Justin Robinson's Blog, page 16
February 6, 2015
Now Fear This: Freddy vs. Jason
Round 1. FIGHT!
I don’t know when my father decided I was going to become a cinephile. I’m relatively confident it was a conscious decision, just based on the scientific way he got me into the Bond series (reasoning, correctly, that Connery wasn’t really going to grab a seven year old’s interest, he started me on Roger Moore, which is why to this day, Moore is the original James Bond in my mind). Because he loved horror more than all other genres put together, I saw a great many horror classics when I was far too young to have reasonably seen them. I plan to repeat this mistake with any future children, because this early trauma inspired me to write a couple horror novels that I’m pretty darn proud of, and if the worst consequences of an action are a couple sleepless nights and some books? Take it. Every time.
I was also raised as a little bit of a snob. Growing up in the ‘80s, you were expected to have a favorite slasher on the schoolyard. Failure to embrace a fictional supernatural maniac who punished the venal with bladed phalluses would expose you to the kind of ridicule usually reserved for anyone whose favorite GI Joe wasn’t Snake Eyes. (Seriously, what the fuck are up with those non-Snake Eyes loving pricks? Assholes. Every one.)
Eat all the dicks ever, Flint.
Back then, Freddy Krueger was my guy. In retrospect, it’s a little weird for a kid to embrace Freddy. After all, he is highly implied to be a child molester (the remake makes this text), and his clawed hand is both the most distinctive weapon a slasher ever wielded and a clever bit of symbolism referencing Freddy’s hinted crimes. It doesn’t matter — the first Nightmare movie is a legitimate classic that still holds up today, mixing glorious practical effects, a resourceful heroine, and a little black comedy for the kind of gem that made the ‘80s such a boomtime for the genre. The sequels vary strongly in quality, and while I’ll happily defend the third, fourth, and fifth, enjoy the miscalculation of the second and the lunatic ambition of the seventh. The less said about the sixth, though, the better. Freddy was gradually Flanderized from a terrifying boogeyman who offered the occasional Bond one-liner to a hacky standup comic who seemed to kill only to get a chance to deliver a punchline.
Like the other Freddy partisans, I looked down on Jason. Friday the 13th movies were juvenile, stupid, borderline pornographic excuses to off a bunch of interchangeable characters in mildly inventive ways. We didn’t have the term “torture porn,” but that’s what the Jason movies were back in the day. Yet, anyone who knows me in meatspace knows that I have limitless affection for Jason Voorhees. I own two 12” figures (from parts 6 and 7), the Jason Funko, and on any given day there’s roughly a 40% chance I’m wearing a Jason/Camp Crystal Lake t-shirt. Hell, the image on my business card is of someone in a hockey mask. So what gives?
In my adulthood, I’ve come to embrace the Jason movies. Oh, they’re terrible. Not a single one of them could be considered good by any sane standard of the medium. What I love is the character of Jason himself, specifically how he has become a modern icon of horror. He has grown beyond the series that spawned him into a monster as recognizable as any of the Universal classics. The hockey mask — though it changes with each film — is instantly recognizable as a symbol of Jason Voorhees, and of death on the misty shores of Crystal Lake. The same goes for Freddy, from the glove and the burn scars to the fedora and sweater. These two have transcended cinema to become modern folklore.
So of course they had to fight. I love Freddy vs. Jason, but truth be told, it’s barely a movie. It’s also the best incarnation we could have hoped for, with a solid backstory, some good fights, all the while staying true to both icons. The movie was trapped in development hell for years, as Jason belonged to Paramount while the massive success of A Nightmare on Elm Street saved New Line (in some circles, the studio is still known as “the house that Freddy built”). Friday the 13th Part VII was the original attempt to make the movie, though Paramount couldn’t get the rights to Freddy, and so went with a telekinetic girl instead. The film’s nickname, “Jason vs. Carrie” bears this out. They teased it again as a stinger in series-worst Jason Goes to Hell, with the clawed glove dragging the hockey mask down to hell.
From the word go, Freddy vs. Jason is blatant fanservice. It opens with the Elm Street theme, and finishes up with the “ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma” from the Friday movies. Then it moves into a “previously on” just in case anyone who hadn’t seen the movies wandered into the wrong theater or something. Basically, Freddy has been forgotten, and without fear, he has no power. So impersonates Jason’s mom and gets the big guy out of his grave to go kill folks on Elm Street, where local legend will kick in and build Freddy back up to size. The problem is, Jason Voorhees is a bit like the Joker in Dark Knight, once you let him out, it’s impossible to put him back. He starts hacking people up in the real world, while an increasingly desperate Freddy tries to fight back in the dreams of the victims.
