers, and Magnolia is made up of nearly nothing but, that remain in the mind, the mini film about coincidence that opens the movie, Tom Cruises uber misogynistic rants and the transcendent Wise Up scene, where every character in the film takes a moment to sing along to anthem of repeated mistakes.

But what perhaps is not remembered is the film’s bruising melancholy. The way it plays less like a movie sometimes and more of a collage of human misery, chronicling its characters despair, and the way they ache for something more. It’s a movie about the mess we make of our lives, and the terrible hurt we carry with us to be something better, to be something good.

The film follows a day in the life of a group of misanthropes, failures, and wasted prodigies across LA, whose lives have reached a point of no return. It portrays it’s character’s yearnings and failings with a compassion and lack of judgement that’s nearly saint like. The characters of Magnolia fail, unable to overcome the sins of their fathers, unable to shrug off the horrid burden the future holds for them, unable to forgive themselves for what they have done and what has been done to them, and most of all what they have become. All held together by Aimee Mann’s desperate score.

But if Magnolia was merely a documentation of human ugliness it would hardly be worth mentioning, let alone seeing. It would be a Todd Solonz movie. What makes Magnolia a masterpiece and what makes PT Anderson an artist is the way it captures people striving to become decent and how hard it is to do that simple thing. Like the similarly inclined Johnathon Frazen, Anderson knows that miserabilism is not enough. So many films are so timid and Magnolia is a bold movie. Bold not merely in its scope and ambition, but in it’s honesty. Character’s say what they are feeling, without bothering with subterfuge. When in the closing moments one of the characters protests through a broken blood filled mouth “That he has love.” It’s not the lack of artiface we’re concerned about, but the desperate raw nerved pain behind it.

The film has two characters a nurse and cop who go through their lives struggling to do good. They can’t help everyone in the movie, there are simply too many who need their help. But the ones they can aid, they do, and the relief they give is as sustaining as CPR to someone who has stopped breathing. For so accurately depicting the weight of guilt and sin, and the way simple kindness can lift that weight, Magnolia is one of my favorite movies. It’s a film that takes you into the darkest reaches of the human heart and soul, and then takes the terrible weight from your shoulders with a simple perfect smile.

The 25: Part 14: Goodfellas

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)



No film has ever made the wages of sin look so enticing as Goodfellas

If it’s not the most tactile movie ever made it’s very close. The minutia in Goodfellas is the focus. Every shot is centered on the details: the shocks of the Cadillac rising as the weight of the gangsters comes off, Powder sifting through a colander, sausage frying in a pan, the gleam off a pair of alligator shoes, off a pool of blood, off the barrel of a gun.

Whenever I hear any critic harping on how “Working Class” the mobsters in Goodfellas are, I know they grew up with money.

Sure as these critics love to point out, Henry Hill and his cronies, don’t live in Corleone like compounds, but suburban neighborhoods. They don’t run an empire, they run scams. And yet the world they inhabit, the world that Scorsese so skillfully etches is a world where its principles, for the mere cost of their souls, have access to anything they want. Suits, cars, money, drugs, houses, steaks a quarter inch thick, Champagne for Bobby Vinton. Action without consequences (the fate of Marie’s grabby ex boyfriend). Everything you could imagine for the mere cost of morality. For me and my working class friends who watched the film ad nauseum, Goodfellas was the most tantalizing portrayal of the seductive power of material things we’d ever seen on film. As surely a portrait of outsized “success” as Scarface. But even more so. Tony Montoya’s life of tigers, outsized mansions, and flashy cars was so foreign he might as well have come from Mars as Miami. Goodfella’s maintained a frame of reference. Goodfella’s lived on our street.

And that’s its triumph. Goodfella’s is not just a movie that recognizes the emptiness, beneath the flash of the gangster lifestyle. Those are a dime a dozen. Goodfella’s is the rare movie that recognizes the true value of the flash over the emptiness. No matter how “sophisticated” I like to think I am, I have to recognize that the primary emotion I feel, while watching Goodfellas is a lizard brained, completely morally bankrupt sense of envy. Henry Hill is a shit, with sociopaths for friends, but that doesn’t make the vision of a life of ease, pleasure and power he leads any less seductive.

I’ve long been enthralled by the narrative structure of Goodfellas, even before I was aware there was such a thing as narrative structure. The way the movie alternates between stretches of privilege and then the consequences there of. Each time the good life getting just a fraction less sweet, and each time the consequences getting a little worse. The joy of childhood, gives way to the cockiness of Hill as a young man, and finally the harried life of just another workaday professional. Standing before the judge with a congratulatory hundred dollar bill in his pocket, becomes an easy stretch in jail, becomes the deaths of friends, becomes the endangerment of everything he holds dear.

