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

Comic Review: The Chimera Brigade Book One

    Regular readers will know that I love the pulps, and a lot of pulp inspired stuff.  Movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Raiders of the Lost Ark; comics like The Rocketeer and Hellboy; and of course adaptations of the originals, like Doc Savage, The Shadow, and the like.  I also enjoy a good referential, alternate history story, like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  So, The Chimera Brigade is right up my alley.   Set in an alternate 1938, where Europe was profoundly changed by the arrival of what seem to be superheroes and villains after the Great War.  Across the Continent, forces are gathering, spies are spying, and trouble is brewing.

    Though the book in no way feels like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that is the most obvious reference when comparing it to something else.  But instead of characters out of Victorian adventure novels, it features a different array of references (from Zamyatin’s We to Orwell’s Big Brother to Meyrink’s Golem), and a very different plot.  I like the setting a lot and am very curious where the plot is going to take the various characters that have been introduced.  The art isn’t amazing, but it’s not bad.  Though not as good, in my opinion, it often reminds me of Mignola’s work on Hellboy.

    Doing a quick bit of research, I found that this is the first of six volumes.  I’m glad that it’s a story that has been completed.  But not I’ve got to wait for it to get translated from the French and published Stateside, which sadly, might take a while.  Because it is only the first of six volumes, this serves primarily as an introduction to the world and to the players, with only hints at the overall story.  It has my attention; hopefully it can hold on to it for however long it takes to get the whole thing out.

The Chimera Brigade: Book One
Authors: Serge Lehman & Fabrice Colin
Artist: Gess
Publisher: Titan Comics
ISBN: 978-1-782-76099-3

-Matthew J. Constantine

A Fistful of Influence! (Matt’s Picks)

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

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

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

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

What could I possibly have found to like in this?

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

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

-Matthew J. Constantine

Brad's Week in Dork! (1/5/14-1/11/14)

Blink and you'll miss it.  That's what this week felt like.  2014 has barely started and I can already feel it slipping away.  I spent a good chunk of it compiling this year's Cinematic Resolutions, but I'm not quite ready to tackle any of them yet - which is certainly foolish if I have any hope in hades of devouring those Godzilla flicks before the latest reboot hits the big screen.  Gotta get hot.  I did manage to finish off Sweet Tooth & begin Grant Morrison's Animal Man.  Feels good to be tackling comics outside of the weeklies, and I hope it's a trend that lasts.  I'm tired of looking at all those unread trades piling up next to the bookshelf - Gotham Central, Doom Patrol, Infinite Kung Fu, Rasl, Swamp Thing, Loveless, and our next entry in the Graphic Novel Book Club, Sailor Twain.  New Year, and I want to refocus some of my dork energy into the other pop mediums.  Let's not forget I'm only halfway through Richard Stark's Parker series, and Darwyn Cooke is already adapting novels beyond my knowledge.  That ain't cool.

"What A World!" & "I'm Melting...I'm Melting!" by Jason Edmiston

I'm not bitching and moaning about the week, it just feels like it lacked focus.  I want to buckle down, but I guess I'm still decompressing from the massive 2013 movie dump I did in December.  This week started with a Late Show Drafthouse screening of Walter Hill's The Warriors.  My buddy Herms was in town from Texas, and it was a blast subjecting his fresh eyes to the Gang War crazy of late 70s New York City.  Yep.  This is the way it was folks.  Fact.  Matt & I also finally got ourselves around to witnessing the atrocity of the latest 47 Ronin.  Oh man.  What a waste.   So...yeah...the real highlight of the week was easily the Alamo 100 Raiders of the Lost Ark screening.  I've seen that film well over a hundred times now (at least 4 on the Big Screen), and it just never gets old.  Me & Indiana Jones?  It's true love.

