A Karate Kid for Girls. Oh, but definitely for Mens.

Miyagi helps a troubled teen by teaching her karate – she’s got two humungous assets that Daniel-san could never have: a pet hawk, and acting talent. Oh, and for all you Men of Culture – she’s got those too.

Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita) travels to Boston for the funeral of a war buddy. Consoling the widow, Miyagi meets her granddaughter Julie Pierce (Hilary Swank), who tells us via clunky exposition that both her parents are dead (Hollywood shorthand for “troubled teen”); thus, Julie is rebellious, an outcast at school, and has no friends. She’s basically just a trope with tits.

Julie takes care of a hawk with a broken wing that she is hiding on the school roof in a pigeon cage. Notwithstanding the dumb plot point of keeping the hawk where anyone who walks up to the roof will find it, the hawk’s presence is central to many plot points: it keeps her teenage angst high by clashing her with security; while feeding it, Julie encounters the school bullies, led by Michael Cavalieri as Ned (bullies? More like rapists), and gets suspended from school (yeh, I’m also wondering how the rapists became the victims); it enables her to meet the Cute Boy, who tails her to the cage (Chris Conrad as Eric); Julie asking Eric to feed the hawk while she is suspended brings them closer, and her badgering him not to tell anyone about it is an excuse to land her in his musclecar (“I’m not getting out of this car until you tell me whether you told about the hawk!” – well, that’s one way to get your itch scratched, hon). And of course, the hawk is a metaphor for Julie herself: damaged when we meet her, entrapped in a cage, until she doesn’t realize she is healed enough to fly…

By describing this hawk element driving the story, you might believe writer Mark Lee (no relation to Australia’s Mark Lee, who starred alongside Mel Gibson in GALLIPOLI) has improved on Robert Mark Kamen’s juvenile handling of these karate kids. You’d be wrong. Lee’s writing is as dull thud as all of Kamen’s entries, with dialogue for Swank that makes her sound as weaselly as Ralph Macchio. Sure, this is Swank pre-Oscars, and arguably her breakout role, and we do actually see many instances of her next-level acting prowess compared to Macchio, and I understand that Julie has to disbelieve Miyagi’s methods, so that she can arc to a fully-balanced karate kid, but the many times she is called upon to whine and babble like Daniel-san is obnoxious – it’s like Lee is trying to emulate the worst elements of Kamen’s scripts. And succeeding.

Another element lifted from Kamen’s childish ethos is the extremity of the villains. These are not world conquerors or even bank robbers, they are school bullies, led by their phys-ed teacher, Dugan (Michael Ironside, out-cheesing any Bond Villain), yet they commit more felonies in any given scene than any professional criminal, like constantly trying to rape Julie. With the full encouragement of Dugan! They’re not playfully slapping her books out of her hand or pulling her hair – Ned is grabbing her and promising that he’s going to have forced sex with her and that she’ll like it! And Dugan has the depth of a cardboard gunnery sergeant and the delivery of a Tourette’s spastic, barking the most insane murderous orders at his troupe of incel douchebags (which includes a very young Walton Goggins).

When Miyagi calmly asks Dugan where he can pick up Julie – basically, a parent asking a teacher where to find their child – Dugan, needlessly antagonistic, angrily shouts at Miyagi to get his trespassing ass off school grounds. Is this how Mark Lee thinks humans talk to each other?

Not only the school bullies – everyone wants to rape Julie! Miyagi and Julie walk into a diner and all the rednecks immediately surround her, sniffing fecund meat, and it takes Miyagi beating them down to quell their erections.

The contradiction here is that the filmmakers acknowledge Julie is so delicious that men can’t control their lust around her – yet no one notices her at school except the rapist bullies. No female friends, no male Just Friends, no fat hangers-on trying to break off a piece of her pheromones…

Men always be looking at my… achievements.

Gotta admit though, Hilary Swank has a body that would make a Real Doll jealous, although, not blessed with a classically attractive face – her nose like a boxer’s, chin masculine, lips way too Jagger – in theory, it should be a “butterface” (as in “great body, but-er-face…”), and yet, put it all in context, and it’s something that might launch a thousand ships from ancient Troy.

And for training, Miyagi takes this barely legal wet dream – to a MONASTERY. Yup, that’s what these celibate monks want to see: Julie’s crop top stretched achingly across her mounds of justice, jumping off rocks with a pearbottom as ripe as a baboon in estrus. Is Miyagi torturing the monks or rewarding them?

Julie tries to kill a cockroach at the monk’s dinner table, and all the monks pout. Miyagi tells her nothing within the monastery walls is killed (except the PLANTS, I guess, for you vegetarian assholes). “Respect all living things” (again, except the LIVING PLANTS that you compartmentalize are not worthy of respect). Julie is meant to be displaying her naivete in killing the cockroach, but the monks are displaying their provincial ignorance in adherence to their religion, reincarnation, and hypocrisy on what constitutes living things.

Directed by Christopher Cain (YOUNG GUNS) like a TV sitcom, the climax comes and goes senselessly, without any orchestra swell and hardly enough action to pay off the karate arc. After a prom, where the bullies bungee from the rafters (Reason? No reason!), they commit more felonies against Eric and Julie (I think because of Julie’s breast-hugging prom dress), until Julie beats down Ned (after changing into her crop top for maximum male gaze), and then Miyagi beats down Dugan, like a slow-motion Jackie Chan movie. Then the credits roll, and I think I might’ve woken up.

