A Fistful of Lone Wolves! (Matt’s Picks)

    After watching Late Phases, and thinking about how cool Nick Damici is in the film, I figured I’d put together a fistful of Lone Wolves; folks who strike out on their own to take care of business.  There are a lot of really good ones, to be sure.  But these are five of my favorites.

5. Foxy Brown (Foxy Brown):  Foxy is tired of drugs, tired of corruption.  Nobody is going to keep her down, or locked in a shed.  A nasty, nasty movie, it puts the titular character through the wringer, but she comes through it.  And most of that blood she’s covered in isn’t hers.

4. Zatoichi (the Zatoichi film series):  A blind masseuse, Zatoichi just wants to be left to his own devices, enjoying a nice drink and some gambling.  But someone’s always gotta start something, and Ichi is there to finish it with a flick of his sword cane.

3. Dan Evans (3:10 to Yuma):  He can’t stand by and watch injustice.  Pushed too far, he stands against the mob to bring a bad man to proper justice.  He’s scared and nervous, but he’s going to get the job done.

2. John Matrix (Commando):  There’s an island full of bad men, and Matrix is gonna kill the hell out of every last one of them until he finds his kidnapped daughter.  Commando revels in violence in a way few films ever have, while being pretty darned funny along the way.  Let off some steam, kill Sully last, and have a Green Beret for breakfast.

1. Walker (Point Blank):  We’ve talked about Walker at great length on this blog, and I won’t go into much more.  He just wants his money.  And NOTHING is going to stop him from getting it.

-Matthew J. Constantine

A Fistful of Over the Top Villains!

    After watching Jupiter Ascending and Kingsman: The Secret Service, I want to take a look at some of Cinema’s best wacky, over the top, out there villains.  There are many, of course.  And I’m sure we all have some favorites.  I’ve been seeing some serious shade thrown at Eddie Redmayne’s particular performance in Jupiter Ascending, but I thought he was one of the best parts of the movie.  Anyway, here are my top five.

5.  Kasper Gutman (The Maltese Falcon):  A wonderfully erudite and civilized gentleman criminal, he chuckles and blubbers his way through a crime caper, attempting to orchestrate the great heist.  “I’ll tell you right out, I am a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”

4.  Mugatu:  (Zoolander):  He invented the piano-key necktie.  What have you done?  This fashion forward madman will not let you bleeding hearts stop slave labor from making your clothing.

3.  Dominic Hoffo (Slaughter):  This sweaty, racist pig has had it up to here with rug-headed mob boss Mario.  And his day sure doesn’t get better when tough hombre Slaughter gets friendly with his buxom lady.  His fiery end is kind of amazing.  Maybe one of the most amazing things ever filmed.

2.  Sir August de Wynter (The Avengers):  A man should never be afraid to get wet.

That's SIR Sean Connery, my friend.

1.  Jean-Babtiste Emanuel Zorg (The Fifth Element): The weirdly Southern business mogul and servant of evil, he doesn’t mind a little chocolate syrup dripping off his salad bowl hat.  And he knows how to deal with gun-hungry alien soldiers.

-Matthew J. Constantine

A Fistful of 80s Trash Sci-Fi!

    After watching a bunch of wonderful 80s trash this past week, and owing to a particularly strong resurgence in my thinking about science fiction in general, I thought I’d tackle a subject near and dear to me; the wonderful worlds of trash sci-fi.  This is the stuff one used to discover and cherish in the stacks of local video shops; something that younger folk will likely never experience again.  To that end, here are some of my favorites.  You’ll notice I don’t have Battle Beyond the Stars, or Enemy Mine, or The Last Star Fighter.  First, I couldn’t include everything.  And second, those all seemed a bit too mainstream…?

5. Gandahar (aka, Light Years) (1988):  I think I first picked this up because of its connection to Isaac Asimov.  But I loved it for two reasons.  One, it’s chock full of animated boobs, and adolescent Matt was quite taken with that.  And two, it’s a totally weird, alien world with lots of strange creatures and cultures.  Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s a wicked mindf%#k.  I’ve never seen the French version, only the English language one, with lots of famous folks lending their voice talents.  This is one I really, really want to add to my collection.

4. Beyond the Rising Moon (aka, Outerworld) (1987):  I stumbled across this in my early days of using NetFlix’s Instant service.  Right away, I was baffled by how I’d never heard of the film.  Absolutely, it’s a low budget thing, but it’s pretty darned good.  A pretty good story and some cool miniature effects.  Seek it out.

