CLERKS 2 (2006) - ****

After the would-be mainstream entry disaster of JERSEY GIRL, Kevin Smith would appear to have gone backwards in returning to his much-liked "View Askewverse" set in New Jersey, in this case a $5 million sequel to the 1994 movie that propelled Smith from slacker comic book-nerd to noted filmmaker: CLERKS.

Besides the fact that it would be an easy and quick profit on the rebound from the failure of JERSEY GIRL, what else is there to the Gen-X slackin clerks of Dante Hicks (O'Halloran) and Randall Graves (Anderson)?

Alot. CLERKS back in 1994 was an absorbing movie about a generation of 20sh slackers that goofed off while debating STAR WARS and insulting costumers. A decade later, they're now 30sh, and having to work at a fucking fast food joint, and now engage in fights with younger useless people between STAR WARS and LORD OF THE RINGS fan factions. But, these two's shenninigans only hide the fact that their lives are still going no where, and they're pissed. However, no Tyler Durden will save them...they will have to fucking make a difference themselves.

Two montage moments of melodrama convinced me that Smith was going to fuck up like he did with JERSEY GIRL, but he restrains himself. If anything, they are feel-good moments to characters that finally grow up, but not to appease a shallow and materialistic society. Besides, Rosario Dawson is one hell of a catch!

Smith arguably is the Woody Allen of Gen-X, in that he can create witty dialogue that people will quote for years, and in regards to situations that we can relate to. However, its the 2nd factor that Smith has been away the longest from. After CLERKS, he worked on humorous would-be cult comedic-movies(or at least attempted to create such fare) as MALLRATS, CHASING AMY, DOGMA and JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK(luckily, the duo are back in CLERKS 2 as well). But save for CHASING AMY, Smith hasn't created a movie that not only burned-out Gen X'ers will get, but people of any generation that feel like the world has passed them by since...well, CLERKS.

Bravo Mr. Smith, and lets hope you continue to make movies based on what you know and understand, and not simply dumbass chick flick fare that suck like most mainstream floaters.

HOLY SH*T! ronnie gave Clerks 2 4-stars!?

Rollerball
1975/Jewison

Director Jewison presents some interesting ideas and images here and there, but ultimately this heavily-Kubrick-influenced film delivers no resounding message. Too much dialogue to be a sports movie, too much action to be a sci-fi drama. And they kept James Caan's temper under wraps for most of the film and discarded his New York accent. What were they thinking?

Dude Hagen, you fucking missed the point of ROLLERBALL. Then again, considering the fact that you gave a 3/5 score rating to 12 friggin MONKEYS, I shouldn't be surprised.

If anything, Jewison's ROLLERBALL is science fiction in the classic sense, a drama that examines the possible higher-tech future of a world where individualism is de-valued, where basic civil liberties and freedoms are given up in exchange for security, food, energy, and very nice materialistic shit. While this seemed sci-fi-ish in the 70's, we see the Chinese government trying to "bribe" the ever growing middle class in that country with TVs, BMWs, and DVDs. Besides, with good shit and food, why bother protesting for things like the right to a fair trial?

While Hagen you apparently wanted Sonny Corleone kicking ass on a roller disco ring(and if that had happened, the movie would have been quiet dated dreck), Caan is perfectly restrained as a guy that despite being this legendary and popular sports hero, he still doesn't have individual freedom. They take his wife away, and there is nothing he can do about it. Apparently his character though take his mind off his pain and misery with Rollerball, but when they try to take THAT away from him as well, that is when he decides that enough is enough.

That is the point of the ending. The plan of the corporate cabal to either kill Caan or force him to quit backfires quite goloriusly, and Caan's character becomes bigger as an individual hero to the masses than he was before. He isn't just a badass sports legend anymore. He's a universal hero of defiance and struggle. For once in this conformist future, individualism reigns supreme.