Until at last in that famous 1980 montage where the two blend until they become indistinguishable, for Hill there is no difference between heaven and hell. Only the insect buzz of Cocaine paranoia, a world in which the tomato sauce and the possibility that a DEA helicopter is following him are matters of equal import.

Goodfellas, is most important in my development as it is the film that introduced me to Martin Scorsese, the filmmaker who has meant more to me then any other.

Though I know its rather Pupkiney of me to say so, I have always felt about Scorsese as more of a favorite uncle I never had the privilege of meeting, rather then just a favorite filmmaker. I collected his films as fast as they where released on DVD, bought films specifically because he did commentary tracks for them, and am the proud owner of a copy of Faber’s Scorsese On Scorsese, dog eared and broken down from being carried in my backpack every day of high school. I’m the type of Scorsese fan who can not only tell you what the first film he saw in cinemascope was (The Robe) I can tell you what the priest who took him to it thought of it (Too gaudy).

Nearly fifty years separate our age. He lived on the east coast, I on the west. He was Italian, I was Irish. And yet, in his restless spirituality caught between the dual pull of Catholicism and Cinema, in his agitated intellect, and isolation and loneliness I saw a kindred spirit. And still do.

I don’t talk with other film fans about Scorsese. If we disagree about Buster Keaton, Joe Dante or Shane Meadows, we’ll have a spirited discussion. If we disagree about Scorsese, I’ll take it personally.

That kind of hero worship may seem unhealthy. Perhaps it is. But it misses the point. Other directors that I’ve covered so far in this series taught me many things about cinema.

Scorsese taught me to take film personally.

Summer Of Samurai: Ninja Scroll

Ninja Scroll remains a deeply fucked up movie. A fact that I find almost heart warming. As I get older and older I find that shock value alone no longer has much appeal to me in and of itself. When I hear about something like Bad Biology I don’t rush out to see it the way I know I would have if I was seventeen. So it was with a feeling of Nostalgia that I found oddly heartwarming that as I watched Ninja Scroll I could only think “God these people are sick and I hope they never get well.”

Ninja Scroll was one of the first anime to cross over as “anime”. While it never had the mainstream name recognition that Akira and Ghost In The Shell had, for fans of the form before it crossed over, Ninja Scroll was just as important a touchstone. A gateway title that far from being watered down delivered all the transgressive kick that anime was capable of giving in one shot gun blast.

No matter how “safe” and mainstream anime gets, Ninja Scroll will always carries that enticing whiff of the forbidden and the depraved. What everyone with a negative bias view towards anime told you anime was, Ninja Scroll actually was. Filled with lovingly rendered ultra violence, and even more lovingly rendered sexual perversion, Ninja Scroll remains the work of the deeply fucked up.

Ninja Scroll follows the wandering Samurai Jubei, who is pressed into service by a shady monk to take on “The Eight Devil’s Of Kimon” a group of demonically powered super Ninja, led by an immortal asshole who Jubei previously “killed” in a non quickening inspired decapitation. Part of the movie’s enduring charm is thanks to how Jubei is played. He’s written to have a “Kurt Russel in a John Carpenter movie” attitude to the ongoing. Getting through the challenges of the supernatural with a wry sense of detachment, occasionally feigned incompetence, and legitimately badassery.

They are joined by Kaigero, a female ninja, whose graphically depicted molestation, at the hands of the Rock Gobbler from The Never Ending Story can only be described as “Deeply unsettling”.

They spend the rest of the film battling the eight devils in some jaw droppingly beautiful, ingeniously choreographed, surpassingly brutal duels, that have earned the film’s legendary status among Eastern Action fans. Its basically the apex of the certain kind of villain gimmick based action filmmaking that dominated in the eighties and early nineties.

And yet even these fights are not free of the faint air of “Ick”. There’s a weird unhealthily erotic feel to almost all the fights. Almost all of the villains explicitly get sexual pleasure from their violence. Snakes come out of vaginas, everyone is feeling rapey, there’s weird orgasmic “I’m being electrocuted” screams. It’s all very John Waters. In all fairness this does give the action a more intense feeling then the usual “Fire Hose O’ Blood” anime violence. But it may also inspire the need to take a shower.

Ninja Scroll is a joyously unhinged freakfest of a movie. That might not be an endorsement from some. But it certainly is from me.

