Matt’s Week in Dork! (2/2/14-2/8/14)

    I’m still doing a lot of reading and idea jotting for my upcoming Call of Cthulhu game.  Reading a lot of stuff about the 20s, and trying to steep myself in some of the better parts of Lovecraft & Friends’ Mythos.  Little else, I’m afraid.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit:  Getting past the absolutely awful title, this is a perfectly acceptable, if not especially memorable exercise in spy-game shenanigans.  Everyone is fine.  It looks pretty good.  The hand-held only gets annoying a couple of times.  The villainous plot isn’t totally idiotic.  And the actions of the heroes don’t rely purely on blind luck.  I gather it stays pretty true to the Tom Clancy character background, though I feel like the style is a bit too much post-Bourne movie to feel quite right.  Not one for the books, but if you enjoy these sorts of films, it doesn’t suck.  One thing I noticed more than I have before is Keira Knightley’s messed up teeth, which I found both distracting and somehow very charming.

Top Hat:  A comedy of mistaken identity, singing and dancing, and innuendo to beat the band.  It’s very charming, with plenty of impressive dance numbers and catchy tunes.  The script and the actors are spot on.  The whole thing works.  I wasn’t as wowed by it as I was with, say Singin’ in the Rain.  But that’s not at all a negative.  Very much a film to see.

Anastasia:  Ingrid Bergman plays a psychologically and emotionally ruined woman who looks a good deal like an adult version of the rumored living Romanov.  Is she, or isn’t she?  Does it matter?  Various people, with various agendas think it does and they’re willing to lie and cheat to make the right people believe it.  There are some good performances.  Bergman has been better, but Yul Brynner is especially compelling as the conflicted general.  It’s not a bad movie, but no classic.

The Lost Weekend:  “I’m not a drinker.  I’m a drunk.”  Ray Milland plays one sad bastard.  One sad, drunk bastard.  An absolutely hopeless, raging, falling down alcoholic, our hero abuses himself and everyone around him in his quest to deaden his self hatred.  Too much of a looser to even properly kill himself, he’s a failure at everything but finding a drink.  And he’s not even super successful at that.  His all consuming hunger for the burn of booze is heart wrenching and pathetic.

The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox:  I’m sure there’s someone out there who thinks this movie is a hoot.  Someone who thinks the jokes are just hi-larious.  I’m not that someone.  Less than two minutes in, freeze frame on a woman’s be-bloomered butt while the credits rolled and I knew what sort of a movie I’d started.  I wasn’t wrong.  It’s one of those ‘comedy-westerns’ I can only imagine appealing to old men wearing lots of plaid who don’t like those dark skinned folk.  (I’m not saying you’ve got to be racist to like it, Internet. I’m just saying I have an image of the person who laughs at these cornball jokes, and that image is a racist. …I’m not crazy.  You are!).  The whole thing goes on for far too long, with far too few laughs and far too much mugging.  And the two leads have all the charm of a brick.  If you’re someone who finds Goldie Hawn attractive, I guess the film has that going for it.  I guess.

Imagine this, for 90 minutes...

Closed Circuit:  Right out of the gate, this movie feels like a lot of stuff you’ve seen before.  Enemy of the State, Vantage Point, The Enemy Within, The Package, the list goes on.  Everyone’s in on it.  You can’t trust anyone.  Everyone’s out to get you.  I like the cast.  And it’s competently crafted.  It’s just not especially interesting.  If you like this sort of film, it’s a mid-level entry.  Not bad, but not very good, either.

I hold here an ounce of originality...I will now throw it away.

