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*NEW* Cloverfield
(2008)
Cloverfield’s biggest problem lies not in its monster, but in its characters. It astounds me that cult-y screenwriter Drew Goddard (Buffy, Lost, Alias) actually thought the average movie-goer would find the film’s group of young Manhattan douchebags at all relatable. How many 25 year olds own swanky lofts in downtown NYC with full bars and nightclub lighting? How many of ‘em land jobs as Vice presidents of whatever in Japan and have doe-eyed girlfriends who just happen to look like the chick from South Beach? I mean, besides coke dealers and hot-shot Buffy scriptwriters? Precious few, I’d reckon, but the first 15 or so minutes of the film plunges you right into their breezy Bright Lights, Big City world, as Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) is thrown a good-bye surprise party by his plucky, casually gorgeous gal-pal Lily (Jessica Lucas) at his aforementioned luxury bachelor pad. Rob’s BFF Hud (TJ Miller) spends the evening with a video camera, shooting goodbye testimonials and setting us up for the Blair Witch-ian shaky-cam hijinks we’ll be sloughing through for the next 90 minutes. Beth (Odette Yustman) is the girl that Rob has loved since fifth grade, but of course, has never told her. Yep, that old gag. So that’s the set-up. I have never wanted to get out of a room so much in my life as I did queasily bobbing and weaving around Rob’s lame-ass rich kid party. Anyway, you know the rest. The monster attacks, the city gets torn asunder, and Rob’s party flees into the streets. Eventually, after some drama in an electronics shop, Rob, Lily, Hud, and Hud’s Nancy McKeon-esque love interest Marlena (Lizzy Kaplan, AKA Janis Ian, the cool-weird chick in Mean Girls) decide to rescue Beth, who’s trapped in her apartment in mid-town, ground zero for the monster attack, slowly bleeding to death. I found this to be a very odd choice to make, especially since Beth brought another dude to the party. I think his name was Travis. Why not let just let this Travis clown save her, and head for the fuckin’ hills? So that’s the quest. It’s pretty exciting in parts, especially a sewer-tunnel tussle with bizarre, screamy monster by-products, and more Godzilla-style building smash-ups than an all-night game of Rampage. But despite the uniformly bug-eyed, goin'-for-it performances of the young thesps, their asshole-ish characters are drawn paper-thin, so you’re never very invested in their plight. Still, it’s a white-knuckle ride for most of its running time, and with one glaringly phony-baloney exception, the CGI monster effects are very close to terrifying. You will know said exception when you see it, and it will bum you out, just a little bit. Bottom line? Fun and popcorn-y, much like 2006’s internet hyped hopeful, Snakes on a Plane. And just like that film, it doesn’t exactly live up to the hype. But it’s pretty close. Oh, and the Blair Witch bullshit? I can tell you that one young couple took off about 10 minutes in at the theater I was at, so it’s obviously not for everyone. I didn’t mind it too much, though. I didn’t throw up, or anything. Ha. I hope they put that on the poster. -Sleaze
*NEW*
Darkon The Movie
(2006)
Specifically, it follows a group of LARPers named Darkon who do battle in public parks in Baltimore. The film features extended ‘battle’ scenes intercut with interview segments that humanize the hooded beardos on the battlefield. The one factor that seems to unite all the Darkons is a dissatisfaction with their personal lives. Most of them appear to toil in low-level retail and service jobs. Several of them are hurtling towards 30 and still live with their parents. Friends on the outside are scarce. Sex is not often an option. And so, they fight, in great swooping battles with foamy weapons and hand-cobbled armor. At times, the battles look like an episode of American Gladiators that’s gone hopelessly off the tracks. It’s a deceptive sort of chaos, with winners and losers clearly staked out via the roll of what is probably some fancy-ass twelve sided dice. But underneath the translucent gauze of rules and regulations there’s an endless web of tiny conspiracies, a black market of spells and weaponry, and good old fashioned treachery to keep things interesting. Amazingly enough, despite the physicality of these exercises and all the sometimes openly hostile war-speak, the soldiers and schemers of Darkon still manage to shake hands and remain friends after the fake-fights are over. If only real life strife could be this civil. But then again, that’s always been the case with nerds and their teeth-gnashing