Then there is other details of the movie I dig. While you probably only saw 70's art-deco(which I can't defend), there is ideas that I loved and make this truely good sci-fi(that is, not sci-fi to excuse for fucking action scenes) movie. Among other things, the fact that whoever possesses knowledge rules. Information of the past is cleansed and censored by the corporate cabal, since the masses can't dare to have the idea that despite the problems of the past, individual freedoms might have been like good.

Or better yet, the concept of how women are used in the future. While on the surface, it appears to be a misogynist future...well, it sorta is. But you see these women as part of the "Leisure" sector, but yet the head of that industry is a member of the global ruling cabal. What the hell is going on? Then you notice moments when these women display intelligence. What this future in this story is what unfortunately we may be seeing right now.

Women that are obviously smart, but have to repress it in public in order to be the beautiful, fuckable sticks that society wants them to be. Dear lord, I see girls that puke their intestines out so that they might be a pound thinner, or regress from being the smart and mature beings of elementary/middle school to that of bimbos in college.

Now Hagen, what about the beginning sequence? I know you was confused because you probably didn't understand the point of it, but its clear. While it takes time, when some of us use our noggins, we start to understand how this game works. Instead of doing some dumbass montage explaining the rules(which the lousy remake did), we learn by visuals how it works. Obviously its a sport where one needs the blade-speed of Ice Hockey, the absolute teamwork of Football(soccer), the rough and tumble tackling of both American Football and Rugby, and so on.

Jewison's ROLLERBALL is one of the two best pre-STAR WARS "smart" science fiction pictures that Hollywood made in the 1970s, along with Lucas' THX 1138. Unlike the action-oriented sillyness of OMEGA MAN and SOYLENT GREEN(which I'm sure you would love Hagen, since both are made just so Hagen can kick vampire and homeless ass), ROLLERBALL is a movie worthy of science fiction.

ROLLERBALL (1975) - ****

P.S. - Too much dialogue? Too much action? Come on, your definitions of "sci-fi drama" and sports movies are that narrow? Besides, ROLLERBALL was a sci-fi drama WITH sports action.

I hope God helps you if you ever watch Frakenheimer's 3-hour Formula-One drama WITH action that was GRAND PRIX.

MAGNUM FORCE (1973) - **1/2

The problem with the DIRTY HARRY franchise is that its simply simplistic, and fucking overrated and forgettable, action/cop movies that have been copied for decades to the point that one wonders how "fresh" these maybe were of the time.

Yet this sequel, I give credit for at least having a killer concept. The vigilante-prone action man of Clint Eastwood forced to fight a platoon of TRUE vigilante assasins(inspired by similar rogue police armies in Latin America in the 1950s), where instead of fighting the system, Eastwood is fighting FOR the system against these agents of anarchy.

Too bad the concept is just that, a novel idea that is delivered in this movie as a muddled and quite average 70's action movie. Still, I did get to see Tim "Otter" Matheson get wasted. That must count for something!

Although perhaps "simplistic" and overdone by today's standards, Dirty Harry franchise was an extremely popular in the 70's, and Eastwood was the number one box office draw during that time. Gosh, I remember the long lines waiting to get into the theater.

Keep in mind RR that, during that era (and probably into the 80's) there were movies making "statements" (of sorts) of corruption within our police/judicial systems. Even still, how many times we the public, criticize people for "getting off scott free?" Even though we can't condone vigilante justice, or Harry's way of doing things, it was great to escape into a fantasy that we probably have all wished for at some time or another: kick the bad guy's ass and the laws be damned! I can't see that kind of film being "big" today, but it seemed to fit in with the times.

While Dirty Harry was a fictional rogue/kick-ass cop, there were other movies such as "Justice For All" and another Pacino movie, "Serpico", which was based on a true story, that at the time, shocked most people that our justice system could be so corrupt. I think these all were a sign of the times we lived in.

Yea, outdated now, but man, it sure was appealing at the time. I actually prefer the Dirty Harry series to the Spaghetti western series.

TIS

P.S. Fitting in this thread..I started to watch "The Italian Job" which was on tv last night. I probably got halfway through it and fell asleep . The storyline was good and I'm anxious to see it all the way through.