The Warriors:  "I don't like the way you live." Ok.  I don't love The Warriors.  It's one of those seminal films of my youth that I just never bothered with.  The first time I saw the movie, I was 18/19 and well on my way to being a snooty film freak.  My initial thought back then was that Walter Hill perfected this sort of whacko gang land in his rock opera Streets of Fire.  Still, this film is a bit of a wonder, and I absolutely love its earnestness.  Here's a New York City in which Mimes rove the streets looking for trouble, where Baseball Furies terrify in warpaint, and where hillbillies in roller skates are the toughest dudes on the block. You can't help but chuckle at the sight of skinhead goons marauding about in a Road Warrior wagon. It's all about honor, friendship, and gash....uh...yeah, there are some awkward moments. The Warriors themselves always seem like a bad date away from running a train on their female companion - I know this, cuz our hero Swan says exactly that.  James Remar is the angry tough guy that gets taken off the stage when he fails to rape an undercover police woman.  So yeah, The Warriors, it's not too PC.  It's an icky fantasyland birthed from the same community fear that brought us Bernie Goetz and his cinematic Death Wish.   It's nearly two hours of confused, but somewhat intoxicating outlaw philosophy.  After all, as The Director's Cut clumsily establishes at the start, The Warriors is a story of courage similar to that of the 300 Spartans......uh....wha?

Sweet Tooth Vol 6 - Wild Game:  Gosh darn.  I just could not get past how damn sad this series got.  In a lot of ways it reminded me of Brian K Vaughn's Y The Last Man.  A Post-apocalyptic landscape.  An on-the-road quest to discovery the origin of a plague.  Bonds of friendship.  Bonds of love.   Maybe it's Lemire's somber, sometimes morose art-style, but I could never really connect to any other emotion than sorrow.  Sweet Tooth & Company finally reach their Alaskan destination, but the answers there are typically more ponderous than narratively satisfying.  Lemire writes a helluva page-turner; once I got back into this series, I was racing to the climax.  I love the sequential tinkering he puts his story through, and he's obviously having fun with the medium.  It's painfully refreshing to witness an artist utterly aware of his medium's visual importance.  This is not Brian Michael Bendis with neverending captions and word balloons.  Sweet Tooth is art.   But gloomy as hell, and I can already feel the story leaving my cranium.

Deceptive Practice:  The first time I encountered slight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay was as the narrator of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. That voice. Once heard it will live in your head. The next time I saw Ricky Jay was in David Mamet's Heist. That lead to an obsession with Mamet's films & plays which in turn lead to obsessions with Joe Mantegna, William H Macy, and Ricky Jay. Now for the first time, director Molly Bernstein takes us inside the tricks of Ricky Jay's trade. No, this is not a How-To on his artistry, but a sort of origin tale - a documentary that will drop your jaw in astonishment while also digging a bit into the history of stage magic. I'm a sucker for this type of thing. Penn & Teller. The Amazing Jonathan. Fun stuff. But Ricky Jay is an artist, a genius, and it feels like a privilege to get a peak inside.

Raiders of the Lost Ark:  "You want to talk to god?  Let's go see him together."  You know the deal.  On the verge of another World War, the American Government responds to rumblings of Hitler's Occult shenanigans by recruiting world renowned archeologist/adventurer, Dr. Indiana Jones.  It's an absurd premise born from the whacky pulp adventures of various movie serials, and succeeds thanks to Harrison Ford's uncanny badass charm.  This is one of those exceptional fits of character & actor.  Yes, you can imagine a world in which Tom Selleck traded idol for whip, but that's an offcentered Fringe universe where RC Cola reigns supreme.  No thank you.  The Big Bang Theory recently postulated that the good professor's presence in the narrative achieves absolutely nothing in the plot, but I actually think the futility of the Nazi's scheme adds an extra layer of apocalyptic gloom.  It's not a matter of Indy saving the day, but Indy bearing witness to God's Wrath.  Can't shake it.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is still the all time greatest adventure story.

47 Ronin:  If you're looking for an Asian Adventure with heavy doses of CGI then let me recommend Stephen Chow's Journey To The West.  If you're looking for a few against the many samurai slaughterfest then let me suggest Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins or the obvious Seven Samurai.  But if you're looking for the 47 Ronin saga told exceptionally then you better go with any other dozen retellings such as Kenji Mizoguchi's double feature or even Mike Richardson & Stan Sakai's recent Dark Horse Comic.  Cuz you're not going to want to bother with this one.  This film is nearly as lifeless as Keanu Reeves' performance.  It's a dull flop destined for banishment in the Wal-Mart five dollar bin or the black hole of streaming services.  Maybe some ignorant child will discover a curiosity for the genre after stumbling across it, but that's the best possible future this 47 Ronin can hope for.