(PS. I'm heading down to the ole Whales Vagina this weekend (San Diego) so there won't be any posting until Monday. Have a good weekend all)

Somebody Asked Me To Be An Expert In Something Part 5: Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction is a film so ubiquitous that its hard to chart its impact.

Pulp Fiction drew on so much, and has been in turn so copied, that it becomes almost invisible.

This draws a problem for someone trying to talk about the film. I mean should I mention the dance sequence, that’s shown in countless clip shows, retreads, and parodies? What about the hypo scene? Or the watch speech? Or what Butch and Marsellies find in the basement of the pawn shop. They’ve all entered the lexicon. So well known that they’re almost impossible to see.

This is a fate that befalls all classic movies, but given that so much of Pulp Fiction's acclaim at the time came from how fresh it was its feels even weirder. You mean there was a time when it was considered weird for a movie to mention another movie? You mean there was a time when Tarantino wasn’t a household name? Weird.

Pulp Fiction is a unique film, in Tarantino’s career as well as in general. Tarantino has spent the last decade doing nothing less then creating his own cinematic universe. Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill, and Grindhouse all take place in their own pocket Tarantinoverse as surely as George Lucas’s films take place in “A long long time ago, in a Galaxy far away.” And the mythologies and rules of Tarantinoverse are no less intricate then the Jedi’s.

Pulp Fiction, despite its many flourishes...

Is still placed in something that resembles the real world. One of my favorite shots in the film is a simple one of Butch cutting through the back Alley to an apartment complex. A shot that anyone who has spent anytime in LA will recognize as it s
omehow manages to look like every single apartment in LA.

Because that’s what people miss about Pulp Fiction. The important thing about it isn’t how, modern and blaise it is. But how retro.

The critics of the time blasted Fiction as being nihilistic and glib. This seems laughably now, partly in thanks to just how many times and just how badly Tarantino’s film was imitated. You couldn’t walk into a movie theater or video store between 1995 and 2000 without being besieged by a cheap imitation waiting to show you what a glib nihilistic crime movie REALLY looked like.

The fact remains, that while Tarantino often did, and still does shock the audience into laughter with violence, he can not be accused of making it not matter. After all, the priniciple action of Pulp Fiction isn’t Marvin getting shot in the face, or Marsellus Wallace getting medival on a “Soon to be living the rest of his short life in agonizing pain ass rapist here.”

No. The principle action in Pulp Fiction is an act of mercy. Its Jules proving to himself and to the other characters that he is better then we think he is. And just because violence is easy and learned, doesn’t mean it can’t be overcome. Tarantino isn’t a scold, which is why the movie ends with Jules and Vincent triumphantly strolling out of the diner, rather then Vincent dying on the toilet seat, after failing to change his ways, the way he would in chronological time. But the message is clear. Call it divine intervention, call it Karma, call it whatever you want, the character who mends his ways walks away. The character who doesn’t pays.

Though its certainly more graphic, I’d argue that Pulp Fiction is easily the most optimistic film I’ve shown so far. The message of all the other films, is “There’s no way out.” Pulp Fiction is about one man simply and defiantly choosing one.

Christopher Nolan Blogothon Day 1: Following

Lets start at the very beginning shall we?

Not just at the beginning of Nolan’s career, but at the presumption that Nolan’s is a career worth examining. Something that plenty of people dispute on its own. There are plenty who write off Nolan as a more graceful then average studio hack.

I of course, disagree or else I wouldn’t be hosting this blogothon. But it is a valid question. Because while he might not wear them as on his sleeve as say a Coppala, the filmmaker I think Nolan most resembles as a stylist, yet blessed free off Coppala’s self destructive streak. Nolan does have a few key obsessions and themes he keeps returning to giving his pictures the unifying thread necessary for some real artistic observation.

1. Nolan heroes are all defined by a trauma. What they do and who they are comes from a fundemental inability to move on with their lives from a defining incidents. Whether its death of Bruce Wayne’s parents, the “murder” of Leonard’s wife, Dormer’s trouble with Internal Affairs, The death of Angier’s wife. Every Nolan protagonist has a defining incident that pushes them past the point of sanity.

2. Nolan villains serve not just antagonists to the heroes, but to society at large. All are defined by the fact that they are breaking the social contract in a way that’s beyond the simple motives of greed, revenge, or whatever serves as fuel for most movie bad guys. Nice people do not use their friends as contract killers/ murder young girls in their home/ burn down major metropolian cities/ kill The police commissioner judges and DAs.

