Matt’s Ten Favorite Action Movies (at this moment)

    While talking about Die Hard on the ITMODcast, Brad challenged me to come up with my top five action movie list.  I thought I’d expand that, and list ten of my favorite action movies.   I’d certainly say that Die Hard is awesome, and totally deserves a spot on the list.  But as I realized while watching it last week at the Alamo Drafthouse, I have very little experience with it; it’s not a film I’ve ‘lived’ with like some of these.  Of course, like any of these lists I make, the order (and even the inclusion) of films is subject to change depending on the day and my mood.

10.  The Matrix:  Its massive popularity and the disappointment with the sequels have probably combined to create a backlash against the movie.  But I still love it.  To say the very least, it was a game changer.  Though if that change was good or bad may still be up for debate.  I love the culmination of so many cyberpunk concepts into a kung-fu filled, effects laden action adventure.

9.  Desperado:  Here’s a movie that I had NO interest in ever seeing.  The trailers made it look like some pseudo-Brad Pitt romance with a bit of action thrown in.  No thank you.  But then a friend told me to put my preconceptions aside and give it a try.  The movie started up, Steve Buscemi starts telling his story of the ‘biggest Mexican’ he’d ever seen, and I was hooked.  Way over the top violence, lots of bent humor, and a sense of wild excitement.  It’s so danged much fun.

8.  Conan the Barbarian:  Not surprisingly, I have a couple Arnold movies on this list.  This is probably my favorite fantasy genre film, featuring some of my favorite scenes.  The final battle, in spite of only featuring a relative handful of horsemen, is one of the most epic things I’ve ever seen.  And the music.  Oh, the music.

7.  Fist of Legend:  No wire work, no crazy effects.  Just fists flying at mind blowing speed.  The movie that taught me Kung Fu flicks could be more than just bad dubbing and unintentional fun.  Jet Li was a revelation, the movie had surprising heart and soul, and the action is top notch.

6.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:  A sweeping, martial arts period piece with some of the of the most pulse-pounding kung-fu I’ve ever seen.  Gorgeously shot, marvelously staged, and lushly crafted.  It’s not only an amazing action movie, it’s an amazing movie.

5.  Aliens:  Alien is one of the all time great horror films.  Aliens is one of the all time great action films.  Gone is the haunted house stalking, replaced by hoards of bugs eating a colorful team of wisecracking Colonial Marines.  This is, to my thinking, the peak of James Cameron.  He never even came close again.  But what a peak.  For all his bloated, soulless, time-sucks that came later, this movie remains a masterwork; untarnished.

4.  Escape from New York:  In the 80s, there was one thing people were pretty darned sure about, and that’s that the world was going to go right down the tubes.  This look forward into the corrupt police state of America circa 1997 is darned cool.  Snake is the Clint Eastwood channeling hero who goes into the prison world of New York City, where he has to save the President from the clutches of The Duke.  Lots of great supporting roles and a cool atmosphere make this one a classic.

3.  Commando:  Yup.  My fourth favorite movie of all time.  Yeah.  That’s right.  Obviously, the script is the strength of the film, but Arnold pounds the living crap out of a bunch of people, then cuts and shoots apart the entire army of an evil dictator all by himself, and all for the love of his daughter.  Let off some steam, don’t disturb my friend, and if you’re lucky, I’ll kill you last.

2.  Raiders of the Lost Ark:  Thrilling heroics and retro-fueled adventure are the name of the game in this, one of my all time favorite films (# 10, in fact) and one of my great cinematic influences (# 1 on that list).  Fistfights, foot chases, and that awesome truck fight.  It’s all the cliffhanger excitement of classic film crammed into one beautiful package.  Cool characters, cool story, and beautifully shot.  One of the greats.

