A Fistful of Names! (Brad's Picks)

So apparently boys won't go see a movie called "A Princess of Mars" and girls won't see a movie called "John Carter of Mars" so what we genre fans are left with is a potential sci-fi epic shoehorned with the innocuous title of just "John Carter."  So, shall we write it off?  Not so fast, there have been plenty of films plopped with bland Name titles that have ruled all kinds of crazy brilliance.  Here are five of my favorites.

5.  Rambo:  It had been twenty years between installments, but when Sly Stallone stepped behind the camera for the fourth entry in the Rambo saga he unleashed a beast of a film.  Vietnam Vet Rambo, John J has been hiding out in the jungles since his Afghanistan Commie War of the third film and was just waiting for a batch of wimpy Christian missionaries to get captured by psychotic Burmese despots so that he could spend 90 minutes of runtime butchering and machine gunning every baddie in sight.  Part IV is a bloodbursting exploration of pentup domestic rage and it puts a great big smile on this 80s Action Movie Junkie.

4.  Remo Williams:  Based on the adventure novel series The Destroyer, Remo Williams is an NYPDer who fakes his death to join ranks with Joel Gray's Korean zen Kung Fu master...yeah, you heard me right.  This is the goofy type of pretentious Do-Goodery that I just ate up as a kid and when he's fighting for CURE atop the Statue of Liberty in an effort to "preserve the Constitution by working outside of it" you'll be hollering for the good ol' days of Commie Smashing.

3.  Flash Gordon:  Speaking of goofy...Dino's Flash Gordon is the king of the smiley meat heads as he uses football to battle Ming The Merciless and save the planet Earth from total annihilation.  Along the way he scores with alien and reporters, crosses swords with Timothy Dalton and howls along with Brian Blessed.  Plus, Queen trumpets his every punch.  80s cheese at its finest.

2.  Foxy Brown:  Okay, not as badass as Coffy, but Foxy Brown wins in the realm of the iconic.  After her boyfriend is executed, Pam Grier becomes a prostitute to seek revenge against the drug dealing madame who put him in the ground.  Both Brown & Coffy give Grier perfect opportunities to show off her beautifully intense rage face, but her turnaround from that horror show shack in the woods in Brown is an amazingly cringy action set piece.  When she takes those two pervs out it's a violent crowd pleaser.

1.  Tom Horn:  Yep, I've been ranting & raving about Tom Horn a lot lately.  To see my love fully explored check out my Western Review over at cineAWESOME!  But it really is the quintessential West Gone By cowboy picture and Steve McQueen was never better than he was as the titular hero of this tragic tale.

--Brad

A Fistful of True Stories! (Brad's Picks)

Dillinger by Gary Roberts

One of my cinematic pet peeves is the reverence we as movie goers give to films "Based on Actual Events."  Take for example, this weekend's release of Drew Barrrymore's whale movie Big Miracle.  Isn't it wonderful and heartwarming how the Soviets and Americans put down their differences to help save a couple of ice trapped whales?  Bleck.  Once a "True Story" is filmed it's about as real as Battlefield Earth. The very act of telling turns Truth into Fiction.  My favorite True Stories are the ones that are "Loosely Based..." flicks that take a Law & Order approach, steal a headline and wrap a film around it.

5.  Ed Wood:  If you've read a single word of this blog than you are well aware that Matt & I are fans of all kinds of Trash Cinema.  Roger Corman might be our favorite purveyor of junkfood, but Ed Wood is the King of Where-There's-A-Will There's-A-Film moviemaking.  And just before director Tim Burton plunged into the unholy hells of the Planet of the Apes remake, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland he made his masterpiece with Ed Wood.  Johnny Depp has never been better as the ignorantly optimistic director and his saga to put Plan 9 From Outer Space on the big screen is one of the most heartwarming stories I've ever experienced.  He gives all us wannabes hope--PULL THE STRINGS!

4.  Dillinger:  Man, how do you pick just one Real Life Gangster picture?  Ask me one day and I'll go with Goodfellas.  Ask me another I'll pick The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.  But right now, my favorite Real Life Gangster flick has to be John Milius' Dillinger.  The film is filled with heaps of manly-ready-to-burst violence and its all personified in Warren Oates' beautifully ugly mug.  The film definitely doesn't have the budget it deserves (look to the future in Michael Mann's Public Enemies theatrics), but Oates feels like a real thug.  A charmer buried within a brute.

3.  Tom Horn:  One of Steve McQueen's last films is also his absolute best.  Based on the probably B.S. autobiography of Tom Horn, McQueen plays a former army scout hired by ranchers to hunt down and execute cattle rustlers.  But he's a little too good at his job and the ranchers eventually turn on the hired killer.  An absolute stunner of a flick and I'm gearing up to watch it again for my Cineawesome series of Western reviews.  If all you know of McQueen is The Great Escape and Bullitt than you should do yourself a favor and check out Tom Horn.  If for no other reason it's got a great exploding head gore effect.

2.  The French Connection:  Yep, The French Connection is loosely based on a series of articles and a book by Robin Moore.  Gene Hackman and Roy Schieder are a couple of brutal cops hellbent on busting up an actual drug trafficking scheme, and this little Law & Ordering provides for not only the first Epic Car Chase, but Gene Hackman's finest hour of scream acting.  For my money, all cop stories must be judged against this film.

1.  Fargo:  The film opens with a title card: THIS IS A TRUE STORY.  And it's the funniest damn thing about Fargo.  The Coen Brothers pull the wool over our eyes, "If an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept."  This was the film that exposed the nonsense of "Based on True Stories" storytelling and I'll always be grateful to the Coens for opening my teenage brain.  And once you get past the Facts, Fargo is a brilliant bit of futile crime fiction.  Oh, that wood chipper.

--Brad