Brad's Week in Dork! (11/24/13-11/30/13)

Thanksgiving and Black Friday got in the way of some serious movie watching this week.  Can't really complain about that though, can I?  Life is good.  Family is sweet.  And Business is a boomin'.  Started the week with Matt at The Angelika for Alexander Payne's Nebraska.  It's certainly not going to make my Top Ten List this year, but Bruce Dern is a serious contender for the Oscar race.  On Wednesday The Wife and I made it over to The Alamo for Hunger Games 2.  Better than the first film, but the best part about the night was still the Drafthouse pre-show.  SNL skit was actually pretty funny. And we came home from the movie craving real entertainment, so we had ourselves a double feature with the This Is The End & The Word's End blu rays.  Before my Black Friday got on the way, I caught both Philomena & Oldboy on the big screen while my Brother-In-Law tagged along for the adventure.  Probably couldn't pair two films as different as those.  However, the best film I watched this week was Plunder of the Sun.  Glenn Ford doing that mean bastard routine.  I love it.

While at work on Saturday, I got word that Paul Walker had died.  I'm happy to say that I have always been a Walker fan.  The man appeared in a lot of crappy cinema (the first two Fast & Furious flicks, Into The Blue, Bobby Z), but he's also rather amazing in Running Scared.  I've sung that films praises numerous times on this blog, and I'll take the opportunity again to send you running to your TV set.  It is simply an amazing bit of gonzo cinema.  A Grimm's Fairy Tale remake of Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog featuring possibly the greatest tribute to John Wayne this side of Garth Ennis's Preacher comic book series.  Not to mention those terrifying Nosferatu Pedophiles!!!!  If you haven't seen Running Scared than I demand you drop what you're doing right now and check it out.  If you're looking for other great Walker flicks to tribute and you've already exhausted Fast Five, then I also suggest Joy Ride (see below) and the more recent Pawn Shop Chronicles in which Walker plays a buggin' out meth head.  The man knew how to have fun on screen.  I'm gonna miss ya.

Nebraska:  I've been listening to a lot of conversation surrounding Alexander Payne's latest flick.  From one podcast to the next - Slashfilm, Operation Kino, Battleship Pretension - one critic blasts it as a mean-spirited mockery of the midwest, and another calls it a searing character study.  One thing is certain - Bruce Dern delivers a quiet, painful performance as the senile father determined to collect his million dollar sweepstakes.  And as a city slicker kid who occasionally spent his summers in Taylor, North Dakota population 148, I felt a lot of kinship for Will Forte's interloper.  Is it mockery?  At times.  Is that a bad thing?  I don't know.  I was always told by my teachers that it was cruel to laugh at others, and Nebraska certainly gains a lot of its comedy from pointing the finger.  So maybe I'm an asshole.  I enjoyed Nebraska.  Not the kind of film I'll watch over & over again, and I absolutely prefer Payne's The Descendants, Sideways, About Schmidt, & Election, but I'll root for Dern come Oscar time.

Plunder of the Sun:  "How hard can you beg?"  Now here is a beastly little diddy that does not get the praise it so rightfully deserves.  Glenn Ford, very much in the spirit of Gilda's Johnny Farrall, is an insurance investigator ensnared in an archeological heist when Patricia Medina bats her eyes across the barroom.  Ford is an amazing bastard in this movie, delightfully selfish, and cool as ice in the face of danger.  I absolutely love how no jackbooted thug can take this man down, and how heartlessly mean he can be to a beautiful woman when she attempts to play villain.  Imagine Indiana Jones mixed with In The Mouth of Madness's John Trent and a little of Prime Cut's Lee Marvin and you get Glenn Ford's beastly idol robber..  In 2013, having recently discovered or rediscovered flicks like The Big Heat, 310 To Yuma, Gilda, and Plunder of the Sun, Glenn Ford has climbed himself to the top of my favorite "classic" actors list.  He lives proudly next to Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda, and Lee Marvin.  Now it's time to devour the rest of his back catalogue.

Medium Cool:  "I understand that you have some problems."  Robert Forester is a TV cameraman attempting to navigate the civil unrest of the late 1960s.  The story itself is pretty much what you expect, but Haskel Wexler's in-the-trenches documentary direction perfectly mirrors the era's primetime media assault.  Remember when journalism could make a difference?  Sigh.

