Bad Lieutenant can be hard to watch. It's dark, realistic, and depressing. The main character, a corrupt cop junkie, seems to have no redeeming qualities. But this movie has balls. Metaphorically it has balls because of its blunt portrayal of its subject. Literally it has balls because I saw Harvey Keitel naked.
There isn't any one particular scene that stands out as the sole incriminating piece of evidence to earn the movie its NC-17 rating, but rather the collection of scenes as a whole. It is the entirety of its scenes strewn together, inside of which there is no room for levity or even, perhaps, relaxed breathing. The word "unrelenting" comes to mind. It is a character study of a human train wreck that begins after the initial derailment. We don't get to see what made this cop how he is or how he has maintained a family being the way he is. He just is. And we are allowed to view the drawn out details all the way down to the needle holes.
Since it plays almost documentary-like, we are exposed to scene after scene of drug use and depravity. And because of this narrative structure, the character development actually feels more natural than it otherwise might. We see Keitel's character hit rock bottom and have a crisis of faith of sorts but it doesn't feel cliched. But on the other hand, it doesn't feel satisfying.
It's a difficult movie to watch but if you are interested in intense or unique acting performances then this is definitely worth checking out. I can't imagine that Bad Lieutenant could have been a walk in the park for Harvey Keitel (or any other actor) and he really does a great job in it. He plays a real piece of shit. And I mean that as a compliment.
Today's arbitrary rating declares Bad Lieutenant a five star performance of a zero star lifestyle.
There are characters that you love to hate and then there are characters that you hate to watch. It's a precarious tightrope walk for a character to be so much of an asshole that you hate him and yet be appealing enough to keep you watching and be entertained. Redeeming qualities be damned! Take a look at these ten A-plus A-holes:
HONORABLE MENTION Bruce Campbell as "Snooty Usher" in Spiderman 2 Snooty Usher is the only fiend dastardly enough to defeat Spiderman in any of the three Spiderman movies. And he does it by exploiting his minimal amount of authority to its fullest. He's condescending and self important. And that makes for a great movie A-hole.
#10 Rodney Farva in Super Troopers Rod Farva is a near perfect "asshole" character. He's loud and obnoxious. None of the other characters like or respect him. They barely tolerate him. Anywhere he goes he is bound to cause some sort of disruption. And yet he still thinks he is cooler, funnier, and smarter than everybody else. He's the asshole who thinks he's cool. And that makes for great entertainment.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Wearing his local cop uniform after getting the station shutdown. Not since the treasonous Benedict Arnold plotted to blah blah blah . . . But really it's when he sprays Schlitz everywhere yelling, "FARVA'S NUMBER ONE! FARVA'S NUMBER ONE!"
#9 Roland Alexander in Beyond The Mat This guy is a tub of crap. An accountant who runs an indie wrestling school and promotion, he comes off as a con artist exploiting the dreams of some young aspiring pro wrestlers. Everything about him is sleazy. When he wells up some crocodile tears while thinking of the travesty of some of his students not having pro contracts it makes for one of the best parts of the movie.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Cut in directly after testimony from one of his wrestlers that they sometimes don't get paid at all is a clip of Alexander saying, "they're getting paid after every show and they're lovin' it." He goes on to talk about how generous he is with his payouts.
#8 Lester Diamond in Casino Maybe he's more of a scumbag than an asshole, but I wanted to put him on the list anyway. He's the type of manipulative asshole that can wrap a girl around his finger while everyone else can't figure out what she sees in him. It's so much fun watching this character pretend to be more in control than he actually is. And besides, look at that moustache.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: While trying to plan Ginger's spiteful revenge on her husband by taking their daughter away from him, Lester deteriorates into frustration. The little girl shows him no respect and she can clearly see that this guy is a joke. (And yes, I do realize Joe Pesci was technically a way bigger asshole in Casino. But let me say again in my defense: Look at that moustache.)
#7 Rostov in Invasion USA Rostov might seem like any other action movie bad guy. He's a terrorist who wants to launch an armed invasion of the United States. He has henchmen at his disposal, a cold heart, and a score to settle with Chuck Norris. But where he differs from your standard action movie villain is that he seems to love shooting people multiple times directly in the penis.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Every time he shoots a guy twenty times in the pecker.
#6 Walter Peck in Ghostbusters Walter Peck, the smug face of the EPA, is the kind of asshole who thinks he knows what's best for everybody else without actually knowing a thing. He just can't have faith that four guys with nuclear devices in New York City know what they are doing.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Shutting down the containment unit. And then he has the nerve to play the blame game with the Ghostbusters. It's true. This man has no dick. He must have had a run in with Rostov.