21 Jump Street:  "They don't serve vegan in jail, bitch!"  I lost money on this one.  No way did I think a cinematic reboot of a crappy teen beat cop show from the 80s was going to work - especially one fronted by GI Joe's Duke Meathead.  Directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller obviously enjoy a challenge; coming off a hilarious weirdo adaption of the unadaptable children's classic Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, they go foul mouthed, meta absurdist, and weirdly violent for the buddy cop genre.  21 Jump Street is too damn odd to be this generations Beverly Hills Cop, but I appreciate the life & death stakes filtered through a gross-out, silly Superbad sensibility.   And Channing Tatum shines with his role.  He's an adorable idiot wandering the world of nerdom and discovering humanity while Jonah Hill descends into assholehood via the cool crowd.  It's a dumb ass movie with brief hints of legit high school commentary.  Something the original show could never claim.

The Other Guys:  Playing with the same Buddy Cop nostalgia as 21 Jump Street, Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg are the station house dolts that never walk away from explosions while the world champions the heroics of Sam Jackson & The Rock's Lethal Weapons.  But when aiming of the bushes results in a Wile E Coyote-styled roadkill splat, Ferrell & Wahlberg rise to the challenge of gunkata gymnastics.  Although seemingly impossible, The Other Guys is far stupider than 21 Jump Street, but that's the universe of Will Ferrell, and it's impressive how well Mark Wahlberg inhabits the stupid - "I'm a peacock!!!"  The Bernie Madoff social commentary is welcome even when the actual mechanics of the plot get murky.  You're really just hear to watch Wahlberg torture himself over Ferrell's sexual ownership of Eva Mendes.  "Gator don't take no shit."

Cellular:  Based on a story by Larry Cohen (Hell Up in Harlem), written by Chris Morgan (Fast Five), and directed by David E. Ellis (Snakes on a Plane).  Cellular is actually an extremely entertaining thriller that fully commits to its gimmick.  Chris Evans is dragged all over Los Angeles after he answers an unknown caller, and a weak cell signal keeps him at an arm's distance from William H Macy's savior cop.  It all has something to do with corruption, video tape, and Jason Statham's sneering 5 o'clock shadow.  Sure, Cellular is disposable, but it's the perfect film to catch on TNT.

MST3K - Warrior of the Lost World:  "This isn't Mad Max, it's Sad Max."  The Italians know how to pilfer American Cinema better than most modern day Hollywood Suits, but for every Fistful of Dollars or Django, you get two dozen Warrior of the Lost Worlds.  Doing his best Blofeld, Donald Pleasence rules over a post-apocalyptic wasteland with the doomsday threat of Mega Weapon.  Robert Ginty mumbles his way into the heart of Persis Khambatta, and races through the ashes of exploded henchmen while Fred Williamson's reigns fire from above.  I really can't imagine surviving this movie without the Robot Roll Call, and MST3K feasts upon this horrid buffet with great gusto.  Lots of cheap shots, well played.

Tropa De Elite:  "Put your bad face on."  We're just a month away from Jose Padilha's Robocop remake, and as a means of battling my own anxiety, and thanks to my buddy Darren slapping an import blu-ray in my hand, I finally decided to see if all the fuss about Elite Squad is genuine.  Turns out, this is not the balls-to-the-wall shoot-em-up I had been lead to believe.  Elite Squad is an oppressive cautionary tale destined to keep me the hell out of Rio De Janeiro.  After years of battling unstoppable drug trafficking and corruption, Wagner Moura must find a replacement before his baby is born.  His options are a couple of kids facing their own hurdles in a vile system, and whatever the outcome the resolution seems utterly pointless.  Every Drug War story concludes in futility, but few have achieved such heartbreaking pessimism as Elite Squad.  There is plenty of action here, but I left the film more impressed with Padhila's societal assassination than his shaky-cam.  Hopefully he can retain that awareness for the Robocop.