Catching Fire:  I really just don't understand the appeal of these movies.  I've seen dozens of dystopian sci-fi hellholes.  Some I idolize - A Boy And His Dog, Logan's Run, Soylent Green, District 9.  Some I hate - No Escape, In Time, Johnny Mnemonic.  But The Hunger Games and this redo sequel are just soooooo booooooring.  Doesn't help that I'm not the biggest fan of Jennifer Lawrence's steely-eyed acting (minus Silver Linings Playbook, which is awesome, and her constant red carpet shit-talking).  Seriously, let's see some real deal emotion lady!  You just butchered a dome full of kids and all you can muster is some scream dreaming?  I dig the gender reversal of asskicker Katniss & Josh Hutcherson's damsel-in-distress, but why rehash the structure of the first film?  How 'bout doing something of note with these old ass tributes?  Geoffrey Wright is in your movie!  Use him!  Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in your movie!  Use him!  How can a film be nearly three hours long and have so little plot?  But since this flick just made a butt load of cash at the box office, I must be missing something.

This Is The End: "Call me your Prince of Persia..."  This is not sophisticated satire, it's a ferociously obscene assault on celebrity culture as seen from within.  I've always been a sucker for Seth Rogen's pothead comedy (Pineapple Express & Your Highness), but I don't think it's ever been funnier than it is in the moment when he & Jay Baruchel return from an L.A. Revelation to find all their Hollywood friends Left Behind at James Franco's house party.  One by one, they are either swallowed up by the Earth, impaled on sharp instruments, possessed by Satan, or welcomed into the Donner Party.  Their only option for salvation is to learn & live The Golden Rule.  It does not go well.

The World's End:  "Back to the dark ages."  Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg tackle the apocalypse from a much different, far classier, smarter, and typically British perspective.  I've watched the film three times now, and with each viewing I love it more and more.  I am very comfortable in calling The World's End one of the year's very best films, and even if I rank it at the bottom of the Cornetto Trilogy, it's still one of the finest emotionally wrenching comedies.  It also helps that it so easily Out-Star Trek's this year's abysmal Into Darkness atrocity with Simon Pegg expertly Kirking The Computer.  The World's End also offers the strongest performances yet from both Simon Pegg & Nick Frost.  Pegg's drunkard turned savior, Gary King never quite learns his lesson, but he comes close enough.  The apocalypse is not the awful part, it's how the apocalypse warrants his stagnancy.  The Loser Reigns!  Just what all isolated fanboys dream!  But my favorite delight is watching Frost's sober suit transform into the Pink Hulk of robotic destruction.  We've all seen the slobby brute, but I don't think we've ever been blessed with a prim & proper Frost.  Hard to take at first, but it's all worth it for when the shots hit the table.

The Killers:  Using Ernest Hemingway's short story for the opening scene, the rest of the film traces the actions of Burt Lancaster's punched-out boxer that lead to his inevitable assassination.  This is solid noir.  The flashback structure prevents it from fully capturing my passion, but it's also what gives the overall story its sense of dread.  There's no happy ending here.  Burt Lancaster dies in the first ten minutes and there's no resurrection.  The film has all the genre hallmarks, and Ava Gardner's Femme Fatale is exceptionally venomous with her dialogue.  "You touch me and you won't live till morning."  Don't mess with this lady folks.  She'll drive you to suicide.

Philomena:  Who doesn't love Judi Dench?  Who doesn't love Steve Coogan?  Only the soulless.  Dench plays a woman determined to find the son she was forced to abandon when she was barely a child herself.  Coogan is the failed journalist plunging the trenches of the human interest story to regain some hold on his career.  Philomena manages to be a searing look at the hypocrisy of religion while still managing to not make a mockery of faith.  Everybody wins.  It's the cliche "You'll laugh, you'll cry" kind of dramedy.  Well done, Mr Frears.