The movie’s message: to win karate, have hawk. Or D-cups, I dunno, I was too busy looking at Miyagi’s fine ass.

END

Cosplay meets Fetish!

Quantum Cop-Out!

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP cops out on its grandest concept – the quantum realm!

In ANT-MAN (2015), Dr. Hank Pym warned Ant-Man not to turn off his regulator, for fear of shrinking too small and entering the Quantum Realm, “…where all concepts of time and space become irrelevant as you shrink for all eternity.” The key phrase – the most disturbing caveat that plants a tomb-like horror in our breast – is “shrink for all eternity.” Shrinking smaller than a wave of sound or a photon of light (meaning you end up in silent darkness), smaller than an electrical impulse (meaning your brain can’t function); and in that vegetative, sensory-deprived state, you continue to shrink…

That was the fate of Hank’s wife, Janet. The quantum realm was a device so powerful it underpinned the climax of ANT-MAN, and is now resurrected in ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, as Hank suspects Janet “might still be alive down there” and plans a rescue mission to retrieve her…

No Laurence, we can’t just take the blue pill to leave the quantum realm.

And when he gets there… oh, it seems concepts of space and time are not irrelevant at all, but pretty much the same as the normal-sized world, and Janet is NOT shrinking for all eternity – she’s chillin’ at Hank’s tiny size when he arrives in his chariot, with no further shrinkage. (How would Hank have caught her with a 30-year head start on shrinking anyway?). Not only that, Janet has aged quite normally, and looks pretty darn good for someone who should be hallucinating or brain-dead from decades of sensory deprivation (and no food!). Oh, and she’s got super powers now – did we mention that? – where she can transfer energy by touching people… Quantum realm. Yeh, sorry to have made such a big deal; turns out it’s just a place, like Jersey or something….

Movie ruined!

You spineless goons, Marvel! Stick to your own rules! Hank specifically stated: “shrink for all eternity,” meaning continuing to shrink until death! When Hank told his flashback story of the Wasp “shrinking through the molecules” to stop the missile, I remarked I wanted to see THAT movie. Why? Because the stakes were so high! This movie even opens with that scene, because it’s so powerful and emotional! However, by arranging this shrinkable ferry service to and from the QR, retconning it into a bad day in the Fashion District, Marvel has undermined all the emotions of that last movie and negated the stakes in this movie, homogenizing it and selling it to us as Intense Crisis. Thus, ANT/WASP has to become a chase movie to coax any excitement at all from the QR device which, just last movie, was a disturbing fatality.

That’s not the only problem: there’s this “Ghost” hanging around that the screenwriters are trying to insert sideways into the plot as a villain – until they just give up.

If you don’t care for consistency and a story reneging on its own plot points, then you can enjoy ANT-MAN AND THE WASP in the thrall of ignorance; great effects and kinetic action sequences make it a fun diversion. Just don’t expect any tension or even any connection with the characters, as the movie is a constant cop out on all fronts.

I’ll see your Action Girl Hairstyle, and raise you an Action Man Vest!

ANT/WASP is a sequel to 2015’s ANT-MAN (both directed by Peyton Reed), and a “soft-sequel” to 2016’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. We know this because the characters keep alluding to CIVIL with winks to the fanboys. All the principals return, with Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, berating Ant-Man for going off to fight Avengers (wink); Paul Rudd as Ant-Man/Scott Lang, now under house arrest for contravening the Sokovia Accords (wink); Evangeline Lilly as Hank’s daughter Hope, debuting as the superhero Wasp, outfitted with a suit that can shrink, fly, and has frickin’ laser beams attached to its head. Scott is jealous of her thigh-jitsu expertise and she’s jealous that Scott went to Russia without her (wink) – okay, Enough, you guys! We get it! You’re in the MCU! (Marvel Cinematic Underpants.)

Did we mention that Hank’s wife Janet, though trapped in the quantum realm, can also possess Scott’s body for comedy purposes? Well, she can. Because – Quantum Realm!

stakes cop out

The plot is somewhat less than world-girdling: Hank and Hope want Janet back, and Scott enters the equation because Janet is in his dreams. (Now that’s science.) Is any of this important to the world stage? Nope. To stay under the radar, Hank occasionally shrinks his warehouse lab to the size of a suitcase-cube and moves its location; also owning a fleet of shrunken cars to stay incognito. Is any of this necessary if no one’s looking that hard for you? The FBI skulk around the periphery, as they need to ensure Scott stays home with his ankle bracelet; led by clownish Agent Woo (Randall Park – Kim Jong-Un in THE INTERVIEW), who provides THE clunkiest, cringiest, most obvious exposition ever committed to analog and/or digital film in the history of movies; the only thing missing is a title card saying, “This is the backstory from 3 previous films, for newcomers to the Marvel Cinematic Underpants.” And what are the high-stakes repercussions of Scott breaching his house arrest? Well, another court date for sure…

villain cop out

Then there’s Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) who is sold as a supervillain, but she’s just an unfortunate woman suffering from Special-Effects-itis, who needs Hank’s lab to cure her. Aided by Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne, who speaks of the “Goliath project” – fanboy cool!), Ghost and Hank desire the same thing – the return of Janet, so why is Ghost fighting against Hank? (Also kids, now that Laurence Fishburne is in the MCU, along with Samuel L. Jackson, you can confuse them more often!) I do like the way Foster is not a sneering bad guy, but a man who doesn’t want to save somebody at the expense of someone else. Ghost, being near death and more desperate, threatens to crush kill destroy anyone anything in her way. And doesn’t. Because PG-13.