It’s a bad meets evil kind of situation, and the kids caught in the middle realize they’re basically fucked. They decide that they have no chance at all against Freddy, since he actively hates the kids of Elm Street and can track them in their dreams. Jason, on the other hand, is a mama’s boy and a homebody who will happily stick around at Camp Crystal Lake, and only hack people up if they come to him for some premarital sex or drug use. Or Manhattan, but the series wisely forgets that part. The desperate plan is to engineer a showdown between the killers and hope to god Jason comes out on top. The best part is that, even in the climactic battle, Jason isn’t above hacking one of the kids apart if they get close. He’s the hero, but only compared to a psychotic child molester. He’s still fucking Jason, and he’ll gut you like a fish.
Or, in modern fanfic terms, he’s “misunderstood.”
The movie is sure to visit the most iconic locations, going from Nancy’s house in the original Elm Street, to Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, the setting of (series second best installment) Dream Warriors and where Freddy was conceived, to finish out on Jason’s home turf at the rotting corpse of Camp Crystal Lake. Weirdly, it leans heavily on Freddy’s ability to possess people, the crux of the wildly misguided Freddy’s Revenge. In a modern bit of meta-casting, the movie features scream queen Katharine Isabelle in a role that’s too small for her.
The movie does its best to paint them as opposites. Freddy is a predator, and at heart, Jason is still the disabled boy who kind of drowned but not really (it never made much sense). Additionally, Freddy was burned to death, his place of power is the boiler room where he took his victims, and his scenes tend to be tinted red. Jason drowned (again, kinda), his place of power is a lake, and his scenes are a swampy green. Fire is a destructive, masculine element, while water is a softer, more feminine one that can symbolize both rebirth and motherhood. Appropriate for a guy who really loves his mom. Additionally, both elements cross over at times, with Jason being set on fire and leaving a trail of flames, to show both Freddy’s influence and lack of control, while Jason first arrives on Freddy’s stomping grounds in a torrential rainstorm.
Maybe the best part for me was that the movie fundamentally hinged on the same debate I had a million times on the schoolyard. In dreams, Freddy wins easily, but in the real world, it’s all Jason. I couldn’t have foreseen Freddy’s affinity for wire work, but they made the movie I wanted to see at eight years old.
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Camp Crystal Lake, Crystal Lake, Dream Warriors, Elm Street, Freddy Krueger, Freddy vs. Jason, Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees, Now Fear This
January 30, 2015
Yakmala: Deathstalker
This never happens in the movie.
The 1980s was a wildly experimental time for pop cinema, due to all the free-floating cocaine and homoeroticism that had everyone’s brains in loops. Many subgenres rose and ultimately fell in this sweaty, coked up morass. The sweatiest of these subgenres was the brief vogue for laconic muscle-men loping through low fantasy worlds and lopping off the heads of weirdly-dubbed Italian actors. You can say this was because of the success of the awesome Conan the Barbarian, but come on. You know it was the other thing.
Tagline: The Might of the Sword… the Evil of the Sorcerer…
More Accurate Tagline: The Grease of the Pecs… the Creepiness of Everyone…
Guilty Party: Director John… Watson? Wait, that can’t be right. No, it totally is. John Watson directed this, and he’s getting the blame. Could Sherlock not be bothered to read the script? Dammit, Watson, I expect better out of you.
You’ve not only let me down, you’ve failed England as well.
Synopsis: The movie opens with a shot of a series of men jumping out the window. It’s like the filmmakers were trying to warn you about the only way out or something.
Then we move on to the film’s, nay, the entire subgenre’s terrifying preoccupation: rape. Yeah, some guy has a woman tied up and he’s going to assault her. It’s gross, and the one thing that prevents these kinds of movies from being unmitigated fun. I suspect that a lot of filmmakers in the ‘80s grew so angry when their dicks got hard around half-naked and oiled up men, they had to abuse a woman to prove to themselves they were still totally chill, brah.
The woman is rescued first by cavemen and then by Deathstalker, who makes sure to kill everyone within arrow distance. Who is Deathstalker? Some guy who works out, spends most of his money on baby oil, and looks like he was kicked out of White Lion for being too flamboyant. Deathstalker kills the cavemen, while the potential rapist offers to share the woman with him. Alone in this universe Deathstalker has some morals. He kills the potential rapist, then puts the moves on the lady. So, not a ton of morals. Hey, Deathstalker, maybe wait like a day, day and a half, before trying to bang a rape survivor? Just a thought.
