Upon Capo's recommendation after I said I liked This is England (2006).... Dead Man's Shoes (2004) was a pleasant surprise! The acting was great, along with the soundtrack and landscapes. At first I thought the acts seemed a little unconventional -- perhaps like the pacing in England -- but near the end I realized it was pretty necessary. I don't wanna give anything away, but I thought it was great. I like this (director) Shane Meadows fella!

So you would give it neither Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, but a Thumbs Sideways?

Just because its a kids movie doesn't mean that its excused for anything.

That said, I also liked JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH as a solid kids matinee adventure, and one that should only be seen in 3-D.

...

Blockbuster online was around in 1998?

Netflix fans are like Mac fans. They all have an inferiority complex. You obviously don't have kids who at a moments notice decide they want to have friends stay the night and want to rent movies. Blockbuster allows me to exchange the rented movies for in-store movies with no mail delay. If I didn't have kids I wouldn't use Blockbuster. But it works for me.

I usually use the in-store rental for watching movies with my friends. They are not interested in all the serious foreign language movies that I watch. That way I can watch some popular/commercial movies without them blocking my queue.

Most films that weren't filmed in HD aren't going to have "spectacular" transfers. Movies like THE DEPARTED, CASINO ROYALE, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 2 & 3 were filmed in HD and are going to look AWESOME! However, something like GOODFELLAS, CASINO, or THE GODFATHER isn't going to show that much of a difference

I agree. I was pissed off during my theaterical experience of TRANSFORMERS because of all the kids in their who wouldn't shut up. But again, the studios don't care. It's more money in their pockets. They're not out to make "quality" films, just to make as much money as possible (hence the reason so many of these 80s franchise movies are being revived for "a new generation" see ROCKY BALBOA, RAMBO, and INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL).

I'm also hearing a sequel (this is an old rumor by the way) that the GOONIES is going to get a sequel, RED SONJA is being remade by Rose McGowan and Robert Rodriguez, and THE BREAKFAST CLUB may get remade as well. Ah, how I love movie studios and their originality! [/quote]

A few months ago it came out that there is gonna be a re-make of John Carpenter's The Thing, a film I loved as a kd because it was the first really gory film I watched. It has aged very well, the effects are still quiet good and the paranoia facot was cool. My guess is the re-make would include some lame young actors.

I remember hearing that FOX told James Cameron and Ridley Scott to stop working on the Alien 5 script because the script for Alien vs Predator had better box office potential. What could have been... [/quote]

I was against Rob Zombie's remake of HALLOWEEN and while I did enjoy it and loved the brutality of it, it still wasn't better than the original. That's some of the magic of the original, it wasn't brutal but it got its point across

I just picked up "The Warriors" and was pleasantly surprised how it looked.

Excellent. I don't think any of his films really hold up on rewatches in terms of plotting and narrative structure, but this seems his most accomplished, in terms of tonal rhythm and individual scenes. Paddy Considine is immense (he might be even better in Meadows's earlier film, A Room for Romeo Brass). What tremendous screen presence; love the initial, "You, you badword!" scene.

You can see him in In America (2002) too, with Samantha Morton; and small roles in Cinderella Man and The Bourne Ultimatum.

I wish others would check Meadows's stuff out.

THE JACKAL (1997) - **

My problems with THE JACKAL aside, I gotta admit that such a picture where the hero is a foreign terrorist and the villain is a blue collar American wouldn't be produced in post-9/11 Hollywood, or at least I don't think it would be.

People always whine about remakes, but you know what my fear is with each new announced "re-imagining" pumped out? That the quality original movies are forgotten, ignored, or worse confused with (usually) their inferior retakes by less-informed people. I once worked at a video store years back where someone asked me to recommend a thriller. I suggested Fred Zimmerman's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL from the 1970s. If you haven't seen it, Netflix that sucker right now because it's a genre classic, if simply because it makes you tense and perky with anticipation in spite of you knowing the ending already. Now that's impressive! There is something down to Earth yet epic as almighty hell in Zimmerman's approach as cop Michael Lonsdale is having to chase down a man with no face, no name, no identity, no morals, no ideology, no allegiances in killer Edward Fox.

This customer thought I was being stupid or mistaken and kept trying to correct me that I was actually talking about THE JACKAL with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. I said no, but it was in vain. I want to call him an asshole, but really just imagine all the good and decent people who've missed out on a cool as hell film simply because of this more recent and recognizable mediocre version. Where are the Nazis and their bonfires when you need them?

What's even more depressing is that Zimmerman to his dying breath sought to stop this rendition, which baffled the producers and Universal Studios because they were "great fans" of DAY. With the exception of John Carpenter on THE THING, those two words are like always a glaring warning sign, like how Rob Zombie and Michael Bay were "great fans" of HALLOWEEN and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. This is especially true with JACKAL, made unfortunately during the uninspired and boring days of 1990s Hollywood action cinema, when every flick trying to ape DIE HARD and LETHAL WEAPON missed the two points of why those classics rocked the casbah in the first place....(1) Characters and (2) The Story inbetween the stunt spectacles, a lesson Mr. Bay never seem to have learned.