Floating amidst this no-stakes circus are Walton Goggins as a black market dealer, Judy Greer and Bobby Cannavale who have literally nothing to do, and the three wombats on Scott’s crew, Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian and T.I., Pena finding his fast-talking stride as the film’s true comic relief, while the other two take up screentime that could’ve been used for showing more Wasp pearbottom.

Abby Ryder Fortson returns as Scott’s daughter, so comfortable and poignant in front of the camera, it looks like she and Rudd are really related.

moral ambiguity cop out

Hank Pym gets his OG Ant-Man suit on! And rescues Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the quantum cop out realm. And Marvel adds to that cop out with another… this time with moral choices: Ghost’s life is fading due to her uncontrollable phasing like a Jimi Hendrix video, and it is proposed that Janet’s quantum energy (whatever that is) can save her. Here was a moment where the characters might have been asked to CHOOSE between Janet and Ghost: there might have been only enough energy for one of them to live – who would it be??!! Think of the conundrums and tears and sacrifice that plot point might have stirred! Nope. Janet just touches Ghost with her super powers and – CURED! But how?? It’s magic who cares fuck you.

There is literally NO EFFORT expended in this wrap-up. Because the filmmakers are drooling just waiting to get to the shocking post-credits scene that shows us just how damn much this movie is connected to INFINITY WAR! See how our Marvel movies are all connected? Do you see? DO YOU SEE? Oh, touch myself savagely!

masks cop out

I need to rub my face on that suit! For science.

Ant-Man’s and Wasp’s masks are now CGI, just like the magic masks for Iron Man or Black Panther, which swiftly disappear, then reappear whenever they need to. I actually like the fact the filmmakers made their masks cover the whole face (unlike the comics suits), because it makes sense that if the suit is responsible for your sizing, then it should cover all your atoms. Yet Ant-Man and Wasp regularly remove their masks at any size. Which means even that element is a cop out. Why use masks at all if you’re gonna go against the rules of what the masks are for?

mass cop out

Hank’s shrinking lab and his satchel of shrunken cars both contravene the very rules that this supposed science fiction movie sets for itself: that when something gets tiny, it still retains its mass… Meaning that Hank is wheeling around a ten-storey building which should still weigh as much as a ten-storey building, and has a bag of 20 cars that should weigh as much as 20 cars. Thus, when Scott goes Giant Man, retaining his same mass would mean he cannot hold back a truck, or manipulate it like a skateboard – because he’s only 180 pounds.

By the time Scott is growing bigger than a ferry and skateboarding trucks, the writers (including Paul Rudd) are paying even less attention than the audience. Oh, is that why Evangeline Lilly looks so tight in that suit?

END

Eight is Enough to fill our hearts with dingus.

THE THING meets CAPTAIN RON. And all Snake Plissken breaks loose.

Wyoming. Post-Civil War. At a snowbound outpost, eight strangers must survive the stormy night. And each other.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino‘s THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a slow burn; a firecracker waiting to be ignited in a nunnery. Unlike many of his films, we are not bled with anxiety in the first scenes. It can be said this is Tarantino’s first linear plotline. Or is it?

MungaPoff

This eighth film by the master of mayhem is styled along the lines of the master of mystery, Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945) and TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1965), and, due to the snow and Kurt Russell, holds more than a little resemblance to John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982). Or does it?

Isolated strangers, hidden agendas, mysterious deaths. The Tarantino fan – and the casual Western buff or thriller buff – must wait a good way into the film to discover it is one big ulterior motive waiting to happen. Or is it?– Okay, that’s enough of that. Just asking contrary questions doesn’t create tension, y’know… Or does it?

Opening scene finds bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell, sporting a mustache that is more mungabush than handlebar) as he dashes through the snow in a stagecoach, headed for the town of Red Rock, racing a storm, with his cuffed bounty, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh in a primal, dangerous-funny role). Ruth aims to see her hang and collect his $10,000 reward. They are stopped by a stranger in the street sitting on a pile of dead bodies – Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), another bounty hunter who is begrudgingly allowed to share Ruth’s expensive coach. Soon they come upon yet another strandling in the snow, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims to be the new Sheriff of Red Rock, in transit to his new post, without a badge or official paperwork yet. John Ruth trusts no one – not while he’s chained to a $10K bounty that others might kill for – yet he lets Mannix aboard on the indisputable logic that “If you want to collect your bounty in Red Rock, I’m the one that’s gotta pay you!”

Sam Elliott’s mustache called Kurt’s mustache,
and told it to dial down to a 7.

Forced to stop at a way station called Minnie’s Haberdashery, to let the storm blow over, these four strangers encounter four more stranded strangers in transit: the hangman of Red Rock, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), a cowpuncher writing his autobiography (Michael Madsen), a Confederate General looking for his son (Bruce Dern), and Bob the caretaker (Demian Bishir), who says he is taking care of the place while Minnie is on vacation.