Animal Man Vol 1 by Grant Morrison & Chas Truog:  I've owned these trade paperbacks for three years.  Only now am I tackling them.  Why did it take so long?  I have no idea.  I guess I was just waiting for Morrison to finish up his Batman run before tackling these supposedly iconic stories.  I think I was also nervous that they couldn't possibly live up to their hype.  Well, I'm happy to report, that the first volume of Animal Man is absolutely, utterly, stupendously fantastic.  And weird as hell.  Just the way I like my Morrison.  In the first four issues, stuntman Buddy Baker finally decides that its time to come out of retirement and embrace his mind-bendingly strange animal powers.  He can suck the life essence from any creature in his presence - meaning a bird above can give him flight or an earthworm below can help him regenerate a severed limb.  When he's hired by S.T.A.R. Labs to investigate a giant puddle of monkey meat, Buddy Baker comes face-to-face with an even grosser lost hero of the DC Universe - B'Wana Beast!!!!!  It's an epic clash of the "Oh Dear God" and it's a sobering warning to any reader not ready for Grant Morrison.  This is the deep end kiddies, time to get nuts.  The next issue is a one-shot look into God's Lonely Man, Wile E. Coyote.  Yep, you read that right.  No Looney Tunes character is safe.  You also get the apocalyptic art of Hawkworld, a super villain satirizing of Edgar Allen Poe, and a home invasion from Mirror Master.  Those looking for Superman should take a hike.  I've had a few things spoiled for me, but my understanding is that Morrison's Animal Man only gets better and more bizarre in the next volume.  Can't wait.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/5/14-1/11/14)

    Didn’t get a heck of a lot of movie watching done this week.  I’ve been trying to catch up on some reading and planning for the upcoming return to gaming, and I’ve just been danged tired.  Trying to sleep hasn’t been working out too well.  I did get around to solidifying my list of Cinematic Resolutions for 2014.

The Wolf of Wall Street: There are like eight things on earth that interest me less than Wall Street and stock exchanges, so this movie had an uphill battle to rope me in.  Still, the popping style, funny dialog, and solid performances had me smiling and laughing.  Considering Lawrence of Arabia is one of my all time favorite films, and I only watch the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings, this may be an odd statement.  But the biggest problem I think I had was that the movie was just too long.  It wasn’t boring.  Not really.  Though the second half did drag at times.  But I feel like I got the point, like the message was delivered, but then it just kept going and going and going.  I don’t think, as some critics have said, that this movie is morally bankrupt.  I didn’t feel like the filmmakers were saying this sort of thing was good.  Only that it happens; it happened.  And yes, rich people get away with stuff all the time because they’re rich.  That’s just the way it is.  But within 24 hours of watching the movie, most of it had faded from my memory.  It's something I've seen, and something I enjoyed while watching, but not something that left any kind of mark on me.

Clerks II:  I really, really, really love Rosario Dawson in this.  She’s so danged cute and funny.  The rest of the movie?  Pure Kevin Smith.  If that sounds good to you, you should like this film.  I have to admit, after a few years of trying really hard to be one of the cool kids who liked Kevin Smith films, I realized I don’t.  I enjoyed Mallrats the one time I saw it, but never felt the need to watch it again.  And Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back came out while I was working in a theater, so it holds some kind of place in my heart (I may have even taken a lady friend to it, which might account for the positive vibes).  Otherwise, blah.  He’s still running through the same gags, the same obnoxious half-assed social commentary, the same bunch of dick jokes.  The nerd humor feels forced by this point, almost like self parody.  And shoehorning his wife into the film was…um…weird.  Really weird.  Creepy weird.  It just didn’t work for me.  But then, neither did Clerks or Chasing Amy.  I never felt connected to the 90s and Kevin Smith never left them.  (edit: Upon reflection, I think I’ve figured out one of the things that bothers me about Smith’s work.  He subscribes to that particular 90s brand of pseudo-feminism in which women are ALWAYS right and men are ALWAYS wrong, and if a man doesn’t immediately change any and every aspect of himself to fit what a woman wants, he’s an asshole, and part of the Patriarchy [a shadowy conspiracy that seems an awful lot like the Nazi version of the Jews, running everything from behind some horrible penis curtain].  This is just a half baked theory right now, but I think I might be onto something.)