3. There is a complete Co Dependancy between the hero and villain. The entrapped cop and killer become “partners”. The Joker defines himself completely by Batman. Leonard depends on Teddy to help him navigate the world. Teddy depends on Leonard for something much darker. Ras Al Ghul sees in Batman an heir. The rivalry between Danton and Angier define every aspect of both their lives.

4. Nolan’s editing is slow and his eye for compostion nearly unrivaled. His films are made not for quick cuts, but to withstand long hard looks.

5. Each of his movies is Non Linear to at least some extent (Insomnia is almost an exception, but even it uses as its centeral image a flashback whose meaning doesn’t become clear until the end of the film). Most Nolan films take as one of its theme, the mind, and its fragility.

So there are at least five signatures that Nolan places in each film. And true to form, all five are present in Following.


Following isn’t a perfect film, but it is just about a perfect example of a talent in embryo. Every aspect of what makes Nolan Nolan is present, if not matured to its full potential.

The problem with Following is that its simply too clever for its own good. Unlike Nolan’s other films which are exactly clever enough for their own good.

Had it stuck to its initial premise Following might have been a truly great film. Our nameless protagonist starts following random people, out of sheer boredom and loneliness. Inevitably he’s caught in the act, unfortunately he’s done so by the Mephistophelian Cobb (The first of Nolan’s co dependant duos), who far from curtailing his urges, adds fuel to the fire and starts pushing him to take things further then he ever has before.

Now that’s some pretty potent stuff, unfortunately Following was made during that short window where The Usual Suspects was the most influential crime film. Which is the only reason I can think of as to why we’re treated to a tacked on plot involving a gangster and his girlfriend, that positively shreds suspension of disbelief. Hinging on so many coincidences and things happening just so that the mind reels.

Still if Nolan’s instincts as a storyteller where not yet fully developed, his instincts as one of the most confident stylists of his generation are fully formed from the beginning. Nolan’s instincts of compostion are nearly preternatural. I’m all for democratization, but I hate the lazieness of so much mumblecore, where composition and competence are tertiary concerns at best.

Looking at an independent film from a mere ten years ago, shows just how much that label has degraded in the ensuing decade. Call me a scrooge, but I miss the days when to achieve success as a director, an independent filmmaker like Richard Linklater, Jim Jaramusch, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and yes even Kevin Smith, had to make something that actually looked like a film.

Visually speaking comparing something like Following where every shot had to count on its clearly limited budget, It’s barely seventy minutes long, shot on 16mm high contrast To the sloppy infinite video style of today, is like comparing the MLB to a bunch of preschooler’s playing T ball. There’s an economy and a precision here, that speaks to a true artistry. Nolan knew exactly how many frames he had, he couldn’t afford to waste a single one. It’s the discipline like this that a true filmmaker needs. I mean look, it makes the solipsistic wankfests that pass for independent cinema today just look ambitionless and embarrassing. Every shot in Following communicates something, and does so with grace and panache.









Following found Christopher Nolan in full possession of his talents. His next film would find a story worthy of them.

The 25: Part 12: The Road Home

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)



I tend to think of The Road Home as the last great screening of my cinematic unconscious. It was not Zhang’s technique that entranced me, but the simple human emotion projected on the screen and the lyricism of his images.

Its fitting as The Road Home is precisely the type of film that too much analysis destroys. Like a butterfly killed with chloroform and mounted before being judged a mediocre specimen.

The Road Home is a flawed film, considered a minor entry in Yimou’s oeuvre, by even the director’s most ardent admirers. It contains one of the most singularly intrusive voice overs I’ve ever heard. Perhaps sixty percent of its run time is taken up with shots of Zhang Ziyi running about in sun dappled slow motion. It reduces the Cultural Revolution to an minor inconvenience in a way best described as unseemly (Like a film where the biggest problem with The Holocaust is that it keeps making people late for dinner). Its characters are kind of flat, and not much happens (A brief summary, two people meet. Fall in love. He goes away. She Waits. Eventually he comes back.)

This is all stuff I know should disengage me from the film. But they never strike deeper then intellectually. The Road Home remains a bracingly lovely film. And one of my favorite on screen romances.

Briefly, I feel I should mention as this is a column about my development as a filmgoer I should note that San Luis Obispo was pretty much a perfect place for a film goer to develop. There’s a lot wrong with my deeply neurotic hometown, but the its damn near a wild life preserve for outdated modes of watching movies. I’ve written about The Insomniac before, and the great unmolested genuine film palace before, but there’s a Drive In here as well. And a art house, which allowed me to watch films like The Road Home on a big(gish) screen.