Even at this point, there is still none of that characteristic Tarantino tension. And the dialogue is not up to par with Tarantino’s usual repartee that keeps us glued to our seats through Nothing Happening (foot massage from PULP FICTION, Superman’s idea of humanity from KILL BILL VOL 2, et al). The strangers are somehow all linked in tenuous ways, and though John Ruth blusters his way around the tavern, eking out everyone’s motivation on the pretense of knowing who his mustache is spending the night with (while getting everyone’s backstory exposited for screenplay purposes), we find ourselves almost anxiety-ridden that there IS no anxiety.

Then comes Chapter Four.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is told in Six Chapters (starting with Last Stage to Red Rock), and in Chapter Four (Domergue’s Got a Secret), something dark starts to rise like a shadow in a corner. As introduction to this Chapter, we hear Tarantino himself in voiceover – like a storyteller – detailing a plot point that only one character sees (even we the audience did not see it). It’s strange, it breaks filmmaking rules, but we are home! Coming out of nowhere as it does, it disorients us – yet we suddenly feel that Tarantino paranoia embrace us like a lost lover…

Tarantino has become such a force in movies for contravening convention so fearlessly. Only to create new conventions that others adopt in their filmmaking vernacular. Or he uses techniques that have fallen out of favor, like his penchant for cartoonish titles showing character names or information; techniques that have become such staples in hip movies nowadays that a younger viewer might easily mistake Tarantino for copying his own copycats. So though we titter for the voiceover’s obvious invasiveness, it gives the movie Tarantino’s unique stamp. They’ll be copying this raw invasiveness soon enough…

Suddenly – like piano wire tightening around our throats – everything gets slanted, everyone becomes a suspect, everywhere is a big black dingus.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is filled with all the tiny details that make a good film great. Firstly, it is shot “in glorious 70mm.” (Ultra Panavision widescreen filmstock that hardly exists in reality. Tarantino’s DP, Robert Richardson, tells us this is only the 11th feature made on Ultra Panavision.) It was Tarantino’s recurring descriptive in his script notes, and not so much a detail, as an overarching ethos. Tarantino wanted to isolate his cast and crew to ensconce them in 1800’s frontier survival mode. Even though only a few moments capture the breadth of the exterior snowbound vistas, we’re told the interior cabin shots are also out there. The indoors was in fact outdoors.

Details like hammering two boards on the front door to shut out the raging tempest. Why not just one board? Authenticity. The amount of time spent for characters to hammer two boards into the front door every time someone kicks it in to enter the cabin, is enough to get you drunk if you’re playing the drinking game.

Details like hat brims: Jackson’s character is in Bichir’s face, shouting at him. Their hat brims touch. But then Jackson moves into Bichir’s personal space – signified by their hat brims starting to overlap, as Jackson’s slides under Bichir’s and inches closer. Excellent.

Details like Jackson’s lascivious story describing what a freezing man did for a warm blanket, revolving around what he terms alternately his “big black pecker,” “big black johnson” and – wait for it! – his “warm black dingus.”

Details like the Lincoln Letter: A key element that opens doors for African-American bounty hunter Major Warren. Until Mannix smirks, “The nigger in the stable has a letter from Abraham Lincoln?!” the phrasing of which tells us why he must carry that letter.

Details like nigger: Yes, Tarantino’s characters have no compunction blurting his second favorite word. With Tim Roth putting British spin on it, “…my Nubian friend…” Activist groups get another chance to feel relevant as they twitter their faux-outrage…

And this is not a detail – but a coup: composer Ennio Morricone! Whereas Tarantino has used this giant’s soundtrack music in previous films, (KILL BILL, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, DJANGO UNCHAINED), at last he hires the man himself – 89-year-old master of Westernized Mexican music – Ennio Morricone!

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is not structured to convention. You will find no character that arcs or finds redemption. None do, and no one does. Like the best bucking of convention, the galloping story subsumes the subtexts. By Chapter Five: The Four Passengers, the stagecoach is running off the rails. And we pray to a non-existent god that when it ramps over a cliff, we can keep our crotches safe.

Strangely enough, though Jackson, Madsen and Roth are Tarantino veterans, though Leigh ravages the screen with her savagery, though Dern is an old seadog, though Kurt’s mustache is ten times the badger it was in TOMBSTONE, this movie belongs to – Walton Goggins!

Walton Goggins, perennial creepy-guy character actor (Steve Buscemi-adjacent), a Junior Bruce Dern – here sharing scenes with ACTUAL Bruce Dern, and blossoming as we watch him! He’s been co-star on series like JUSTIFIED and SONS OF ANARCHY, but never red meat like this primo role. Though one of the B-characters, he grabs the reins like an A-Lister and steals the show. He’s at first goofy, then steadfast, and comes out damn righteous. Tarantino had to cast someone who could emerge from amongst the stellar ensemble to shoulder the denouement, and after Goggins’s small, unimpressive turn in Tarantino’s DJANGO, it’s pleasantly surprising that he was chosen to carry this beast to its intriguing conclusion.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is intelligent, well-paced, gory and mungabush. Enough to fill our hearts with dread. Or a big black dingus.

END

Cutting Coyote Comedy.

I can’t tell whether MACHETE KILLS is stupider than EXPENDABLES 2 or smarter than JACK REACHER.

