Bigfoot? Or just Bear’s Night at Club Men?

Big Mistake Afoot.

CRY WILDERNESS boasts the laziest Bigfoot costume in cinema history. Are they punking us? No, I think they’re serious. Irritating son, ranger father who looks more like a trucker, Native American who “spent too much time at college rather than in the wild,” and a muscled tracker wearing a mesh shirt to show off said muscles. A directionless romp through a forest tracking a tiger, while the tracker thinks to bag Bigfoot and make a fortune showing him off. Bigfoot looks on, then lifts some rocks and The End.

Bigfoot appears in a holy vision to young Paul, urging him to save his father in the wilderness. Wait – Bigfoot speaks English? And if he can speak English, does he really go by the name of Bigfoot?

Turns out Paul (schoolboy Eric Foster) hitches a ride to “the wilderness” for nothing, as he ultimately has nothing to do with saving his ranger father (Maurice Grandmaison) from danger. Bigfoot (Tom Folkes) does all the heavy lifting – literally – when a rockslide buries dad. Native American John Tallman tags along for offhanded racist insults, and Griffin Casey is the tracker who would rather be lifting.

Random animals appear for no reason, Paul is always running off for no reason, bikers appear for no reason, the family snuggles with feral raccoons like they are not ferocious, disease-carrying scavengers. For no reason.

Filmed on location in Californian parks, which seem suspiciously Canadian for some reason, a story coalesces when a tiger escapes from a zoo (that would be LA Zoo, I’m guessing, as that is one of the filming locations), and Ranger Dad, College Indian and Mesh Tracker go after it, with Mesh sensing there is bigger game afoot – with bigger feet. Paul keeps his tryst with Bigfoot a secret for as long as his seventies bowl haircut can hold out. It’s not much of a secret, as he blabs to his effete private school teacher (Navarre Perry) at every opportunity, who doesn’t believe him, until the very end, which makes for a magical ending that leaps to the far side of stupid. When Paul meets a mystical Indian who tells him Bigfoot is in danger (No shit, Sherlock!) and must flee to the mountains, the story starts making less sense than it was already not making. Wait – aren’t we already in the mountains? And what happened to the “Your dad is in danger” throughline?

It should tell us all we need to know that most of these actors have only one movie credit to their name – this 1987 masturb-piece. The only person with any mustering is writer Philip Yordan (HOUDINI 1953, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, KING OF KINGS, FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, BATTLE OF THE BULGE). I speculate that first-time director Jay Schlossberg-Cohen thought he could do no wrong with such a veteran onboard. But writers have no control over directors’ ineptitude, actors’ cringeworthy performances and execrable looping.

And I can’t see the mighty Philip Yordan ever writing, “Bigfoot peers from the eyeholes of his cheap synthetic-fur suit, with a headpiece that looks like it’s just resting on the shoulders of the torso piece that looks like a Halloween costume of a furry jacket, and says…”

END

Bigger, brainier, braver than DELIRIOUS–and ten minutes too long.

Dick… swingin’… metaphor, microphone, reality.

“HALF!”

I learned all I need to know about California divorce courts from Eddie Murphy.

In his second standup special, RAW, Murphy has matured slightly, taking on meatier issues than the fluff he posited in his 1983 standup film DELIRIOUS. “Half!” is one of his most enduring bits, as he outlines what a woman is entitled to when she divorces you in California.

RAW opens with a “flashback,” showing Eddie as a kid during a family gathering, telling a mildly dirty joke – with Samuel L. Jackson playing his uncle, laughing uproariously over the disappointed scowls of Eddie’s parents.

Then – the sex begins. We see shots of Murphy arriving at New York City’s Felt Forum (in Madison Square Garden), and if we thought his red leather in DELIRIOUS was dangerous-sexy, there must have been unisex jism stickying the aisles like popcorn butter when he stepped out of that limo in leather so form-fitting and perversely purple, the porn industry called and told him to dial it down to a 7. He knows it. He woiks it. He IS sex on the hoof. What an entrance!

Upon rewatching the two old Eddie Murphy standup specials (DELIRIOUS and RAW) I kept asking myself what made them the juggernauts they are regarded as today, and Murphy’s obvious mandingo sexuality was part of the equation.

Murphy’s opening volley is not too promising as he spends a few minutes talking about celebrities’ reactions to DELIRIOUS (Mr. T looking for him at parties, etc.), and how he is perceived in foreign countries (Mr. “Fuck-You” Man!). Then, thankfully, it gets much better.

If we thought we had a wealth of one-liners from DELIRIOUS, then RAW delivered a truckload, dumping them onto our heads faster than we could commit them to memory to spout at our friends incorrectly: “You don’t OWN me” “I don’t see no RINGS on these fingers!” “What have you done for me LATELY?” “Same old crackers” “She’s special…” “Why don’t you shake your ass on home?” “We made good LOVE!” [voice of Mfufu, his African bride] “EDDIIIIE!” [voice of Italian after watching ROCKY] “Alright, Rockaaaaay!”…

His impressions are still exacting, his comedic timing still impeccable, and now – with added CONTENT. Yes, with RAW, Eddie Murphy at last gets real, and his “observational” comedy finally gets down into the weeds to say something not just funny, but sociologically biting. His bit on California marriage will forever stand as a young man’s protocol: “If you enter into a marriage and build 300 million together, you deserve half, but [Johnny Carson] already had 300 million. I hear ladies saying, Well, you can’t put a price on what *I* do, but ladies, when you marry a man with 300 million, you’re not a regular housewife; you don’t have to clean, cook, get a job, nothing! All you have to do is fuck your husband!” He ends the bit decisively proclaiming that no pussy on Earth is worth $150 million. Social commentary, ethics, comedy. Now this is worthy of a superstar.