3. The Ice Pirates (1984):  Before there were The Guardians of the Galaxy, there were the Ice Pirates.  A goofy, fun, exciting and wacky film that dropped in the wake of Star Wars and has that film’s marks all over it.  But so what?  It’s a blast.

2. Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983):  A Han Solo type gets sent out so a backwater planet to rescue some damsels.  OK.  Whatever.  While not an amazing film, to be sure, I enjoy the heck out of this Peter Strauss vehicle (yeah, there was a Peter Strauss vehicle).  This feels like one of those space adventure novels you’d find in a used book store and knock out in an afternoon.  It definitely felt like there should have been more films.  I’d love to see the further adventures of Wolff.  Alas.

1. Cyborg (1989): This movie is the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Cannon’s collapse.  It was also their last theatrically released movie.  Masters of the Universe II and an attempt at doing a live action Spider-Man movie had to die so that Cyborg might live.  You can point to all the various technical issues the film has, to the bad acting and the weird pacing.  You’re not wrong.  But this is one of my all time favorites.  I love it.  And not with a single ounce of irony.  This is the movie I’ll often point to when talking about the difference between movies that are ‘good’ and movies that I love.  And there is a difference.  Citizen Kane is a ‘good’ movie (well, it’s actually a great movie).  Commando is a movie I love.  Those two labels are neither mutually exclusive, nor mutually assured.

-Matthew J. Constantine

A Fistful of Cinematic Resolutions 2015! (Matt's Picks)

    It’s that time of year again.  Time for me to look at my viewing history and find some of the glaring blank spots.  French New Wave?  60s comedies?  Nautical Kurt Russell?  I’ve got some movies I need to watch in 2015. 

5. The Sound of Music & All that Jazz:  I’ve watched a good number of musicals.  It’s never been a type of film I necessarily love, but it’s also never been one I avoid.  The King and I, The Music Man, and West Side Story were favorites from my youth.  But somehow, no matter how many times it aired on TV, I never watched The Sound of Music.  Oh, sure, I’ve seen the clips.  I know some of the story.  But I’ve never seen the film.  I figured I’d pair that with All that Jazz, a movie that reinvented the musical for a new era.

4. Breathless & Jules and Jim:  French film.  I love some.  I hate some.  I’m indifferent to most.  The French New Wave, while obviously influential, never much captured my interest.  And the few times I’ve tried to make inroads, I’ve found myself a mix of confused and bored.  Alphaville, anyone?  But this time, I’m gonna try a couple of the classics of the movement, by two of its most iconic directors.

3. La Jetee & Sans Soleil:  I loved 12 Monkeys, and I dig science fiction.  So, I’m finally going to sit down and watch La Jetee, the short film that inspired Terry Gilliam’s time travel weirdness.  And while I’m at it, I’ll check out Sans Soleil, mostly because they’re packaged together by Criterion.

2. Pillow Talk & The Odd Couple:  A big blank spot for me (which I’m really trying to fill in) is the 1960s comedy.  Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, Jack Lemmon, and the rest…just never watched ‘em.  Over the last couple years, I’ve tried more and more.  But this year I thought I’d go after a couple big ones.

1. Overboard & Captain Ron:  Kurt Russell and John Carpenter make magic together (ignoring Escape from L.A.).  But I realized that outside of Carpenter films, my Russell knowledge is spotty.  I’ve never watched any of his films from when Disney owned him.  And I haven’t seen much from the late 80s or the 90s.  People keep talking about how great Captain Ron is.  Well, let’s see.

    Bring it on 2015.  I’m ready to get all learned and stuff.


    Here more about it on the ITMODcast!

-Matt

ITMODcast

If you've enjoyed our posts over the years, please join Brad and I, and our co-Dork Darren for ITMODcast, our new podcast (click here or search ITMODcast on iTunes).  We discuss many of the same topics you've seen here, but we hope to grow and of course, to surprise and delight (I always hope to surprise and delight).

-Matt

Drum Roll, please...

So, Brad and I, with the profound help and prompting of fellow traveler on the Road of Dorkness, Darren, are getting ready to go all multimedia on you're buttocks.  Coming soon... In the Mouth of Dorkness: The Podcast (!!!).  That's right.  If reading a blog filled with our sometimes outlandish opinions isn't enough for you, you'll be able to hear us in the surround-o-scape of digital audio beamed into your house/car by the magic of wave motion technology (all the way from the future!). 

