Archive for October, 2007
351 – Death Proof
Posted by frothy in Death Proof on October 31, 2007
Grindhouse was originally released in theaters as one big movie comprising two feature-length parts, complete with fake trailers, that evoked the cheap and cheesy cinematic experience of low-budget movies in the olden days. However, each of the features was instead released separately on DVD, also in keeping with grindhouse theater tradition.
Death Proof, from Quentin Tarantino, relates the story of one Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a movie stunt dude who’s tricked out his kick-ass muscle car to be, well, death proof, meaning that it could be used as an actual stunt car, able to withstand high-velocity crashes without its driver sustaining much in the way of injuries. But see, Stuntman Mike isn’t just some guy with a mean-looking car, he’s also a sicko who gets off on killing young women. This is the kind of theme you’d see frequently in low-budget films of yesteryear – the sexy damsel in distress who’s mowed down by a some psychopath with no greater motivation than sheer lunacy. Mike’s a scary-looking fella, too – he has a long vertical scar that begins above his eye and travels down to his chin. He’s gritty, slimy, grizzled. Heck, he kind of looks like Snake Plissken, come to think of it; all he’s missing is that eyepatch.
In the first half of the movie, Mike stalks a group of young women, following them to a honkytonk bar. The women are luscious and oversexed, another theme of cheapo trash movies; eventually, Mike offers a lift to Pam (Rose McGowan), who’s not even in the group he’s been following. Do you think Pam will make it home in one piece? Yeah, I’m gonna go with “no” on that one, Johnny. Mike’s car is death proof, indeed, but as he accurately notes, you get the full effect only if you’re in the driver’s seat. Hey-o! Anyway, death happens. There is a huge, wildly violent crash, as Mike uses his car as the ultimate murder weapon.
Once you accept the concept of the movie – that it’s really supposed to be reminiscient of those crappy drive-in films of the past, complete with poor cinematography and editing – then you can somewhat enjoy the movie. I qualify that statement because there’s one big problem I had with the movie, and that’s while it should remind you of, say, a 1977 hot-rod/sexploitation movie, there are such curious anachronisms as cell phones and some late-model cars. There must be a logical explanation for this, but if we’re supposed to think of those older movies and the primary vehicles in the movie are from the 1970s, then why have modern gadgets? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose a little?
Russell is awesome as the diseased creep – he reminds me not only of Plissken but of Rondo Hatten, who played many seamy and seedy monsters back in the 1930s and 1940s. Stuntman Mike is a typical tough, hard-ass Tarantino character who can also use words to knock down an opponent – or win a lady. With a squint and a glint, Mike is instantly a mysterious rascal with an agenda, although the exact nature of that agenda isn’t known until deeper into the film.
The rest of the cast is pretty good, although I do wish the entire atmosphere of the 1970s had been preserved; there was just too much modernity to the sets and the characters’ mannerisms to suit me. The women we see in the latter half of the movie outshine those in the first half, particularly real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell (playing herself, natch) and Rosario Dawson. Not faring as well were Vanessa Ferlito and Jordan Ladd.
Beyond that little head-scratcher, though, the movie’s not half bad. Were it not released as a big budget movie to such fanfare, it might even qualify for cult-movie status. Heck, it still might. The crash scenes are wonderful, pulse-quickening shots born of angst and revenge; you can almost feel the glass splintering, the metal bending, the rubber leaving a mile-long skidmark. This, along with pepper-hot dialog, is Tarantino’s calling card – recall the crash scene in Pulp Fiction with Butch’s car. Tarantino, typically, writes himself a good part as Warren the Bartender, although he didn’t give himself a witty monologue like he did in Sleep with Me or Pulp Fiction.
***
350 – Saw IV
You don’t need me to tell you that the blood and guts in Saw IV is, well, a bit grotesque. After all, the torture series has made evisceration its bread and butter, if you will, and it’s probably a little bit late to slap that sin back into Pandora’s Box. So, Saw = gore. Presumably, if you’ve read even this far, you’re all in for goopy blood and entrails and whatnot. It’s your bread and butter too, you see.
So Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and his faithful companion Amanda (Shawnee Smith) are no longer among the living, but their “work” lives on, in an unending conga line of sequels. In this one, two veteran FBI agents join the local cops to try to figure out who’s killing cops, especially with the supposed mastermind quite sincerely deceased.