#5 Harry Cooper in Night of the Living Dead Here is another guy who is so sure that he knows what's best for everyone else. He is stubborn to an extreme degree and the crisis at hand is only exacerbating his attitude. His wife clearly doesn't think much of him and neither does anybody else. But imagine how boring the movie would be without him there insisting that the basement was the safest place and that everybody else was an idiot. To his credit, he was kind of right about the basement.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Staying in the cellar for the first 40 minutes of the movie while Ben and Barbara fight for their lives and fortify the house could be construed as a strategic survival tactic, so I'm going to go with Ben kicking in the door to see Harry on his way to the cellar. Harry was caught red handed leaving Ben for (the) dead.
#4 Mr. Vernon in The Breakfast Club Whereas Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off could be sympathetically seen as a man pushed to his limits by a renegade bad-seed teenager, I think Dick Vernon has some deeper issues driving him. Mr. Vernon abuses his power to intimidate his students. He's taking out his problems on these kids. He feels like a big man being master of his little world.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Begging for Bender to punch him.
#3 Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead Sometimes somebody can be such an asshole that his evisceration at the hands of the living dead is met with rapturous applause. Living underground with a small group that may be all that is left of humanity while millions of walking corpses roam topside can put a damper on anybody's attitude. But Captain Rhodes has officially lost his shit. He practically screams everything he says and what isn't shouted is spat through clenched teeth. He is trying to control an uncontrollable situation.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Commanding one of his men to shoot a woman who won't sit down.
#2 Doyle Hargraves in Slingblade The first time I watched Dwight Yoakam in Slingblade I thought that if I saw him on the street I would want to knock his teeth out. That's how good he is at being the abusive asshole boyfriend. He hates absolutely everything about everyone. He hates his friends, he hates his girlfriend's son and his retarded buddy, he hates her gay boss, he hates antique furniture and midgets. He's an incredibly miserable bastard. But he isn't a cartoon or cliche and that's why his character works so well. He's just an unbearable asshole.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: When he kicks everybody out of the house in spectacular fashion (seen below).
. . . and that brings us to our number one on-screen asshole . . . #1 Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future Trilogy There is something inherently assholey about the Tannen DNA. Biff's entire genealogy seems to be littered with aggressive bullies who can't properly make puns. No matter the time period Biff is an asshole. "What about sheepish Biff who waxes the car in the happy ending of the first movie? Surely he's not an asshole," you might say. Well that Biff grows up to be old asshole Biff who steals the time machine and gives young asshole Biff the sports almanac. And that act creates the horrifying alternate 1985. You can't keep a good asshole down. Biff is big, dumb, and cocky. And he's the numero uno movie asshole, butthead.
BIGGEST ASSHOLE MOMENT: Murdering George McFly in alternate 1985.
The Exorcist is one the best horror movies ever made. The Exorcist II is not. But this preview might lead you to believe otherwise. The music in it is off the wall and it bombards you with what the kids call "batshit-insane imagery." It's like they culled every frame from the movie that might mislead you into thinking that The Exorcist II was going to be the craziest movie you have ever seen and then spliced them together one after the other on top of overbearingly bonkers music.
Sure it isn't representative of the movie, but this trailer would have gotten me in a theater. It kind of makes me want to watch it right now. And I know I'll be disappointed in two hours. That's the power of this trailer. Or perhaps it's the power of Pazuzu?
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going into The Good, The Bad, The Weird. I had seen a short trailer a few months ago that seemed cartoonishly violent with a sense of humor but I didn't get a sense of what the story would be. How much of it (if any) would be a retelling of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and would it do that movie any justice? Part of the problem was that I didn't speak Korean and the trailer had no subtitles. Then I forgot about it. I checked it out on a whim at the Kendall earlier this week.
Any comparisons of this movie to Sergio Leone's Westerns can be made quickly and then put behind the viewer. There are three main characters, each personifying a titular trait. There is a jockeying of these men towards a treasure. There is traditional Western gunslinger imagery. There is a Mexican Standoff at the end. Other than that The Good, The Bad, The Weird pretty much goes off in its own crazy directions. It's not a remake, but it does have a few moments that feel like sincere homages to Leone. Though the Western aesthetic is in place throughout much of the movie, this is its own animal.
The general premise of the movie is that Yoon Tae-goo (The Weird) is robbing a train that Park Chang-yi (The Bad) was hired to rob. Chang-yi's target was a map carried by one of the passengers. Park Do-won (The Good) also shows up to take on the bad guys. The Weird ends up with the map and everyone else wants it. The chase begins. Elaborate shootouts, cool visuals, and eclectic music ensue. The map is being sought by every gang in the area. Even the Japanese army and the Korean resistance are after it.
The movie is cluttered with action scenes. There are very few moments of isolation for any of the characters. Even when a character seems to be alone in the desert there are a dozen other people over the next dune watching him. It's OK though because it allows for more people to get shot.