His most powerful bit is when he turns around dialogue that women spit at men callously, putting those same words in a man’s mouth – but after he’s made the woman cum: “You don’t own me!” “I don’t see no rings on your fingers” What have you done for me lately?”…

And his acting prowess has improved. Listen to his tone when he disclaims infidelity, “It weren’t me.” He yells as he plays the woman’s role, then suddenly switches gears to the calm man’s role, “Weren’t me.” It doesn’t even sound like his voice; we’ve caught this lover red-handed but we see the conviction in his face, hear it in his subdued voice, as he maintains, “Hey… weren’t me.”

Well, maybe it wasn’t him…

Eddie Murphy is no longer just a generic swearing machine. He’s a real comedian!

Yet there are still some shallow bits that I find hard to believe. Murphy doesn’t see the irony when he tells of his younger days as an unseasoned comic with a lack of material, falling back on doing jokes about shit, mimicking Pryor: “What does that chunk want?” Which is actually a funny bit, but the irony is that he is implying he’s progressed, and has mature material now. Then we get the tiresome McDonald’s bit, where his mom fries a slab of meat in lieu of a McDonald’s burger and makes him eat it with the neighborhood kids’ singsong taunts, “We got McDonald’s, we got McDonalds!”? So, because he’s not doing Pryor’s accent any more, this is progress? I like “What does that chunk want?” better.

How tragic when Murphy mentions Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby’s son. In Murphy’s bit, Ennis was a teenager buying a ticket to Murphy’s show, with Bill incensed that Murphy was swearing so much, influencing his son, “You can’t say filth flarn flarn filth!” Ten years later, in 1997, Ennis would be tragically murdered.

Murphy also covers Michael Jackson looking to bust him up, the “24-hour homo watch” waiting for him in San Francisco, the spoiled women of the ’80s, STDs, all men screwing around, making a woman cum real hard “Oooooh!,” your woman crying in the romantic Bahamas until Dexter walks up swingin’ his dick, “salad-eating bitches” with skeletons in their closet… It’s pretty solid material with the odd vapid hiccup. Then the last 15 minutes falls apart. In retrospect, you can see the fall coming when Murphy starts recounting his fistfight at a club. That’s the genesis of the end fail.

He relates getting beaten up, calling his mother for support, and his drunk father answering the phone…

Apparently the drunk father routine is a fave. It elicits applause – when it starts. Crowd remembers it nostalgically from DELIRIOUS, but then it just goes on… and on… and on. The laughter dies down – but Ed keeps going. It’s uncomfortable, especially since we are looking past the “jokes” his father character is making to the fact that Murphy’s father was a violent and abusive alcoholic. It’s pathos and repressed anger and childhood pain; in fact, the last ten minutes of the show is Eddie holding an imaginary phone to his ear, playing his drunk father, admonishing young Eddie on the phone. And it’s just a mean, unnecessary episode. And then the show ends! With Eddie holding his hand to his ear screaming as the character of his father. Screaming about the privileges his children have, while he had to eat toys as a kid to survive. Eating Monopoly and Etch-A-Sketch. Really? Is that from a universe where eating toys is a good gag? Wearing toys to school, wrapping Twister games around him as clothes… None of this is remotely funny, as a smile freezes on our faces and we pray to Pryor that Eddie’s got a solid punch to end this bizarre walk down pain lane. Instead, his “father,” still with phone to ear, ends by singing the Slinky song, then “Bye bye, I gotta go.” Oh no, you don’t Eddie! You can’t possibly leave on this sour note! But he does. It’s a pity this cannot be fixed or edited with some better content from another show. Or just cut short ten minutes. Where’s George Lucas when we really need him?!

It’s like director Robert Townsend had only this one show to edit from; like Murphy hadn’t done any other shows in that costume and on that stage set; like this is raw footage that has to remain in this 93-minute feature because there is absolutely no other content to fill the time.

Is that what RAW really means?…

END

Vengeance is Rubber.

In one respect, JAWS 4: THE REVENGE, is trying to emulate the dark 1977 movie ORCA, about a killer whale seeking revenge for its murdered family. (Ironic, considering ORCA was summarily dismissed as a ripoff of the original JAWS, which it wasn’t.) In another respect, JAWS 4 is simply batshit.

Taking it as read that a fish can harbor the concept of revenge, we hafta ask: Revenge on whom or what? How does this shark (nicknamed “Vengeance” by fans) even know Ellen Brody (the wife of Martin Brody from Amity Island, played by a now-exhausted Lorraine Gary)? In JAWS, Bruce the shark was exploded near Amity, without – so far as we know – communicating the identity of his murderer (Martin) to the undersea kingdom. And when Brucette was electrocuted in JAWS 2 (also by Martin), ditto. Ellen was nowhere near the sharks in both these films. In JAWS 3, Brucetta exploded, never conveying to her offspring or to the shark community Ellen’s identity – Ellen did not even appear in the film. As far as we know, none of these sharks even got a glance at Ellen, nor are any of them psychic. As far as we know.

Turns out we know shit. Because in JAWS 4: THE REVENGE, Vengeance knows:

1) who to look for – Ellen Brody,
2) where to look for her,
3) her family members, and
4) how to track Ellen to the Bahamas, a tropical locale where sharks can’t even survive! Vengeance doesn’t even follow Ellen’s trail across the water – she takes a plane there, so either he’s sniffing the air for her trail of pheromones, or he’s got a network of shark spies with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads. I think the latter.

Just like screenwriter Michael de Guzman, I’m going to back away from logic and tell a Hollywood story: Ellen’s youngest son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) is killed by a great white shark (probably for his unconscionable overacting), causing Ellen to rave about a shark “seeking revenge” on her family. As she relates it, Martin her husband died of a heart attack (you know, from “fear of sharks”). So her husband has a heart attack, her son gets eaten, and uh, how does that relate to a shark terrorizing your family again, Ellen?…

Ellen’s older son Michael (Lance Guest) spirits Ellen away from Amity to spend Christmas with him, his wife (Karen Young) and five-year-old daughter in the Bahamas, tropical waters where Ellen’s fear of sharks is unfounded as sharks never lurk there. But of course, with his spy network of sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads, Vengeance follows.

