The All Movie Staff Presents: What We’re Watching
August 8th, 2008 | 4:21 pm est |
From stoner comedies to straight-to-dvd junk, this installment of All Movie’s What We’re Watching column once again bounces around the film world to deliver a varied look at each editor’s top viewing choices for this given week. Whether it’s on cable, the big screen or straight off an old dusty VHS tape, here’s what’s on our tubes — so what’s on yours?
In Bruges, Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic tale of hitmen dealing with the fallout from a job, has something for everyone. A deftly written screenplay, the best work of Colin Farrell’s career, reliably perfect turns by Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, and a drug-abusing angry dwarf. Throw in gorgeous location shooting in Belgium, and you’ve got the recipe for one of the most enjoyable sleepers of the year.
For all of the enjoyable aspects of Pineapple Express, the best might very well be James Franco’s performance. He’s entirely credible as a stoner at every point, but he never plays to the joke, always to the emotional truth. It’s a funny and grounded “real” performance in a movie that gets just as many laughs by going to some very over-the-top places.
The Long Way Down
Ewan McGregor and fellow motorcycle enthusiast Charley Boorman travel through the furthest reaches of Mongolia, among other exotic locales, in the BBC’s documentary series The Long Way Down. Though they have a full production team to take care of your everyday international hassles — obtaining visas and hauling around that extra 1000lb touring bike — there is still a palpable sense of danger accompanying their travels through lands unknown; this is perhaps best described by McGregor as there “always being an element of ‘what the fuck is going on’” (uttered in a truly bizarre scene involving a fishy Ukrainian businessman crooning a love song while holding an acoustic guitar in one hand and a machine gun in the other).
Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal
Former ‘Hollywood Madam’ Heidi Fleiss bemoans the unfortunately named town of Pahrump, Nevada, early on in this documentary from filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, claiming that “any other Indian name, like Tomahawk…anything but Pahrump” would make it easier to attract her target clientele. The would-be clients of the would-be madam are female, and their would-be destination is Heidi’s would-be “stud farm”, a legal brothel staffed by male prostitutes. Fleiss asserts that brothels catering to women are an untapped goldmine within the sex industry; their lack of prevalence due to society’s refusal to acknowledge female sexual desires. Sadly, due to the intimidating brothel licensing process, resentment from the locals, and mysterious legal issues, her theory doesn’t get the chance to come to fruition. The focus instead turns to Heidi’s unexpected relationship with an 80-something ex-madam and her vast collection of exotic birds. Fleiss admits she is “submissive” to elderly madams, and her seemingly opportunistic relationship with the ailing woman turns to one of genuine affection, and leads to an unlikely bond with a macaw by the name of Dalton. This is a weird, weird documentary, rife with clear but only vaguely acknowledged drug abuse and shady business arrangements beneath the surface. Still, damaged as she is, you can’t help but root for Heidi and her birds.
Monster Dog
Known for its iconic video box art and curious casting, Monster Dog is a strange oddity in the werewolf genre that isn’t quite tasty enough to be camp, yet still manages to be notable thanks to its silly special effects and curious casting. Alice Cooper takes center stage as an 80’s rocker who returns to his hometown to shoot his newest video only to discover that there’s a werewolf curse surrounding his family name. While it’s not surprising that the flick is filled with ridiculous rubber monster heads and at least two instances of bodies getting thrown through windows, what is interesting is the crazy dub job that was thrown into the mix. So while Alice provided a few songs for the picture, his actual voice is nowhere to be seen in any of the dialogue scenes! And what about those songs of his? Well if the idea of Alice pretending that he’s James Bond, Billy the Kid, Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper (all set to a cornball synth soundtrack) sounds good to you, then maybe this might be something to search out. Also featuring scenes of ghost rape, dog attacks and one gratuitously cheap werewolf transformation, Monster Dog delivers as only a video gem from the ‘80s can – which in this instance means not so much.
The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior
Really, it should be a no-brainer to expect not that much from a sequel to a movie that was a spin-off of another sequel to what essentially was a glorified rip-off adventure flick – yet this was the best they could do? Tune into any Sci-fi Channel flick and one would surely get more in the monsters department and a script that didn’t nearly take itself as seriously as this one does. One thing where the two are on par with each other has to be the atrocious acting. Though skilled as a mixed martial artist, Randy Couture’s onscreen chops are anything near expert level. In fact, if there’s any joy to be had in the flick, it’s with his ludicrously bad performance. Other than that, the Scorpion King 2 continually fails to deliver the monstrous goods – thanks to a now you see it, now you don’t minotaur, never mind the giant scorpion who’s shrouded in shadows when it’s not in Predator cloak vision. Worse than anything is the involvement of director Russell Mulcahy, whose name has meant many things, including promise (Highlander, Razorback), disappointment (Highlander II: The Quickening, Resident Evil: Extinction) and actual quality (Queer As Folk). Sadly it seems that this outing is a hat trick for the newly crowned Bland in the Sand King, once one takes into consideration his previous two monumentally mediocre mummy outings (The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, Tale of the Mummy).