Deathstalker heads into a nearby town, but it’s just some tents set up in the forest. The headman is like, “Dude, go kill Munkar the wizard.” Deathstalker’s like, “Fuck that. You think I got my sweet-ass name by assassinating people?” And the headman is like, “Well, obviously. Your name is ‘Deathstalker,’ not ‘Lazy Metal Bitch Who Eats All My Goat.’” The headman is pissed because his daughter, the princess, has been kidnapped by Munkar and taken off to his harem. We cut to the harem, and it’s the most ‘80s thing I have ever seen in my life. It looks like the calm moments right before Duran Duran is going to warn everyone of the dangers posed by the Union of the Snake.
It’s on the climb, people.
Some guys on horseback menace an old witch in the woods. Deathstalker arrives, kills two of them, but the leader, Kang, turns into a bird and gets away. Kang is also Munkar, and I totally don’t understand. It’s like Munkar is playing a life-action version of Second Life, and occasionally he wanders around as a guy named Kang. Probably because Munkar loves the shit out of Star Trek and wants everyone to know.
The witch tells Deathstalker he needs to get the three powers of creation. Munkar already has two, and if he gets the third, I don’t know, bad shit happens. There’s the Sword of Justice, the Amulet of Life, and the Chalice of Magic. She sends Deathstalker off to a cave to get the sword. This creepy little troll man hands the sword over no problem, so, yeah. Tough quest there, guys. The troll man — Salmaron (brother of Marcmaron) — was cursed by Munkar’s magic, but now that he’s free of the sword, he’s human again. Yay.
Since we’ve gone twenty minutes without an attempted rape, Watson gets antsy. A midriff-baring fencer named Oghris fights with some bad guys while they alternate between fighting and attempting to rape this woman (who is never named and I have no idea what she’s even doing there). Deathstalker shows up and helps kill the guys, so he and Oghris are pals now. Oghris explains that he’s heading to Munkar’s castle because there’s a tournament. Whoever wins gets to be Munkar’s heir. Deathstalker, confused by his feelings for Oghris, decides to go along.
The next night they meet Kaira (Lana Clarkson), a mysterious fighter also heading to Munkar’s place. She also has something against covering her breasts, presumably because they’re afraid of the dark. She pretty much instantly starts banging Deathstalker, and it’s only surprising because it’s consensual. They also appear to still be wearing loincloths, so it might just be dry humping, and they’re both worried her folks will come home early and catch them.
We go to Munkar’s village, and it’s as unpleasant as you think it is. All the fighters have gathered, and they’re mostly the kind of roided up musclemen you expect from this kind of movie. They don’t look like they can move, let alone fight. There’s also a man with a pig head there, because logic has no place in this dojo. There’s a big party for the fighters, and women are just hurled in there like chum over a reef of angry bull sharks. Even Oghris is clearly coercing a reluctant woman. Kaira in a rare bit of modesty (maybe it’s cold) has covered most of her nipples, and she also makes sure no one is coming near Deathstalker.
Munkar then brings out the princess and ties her up for the room of fighters. At this point, I’m hoping Watson was on some kind of watch list. It really paints some of his adventures in a darker context. A big fight over who gets to rape the princess breaks out, and Kaira is the only one defending her for a long-ass time. Finally Deathstalker hauls his ass out of his seat and saves the princess. Hilariously, he has this expression on his face the whole time like he’s not angry with the fighters, he’s just disappointed.
After the party, Munkar turns his weird Dungeon Master into the princess and sends him to Deathstalker’s room to assassinate him. It nearly works, but Deathstalker susses it out in time and kicks the assassin out. In the hall, he runs into Kaira, and turns back into a dude. They kill each other. That’s it for Kaira.
The tournament starts, and it’s some old fashioned killing! One guy even gets hammered into goo! It’s kind of awesome.
That night, Munkar questions Oghris. Turns out Oghris was on Munkar’s payroll the whole time, and his job was to bring Deathstalker to the castle. Let’s ignore that this makes no sense, and move right along. Oghris and Deathstalker then fight, and holy shit, it literally could not be gayer unless they had their dicks in each other’s mouths the whole time. These two are clearly in love, and the fight mostly consists of hurling each other onto the bed. Finally, Deathstalker kills Oghris, and he has a deeper emotional response than when Kaira died. You know, the chick he was banging, who was allergic to shirts and badass enough to enter the tournament: AKA marriage material.
The next day, we have the championship bout: Deathstalker vs. Pig Man. During the fight, Pig Man gets behind Deathstalker and it really looks like he’s raping him. So… you know… hooray for equality? Anyway, Deathstalker kills the Pig Man, and Munkar reveals the last bit of his plan. All the fighters who could challenge him are dead, and now he just has to take out Deathstalker.