Oldboy:  A serviceable remake.  There are a few changes to the Korean original, but a lot of the horror of that film is surprisingly maintained in this Spike Lee joint.  Josh Brolin is pretty damn great as the American businessman kidnapped off the streets and mysteriously imprisoned for ten years.  Suddenly released, Brolin beats, bashes, and hammers his way through a variety of thugs until he finds the man responsible for his torture.  Along the way he meets Elisabeth Olsen's attractive social worker and does things he shouldn't.  Besides being totally unnecessary, I have a few other complaints in regards to Newboy - Sharlto Copley is far too James Bond Villainy as the billionaire beast, the film rushes too quickly towards its climax, and never properly establishes the "love" between Brolin & Olsen.  And could we please stop with the CG bloodwork!?!?  I hate it sooo much.  Still, it could have gone down a lot worse.

We Steal Secrets - The Story of Wikileaks:  "I like crushing bastards."  I'd love to tell you I was a socially conscious person.  But I'm a pop culture freak.  I can drone on and on about the merits of Roger Corman, but can barely string a sentence when it comes to the politics of the day.  I'm trying to be a better American.  I probably should venture out further into the real world than the handful of documentaries I watch a year.  I knew very little about Wikileaks before watching We Steal Secrets.  Similar to The Act of Killing, I found it to be a rather disturbing viewing experience.  What is the truth of the Red, White, & Blue?  What can we as Americans accept as collateral damage?  Wikileaks is incredible.  Too bad Julian Assange is such a hypocritical asshole himself.

Joyride:  I love Joy Ride.  Co-written by JJ Abrams and directed by John Dahl, the film is the closest this century has come to crafting the classic noir screenplay.  It's Detour populated with sexy young things.  While on a cross country roadtrip, two brothers punk a trucker using sex as temptation, and unleash a nightmarish Duel on the freeways.  Paul Walker & Steve Zahn are so much fun to hang out with that you forgive their idiotic prank and cheer them on to victory.  Too bad the film doesn't have the grit to adhere to its noir heart, and falters with a too-neat climax.  And Leelee Sobieski should totally Femme Fatale these bozos, but is simply relegated to the damsel-in-distress.

--Brad

"Salvation Comes In Many Forms!" - Brendan Fraser Does The King in Pawn Shop Chronicles

A few weeks back I expressed my absolute adoration for Wayne Kramer's Running Scared, and now he's back with Paul Walker in another goofy tale of crime.  This one appears to be heavy on the comedy, but with a cast stacked like this one, you can officially color me excited.  Besides, Brendan Fraser admitting that his influences are the KKK - The King, The King, & The King - has gotta be pure comic gold, right?  Sure, this film has Direct-To-DVD written all over it but I'm hoping for some more weirdo brilliance from Kramer's demented noggin.  And who doesn't like spider neck tattoos?

Brad's Week in Dork! (5/26/13-6/1/13)

This week may look deceptively small in the world of Dorkery, but dang, it seriously packed a punch.  Once upon a time, I bitched & moaned about the lack of culture in Washington DC...at least as far as the movie scene was concerned - still lots of killer music venues & events to discover.  But with the recent additions of The Alamo Drafthouse & The Angelika Film Center (along with the old standbys of the AFI Silver, West Side Cinema, & E Street Cinema) Washington DC now has an amazing lineup of movie houses.  You can't go a weekend without a vintage screening of The Wrath of Khan or Rocky Horror Picture Show.  And this week Matt & I finally witnessed Bruce Lee's iconic smasher, Enter The Dragon over at The Alamo, and I crossed off another Cinematic Resolution with Fellini's hipster classic 8 1/2.  And our big screen future sill includes Jaws 3D, Top Gun, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, & The Silence of the Lambs.  This truly is the Silver Screen paradise our Nation's Capital deserves.

However, as fun as those big screen classics were, the film that ruled this week was Rolling Thunder.  Shout Factory finally brought this grindhouse classic to blu ray on Tuesday, and I will be forever grateful.  I remember catching a VHS watch a decade back, enjoyed it a little, but couldn't quite see Quentin Tarantino's obsession.  Now I'm one of the converted, and it's a strong contender for this year's Top DVD Release.  If you're at all interested in exploitation cinema than you have to add this sick puppy to your collection.

