Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

  Ah, Disney. My grandfather worked at Epcot Center and every summer since I was five, my parents would put me on a plane (by myself! Shocking!) and send me down for two weeks to visit my grandparents. They had a pool and cable, which would have been enough, honestly. But they one-upped it by also having passes to Disney World. Every day for a fortnight, I ran around the parks until I passed out from heat exposure. Good. Times.

To my pint-sized mind, there was no place more magical than Disney World. They had ghosts, pirates, princesses, and animals that talked. But for every feel-good, happy-ending animated movie like Oliver and Company, they had to have a nightmare-inducing traumatic live-action film like Old Yeller. Part of Disney's deal with the Devil.

This segues into the above poster.

I didn't see this one as a child, which is probably a good thing. Lady and the Tramp made me hyperventilate in the theater (don't judge). All I knew about the Pound at 5 was that it was where dogs went to die and I lost my shit completely when the Tramp got hauled off. Moving on...

If I had seen a movie about an evil carnival that preys on people's dearest dreams and sends an assload of giant tarantulas to terrify the two precocious boys that stumble upon its nefarious ways, well, I would have developed a distaste for carnies at an even earlier age. As an adult, I can determine that the tarantulas are not generally dangerous to humans and tolerate them. But if I had been a kid when I saw them covering the walls and crawling under the bedsheets, I would have lost my fucking mind.

The production is a bit dated and the effects are very much so, but it's still quite a good film. It makes me want to go read the Ray Bradbury source novel. I kept thinking through the movie that if I had seen it earlier it wouldn't have reminded me so much of Carnivale, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Still, if you have nieces or nephews of an impressionable age, this is probably a great one to introduce them to the terrors of the dark.

Planet B-Boy (2007)

I'm not generally big on documentaries. I watched a couple this year for the Oscars but that's about it. I have to be really interested in a topic to seek out a doc for it. This is because I watch movies to be entertained, not informed. If I want information, I'll read a book.

Planet B-Boy is an okay documentary. It is kind of a misnomer, though. It basically chronicles a handful of teams that make it to the 2007 Battle of the Year in Braunschweig, Germany. I guess I was expecting more of a global look at the origins of breakdancing. The movie only covers that in a very little piece at the beginning.

I'm sure all the dancers are great guys (there was only one b-girl that I saw and she could have passed for a dude even in good lighting) but I don't care about them. I don't need to know about their relationships with their families, or how much money they could make from their dancing if/when they "make it big". Do. Not. Care. I thought I was going to be seeing a documentary about the style of dance, not a biography of the people dancing. Maybe that's my fault for going in with specific expectations, but there you go.

City of God (2003)

So check it: Cidade de Deus is one of the most depressing films I have ever seen. In the top 5 all-time most depressing films (just watched High Fidelity, bear with me) it goes:

1. Schindler's List

2. Requiem for a Dream

3. City of God

4. American History X

5. Sophie's Choice

The last one is only on there because I was annoyed I wasted two perfectly good hours on that movie to hear Meryl Streep mumble in a Polish accent and watch Kevin Kline act like a schizo. I'm not even going to tell you her "choice". You want to know? You sit through it.

City of God is depressing in that whole "this is the dark underbelly of life" kind of way. A boy grows up surrounded by abject poverty, death and drugs in one of the worst slums known to man. (Question: Can you have a good ghetto?) There is systemic corruption and no effort to make a lasting change, leading to an endless cycle of violence. Kids in the favela dream of one day getting out and making it to Rio proper where they can work as a lifeguard in one of the fancy resorts.

Yep, their dream is your worst summer-between-junior-and-senior-year job. Doctor...lawyer... these aren't even fantasies for these kids.

Psychopaths abound with ready access to guns and zero oversight. Get ready to see children kill over petty offenses. Even more depressing: it was based on a true story written by Paulo Lins, who managed to get out and become a successful writer. The good news is that his main character is one of the only two likable ones in the movie, and he lives! (It's hard to write a set of memoirs if you get shot before puberty.)

Ugh, it really was one of the most bleak movies I've seen in a while. I would never have picked this one on my own. The beau insisted. Apparently, he is one of those lofty types who watch movies in order to be better informed about the world around him. Bless his heart.