    In the mood for some weird and spooky tales, I listened to neo-radio shows by The Colonial Radio Theater.  Their Vincent Price Presents series isn’t quite what I was expecting.  It’s not Price reading, nor even adaptations of Price films.  The four stories contained are adapted from Blue Water Comics (?) comic book shorts.  There are four, The Tinglers, Fade Away, Canus, and Road Rage.  The Tinglers is probably the best, being a somewhat silly jungle adventure tale with something of a King Kong or Lost World vibe.  Fade Away feels like any given episode of Tales from the Crypt.  Canus seems like a good idea, but the voice actor for the kid is so danged bad, I couldn’t concentrate on the story.  And finally Road Rage is well acted but has an extremely awkward framing story that doesn’t work at all.  Overall, it’s a fun listen, but not great.  Anyone interested in these new radio show style presentations would be better off with the HPLHS adaptations of Lovecraft stories.  But these are still worth a listen.  ISBN: 978-1-4558-1291-2.

The Last Boy Scout:  Maybe if I’d seen this movie when I was a lad, I’d have fond memories of it now.  But I didn’t, and watching it at this late date, I can’t help but notice how it seemed to be a perfect mix of the worst elements of the failing 80s, and what would be the new norm of the 90s.  The macho, one-liner spouting leading men were kind of played out.  The Last Action Hero, the parody of the genre that had become a parody of itself was only two years away, and Bruce Willis’s excruciatingly awful Die Hard 2 had just come out.  Terminator 2, the unofficial end of the creative 80s, and the beginning of the ultra-sanitized, paint-by-numbers 90s was months old when this film hit theaters.  The script is just one chincy line after another, delivered by a barely present Bruce Willis and an confused Damon Wayans.  Tony Scott color-saturates the crap out of every scene, and lights everyone in the most off-putting way possible.  Everything about the movie feels like a half assed Walter Hill movie (or any given Walter Hill movie of the 90s).  No, it’s not awful.  I mean, it’s awful; but it’s the kind of awful I understand enjoying.  However, Tony Scott’s particular brand of filmmaking has never much impressed me.  And while better than some of his others, it’s still pretty much the lame movie I expected.  Did I bring baggage with me when I watched it?  Yup.  But there it is.  Not going on my list of lost gems.

Vikingdom: The Blood Eclipse:  The music started, the first images lit my screen, and I knew I’d made a mistake.  “Oh, no.”  That’s what I said.  My reaction wasn’t wrong.  Awful post-300 CG effects, dreadful sets, terrible wigs, and acting that puts them all to shame.  I do think a Viking based high fantasy adventure film could be a lot of fun.  But the 1994 video game cut scene quality of the effects, the Target bought Halloween costumes, and the terrible writing sink this turkey.  I get the feeling that the idea behind the film was to do a Ray Harryhausen-type adventure film.  But without any of the resources, skills, or heart, everything fails.  50 million dollars and a couple good actors might have made this pretty good.  Alas.

    I’ve been watching The White Queen, which is certainly the best thing I’ve seen from Starz so far.  Plenty of the expected nudity and scandalous behavior, but without the crassness and dreadful writing one expects from the people who brought us Spartacus.  It’s not great.  It’s not HBO level of quality.  But it’s shockingly better than average.  I like much of the cast and the storylines are pretty well handled.  A few cast members are kind of annoying, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad on a show like this.  One thing that stood out as particularly anachronistic was the sex.  No, not that they were having sex, or having sex outside of wedlock.  That wasn’t weird.  But having the woman on top or...um...from behind... was considered unnatural and ‘morally questionable,’ especially as it was thought to be more likely to cause the woman pleasure, which was obviously not proper.  It could be punished with up to three years penance (for the woman, of course…this was still 1400s Europe).  The so called 'missionary' position was considered the least sinful way of engaging in sex.  You were, of course, still supposed to feel ashamed for doing it, but there was no punishment.

War-Gods of the Deep: Vincent Price did a lot of movies, some less traditionally ‘good’ than others.  I really enjoy this one, though it’s hardly a classic.  It features dashes of Atlantis myth, a Jules Verne like plot, and the incomparable Price as a megalomaniac trying to save an undersea kingdom.  One could argue that the film isn’t especially exciting, but I find it entertaining and atmospheric enough to enjoy.