1.  The Road Warrior: I’m a fan of the whole series, to be honest.  Yeah, I even like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.  Actually, I love it.  But The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) is a straight-up amazing film.  It’s gut punchingly savage, dark, depressing, and exciting as all heck.  The iconic final chase is a thing of beauty (so much so that they felt the need to directly lift it in Beyond Thunderdome), but the movie features several cool action scenes, not to mention a beautifully presented apocalyptic world, populated by interesting characters.  Like the best movies, I felt like it took pace within a much larger world.  While we’re watching the story of Max, I have no doubt that over the next hill, equally dramatic lives are being lived and snuffed out.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Another Two Fistfuls of Favorites! (Brad's Picks)

For the last two years, Matt & I have been constructing a list of our Favorite Films.  My personal Top Ten came to me quick & easy; those films have ranked as my all time favorites for several years.  My Top Twenty was a little tougher to crack, but I got their after minimal struggle.  However, formulating my Top Thirty Favorite Films was downright brutal.  A couple of them sprung to mind (#s 21 & 30 were obvious), but I spent several hours over the course of this week pursuing my DVD shelves, selecting & rejecting various movies for whatever reason.  I Love All Of These Films...and so much more.  I cannot guarantee you in a week, let alone a year, that this list will remain - How can The Monster Squad not be in my Top 30 Favorite Films!?!?!  That seems ridiculous to me, but a fact nonetheless.  So take the ranking below with a grain of salt.  I love 'em, but my confidence is not as strong as it was for Movies 1-20.

30.  King Kong (Merian C Cooper & Ernest B Shoedsack, 1933):  Monster movies, this is where it all began.  Frankly, I love all three versions of this movie, as well as the crappy sequels & the Hong Kong knockoffs.  King Kong is one of those rare movies (maybe the only movie) that I'd like to see remade every decade or so, and I find myself positively giddy over the upcoming Skull Island.  It's delightfully simplistic, and eternally relevant.  "It was beauty that killed the beast." This is the ultimate Man Fucks Over Nature story.  We see something beautiful, dangerous, AWEsome and we've gotta have it - even if that means destroying it in the process.  A terribly sad movie, but also one filled with wonder and exceptional cinematic craft.  No King Kong means no Ray Harryhausen, which means no Steven Speilberg, George Lucas, Joe Dante, etc - which means one crappy childhood for this guy.

29.  In The Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1995):  This was the first Horror movie I ever saw in the theater.  Hellraiser was the film that sparked an interest in the genre, and that film led me to the works of Clive Barker & Stephen King.  I remember vividly when I caught the trailer for In The Mouth of Madness on TV, and the Stephen King namecheck immediately peaked an interest.  Who is Sutter Kane?  The concept of a world driven mad by Fiction, was both terrifying & infuriating.  It's a plot spit forth from the mouths of your parents, your teachers, your politicians.  Horror will rot your brain, kids.  Sam Neil has never been better, and his journey from dismissive suit to screaming believer is utterly unsettling.  He steps into frame thinking he's Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, a cocky insurance investigator bored of the game, but a "chance" encounter with an axe-wielding madman sends him scurrying down dark alleys populated by unnamable horrors.  If you're reading this blog post than you already know how this film had an impact on both Matt & myself.  It introduced me to John Carpenter & HP Lovecraft - after such an encounter how can one not become a full fledged horror fiend?

28.  Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988):  There is simply no better action film.  A good, but flawed man fights his way through a slew of bad men in an effort to reunite with true love.  And all set to the backdrop of the Ho-Ho-Holidays.  The 1980s were bogged down with countless bloody shoot 'em ups, but few had as much charming character as Die Hard.  Bruce Willis is exceptional as the everyman.  He's fun, witty, goofy, and absolutely badass when he's got a gun in his hand.  Yipee Ki Yay for the Energizer Bunny, the man takes a beating and keeps on ticking.  After a half dozen sequels, it's hard to find excitement for the "regular Joe," but you can't hate on the studio for trying to recapture the magic of the original.

27.  The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004):  As much as I enjoyed Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, it was not until The Life Aquatic that Wes Anderson's mastery over his dollhouse filmmaking hit perfection.  Words like "quirky" and "whimsical" get tossed around a lot when discussing his films, and I find them to be frustratingly reductive.  Anderson does not wish to recreate reality.  He's not interested in Oscar Bait.  He strives for the artificial, for style, for the storybook.  But to say there's no truth in the artificial is absurd.  The Life Aquatic is layered in familial heartbreak.  Bill Murray is an artist soaked in despair, a man desperate to believe in fatherhood when the chance presents itself, but also incapable of expressing love.  Owen Wilson is equally adrift as the son in question, but manages to force himself into this gruesome adventure of oceanic revenge while deflecting the jealously of Zissou's crew.  Ultimately, The Life Aquatic is about getting beyond your emotional baggage, and accepting the imperfect people around you.