I persume you refer to the original with Michael "He apologized for JAWS: THE REVENGE" Caine.

Seen the recent remake with Statham?

Anyway, you're right TIS. Maybe what you said is why MAGNUM FORCE is maybe the only movie of all those HARRY movies by Eastwood that is interesting, at least in concept.

Let's just say that Irishman's disapointment with the overrated DIRTY HARRY is justified.

I just saw your tirade Ronnie. I've got work in 10 minutes, so I'll mull it over and get back to you. I seemed to remember you praising this movie a while back but couldn't find anything.

RAT RACE (2001) - ***

Jerry Zucker, 1/3 of the legendary "ZAZ" tag team along with his brother David and Jim Abrahams, directs this amusing and humorous tip of hat modern remake of Kramer's classic madcap slapstick road race comedy IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD.

While some gags don't work, I caught myself chuckling at the actual respectful spirit of this movie, considering that true slapstick is rarely made by Hollywood anymore. The ending itself is pretty silly(besides, Smashmouth always sucked as a band), but never less to those that remember old school comedies, this one will score for easily. Better yet, its a modern Hollywood comedy without farts, dicks, and very nice tits.

I once passively watched Rat Race, not actively enough to say I've seen it, but the parts I saw were absolutely atrocious.

CLUB DREAD (2004) - ***

I love BROKEN LIZARD. It's official. A comedy troupe of guys that met while part of a Frat House at Colgate University, they obviously are smart, except instead of trying to prove people that they are, instead they just simply want to be smart with the frathouse humor.

While SUPER TROOPERS was a joke on those 70's cop-genre movies, CLUB DREAD is almost a perfect joke on the slasher titty movies of the 1980s.

In fact, CLUB DREAD is a smarter and actually funnier take-off of this particular genre than the ridiculously popular and overrated SCARY MOVIE franchise.

For one thing, CLUB DREAD is so directed well on the conventions and directorial cliches of slasher flicks, that if you took out the humor of it, you would have probably a legitimate if forgettable slasher movie. Now THAT is remarkable(I guess).

Two, you gotta love the moments in this movie that bust my gut.

"Peen-ah-lope"!

*Corpse of guy flying, so fake and silly, into boathouse*

Pac-Man sex game in maze!

"We have jungle rats?!?!?"

"I think I'll need to *pump* her for more information!"

better yet, Bill Paxton just rules as Coconut Pete, the poor man's Jimmy Buffett(with the latter apparently a big fan of the movie. Hey, that's cred!), truely a burned-out margarita-drinking 70's rock star who is now stuck to running a stupid Club Med-like island.

What I like was something that was entirely risky for a group that just had a cult/DVD hit with SUPER TROOPERS, the troupe decided to switch their perspective roles. Instead of being the slick and commandering leader in TROOPERS, Chandrasekhar(also the director of this film) is now the pussy, possibly narcicistic gay tennis pro. Hefferman isn't the white trash personification of "Farva", but now the actual hero, and so on.

In a way, the group is actually more daring than the great MONTY PYTHON, for Chapman was almost always the straight man, Cleese the serious-but-daffy cheeseball, Idle the crazy nutcracker, Palin the goofball, Jones the women's-clothes-wearing guy, etc. I know, sacrilige. Go ahead, stone me.

BEERFEST, apparently a joke on those fucking silly 80's "tournament fight" movies like BLOODSPORT and KICKBOXER, but as well the FIGHT CLUB of drinking, it should be a hoot.

Videodrome

Amazing film with some absolutely mindblowing images. I love how Cronenberg manages to slowly incorporate fantasy with reality until it reaches the point where they become one in the same. The final half hour of this film was absolutely astonishing, everything being perfectly wrapped up with a barrage of surreal images and intense murder scenes.



"Long live the new flesh..."

Survive Style 5+
2004/Sekiguchi

This is what real movies are made of. First time director Gen Sekiguchi crafts a beautifully strange multi-character film that runs the full gamut of emotions, experiments with several distinct styles of direction and editing, and on top of that, everything's so damn beautifully colorful. The film begins with five seperate stories that gradually intertwine and collide, with parts that play like a horror movie, parts that play like comedy, parts that play like tear-jerking drama, and parts that just play like nothing you've ever seen before. I'll be rewatching this sometime very soon to justify the 4 star rating.