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Gamera VS. Guiron:  “It’s a planet.”  This one is pretty darned good.  The Gamera movies are more kid friendly (read: shoddy) kaiju movies, and their American releases had some epically bad dubbing.  All the stuff with young Richard Burton cracks me up.  And the ending piano bar thing with eventual host Mike is priceless and weird.  Perhaps not in the upper echelons of the series, but a darned fine entry, none the less.

Raiders of the Lost Ark:  Straight up, one of the best danged movies ever made, and one of the very top action films.  It’s also the film I can trace a great deal of me back to.  At the core of my interests, my loves, and my way of looking at the world, there is Raiders.  Karen Allen was one of my very first crushes, and became a template for the tough, black haired ladies I’ve always found myself falling for.  Indiana Jones became the model for my ideal self (one never achieved).  History, geography, religion, archeology, and fighting Nazi bastards became essential thoughts for young Matt, and paved the way for my life to come.  It’s beautifully shot, tense, funny, action packed, and sweeping.  It’s a true homage to the serials and adventure films and fiction of the 30s and 40s, and a great way to spend an evening.

47 Ronin:  If I were 13 and had never seen any movies about samurai, or any Asian fantasy films, this would probably have been pretty cool.  A good springboard movie for me to get into other, better films.  Unfortunately, I’m nearing 40 and I’ve seen everything in this film done before in much, much better films.  I was hoping for a Pirates of the Caribbean type action fantasy film with a Japanese style.  In stead, I got a made for TV, slow paced retread, with little passion and less excitement.  I liked the look and feel of the film, but the script and the acting were not so good.  And shooting digital made everything look cheap, like soap operas.  Still, it wasn’t awful, just dull.  It should have been much, much better.

    I finally got around to listening to Kate Nash’s new album, Girl Talk.  It’s more polished than her previous work, and very catchy.  She’s talking about the same stuff, bad relationships mostly.  But some of her poor London girl charm is missing, due to that polished, studio sound.  And there’s a weird undercurrent of feminism lip-service, like she’s trying to set herself up as some kind of crusader.  But that feels a bit half-hearted.  Whatever the case, the album is pretty good, and fans of her earlier work should enjoy it.

Despicable Me 2:  I didn’t love the first film, but I enjoyed it just fine.  This second movie is more of the same.  It’s funny, occasionally very funny, and cute.  But at the end of the day, not something I’ll be thinking back on too much.  If you enjoyed the first one, by all means, check this out.

Images:  I guess this film captures the point of view of someone who’s completely insane, but that doesn’t really make for a particularly watchable movie.  There’s little to latch your brain onto, so very little to understand or follow.  Every scene and shot is unreliable, so what does anything matter.  In that classically 70s way, everyone is absolutely awful and emotionally bankrupt.  Just unpleasant.

We Are What We Are:  Writer/director Jim Mickle and frequent collaborator, actor/writer Nick Damici have put together another entertaining, atmosphere rich, modern horror film.  I watched Mulberry Street on a whim, and was shocked that such a silly premise turned out to be such a moody and watchable film.  Stakeland, their follow-up was equally as moody, and also quite entertaining.  And now with We Are What We Are, a remake of a Mexican horror film from a couple years back, they’ve cemented their place as high quality-low budget film makers to watch.  This movie looks better than many big budget Hollywood films, has excellent acting, and a good slow-burn pace.  Mickle isn’t re-inventing the wheel here.  He’s not breaking new ground or making movies that will change the way you think about film.  But he’s making good horror movies.  And that makes him a rare breed these days.  Horror has been a near dead genre since the late 80s, and now I’m starting to feel like there’s still potential in it.

    That’s about it for this week.  A lot of things in life are kind of on hold for a bit right now.  My holiday horror isn’t quite over yet.  Soon.

-Matt

Dork Art: Oscars Legends

The Hero Complex gallery is gearing up to launch their Oscars Legends series this weekend.  Rather than showcasing this year's nominations, the gallery will focus on the Academy's past glories.  You've got your typical stuff like 2001 and Chinatown, but it's the spotlight on Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Incredibles that really got me smiling.  For more artwork and further info click on over to Slash Film.

--Brad