While Salmaron (remember him?) leads the harem women in a fight against the guards (which has lots of prison shanking and even more hairspray), Deathstalker hunts around for Munkar. He finds his Second Life avatar Kang first and kills him, getting the amulet. Then out in the courtyard, he finds Munkar. After some illusions, a fed up Deathstalker just marches up to Munkar and demands the chalice. Munkar hands it over and refuses to make eye contact. It’s pretty amazing. Deathstalker hurls the newly powerless Munkar to the crowd to be torn apart, while he calls some lightning to destroy the three artifacts.
Nobody gets that power on Deathstalker’s watch!
Life-Changing Subtext: Sex with dudes can be dangerous.
Defining Quote: Deathstalker: “Heroes and fools are the same thing.” Yeah, the way you do it.
Standout Performance: I’m giving this one to Lana Clarkson as Kaira. While she swordfights as convincingly as a small child with cerebral palsy trying to hang up his clothes, she also has that whole no-shirts philosophy.
What’s Wrong: The rape. Oh, dear god, the rape everywhere. Can’t I just have a fun, stupid fantasy movie please?
Flash of Competence: Make no mistake, this is a highly dumb movie. Some of the fights aren’t bad, the Oghris plot twist was kind of cool, and the whole thing is just insane enough to be distinctive.
Best Scenes: The first scene in the movie when the cavemen show up and interrupt the first rape is kind of amazing. While the guy is sort of gearing up for it, the aforementioned cavemen sneak up on him. And they’re really not doing a very good job of it. If he looked up, or even had peripheral vision, he’d see six or seven hairy dudes just standing there like, “Dude… what’s going on?” It basically takes him until one of them taps him on the shoulder to notice, and then he’s like, “Oh shit, cavemen!”
The first scene also features some gross early ‘80s kissing. I don’t know what it is about kissing, but people didn’t figure out how to do it until the ‘90s or so. There was a period when it basically looked like two people trying to eat pudding out of each other’s mouths and it’s fucking horrifying.
Transcendent Moment: On the night of the weird party, Munkar explains the purpose of the tournament to the gathered fighters. Presumably, they already know as they wouldn’t have shown up otherwise, and we the audience also know, so I don’t know why it’s in there. No, I totally do. It’s for the film’s Transcendent Moment.
So Munkar is like, “I don’t know who will win! I’m dying soon, so whoever takes over will get to rule my kingdom however they see fit. Good or evil will rule.”
And this dude in the middle of the mud ring (oh yeah, there’s a mud ring for wrestling because the director learned everything he knows about women from strip clubs in snuff films), raises his hand and roars, “EVIL!”
That’s right. This guy is just psyched that he will get to rule the kingdom for evil. What’s evil? Who knows, but this guy is putting in the time.
“Seriously dude? Tone it down a notch.”
Other than the, uh, troubling gender politics, Deathstalker is a reasonably fun entrant into a sadly-gone subgenre of movie. There was a time when you just needed a couple bodybuilders, some toy swords, Crisco, and loincloths, and you had the makings of a movie. They drifted away, like so much cocaine in the winds.
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: baby oil, Conan the Barbarian, Deathstalker, Duran Duran, John Watson, roids, swords and sorcery, the Sword of Justice, White Lion, Yakmala!
January 23, 2015
Lifetime Theater: Big Driver
I don’t think it’s possible to grow up when I did and not become at least a casual Stephen King fan. He catches some flak, good-natured and otherwise, for his fevered output, and even his most ardent defenders would admit that he misses almost as much as he hits. In particular, he has an unjustified reputation for making terrible movies. While it’s true that a lot of his prose — which leans heavily on stream-of-consciousness internal monologue to make points — is tough to adapt to a visual medium, the consistent number one spot in the IMDB’s Top 250 Movies is The Shawshank Redemption, which is adapted from a King work. The Mist is a modern masterpiece of horror, and a lot of people really like a little film called The Shining. There are others too: Stand By Me, Misery, and hell, even The Green Mile has its apologists.
Whatever you may think of King, you don’t get an opinion on him until you read The Long Walk and Misery. These works take King’s best traits, placing his everyman protagonists in the middle of an ordeal designed to break them and then finding what shakes out. Perhaps even more important, they’re brief, with none of the digressions that can either bog down or fill out King’s work, depending on your preference. Nary a word is wasted in either one. In fact, most of the better adaptations of King’s work come from his novellas — Shawshank, Stand By Me, and The Mist are all short pieces that benefit from a filmmaker’s eye.