I totally know how technology works.  And Brad is a wiz with machines.

The files are in the computer?!

Thank goodness for Darren.

-Matt

Wait just a tick...

Stop.  Collaborate.  Listen...

Brad and I have been extremely busy the last few weeks (and I've injured my hand).  But rest assured, we have not forgotten you, our loyal readers.  We'll be back soon with more timely and world changing bits of Dork Life.

-Matt

Another Two Fistfuls of Favorites! (Matt’s Picks)

    It’s that time of year again.  Brad and I put down in stone (blog) the next ten movies in our lists of all time favorite films.  (See my 1-10 here, and 11-20 here).  The further into the list I get, the more weird I feel about it.  Not bad.  Just weird.  Of course, picking favorite movies is like picking favorite children.  Still, some kids are better than others.  And dang it.  Where’s Citizen Kane?  2001?  Hard Ticket To Hawaii?  I love those movies.  Well, maybe in the next installment.

30.  Cat People:  “Look at that boat…Look at that boat.”  I’m not a kinky guy.  But this movie drips in kink and I love it.  John Heard plays a successful me (you know, if I ran the zoo, and all that), wrapped up with a very special kind of femme fatale.  Nastassja Kinski is that fatale, a sweet natured girl with giant eyes and deep naivete.  They’re a perfect match, except for one thing.  Beautiful, deliberately paced, and with plenty of time spent on character, this weird mystery takes more than one unexpected turn.  Not for the easily upset, it features some rather unusual ideas, none too few of them depicted on screen.

29.  In a Lonely Place:  I’ve been a Bogart fan since I was around 10, when we got a VCR at my house and saw Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and Key Largo on a VHS my dad had.  Bogie was so cool, so tough, and so beautifully ugly.  Over the next 25 years, I watched those three films many times, and slowly watched others in his filmography.  But it was In a Lonely Place that struck me like a bolt of lightening.  Like when I read Henry Rollins’s poem I Know You, I felt my heart and soul were being ripped out and shown to me in their raw form.  Here was a film where my favorite actor was playing me, or at least the version of me I’m most ashamed of, most scared of.  I think it’s his best performance, and though the ending is a bit sensationalist, the movie feels like a brutally honest piece of self assessment by a writer about being a writer.

28.  Zardoz: "I have seen the future and it does not work."  It doesn’t get a heck of a lot more British-weird than this 70s masterpiece of the bizarre.  Sean Connery plays an ubermensch uplifted from the shattered remnants of humanity who sneaks into a pampered paradise of bored immortals.  Everyone plays it straight, no matter how crazy it gets.  And it gets CRAZY.  Zardoz is not for everyone…Scratch that.  Zardoz is not for most.  But for those lucky few, this movie is like no other and it’s wonderful.

27.  The Creature from the Black Lagoon:  I saw this film at such an early point in my life that I only have the vaguest sense of when it was.  I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, and it would likely have been on the Creature Double Feature, seen at a friend’s house (they had cable, and got Channel 56 out of Boston).  I’m sure it wasn’t the first monster movie I saw, but it was the one that stuck with me, that made me a lover of the genre.  And it was my introduction to the Beauty and the Beast plot archetype, which has remained a favorite of mine ever since.

26.  Escape from New York:  Kurt Russell is a one eyed monster getting all up in the Big Apple’s prison hole.  Great cast, great score, lots of awesome action, and Snake Plissken, one of the most ridiculously tough tough guys of cinema.  I don’t think anyone but Russell could have pulled it off.

25.  An American Werewolf in London:  Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, I’d heard a lot of negative stuff about this movie before I rented it, but just minutes in and I loved the Hammer Horror vibe, the humor, and the surprising twists.  I laughed and jumped and marveled at the horror.  The effects are some of the best put to film, the cast is extremely charming, and the story wonderfully tragic.

24.  The Iron Giant:  The design and animation are excellent, but the story is the thing.  A lonely boy living in Cold War era Maine finds and befriends a giant robot from outer space.  It’s a good movie all around, but the ending.  Man, it gets me.  Superman indeed.  Niagara Falls.

