Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)

  I hated this movie so much.  When I heard it referenced on Indie Sex, I thought "oh, hell yeah.  A young, hot Antonio Banderas in an NC-17 movie about bondage?  Where do I sign up?"  This movie was awful.  AW-FUL.  And I have no idea why it's NC-17.  There is 1 (one) sex scene and you can't even see anything.  The sex scene in Desperado was way hotter.  The main chick gets naked in a bathtub for about 20 seconds.  I've seen longer in shampoo commercials so that's not it.  Is it because they show an old guy watching her in a porno?  Ok, she's obviously simulating masturbation but, again, you can't see anything.

This is billed as a sex comedy.  You tell me if you find anything funny in the synopsis I'm about to write and I'll personally pay for you to go to therapy, you sick bastard.

Ricky (Antonio Banderas) gets released from his court-mandated stint in a mental institution and immediately steals the keys of former-porn-actress-and-heroin-junkie-turned-legit actress Marina (Victoria Abril) from the set of her last movie.  He busts into her apartment, knocks her out, and proceeds to keep her tied up and a neighbor's apartment (he's on vacation), threatening to kill her and then himself if she tries to escape.  His aim in all of this?  To make her love him.  Because she totally would if she just gave him a chance.  He gets his ass kicked by some drug dealers after he tries scoring some heroin for her toothache and she cleans him up.  Then they have sex.  Her sister (Loles Leon) comes in to water the plants and helps her escape.  Then she realizes that she really does love Ricky, her kidnapper, and goes to find him.

Now, I have been hit on by some creepy dudes.  I've never been legitimately stalked, but I've had people push that line.  It's not cute.  It's not funny.  At best, it's pathetic.  At worst, it makes me think about booby-trapping my apartment Home Alone style.  Maybe if the actress didn't actually look like she was fucking terrified for her life, it would be funny.  This is definitely a case of being too good at your job.

Romeo Must Die (2000)

Happy Veteran's Day!

  Another one from my Jet Li collection.  Not one of his best films, plot or action-wise, but I forgive him.

Han (Jet Li) was rotting in a Chinese prison when he got word that his little brother was killed.  He immediately breaks out (best part of the movie, hands down) and gets to California, where he finds that his father is a gangster controlling half of the Oakland waterfront.  The other half belongs to Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo) and his gang.  The two are competing for properties in order to buy an NFL franchise.  O'Day's daughter Trish (Aaliyah) is not in the family business but gets roped in after her brother is also killed.  Han and Trish bond while they're looking for whoever is trying to start this street war.

I'm going to take a moment and talk about wire-fu.  For those who have never heard the term, it's the really elaborate Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon type of fight choreography that involves putting the actors into a harness and using wires to make them defy gravity.  Done well, it can be beautiful and artistic or, used subtly, it can help protect the actors from getting hurt doing difficult or even otherwise impossible stunts.  In this movie, it is neither.

You know what, though?  I don't even care.  I have a huge girl-boner for Jet Li and I have seen this movie about a half dozen times.

RocknRolla (2008)

  I'm seriously beginning to wonder if Madonna is actually a leanan sidhe, a type of vampire from Irish legend that fed on talented human men until they died.  Guy Ritchie must just be recovering from his "marriage" to her because Sherlock Holmes is the first movie he's made since Snatch that hasn't sucked donkey balls.

Sadly, this poor piece of shit movie is yet another victim of The Material Girl's nefarious hungers.  It's just terrible.  Not quite Revolver levels of suckitude, but nowhere near as good as Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  You can tell he was really trying to recapture that magic, though.

Set in the London Underworld, the plot revolves around a core group of characters.  Lenny (Tom Wilkinson) is a crime boss who has made tons of money doing shady real estate deals.  Archy (Mark Strong), his second and also the narrator, disapproves of Lenny getting in on a scam with a Russian billionaire (Karel Roden).  Lenny's step-son Johnny (Toby Kebbel), a rock star and crackhead, steals a painting from his dad's house that belongs to the billionaire.  Also involved in a side plot is the Russian's accountant (Thandie Newton) who is tipping off a group of petty crooks called The Wild Bunch (Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, and Tom Hardy) to rob his money transfers.

There is a lot of homophobic crap throughout, as well as very negative portrayals of homosexuals, which I do not care for at all.  Even leaving that out, this is just a shitty movie.  Too many characters trying to distract you from the fact that there is almost no plot holding this thing together.

American Outlaws (2001)

  That is Colin Farrell playing Jesse James.  Oh, yes, people.  This happened.

Jesse, his brother Frank (Gabriel Macht), and their group of friends return home to Missouri after the Civil War to find that an unscrupulous railroad tycoon (Harris Yulin) is trying to force all the farmers off their land.  Naturally, the James boys take umbrage and resist.  This leads to their family home getting firebombed and their mom (Kathy Bates) getting killed.  So, with their compatriots the Younger boys (Scott Caan, Will McCormack, and Gregory Smith), they head out to start robbing the banks where the railroad company keeps its money.