VIDEODROME does rock. Cronenberg is the man.

Anyway, I finally got my hands on a certain epic-long infamous flop I've been meaning to review. Is Cimino's movie that blackballed him from Hollywood for good THAT bad, or as some people claim an underrated "lost" film, or is it an egotistical, overlong, indulgent piece of shit? (Well, it can't be as successful in the 3rd department as LADY IN THE WATER).

La jetée (The Jetty / The Pier)
Chris Marker 1962 France (1st time; DVD)
A post-WWIII prisoner, haunted by a woman's face from his childhood, is sent back in time as an adult to bring help to the present.
Quietly devastating short, a montage of still photographs narrated in a haunting voice-over, which cumulates to an emotional climax of lost youth; probably a film to see when one is young, this essay on memory as a mental image is a convincingly realised concept.

Sans soleil (Sunless)
Chris Marker 1982 France (1st time; DVD)
A woman narrates, and reminsces on, letters she received from a cameraman who travelled the world.
Primarily an account of Tokyo, with subtle diversions into the contrasts between the cultures of Japan and Africa, two extremes of humanity's survival, this is an original, subjective and personal take on the world as a kind of alienated planet to itself. As it develops from documentary to science-fiction fantasy, the narration becomes more abstract, more philosophical, and the images more beautiful and profound, evolving into a film similar to Herzog's Fata Morgana.

L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad)
Alain Resnais 1960 France/Italy 1st time; DVD
At a vast hotel of decorated corridors and anonymous mirrors, a man tries to convince a woman they've met a year previously…but did they, and was it Marienbad or Frederiksbad?
Another of those films strictly for cinema buffs; the director clearly loves the medium (which New Wave child didn't?) and here he presents the whole proceedings as a completely intrinsic, insular world, detached from any kind of external society or politics. The protagonist, the only character with any kind of life or awareness of his own existence, acts as a kind of self-reflexive justification for the narrative's convolution, which determines what we see and how it is edited. The entire thing floats by like a fever dream, preoccupied with its own form, its own convention, wherein character names matter little, and distinguishing time and space is futile.

Toute la mémoire du monde (All the World's Memory)
Alain Resnais 1956 France (1st time; DVD)
An account of the national museum in Paris, a library of text and resource.
Obsessive evocation of knowledge and history as the defining factors for a future truth, that of happiness; Resnais is clearly a fan of Welles.

Notre musique (Our Music)
Jean-Luc Godard 2004 France/Switzerland (1st time; DVD)
Three kingdoms: Hell, which consists of archive war footage; Purgatory, in which Godard gives an essay on text and the image; and Paradise, a tranquil forest guarded by sailors.
A more subtle, and somehow more rambling work than Godard's previous Éloge de l'amour; there are ideas here so numerous that they cancel one another out. It seems to be an indictment, of some sort, of how modern cultures lack poetry; no doubt, like the 2001 masterpiece, it becomes better upon rewatches.

Stealing Harvard
2002/McCulloch

Much funnier than I had remembered it. Consistently laugh-worthy throughout with some suprisingly solid direction from Bruce McCulloch of Kids in the Hall fame. What ever happened to Tom Green?

V For Vendetta ****
(2nd Viewing)

Easily my favorite movie of the year thus far and for good reasons. Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving and John Hurt were all fantastic in their respective roles. The Wachowski's most satisfying film, IMO with a bold and great message to it, "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid- (theatrical version)
I love Peckinpah, and really wanted to like this, but theres no hiding the huge chunks missing. I'd seen this a couple other times, and untill I see the 88 (or at the very least the 05 version) i really cant say it has too much merit.

Dracula (1931) ** 1/2
(First Viewing)

The movie started out pretty good but lost steam about half-way through. Not as good as Frankenstein but still worth the rent.