I just want to see stuff blown up real good. So this movie gets the Hated It tag, just because I like hyperbole. If you've been feeling like life is too good or if you've never turned on the news, I would recommend this movie.

Hudson Hawk (1991)

This movie had the most ludicrous plot. I would put it in the same category as that shitty John Malkovich comedy. When I came across it in Netflix, I was surprised I had never heard of it before. I love Bruce Willis and I considered myself a fan of all his movies. Not this one.

The one thing that lifts it out of complete dreckitude is the James Coburn-Bruce Willis fight near the end. James Coburn was still capable of badassery, even though he was probably in his 70's. (63 according to some math I just did. Whatever.) The point is that he was awesome.

Okay, so the actual plot of this movie is as follows: Bruce Willis is "the best cat burglar in the world" who has just done a dime in Sing Sing. (I speak prison! Thanks, Law & Order!) He gets out and is immediately pressed to do One Last Job by his parole officer, who is in the pay of Frank Stallone's mafia. By immediately, they are walking down the halls of the prison as this is occurring, with guards and inmates lining the walls....and discussing an illegal act that the parole officer wants accomplished.... You begin to see the problems I had with this movie. Bruce (or Eddie "Hudson Hawk" Hawkins) doesn't want another job, he just wants a damn cappuccino.

He gets picked up by Danny Aiello, his (life)partner and finds out their cool locals bar has turned into a yuppie hangout. Stupid dialogue happens and Frank Stallone convinces Bruce that he should do the One Last Job. He and Danny are to steal a bronze horse sculpted by DaVinci from a museum. They're actually quite cute together, singing old jazz standards to time themselves.

However, these are probably the two worst cat burglars in the world and get every guard in the place chasing them, but they get the horse and get out. Enter the main story: Inside the horse is part of a mechanism that DaVinci hid there from his chrysopoeia machine (that's something that will turn other things to gold, for all you non-alchemists). Yep, that's right. DaVinci built a machine that would turn lead to gold but feared that it would destabilize the world so, instead of setting it on fire and using the written plans to line his bird's cage, he divided it into three parts like a kid's birthday scavenger hunt.

Poor DaVinci. Oh, the atrocities committed under his name! I'm sure the venerable polymath is eagerly anticipating the doomsday machine he could unleash on the perpetrators of this movie upon their arrival to the afterlife.

So, Bruce Willis is a lousy thief, Danny Aiello is his long-suffering husband, James Coburn is a CIA crazy man with a gang of henchmen named after candy bars. (David Caruso plays Kit Kat, a mime, because he hadn't discovered the source of his power: black Ray-bans and The Who. It's fortunate that he plays a mute, however, because the running time is only 1:39.)

Andie McDowell plays a nun, who is also the love interest for Hudson Hawk. Ugh. I can't type any more about this movie. That last sentence broke my brain.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

I was a little concerned about how Terry Gilliam would segue into three other actors to fill in for Heath Ledger. (I'm going out on a limb here and assuming that you already know why it would be necessary to fill in for Heath. If you don't, what have you been living under a fucking rock? Are you part of one of those weird fringe religion where people aren't allowed to watch TV? Then what the hell are you doing reading a movie review blog? Fuck off.)

What was I saying?

Oh yeah, concerned about segues. It actually handles the situation quite well by positing that everyone looks different in their imagination. It's true. In my head, I'm 5'8" with waist-length black hair, ivory skin, and green eyes. Yeah, you'd do me. There was even a study done that showed people will pick out their picture from a line-up more readily if it's photoshopped to look about 20% more attractive than their actual face.

It's not vanity; it's science!

Anyway, movie.

I liked it. Of course, the entire time I was watching it I was thinking about how much more awesome it would have been to see it in a theater. You know, on a screen so big the towering CGI showpieces make my retinas explode from sheer joy. Seeing as we were denied that opportunity (in America! Can you believe that shit?), I had to make do with my LCD TV.

That's really my only complaint.

In related news, Tom Waits is the SHIT! He is the smarmiest devil you've ever seen. And so far, I have seen him play a creepy mechanic in The Book of Eli, God, a mysterious preacher with stigmata, and a mental patient. Plus, he did the singing voice of the pirate captain in Shrek 2. Seriously, go iTunes the song "Little Drop of Poison". It rocks.