    I was prompted to enjoy a Vincent Price movie because there’s a petition campaign to get him on a US Postage stamp.  I think that would be swell.  I signed.  So should you!

-Matt

A Fistful of The Maligned! (Brad's Picks)

Oh January.  What a wonderful dumping ground you are.  The Awards Season is over.  The Oscar Nominations have been picked.  Goodbye 12 Years A Slave, hello The Legend of Hercules.  For most moviegoers this is a time for catchup, snatching the good word of Lone Survivor, Frozen, The Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle.  But we here at ITMOD dream of the great bad movie, or the next forgotten misunderstood gem.  Sure, Renny Harlin specializes in write-off trash these days, but as you'll see below, he's ticked off a fun film or two in his time.  Maybe his baby face Hercules will ascend to the art of high camp.  Or what about this Jack Ryan fellow?  Or Aaron Eckhart's sexy stick fighting Frankenstein?  Look - these are long shots.  But gold has struck in January.  Remember The Grey, or Doomsday, or Rambo.

And I love to play contrarian.  The Great Defender.  While the world championed the arty ennui of Frances Ha, I was going to bat for the offensively weird The Lone Ranger.  I don't think you can really call yourself a movie fan unless you've encountered and battled for the underdog.  But in the batshit trenches of the Internet you can find fellow weirdos, and suddenly distributers like Shout Factory start producing Special Editions of Halloween III and Tank Girl.  When putting together my own list of Favorite (Unfairly) Maligned films I found it difficult to choose older films - the problem being that given enough time even the most hated films find their fanbase.  So who knows what popularity the films below will find in the future; all I can tell you is that when friends hear of my enthusiasm for these flicks a quizzical look crosses their face.  My co-dork Matt joins me for some of these, but no matter how hard I try he can't bring himself to understand the films in slots 3 & 1.  I'm gonna break him one of these days.

5.  Your Highness:  I'm generally not a fan of pothead humor.  I've never smoked a joint in my life.  And the glorification of weed and booze irritates the hell outta me.  I'm a regular L7 (after all, I just used L7).  But dammit, I can't help myself when it comes the stupidity of Danny McBride, Seth Rogen, and James Franco.  Mixing their brand of idiocy with the absurdity of the Deathstalker genre ignites a childish glee within.  Teaming the foul sloth McBride with Franco's Prince Charming in a latex heavy quest through mushroom wizards, wood nymphs, and minotaurs?  Hell yes, that is hilarious.

4.  Knight and Day:  Released not to long after the couch jump incident, when the world turned against the smiling scientologist, Knight and Day is an inexplicably titled action romance from journeyman director James Mangold that tickled all my right fancies.  Tom Cruise is utterly bonkers here, his Ethan Hunt persona cranked up to 11 and it's both terrifying & appealing to Cameron Diaz's bored bridesmaid.  Their flirtation is adorable - a genuinely cute middle aged couple, something you do not often find in cinema these days and certainly not found within the action genre.  The challenge for you is to separate celebrity from the movies - tear up your US Weeklys, your People Magazines, set yourself free and rediscover your love of fiction.

3.  Die Hard 2 - Die Harder:  "Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"  Look, I'm not going to try and tell you that Die Harder is superior to Die Hard.  That's just foolish.  But Die Harder is a fascinatingly bizarre upping of the ante.  The film is filled with scenery devouring performances from a variety of familiar faces: William Sadler, Franco Nero, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson, William Atherton, John Amos, Robert Patrick, Tom Bower, Art Evans.  Director Renny Harlin pushes the violence to extremes with blood splattered massacres, throat slicings, and icicle impalements.  There are not two lines of dialog without at least one juicy F Bomb.  Classy?  No.  But the sequel earns its "er" for sure.  Dumb and goofy, I love it.