26.  The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966):  Last year, in the wake of The Lone Ranger, I put together a list of my Top 5 Favorite Westerns, and The Professionals ranked at number 4.  Well, as I warned above, I've changed my mind.  It now sits as my third favorite western & my 26th favorite movie.  Lists are stupid.  But I love them.  Ralph Bellamy's Texas tycoon hires Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, & Woody Strode to charge down into Mexico to rescue his wife from Jack Palance's crazed revolutionary.  But as plot demands, things are not as simple as they seem.  I've spoken about it before, but perhaps the most stunning feat about The Professionals is Lancaster's ability to steal the show from Marvin.  His rapscallion is not so much an outlaw as he is a man who let his disgust for humanity crush his own morality, and the result is a gleaming devil worth rooting for.  Lee Marvin is simply a badass...he's great at being a badass, but it's also kinda expected.  The Professionals is certainly Lancaster's show, but there are few films with as strong a cast - each man (and one lady) gets their moment.  Imagine The Wild Bunch minus the grotesque i.e. violence as Adventure!

25.  Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005):  One of my many reoccurring rants around here is my stance against Superhero Origin movies - they're boring!  Been there, done that.  'nuff said.  So, why in the world is my all time favorite Comic Book movie an origin story???  Well, because in the 75 years of Batman's time on Earth, we've never been given the full story on Bruce Wayne.  Yep, before Batman Begins even the comic books only told a partial story.  Not to mention the fact that because we've had so many incarnations of Batman over the years, an origin story was actually a fresh approach to the character.  I love The Dark Knight, I dig Rises, and I even appreciate the Clooney travesty.  The Brave & The Bold and "Holy Adam West, Batman!"  But this is Bruce Wayne's story.  No other film comes close to that kind of human focus.  Plus, the way Nolan & Goyer snake the theme of fear through the story is outstanding.  A child's fear leads to his parents' murder, that fear becomes the child's armor, and that armor becomes Gotham's Knight, it's savior from the forces of darkness.  The first time I saw Batman Begins will go down as my All Time Favorite theatrical experience.  While attending the Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con, I was one of a lucky few who won tickets to see an advanced IMAX screening of Batman Begins.  I've never been more thrilled to be part of a crowd; several hundred nerds cheering, rooting, and screaming as the caped crusader finally got his story told proper.

24.  First Blood (Ted Kotchef, 1982):  The story of two generations of soldiers, the good war vs the bad war.  I know it's hard to imagine in this Expendables era, but once upon a time Sylvester Stallone was considered a Renaissance Man.  Before he got 'roided & sequeled out, Stallone made a career out of emotionally gripping character pieces.  First Blood was the last one...or at least, the last successful one.  A Vietnam vet wanders through town after discovering his last war buddy has died a lonely cancerous death.  A Korean War vet turned constable scoops him up, and attempts to shuffle him down the line so he may not soil the town scenery with his long dirty hair.  An act of disrespect that leads to rage-fueled domestic warfare that's as sad as it is understandable.  John Rambo began his career in cinema as a symbol for the lost, the disaffected, and the traumatized.  This is not the badass action film the sequels would eventually attempt.  First Blood is the story of hurt, and a damn fine one.

23.  Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1943):  I only saw this film for the first time six years ago.  "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."  I'd seen all the clip shows, read all the critic's lists, and I thought I knew what Casablanca was.  Nope.  More often than not, classics are classics for a reason.  Humphrey Bogart is a lost American hiding from himself as much as the war when an old flame walks into his club, and causes all sorts of Nazi trouble.  Bogart is cold & cool in The Maltese Falcon, a cocky braggart in The Big Sleep, and the shlubbiest sadsack loser in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Rick, though, is Bogart's great performance.  He's a selfish jerk, a master of slick wit, a (self)forgotten patriot, and a doomed romantic.  If all you know is the soundbites, do yourself a favor, and treat yourself to one of The Great Movies.