Knowing that director/co-writer Robert Rodriguez intentionally crafts this movie with tongue planted firmly in Danny Trejo‘s ass cheek (sorry about the visual) affords it some leeway, however the hyper-reality clashes so discordantly with the ultra-stupidity that Wile E. Coyote called and said he wanted his Acme products back.

In this cartoonish sequel to the equally-cartoonish MACHETE (2010), body-inked, runnel-faced Trejo returns as the unkillable ex-Federale Machete, who is sent on a mission by the president to stop a Mexican terrorist from blowing up Washington DC.

Machete (the kewl pronunciation, of course: “Ma-CHET-ay”) prefers machetes, knives and swords to guns. He has a penchant for speaking of himself in the third person (“Machete don’t tweet!”), and he escapes bullets by running.

The American President Rathbone is credited “and introducing Carlos Estevez” – yep, it’s Charlie Sheen; overacting, underacting – I don’t know what that’s called. Jessica Alba reprises her character from the past movie for a few seconds and is shot immediately (y’know, I agree her acting is so bad that even Zooey Deschanel called and asked for lessons, but putting a bullet in her brain seemed quite extreme). Cuba Gooding Jnr. in a solid few minutes as a gritty assassin (why isn’t this great actor getting more great roles like this?). Lady Gaga takes her clothes off as an assassin, once again trying to distract us from her big Italian nose with her medium-sized dirty pillows. Antonio Banderas plays an American playing a Mexican; so… just playing himself then.

Michelle Rodriguez returns as eyepatched freedom fighter Luz, who escapes bullets by wearing hardly any clothes – because going into battle three-quarters naked is the best way to avoid being shot. I’ve always thought of Sofia Vergara as “Soft Viagra.” I know what you’re thinking, “Who needs Viagra with a curvaceous hoo-er like that?” Coincidentally, here she plays a curvaceous hoo-er – but with a nails-down-blackboard voice that guarantees the need for dick pills. Speaking of dick pills, Amber Heard; only good for two things on this Earth – and neither of them are acting.

Tom Savini (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN) is looking haggard. He killed Machete’s brother (Cheech Marin) in MACHETE; explained into this plot as a good guy because, uh, because he’s friends with the director.

Cool Demian Bichir (CHE, 2008) is multi-personality villain Mendez. At first it’s his bomb, then the real villain appears – Mel Gibson.

One of the great actors of our generation, brought low by his big mouth, Gibson has somehow lost his acting talent, but retains his big mouth. Like every cartoonish villain in action movies, he gushes to our Hero of his grand plan for no reason, reading pages of dialogue as exposition as if he’s reading pages of dialogue as exposition.

Serendipitously, he delivers half of his exposition while riding a replica of a landspeeder – a prop used in one of the renowned non-acting gigs in the universe.

MACHETE KILLS is one of those movies where bad guys constantly train guns on our Hero and never shoot him. Then when he’s running or leaping to escape them, they’re shooting like maniacs who literally can’t hit the side of a helicopter. In this movie where knives make a “shink” noise every time they’re moved through thin air, is it any wonder helicopters play into some of the most egregious stunts that only 7-year-olds will find entertaining (intestines into the blades, Machete swinging around on the blades chopping people, etc.)?

And the most egregious stunt/plagiarism of all: Machete riding a bomb (a la DR STRANGELOVE) while it is flying toward Washington. Using all his Wile E. Coyote skills, Machete saves the day by cutting the blue wire (it’s always the blue wire, isn’t it?).

It’s actually the eighth time Danny Trejo has sliced into the character of Machete, starting with SPY KIDS (2001), SPY KIDS 2, SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER, GRINDHOUSE, PLANET TERROR, MACHETE, SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. There is hilarious promo for another sequel: MACHETE KILLS AGAIN… IN SPACE!, but that’s purely just Danny Trejo’s ass cheek talking…

END

Once Upon a Black Time in the White West.

Whiteys: 0. Niggers: 1

Quentin Tarantino, as he did with INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009), once again punches history in the face and rewrites the underdog as the alpha dog in DJANGO UNCHAINED. And says nigger a lot.

DJANGO UNCHAINED throws that word at us in such forceful abandon that it becomes hilarious to hear from the mouths of rednecks and high society alike; a grim reminder of the times (1858, two years before the American Civil War), when even the educated elite were conditioned to call African slaves niggers, not as pejorative or juvenile display of superiority, but as reference.

Rock solid Jamie Foxx is slave Django, liberated from a slave gang by dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (eternally mesmeric Christoph Waltz), at first to help King identify a bounty kill, then going Marvel Team-Up to rescue Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was sold to a dandy Mississippi plantation owner, Kandie (a very sinister Leonardo DiCaprio).

As with all Tarantino films, the movie MAKING sells it, not so much the simple buddy/road-movie plot, which is once again littered with audacious coincidences and maddeningly convenient plot points. Tarantino’s signature compelling vignettes still litter the celluloid, the hip dialogue as ferocious as the bullet-fests, yet of all Tarantino’s oeuvre, DJANGO stands apart as arguably his first film that can neatly be sliced into three acts.

The acts are split into comedy, drama and violence. First act finds Django and King bonding on bounty kills, second act is the Long Con, and third act is all Foxx, hero angles, hero bloodshed, and hero slomo.