Of course, Michael’s job involves diving, with a bad-Jamaican-accented Mario Van Peebles. Shark encounters ensue, with a reasonably authentic rubber shark (that sometimes “crinkles” when it opens its mouth), that has somehow learned Michael is Ellen’s son, so attempts to make him brunch.

Ellen finds herself pursued by two sharks – one of them rubber, the other wanting to use a rubber – Michael Caine as island pilot Hoagie, an old sea dog always ready with a tall tale and an accommodating shoulder. And maybe a rubber.

Movie tries hard to recall JAWS: some of John Williams’ themes; recreating that poignant scene in JAWS where the little kid imitates his father at the dinner table (Ellen sees this and has flashbacks like she was in ‘Nam).

After Vengeance attacks the beach where her granddaughter is playing, Ellen takes the boat out to sacrifice herself to the shark. Or maybe to kill it – I couldn’t tell from her hackneyed facial expression. Her fanatic death wish is thwarted by son Michael and the faux-Jamaican, with Hoagie’s plane being eaten, before the worst staging of a climactic shark death scene in cinema, as Vengeance is shocked repeatedly out of the water by a beacon that he swallowed, eventually being impaled on the bowsprit during one of his leaps. It’s ridiculous, hilarious and very, very rubber.

This climactic encounter between the heroine and the villain is anti-climactic mainly because the movie succumbs to the convention that a woman cannot be the hero in an action movie of this ilk. It’s still 1954 in this movie. Three men do all the work to setup the shark death – they even show cutaways of Roy Scheider’s last scene with Bruce to add to the male presence; all Ellen does is steer, with a look on her face like her turkey is burning.

The JAWS franchise itself would never recover when director Joseph Sargent opts to shoot the final scene in a studio tank with a sky cyclorama gloriously unfolded along the back wall – we can even see the folds in it!  We can say he used a rubber (Vengeance) to fuck the franchise…

END

From duds to merely dull.

DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN surprises us by actually getting close to a plot!

After two sequels written by babies and directed like tweens measuring their dicks, this third sequel to DEATH WISH (1974) has actual pacing, quarter-decent acting and a halfway compelling plot that includes a couple of good twists. It helps that it’s borrowed from YOJIMBO.

(Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961), remade as FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) starring Clint Eastwood, Bronson’s toughguy peer, and the man who actually holds the macho crown that Bronson might have contested had he not done any DEATH WISH sequels.)

So DEATH WISH 4, like YOJIMBO, like FISTFUL, is about a man playing two sides against each other until both implode in paranoiac gang war; in this tale, two Italian mobster families (led by Perry Lopez and Mike Moroff) who run the city’s drugs, square off. Well, they’re trying to portray Italian mobsters but Lopez, Moroff and all their hoods look like they’ve just come from a double-shift at the pizza parlor. Watch for Danny Trejo in a small role as an Italian henchman. See what I mean?

Architect/vigilante Paul Kersey is in yet another inexplicable relationship with a blond spinner 30 years his junior (Kay Lenz as Karen-faux-Farrah bo-bana fo-fana), and he’s architecturing the shit out of his job, leading a normal life, sleepwalking through this low-bar role – until Karen’s daughter dies from a forced cocaine overdose. They should have seen that coming when her date picked her up in a muscle car with the radio on the Generic Guitar Solos channel.

Featured high points of humor in the DEATH WISH series are when people are told that their loved ones are dead. Most of them react like they’ve eaten ice cream too fast.

After Kersey kills the guy who sold her the drugs – once again employing his blinkered modus operandi of attacking the bottom rungs of the problem – that would usually be the end of any DEATH WISH movie, but now a millionaire (John P. White) calls on Kersey, providing him weapons to go after the big fish, the mobsters who sell the drugs. At this point, in any good movie, we’d wonder what exactly is motivating Kersey’s vigilantism. In the first three movies this is never explored because he was exacting revenge for people close to him. But now he is being asked to “professionally” premeditate the deaths of numerous people whom he has no stake in. He’s already making a good living with his own architect firm, he doesn’t harbor any repression because he sates his revenge whenever he feels like it and doesn’t encounter any consequences, and he’s tapping the slimmest blondes in every town he lays his hat. Why would he go out of his way risking his life, risking legal capture, foregoing sleep, and for no pay, to infiltrate these two mob strongholds?

It’s a DEATH WISH movie. Oh.

Karen-fo-fana beseeches her generic editor to let her write an exposé on drugs, and is told that everyone from doctors to schoolkids are using cocaine so it’s passé, but she can do it as long as it doesn’t ruffle his perfect Lego hair. He’s teasing us though, because Karen and her goody-two-shoes story are completely excised from the script until the plot calls for the damsel-in-distress for the climax.

We can see Charlie Bronson has kept himself in shape, but is it realistic how Kersey can knock out everyone with just one punch? One guy goes down after being hit by Kersey’s lunchbox!

There are two cops hot on Kersey’s trail, George Dickerson and Soon-Tek Oh, but they aren’t what they seem. And neither is the millionaire. Double crosses fly like bullets, as writer Gail Morgan Hickman (who also co-storied Eastwood’s 1976 THE ENFORCER) knows a little about misdirection, reveals and payoffs; combined with new director J. Lee Thompson (taking over from Michael Winner, who ran the series into a ditch), it’s enough to make DEATH WISH 4 the best of the sequels.

Now someone wake up Charles Bronson and tell him.

END

Up against The Wall.

Veteran stockbroker Gordon Gekko wakes upstart stockbroker Bud Fox in the middle of the night with a phone call, to remind him the Hong Kong markets are open: “Money never sleeps, pal!”