reasonalble-ness, hasn’t it? Neel and Meyer picked up a subject so rich in material that all they really had to do is wind these folks up and watch them go. Still, they do manage to infuse a real sense of the epic in the battle scenes, some of which look as though they were lifted straight from some long-lost Italian sword-and-sandal epic. And while it would be easy to paint Darkon’s participants as mere lovable losers, the filmmakers take pains to flesh them out as real people with a quirky hobby that, despite looking nuts, enriches their lives in a very real way. Foam sword stabbingly, bleeding rubber skull-cracklingly good stuff. And of course, this film is endlessly quotable: “Are you going to fight fair, or fight like elves?” “The one thing I will pay greatly for is a supernatural death poison.” “Everything good and noble in this world is gone. It’s been replaced by Walmart.” Etc. I’ve only got the bare-bones screener, so I don’t know about bonus features, but there’s gotta be plenty on the actual DVD. -Sleaze
*NEW*
Savage Planet
(2006)
Nope. Just regular bears that are smarter than the average bear. Like Yogi, only less funny. But no less animated. More CGI bullshit, naturally. There’s a few unintentional yucks along the way, including a fantastically idiotic doomed romance, and in spite of its rank TV-ness, there’s a goodly amount of head choppings. But otherwise, Savage Planet is a brainless, fun-deprived bottom-scraper. 20 years from now it’ll probably be an Ed Wood-ian cult classic, but today, it’s just bad. From the always-working Paul Lynch, who is one hell of a long way away from Prom Night. -Sleaze
*NEW*
Jetboy : The Glam Years Movie
(2007) How much do you know about Jetboy, anyway? If you’re like most rockers that were at least half-awake during the glam daze, then you probably know four things: 1. “Feel the Shake”. 2. The had one of the dudes was from Hanoi Rocks in the band for awhile. 3. The singer had a Mohawk. 4. They got their name from the New York Dolls.
-Sleaze Sweeney Todd (2007) Directed by Tim Burton Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, whoever else. Borat.
Ultimately though, Sweeney Todd left me cold. I felt like I walked into the wrong party. Said party was sort of amusing in spots, and that one ashy girl with the kinky red hair was pretty hot, but overall, everybody was sort of a dandified douche-bag. Like a homicidal drama club.
Whatever. If you have only a sliver of patience for musicals, save it for Repo, A Genetic Opera and leave Sweeney Todd to the goth kids and their moms.
-Sleaze
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) Starring John C Reilly and the Apatow Mafia Produced by Judd Apatow Directed by Jake Kasdan
The story, in case you haven’t turned on anything electrical in the past two months, involves one Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly), a dim-witted, self-possessed hillbilly who accidentally chops his older, more talented brother in half with a machete at a young age, and spends the rest of his life trying to make up for it. Said life is a winding road full of drugs, ex-wives (Kristin Wiig, a lovelier-than-ever Jenna Fischer), and of course, songs. As the decades wear on, Cox’s music spans many a genre, from sciffle and honky tonk in the 50’s, to Dylan-esque folk in the 60’s and bloated psyche-prog and shmaltz in the 70’s. Kinda like Neil Diamond, I guess. If Neil Diamond looked like a constantly perplexed Yogi the Bear.
So, there’s joke-y songs, and lots of overwrought sight gags, some even involving a monkey. The funniest bit in the entire movie was when a roadie offered Dewey some coffee while his cock n’ balls innocently hung a few inches from Cox’s face. But a dangling penis would be hilarious in ANY movie, really, so I’m not sure if that counts. If it doesn’t, than Walk Hard is even less funny.
You know, they’re probably burying all the prints of Walk Hard in the desert in New Mexico anyway, so forget I said anything. Just walk away. Hard.
-Sleaze
We Like To Drink, We Like to Play Rock ‘n’ Roll (2007) The Unband Movie
Fuckin’ assholes.
Two viewings of this, 12 beers later, and here I am at the computer. I’ve been called “retarded” for a lot of things; often for my opinions whenever I feel the need to vent them almost solely for the purpose of angering people I generally consider idiots; looking at serious moments in life and basically finding them absolutely absurd and entirely, as well as to many people, inappropriately hilarious; numerous times by my ex-wife. But I’ve been called “retarded” more times than I can count for my extreme liking of The Unband. To which I reply, “No, the album is called, ‘Retarder.’”