It's been a while since I've seen a legitimate B-grade Western.  This one is pretty entertaining, for being as crappy as it is.  It looks like a movie where all the big-named people (Timothy Dalton also co-stars as Allan Pinkerton) just had a lot of fun making it.  The action is over-the-top and the acting is sub-par, especially from Ali Larter as the love interest.  Honestly, I'm not sure why she gets face time on the poster.  Definitely one for a rainy day or if you want something fluffy playing in the background during a party.  You don't have to worry that you've missed something if you're not giving it your full attention but it's not so annoying that you'd turn it off.

Rock-A-Doodle (1991)

  This is another of my nostalgia kicks.  I swear I thought I made this up until I came across some random article that mentioned it.  I remember watching this with my brother, who was about 5, over and over again. 

It has not survived well.

Chanticleer (Glen Campbell) is a rooster who crows every morning to make the sun rise.  One morning, he is distracted by the forces of evil and doesn't.  The sun rises without him.  Crushed, Chanticleer leaves the farm.  Storms beset the place and the animals realize that, without the rooster, the sun may never shine again.  This is all well and good for Grand Duke Owl (Christopher Plummer) but a little boy named Edmund (Toby Scott Granger) is determined to bring him back.  Naturally, the owl turns him into a cartoon kitten to prevent him from joining the other animals on their quest to the city to find the rooster.  Meanwhile, Chanticleer has put his pipes to work, rebranding himself as The King, with a thriving stage show.  Fame is no substitute for friendship, however, and The King's evil manager comes up with a solution:  get a dumb, pretty, blonde pheasant (Ellen Greene) to pretend to fall in love with The King.

The animation is pretty crap and the songs are pure drivel.  As an adult, I wanted to claw off my own ears.  This is definitely one to put on for the kids and then vacate the premises.

Timecrimes (2007)

"Los Cronocrimenes"    I don't know that I would call this a "serio-comedy".  I don't even think that's a word.  There are a couple of funny moments but not nearly enough for the label 'comedy'. 

Time travel.  It's dangerous, y'all.  Hector (Karra Elejalde) and his wife (Candela Fernandez) have just moved into a new house.  While in the backyard playing with a pair of binoculars, Hector spies a young woman (Barbara Goenaga) getting naked in the woods.  While on his way to find her --in case she needs some help, of course-- he gets stabbed in the arm by a crazy figure whose head is wrapped in bandages.  He runs away and winds up at some sort of research facility where a technician (writer-director Nacho Vigalondo) helps him hide from the masked man in a mysterious machine.

The film reminds me of The Machinist, which is a much better film than Memento I think, in that it shows you things which seem meaningless, then serve as touchstones throughout the film.  It's well-done, especially for a first-out-the-gate try.  It could have used a little more polish, I think, but I'm sure the 2012 Dreamworks remake will fix that.  Or completely ruin it.  We'll have to wait and see.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

  I'm an idiot.  I misread the date on the back of the DVD box as '97 instead of '91 and was super disappointed in myself because I remember being scared shitless of the old witch lady (Geraldine McEwan) and in '97 I was almost 16, way too old to be scared by that.  But in '91, I was about ten years old.  Which is perfectly acceptable since I hadn't yet inured myself to the kind of gore and violence I am now accustomed --and, in many cases, demand-- to see in my movies.

Moving on.

It's been years since I watched this film.  The first time, as recounted, scared the everliving fuck out of me so I avoided it for years.  I saw it again in my late teens/early twenties and sneered at the cheesiness of it all.  Now, at a hair away from 30, I can finally appreciate the humor in this movie.

Holy crap, Alan Rickman must have had a ball making this (and won a BAFTA for it!).  He steals every scene he's in, he has the best lines, and that whole rushed-marriage-quasi-rape scene has some of the best facial mugging I have ever seen.  Come on, when he puts his butt in the air and scissors Maid Marian's legs apart... I damn near fell off the couch laughing.

Does that make me a bad person?  I mean, obviously, I'd never laugh at an actual rape, or even one being played seriously, but this one?  Come on!  It's played like a cartoon.  Which makes sense, considering the PG-13 rating.  In fact, the only real curse word in the entire movie is said by Christian Slater, and I quote "Fuck me, he cleared it" after Robin Hood and Morgan Freeman catapult themselves over a castle wall.

For the million of you who were born in 1990 or later, Robin of Locksley (Kevin Costner) was captured during the Crusades and is facing execution.  He escapes with a Moor named Azeem (Morgan Freeman) and goes back to England, where he finds his family home a ruin and his father (Brian Blessed) killed on the orders of the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman).  He seeks refuge in Sherwood Forest and carries out a campaign of robberies to relieve the suffering of those made poor by the Sheriff's taxes, meanwhile wooing Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the cousin of King Richard the Lion-hearted.  The Sheriff also wants Marian, because his pet witch tells him that he can marry her and put his own heir on the throne while Richard is away at the Crusades.

It's a bit of a bastardization of the Robin Hood legends but it is an entertaining film.  I recommend it to everyone over the age of 10.