2.  The Ladykillers:  Filmed directly after a true abomination (Intolerable Cruelty), but before their critical renaissance (No Country For Old Men), Joel & Ethan Coen chose to transplant an Ealing Classic to the American South.  They picked Tom Hanks for their ringleader and it's a shoot-for-the-moon performance not seen from the Oscar Winner since the early days of The Money Pit.  People tell me its not funny.  I don't get this.  I bust my gut laughing every time I watch another weirdo crook attempt old lady homicide.  The Ladykillers is not Fargo.  I see similarities to the comedy on display in Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy, but at the end of the day it's a feast of caricature.  You either accept that or you rewatch The Big Lebowski for the 100th time.

1.  Domino:  After years of photographic experimentation, Tony Scott took all his hand crank tricks, his splicing magic, his saturation pallet, and set fire to subtlety.  The "Based on True Events" screenplay doctored by Donnie Darko's Richard Kelly is an absurd assault on Reality Television and our celebrity obsessed culture.  Kiera Knightley gets pornographic with her posh accent, joining forces with the toeless Mickey Rourke, and showing Brian Austen Green & Ian Ziering how a true Beverly Hills diva throws a tantrum.  It involves nunchucks, machine guns, and lapdances.  There can't be a shot in this film that doesn't last more than half a second, but if you can train your brain to keep up, then Domino offers a sensory barrage like none other.  One of my absolute favorite films of the last ten years.

--Brad

Dork Art: Justin White's Rated G - The Sequel

Here's another helping of Justin White's devilishly cartoony genre makeovers.  Rated G - The Sequel will be showing at Gallery 1988 through September 14th.  Again, why does LA get to have all the fun?  The 2001 monkey madness print might be my favorite, but the smiley American Psycho is a close second.  You can buy some of the prints on the Gallery 1988 website, and you can explore other Mickey Mouse interpretations over at Crome Yellow.  Good stuff.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (6/30/13-7/6/13)

    Not an especially grand week, but not a bad one.  Another enjoyable viewing of a classic film on the big screen.  And some other general fun.  To avoid repetition, I will not talk about the weather.

King Eagle:  “You are so kind; but unfortunately we are the evil brothers of Tai Shan, not the benign brothers.”  The opening credits aren’t finished before the second fight starts.  Some petty squabblers wake the dragon and pay the piper.  ’Lone ranger’ King Eagle doesn’t care about you.  He doesn’t care about anyone.  But some people can’t let still waters rest.  They just keep poking until he kills them all.  Assassins and warriors in the know won’t help.  They know what’s up.  Overall, it’s nothing to write home about, but a perfectly adequate Shaw Bros. movie if you’re looking for one to watch.

Godzilla:  Another day, another trip to the Alamo Drafthouse.  This time to see the original Godzilla (no Raymond Burr).  Had a great time.  The movie is an interesting glimpse into the post-War mindset of Japan.  I found little bits especially effecting, like the guy who just didn’t want to evacuate again.  It’s a good flick that takes its subject quite seriously.  Later movies would get pretty crazy, generally moving away from the whole ‘shadow of the bomb’ thing.  But this first one is quite a thing.

The Lone Ranger:  Who would have guessed this film would become one of my favorite of the year.  Yes, I’ve been a Johnny Depp fan for some time, and I’ve liked several of Gor Verbinski’s movies.  But I have never been a Lone Ranger fan and thought the movie looked dreadful.  But it’s all kinds of surreal fun, with a very dark and strange sense of humor and plenty of exciting stunts.  It’s a bit overlong, and does go off the rails (before literally getting back on them) at one point.  The cast does a fine job.  Depp isn’t doing one of his Tim Burton performances.  Yes, it’s weird.  But not annoying and stupid like his work with Burton.  All that crazy stuff with the horse and the rabbits?  Bonkers.  But bonkers funny.  It’s clear America wasn’t looking forward to this film, and I sure as heck wasn’t.  However, it’s pretty danged fun and well worth a watch.  Much better than other summer action fare, like Iron Man 3, White House Down, Man of Steel and some others.