Act I, we meet heavily-drawling Don Johnson as plantation owner Big Daddy, replete with Colonel Sanders goatee, imperious white suit and finger-lickin’ necktie; Django posing as a “free man,” the plantation slaves so inculcated in perceiving black men as slaves that Big Daddy must instruct them on how to treat Django – “like a white man” – which flabbergasts them; and a wildly-miscast Jonah Hill, arguing with fellow Klan members over the eye-holes in their hoods being constrictive to their vision, like a Python sketch.

Act II is the Long Con, the most intense psychodrama sequence, where Tarantino sets up his beautiful dangerous tableaus: Django posing as a black slave trader (“lower than a house nigger”), he and King masquerading to Kandie as business partners seeking new talent for “mandingo fighting,” a whitey bloodsport pitting black against black to the death (broken arms, hammers to the head and other such whimsy). They attempt to buy Django’s wife from Kandie, on the pretense they would be investing thousands more buying mandingoes. When the ruse is uncovered – by the lowly “house nigger” – and Kandie brings out his father’s skull, we just know we’re in for some sweet Tarantino mindfuck dialoguing. And who is the house nigger? None other than Samuel L. Jackson; a wonder how he pulls off a role alternately so funny and so slimy.

Second act wraps with wild gunfire, dodging impossible hails of bullets, gouts of blood spurting in bucketfuls, each death an art statement, human entrails exploding in fiery red fountains… It’s classic Tarantino by way of Sam Peckinpah and early John Woo, with better technology, ergo better gratuitous gore. That’s why we love him. We also love Tarantino for his brazen deus ex machinae  that always seem as natural as spitting blood after being shot in the lung. But in DJANGO, for the first time – Tarantino fails to make it seem natural…

It is in these impossibly tense Kandie sequences that all Tarantino’s storytelling errors are made: firstly, King could have avoided Kandie’s revenge with one simple lie (that he bedded Broomhilda); secondly, King is outfitted with guns hidden up his forearms (TAXI-DRIVER-style) and opts not to go out blazing; thirdly, Django is saved at the annoyingly last minute by the person who hates him most, the house nigger. And he is sent on a cross-country trek with infinite opportunities to escape, like a 1960’s Batman episode. A jaw-dropping display of lazy screenwriting.

In BASTERDS, Waltz played someone so demonic, his every innocuous gesture contained menace, his every courteous word laced with arsenic and occluded intent. In DJANGO, Waltz is still lucid, ruthless, merciless (and it’s incongruously hilarious hearing him say nigger in that Germanic brogue) – but this time, he’s on our side. Here, Leo is The Christoph Waltz, teetering on a tightrope of volcanic eruption and insatiable violence, his beatific smile masking a sociopathic nihilism. And boy does he love saying nigger. Walton Goggins is a crazy-eyed Kandie ranch-hand (the guy you call when Steve Buscemi is unavailable) and the most comfortable having nigger in his redneck vernacular. But the movie is Foxx’s, to have and to hold. And he’s the only one who can say nigger with any conviction and impunity.

Act III is Jamie Foxx Unchained. Who would’ve thought Wanda would end up such a big brutal star?

On his trek to the Batman prison with three other caged slaves (minded by Tarantino in a jailer cameo with an atrocious Australian accent), Django, in his overbearing confidence, spins a tale to free himself, spitting at his dubious captors, “Do I talk like a slave?” (An excellent line, reminding us that though most slaves must have been cowed into obeisance, there must have been men among them who yet held their heads high enough to rise above the physical and psychological cowing of Whitey, otherwise Lincoln and his cronies would never have thought it morally reprehensible to keep these men captive.) After a brutally quick shootout with his captors, Django rides off armed to the teeth on an unsaddled horse, and one of the caged slaves watches him, the hint of a smile on his face. That smile, edged with tears, is a hammerblow button to this scene. It’s like the slave was looking at everything the black man could be; like he was looking at the revolution right there; witness to the beginning of the rising up from underfoot. Unwritten history written all over his face…

UNCHAINED is another Tarantino thunderball. Though based in an historical period, it unapologetically blazes outside the arc of history. Its lead character is an anomaly – Django is not just a rebel slave, he doesn’t even consider himself an underdog. It is not in his vernacular; he holds an intrinsic belief that he *is* superior to his captors, an aspect that was literally beaten and bred out of generations of Africans.

Tarantino had to field a slew of interviews to justify why his characters said nigger so much. (Why do you idiots focus on that one word? Is anyone hearing Waltz mention Alexandre Dumas to Leo, who coincidentally played THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK? Is anyone hearing the authentically Western soundtrack that contains numerous Ennio Morricone compositions, including themes from TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA? Is anyone commending QT for alluding to Wagner’s Brünnhilde?)

And here’s the thing: even though writer-director Tarantino set DJANGO during slavery and feels justified in sprinkling n-words like glitter, the tale of the unbound slave-turned-bounty hunter is hyper-realism – it’s not meant to be a documentary or authentic representation of the era – so Tarantino could have opted to be more niggardly with the “niggers.” But – as we discovered in PULP FICTION – QT just loooves dropping that bomb… I think it’s a case of just liking the way the word sounds, like “fuck.”

Like fuck, it drops like a ball-peen hammer every time you hear it. It never gets old and it never wears thin. Like fuck, it is all-purpose, can be used in any context, to friend or foe, to black or white, for stop or go. Could it be that modern Whitey guilt just doesn’t like admitting how blasé and passe the derogation was back then? That, just like rewriting “Mark Twain” and Republicans’ disavowal of slavery, they don’t want such a harsh light shone on their past cowardly White-nited States of America?