If you have no clue who, or what is The Unband, here’s the summary. It’s three dudes who drink a lot and play rock. The title of the song, and now the film, wasn’t a stretch. They’re unabashed, unashamed rock ‘n’ roll that at one time caught a break from TVT Records and toured with the likes of Motorhead, Dio, Anthrax, Def Leppard and other groups whose fan bases weren’t exactly impressed with short haired dudes in blazers playing three chord rock in front of an exhibitionist drummer. More accurately their sound is punk trying very hard to be AC/DC, but coming off more like Gang Green only much better, or worse, depending on how much you’ve had to drink. This is like the fifth fuckin’ time I’ve written about them, so needless to say, I’ve had a lot.
Basically it starts like many rock docs, in that you get a general background, some praise from peers, before it all devolves into liquor, women, fighting, a band breakup, a band reunion, all under the only basic theme you really need to concern yourself with, drinking and rocking.
Perhaps Supersuckers frontman Eddie Spaghetti’s recollection sums it up best. “They weren’t very good if I recall.” But behind the noise they in fact, were. They were at least decent in the mass amount of live footage shown. Or, I suppose I should say, nothing live sounded all that different from the “Retarder” album, and the music is played as if every show is the band’s last. And by the latter part of the documentary it certainly seems that every show highlighted could be the band’s last. When it all kind of comes down to it, and the debauchery of how the band came to be, how it came to succeed, then fail, then breakup, it’s really as Pierce says, “Your typical Yoko Ono scenario.” Money and women seem to be the cause of the band’s demise, not unlike a million others. Pierce’s ex-girlfriend, Kate, is particularly frightening albeit immensely entertaining considering she’s loaded all the time. She refers to her and Pierce’s relationship as co-dependency, but also “paradise on earth.” Ruffino’s fiancée, Caroline, seems entirely too regular to be involved with the Unband beast at all. They’re together at film’s end, but judging by the “congratulations” I got from him when I told him I was divorced earlier in the year, that may not still be the case. At its heart, “We Like to Drink, We Like To Play Rock ‘n’ Roll” is immensely entertaining. It’s not going to reveal a whole lot if you’re not already familiar with the band, but again, the band doesn’t tend to do that much on its own anyways. In fact, neither do many rock docs, most of which can’t even inspire a stiff drink – which reminds me of the unopened bottle of whiskey in the freezer.
-BJ Lisko
Blade Runner :The Final
Cut
(1982)
I will say this: Blade Runner’s set design is still mind-boggling. Every square inch of every frame is jam-packed with awe-inspiring retro-futurism. As visual wallpaper, it’s amazing. But as an actual film, it’s very slow. Barely anything happens. I napped for a good ten minutes in the final third and did not miss a plot point. In fact, here is the sum total of interesting parts of Blade Runner: Brion James says a bunch of cool stuff in his 'replicant' interview in the opening scene. Pretty much every scene James was in has had some dialogue pilfered by bands over the years, including Guns N’ Roses (“Wake up, Time to Die”), Sigue Sigue Sputnik (“It’s test designed to provoke an emotional response”), and Tricky (“My mother? Let Me Tell You About My Mother”), so his performance has obviously had a pretty lasting effect on the culture. He’s an unrivaled bad-ass here.
The scene where Joanna Cassidy falls through a bunch of plate glass
windows.
Darryl Hannah dresses like Marilyn Manson.
The midgets.