The plot is straight forward and simple but a lot gets piled into it. We are constantly introduced to new characters and relationships. Then spectacular gun fights happen in between and during. This all culminates with an epic chase towards the end that includes horses, motorcycles, and an assortment of military artillery.
Don't expect anything like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in terms of tone or pacing. This is an all out action movie with soaring cameras and frenetic energy. Pure eye candy for action junkies. With action scene after action scene, it takes a lot for the big chase at the end to not fall upon desensitized eyes. But it delivers. It delivers so well that the standoff at the end feels almost like an afterthought. The movie doesn't really suffer because of this though, since it is all about relishing in the stylized violence anyway.
If hyper-stylized bullet storms are your cup of tea, then dust off your doilies, Barbara. I'm not really sure what that means, but I'll give The Good, The Bad, The Weird 76 bottomless refills for its revolvers out of 82. I'm going to bed.
I'm going to try to do this without making any train jokes. Here we go.
Horror Express is a great fix if you are hankering for a 70s European creature feature. It's a Spanish/British production starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as scientists on a train travelling through China and Russia at the turn of the 20th century. Rivals at first, they end up having to work together to fight a thawed-out prehistoric humanoid monster that absorbs passengers' minds through their eyeballs.
Christopher Lee is Prof. Saxton. He finds a fossil that he thinks is the missing link and will prove evolution as fact to all the doubters. Unfortunately, the fossil was possessed by an evil alien being millions of years ago and is still alive in the ice. Like Encino Man. It thaws out and starts draining people's brains until they are utterly barren of memory or thought and are dead. Like Encino Man.
Lucky for the monster, a thieving locksmith tries to open his crate. The monster absorbs his mind and is now himself a master lock picker. Now he can get himself out of his box and wander the train cars. It's kind of funny seeing a brown, hairy monster hand delicately picking a lock. The next victim is a train steward with huge Irish-guy sideburns. Rather than the monster getting sideburns from this attack, he acquires the man's trademark "whistling of the movie's theme song."
The victims look really cool. After having their minds sucked out, they are left with bulging, bleeding white eyes. Considering this movie was made in 1972, when contact lenses were actually the size of dinner plates, this couldn't have been an easy visual to create. The other option is that they had to build the effect on top of the actor's eyes. Either way, it is visually effective. They look like less crusty versions of the demons from Evil Dead.
For an audience in 1972, the scene in the picture above was probably the equivalent of the part in The Ring when they open the closet door and you see this sexy lady:
Peter Cushing, while trying to use some of his smooth English charm on an attractive young lady who turns out to be an international spy in an unnecessary sidestory, gets grabbed by the monster. Lucky for him he did not look into its glowing red eye. Not so lucky was the inspector who saved him. He succeeded in shooting the monster but little did he know the alien beast had a trick up its monster sleeve. Not only can it take your mind, but it can apparently also take your body. So the monster is now in the inspector.
So now it's like The Thing and no one on the train knows who the monster is. Telly Savalas shows up and hams up the joint and all Hell breaks loose. The monster had another trick up his monster sleeve. Not only can he take minds and jump bodies, but he can also create zombies from his victims. This is a shocking turn of events indeed!
Well, I've ruined a lot of the movie for you now, but check it out anyway. It also has a mad monk, skull-sawing autopsies, and a few good mustaches. And an alien trying to get back to his home planet. Like E.T. if he were a total dick.
Horror Express gets today's arbitrary rating of two and three quarter monster hands out of five.
Cool VHS Cover Bonus Points
Looks like I did it. No train jokes. I hope it wasn't boring. That you weren't bored. Aboard. All aboard. Trains.
Kick Ass was pretty great. Violent. Vulgar. Funny. Nicolas Cage with a moustache. It's the story of a teenager who decides to become a super hero. Donning a scuba suit he takes to the streets to fight crime and gets the snot knocked out of him. But he is optimistic and persists. Along the way he meets other, more organized heroes, gets famous on Myspace, and pisses off some bad dudes.
What is garnering the most attention is the character of Hit Girl. Apparently some people get upset when a foul mouthed eleven year old girl kills a room full of drug dealers. I say, that's what America is all about! The scenes with her and her father, Big Daddy, are great. it's oddly touching watching her make a deal that if she takes two more bullets to her protective vest, without wincing, they'll get sundaes.
And Nicolas Cage delivers another oddball performance. When not fighting crime he has a pleasant, Flanders-y demeanor. But once he dons a costume and adds extensions to his mustache, he murders gangsters and talks like Adam West.
The movie tries to take a "realistic" approach to superhero style vigilante justice but still keeps it within the world of comic books and superhero movies. Our hero gets injured constantly and has more guts and good heart than skills or plans. It's a world where instead of kids trying what they see on TV, they try what they see at the comic shop.