Once again, the purveyors of the message are attacked, instead of the message being heard. When I state that the Pope and his cronies fuck boys, it’s me who gets vilified for saying “fuck.” (What would you prefer I say – making love?) Do you critics think the actual crime/sin of fucking boys can be overlooked simply because you turn your hypocritical derision to the people who are calling it what it is?

Nigger, please!

END

Roaring Ripping Rending Rebirth!

At last – the sequel to PREDATOR we’ve been waiting for!

With the internet ablaze with derogation over the casting of Adrien Brody in the lead role (purely because action fans cannot comprehend life after Arnold), and the B-movie schlock of the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movies sullying DVD rental racks around the planet, it would seem PREDATORS had little chance of being taken seriously by moviegoers or the men who make the moving pictures.

But Robert Rodriguez (producer) and Nimród Antal (director) have bowed their heads in fealty to the legendary 1987 PREDATOR film, shinked out their arm-talons and ripped forth a roaring rebirth for the franchise.

PREDATORS starts in free fall – literally – as eight nameless characters drop from the sky into a mysterious jungle. They’re all the best “predators” in their killing fields. They discover they’re on another planet – a grand vista of three gigantic moons in the sky and a sun that “hasn’t moved since we got here” tipping them off.

And they’re being hunted by something.

The planet is a game preserve and they’ve been dropped here for sport. The over-arching theme, which is sometimes used as the embarrassing tagline: “When the predators become the prey.” Oh, I feel dirty.

Adrien Brody, an American Special Ops merc, is the tacit leader and therefore has to put on the raspiest voice. There is the Russian Special Forces soldier (Oleg Taktarov, last seen with De Niro in RIGHTEOUS KILL and 15 MINUTES), a Mexican drug enforcer (Danny Trejo, last seen in any Robert Rodriguez film), a Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Sierra Leone soldier (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, last seen buying another vowel), an Israeli sniper (Alice Braga), a death row inmate (Walton Goggins, last seen as Sam Rockwell in THE GREEN MILE) and a disgraced bean stem of a doctor (Topher Grace, last seen apologizing for being an actor).

(Of course, physics is once again given short shrift, as three giant moons that close to a planet would not make it humanly habitable: the planet would either be torn apart by gravitational forces, have no atmosphere or suffer continual tectonic upheaval and volcanism. Also, it’s very unlikely the sun would appear the same size in the sky as our sun, and if it doesn’t move, how come night falls?)

Onward to plot that makes sense if you discount everything else.

Luckily, Brody has read the script and rasps the exposition above. But you don’t need the script if you’ve got someone who saw PREDATOR; Alice Braga recounts the story of the Special Forces guy (that would be Arnold, fanboys) who killed one of the hunters and described its proclivities.

Can’t help feeling the cast is a leetle too international for the sake of worldwide box office – or maybe they’re just auditioning for a crowd of passengers in another SPEED movie.

First act is tight, effective screenwriting; characters introduced smartly, situation assimilated; inexplicable jungle mystery, thriller, action, even some horror. All the classic story elements that made PREDATOR so good. PREDATORS reminds us of ALIEN 3: back to basics to bring the solemnity under control again.

Suddenly – Laurence Fishburne. A surprise cameo, an eccentric old hermit, well-built, brain-fried, and whispering in that Morpheus velvet about surviving for ten seasons. He reveals the Predator hunting party travels in threes.

And then, in maximum cool – we meet The Predators…

They’re played by Carey Jones, Brian Steele and Derek Mears, and they’ve been given names by the filmmakers that we discover only by reading the credits: the captive, strung-up Predator is Classic Predator; the leader of the three hunters is Berserker, larger and scarier than Tracker and Falconer. The armor and headgear of these new Predators is akin to the development of Batman’s suits; more jagged and streamlined than previous versions. Makeup by Greg Nicotera and Howard Berger goes above and beyond the call of B-Movie duty. Like the rest of the production, they’re taking it very seriously indeed.

There are numerous homages to PREDATOR, creatively intertwined into this tale, and Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally (which is blaring in the chopper on the way to the drop zone in PREDATOR) plays us out over the closing credits. There are the unavoidable cliché moments: Walton exalts, “We killed it! We killed it!” and is suddenly shot in the back by “it.” There are the interesting twists of character, and even a grand moral dilemma: when Topher is injured, rather than carrying him as dead weight, Brody decides, “We leave him as a booby trap.” When Alice protests, he elucidates on how the Predators maimed Topher to slow down the fleeing humans, knowing they would carry him, “They’re banking on us being human.” I love the smell of sociopath in the morning.

And when Yakuza finds a samurai sword, we know there must be a reckoning – between an arm-bladed Predator and Yakuza gettin’ his Toshiro Mifune on. Like Billy on the log, Yakuza stops in a field as the rest of the humans continue to flee. He turns to face the oncoming Pred, who, true to form, decides to grant his prey the courtesy of a “fair” battle… as he shinks out his arm-talons…

It seems Predators are taken down not by their superior technology or weaponry, which, if utilized judiciously, can take down any prey in the galaxy – they are done in by their own hubris! They are arrogant beyond caution. Brody (covered in mud like Arnold) goes mano a mano against the last Berserker; when the Pred could easily shoot Brody as he lies squirming on the ground, he opts to grab Brody by the neck and throw him. Even picking Brody up by the neck could warrant an efficient killing stroke if the Pred just shinks his arm-talons up through Brody’s throat. Nope. They take toying with their prey to new levels of carelessness.