23.  The Virgin Spring:  A beautifully filmed medieval story that straddles Ingmar Bergman’s symbolic and visceral sides comfortably.  It’s gut-punch brutal and lyrically mystical in turns.  A family’s love, the destruction of innocence, and the calculated vengeance of a grieving man.  This was the movie that made me a Bergman fan, and it’s a darned fine film.  Human ugliness displayed in a beautiful package.

22.  Coffy:  The rough, tough, and sexy Pam Grier shotguns her way through the criminal underworld as a one-woman war on corruption.  Reveling in the weird fashion and décor of the 70s, while slinging slang and splashing house-paint blood, it may not be the best Blaxploitation (Trouble Man, maybe?) or the best Pam Grier film (Jackie Brown), but it’s my favorite, and my go-to.  It’s the film that brought me to the genre, and the one I find myself popping in the DVD player most often.

21.  Alien:  A fantastic cast of characters, stunning production design, wonderfully slow then nightmarishly fast pacing, and one of the most beautiful creatures ever designed.  It’s a haunted house on a space ship.  It’s a creature feature.  It’s a pretty darned good slice-of-life science fiction film.  Everything about this film is top notch.  But I think it really comes down to the script and performances.  (See my detailed review here).

-Matthew J. Constantine

A Fistful of Influence! (Matt’s Picks)

    OK, everything Brad said in his post on this same subject.  These aren’t necessarily my favorite films, but these are five of the films that shaped who I am as a movie viewer.  Movies have been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember, becoming all the more so when we got a spankin’ new VCR and color TV in the mid 80s.  These movies represent a few important street signs on the road map of my life in film.

5.  Star Wars:  Growing up in the 80s, Star Wars and the renaissance of genre films that followed in its wake was like a warm blanket I wrapped myself in.  The toys, the bed sheets, the Underoos, sure.  But the movies themselves.  To a lonely kid who spent much of his time inside with a TV, the Star Wars films were trusted friends.  And Star Wars itself was the beginning of it all.  I love all things (almost) science fiction, and I never held with the idea that you were either a Star Wars or a Star Trek person (the 60s Star Trek remains one of my favorite TV shows, and if I did a list like this for TV it would be right near the top).  But Star Wars had a lasting impact, even with all the later tainting of my love that came with the dreaded prequel trilogy and overdose of merchandising.

4.  Fist of Legend:  I’d watched a few Chinese martial arts films before I watched this Jet Li film, mostly Jackie Chan stuff.  But it was while watching this movie that I realized Kung Fu films could be more than just stunts and bad dubbing.  They could also be about stuff.  They could also have compelling characters and solid plots.  They could also tap into genuine emotions.  Fist of Legend has some excellent fights, but it’s a good movie, too.  So, in a way, it was the movie that really introduced me to Kung Fu films.

3.  The Phantom Empire: This Gene Autry serial was a very early viewing for young Matt the Lad.  Not only did it make me fall in love with the idea of the movie serial, but I also became captivated by the mix of genres (here Cowboy Musical and Science Fiction).  Over the years, bits of this film were always floating around in the back of my head, leaking into my fiction and into my choices of movie rentals.

What could I possibly have found to like in this?

2.  Coffy:  When I broke up with my high school girlfriend, I suddenly found myself with more time and more money than sense.  Being me, instead of re-directing those resources into doing something that would improve my life, I descended into a black whole of video rental madness.  For a couple years, I watched more movies than I could possibly count.  I mean, I watched EVERY DANGED THING I could get my hands on.  And while I’d been aware of Shaft, and I knew there were Grindhouse films that had been made in the 70s, I was largely ignorant of them, and knew little of Blaxploitation beyond a few articles in film texts.  But one night, walking through the stacks at the local Front Row Video (yeah, it wasn’t even Movie Gallery, yet), I spotted a very sexy picture of Pam Grier looking out at me from a video box.  I was in love, and my movie lust found yet another new direction to stretch.

1.  Raiders of the Lost Ark:  Almost everything about me, my tastes, and my interests eventually leads back to seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark at the old Bangor Opera House when I was five years old.  I wanted to be Indiana Jones.  I wanted to fight Nazis, travel the globe, find ancient cities, have love affairs with feisty brunettes, and live in Hollywood’s version of the 1930s.  Pulp, history, geography, the desert, the jungle, nature, religion, and so many other life long interests started here, not to mention my eventual love and fascination with the films and the era that inspired it.

-Matthew J. Constantine