If DAY took its sweet-ass narrative before coming through in the great climatic finale, along with the charm in Fox's precision methodolgy this side of the BOURNE movies in setting up the big hit, THE JACKAL is more concerned with meeting the quota in car explosions, shoot outs, and chase scenes. Interestingly, several similar, alright identical sequences from DAY are reused in JACKAL, yet they are impotent. With the same basic story, you can either shoot a taunt intelligent flick (DAY) and an incredibly dumb loud one (JACKAL).

Thing is, JACKAL starts out alright and promising in a matinee escapist pleasure sort of way....then again, so did DIE ANOTHER DAY. The FBI and Moscow cops kill a Russian mobster, and his brother gives the world's best assassin in Willis a $70 million contract to get revenge on American soil. JACKAL in retrospect is quite naively dated considering this concept was written during Russia's failure of a civic democracy, for the gangster could have bided his time, saved some cash, and throw bullets and cash at the Russian police force instead of the Yankees. Domestic law enforcement pacified, a deal then be made with the new masters like Putin to kick the Americans out, and walah no more problem.

The Feds in Sidney Poitier spring out Richard Gere from prison to help them because he's the only person alive who's seen the Jackal's face. Remember how before the Good Friday Agreement, that every Irishman in a Hollywood movie was either a IRA member, related to one, or a goddamn leprechaun? Anyway, Gere here just might be sporting the worst Irish accent I've ever heard in a movie. It's so bad, it's a mystery why the filmmakers didn't simply rewrite him into an Irish-American or something to salvage a lost cause. Gere's character is also another example of a pet peeve of mine with Tinseltown. Whenever a "bad man" is made the protagonist, a great mistake usually made is to try to make them heroic somehow to get us to like them. Why do we dig Clint Eastwood in those spagetti westerns or Snake Plissken without betraying the fact that in most other tales they would be the antagonist? Because we admire those bastards for being ruthless or their wits or their badass nature, that's why.

But with Gere in JACKAL, yeah he was a proud (Irish) Republican, but he was "only a gunrunner." That's supposed to make him seem not as awful? That's like your local high school drug dealer revealed to be only selling pot, not meth or coke. Still, at least THE JACKAL is going off on the classic action exploitation set-up, that of someone forced to kick some ass to save his own. The problem is when out of damn nowhere this side of a on-set rewrite, it's revealed that Gere is doing this for revenge against Willis. You know why most revenge plottings work? Because those films set themselves up early on to milk that natural emotion of vengeance, but with JACKAL you never buy it and unable to suckle that teat. Plus, how the hell did Poitier know that fact if the Feds are totally ignorant about Willis?

Really, why can't we have more unapologetic scumbag action heroes? Better yet, someone else than a pussy like Gere?

You're reading this review, and with so much venom you wonder probably why I didn't give it a lower grade. That's because of Willis. He's played baddies before in PLANET TERROR and THE SIEGE, but JACKAL is his only undisputed evil part from what I know and it's obvious that he's relishing the fun in being such a cold ruthless son of a bitch for once. To be honest, he's rather solid actually. There is a great scene where after he seduced someone to gain their parking permit, he's calmly eating Korean food when he simply pulls out a gun and pulls the trigger, then goes back to munching away. This shit is second-nature to him this side of breathing. Another good sequence is when he learns that an engineer in a young (and thinner) Jack Black is trying to blackmail him for more cash, and Willis uses him as target practice for his super cannon rifle. I guess Willis hated ENVY too.

But even JACKAL in the end jobs out Willis as a psychopath, as if it had to ruin everything just for fun. You suck movie.

I guess I could write another 1,000 words about how the midway confrontation between Willis and Gere castrates the potential power of the desinent showdown, or how Willis makes an idiotic mistake simply to move the story along, or better yet an idiotic shot when prisoner/terrorist/snitch Gere is showing the Feds how to corner off the parameter on a map. With those stupid Feds in charge, how 9/11 didn't happen sooner I'll never know. I could also ponder about how I realized that with the scene in the garage between Willis and hijackers, that this is a mindless movie that actually has the gall to thinks its clever like the recent BEOWULF. I might even mention that you'll howl with laughter with a character comes out of nowhere in the conclusion.

Instead, I'll write about current popular revisionism from black film buffs like Spike Lee about how Sydney Poitier was simply an Uncle Tom, a friendly dark face for whitey, aka the "Magical Negro." They might have a point, but you know what? Poitier is still a pretty good actor, and considering how crappy his part and lines are in JACKAL, he's still cool here. Now that's killer.

The SciFi channel is running the "Trilogy of Terror 2" right now. Like the original, the same star is playing in all three stories (Lysette Anthony??) The little Zuni doll story will be showing next. It's not as good as the original, but still creepy. Can't beat Karen Black in the original, at the very end of that story. They never play the original on tv.


TIS

Watched OCEANS THIRTEEN yesterday.

Not particularly great but a fitting way to pay tribute to Bernie Mac.

Also watched TRADING PLACES.