With the advent of home theater and the decline of the multiplex, one of the things that surprises me is just how giddy so many cinephiles seem to give up the theater. Now I’m in full support of watching a film by any means necessary. And I have no delusions about the sanctity of the theater, a lot of them are pits, and its not just a multiplex problem. The worst screening I ever went to was a revival of Blue Velvet with an audience of hipster douchebag’s so jaded that they howled with laughter through the scenes of sexual abuse. If there is ever an experience to make you reevaluate the merits of Ebert’s review of the film…

But I don’t feel for a second that the ideal experience will ever be anything but the theater. The theater experience is as much about reaction as the film. The audience is harmonics, and nothing will ever compare to the feeling of hundreds of people experiencing a film as one. my feelings about the theater are much like my feelings for the church. It may be flawed, perhaps irrevocably, but it is my home. And I would rather try to defend it and build it then abandon it.

The Road Home may be a simple story, told in a simple way (Though there is a quiet wit to the film. It’s as much about the cultural shift in China as it is about the romance. The way Yimou sneaks Titanic posters into the background to comment on both is very well done). And yet the emotion it provokes, both by Zhang Ziyi’s natural pure performance and Yimou’s natural mise en scene and Malackian golden light.

It’s the simplicity that gives the film its power. The film’s greatest scene (and incident) involves Ziyi attempting to catch her lover as she runs through the woods. A scene I will never forget as long as the movies occupy any fraction of my headspace.

In my time at the movies I’ve seen wave after faceless wave of people killed in the most horrific ways. I’ve seen tragedies reproduced on sound stages, and even watched the Earth turned into a cinder a time or two. And yet I don’t believe that anything I have ever seen on screen has moved me quite so deeply, so primally as that simple combination of the sound of breaking pottery, and a few dumplings rolling down the hill side, juxtaposed with the sight of that weeping girl. Then I understood what film was in a way that none of the theories and techniques I’ve learned about film have ever come close to matching. Film is empathy. Empathy trapped in light.

Through study I’ve learned more sophisticated ways of saying that, in fact I probably wouldn’t have been able to even phrase my reaction that way on first viewing. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder if all this analysis and dissection is really just a means of covering up what I already know. If I’ve lost more then I’ve gained.

Speed

I have a confession to make. I kind of unironically like Keanue Reeves.

Lets set aside for a moment the roles he’s easy to defend in, the likes of My Own Private Idaho, Scanner Darkly and River’s Edge. Lets take a look here at your Constantines, your Lake Houses, your Point Breaks, your Day The Earth Stood Stills. Theres a reason Keanu always gets cast in this high concept shit. Mainly, because he buys it.

Take Constantine, which is for the record one of my favorite guilty pleasures of all time (lower your opinions of me accordingly). There is a scene which finds Keanu sitting in an electric chair, with his feet in a bucket of water and a cat on his lap, patiently waiting to be sent to hell. And he acts like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Presumably because he doesn’t know better. His shall we say, unique cadences, zen outlook, and unflappable demeanor all conspire to make Reeves truly one of a kind. I mean come on how can you not like him a little.

He anchors Speed. Along with Sandra Bullock one of the few women not named Carrie Ann Moss that it can be said Reeves has some genuine chemistry with. Bullock’s appeal has always been not her glamour but her normalacy, which is why she is still a movie star at forty five no matter how many actresses she kisses in public. It’s that ability to keep that Girl Next Door feel even when doing things as patently ridiculous as piloting a multi ton bus over a gorge, that keeps her likable.

Speed serves as the apex of a certain kind of pre CGI blockbuster filmmaking. There’s a purity to Speed that you have to admire it’s a two hour movie that probably has ten minutes in it not devoted to vehicles going fast, shit blowing up, and actors trading pithy bon mots. It’s the Darwinian end result of the action eighties. A movie that has (de)evolved into nothing but a goods delivery mechanism.

And in all fairness Speed does nothing but deliver the goods. Things start off with a fantastic set piece involving an elevator rigged to explode, that would serve as the climax for a lesser film. The plot develops into (white noise) mad bomber (white noise) will explode if it dro- (white noise) -illed his best friend.

Watching anything wreck that much havoc on LA’s nightmarish Freeway system during its Kakaesque rush hour is a guilty pleasure for any Angelino (Let us also take a moment to appriciate the sublime irony of a thriller built around public transporation being set in a city notorious for having the worst public transportation system of any major metropolitan area in the world). Unfortunately the film does little more then nod at the cities multi culturalism. Original director Tarantino might have turned the film into LA’s answer to The Taking Of The Pelham 123. De Bont, just lets everyone have a funny line.