22.  Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987):  An action film, a gorehound's delight, a Frankenstein parable, and a painfully funny satire of 1980s consumerism.  Robocop is one of the strangest bits of outsider art to sneak into mainstream cinemas.  Peter Weller does Karloff proud as a man slaughtered by criminals, and butchered further by corporate scientists.  He's given very little to emote with (a facial slit & Mr Roboto body language), but the film succeeds thanks to Weller's ability to pull the humanity from the cyborg. Then you have Kurtwood Smith & his gang of goons.  Never has there been a better collection of psychopathic villainy.  Verhoeven revels in the monstrosity of man, he takes glee in showcasing the vile & despicable, and then he projects triumph through violence.  Politically correct?  Hell no!  It's cool though.

21.  2001 - A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968):  My experience with this movie is probably like a lot of folks my age.  At 15, I didn't "get it."  At 20, I thought I liked it until it went Beyond The Infinite.  At 25, seeing it for the first time on the Uptown's Big Screen, I was in awe of the cinematography and the pulsating soundtrack.  At 35, I worship it's attempts at understanding the question of man via science fiction & metaphor.  I don't claim to understand the Star Child any better than I did at 20, but maybe in another decade or so I will.  I certainly look forward to rewatch after rewatch.  2001 is a rare event, a film that evolves as you do.  You gotta cherish that.

--Brad

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

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

Matt’s Week in Dork! (2/17/12-2/23/13)

    I scraped out my penny jar and went out to see a matinee with Ben, Brad, and Paul on Sunday morning.  Five dollars.  Not too bad.  We saw the new Die Hard film (review to follow).  But what I really took away from it was how bloody awful the trailers were.  Scary Movie 6?  Holy crap, it looks terrible.  Like Donovan’s Reef, where you see where you know everyone must have thought they were being funny, but can’t for the life of you figure out why.  And then…the trailer for The Heat.  Good sweet crap.  It’s like looking in to the abyss, and knowing in your very soul that it looks back at you.  Every moment of the trailer was like having my scrotum wound up on a spinning wheel.  Only really unpleasant.  Anyway, I really don’t know how I got so many movies and such in this week.  Because I also did a lot of reading and some writing.  Not to mention some solid music listening time.  Whatever the case, it was a good week.

A Good Day to Die Hard:  Look, I’m gonna say something that will almost certainly earn me some hate, and I know frustrates the crap out of my co-Dork Brad.  I really like the first Die Hard film.  It’s a fun, silly 80s action movie with lots of cool stunts and stuff blowing up (though not even one of my favorites of that time/genre).  But I absolutely HATE Die Hard 2 in every way.  And I think the rest of the sequels are stupid, though mildly entertaining.  This new one is no different.  The script is crap.  The acting (most likely because of the script) is crap.  And yeah, it feels PG-13, because except for one bit of CG blood, the violence is very restrained.  But a lot of stuff blows up, and frankly, that’s all I expect from this series.  They’re not good.  Honestly, they’re not even memorable.  And I never find myself thinking, “I need to watch a Die Hard film.”  I think the only one of the sequels I’ve ever seen a second time was 2, and that was because Brad wanted me to give it another try (still didn’t like it).  Beyond the first one, they’re all pretty meh.  And so it is with this latest entry.  I had fun watching it, but in a week, I won’t remember it. (edit: this latter prediction was brilliantly prescient -Matt of 5 days later).

Destroy All Planets:  Gammera doesn’t think too much of aliens in their striped ball-rings.  Wacky fun ensues when two boy-scouts play havoc with a submarine.  Like some late Godzilla films, this one relies WAY too much on stock footage, showing large chunks of previous films’ Gammera battles in order to pad its run-time.  Clearly, a solid script would have been a bit more helpful.  Once the kids get on the alien ship, it gets a bit better.  Actually, everything that’s not monotonous stock footage is pretty good.  The aliens are freaky.  And it’s kind of horribly violent.  But it also finds a giant turtle riding a giant squid-alien like a jet ski, so all’s fair, I guess.