WALL STREET is a powerful albeit slightly cheesy look at the inside of insider trading. Co-writer/ director Oliver Stone, with his characteristic insider knowledge on his filmic subject, conveys another wider world out there that we are not always privy to; amongst the cloying office environments, frenetic relationships and insecure personalities, the people of Wall Street do that mysterious thing they do with imaginary money that isn’t theirs – illegally, unethically and with a plastic 80’s soundtrack.

Bud (Charlie Sheen) is a hungry young stockbroker in a bull pen who dreams of breaking out into something more substantial. Like TWO AND A HALF MEN. Rampant charging corporate bull Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is on the pedestal Bud would like to inhabit. Through persistence, Bud gets a five-minute meeting with Gekko, to try and land a position as broker for him. Gekko is unimpressed – until Bud lets slip some “insider information” about an airline company that piques Gekko’s buy-and-chop-up instincts.

Bud’s dad, Carl (coincidentally, Martin Sheen) is a union boss at that airline, which is how Bud “just knew” it was ripe for the picking. The elder Sheen brings a stately ease to his role, paternally looking down his nose at Sheen The Younger, both in real life and in character, calling him a “salesman” when Bud insists he is an “account executive, soon to move onto investment banking.” When young Bud asks Carl for a loan, Carl inquires of Bud’s $50K Manhattan job, “Where does it all go?” Bud breaks down his payments on car, apartment, suits, etc. to make him look like the richie he aspires to be, ironically adding, “There is no nobility in poverty any more, dad.”

WALL STREET truly is a snapshot of WASP life in the 80s; young fantasizers throwing themselves into the river and hoping they don’t sink. It’s ultimately what we’ve all become used to doing with our lines of credit and the powerful agitprop of capitalistic culture. Wall Street: convincing Americans that in order to grow your money you have to risk it. And dumb cluck Americans buying into the Orwellian dream.

Gekko is under no illusion how he retains his 1% status. He tells the naive Bud that insider trading (the corrupt kind) is the difference between riding in a private jet and owning a private jet. He’s brash (“I’ll talk atcha!”), he spouts the most amusing axioms (“A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place”); he rationalizes his unethical practices (“Money itself isn’t lost or made. It’s simply transferred from one perception to another”); he coaches Bud in Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War. In essence, Gekko tempts Bud like a modern Mephistopheles, gradually claiming more and more of Bud’s soul, as Bud acquiesces to performing more dangerous and fevered favors for Gekko in the pursuit of treasure. I’m sure TWO AND A HALF MEN was not part of the equation…

No matter how big of a dog you think you are – there’s always a bigger dog. The dog bigger than Gekko is Terence Stamp as Sir Larry Wildman. He’s richer, scarier and Britisher. Gekko puts Bud on Wildman’s tail for inside info, exploiting Bud’s hunger and rewarding him with riches.

WALL STREET is the same parable espoused in TRADING PLACES (1983): engage in insider trading, lose your shirt. That is, being drunk on power makes you as likely to screw up and go to jail as being drunk on alcohol. Bud’s downfall looms as he moves into a swank penthouse apartment (decorating it in 80’s Gaudy), scores a sophisticated blonde, Darien (Daryl Hannah), and develops a penchant for preparing sushi for dinner. His hubris would lead him to try brokering a deal to chop up the small airline company where his father is a union boss.

Of course, the downfall of the padawan presages the downfall of the Master…

By the late 80s, it was established that the richest 1% in America “owns half the country.” Gordon Gekko would make a speech that would become infamous for the catch-phrase “Greed is good,” making it seem as 80s-dated as Adam Ant, but the speech is relevant in 2011 for various reasons. The opening phrase, “You do it right – or you get eliminated” is still the model for everyone in business – except for the corporate dishonest who do it wrong and still get rewarded (the “Too Big to Fail” asshats).

It is ominous that even back then, director Stone and corporate raiders were acknowledging that the USA was run by corporations; what they couldn’t predict was that greed would not save the corporate model but set it up for takeover by other countries with a better grasp on capitalism.

…The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be Survival of the Unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right – or you get eliminated… I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward search of mankind, and greed – you mark my words – will not only save Teldar paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
— Gordon Gekko, WALL STREET.

Will that “malfunctioning corporation” ever learn its lesson when there’s a steal-from-the-poor-and-give-to-the-rich bailout around every corner?

In the end, both Gekko and Bud have met their downfall, Gekko ending up in jail and Bud ending up in TWO AND A HALF MEN.

END

High and Mighty or just Mighty High?

Drugs, detachment… disco!

Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz spend their time looking for Robert Downey Jr. who’s whacked out on drugs and prostituting himself. They find him. They lose him. They find him. They lose him. They find him. He dies. The End.

If LESS THAN ZERO is trying to squeeze pity out of us for the poor, derailed yuppie turned junkie, they won’t find it here. I’ve dealt with enough people who are supposedly “nice,” “good-hearted,” “intelligent,” “talented,” and blah blah, who cancel out every iota of goodwill or talent they supposedly possess by letting hard drugs or hard drinking ruin their lives and make unbearable the lives of those around them and those trying to help them. They promise (they’ll give up, they’ll be there, they’ll only be a minute), they steal (your time, money, DVD player), they vomit (on themselves, on you, in your car), they embarrass you (with friends, strangers, other junkies), not to mention all the grand moneymaking schemes and personality-disorder mood swings – goddammit! You wastes of human life! Just get away from me!

Lecture over. Onward…

McCarthy is Clay, who returns to the Los Angeles preppy scene from some fancy-pants college at the request of his ex-girl Blair (Gertz), to help their bestest friend Julian (Downey), who has gotten himself into another fine mess with pimpy Rip (James Spader, as always, playing despicable with a flair that comes way too naturally). Julian is skagging until flames are comin’ out de side, owing 50-large to Rip, who sets him hooking to pay back the wad.