One of my favourite films and a nice reminder of when Eddie Murphy used to be funny and didn'n have to dress up in rubber suits all the time

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (2008) - **

With due respect to Maria Bello, who is a proven quality actress (and we men will never forget her beaver shot in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE), but I recognized also while watching the third MUMMY entry how much Rachel Weisz is missed here. Just maybe Weisz's tendency to perform hyperbolic in these pictures seemed in line with the blunt stark nature of such blockbuster pulp action trash, because to my great shock Bello is surprisingly boring here. Perhaps it's that give a great character, and not a paper-thin archetype, Bello can soar as an actress, while Weisz is watchable no matter what (CONSTANTINE anyone?), I just don't know.

What is known is that she reportedly passed on returning for THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR because of "problems with the script." Considering that she left alot of money on the table, and she had previously agreed to a crappy screenplay like THE MUMMY RETURNS, that's a pretty damning ominous sign if you ask me.

Anyway, just look at the stuff in this movie: Stone zombie mummies, flying dragons fighting an fighter plane, fireworks used as weapons during a car chase, Yeti throwing henchmen around like ragdolls, displays of martial arts, gunfire, and fistfighting in the midst of two Dead armies numbering in the thousands waging war. This is the ridiculous juvenile masculine power-tripping shit you know me for gladly eating up with a grin, and I should have fun with TOMB, right?

Wrong

You know how you're sitting in a theatre, there is a moment when you realize that thereafter either a movie is good or bad? Well that spot came for me for TOMB during the prologue when I noticed, that like the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy and the recent INDIANA JONES adventure, that these filmmakers are really overcomplicating the fuck out of this incredibly simple story to set up both Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. Hey Hollywood, this action story shit aint rocket science. Either trim it down and then "reveal" more later in plotting or don't even bother. Worse is when the voice-over narration was everything the most obvious stuff from the affair to what exactly the Five Elements like we're retarded. Look, I know the demographics for such movies like TOMB are most likely lesser in the intelligence department compared to say THERE WILL BE BLOOD, but this is goddamn ridiculous.

The second stamp of doom though was the comedy. To quote the great Mike T. Nelson of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000, there is nothing worse than an unfunny comedy. I haven't seen such lame attempts at popcorn humor since TRANSFORMERS last year. You could hear a pin drop in my theatre during the "silly" shenanigans at the manor between Bello and Brendan Fraser. If anything, its amazing how Fraser's goofy braun charisma is just completely muted here which brings me bad memories of when Christopher Reeve was stuck with SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE. Yet as desperate as the repeated "music record abruptly interrupted" gag and Yak vomiting is, they fail in comparison to the lowpoint of getting a laugh when a Yeti kicks a Chinese guy over the uprights of the mountain temple entrance, and his buddy indicates goal!

Oh for fuck's sake.

I gotta say, there is one kinda cool thing about TOMB, which is that Li the mummy is trapped in clay and each time he moves his face, that mask breaks and promptly burns itself a new coat. Hell, a creative shot is when he throws a broken piece as a weapon. Later, he gains the power to transform into bizarre creatures, like a three-headed dragon, so what does Li do when he finally duels Fraser? Neither. This is a villain that deserved to lose, not because he's evil, but because he's just simply dumb.

I think I simply gave up on hopefully having some form of fun with TOMB when during intense heavy FX sequences, my mind was distracted by plot holes the size of Texas. Before some of you go off on me for being hypocritical, consider this: There are two types of plot holes: those your brain can give half-ass wisdom and movie logic to explain the gaps, and those that you can't. For instance, you have a ninja woman who assaults the spectacularly bland Luke Ford at the Tomb, persumingly to stop Ford from opening the coffin and resurrecting Li from the dead, right? Alright, she's chased off by bullets, but later she's revealed to be immortal, and she knows it.

OK, so why the hell did you run in the first place?!? You could have stopped whitey from unleashing the apocalypse, and saved some people alot of trouble. I hate to say this, but to quote NATURAL BORN KILLERS, you're just "a stupid bitch." Sorry babe, but common sense and martial arts just aren't a good mix for you. I just don't see what Ford sees in you...or at least I wouldn't if I actually gave a shit about that romantic sub-plot. Speaking of which, anyone else notice how Ford's character went from being an annoying spunky English-tongue brat in RETURNS to a whiney emo-bitch with an American accent?

I guess I could go on about during the finale why a drawn & quartered guy returns with his corpse intact or why I'm still tired of the movies having the modern concept of freedom being uttered by ancient peoples, but instead I'll note that I briefly grinned when Yeoh and Li duked it out. Both Hong Kong martial arts cinema legends are now in their late 40s, but it was nice as a fan from back in the high school video store days to see them reteam after TAI CHI MASTER (aka TWIN WARRIORS.)

The sad thing is, TOMB is actually sort of what I had in mind when Rob Cohen signed on as director. Yeah I hated the hell out of VAN HELSING, displeased with RETURNS and keep forgetting DEEP RISING like probably the rest of you, but I have to give Stephen Sommers credit on THE MUMMY. That one was an expensive trashy idiotic matinee movie, but it was a good expensive trashy matinee movie that was more a fluke than intentional. My point is, Sommers has a anomaly of decency within his otherwise mediocre-ass career, which I can't say for Mr. Cohen. I won't go on a IMDB.com-esque detailed ranting to ascertain why Cohen is a Hack Auteur, but just consider that this is his third lousy Universal Studios-basked film with DRAGON in the title(!) in the last 15 years.