Attack of the Monsters:  “You’re dumb.”  Trouble makers are out looking for a space ship when they get more than they bargained for.  By this point, these Gammera films were pretty much goofy kids films.  None of the seriousness of the first couple is left.  And having the little kids as leads is rough.  The crappy marching music that plays continuously is aggravating.  I like that this one goes to another world, which makes for plenty of weird things to see.  This is another one of those movie from this era where people don’t seem to know the difference between various cosmic bodies.  In this case, stars and planets seem to mean the same thing.  I remember seeing a lot of movies that talk about going to other galaxies, when really they were talking about other star systems.  Seems basic, but I guess looking in books was too hard.  Whatever the case, untrustworthy space babes are always a concern when traveling between worlds.  Keep watch!

Mmm.  Brains!

Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (aka An American Love Story):  Entirely too made-for-TV.  Though the story of Jefferson and Hemings could make for a fascinating movie, this ain’t it.  Sam Neill is dashing (in a sophisticated intellectual sort of way) as Thomas Jefferson, and Carmen Ejogo is ridiculously fetching as Sally Hemings.  This had to have been a complex and fascinating love affair, as Jefferson was a complicated dude, and from what I’ve read, Hemings was quite a woman.  However, here we have Jefferson seeing a beautiful woman and wanting her.  I have to imagine if it was just a beautiful woman he wanted, he could have had his pick.  And while Ejogo is amazingly beautiful and seems to be a talented enough actress, there isn’t enough in the script to make her seem like someone interesting enough to woo Jefferson.  It comes off as, well as what it is, a Hallmark made for TV movie.  It feels a bit like a visit to a theme park, like all the surface is there, but the content missing.  The old age make-up is generally not good, mostly looking like people have lumps of clay splashed on their faces.  In the end, it’s a different look at Jefferson than one might be used to, though again, not a very deep one.  I feel like there was so much more that could have been done here.  Instead, what we get is one of those high school text book renditions of history.  A few dates, a few names, a couple of anecdotes for color, and done.  No heart or passion.  No dirt under the nails.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers:  “I don’t have any friends, Doctor Kibner.”  The original is a classic.  But this is one of those rare-breed, serious, and worthy remakes.  Starting on some distant planet, we see weird alien life launch into space, like plant or fungal spoor.  It eventually descends on our unsuspecting world in a rain storm, and the horror begins.  Right from the start, there is an unsettling, off balance feel to the movie.  Weird angles, suspicious faces, and creepy lighting.  Paranoia is whipped up with gusto.  This is a story archetype that is one of the fundamentals of science fiction.  Who can you trust?  Is the person you know and love really who you think they are?  Or are they something else, something sinister and alien?  On of the more obvious and frequent uses of the concept was in the anti-Communist films so popular in the 50s, but it goes far beyond that, becoming a timeless look at our fears of the Other.  We can never really know who someone is outside of ourselves.  And can we really know even that?  And this is 70s PG, so there is some strong language, some pretty nasty violence, and a bit of nudity.  It really isn’t a kid-friendly film.

Just Before Dawn:  The 70s weren’t quite over for the makers of this film.  Was there some kind of subconscious fear of rural life, or the ‘country’ that had infected city folk?  So many movies about the horrors of leaving the city were being made.  Right off, this has a dash or two of Texas Chainsaw.  But the way it’s shot actually reminds me of early Sam Raimi (remember when he was good?) and early Peter Jackson.  In fact, the very opening, looking down through the hole in the roof of an ancient chapel felt right out of Peter Jackson’s low budget horror days.  Greg Henry leads a group of young people into the mountains for some camping.  George Kennedy is the local ranger who warns ‘em not to go.  Them woods got the giggling fat guys in ‘em, and nobody wants that.  Not to mention all the twins.  And as The Slammin’ Salmon tells us, twins are disgusting, man (not my actually feelings, all you twins out there).  It doesn’t really cover any new territory.  This was all well explored country by 1981.  But, it still has a certain charm.  And while I can’t say I especially liked any of the characters, unlike most modern horror movies, I didn’t dislike them.  Plus, Deborah Benson is cute, especially when she lets her hair down.