Sean Young. And that’s pretty much it for me. Harrison Ford appears to be zonked on Nytol the whole time, and Rutger Hauer is the least menacing evil robot since Ro-man. You know, the gorilla with the diving helmet head. That guy. So there you go. A classic? Ok, sure. But classics are for nerds, anyway. -Sleaze _____________________________________________________ |
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December 2007 |
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I Am
Legend
(2007)
“Ma! I can’t talk right now!” Which, you know, that’s what voicemail is for, douche. Anyway, Will Smith stands in for Charlton Heston here, and a bunch of bullshit CGI stands in for the albino black guys in capes. Only this version of the story has none of the Omega Man’s camp. It’s deathly serious, and just this side of morose. Same story, though, with a few twists along the way. In this version, it’s a cancer cure gone bad that ends up wiping humanity out. Will Smith survives because he’s the scientist that…what? That part’s confusing. He’s the guy that’s supposed to come up with the cure, but he’s immune to the virus, so wouldn’t he be the cure? And why is Will Smith always so awesome in these movies? Not only is he a scientist, he’s a doctor, a survivalist, a hunter, a carpenter, and he’s in better shape than most professional athletes. Although they do not show it, I suppose he probably also has a giant penis. I mean, it’s enough, already. Will and his dog and his giant penis drive around a desolate NYC shooting deer and broadcasting on AM radio all day, and sleep in the bathtub all night while the baldy monsters run amuck. But when one of the monsters starts getting smarter, ALA Land of the Dead, and when a doe-eyed Brazilian chick blows in from Maryland, than Will’s life of uneasy solitude is turned inside-out. I’ll not spoil the rest, but I will say this for the ending: it’s quite Republican. I bet George W himself would approve. Hell, he might have ordered it up himself. Along the way, though, there’s some pretty spectacular sequences, including a pulse-pounding chase through a dark building that’s as suspenseful and scary as any horror movie in recent memory. Smith is, as always, ridiculously charismatic, and the set design is, at times, astonishing. Director Francis Lawrence is known mostly for music videos, so it’s no surprise that the film mostly rings hollow, but for sheer whiz-bang thrills, it does the job. Sorta like an expensive hooker. And at $11.50 a ticket, that's exactly how it feels. -Sleaze
Juno
(2007)
The film follows Juno through her pregnancy, and we all learn something along the way. The moral? Things don’t always end the way you think they will, and love conquers all. And that should make you feel good. In fact, the only thing that won’t make you feel good is Jason Bateman’s loathsome hipster douchebag character. HG Lewis a better horror director than Dario Argento, Jason? I bid you good day, sir. Fuckin’ jerk. PS: While quite funny, Juno is actually a lot weepier than you’d expect it to be. And the soundtrack is astoundingly fey. PPS: Speaking of teenage pregnancy movies, I suggest you stay as far away from Palindromes as possible, unless you’ve got a lot of Prozac on hand. -Sleaze
Before the Devil Knows
You’re Dead
(2007)
Unbelievable. What? The story? Well, it’s like Reservoir Dogs and the Bad Lieutenant, only with two pussies in the lead instead of Harvey Keitel. And it’s pretty good, except for all the parts where it’s nothing but drink-pouring and corridor walking. Which is about half. I doubt it will garner any nods from the Academy next year, but I’m sure Mr. Skin will be lavishing it with Skin Flutes or whatever they pass out. -Sleaze
Dead Mary
(2007)
DVD
PS: When grumpy-faced Swain is the prettiest girl in the movie, we are in trouble. You can keep your pants on for this one, that's for sure. -Sleaze
Teenagers from Outer Space
(1959) DVD
The story involves a bunch of very dick-ish spacemen, who show up in the California desert one afternoon. They drop out of the sky in a tiny 6-foot flying saucer, but it’s roomy inside, sorta like Oscar the Grouch’s garbage can. There’s half a dozen “teenagers” from outer space (average age of the actors playing teens: 27), including King Moody (Twinkie Doodle from the Dark Backward!) as the brooding space captain, and David Love as Derek, the sensitive spaceman. Derek appears to be massively, 150% gay, yet he’s the only one with a love interest - Betty (Dawn Bender), a skinny, big-eyed sweetheart with an insane haircut who falls instantly in love with Derek even though his buddies are running around town zapping people into skeletons with a raygun. Why? Because they are here to breed giant lobsters for food on their planet. Lobsters! So a bunch of dumb stuff happens, and at one point, Gramps has trouble crossing the street, so he waves his arms around. I don’t know why, but this was officially the funniest cinematic moment Stacey and I witnessed in 2007. It was tremendous. The ending was weepier than it should have been. The lobster shadow was very underwhelming. Derek Love did not take on any other roles, gay spacemen or otherwise. Gramps did a few Ed Wood movies, which this resembles very closely, and then he died of cirhossis of the liver in 1968. Imagine the stories ol’ Harvey had to tell before he kicked. Apparently, there’s a documentary about this film called “The Boy From Out of This World” due out in spring of 2008. I can’t wait. Classic garbage, well worth a look. -Sleaze
Learning Curve
AKA
Detention
(1998)
DVD
Nice concept, but where does it go? Well, it does not devolve into torture porn. That’s probably because it’s ten years old. If it was made last year, they’d be forced to eat each other’s eyeballs, I’m sure. No, it takes a very strange about-face and suddenly turns into one of those Denzel Washington type movies, where the kids start actually learning something and become better people. Well, better people that are locked in electrified cages. The ending had a neat twist, which I did not see coming. The whole film is pretty twisty, actually, and despite being very low budget and littered with hammy 20-something scooped right out of drama class, I found it to be a pretty compelling ride. It’s very original stuff, a jet-black comedy played as straight as any high-school-kids-gone-bad drama. Fun stuff. I bet it’s probably a huge cult favorite among disgruntled teachers everywhere. -Sleaze
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First of all, don’t sweat it. Despite the maddening hype,
Cloverfield is
pretty much spoiler-proof. There is no stunning revelation to uncover.