Or ponder how much one screws the pooch when JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is a superior Fraser vehicle and that you have actually made some folks almost nostalgic for THE MUMMY RETURNS.

Almost.

Read your review on FCM. The Maria Bello image made my day. I'm giving her a mental hug right now.

And she then called security on you.

FRANTIC (1988) - ***1/2

A surgeon (Harrison Ford) and his wife are visiting Paris for a medical conference when at their hotel room they realize that she picked up the wrong suitcase back at the airport. She gets on the phone, he takes a shower, he gets out and she's vanished. Suffering from severe Jet lag, ignorant of the French tongue, and getting no worthy help from the police and American Embassy, he scours the city for her. He's lonely, he's desperate, he's FRANTIC.

After reading that, either you're intrigued enough to get onboard to explore such a set-up, or you're not. If the latter, I suggest for you DISTURBIA, a dumb direct recent uninspired boring picture made for folks who can't wipe their own ass, and get the hell out of my review. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. But if FRANTIC sounds like good popcorn, which it is...then welcome to the rest of the review. Enjoy.

I think it was in the middle of FRANTIC when I realized that the extra pleasure beyond the surface is seeing the filmmakers obviously having a good swell time with the material. Writer/Director Roman Polanski has shot alot of terrific thrillers from KNIFE IN THE WATER to REPULSION to ROSEMARY'S BABY to the underseen THE TENANT, my point is he knows his stuff. FRANTIC isn't one of his better works, but like with Brian DePalma on FEMME FATALE and Martin Scorsese with CAPE FEAR, we benefit mostly from him having fun in playing in the Hitchcock sandbox again, what with the step-by-step paranoia mystery with shadow-lit alleyways and ominous garages. This includes the legendary composer Ennio Morricone, who himself is willing to play Bernard Herrmann to Polanski's Hitch with the trumpets and strings to stress up the suspense and tension.

Ford himself is a man lost and adrift, a everyday man fighting against unseen enemies in an alien culture, insurmountable odds stacked against him. I always thought he was miscasted in his Jack Ryan adventures if simply because for an analyst-turned-actioneer, you expect such heroics from Indiana Jones or Han Solo. But in FRANTIC you buy his vulnerability and helplessness, that he doesn't do this crazyness for a living. I think the difference is that Polanski puts a strong emphasis in close-ups and framing on Ford's face, and you realize that Ford once upon a time could be a terrific actor. I mean in recent years with K-19 and FIREWALL and the Internet-hated INDY IV, you forget that fact but his facial expression do alot more justice for FRANTIC than mere expositional dialogue.

Take the 3rd act, the home stretch for the genre to wind itself up, Ford is on the phone with the Embassy when they put him on hold. His eyes first display shock, then fustration, then outright seething anger, or in other words the classic look of "What the Fuck?!?" Such scenes in most thrillers are placed in 1st Act, you know to build up the problems a hero has to face on his quest. But such a sequence holds our attention more by being written here, against expectations.

Some critics have criticized FRANTIC for bringing nothing "new" and creative to the table, and that's probably true, but so what? I think to steal an argument from the great Internet critic The Outlaw Vern, genre films are like the blues music in that you've been through a combination of the same plottings, scenes, and situations a thousand before, and a thousand times afterwards, but you can still compose them to make them still effective for even the most experienced film buffs, and with your own authorship.

Polanski does that with FRANTIC in a few shots, like how a potential lead for Ford at a night club is revealed to be an embarrasing misunderstanding, one that he can't express because he doesn't want to piss his only possible link to his kidnapped wife. I even liked how after a shoot-out where the driver of a car gets capped, you expect Ford and femme fatale Emmanuelle Seigner to push that dead bulk out and then drive in the pursuit, like you would expect with most movies. Nope, they don't have the time so instead they work the steering wheel around the corpse, while keeping his head up so daytime Parisians won't notice them. Then after parking, Ford belatedly tries CPR on the body, as if to try to escape blame for that death in the eyes of bystanders.

My favorite scene though is the opening, which may surprise many for being so mundane. Ford and his wife in a taxicab that gets a flat tire, and the driver pulls over to repair it. I liked a fact that I've forgotten, which is that when people speak in a foreign language you don't comprehend, you automatically ignore it. I mean why would your ears pay attention to mere gibberish? Plus, FRANTIC instantly dispels that this isn't the postcard Paris, where Polanski has resided since his legal exile, we see in almost every other mainstream movie. No accordian music, no berets, no mimes, no Eiffel Tower in every shot (hell, unless I'm mistaken, it's not seen at all) or any of that nonsense that TEAM AMERICA wonderfully mocked. But I like all this because it slickly butters you up for what is to come.