Prince Valliant:  “Don’t bring in religion to confound me!”  The venerable comic gets a 50s Technicolor treatment, staring a young Robert Wagner.  Throw in Janet Leigh (good golly, but she’s lovely in this, and Debora Paget is nothing to sneeze at, either) and James Mason, and you’ve got something.  It’s Christian Viking VS. Pagan Viking in a duel for the hearts and souls of Scandia.  The locations are beautiful, enhanced occasionally with some pretty good mat paintings.  One thing that old adventure films have taught me is that I need to do more wandering/adventuring.  Because that seems to be the surest way to stumble upon beautiful women bathing, who will quickly fall in love with you.  It’s weird seeing King Arthur portrayed as an old man.  I just don’t think of Arthur as old.  He should have died in the prime of his life.  Whatever the case, this is very much in the style and spirit of those other vibrant and somewhat cartoony medieval adventure films, like the Errol Flynn Robin Hood.  It reminds me a bit of that sequence in Time Bandits when they meet John Cleese, and he’s in that ridiculous costume.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance:  “He’s mocked my dirks.” This is one of those films that explores the oft repeated cinematic mistake of screwing with your hired killer.  If movies have taught me anything, it’s that you should always treat your exceptionally competent and deadly help with respect.  If you have a great hitman (or woman) in your employ, and he or she chooses to retire, you give them a care package, a nice bonus, and send them a Christmas card every year for what you hope is a long life.  If your executioner does a fine job of taking some princeling’s head off, but it becomes politically embarrassing at a later date, you don’t take it out on him, you simply accept that these things happen, be honest, and move on (maybe take the executioner out to dinner at a nice place…nothing too fancy…just to show that everything is A-OK).  But don’t kill his wife, or threaten his kid, or sick assassins on him.  Don’t go to some mountain village and kill his master or have his brother shot in the street.  These things may seem like good ideas in the heat of the moment.  But they are not.  Anyway, the movie is pretty cool.  Very stylized, with extreme sound design and buckets of blood.  The violence is pretty extreme.  The duel in the sun drenched field is a nasty highlight.  There are some crazy dismemberments in this movie.  If Akira Kurosawa’s work was inspired by John Ford, I think these movies were inspired by Sergio Leone.

The Island:  “It is no fun in an airplane with a 400lb sow gone ape-shit.”  This movie is crazy.  Crazy.  Michael Caine is a stressed out reporter on a quest to find out what’s up with a bunch of missing boats.  He hires the greatest pilot ever to take him and his boy to the Caribbean.  In the meantime, some sort of nutty killer is roving the waters with a burning crown.  Oh, yeah.  Then things get weird.  I would actually avoid reading up on this movie before you see it.  Not knowing where it’s gonna end up is probably a lot more fun.  Overall, it doesn’t live up to the madness of its first 15 or 20 minutes.  But it’s oddly enjoyable anyway.  The violence in the opening is pretty extreme.  The rest of the movie tones it down several notches.  And the music?  That’s crazy and seemingly inappropriate.

El Condor:  Jim Brown and Lee Van Cleef are a dirty pair, out for loads of gold in this odd Western.  Van Cleef is ultra-goofy and spastic, which is odd to see.  And Brown isn’t playing suave, as he normally would.  Lots of killing and shooting.  Some very odd bits.  A bunch of good twists and turns and back stabbings.  Frankly, this was a far better movie than it seemed to be, and much more than I was expecting.  It was nice seeing Van Cleef in such a different role.  And though he gets more serious and more ‘smooth’ as the film goes on, Brown is a bit goofy in the beginning, too.  The women are lovely, and there’s a surprising amount of nudity for a movie of its time.  The violence is pretty nuts, too.

Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord- Terror of the Veroids:  The first story to feature Mel (gah!) finds the Doctor and his companion on a space ship loaded with mystery.  Mel is this perky nightmare of frizzy 80s vacuousness.  I think I had tuned out of the show at this point when it was on PBS in the 80s, because my first memory of her was with Sylvester McCoy.  Dang, she’s aggravating.  Still, when the pod people start a rampage, things got rolling.  The overall story is not too bad.  It’s very Agatha Christi.  The whole season, with its trial frame story is kind of blah.