It’s got a big monster, and he (or she, who knows?) is fucking up mid-town
Manhattan, big-time. And that’s it. What’s the monster look like? A
monster. You’ve seen them before. This one is just like the rest of them. 
And that’s actually a pretty good amount of stuff to know about a
lower-tier flash metal band, isn’t it? I mean, how much do you know about
Johnny Crash? Anyway, if you pick this up, you will get the proverbial,
Paul Harvey-esque ‘Rest of the story’. The meat of this two disc set is a
live show from the Whiskey in 1986 that appears to be sourced, as many
live visual documents of the day were, from a camcorder. So it’s a little
splotchy, and the audio is as thin and runny as powdered milk, but the
band’s performance is fiery, and the songs are tasty nuggets of deep-fried
glam cheese sprinkled with pop-sugar. They even toss in a suitably bitchy
cover of Wayne County’s “(If You Don’t Wanna Fuck Me Baby) Fuck off” to
end the night’s frivolities. A fun and lively set that will remind
old-skull glamsters of the simple joys of flashy 80’s metal. There’s a
second audio disc included that’s jam-packed with rough n’ ready early
demos of Jetboy faves like “Don’t Mess With My Hair” and “Fire in My
Heart”, and it’s even got a smattering of brand new tracks, including a
nuclear-powered “Feel the Shake 2007”. So all that’s cool. But probably
the big draw for most fans here is disc one’s main bonus feature, an
hour-long documentary featuring interviews with all the original players
who tell the whole sordid story, from discovering their punky lead singer
in a pile of puke behind the Mahubay Gardens in 1983 to getting
unceremoniously dropped from their major label deal just a few years later
and beyond. It’s not the most harrowing, star-studded rock n’ roll story
ever told, but if you’re a fan of the band, it will answer all those
nagging questions you’ve been wringing your hands over since 1986. 
I
could have done without all the singing, really. I understand that it’s a
musical, slightly modified from Stephen Sondheim’s long-running Broadway
adaptation, and I am fine with that. But if a movie is going to be
wall-to-wall with songs, they should at least be good. They should have
some pizzazz. Like Camp, for example. Or Hair.
Cry Baby, maybe. Those had good songs. What about whatever
that musical was that had “One Night in Bangkok”? That was a snappy tune.
The songs here drone on forever, and they’re relentless. It never stops.
It’s like the rain in Seattle, it just goes on forever. Anything anybody
does in this film is described, in excruciating detail, in song. After
awhile, it’s pretty ponderous. Also, Depp’s look is spot-on Dave Vanian,
which is ok, but a little plagiaristic. Otherwise, it’s got lots of
graphic throat-slitting, and Helena Bonham Carter’s death scene is way
more horrific than you’d expect. I’m assuming you knew she was going to
die. It’s not a big mystery. Anyway, it’s gross. But the blood is cool.