Needless to say, Robert Downey Jr. fulfills all the above junkie criteria in LESS THAN ZERO. Movie is held together solely by his rabid dog performance. McCarthy has never been able to act his way out of a paper bag and Gertz has the misfortune of once being a showroom dummy magically brought to life but not imbued with a soul. Spader is so evil he’s just funny.

My antipathy towards junkies runs even deeper when their parents are swimming in dough. It means they had all the breaks and they still ended up less than zero.

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m too cool to try to be cool or that I’m missing the boat on what it takes to actually be cool, but I’m pretty sure the preppies and yuppies and WASP-ies in LESS THAN ZERO are trying way too hard to Be Cool and failing miserably at it.

Amidst one of the lamest disco/house soundtracks in history, movie opens with the dorkiest cover of KISS’s Rock And Roll All Night you will ever hear. Someone musta been high on drugs to let the music director slip that crap in…

LESS THAN ZERO captures too well author Bret Easton Ellis‘s infamous nihilism. That’s quite a task, as this formulaic, manipulative movie departs from the Ellis novel considerably. Technically, these misguided drogues are not really nihilists – that’s too much of a stretch for their pedestrian imaginations – they’re really pleasurists; short-term pleasure-seekers with no cerebral motivation past the present moment. In an era when Gordon Gekko told us “Greed is Good,” this movie runneth over with social climbers all climbing in the wrong direction, overprivileged yuppie scum suffused with that spark of nothingness masquerading as somethingness.

“We went from a fat-based diet in the ’70s to a sugar-based diet in the ’80s.”
— Dr. Robert Lustig, MD, UCSF.

Doesn’t that say everything about the pastel tonality and over-ripe mentality of LESS THAN ZERO?

END

Slaving for Freedom.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
–Obi-Wan to Darth Vader in STAR WARS.

Another man of peace killed by men of ignorance.

CRY FREEDOM stars Denzel Washington as Steve Biko, the black South African anti-apartheid insurrectionist of the 1960s and 70s (a contemporary of Mandela’s, imprisoned on Robben Island during Biko’s time), who advocated against blacks being treated as second-class citizens – killed, as usual, by white men with small-penis insecurities.

But – like Obi-Wan before him – his murder achieved exactly the opposite effect that the ignorant men desired. His death was another nail in apartheid’s coffin. Amandla!

Kevin Kline is Donald Woods, a white South African reporter who misunderstands Biko (as all whites did) as a black supremacist inciting riots. Woods is challenged by a Biko supporter, “If you are the journalist you say you are, you will visit him!” Woods does! And falls under Biko’s spell, discerning the nuance in Biko’s message of equality in his own stolen land.

But how does one NOT fall prey to the charms of Bantu Denzel? Magnetic, sexual panther, with a locution like butter dripping from warm croissants… CRY FREEDOM is truly where Denzel honed his silver-tongued smoothness for his role as that other black insurrectionist who cried freedom, MALCOLM X (1992).

The apartheid regime deemed Biko a “banned person” from February 1973, which meant he was not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time, publish his writings or speak in public. All of which he continued to do, with the aid of his network of underground supporters.

Biko brings Woods into his inner circle and Woods truly begins to see through others’ eyes, eventually becoming such close friends with Biko that he would risk his life to bring Biko’s message to the world.

CRY FREEDOM is two very good movies cobbled together at the expense of one great movie. From Donald Woods’s 1978 book Biko, screenplayed by Jack Briley, director Richard Attenborough’s cry of freedom becomes diluted in its second half to a cry of chase-movie.

Filmed in Zimbabwe, the first half of the movie is rife with suspense and frustration as Biko is sought by the white authorities, and his family and community terrorized by no less than the Minister of Police, Kruger (John Thaw); it is also showcase for Biko’s philosophies. And – not least – Denzel! Dominating with his “black is beautiful” renaissance.

Nice to hear Biko’s speeches thrum with honesty, rather than stale rehash from Movie Speech handbooks: “…As angry as we have every right to be, we are here to kill the idea that one kind of man is superior to another kind of man. And killing that idea is not dependent on the white man. We must stop looking to him to give us something. We have to fill the black community with our own pride….”

Equal rights in his own country – too much to ask? The white regime thought so. Oppressors are always threatened by the conquered rising above their oppressed state in any way, even psychologically.

Biko: “We’ll stand up to him any way he chooses, conflict if he likes, but with an open hand too; to say that we can all build a South Africa worth living in; a South Africa for equals, black or white; a South Africa as beautiful as this land is, as beautiful as we are.”

Biko did not advocate violence – he was the black Gandhi (but wasn’t Gandhi the black Gandhi? Uh, let’s move on…) – but unlike the frail little Indian, he had no qualms in fighting back against it. When a cowardly detective strikes Biko while two police hold him, as soon as they think he has cowed and release their hold on him, Biko hauls off a backhand that sends the detective sprawling. Reminds us of Poitier IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT – unthinkable for black to strike white, even in self defense. “…conflict if he likes…” To top it off, that measured voice, reminding them in buttery croissant, “I just expect to be treated like you expect to be treated.” How very Christian of him – Old and New Testaments!

August 1977, Biko is arrested as he tries to make his way through roadblocks to deliver a speech in Capetown. This is the jarring transitional stage of CRY FREEDOM, as we next see Biko naked and comatose on a cell floor after police have tortured him to the point that an independent doctor is examining Biko and advising them to get him medical attention NOW. Which they don’t, opting to throw Biko in the back of a Land Rover to transport him to a hospital 700 miles away in Pretoria. Steve Biko dies on September 12, 1977 in custody. The police lie it was a hunger strike.