I do think that FRANTIC suffers because the second half with the revelations, plot turns and a dramatic finisher this side of SABOTEUR over a MacGuffin doesn't quite something compute as well as the first half did. Reportedly 10-20 minutes were axed by Warner Bros. from the final cut, which may or may not be true, and may or may not have affected Polanski's narrative energy output. But otherwise, FRANTIC is a pretty good routine genre thriller with some nice touches that was Polanski's career comeback after PIRATES, one of the biggest flops of the Reagan Decade, and more than anything else FRANTIC is a good reminder of when Ford was relevant.

Speaking of which, notice signs of Ford's homeland all across Paris, such Americanization from some of the music to Coca-Cola advertizements, to even the Pizza Hut next to his hotel. All this is a good allegory for his character's search for his wife: So Close, and Yet so Far Away.

Saw Vicky Christina Barcelona this weekend. Brilliant.

I missed this post, TIS. I remember the original with Karen Black too. That last scene is memorable indeed in a creepy way. I can't remember the first two stories in the trilogy, but the last one was something else.

Indeed. Creepy and KB played the role perfectly.

PSYCHO II (1983) - ***

It is 1983, and the slasher horror was still in full swing of its Golden Age. The genre foundation partly laid down by Tobe Hopper's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS, and Mario Bava's double header BLOOD & BLACK LACE and TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE were being fully exploited (i.e. ripped off). Major dividends were being made at the box-office for John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, Sir Ridley Scott's ALIEN, and Sean S. Cunningham's FRIDAY THE 13TH, with Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD an underground hit and Wes Craven's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET only a year away. Nevermind the hundreds of awful clones that cluttered theatres and we still are stuck with, collecting dust at your local mom & pop video store.

Obviously Universal Studios noticed this and decided to cash in by producing a sequel to the grandaddy of all slasher movies, Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic PSYCHO. What surprised everyone isn't that it made a profit (only a moron loses money on a horror picture), or that Anthony Perkins and his struggling career returned as Norman Bates, but that PSYCHO II was actually....good? A surprise sleeper hit with both audiences and critics, PSYCHO II is a rare solid and competent genre sequel, and I mean rare as in how many good horror sequels do you know?

OK, maybe George A. Romero's DEAD pictures, perhaps too the fun A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS, and also EVIL DEAD 2 if you can argue around the comedy. But what else? Exactly my point. Oh sure I know many folks out there are fans of franchises from NIGHTMARE to FRIDAY THE 13TH or the more recent SAW, but such nerd jihadists care more about Freddy, Jason, or Jigsaw and creative gore shots then the pictures themselves. I mean let's be honest guys.

Seriously, PSYCHO II should have blowed this side of Amy Winehouse given a line of cocaine, or sucked a golfball through a waterhose, because God knows we didn't need a PSYCHO sequel, nor was there any real rabid demand for it (unless I'm mistaken). Besides, what else could you do with the material?

That my friends is where I was proven wrong. Released after 22 years at the nuthouse, the poor guy just wants to go home, work his crappy job at the diner and be left alone to eat his toasted cheese sandwiches. He's paid his debt to society with most of his adult life, and the scorn of almost everyone in the county. The problem is, he keeps getting notes and phone calls from "Mother," despite the fact that we and he knows that she's as dead as fried chicken. People are being murdered again at the Bates Motel, and Bates is desperately trying to keep his hard-worked sanity intact...if it hasn't left him already.

If you think about it, this was a real risky move on Universal's part to turn Bates from a dangerous psychotic killer in drag to that of a tragic hero, because with every other slasher icon, we pay to see them do what they were born to do: Slice & Dice. Instead, this crazy(pun!) gamble pays off for two reasons. One, my theory holds that viewers don't necessarily have to like characters or their actions, but are willing to follow them as long as they are compelling people. I mean, after Janet Leigh's death in PSYCHO, Perkins afterwards became the sole intriguing player for us, even if we find out later what a sad sick bastard he was. With PSYCHO II, Bates is like a long-time abuser trying to stay sober despite temptations everywhere, except instead of booze or drugs it's murder. Even psychopaths have their 12 step programs.

Two, PSYCHO II works because of Perkins. If you ever catch his other screenwork outside of PSYCHO like say Orson Welles' criminally underseen THE TRIAL, you'll realize what a great actor Perkins was, and what a tragic waste of talent because Norman Bates typecasted him. Still, watch Perkins' awesomeness in PSYCHO II in the scene with Meg Tilly as she hands him a knife to cut some bread. He hesitates and struggles, but its such a great triumph of a close call for him. That simplistic scene probably read silly on paper, but Perkins makes it work as someone who simply wants to do good, and yet people won't let him. Later when Tilly is telling him about the "loud noise" made by her roommate and boyfriend, Perkins has such an awkward look to him. You forget that Bates is a boy who never quite grew up.

If we didn't care about Bates, the sequel is screwed no matter how much blood and titties fly out.

My favorite scene of his in PSYCHO II might have to be when he finds out that the Bates Motel manager in Lou Franz is using the joint to host drug hooker parties, and he's morally outraged, which Franz fires back: "At least my customers have a good time! What do yours get, Bates? Huh? Dead! That's what! Murdered by you, you loony! " Franz may be a fat asshole, but you know he's got a point.