"I look like a what!?"

Branded:  This satire about advertising, politics, image, and business takes on a bedtime story feel, with a calm, mellow narrator.  Setting it in Russia helps capture all that crazy Cold War history, and the Orwellian boogieman of the State as God.  The speech about how Lenin created marketing with his propaganda to sell Soviet Communism, and how everyone else learned from that is pretty spot on.  There are elements of Brazil, and as one comes to expect in films like this, Kafka, and for some reason, I kept thinking about The Hudsucker Proxy, and by the end, Videodrome.  Like a good bedtime story, it features a weird, transformative quest of a hero who must find himself in order to battle great evil.  Will or can anyone understand the transformed man and the message he brings?  While this movie is kind of a smorgasbord of previously used ideas, it manages to take those ideas in some interesting ways.  Certainly non-standard ways.  Does the ending ring a bit false?  Yeah.  But again, it’s like a fairy tale, and fairy tales often wrap up in less than believable ways.  I can’t say that the film is any kind of genius, but for what it is, it’s pretty good.  In a way, it feels like all the things Cosmopolis wasn’t.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession:  A documentary about the ground breaking L.A. channel that helped bring movies of all kinds to viewers, presaging HBO, Showtime, and the rest.  Wrapped in that is the tragic story of one of the channel’s driving forces, Jerry Harvey, a mad genius.  The wide breadth of what the channel showed made it like a televised version of The AFI theater, or Criterion collection.  From trash to art, from foreign to simply unusual, it showed movies many would never otherwise see or even be able to see.  Sometimes giving movies that bombed a second shot at life, showing what would eventually be known as ‘directors’ cuts.’  Seeing this makes the movie lover in me so  hungry for a taste of all these great movies, and reminds me of the pleasure I receive in sharing my love of film with others.  Obviously, there’s though, as you know from the start that it ends in death, both for the Z Channel and for its tempestuous champion.  Jerry’s life is a depressing spiral that ended where all too many spirals end.  His passion for film and for sharing it was impressive.  But the man suffered from severe mental illness.  Interviews with actors and directors who had their work shown, as well as co-workers and personal friends of Harvey give a human side to the story, both on the part of those involved and those who were effected.  It was an emotional film, and you can see it raw in faces of his friends, who still can not fully reconcile the good times with his violent and ugly exit.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx:  “Gyaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!”  Our strange heroes are back, eating dumplings and taking names.  This series of films features an especially bleak vision of feudal Japan, where danger lurks in every glance, life is cheap (if it costs anything at all), and everyone is unhappy like it’s their job.  Samurai films in general owed a lot to Westerns, but this series feels like it’s got more than a dash of Film Noir, not in visual style, but ugly human action.  Like the first film, this one features extremely disturbing use of sound design, and for that matter, its own visual language.  The film certainly reiterates that classic advice, I think it was from Aristotle, ‘watch out for crazy bitches.’  The cackling lady and her deadly maidens are not a group to run afoul of (or work for), ninja or no.  If I ever have a kid, I’m getting that stroller.  You can see pieces of this film in many other later movies.  What’s really weird though, is that this movie (trippy as it is) is much less trippy than the first one.  And as I sit her watching what I’m watching (the Three Storms just killed the Wolverines!), that mere fact speaks volumes.

    Started watching season two of Game of Thrones.  So far, so good.  Maybe a bit much on the sex.  I mean, it’s not the later books of Niven’s Ringworld we’re watching, right?  Still, I’m digging it.  And I like a lot of the new cast.  Hope they fare better than some of last season’s.

    I finally got back into Fraggle Rock.  Seriously, one of the best television shows for kids ever.  It’s the perfect blend of thoughtful, ethical, creative, funny, and stamped with that intangible Jim Henson genius.  And it’s not condescending.  I think that’s why I can watch it as an adult and still feel that wistful sense of childhood wonder.  If the stars shifted, water changed course, and the pressures of evolution ever let up, allowing me to have children, this is the kind of thing I’d want them to see.

    On Sunday afternoon I finished God is Not Great.  A solid read, if not my favorite Hitchens book.  Still, gets the blood pumping.

-Matt