And yet I’ve ended up writing about everything in this movie aside from my reason for revisiting it. Hopper of course, grounds the film. Giving his role a real sense of menace and ruthlessness. Not to mention making the idea that he can outsmart Keanu Reeves seem all too plausible. He gives the role the requisite intensity. But It’s then kind of role that Hopper was all too often saddled with, in the late stage of his career. One that the movie depended on, but gave him little room to do anything but pop his eyes, yell, and get one ker-aizy speech in. Don’t get me wrong, like everything else in the film Hopper is a lot of fun. He’s just not much else.

Red Rock West

I somehow managed to miss Red Rock West, John Dahl’s mean little Neo Noir, until now. This despite the fact that it is so far up my alley that its practically down my throat.

The film’s premise is a standard Neo Noir one. A drifter comes into town and ends up mistaken for a hitman and ordered to kill the interested party’s wife. Paid but not wanting to do the job, he skips town with his employer’s money, but not before telling his target about the plot and accepting another cash payment from her to off her husband. He skips town a several thousand dollars richer and heads for the hills.

Simple right?

You haven’t seen many Neo Noirs.

It’s worth noting that Red Rock West is one of the most relentlessly structured movies of all time. You could basically read it with a screen writer’s manual in hand and mark it off all the stuff you’re supposed to do minute by minute. You can basically hear Robert McKee weeping in delight. Its not really a positive or negative just an observation. It does however show that there is occasionally something to be said about the three act structure. Red Rock West is a relentless movie, and every complication (and there are plenty) hits with maximum impact.

Nicholas Cage plays the hapless drifter, and its from that weird pre The Rock post Wild At Heart period of his where you could say that Cage was the most subdued part of the film and actually mean it. Its safe to like Cage again, thanks to his great performances in Kick Ass and Bad Lieutanent making it OK for hipsters to retroactively praise the bug eyed crazy shtick that Cage has been trotting out for the last ten years, and pretend like they were in on the joke all the while. (Look for this to reach some kind of annoyance Nexus when The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which I’m actually looking forward to, comes out). But as much as I enjoy Cage’s “Mega Acting”. I miss these types of roles to. There’s not much too it. But he plays it well, lean and compact. An average, likable schmoe forced to survive on his limited wits in a harsh situation.

Hopper plays the real hitman, and while his role is more his “That guy in Speed.” Level of villainy rather then Frank Booth. He gives the role both a real sense of danger, and more importantly a real sense of amorality. He even gets a few moments to radiate that genuine Hopper Lunacy we all know and love. As in the scene where he forces Cage to race a speeding Freight Train.

If there’s a weak link in the chain it’s Laura Flynn Boyle as Cage’s intial target, and later partner in crime. Boyle is a fine actress given the right material, but she is convincing neither as a vulnerable victim, nor a cold blooded Femme Fatale. Dahl to his credit seems to realize this, and she spends the minimal amount of time on screen until the final thirty minutes or so.

Red Rock West, might at the end of the day be nothing but a poor man's Blood Simple. But damned if it doesn’t do a good job of it.

The 25: Part 11: Fist Of Legend

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)



If there’s a genre that I write about with a frequency that’s the complete inverse of my interest it’s the Kung Fu film. Oh I’ll get a review in every now and again. But there’s no denying that I watch a lot more of these films then I write about. I could claim that there are only so many ways you can write about people hitting each other, but that would be a lazy stupid thing to say.

The Kung Fu genre can be as rich and effective as any genre. And yet it is virtually the only one that is still okay to be ignorant of in the critical community. Despite the efforts of the like of Tarantino, Yimou, and Ang Lee, it is still more or less acceptable to think that these movies are crap and leave it at that. Try engaging in a conversation with a non believer about the artistry of the Shaw Brothers sometime. Go nuts. It’ll be fun.

When certain critics complain about people staying lazily in genre film, not exploring the films of other countries and eras, they miss that the surest ways to start exploring the films of different countries and era’s is to be a fan of genre film. Every genre fan eventually starts to run low on their drug of choice, and start going further into the outreaches of cinema. Either to the frontiers of the foreign or the recesses of the old. Genre becomes a kind of known reassuring river guiding the film fan deep into unknown territory of time and country.

I’ve linked to Devin Faraci’s excellent essay on the Horror fans before. But I think the same is just as true if not more so, for Martial Arts fans. Being a martial arts fan means you’re willing to search for the bootleg, it means your willing to go through the swap meet and dig through dealer boxes, or drive half an hour to that one video store that has your fix. It means going to the extra mile to see what you care about. Otherwise you won’t see it. It’s valuable training for any would be cinephile. And the man who made me a Martial Arts fan was Jet Li.