Well,
despite one of the most aggressive ad campaigns I’ve seen since the
equally doomed Grindhouse, Walk Hard tanked at
the box office. Did it deserve its short and violent death? Sorta. While
it is literally littered with all your fave Apatow-ians, from Paul Rudd to
Martin Starr to Jonah Hill, Walk Hard lacks the improv-y verve of
Knocked Up and Superbad. Instead, it is mired in
two, count ‘em, tired old comedy genres at once: the Airplane-esque
kitchen sink slapstick gag-athon, and the Spinal Tap-ish
absurdist rock-mockumentary. Both styles have been sucked dry of all
flavor decades ago, leaving Walk Hard the cinematic equivalent of used
beef jerky. And you don’t wanna suck on used beef jerky, do you? 
God damnit. I didn’t
want to drink tonight. But of course, a night I designate as “recovery,”
in a very loose sense, there in the rusty tin box at the end of the
driveway is the documentary of The Unband, “We Like To Drink, We Like to
Play Rock ‘n’ Roll.” 
Director
Sidney Lumet is often referred to as a “master filmmaker”. I’m
assuming this is because he helmed Network and Dog Day Afternoon,
as opposed to say, The Wiz or that Gloria bullshit with
Sharon Stone. Anyway, he’s good. Knows what he’s doing. He’s also quite
aged at this point, and may no longer have his finger on the pulse of the
culture. Life moves more quickly now than it did in 1975, so when we
Phillip S. slowly pours a drink, and then even more slowly sips it, the
more manic among us will have already left the theater in pursuit of pussy
or blow or something more stimulating. But if you can deal with the
languid pace, there is a very good reason to sit through this dreamy,
fractured, non-linear heist-gone-wrong flick. And that reason is Marisa Tomei’s tits. She has two nude scenes in this film. The first, which
happens to be the opening scene of the film, has her getting doggied,
hard, by Hoffman. In fact, Hoff’s very pasty and sorta flabby ass is
figured even more prominently that Marisa’s, but no matter. Marisa’s tear
drop shaped breasts are so sublimely perfect that even rampant man-ass
cannot ruin the scene. Later on, she stomps around the room in a post-coital
scene with Ethan Hawke, Hoff’s sniveling little brother in the film. She’s
fucking both of ‘em, see. Anyway, in that scene, she’s wearing black lace
panties and nothing else. Sweet. I mean, just look at these things: 
This was
not directed by conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson. If it
were, I’m sure it would have been better. No, this was made by plain ol’
Robert Wilson, the visionary behind 2006’s Warriors of Terra, a
snooze-inducing, Peta-inspired Scanners rip-off. This time around, he
riffs on the old Bloody Mary/Candyman/Beetlejuice gag, where-in the
hapless party animal stares into the mirror, utters the title words three
times, and conjures up a deadly apparition. But first, he assembles six or
seven wholly unlikable 20-somethings in a cabin and has them bicker,
uneventfully, for a full 43 minutes. Then, finally, somebody wanders into
the bathroom and starts up the Dead Mary bullshit. The rest is vaguely
Evil Dead-ish, minus the gore and humor. So, there you go. Oh, and the end
of the movie is abrupt and senseless. Much like this review. 
So, this is a zero-budget black and white sci-fi howler from the 50’s,
which is usually snoozetime for me, but despite it’s lame not-special
effects (seriously, a fucking SHADOW?), goofy script and wooden
performances, this one stills charms and provides lots of probably
unintentional laughs, mostly at the expense of the bumbling Gramps (Harvey
Dunn), who shines like a diamond in every scene. 
Wilson Walmsley
(Davies) is a substitute high school teacher in some awful suburb
somewhere. The kids all act like the punks in Class of 1984 – they make
the nerdy kid pee himself, they attempt to rape the art teacher (then they
beat up the art teacher), they bring guns to class, and they swear
constantly. It’s a mess. Turns out the teacher that Wilson was subbing for
had a heart attack and died, so now these monsters are his responsibility.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it really works, but whatever. Wilson
tricks them into thinking they all got paid internships on soap operas and at
NASA for the summer (don’t ask), but instead he locks them up in electric
cages and force-teaches them. The kids wake up naked (excellent breasts shots,
but copious ballsacks and penises, as well) and are forced to listen to
“Mickey” by Toni Basil for 24 hours straight. If they touch the bars on
their cages, they get shocked so badly it knocks them out. If they sass
their teacher/captor, they are denied food, or shocked, or shot dead on
the spot. This is a very strict summer session.