Running Scared:  In this neon remake of Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, Paul Walker screams through some sort of New Yorker accent as the criminal goomba charged with stashing his bro’s cop killing revolver. Director Wayne Kramer leaves the slick Vegas cool of The Cooler behind, and attacks his audience with this vile & violent decent down the felonious rabbit hole. Once you get past the accent and the hysterics, Walker ain’t half bad.  The absurdity of the adventures he forces upon his family make Running Scared a must-see for grindhouse fans.  This is certainly not a wannabe exploitation a la Planet Terror, Machete, and The Expendables.  Running Scared is the contemporary "real deal" equivalent to those glory days of Roger Corman kill fests.  This flick relishes the muck of sex & violence; shines a bright red bulb on the gyrating horrors forced upon its characters and smiles at your revulsion or – gulp – perverted entertainment.  Sure, it has its winks too. Karl Roden’s demented admiration for The Duke. The Albino Pimp’s pathetic imitation of Tony Montana. The nosferatu shadows cast by the husband/wife child killing combo.  But there is an honesty to the exploitation that seems lacking from the pale pretenders. With Quentin Tarantino you’re often in on the joke, laughing along with or at his monstrous nods to popcorn past. Wayne Kramer’s Running Scared is sincere filth.  Over the top.  Gross.  Uncomfortable.   Wrong-headed.  But Kramer means it.

What I Did:  Jason’s comics are often painfully funny. He loves to riff on genre, scoring good chuckles from planting Athos on Mars or sending Hitler through the time tunnel.  In this collection of early shorts, there are a couple of good laughs, but mostly it's heartache to be found.  In particular, the coming of age saga “Hey Wait” had me wincing.  I recognize a lot of myself in the fanboy gushing over Neal Adams’ Batman, and their monster squad rules, but then the tale takes that Stand By Me turn, and Jason drops a surreal hiccup in the timeline.  What the cartoonist leaves us with is an event that permanently shapes, if not breaks, a life.  A moment of youth that forever shadows a sad existence. That’s not fun.  But it’s got bite. And Jason excels at bite.

Enter The Dragon:  AKA the film in which Bruce Lee puts all the chips down on the table. Not satisfied with his treatment in Hollywoodland, but riding the wave of a couple of international hits, Lee goes for broke with this Kung Fu Hustle and the result is an action masterpiece with a serious side order of cheese.  His injections of the “Fighting Without Fighting” philosophy add a fanciful flavor to the violence, but when he lands on Mortal Kombat island for a little sibling slaughter revenge, that dime store zen must be ignored.  The production balances out Lee's howling wisdom with the righteous Jim Kelly and the ultra smooth, bad luck sex machine John Saxon.  The trilogy of badasses face off against Jim Henson's evil twin (Bob Wall!) and Mister Han's interchangeable slice & dice hands.  Bruce Lee is a monster of muscle, and it's seriously delightful to watch him storm through their brittle bodies.
 

Repo Man:  "It happens sometimes.  People just explode.  Natural causes."  This is a wicked little comedy.  It's not so much Ha-Ha funny, but Alex Cox obviously understands punk culture and its reactionary anger to 1980s consumerism.  An odd, jokey tone tinged with real bitterness.  In a lot of ways, this is the perfect double bill with John Carpenter's They Live, another film brimming with weird sci-fi anger expertly targeted against the masters of the world - F You Reagan!  Emilio Estevez is a suburban drifter angry at the world for some mysterious reason.  Enter Harry Dean Stanton, a man with purpose, a Repo Man.  Together this dynamic duo snatch back the property of those who dare to live above their means.  And, of course, they're just one wrong repo away from total thermo nuclear warfare!  I'm fascinated that Criterion added this to their collection, but I'm beyond pleased with their Special Edition treatment.  A gorgeous disc, and an essential addition for genre hounds.

Savage Wolverine #5:  Frank Cho's run on this needless Wolverine spin-off comes, thankfully, to a close.  There were some great panels along the way (just look at that bastard snikt his claws into the jolly green giant), but the story left me cold.  Raptors.  Shanna the She-Devil.  Gorillas.  Man-Thing.  Hulk.  Whales.  I love all those things, but the story never brings them together in any kind of satisfying manner.  Maybe it's time to pair Cho with an actual writer, as it's obvious he needed a firmer narrative to hang his big booty action upon.