Gidget
I saw this classic surfer movie from 1959 when I was just a kid, lounging at home feigning illness, watching Happy Days reruns and old movies on AMC. The difference now from when I was nine is that today I can see this movie is batshit crazy. Wide eyed, superblonde, 15 year old Sandra Dee starts hanging out with a bunch of 20-something surfers who live by a strict code of never getting tied down by the responsibilities of lives and jobs? For the 50’s, that seems kind of crazy, but not half as crazy as the fact that the leader of the surfer gang (a guy they call Big Kahuna) is supposed to be a disillusioned Korean war vet, kind of heavy for an Eisenhower era teen beach romp. What’s even better is that at the very end, Big Kahuna inexplicably gives up his rootless life and takes a job as an airline pilot. I have a theory that the guy who penned Point Break secretly wrote the whole screenplay as an outlet for his deep, spiritual rage at Big Kahuna going square in Gidget. I’m sure that while tearfully typing out the scene where Bodhi makes his final voyage into the waves, he bitterly sobbed to the typewriter “That’s how the REAL Big Kahuna would go out…HE’D NEVER GIVE UP THE DREAM!”
Ransom
I’m not sure about watching – one screening of this did it for me. As a remake of Alex Segal’s truly fascinating but flawed 1956 psychodrama (which presents a ghastly and sick father as its protagonist) this fast, slick and thoroughly empty nail-biter leaves one with almost nothing to take away from it. But at least it still never sinks as low as the awful Breakdown (it comes mighty close with the scene that finds the pint-sized kidnap victim betraying the kidnapper to his father, by nervously peeing on the floor). The very best one can say about this picture is that scriptwriters Alex Ignon and Richard Price figure out an appallingly simple way to make the father’s (Mel Gibson) “insane” demand on television (assuring the kidnappers that they will never ever see a cent of the ransom money) an empathetic one: they have the kidnapper (Gary Sinise) declare to one of his compadres that he plans to kill the kid anyway once they collect, so Gibson’s delivery of the ransom money would mean sacrificing his kid’s life. Nifty, huh? Yeah, and it works in spades. But the movie recalls George Lucas’s old quote about film: “Emotionally involving the audience is easy! Just have some guy take a kitten and wring its neck.” No thanks.
The Big Bang
With a breezy 81-minute running time, James Toback’s documentary filters subjects including God, sex, and the meaning of life through the perspectives of 25 commentators from all walks and professions. It’s a unique effort that packs in some poignant, glistening insights and some offbeat humor, though one wishes it were longer and that Toback didn’t insist on such rapid-fire cutting between interviewees. Darryl Dawkins practically walks away with the film by reflecting on his religious leanings and then confessing his sex fixations at length, while the late and certainly not great megaproducer Don Simpson turns up here, about five years before his heart exploded from a $60,000/month drug habit. The realization of his demise makes his verbal and profane rejections of spiritual faith, connubial bliss and family life (”For me, family is just the source of a lot of pain”) especially sad and telling. Particularly moving, in the film, are the interviews with onetime Penthouse Pet Sheila Kennedy; she comes across as vulnerable, sensitive and empathetic, though her admission that she has inherent difficulty trusting men shouldn’t come as a huge shock given her longstanding association with Guccione’s minions. (She’s currently writing a book called ‘No One’s Pet,’ so maybe she’s learned by now).
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
One of my most exciting discoveries during my senior year of college was an out-of-print copy of Earl Mac Rauch’s 1971 experimental novel Dirty Pictures from the Prom. Inspired by a picaresque craziness, a willingness to defy form to an almost outrageous degree, and some of the most inventive blue prose in memory, it was informed and shaped by mad genius. And I was surprised to discover, via the magic of on-demand cable, that almost the exact same authorial voice colors Rauch’s script for this wild, wild sci-fi comedy effort, helmed by “Rick” Richter of Brubaker fame. (Oh, yeah, and a bit of trivia for Banzai cultists: the main villain, Dr. Emilio Lizardo, turns up in both works, but he’s about a million times more sinister and disgusting in the original book – a Nazi medical experimenter in fact). Here, Lizardo (John Lithgow) and alien John Bigboote (Christopher Lloyd) are brought in to battle Dr. Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller), a combination particle physicist, racecar driver, neurosurgeon, rock star and hipster whose mission involves partnering up with the heroes from his ‘Team Banzai’ and saving the world from alien Lectroids as they learn to pass unharmed through solid matter. It all adds up to two solid hours of off the wall entertainment. And as for Bigboote, just remember: it’s pronounced “Big-BooTAY!”