Kick Ass earns its R rating with brutal violence and harsh language but still maintains elements of comedy. It isn't an oppressively dark, violent movie. Imagine the first Spiderman movie written by somebody more horny and cynical. And in that movie Peter Parker meets an incredibly violent vigilante father/daughter duo.
When Kick Ass is blamed for a series of mobster murders, he becomes the target of some really bad guys, not just street thugs. Enter the villain's teenage son as the decoy superhero, Red Mist. I felt like they were trying to put Red Mist on a moral tightrope where we were supposed to wonder where his allegiances would eventually fall. However there was never too much doubt, especially by the end where his character's moral choices could have played out very interestingly. Instead I felt that the last few minutes were some of the weakest of the movie. Hit Girl's attack on the mob boss's lair was great. But then there was some jet pack business that stretched the movie's accepted realms of realism for me.
Kick Ass was a fun take on the Superhero genre and I'll definitely check out a sequel in the future.
Today's arbitrary rating says that Kick Ass gets 12 broken noses, 3 broken ribs, and 16 black eyes out of forty something somethings,
George Romero has made three of the greatest zombie movies ever made. With Night, Dawn, and Day he laid the ground work for the majority of the zombie genre. His newest movie, Survival of the Dead, is the sixth in the "Dead" series and the first one to directly connect a character to its predecessor. So it is the first "sort-of-direct-sequel." When he made Diary of the Dead in 2007, he went back to the beginning, to the first night that the dead came back to life. Part of Survival's story follows a character briefly encountered in Diary.
The other part of the story follows two rival families living on an island, the Muldoons and the O'Flynns. These two families are clashing over the proper way of dealing with the reanimated dead. O'Flynn wants a bullet in every walking corpse and Muldoon wants to keep the dead restrained and hope for God's judgement or perhaps even a cure.
Given that this is a George Romero movie, I was surprised that this war of ideologies was not entirely beaten like a dead horse (the phrase "dead horse" being unintentionally funny after having watched the movie). And I say that with love. I really do love his first three Dead movies, and I definitely enjoyed the later three entries. It just seems that with this newest installment Romero restrained himself from an overindulgence into themes of religious zealotry in favor of shootouts and a general theme of people with different ideas not being able to live peaceably together, dead or alive. And for me that was a good thing. Fans who have left his previous two zombie films with unfulfilled expectations will probably feel similarly after watching Survival. This isn't the grand epic of world wide proportions everybody seems to keep wishing for from George Romero.
Instead of letting social commentary overwhelm the movie (as I worried it might have earlier on) Romero goes for laughs and a quick pace. This isn't as much a horror movie as it is a modernized Western with zombie gags. The zombies do not provide scares for us or for the characters they are trying to eat. They are nonchalantly manhandled by characters throughout the movie. The focus of the story is more on how the dead are treated by the characters.
For example, the idea of family members unable to kill one another after they have become the walking dead has been explored in Romero's other movies. Most memorable might be the scene in Dawn of the Dead, when we see the basement of an apartment building full of what used to be tenants' relatives but are now flesh eating ghouls. It was scary and kind of sad as Roger and Peter had to put them all down. In Survival, the dead are treated like cattle or livestock. But not scary. Just another day on the farm for the Muldoons. I think it was an intentional transition though.
Since the movie doesn't get too bogged down in social commentary, which is always a danger in the genre, there is room for playing. George Romero introduced the movie when I saw it and described it as having several "Looney Tunes" moments. He went on to say that people should not be afraid to laugh. It's a movie. Have fun. Perhaps it was due to this granting of permission, but the audience was going wild for some of the more outlandish stuff and I was glad. It seems George Romero is at a point where he just wants to have some fun with his zombies. It was as if the scene from Diary with Samuel the Amish mute had spread out into most of this movie. There was a lot of silliness to be had here.
Zombies get lobotomized with fire extinguisher foam, used as cigarette lighters, ride horseback, and try to do chores around the farm while some of the living characters are entertainingly cartoonish with ridiculous accents. There is even a scene where a wall gets exploded, leaving the men who were hiding behind it comically covered in ash, like Yosemite Sam after pushing an ill-prepared dynamite plunger. These are, for the most part, what I consider intentional laughs. On the other hand there are moments that made me laugh that I don't think were supposed to. The introduction of a character's twin was a little iffy story-wise but hilarious nonetheless. And the end result of Muldoon's training zombies to eat something other than humans played out comically as well. I don't think it had the intended impact. Although I must say that the final shot of the movie is pretty great.
Bottom line, America: I had a fun time at the movies. Survival of the Dead is not the living dead epic that hardcore fans have been awaiting, but I'm totally fine with watching George Romero have fun with his zombies.
Today's arbitrary rating says that Survival of the Dead gets 46 empty graves out of 57.