Irish, V FOR VENDETTA movie was decent. Though I'm still obliged to Alan Moore's fucking masterpiece of the graphic novel. Imagine the movie, but without an action movie crammed into it. Thus, graphic novel!

Anyway, what the f*ck was I thinking giving *** to f&cking RAT RACE? Re-rating! It's now **1/2

Wild Strawberries
1957/Bergman

My first Bergman. I had been really looking forward to this one as its themes seemed to hold potential for true greatness. The final product was decent, exploring some deep ideas, and Bergman does draw up some interesting symbolism at times. Overall, the only parts that really shined were the surreal dream sequences. Otherwise, average.

X-Men **
X-Men 3 **
Both movies are entertaining for the 2 hours or so that you watch them. And safely forget them afterwards.

Are We Still Married? (Stille Nacht II)

At only 3 minutes and 20 seconds in running length, this packs more punch than many full length features I've seen. An amazing sequence of surreal and dreamlike images that evoke feelings of nostalgia and wonder.

One Man Band
Mark Andrews / Andrew Jimenez 2005 US (1st time; big screen)
Two multi-instrument musicians compete for the single coin in a toddler's hands; their greed gets the better of them.
Witty Pixar short, which runs just about short enough for the charm to come off; any longer, and it might just grate.

Cars
John Lasseter 2006 US (1st time; big screen)
Lightning McQueen, a racing car, wants to make it big, but first has a lesson or two to learn from an old abandoned town on what used to be a busy route 66.
Decidedly American affair, oddly nostalgic and neglecting character for sentiment; Pixar has always brought such gusto to facial expressions in its characters, but this freedom doesn't translate well to automobiles. It isn't as succinct as their other efforts, but stands as a visual triumph in its own right, far away from the studio's previous worlds of superheroes, the ocean and a bedroom full of toys.

Wolf Creek
Greg McLean 2004 Australia (2nd time; TV)
Three backpackers, an Australian male and two English tourists, get stranded in the Outback, and take the offered help of a seemingly genuine local.
Effective, confident piece of filmmaking; it looks marvellous, presenting beautiful images of the Australian landscape as if from a postcard, which are contradicted by the brutal violence. The opening hour is a subtle lesson on how to absorb and ultimately wrong-foot the audience; the second hour is a tremendously sustained gore-fest reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Professione: reporter (The Passenger)
Michelangelo Antonioni 1975 France/Italy/US/Spain (1st time; big screen)
A reporter in Africa assumes the identity of a gun-runner who dies of a heart attack in the hotel room next to him.
Thoroughly unpredictable, meandering film without any kind of foreseeable character or narrative arc, presented as a kind of extended travelogue which goes on far too long and burns at too slow a pace; Nicholson's performance is tame and his character is simply uninteresting. The cinematography is fantastic early on, and there are some brilliant cinematic touches throughout, the best of which comes at the very end of the film, where a camera seemingly moves, at a snail's pace, through a barred window, slowly turns around, and is somehow outside the hotel room in which it started its movement.

Glad you enjoyed it Capo. I really dug it in the theaters, but not as much on DVD. At the time I would have said I liked Wolf Creek more than Hostel but today I'd say the opposite was true.

MIAMI VICE (2006) - ***1/2

The "Man" returns. American filmmaking master Michael Mann is here to bring us a fucking rarity in Hollywood. Not a cop action movie, but a cop DRAMA with action. Especially a very-hard R-rated $135 million summer blockbuster picture.

Filming in digital, Mann revives his noted 1980s TV series to the new millenium, where new people fill in the shoes of some characters, but now in the visual and attitude spectrum of Mann's beloved HEAT and recent critical and financial hit COLLATERAL.

Mann's screenplay doesn't have the dramatic intensity or epic scope of HEAT, nor the intense one-night thriller/drama of COLLATERAL, but if anything it feels like a 2-hour special episode of VICE, if it was made in 2006 instead of the mid-1980s. The story feels episodic, that being our duo of Sonny Crockett and "Rico" Tubbs(Farrell and Foxx) going undercover against a middle-man drug runner who was behind the murder of some people they knew, and as well explore a leak within the intra-agency task force of the FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.