As with the first three movies, people are maimed and killed in variously creative ways, all part of some posthumous scheme cooked up by Jigsaw. Or by some accomplice who’s carrying on the evil work. The good news? It’s all interconnected with the events of Saw III. The bad news? Saw III was somewhat confusing, and this one blows it out of the water in terms of murkiness and who the hey is doing what and when. But we do see a lot of the same basic concepts, like a victim wakes to find himself in some sort of diabolical trap, and he must suffer incredible pain if he wants to live. I have to admit that the devices themselves – and the plots they forward – are pretty ingenious. In one scene, a husband and wife wake to find themselves impaled on a series of sharp sticks. That is, a stick enters the woman’s body and exits, and then enters the man’s body. The backstory is that she was physically abused by him for many years, and now she literally holds his life in her hands. She can live, but only if she removes the sticks, and by doing so his vital organs are skewered. Awesome stuff.
But at its heart, this is a revenge movie. Revenge of Jigsaw for the wrongs he’d suffered. In IV, we find out a heck of a lot more about John’s life story, what made him who he is. In fact, we learn he has/had an ex-wife, who makes an extended experience here. Can the ex-wife jokes, you guys out there. She’s actually a good guy in this one. I think. It’s hard to tell, the plot’s so convoluted. You did something wrong to Jigsaw? You die violently. Cut him off at the supermarket? Dinged his car in the parking lot? Littered on his part of the sidewalk? Man, you are so dead.
Meanwhile, all the cops and agents are trying desperately to find out where the actual Jigsaw headquarters is, because the killings continue – and one of their own is missing. Well, more than one, actually; one’s been gone six months. But another just vanished, and for some reason the men in blue think he’s the one behind everything. They may have a point, since as they follow his trail the bodies pile up. And, as I said, each victim has been selected for a specific reason. Man, if Jigsaw put as much effort into saving the world as he did in killing people off, we’d be pretty set.
This ain’t for the squeamish, certainly. First scene is Jigsaw being cut open during an autopsy, and no sight is worse, perhaps, than seeing the skull sawed open, the skin flapped down, the brain removed… Eww. It’s a big fat eww, and it’s not the only one. If I were you, I wouldn’t eat anything sticky or squishy while watching this – parts of it make Hostel seem like Herbie the Love Bug.
The biggest caveat is that the plot is a little tough to follow, since your mind is overwhelmed by all the carnage. At one point during the final ten minutes or so, a character appears whom I swear I didn’t even recognize, and that’s because some of the events of IV run parallel, timewise, to those in III. Saw III was so last year, so I didn’t remember the character.
Overall, though, there is no substantial dropoff in quality from III to IV. Or even, really, from II to IV; the first one still reigns supreme, but that’s partly because it was all fresh for us back then, and the others have had to live up to that film’s standard. IV manages to hold its own; good thing, too, since it’s very likely we’ll see a V and a VI.
**1/2
349 – Bug
I can’t possibly give this movie the rating it truly deserves. This is one of those movies that fools you into thinking it’ll be a pretty decent film, only to not only not be decent but to be hands-down one of the worst movies of the year. If I had a rating system of one to ten, with ten being the best, Bug would rate at about a negative infinity. But perhaps I’m being a little harsh on it unnecessarily.
Bug is about a stereotypical lonely midwestern woman who lives in a crappy, run-down motel in the middle of Nowheresville, Oklahoma. She has the standard crazy ex-husband who’s just been released from jail and the standard lesbian best friend who works with her at the honkytonk cowboy bar down the road a piece. Agnes (Ashley Judd) is kind, considerate, saucy, sassy, and gorgeous. Agnes is supposed to be sort of broken down; she has just her one friend R.C. (Lynn Collins) and doesn’t like to party – although she does snort her share of the cocaine. Still and all, she seems like a right nice sort, although in typical Lifetime movie of the week fashion she’s instantly cowed by her psychotic ex (Harry Connick, Jr.).
One day R.C. brings over a guy she found at their bar, Peter (Michael Shannon), a man who seems even more distant and unsure of himself than the lovely Agnes. Peter takes to her, and she to he, despite not knowing a damn thing about him. He has no home, no car, no nothing. Dude’s not even handsome, like her ex. But there’s something kindly, if off-putting about Peter; he seems to listen, you know, care. Chicks dig it if you fake caring about them, you see. At any rate, Agnes lets him spend the night, chastely on the couch.
But it quickly transpires that Peter’s not all there. He’s a former war vet, and he’s a little batty about bugs. Sees them everywhere. Once, in the middle of the night, he insists he’s been bitten by an aphid and tears the bed apart looking for it. When he does find it, though, Agnes can’t see it. No one can see it. You know why? Because it’s not there. That doesn’t stop Peter from bitching about it. The next day, he’s spread flystrips all over the motel room. Oh, and somehow gotten a hold of a microscope, the better to look at slides containing his own blood. You know, normal stuff.
Now, you or I might think, “Hey, Peter’s whacked from being tested with drugs by sinister Army doctors!” and that he clearly needs some freaking medical attention. R.C. points out to Peter that aphids don’t bite, and he in turn accuses her of selling him out to The Man. And of course, at that point, as you might predict, Agnes goes crazy at her friend, screaming at her that she’s trying to take away the only thing Agnes has left in her life, and yadda yadda yadda, and it all ends with a classic line of “Get out of here! And don’t you ever come back!”