PSYCHO II was shot by the late Richard Franklin, who also directed ROADGAMES which I haven't seen but people I know have praised it as an underrated thriller gem. Anyway, considering that he was following in the shadow of Hitchcock, I think he does a fine job in helming a compelling murder mystery, where Bates believably may or may not have lost his marbles again, which lags simply because it doesn't completely justify two hours. He does make some missteps by including the slasher genre staple of doomed pot-smoking kids caught at the house screwing by "Mother" and opening his sequel with Leigh's shower murder from PSYCHO, as if he was afraid that kids watching PSYCHO II wouldn't know of the original. Then again, as SCREAM reminded us, how many remember that Jason wasn't the stalker in the first FRIDAY THE 13TH?

But Franklin has one well-crafted sequence, where Franz is pricking around Tilly at the diner, as Bates watches intently while cutting lettuce. We then see another written message from "Mother" on the turn-table with other Orders, and as it creeps closer to Perkins, and Franz is stiring more shit up...good tension right there. Franklin also a ridiculously over-the-top kill scene with someone getting stabbed, then falling into a stair bannister which runs the knife through him. I still can't decide if it's retardedly stupid or so-bad-its-cool.

PSYCHO II doesn't reinvent the wheel or shake the pillars of the cinematic heavens, but it's a decent entertaining quality jobber, and you should see it if simply for the ending with the shovel that is just so shocking and nuts, yet so completely satisfying. If anything, PSYCHO II was a weird underlining theme under it. We Americans, and probably most humans in fact, are such revenge-driven creatures like the people against Bates, and yet only one person tries to follow the Christian culture's teachings of "forgive & forget."

If that message was applied instead of vengeance, Bates probably would have been normal for the first time in his life, instead of unfortunately becoming again the very monster that they were fighting against.

The Dark Knight

A movie I wouldn't mind seeing again.

I liked Joker's magic trick.

In the movie Striking Distance with Bruce Willis, he plays a river patrol cop. In one scene he unloads the shells from his shotgun and holds them in his mouth. Then he submerges with the shotgun. When he surfaces he loads the shotgun with those shells. My question is why did he pull the shells out of the shotgun before he submerged? Anyone on the Board know enough about guns and shells to say why?

I saw DEATH RACE today. It'd be the best summer movie of the year if it weren't for IRON MAN and THE DARK KNIGHT (so it's in good company). The greatest action star walking the planet, Jason Statham, returns and do what he does best: kicks a$$ while taking names! FYI, David Carradine's voice at the beginning is lended for the Frankenstein character

Death Race looks like a movie version of the Twisted Metal video game series.

The Last House on the Left (1972)
(out of 4)

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Two teenage girls head to a concert with the intention of "scoring some good grass" on the way. They run into escaped convicts who happen to be murdering rapists. The convicts car ends up breaking down in front of the house of one of the girl's and the parents attempt to take revenge for their daughters death.

---

This controversial movie, the first directed by Wes Craven, had so much promise but ended up more of a joke to me than anything. As I was watching it I realized svsg covered this movie in his thread The movies that went all the way. I agree with him that this movie made more of a joke of itself that tried to shock the audience with something new and horrifying. The scenes that were truly horrific would have been much scarier if the atmosphere were held steady rather than adding in humorous scenes in between, mostly involving the dumb Barney Fife-like cops.

The music is the other thing I took issue with. Some of the music selections fit very well for the situation while other times it was just comical when it shouldn't have been.

While I have problems with this movie I'm glad I saw it, especially to see how Wes Craven got his start with something that was very disturbing for it's time.

Yeah kinda, but it was still one heck of a popcorn action movie!

Just watched COOL RUNNINGS again.

Funny, funny film.

"Jamacia has a bobsleigh team"

TIGHTROPE (1984) - ***1/2

Back in 2004 when Actor/Director Clint Eastwood got in trouble over the euthanasia sequence in his MILLION DOLLAR BABY, I thought it was rather strange how a man once seen by right-wingers as the epitome of law enforcement ultra-justice in DIRTY HARRY was now out of touch with the Neo-Conservative crowd. Certainly it's no secret that Eastwood is a Republican (was even a Nixon supporter) but as a cinematic artist he's willing at times to explore beyond his ideological shell, even question assumed truths, and you gotta dig that. I mean if anyone else had shot LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, that person would have been automatically slammed as a leftist God-hating traitor by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but since this is Eastwood, nobody complained.

That's the awesome power of Eastwood right there.

But anyway he didn't shoot TIGHTROPE, and on the surface it seems like a routine Dirty Harry-esque picture. Eastwood as a tough cop who uses his fists and guns to stop crime? Been there, done that. Eastwood fighting a serial killer terrorizing a city? Yup. Eastwood spouting one-liners? Ditto. Eastwood having problems with women around him? What else you expect?. How about him getting his kicks from handcuffing prostitutes and then having sex with them?

OK, that's a new weird one for Dirty Harry.

You have to respect Eastwood for willingly taking the risk of alienating certain demographics of his fanbase with such a character, a cop in New Orleans who ends up investigating a series of brutal strangulations, most of whom Eastwood had hired previously for his kinky games. So we're walking a TIGHTROPE between the usual action cinema heroics in stopping this murderer, and him wrestling with his conscience about his treatment of women as mere sex objects, especially after teaming up with Genevieve Bujold, continuing her feminist schtick from COMA.