Ghidorah The Three-Headed Monster:  All kinds of crazy is descending on Japan, and the worst of it is Ghidorah, a giant, three headed, golden dragon with erratic space lightening shooting every which way.  He’s so danged powerful, it takes the heroic Mothra, the cantankerous Godzilla, and …Rodan to drive him off.  In the meantime, a pretty young princess is possessed, a plucky reporter is on the job, and a dull cop is ready to save the day.  This is full-on crazy Kaiju action, but like a lot of these movies, it spends a good deal of time building to the action, getting to know a few characters and letting the tension mount.  This is on the better end of the Toho monster movie spectrum, though I do miss Anguirus.  It just doesn’t feel right to fight Ghidorah without him.

     I finished up Scrivener's Moon, the last book in Philip Reeve's new Traction City trilogy.  Good stuff.

Drive Angry:  “I want you to holster that iron god-killer and say ‘thank you.’”  That this movie hasn’t been embraced by the general public is beyond me.  It’s a world of bent genius.  Just amazing.  Boobs, guns, cars, explosions, and cussing like drunken sailors.  Nic Cage looks like he’s having a blast.  Amber Heard is surprisingly fun as the feisty chick he’s traveling with.  But William Fichtner is the real standout as Hell’s accountant.  Just a heck of a lot of fun.  Awesome.

Red:  “Moldova sucks!”  A darned funny, stupid, and action packed movie about a bunch of ex-government sanctioned action heroes being pulled back into the fire.  Everyone seems to be having the time of their lives, gleefully spouting mad-bastard dialog and blazing away with heavy weapons.  Honestly, if nothing else, it’s worth checking out just to see Helen Mirren wearing a classy dress, firing a huge machine gun.  Whatever the case, the movie isn’t going to change the world, but it’s a lot of stupid fun.

Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror:  Trying to drop off Barbara and Ian, the Doctor and companions end up in the past of France, and plenty of trouble.  The French Revolution is not a time period I’m especially interested in, and the story doesn’t have a lot of new to say about it.  Not one of the more interesting Hartnell tales.  The animated sequence is pretty well done, and I hope they do more for the episodes where the video is missing.

    So, for the first time in a good deal of years I decided to read the Bible.  Perhaps one might think it an odd thing for an atheist, but it is an important work of literature if nothing else.  And so far, I would have to say, not much else.  Working my way through Genesis, it’s such a hodge-podge of messy old wives tales that it’s hard to pull out a narrative.  There are some interesting images, but it’s all so vague.  Reminds me of reading Gilgamesh.  The idea that people would think this stuff was anything but the mythology of Bronze Age savages is beyond me, but people believe in homeopathy and crystals.  So who knows?

-Matt

New Release Tuesday!!! - Better Late Than Never Edition (6/4/13)

I know I'm late on this one, but I didn't want to let this week slip by since it's packed with so many wonderful films to consume.  You've got another so-so Die Hard as well as another zom rom com (who would have ever thought of another one of those sub, sub-genres coming around after Shaun of the Dead?), but the real treats of the week extend from that glorious decade of the 1970s.  And they're not the typical classics most film freaks have seen.  Let's start with the...

MUST BUY DVD OF THE WEEK!

Electra Glide in Blue:  One of the best beat cop movies out there.  Robert Blake (let's ignore his murderous personal life) is a teeny tiny highway patrolman navigating the mundane crimes of the Arizona interstate.  His dreams of Homicide Detection are teased when he discovers the corpse of an anonymous hermit.  It's a mean little film with just as much disillusionment as Dirty Harry, but not as widely regarded as that Hollywood endeavor.  Electra Glide in Blue is a slower film; it takes its time to rip your heart out, but when it gets there you'll feel a chunk of your soul missing.  Sound like a good time out at the movies?  Maybe not, but it's a fantastic experience.

BUY!