Knowing that logic has been jettisoned might actually help the viewer here, because plainly a lot of stuff here just isn’t meant to make any sense. It’s a screenwriter’s crutch, really, having a character be so completely off the wall that one can’t relate at all. Peter goes from being simply creepy (and, it should be noted, not someone a fragile, single woman should ever allow into her home) to certifiable in the wink of an eye. Much worse, though, is that Agnes goes from being intelligent and romantic to being… well, really, really dumb. Suddenly nothing she says contains one iota of smarts. It’s as if Peter’s enormous head (seriously, go look at Michael Shannon) was sucking all the brains out of Agnes. Or she sucked the crazy out of him. Because, come to think of it, she wasn’t loopy until after she slept with him.
I have to wonder, though, if this movie is supposed to be ironic. Because it’s loaded, absolutely chock full, of seemingly unintentional comedy. Here’s an actual line. Actual line, mind you: “Agnes! Tell me what you don’t know!” I am the dumber for having typed those words. Watching this movie is like being hit repeatedly about the skull with a blunt instrument. It’s badly written – this stuff wouldn’t make sense on paper, why would it make sense in a movie? – terribly acted, and an overall embarrassment. One plus: Judd is naked for quite a bit of time, rare for such a high-caliber actress.
*
348 – Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
Posted by frothy in Aqua Teen Hunger Force on October 21, 2007
Let’s be frank. If you don’t like this late-night Cartoon Network series (or if you’ve never even watched it), you’ll likely find this movie to be a huge bore, veering from frat-house humor to incomprehensibility. The characters are bizarre, and the premises are bizarrer. More bizarrererer. Or something. It’s absurdist comedy that makes sense only within a certain context, and that context is “Oh my god I am so stoned is that a talking milkshake woo.”
I’m generalizing a bit, but yeah. Basically, you have to accept the idea that a Happy Meal – a giant milkshake, an order of fries that can fly, and an shape-shifting meatball – lives in New Jersey. It’s not worth considering how they pay for groceries or how, you know, they even exist, you just have to buy into that premise above all else. Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad inhabit a run-down craphole of a house somewhere up in north Jersey; they interact with mainly just their next-door neighbor Carl, a sterotypical Joisey bastard with a lot of chest hair, medallions, and no Inner Voice. Oh, and then there are the eight-bit aliens, and a robot bird..thing,
Now, most episodes of the show end with someone or something (usually the Teens’ house) blowing up. And then in the next show, all is well. It’d be a mighty quick series otherwise. Frylock is the wisest of them all, and he has superpowers – he can fly! he can shoot lasers out of his fries! – and he spends much of each episode trying to keep the other two out of trouble – or yoinking them away from it. Master Shake is callous, egotistic, heartless, and not terribly bright. But he’s smarter than Meatwad, who’s simply a ball o’ meat. Meatwad’s also terribly gullible, a trait that shows up roughly every episode, as Shake takes advantage of him all the time.
This movie does make a stab at not being a simple extended episode, which many ‘toons wind up doing (I’m looking at you, Mister Squarepants!). You know the drill. Hey, this show is pretty funny for 30 minutes, so naturally it’ll be three times as hilarious if it’s 90 minutes long! Am I right or am I right? Am I working hard or hardly working? Woo! But in this case, the decision was made to explore the origins of the Teens, since it’s never really explained in the series how they came to be. Seems our boys were the creations of Dr. Weird, who has a lab out on the Jersey shore. To be fair, this is covered a little bit in the series, but the movie goes into much more detail about who begat whom and why and what this all means.
In addition to the where’d-they-come-from angle, the plot centers around a kick-ass new exercise machine owned by Carl and borrowed by Shake, called the Insaneoflex. Yeah, you’d think with a name like that, it’d have you ripped in no time, right? Yeah, well, it does, only not in the good way. It’s a bad machine. And it’s up to our boys (well, mostly Frylock) to save Carl from its evil clutches!
And there’s your threadbare plot right there. Now, again, if you’re not a fan of the series, you won’t buy into any of this. The jokes are sometimes very subtle and completely off the wall. And they often don’t make a whit of sense, even if you have indeed seen the show. So what I’m saying is this: If you’re in the right frame of mind (that is, chemically enhanced or some facsimile thereof), you might find this entertaining. It’s not as bad as many mainstream critics claim it is, mainly because it’s perfect for the audience it’s aiming at. That said, such audience is probably a small focus group, and since the movie doesn’t (perhaps nobly so) attempt to move outside its mien, I’m not going to give it a particularly good rating.
**
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