TIGHTROPE was written and helmed by Richard Tuggle, who scripted the last Eastwood/Don Spiegel collaboration in ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. If you've seen a serial killer movie in the last 20 years, TIGHTROPE's plotting seems pretty routine procedural material, but what I dig is the touches he gives to a pretty effective popcorn psychological thriller. This flick openly suggests that Eastwood's fetish comes from his desire to reign control over women at a time when they were demanding equal power, if not more...which perhaps is why he got divorced. What I think is intriguing is that besides his nightly shenanigans down in the French Quarter, Tuggle makes a point of the fact that he's the patriarchal rock for his two daughters seem to only acerbate the problem.

Consider also a nice throwaway shot is when Eastwood's oldest kid, played by his real-life offspring Alison Eastwood, catches a peep of the crime scene photos from his case file. You expect a direct payoff from this, which you don't get but the dividends do arrive when Eastwood gets drunk because he can't beat this killer. In most movies, such a scene would tie in of how his ex-wife or kids yell at him for dragging work to home or for boozing. Instead, the girl tries to take care of him, as if to say "Yeah you're a jerk at times, and you're drinking, but I sorta understand why."

I also dig Tuggle's approach with the villain. A mistake that many filmmakers tend to make is going over-the-top with how crazy or sadistic the baddie is, like with Brett Ratner's RED DRAGON where Ralph Fiennes has pumped-up muscles, tattoos all over his body, and some rather nasty teeth, because you know only a psychopath would look like that. Yet I think sometimes an understated approach does the job better. I mean, you see him behind one of his victims, she turns around to see....a guy wearing a kabuki mask, and you go what the fuck? Fiennes is fine for a comic book I guess, but with TIGHTROPE, I see that sort of asshole actually living in our world.

The heroes and creeps engaged in a cat-and-mouse mind game is a staple of the genre, but I liked how Tuggle has the antagonist just likes to fuck with Eastwood, which the villain mockingly points out that they both have some of the same "peculiar" tastes. Consider an early scene when after a "meeting" with a hooker, Eastwood realizes that he left his tie back at her place, and we forget about it. Then later when he finds her dead, he sees that the exact same tie is hanging around a nearby statue. But that's nothing compared to when the murderer invades Eastwood's home, and locks his 12-year old kid to the bed with the very same handcuffs that Eastwood used in his sex games.

Now that's fucked up. Really, you gotta commend that such a visual idea perhaps wouldn't be used in Hollywood 2008, and yet it was done 24 years ago. A pity that Tuggle's only other theatrical directorial work was the Anthony Michael Hall vehicle OUT OF BOUNDS, for with TIGHTROPE he showed some competent talent. Plus, as someone at IMDB pointed out, he and Eastwood were slick to cast Bujold and her French-Canadian heritage as a native of the Franco-Anglo city of New Orleans.

I think Tuggle does contradict perhaps his armchair psychological exploration of Eastwood when he has him going to save Bujold, which arguably could be seen as an affirmation of traditional masculinity. The climax finale between Eastwood and the killer at the train tracks is the most uninteresting and boring sequence of TIGHTROPE, as if it went all Polanski FRANTIC on us in jobbing out. Then again, to TIGHTROPE's credit, how many pictures you know of where the action cinema is the least interesting?

TIGHTROPE is underrated, if like FRANTIC its a few notches short of being a special gem, but I say check it out, if only to see when Eastwood meets up with a gay escort. He asks Eastwood why he doesn't "partner" with guys for once, and Clint answers "Maybe I have." On paper, that may have read like a joke, but the way Eastwood said it in such a cryptic coded way......

Oh Shit! Now the Moral Majority have another reason to hate him.

CLASS OF 1984 (1982) - ***1/2



The new music teacher (Perry King) at Lincoln High School should have known something was wrong and quit immediately after seeing fellow colleague Roddy McDowall at the parking lot carry a gun in his briefcase, and not even bother to hide that fact in broad daylight.

Watching the nicely-produced Anchor Bay DVD, you'll get a kick out of director Mark L. Lester making a big deal over and over of how CLASS OF 1984 "foresaw" shocking violence at America's educational institutions like Columbine, which is incredibly silly. Last I checked, Columbine was committed by two bullied guys with psychological problems who spent way too much time playing DOOM and illegally straw purchased their firearms with help from a friend, and not by a mafia-clique of mascara-wearing punks. That said, I'll give Lester credit in that it was science fiction to many back in 1982 to have metal detectors, security guards, and surveillance cameras at our high schools, and yet alot of my generation probably now take such measures for granted.

Early on, CLASS OF 1984 looked like it was gonna be a The Clash-inspired retake on BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (though I doubt that left-winger rock act would have liked being role models for such gangsters), where a well-meaning middle class teacher goes into an inner-city school run not by the faculty but by the students themselves, and as King pushes to do his job and regain law & order, the leader (Timothy Van Patten) pushes back harder. Nothing really exciting here, real bland melodrama and we even get some incredibly contrived cartoonish sillyness when this movie goes like so many movies from the 1970s and 80s where the administrators refuse to punish the kids and the law due to those damn civil liberties this side of DIRTY HARRY. Plus, Michael J. Fox (in an early role) is so annoying and whiney as a trumpet loser, you're sorta glad that he got knifed in the cafeteria.