Maybe it is this inherent ego, conceit and pride that makes them hunters in the first place (those characteristics sure work for Man); maybe this same presumption of their superiority impels them to waste resources bringing animals from throughout the solar system to dump on this planet as prey; all we know is: “Pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18). Another reason for Predators to read the bible – they’d kill us more efficiently. They should also stop watching 1960s Batman episodes.

It’s almost as if the words of the Little Richard song reflect the taunting hubris of the Predators, “We’re gonna have some fun tonight – whooo!/ We’re gonna have some fun tonight – whooo!/ Have some fun, havin’ me some fun tonight!”– Oops! Blown up by humans again!

Whooo!

END

Like A Bat Out Of Invercargill…

To Go Faster: that was the single-minded purpose of Herbert J. “Burt” Munro (1899 – 1978), whose life story was an “inspirational movie” just waiting to happen.

World’s Fastest Cucumber

The tagline boasts, “based on one hell of a true story,” justifiably it would seem, as Munro – a fearless, free-spirited New Zealand rider who broke land speed records in his 60s – was one hell of a character.

THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN is the quixotic tale of Munro’s first trek from his provincial home town of Invercargill, New Zealand, to Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, to tilt at the land speed record in what he hopes will become The World’s Fastest Indian – his modified 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle. Reading like the archetypal Hollywood tearjerker, it is fortunate that archives of Munro interviews and riding footage still exists, to corroborate that his tall tale was indeed a real life template for underdog movies.

Anthony Hopkins gives a startling performance as Munro (for his utter divergence from all things Hannibal or Uptight Butler), paying supreme tribute to Munro by burying himself in a role which is part absent-minded professor, part master mechanic, all nutjob – the type of guy who, when told to mow his thigh-high lawn, torches it with gasoline, not through any malice, but with an ingenuousness that would somehow endear him to all he came in contact with.

As with any “true” story, director-writer Roger Donaldson (whose resumé is a laundry list of recognizable films: THE BOUNTY, NO WAY OUT, COCKTAIL, SPECIES, DANTE’S PEAK) composites events and characters to squeeze Munro’s storied life into 127 minutes of fish out of water hell on wheels. Lifting many of the anecdotes and dialogue from Munro himself (from a documentary Donaldson directed in 1973, which appears on the DVD: OFFERINGS TO THE GOD OF SPEED), Donaldson admits to Munro’s legend blurring over the years, “There were many stories that I’d heard that just could not have been true and then there were stories that I knew to be true that were hard to believe.”

The numerous cameos ably support Munro’s need for speed : Chris Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Rodriguez, Christopher Lawford, with notable appearances by Annie Whittle and Diane Ladd, to further the fact that “dirty old men need love too.”

Accompanied by the Indian he worked on for decades like a lover, Munro’s quest would see him paying his way across the Pacific as cook onboard a tramp steamer, using a log as a wheel when the desert highway claims his makeshift trailer, choking down a Native American’s gift of powdered dog’s balls for his prostate, stealing petrol from the official race supply, letting his tailpipe char his calf during a record attempt rather than stopping, battling his own ailing heart, butting heads with regulation-raunchy officials and – the most horrible trial of all – spending a night in Hollywood.

Was Munro such a yokel that, instead of finding a hotel in Long Beach (where he would pick up his bike from Customs the next day), he would rather trek all the way north into Hollywood for the night just to “see film stars”? Apparently so. With scenes that read like a clunky CROCODILE DUNDEE, Munro winds up at the Flamingo Sunset hotel, promptly getting ripped off by a fake flower-girl, propositioned by an old hooker and meeting a transvestite within the space of two minutes. (When I first moved to Hollywood, it took me a whole week to get taken by a small-time hustler, propositioned by a skanky hooker and befriend a she-male.)

Cutting down on the weight of his bike – and against all regulations – Munro saw no need even for brakes (“I’m planning on going, not stopping”) or a parachute (“I’m not planning on bailing out”). From the poverty-stricken, ascetic life he led, it was no wonder he was eternally ready to die with his boots on. If Munro had nothing else, he had balls. And plenty of ’em. Which accounts for his simple philosophy, “You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime.” And also accounts for the trail of bodacious, wrinkled squeeze he left in his wake.

For those who believe in planetary alignments and other such nonsense, the whole solar system must have conspired to aid Burt Munro in those days leading to the 1962 Bonneville Speed Week, as fortuitous event after fortuitous event nudges him towards his goal, everyone’s heart melting over Burt’s cause (from competitors to race officials alike), creating a syrupy Disney contagion that seems non-believable at times, but which must have some basis in reality, as the shattered records are testament to this broke, obsessive, neighborhood nuisance becoming a living legend.

Some of Munro’s land speed records still stand to this day.

It’s a sobering thought that there must be thousands of fanatical old tinkerers out there who obsess over seemingly ridiculous, esoteric pastimes, any of which, with the right set of circumstances, could land them in history books.

Burt Munro just happened to be the wrong man in the right place at the fastest time.

END