I had seen other martial arts movies before. But Bruce Lee’s film’s didn’t make an impression me, as his films need to be watched for their cult of personality, more then their relentless pacing and crack timing. I’d seen some of Jackie Chan’s stuff as well but his goofy streak was always too much for me. I never really liked Chan much until later, when the true implications of “Holy Shit He’s actually throwing himself through plate glass and hitting the concrete." sank in.

Li though, Li was perfect. Cool, charismatic, genuinely funny, with an astonishing unfakeable athleticism. His movies My Father Is Hero, Tai Chi Master, and especially the first Once Upon A Time In China, are films I have a great deal of affection for. But it all started with a bootleg copy of Fist Of Legend (This was before Dimension dedicated itself to releasing and fucking up as many of Li’s films as they possibly could.) The Bootleg featured a photo of Li on the cover dressed in his school uniform, hands behind his back, in front of gigantic Chinese Flag, looking for all the world as if he was about to personally enforce a new five year plan. It was kind of awesome.

Fist Of Legend proves the perfect showcase for Li’s talents. A melodramatic retelling of Bruce Lee’s Chinese Connection. It show’s Li equally adept at humor, pathos, and not unimportantly kicking yards upon yards of ass.





A career like Li’s tour in America showcases the trouble of race in modern Hollywood. Li never came close to utilizing the full range of his talents in an American film (In all fairness Forbidden Kingdom at least nodded to the fact that Li knew how to do shit other then glower).Its not as if Li ever played a character who was a racist caricature. No one ever made him put on prosthetic buck teeth and thick glasses, or had him play a house boy or a laundry man. But at the same time, Li’s entire American career is one big wasted opportunity, because in American movies Asian’s aren’t charismatic heroes but inscrutable ones. So instead of playing the fully rounded leading man roles he pulled off so easily with so much charisma in his homeland, Li got to stand around with Rappers and Jason Statham, sullenly saying as few lines of broken English as possible in dreadful movie after dreadful movie. Which is frankly not where his talents lie. When you can rank Romeo Must Die among the best of the film's Li made in America, you know things have gone terribly wrong.

It should be noted, that I think in this case it is a specifically top down problem. With executives fearful of demographics. It should be noted that both Fearless and Hero, which both showcased Li in a more rounded role, became minor hits at the American box office. The general audience seems more or less willing to watch anyone in anything. It’s the American studios, as the stupefying whitewash of The Last Airbender and Prince Of Persia show, that are out of step.

And yet it’s the kind of grass roots fandom that a film like Fist Of Legend represents to me, that can change all of that. It’s the average film fan who seeks this kind of stuff out, not just the hardened cineaste, and ultimately its they that affect the change we see in the multiplex.


(So There's not going to be much around here for the next month other then The 25 and Dennis Hopper films. So I hope you're enjoying them both. I reeeeeaaaaalllllyyyy would like to get The 25 done before starting The Christopher Nolan Blogothon. Get one albatross of from around my neck before putting another around. But then again I'd really like a pony as well. So we'll see how this goes.)

Robin Hood Men In Tights

Its pretty much agreed upon that late period Mel Brooks is a pretty sad thing. And yet, Robin Hood Men In Tights alone among them has a bizarrely affectionate following around film fans my age. It’s a film carried up from the elementary school yard, and chances are if you solemly explain to a twenty something “That if you don’t give no tolls we don’t get no rolls.” You’ll get a smile.

I on the other hand have never had a real like for this film leaving my completely irrational and unexplainable affection for Dracula Dead And Loving It. Shut up. Look there’s this scene where Leslie Nielsen has a dream that he’s free from his vampirific curse. He takes a walk in the park, eats some chicken and drinks some wine; when all of a sudden the laws of his vampirism abruptly and violently reassert themselves. Bursting into flames pathetically clutching his chicken leg and goblet of wine Nielsen delivers what I can only describe as the greatest “Oh Shit” face I’ve ever seen.

But like I said maybe because I saw it past the prime age of eight, maybe because there is only room in my heart for one shitty Mel Brooks movie, I’ve always considered Men In Tights to be Brook’s worst movie.

The film opens with a scene that must rank with Brook’s best for the truly unexpected punchline alone.(“Every time they make a Robin Hood Movie they burn our village down.”) Thankfully before one’s expectations can get too high The movie comes along to help us realize what it does wrong.