Mann has to play a careful game of trying to export his crime autuership to that of obvious commercial fare. He can't be too moody, or the midwest will instead go see PIRATES 2 again, nor can he too un-Mann, for his film buff fans will turn on him. For the most part, he succeeds, but who will get the most out of MIAMI VICE?

Obviously, me and several people at BB.Net are big Mann fans, and I'm sure his admirers will dig the hell out of VICE. Technical people will marvel at the sure-to-be Oscar nominated digital-shot cinematography(how many days does good ole film have left?), but Michael Bay zombie-like fans will be pissy that the hero cops aren't flashy videogame rejects, or that there isn't a real substantial difference in this dangerous world of police in their never-ending war on drugs made compared to the the situation in the beginning of the story.

As a native of Miami, Mann has in limited sequences given the special glow, good and bad of this sunny paradise of an urban metro-city, which make up for Bay's silly juvenile nonsense with BAD BOYS and its $155 million-costing sequel(and no, I fucking have no idea where THAT budget went to).

At the end of the movie, cynics will see shots in this film that indicates an opening for a sequel. I really doubt it(and considering's the movie's box-office intake so far, it aint happening), for like the real men and women who work for law enforcement for Miami-Dade, it is a brutal, depressing job(much as Mann explored in HEAT) where the dividends is the hope that maybe they made the world a little better by taking out a few more scumbags. Besides, as VICE obviously pointed out, one case, one day at a time.

Glad you enjoyed it Capo. I really dug it in the theaters, but not as much on DVD. At the time I would have said I liked Wolf Creek more than Hostel but today I'd say the opposite was true. [/quote]Yeah, I saw it at the cinema too, and it's obviously more impressive on the big screen, but held up quite well on the small screen, I thought.

Dramolet (Stille Nacht I)
Timothy Quay / Stephen Quay 1988 UK (1st & 2nd time; YouTube)
A puppet overlooks a room being invaded by a strange hair-like substance.
The first in the Quay brothers' Stille Nacht series, a visually unsettling piece of work with much atmosphere bursting out of its minute-long duration.

Are We Still Married? (Stille Nacht II)
Timothy Quay / Stephen Quay 1991 UK (1st & 2nd time; YouTube)
Synopses are dangerously reductive to the Quay Brothers' work: a rabbit mimics a small child's foot movements…?
The visual influence of the two is clear throughout: are those opening white-on-black eyes not the same as Papa Lazarou's in The League of Gentlemen? The filmmakers pay homage to films, too, with reference to The Wizard of Oz in particular, with a pair of heeled shoes paid especial attention to, as a rabbit tries to mimic the "human" movements. Lynch's Rabbits, anyone? It's all pretty surreal, creepy stuff, not least of due to the music.

Can't Go Wrong Without You (Stille Nacht IV)
Timothy Quay / Stephen Quay 1993 UK (1st time; YouTube)
Death pulls a string through a key-hole, on the other side of which sits a rabbit in a deck-chair.
More stuff of visual interest, hauntingly surreal and about nothing in particular; you can search for all the allegory you want in this, but in the end it is far more interesting as a work presenting only itself.

Dog Door (Stille Nacht V)
Timothy Quay / Stephen Quay 2001 UK (1st time; YouTube)
A dog masturbates over a spread-eagled doll.
Probably the most narratively coherent of the series, with the most blatant symbolism too; a rather violent take on sexuality, with the dog's hand movements particularly (and suitably) crude. You get the feeling that with a bigger budget the Quays could make something really profound, both weird and rational, along the lines of their Street of Crocodiles, instead of films which can be defended simply as "dream-like" or Dadaist...though they are impressive to watch.

I expected too much out of Hostel since Quentin Tarantino "presented it" (yes, I know) and my expectations for Wolf Creek were pretty low so that's why I enjoyed it so much.

Dracula (1931) ** 1/2
(Second Viewing)

Same as last night