Donald Woods’s escape from South Africa is an amazing story itself. Authoring a book about Biko’s life, Woods must get the manuscript across the border for publication, to reveal sordid truths and spark change. By then, Woods was a “banned person” himself, so the book’s very existence was cause for imprisonment. His clandestine writings and physical struggles seem almost comical in this age of pdfs and e-mail, in this technociety where our pathetic little rantings are published on a world wide web with the effort of a few pushed buttons – and here is Woods neck deep in a river, a single copy of a paper manuscript held desperately above his head in a satchel…

We are suddenly introduced to the complete Woods family (Penelope Wilton as wife Wendy, and five kids, including stunning, shapely Kate Hardie as daughter Jane, who would unfortunately grow up to be boxy Bella in CROUPIER). Interspersed with the Woods family’s flight, Attenborough throws in flashbacks of Biko, to remind us why we’re here and (probably) still interested in a middle-aged woman and five brats. Strangely, those Biko flashbacks now seem to intrude on this suspenseful escape movie. Attenborough can’t win!

While it may seem on the surface like the movie has derailed, CRY FREEDOM is about Biko’s message – and Woods, through the direst adversity, is continuing Biko’s message, taking his cry of freedom to the world. It had to be shown that this life-risking trek is what Biko’s message is worth. And the continuing solidarity of Biko’s underground supporters who help Woods along the way is touching, and proves Obi-Wan correct, “A friend of Steve Biko’s is a friend of ours.”

When Woods boards a small plane with his family safe at last, when we think the great journey has ended, Attenborough reminds us it has just begun, with a final flashback to June 1976, the Soweto Uprising, a euphemism for its original name, the Soweto Massacre.

All his life, Attenborough has had an iconic picture on his desk of a little boy named Hector Pieterson (1964-1976), one of the first children shot by police during a demonstration by students protesting being taught the white Afrikaans language in schools. The picture is to remind Attenborough of the injustices of the world – and in the last few minutes of the movie he recreates the scene (albeit a mirror image, as Hector’s head is facing the other way) – to remind us that 700 children were killed, 4000 wounded; to remind us why Biko had to fight; to remind us why Woods had to flee; why that manuscript had to make it out of South Africa; to remind us why CRY FREEDOM had to be made.

END

Primary Colors Man vs. Pillow Man:
Filming another fictional event on the Fake Moon Landing set.

When super boy scouts bring peacenik fascism.

How sad. The last SUPERMAN movie with the most famous Man of Steel, Christopher Reeve (1952-2004). Since arriving from Krypton in 1978, Reeve became the acknowledged Superman due to – or despite – the SUPERMAN franchise. The producers of the franchise, Alexander and Ilya Salkind, let him down like an ape from the future. Like the PLANET OF THE APES series, after the first stunner movie, each successive sequel would be funded less than the one before, therefore procuring less talented production and nullifying the essential element of authentic flying sequences, until no one – not the filmmakers, the marketers or the public – took the legendary superhero seriously any more.

And the sad part is: Christopher Reeve would never get the chance to atone for all the waterheads around him who sullied the majestic concept that he alone would remain the Face of. Eternally proud to be, in his words, “the onscreen custodian of the character,” after his paralyzing horse-riding accident in May 1995, it was out of the realm of possibility for him to ever don the red cape and panties again, to redeem himself and the franchise in maybe just one more tale, just one well-produced, well-written juggernaut film, featuring an older Superman in a cynical, gritty movie that might have restored the mythos to its legendary footing.

And that’s the sad truth that eats at the base of my brain like a deathworm as I watch SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE.

Superman (Reeve) takes it upon himself to rid the world of nuclear weapons, catching every missile launched by the Soviets and the USA, piling them into a giant net in space and throwing them into the sun. Evil genius Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) uses this knowledge to construct a missile that contains mutated DNA of Superman’s, so that when he hurls that missile into the sun, an evil super being emerges, Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), with allegiance to Luthor and one thing on his tiny mind, “Destroy Superman!”

Regarding my old refrain/complaint that Superman should be using his powers for more than mere bank robbers, SUPERMAN IV actually gets it right! The writers (Reeve himself, with Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal) pitted Superman against a threat which could not be taken out with a simple super punch; an amorphous “evil” – nuclear war – which called for a super solution. The movie fails because the execution of the solution is handled in that same juvenile way we have come to expect from Hollywood execs who believe audiences haven’t got the brainpower to understand anything beyond a super punch.

In response to a decidedly Reagan-ish president announcing an arms buildup, Superman announces at a United Nations symposium that he will rid the world of nukes. It brought a fictional character into hard reality and the movie was suddenly relevant to a generation who were growing up under Ronald Reagan’s idiotic Strategic Defense Initiative of 1983, which escalated the arms race worldwide. The stage was set for SUPERMAN IV to impress us with the ramifications of a super being’s intrusion into mortal conflicts; of a godlike being enforcing his unilateral view of peace; of the irony of heeding peace advocacy only from someone with the ability to destroy you… instead, the story derails immediately as the U.N. breaks into unanimous applause at Superman’s announcement. Everyone? If everyone was in such agreement, why do we need a super man to resolve an arms race issue?

And the juvenile, passive-aggressive manner in which Superman enforces his ape law – capturing missiles AFTER they’re fired – illustrates further how this movie is one big missed opportunity and that Superman still doesn’t realize how to utilize his super powers efficiently. Because he is doing exactly the same thing with nuclear disarmament as he did with crime – attacking the issue from the tail end. We are not expecting him to bore us to death in political discussion, but even on a simplistic level, wouldn’t it be more expedient to dismantle the nuclear facilities and launch sites and underground stashes of these missiles rather than tackling them singularly after they’re fired?

Then Nuclear Man appears. Cue super punching. And all semblance of intelligent thematic grist goes flying out the window faster than Superman speeding to save Lois Lane’s pink knickers.

At least Gene Hackman was game enough to actually appear in this film. (He passed on SUPERMAN III.) He tries valiantly, but even he fails to save the movie, encumbered as he is with the talentless Jon Cryer, who, as his sidekick in the place of the great Ned Beatty, effects an insufferable Valley Boy accent and tries not to let Hackman’s shadow fall upon him for fear it will crush his vapid soul.