The Wake #1:  Scott Snyder & Sean Murphy's ten issue mini-series begins like the very best Michael Bay 'splosionfest.  An exiled scientist is recruited into a top secret government project populated with other quirky exiled scientists.  There is an apocalypse coming, but what's it all got to do with a teethy fishman?  Not sure, but I'm happy to find out.  And I'm happy to be enjoying Snyder's writing again.  His last batch of Bat-Books have been tiring; The Wake looks to be a real shot in the arm.

Hangover Part III:  This is a film I saw. I don’t really have much of an opinion. Did I laugh? Yeah. A few times.  But only when the film sinks to its most violently disturbed - Ken Jeong smothering a rooster, that's hilarious right?  Sure, I enjoyed the hangover detective work of the first film, and piecing together their drunken mistakes like a fratboy Sherlock Holmes.  The second films was a sad, pig bursting remake.  But this time the producers actually seem to think we care what happens in the lives of these sophmoric nimrods.  Maybe you care, I certainly don't.  John Goodman steps out of a Coen Brothers flick to scream threats at our trio of dunces, and Bradley Cooper manages to keep his dignity while Zack Galifinakis bulls his way through the china shop.  Attempts at originality just birth character repetition.  Meh.

8 1/2:  Is this the greatest movie about movies?  Some certainly seem to think so, but I must claim ignorance since Federico Fellini's surrealist exploration of craft left me scratching my head.  Although, I certainly see where Woody Allen stole his entire career from.  Marcello Mastroianni holds a certain charm, but as he bashes his ego upon various sexual prey, I found myself growing aggravated with his rich white man problems.  He's an impotent fool, tortured by the gifts that life has mysteriously granted him.  Where is the auteur?  All I see is nerves.  Maybe that's the point?  Maybe I'm just not the creatively haunted soul this film is meant for?  But if we were going to get this mopey, I could have used a bit more of the dreamscape and less of Mastroianni's lifeless reality.  Well, at least I can now check this off the bucket list.

Almost Silent:  The first half is a concoction of brief, repetitive strips mostly circling the monstrous antics of Draculas, Frankensteins, Cave Men, and Zombies.  The second tale is one of love lost, found, and lost again.  Typical sad-funny Jason work.  But with You Can't Get There From Here, the mad cartoonist strikes the heart with a sadsack tale of Frankenstein Love - where Igor might just be the most sympathetic character around.  And for The Living and The Dead, Jason tackles the world of George Romero and discovers his most bittersweet romance yet.  The early work of Jason might not be as strikingly unique as his more recent genre benders, but it also seems like the nutty Norwegian can do no wrong.

Rolling Thunder:  "You learn to love the rope."  In Taxi Driver, screenwriter Paul Schrader delved into the isolation and depression experienced by the returning Vietnam Vet.  It's a masterful exploration of loneliness and obsession helmed with revelatory craft by Martin Scorsese.  Released a year later, Rolling Thunder travels similar themes but under the watch of John Flynn (The Outfit) the result is a much more exploitative and angry vehicle.  After spending years in a POW camp, William Devane returns to Texas only to discover a son that doesn't recognize him, and a wife with a replacement lover.  Hiding behind his mirrored sunglasses, Devane stifles the rage below the surface, refusing to unleash his anger till a roving gang of borderland goons invade his hamlet home.  He's left mutilated on the kitchen floor, but it's just the excuse his temper has been waiting for - on comes the hook hand, then the sawed-ff.  Partnering with Tommy Lee Jones, the two killers cross into Mexico for a bloody whore house showdown.  Rolling Thunder is a shocking beast of a film.  It's success hinges on it's fury, but the heat is only as strong as the undeniable sadness inflicted upon Devane at the very beginning of the film.  The quiet moments between father & son.  His nodding acknowledgement at his wife's infidelity.  And when it's time to Death Wish, the audience is just as thankful for the character to have a mission to let loose biblical terror.  Taxi Driver is for the contemplative cineaste.  Rolling Thunder is for the Old Testament avengers in the audience.

--Brad