But the surprising and shocking thing about CLASS OF 1984 is that for a low-budget trashy capitalization of then-newspaper headlines, it actually improves as the brutal violence and sheer insanity escalate until it becomes a satisfying and even memorable delivery of B-action exploitation cinema. When those punks throw stage blood at King, it's goofy and yet it's a sly blunt indication of the carnage to come.

I mean you have a kid tripping out after snorting some cocaine go climb up a flag pole and sing the Pledge of Allegiance before falling to his death. Then King grabs Van Patten in the bathroom with the intention of beating him into a bloody pulp for that dead kid, and when he can't do it, Van Patten mocks him. Then he promptly smashes his own head against a mirror, the wall, and sink, and gets King arrested for "assaulting a student." Speaking of which, I wonder what if Lester had scripted the scene differently, where King then afterwards took credit himself for the thrashing, and thus have Van Patten's psychological warfare horribly backfire, as the school makes fun of "the boss" getting wrecked by a pacifist liberal.

What I thought was really intriging with Van Patten was that after the movie's narrative rhythmn had been established, when he tries to play mindgames with King again in his classroom, he then busts out a beautiful and touching piano piece out of friggin nowhere, a total contrast to his rough and ruthless persona. It's such a surprisingly gifted touch to such familar formulaic genre ground, and even display a person's potential squandered on egomania and hooliganism, and also warn of his literal destructive creativity.

Anyway, CLASS at this point becomes A CLOCKWORK ORANGE meets THE GODFATHER, where Van Patten is good at being an asshole villain who grins at using the law and his super-intelligence to get away with everything, forever self-admiring himself. Though to be honest, Van Patten has one thing over Malcolm McDowall's Alex DeLarge, which is that instead of being a whore Beethoeven, at least he created his own music. There is even a scene where much reminiscent (i.e. derivative) of Coppola's film where Van Patten meets at a nasty rotting night club and deals narcotic transactions, recruit gang muscle, and make would-be coke whores go through "try outs" to join his prostitution ring. Then we see him at his home, and you'll go "that figures."

How many high school movies you know of where the destiny of everyone and their fates belong to that a guy who if busted could be only tried as a juvenile?

Really folks, there are so many moments where you will say simply Damn to it, even if you have to sit through some inadverted cheesyness that was Lester's fault, like when Van Patten says seriously clunker lines like "Life....is Pain!" and "I am the Future!" (Who wrote this dialogue, Sylvester Stallone?) For example, when the brood retaliates at McDowall by turning his animal laboratory into a gory butcher shop. Then McDowall's response, in the best awesomely bizarro sequence in CLASS OF 1984, when he has a total nervous breakdown from the slaughter and nobody in his biology classes giving a damn about what he's trying to teach, he holds the students hostage at gunpoint. If anything, these pukes had been going through their rampage motions like a game, and yet now in their eyes they realize that the safety net aint there for them afterwards.

There is something perverse about us enjoying McDowall's threats to blow their brains out if they answer a question wrongly, and yet a total swerve from what you expect when he's like happy that they actually remember his lectures, even if these are the same assholes who skinned his rabbits alive. Speaking of which, thank God I was an "A" student in high school biology. Mathematics though, I would have been fucked in McDowall's classroom.

With the finale when Van Patten's army gangrapes King's pregnant wife and take polaroid snap shots, which they show to King before his major school recital, and he gives the look. According to self-stylized badass cinema afficionado The Outlaw Vern, he defines the the look as one essential in most such revenge movies from WALKING TALL to KILL BILL, where the wronged hero tells us without talking that we're going beyond the point of no return regarding his relations with the villains, which of course means they're gonna fucking die!

This is the strongest section of CLASS, where it becomes ultimately THE WARRIORS and STRAW DOGS mixed into a blender, spit on by Lester, and then thrown out the window for good measure. Really, I admit that King and Lester did make me buy why this guy at this point finally decides to kill those little bastards, and why we get everything from a bloody brawl around a powered-up sharp bandsaw to a nice human fireball at the garage to finally an operatic and climatic splatter confrontation on the school rooftop.

CLASS OF 1984 is pure junk, but it's really good junk. It could have been really idiotic and lousy, but instead prevails because of some good acting here and there, some adjustments to genre traditions, and the filmmakers never job out simply because of the material, yet not apologize for its direct visceral nature. You know, such a movie could only be produced before Columbine, because unless you're going for an arty "serious" angle like say ELEPHANT, I don't see anyone funding or willing to distribute such a flick these days.

So check it out, if only as a time capsule to both what some people probably seriously thought the future held for them, and for the shit you could get away with at the movies at that time.

I watched RAIN MAN for the first time last night, why its took me this long to watch the film i don't know, The film was very good and Dustin Hoffman played the part perfectley and it was also good to see Tom Cruise play a more serious role we have become used to seeing in the last 15 years..