A Good Day To Die Hard:  Not the return to Hard R glory I wanted, but what do you expect for the fifth film in a franchise?  Um, how 'bout Fast Five!  Bruce Willis travels to Mother Russia to retrieve his son from a whole heap of Cold War trouble.  Jai Courtney is actually pretty fantastic as the McClane offspring, and his relationship with Willis is far more entertaining than expected.  My real problem with the film are the lackluster action set pieces.  Other than an impossibly long car chase, there is very little to remember about this example of diminishing return.  And is John McClane really John McClane when he's sporting a chrome dome?  Not to me he isn't.

Warm Bodies:  Much better than it has any right to be, the film pretty much looses me as it crawls towards its climax.  But where can this sub-genre go once you've explored every horrific aspect?  It was bound to get the Twilight treatment and it succeeds thanks to the presence of "real" actors (you know, people than can emote) and a recognizable sense of loneliness.  Rob Corddry steals the show as Holt's zombie buddy and the film certainly could have benefitted with more of his zombie banter.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome:  The whole trilogy hit blu ray this week, but since I already have the first two the only one I'm really interested in acquiring is this flawed, but ambitious conclusion.  It's been at least a decade since I've seen this movie, and the plot details have pretty much faded.  I certainly remember Tina Turner and the revolting Master Blaster.  I remember that tribe of children from the poster.  And I remember the disappointment that Mad Max is just not as hardcore as he was in The Road Warrior.  But it's time for a revisit.

The Shadow:  Speaking of disappointments...The Shadow came out amongst a flurry of pulp hero adaptations (Dick Tracy, The Phantom, The Rocketeer) and it was easily the weakest of the bunch.  Alec Baldwin cuts a pretty fine Lamont Cranston, but his masked avenger could use a little work and definitely a better nose job.  PG doesn't work for the film either.  I'm not looking for an R Rated bloodbath, but The Shadow is a killer and he should act as such.  Think Batman filtered through gangster morality.   However, the real exciting thing about this blu ray release is the widescreen.  Every few years a new DVD would come out, but it would always be truncated into Full Screen.  Now we can see every inch of this mediocre adventure, and I'm genuinely excited.  Even a poor adaptation is worthy of some enthusiasm.

Earthquake:  My absolute favorite Disaster Film.  Growing up in San Diego, California I was always terrified the Earth would open up and swallow my home.  I only lived through a few minor quakes but they were enough to permanently scar my child brain.  Charlton Heston leads a cast of time-gone-by actors as well as a few bright, up & comers.  George Kennedy is the bee's knees as the tough guy cop brought to an emotional breakdown by mother nature.  Richard Roundtree is a meastro of the dirt bike, coming to the rescue of helpless kiddies everywhere.  But the real stars are the matte paintings and the crumbling Universal sets.  Brutal, heartbreaking devastation and only in a way that 70s Hollywood could do.  Roland Emmerich only wishes he could match this horror.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry/Race With The Devil:  Shout Factory put out this brilliant double in standard def a few years back, but now we can take in all the 70s sleazy grime in beautiful 1080p.  Mary & Larry is fun enough, however, the real draw is the satanic road rage of Race With The Devil.  Starring Peter Fonda & Warren Oates as a couple of dirt bike champions (such a popular profession in the 70s), the two cool cats & their wives stumble upon a human sacrifice while dragging their winnebago across America.  RG Armstrong guest stars as a sheriff with a touch of the goat.  Directed by Jack Starrett after he ruled the exploitation world with Jim Brown's Slaughter, but before he co-starred in First Blood as the asshole cop Rambo rocked out of the helicopter.  Race With The Devil will mark an excellent addition to your Rosemary's Baby, Devil's Rain, Ninth Gate dvd shelf.

RENT!

Scum:  Starring an impossibly young Ray Winstone, Scum is a flick I've always wanted to see but have just never gotten around to.  Time to change that.  Director Alan Clarke originally crafted this story as a BBC play but it was banned before it ever aired.  When the regime changed they reshot the story with Ray Winstone in the lead and brutalized British society.  Apparently.  I can't tell you if it's great or not.  But I love Winstone.  And I love angry films.

--Brad