Once again, Jackie Cooper is Perry White, Marc McClure is Jimmy Olsen and Margot Kidder is Lois Lane. I’m embarrassed for the lot of them.

Buy SUPERMAN IV on DVD….it will be the only time you’ll ever spend more on a DVD than the producers did on the special effects.
— YouTube comment.

Director Sidney J. Furie (LADY SINGS THE BLUES, IRON EAGLE) just didn’t have the ‘nads to pull this production together; from the opening titles (which cost $2.50 and a handjob) to the continuity, to the nuke storyline that went completely ignored after Nuclear Man appeared, to the inane “romance” sequence where Clark reveals he is Superman to Lois only to hypnotize her to flense her memory within five minutes of doing so, to the slapstick where Superman tries to double-date Lois and new Daily Planet executive Lacy (Mariel Hemingway) as himself and Clark Kent, to the laughable chroma key flying effects that make us forget we once believed a man could fly.

Just one example of the uncaring effects department: when Superman is on the surface of the Moon with Nuclear Man, we can see the ruffles in the curtain that is meant to be the “black night sky” behind them!

Well, at least they bought the rights to the magnificent John Williams score.

At one point, Nuclear Man threatens Superman, “If you don’t tell me where Lacy is, I will hurt people,” then makes good on his threat by firing explosive rays at buildings and cars, not hurting any of the thousands of gawping mob gathered to see the fight just a few feet to the left of anywhere he’s firing. To which Superman screams in alarm, “The people!” Uh, what people? The ones he’s NOT hurting?

Nuclear Man kidnaps Lacy and flies into space with her, but Lacy doesn’t suffocate or anything, cos in a SUPERMAN movie, people can breathe in space apparently.

Because Nuclear Man draws his power from the Sun directly (unlike Superman, who draws his power from the Sun, uh, scientifically) Superman is able to stop Nuclear Man by pushing the Moon in front of the Sun to create a solar eclipse; of course, it would help if Nuclear Man were on Earth so as to be affected by the lack of sunlight. Since he was in space with Lacy, we can only assume he lost his power due to Christopher Reeve telling him, “Because I’m the screenwriter and I say so!”

When Luthor asks Superman how he discovered Nuclear Man’s weakness, he replies, “high school physics.” Well, that same physics applies to the Moon you just shifted out of orbit, Super Einstein! Have you any idea of the chaos you’ve created with the seasons and the tides and biological ecosystems, not to mention shipping, calendars, menstrual cycles and the price of rice in China?

Because in space, no one can hear you breathe…

At the conclusion of this Golan-Globus Production (ooooh, say no more…) Superman proselytizes about the plot point that was forgotten when Nuclear Man showed up, “Once more we’ve survived the threat of war and found a fragile peace” (Is he talking about another movie? Didn’t he just rid the world of nuclear weapons?) “I thought I could give you all the gift of the freedom from war, but I was wrong. It’s not mine to give.” (It is if you want it to be, Man Who Can Push The Moon Out Of Orbit.) “…there will be peace when the people of the world want it so badly that their governments will have no choice but to give it to them.” (Oh really. Like health insurance. Like lower taxes. Like not bailing out banks. Like not starting wars in the Middle East…)

Superman’s final words are Sagan-esque, “I just wish you could see the Earth the way I see it, cos when you really look at it, it’s just one world.”

From playing an icon who inspired millions to becoming an icon who inspired millions.

In his HBO Special BIGGER AND BLACKER (1999) Chris Rock lamented how doctors can’t truly help crippled people, highlighting the tragic irony of Christopher Reeve’s plight: “You get paralyzed, they don’t got shit for you! Look at Christopher Reeve – paralyzed! Superman can’t walk! What kind of sorry-ass shit is that? Superman can’t walk… What the fuck kind of injustice is this? Superman can’t walk!”

When Reeve died in October 2004, all Earth and Krypton broke loose with tribute to him, the posthumous phrase that would bring a tear: “He made people believe a man can fly.” Innumerable cartoonists depicted him as Superman flying away from the wheelchair that defined the final chapter of his life. I quite like the cartoon of the little boy – mirroring the reality of children born into paralysis who knew Reeve only as the champion of their cause rather than the screen icon:

Tragically serendipitous that the man who would be Superman Forever actually lived through an adversity that would serve to prove how super he truly was.

END

Dead on Arrival.

Does it irk Gene Simmons that two of his first “serious” motion pictures (RUNAWAY and WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE) are names of Bon Jovi songs?

Simmons has a small key role in the Gary Sherman-directed “actioner” WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. He plays the Arab villain, Malak Al Rahim, intent on causing terrorist chaos in Los Angeles seemingly for the sake of giving hero Rutger Hauer someone to pursue. No motivation on the villain’s part is the first sign that this movie smells much like working out next to a hairy-backed Middle Easterner in the gym.

Blond, blue-eyed Hauer is bounty hunter Nick Randall, supposedly continuing the legacy of Steve McQueen in the TV series of the same name; he’s ex-CIA, combat-rugged and as weirdly pansexual as ever. In the grand tradition of boring screenwriting, he wants to give up the bounty hunting and settle down with his bland lady – until he is called upon by his ex-boss (Robert Guillaume) for One Last Job – to bring in Rahim, Dead Or Alive.

So begins a series of vapid car chases, half-hearted fight scenes, annoying gun battles and furiously silly explosions, with intermittent perfunctory characterization which doesn’t lend any emotion to the non-chemistry between Randall and his babe, his bro or his boss. Writers Michael Patrick Goodman, Brian Taggert and director Sherman try to inject an interesting twist by having all the cops and FBI and CIA double-cross Randall. We don’t know why. And we don’t care.