Okay, I just got the new Sookie Stackhouse novel Dead in the Family and I must begin reading. I also have to go to the bank, UPS, and the dog park. Oh, and at some point, I should probably eat something.

Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)

This was supposed to have gone up yesterday but the new beau came over early. Man, my blogging has gone to shit since I started getting laid regularly.

Back to the movie.

I was looking forward to this movie. It looked super cool. It's about two rival gangs, the Heike Reds and Geiji Whites, stuck in a stalemate over some hidden treasure in an alternate history where the Old West was settled by the Japanese. Then a mysterious drifter (wearing black leather, natch) comes to town and stirs up trouble.

Basically, it's A Fistful of Dollars with katanas. How could that not be awesome?

It completely blows. In the Baskin Robbins of Hell, this movie would be 31 flavors of wrong.

First off, the entire movie is in English...but I still had to use subtitles. Aren't there enough American actors of Japanese descent that you could cast the main roles with, instead of trying to cast Japanese speakers and have them learn the script phonetically? Now, before I get an angry letter, I'm not knocking the actors. I would have been perfectly okay with the movie in Japanese with English subtitles, or something like Serenity with native English speakers using random Japanese for emphasis. I'm sure it had something to do with the "style" of the film but it was a bad fucking decision.

I was going to make Quentin Tarantino my second point, but in retrospect he's not really part of the problem. Sure, he hams up every scene he's in and his accent changes depending on which word he's saying but this was probably like a wet dream come true for him and I can't knock on that.

So let's make point number 2 the schizophrenic sheriff. I understand that the character is supposed to be conflicted between the side that press-ganged him (the Reds) and the side that he thinks is going to come out on top (the Whites) and is a spineless jellyfish. But did you have to make him Gollum with a badge? His multiple voices got on my last Goddamn nerve. Not to mention **SPOILER ALERT** having him kill the ONE interesting awesome character in the whole movie! **END SPOILER**

I just...it makes me so mad...I want to hurt it... GAH!!!! Get out of my face, movie! I hate you!

The Spirit (2009)

I had heard a lot about this movie, specifically that it was a piece of crap and didn't deserve a theatrical release so much as it deserved to be burned to a heap of slag and force-fed to the people that green-lighted it. All the critics trashed it and I don't know a single person who saw it in the theater.

My cousin recommended it to me. She routinely has shitty taste in movies and that isn't just my opinion. On a list of the worst films of the decade, she owned 80% of them. She is unrepentant about her enjoyment of these movies, which I actually respect. So I always watch the movies she recommends, I just reserve the right to make fun of her for them (Twilight and Gabriel especially).

The dialogue and expressions which aren't overshadowed by the costuming or Sin City-esque cinematography are so over the top I wondered if it was intentional. I'm fairly certain Samuel L. Jackson decided that it was a comedy because that's how he played The Octopus.

   See that face? Hilarity.

I had read a lot of critics slamming him for wearing Nazi regalia in the movie so I was waiting for that scene. I think they completely over-reacted and didn't appreciate the humor in having a black man wearing eyeliner in a Gestapo suit. My irony gland practically exploded with joy. And his army of retarded clones? They start out all high-tone with names like Logos and Pathos, and as the movie progresses and they get killed, they are replaced with names like Huevos and Rancheros.

By comparison, The Spirit himself was kind of lame. I mean, he's just a garden-variety revenant. No real powers, no compelling backstory, he's just a guy who died and got brought back as a science experiment. The villains are really the only reason to watch this movie. ScarJo is adorably snarly and bitchy, like an angry Persian kitten. Eva Mendes pouts and swishes around in catsuits as the appallingly-named Sand Serif.

I shuddered a little just now, typing that. She makes up for it by being naked in part of a scene, putting her (arguably) best asset out for the world to see. Poor Paz Vega had to be saddled with the name Plaster of Paris and didn't even get to take off her bra.

So, yeah, if you are in on the joke, you might enjoy this movie. Don't get your hopes up too high, though. There's no real plot and the character interaction sucks. It's really a good thing that Will Eisner died in 2005 before he could see the movie that mocks his life's work and all the recipients of the award named for him. But, hell, maybe he's sitting in the afterlife laughing his incorporeal ass off. What do I know?