Simply put Mel Brooks attempt to appropriate hip hop culture is painfully unfunny. I mean I can’t describe to you the effect that a seventy year old Jewish man’s idea of B-Boys delivering the theme song did to the part of my brain that feels joy and laughter. It beat it with a rubber hose and left it bleed in the corner.

This basically continues throughout the movie. There are a few chuckles, with the amount of gags Brooks throws at the screen there has to be. But the hit to miss ratio is absurdly high. For every feeble joke that gets a half hearted chuckle, like Robin’s blind servant feeling up the Venus DeMilo, weeping that his master has lost his arms in battle, but complementing him on the nice new boobs, there are a dozen that are literal groaners, that make that desperate gag sound like Lubitsch.

Elwes can be a sly comic talent, but this is not his best work. Still he gets a few moments in particularly when his target is Costner’s hamminess. Still for the most part his work is overly broad (even for, y’know Mel Brooks) and he desperately wants to be in on the joke. The great Brooks clowns always where desperate to maintain there dignity in the worst of circumstances, Elwes just wants to look as silly as everyone else.

Of course, the other standout in the cast is the young Dave Chappelle. Unfortunately fans of his later work will find little to love here. He’s young and unconfident and the material that Brooks gives him is just plain weak.

Look if you’ve got a soft spot in your heart for this one, chances are you’ll still enjoy it. Like I said I’m hardly one to throw stones on this account. But if you’re first impression of Robin Hood Men In Tights was less then positive. Its the correct one.

Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves: Hoo Boy

It was with no small amount of nostalgia that I pulled up Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves on my Netflix instant watch. I knew the film’s reputation hadn’t exactly aged well. But I had fond memories of watching the film on our Library’s increasingly worn VHS copy. Memories of getting caught up in the hype of the film, and playing with a Kevin Costner Happy Meal Toy (See also Hook).

I didn’t expect the movie to be great. But after all I’m a big fan of Reynold’s underrated swashbuckler The Count Of Monte Cristo. Perhaps, I thought, Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves will have aged into an enjoyable, light example of pre CGI blockbuster filmmaking. Did It? Oh sweet Christ no.

There are a few things to be said for the much maligned Prince Of Thieves, so lets get them out of the way.

1) Michael Kamen delivers a rousing score, which has earned its place as a trailer cue for for seemingly all eternity.

2) Say what you will about Reynold’s as a director, but he has an eye for composition and choreography. As a result some of the film’s set pieces are interesting to watch as examples of geography, such as the battle between The Merry Men and The Celts. Interesting on a technical if never on a narrative level.

3) Alan Rickman and Michael Wincott seem to be having a hell of a lot of fun. (Is it a mark of 90’s filmmaking that only the villains ever seem to participate in this particular past time?)

And that’s about it. What’s bad about the film? Just about everything else. Let’s start with the man in the center. What can you say about Kevin Costner? Its so easy to forget how big he was. How likable he was. Go back and revisit Silverado some time. He has the live wire energy, and raw charisma of a born movie star. No endless depressing litany of vanity projects, CGI hairlines, and ill thought out post apocalyptic joy rides can rob him of that.

Still Costner’s best roles, thrive on his very Americaness. Whether as the boyscout straight Elliot Ness, the passionate Jim Garrison, or even his tired cowboy in Open Range (underrated). Costner at his best represents the reincarnation of Gary Cooper. Which is why having him play England’s greatest folk hero is a very very very very very bad idea. I mean what the fuck?

It doesn’t matter that Christian Slater, apparently cast so Costner would look less anachronistic, acts worse then Costne. He still looks very bad.

The entire movie screams of bad 90’s filmmaking, from the bizarre casting of Mary Elizibeth Monstrantonio as Maid Marian (what was Penelope Ann Miller busy that weekend?). To the tokenism of Morgan Freeman hanging out in 11th century England (though it is kind of refreshing to see an unabashedly pro Muslim figure in a mainstream Hollywood film). The fact that the movie feels stage bound despite being shot mostly on location (Dover Cliffs look great, but other then that the film might have been shot in my backyard). To the tie in theme song by Bryan Adams which serves as that last cherry of shittiness, Atop this Sunday of suck.

Everything about the movie is a misstep. From the bizarre Monty Pythonesque make up, design, and tenor of the supporting cast (“How do you know he’s the King?” “Cause He doesn’t have shit all over him.”) To the bizarre subplot involving The Sheriff Of Nottingham’s Satan worshipping, Albino, Witch step mother (Only in the 90’s)

In short, Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves is an ill conceived, stagy, disaster. If you have any affection for this film do yourself a favor and leave it in the warm forgiving bosom of nostalgia. There’s nothing to do with it now but gape at it in horror.