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE begins that drab period in Hauer’s career where we see him popping up in every piece of crap that required a blond, pansexual action hero. Strangely, the man to watch in this movie is KISS martinet Gene Simmons. He truly makes an imposing villain; he’s the tallest Arab-looking guy in the room, he doesn’t say much, and he puts that Bat Demon dead eye stare to great use. He doesn’t do anything overtly thespian – in fact, he is underused, probably because he can’t act – but since his first major outing as Tom Selleck’s nemesis in 1984’s RUNAWAY, he has learned to control his overacting stage persona, in the process creating a more sinister performance.

During the boring climax when Randall is beating up Rahim, we see blood dripping from Rahim’s mouth and are instantly reminded of who Rahim is; someone well acquainted with the practice of spitting blood – the Bat Demon himself.

Thankfully, KISS went back on tour, saving Gene – and us – from too many more acting outings.

END

The KISStory Starts Here.

The Cucumber-Starchild

Created three years after Kiss dropped their characteristic makeup, KISS EXPOSED is anything but an exposé on Kiss. Matter of fact, like the makeup days, it only enhances the mystery of what the band members are really like “in real life.”

Part history (sorry, KISStory), part mockumentary; part music videos (current and vintage), part comedy, part scantily-clad women, EXPOSED is a grab bag of entertainment – like Kiss always promises – presented by a mock interviewer (Mark Blankfield) dogging two good comedians who also happen to be the founding members of Kiss, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. (Unfortunately, relatively new members, Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr, are given one line each in passing comedy skits involving – what else? – scantily-clad women.)

Opening: Interviewer “surprises” Paul at “his mansion” (maybe it IS Paul’s home, but more than likely, rumors/info identify the location as “some mansion in Beverly Hills”), doorbell playing the tune, Rock And Roll All Night, with Paul supposedly just woken (a stray scantily-clad fem running for cover in the background) and inviting the interview crew into his home “since they were there anyway.” The audacity that anyone would mistake any of this fake setup as authentic is what makes it so funny.

The acting is as bad as KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK but the difference is, no one’s taking anything seriously (at least, I hope not). So whether the boys are making up stories or recounting real band history, we can never be quite sure with all that tongue in cheek.

And what a tongue!

Gene Simmons apparently has a spacious, decked-out dungeon facility upstairs in Paul’s mansion. To the foley of metal being smashed, Paul comments, “Oh, Gene’s up. Let’s go visit him.” Camera follows Paul up a stairway, at which point we meet Kiss lead guitarist Bruce Kulick chasing a girl down the stairs, Bruce stopping for a moment to emphatically entreat Paul, “Is this for the documentary? Edit her out! Edit her out!”

We meet Gene in a high-ceilinged, medieval demon’s den, garbed in a big Dracula cloak, sitting on a throne with women surrounding him like slaves and – as usual – on the phone cutting a deal, mentioning something about “marshmallows and duck butter.” He greets the camera crew like Frank Sinatra overlording his kingdom, “My kinda place! Just call me Mr. Hollywood,” then turns to the wall where four trophy heads of women hang. He asks two of the girls to switch places and the heads promptly pull backwards out of the wall and re-insert themselves in the appropriate trophy plaques, to Gene’s aesthetic contentment.

Later, the interviewer searches for Paul and runs across Eric Carr being pursued by a – you guessed it – scantily-clad female shouting, “Eric! Where are you? I’m not through with you yet!” When the interviewer finds Paul, he is in bed with several women and a chimpanzee “who doesn’t know he’s a monkey,” according to Paul.

And on it goes like this, interspersed with excellent vintage live performances from the mid-70s – to any Kiss fan, ambrosia – and then-current videos from their latest album (Asylum, 1985).

Paul and Gene take us on a fun, informative tour of “the Kiss vault” (which is more like a bunch of Kiss memorabilia thrown into a dark room, set-dressed to look like a Kiss vault if you squint hard) – again, it might just be the real Kiss vault with all the excellent artifacts it contains, but then Paul points to a Shakespearean-era painting and identifies it as “Joseph Kiss Senior, who came up with the vision of Kiss in 1753,” with Gene adding, “That’s of course, a picture of him without makeup.” It’s dry as hell and twice as lunatic, with Paul ad-libbing to his frontman heart’s content and Gene speaking of himself in the third person.

Of course this mocku-docu is for viewers who do not vomit and/or consult Jesus at the sight of Kiss. And if you disagree with the high rating here, the only loser will be you. Kiss don’t care, they’re millionaires.

Directed by Claude Borenzweig, EXPOSED is hands down one of the best Kiss DVDs, not just for nostalgia value, but because Stanley and Simmons (who have co-writing credits, I suspect from all the mad-libbing) were in fact, different back then. They were a lot more fun. (And most of their hair was real.) Though the band was only 14 years old at the time, it could be argued they were not yet sullied by the travails of longevity; not innocent babes by any means, but also not 37-year veterans either (at the time of this writing), which lends performers a maybe-wiser, maybe-bitter, maybe-worn, but definitely more sober perspective on their careers and personas. They were young (Simmons 38, Stanley 35) and definitely enjoying the ride a lot more; it shows in their lighthearted patois, their commitment to totally irrelevant sketches (the Paul Stanley Disco Workout, Gene’s dungeon gags) which we could never envision them doing now, and the ease and playfulness with which they interact during their two-man interviews. At one point, they reminisce about the two of them busking Beatles songs and break into a seemingly impromptu harmonizing of I’ll Be Back.

Technically, PHANTOM OF THE PARK was the first Kiss DVD, but that was a crap movie that had nothing to do with Kiss. EXPOSED is the band’s first authorized DVD release that is truly a snapshot of Kiss – maybe not “reality” per se, but definitely how Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons want us to perceive them. Since EXPOSED, many more Kiss DVDs have come our way, all following a similar formula (current documentary/interviews, mixed with new videos and vintage live shows), none capturing the Marx Brothers lightning-in-a-bottle of this earliest release.

The KISStory starts here…

END