The idea that the Lifetime network might want to take a crack at one of King’s works at first sounds kind of strange. But look back on some of the movies I’ve reviewed. We had an Amish serial killer, a lesbian murder-club, and an investigation into a brutal rape. When I heard that Lifetime was adapting his novella Big Driver from the collection Full Dark, No Stars, I only had a moment of “…the fuck?” before realizing that it made a disturbing amount of sense.
Full Dark, No Stars consists of four novellas (or three and one long story), and Big Driver is easily the second best of these. It’s King’s take on the rape-revenge story, a horror subgenre that reached its peak popularity in the 1970s. I’ve always had an uncomfortable relationship with that specific subgenre — I suspect that’s part of the point of it — because there is little more horrible to watch than a rape scene, no matter how satisfying the ultimate comeuppance is in the end. I Spit On Your Grave has divided critics since it came out, with Roger Ebert attacking its sexist nihilism while Carol Clover uncovered the deep meanings underneath. With this aside, it makes sense that of all the King stories out there, Lifetime chooses possibly the most Lifetimeiest (both in the traditional and new definitions for the word) to adapt.
Tess Thorne (Maria Bello) is a cozy mystery writer whose most famous creations, the Willow Grove Knitting Society, are a quartet of old women who solve mysteries. She gets invited to speak to a book club out in the boonies. Hoping to avoid the highway on the way back, Ramona Norville (a King name if ever there was one), the woman who runs the book club, gives Tess a shortcut through the woods. In the middle of nowhere, Tess suffers a blowout caused by a series of nail-covered boards set out in the street. A giant of a man — the titular Big Driver — happens by in a beat-up old pickup. He’s initially helpful, but he rapidly turns creepy, and when Tess discovers more nail-boards in the flatbed, he attacks her.
After the rape, he stuffs her in an old drainage pipe. She wakes up surrounded by the corpses of his other victims. She limps home, all the while having visions of the way the world will judge her for the assault. King is very good at talking about the negative side of fame, and he does it in ways that don’t feel whiney. Tess feels like she can’t go to the cops because her fame will turn it into a big story. She’ll stop being Tess Thorne and will become nothing more than the rape. She’s not having that, so employing the detective skills that made her a best selling mystery novelist, she figures out that Ramona Norville was the one who set her up, and Big Driver is her son, Lester. Tess tracks them both down (and Lester’s brother, who turns out to be part of it) and shoots them dead.
Here’s the crazy part: I kind of liked this movie. It’s just as unsubtle as your standard Lifetime flick, but it works dramatically. It even takes a Kingian literary device — Tess’s overactive imagination makes her interact with her GPS and Doreen, the leader of the WGKS (Olympia Dukakis), and a couple corpses — and makes it more or less work. Maria Bello is a fine actor, and she might not be bringing her A-game, but her B-game is still a hell of a lot better than most other A-games. Lifetime didn’t skimp on the horror, either. Whoever decided that Lizzie Borden needed great gore effects showed up here. While they aren’t that good, the corpses in the pipe are suitably gruesome, and the murders are laudably messy affairs.
The rape itself was fucking horrifying too. There’s no attempt to downplay or softpedal it. Big Driver and his family are monsters and the movie is only too happy to show you that. (Also, just an FYI if you want to watch it, because man… it’s seriously rough.) While some of that is to allow Tess to commit multiple murders and retain audience sympathy, it’s also important to show the consequences of violence. The movie even undermines Tess’s Liam Neesoning: at the site of her attack, there was a sign for soda with the phrase “Come and Get It!” She drew strength, like Inigo Montoya before her, from fantasizing about saying this to Big Driver. When she does, her gun misfires.
Swords don’t jam.
Director Mikael Salomon, who was the D-P on James Cameron’s most underrated movie, The Abyss, does truly excellent work. He starts the film with the standard Lifetime bright over-lighting, but as it takes a turn into darkness, he steps up his game, drenching the palette in gloomy grays and sickly yellows. He is saying in the beginning that it’s typical Lifetime because for Tess, it is. I know this isn’t the kind of compliment the network wants, but in certain shots, if you took the Lifetime logo out of the corner, you’d think it was from a real movie. He’s giving us the Stephen King Lifetime movie we never knew we always wanted.
The lighting and the turn is shown with the character of Tess as well. She’s a murder mystery writer, so she has a flippant attitude toward death. Confronted by the horror of the drain pipe, and later the mementos that Big Driver and his brother took, she sees true evil. I mean, the character was thrown into water and forced to emerge from a darkened pipe; is it any wonder that she experiences a rebirth?
So what did we learn? Never let anyone else program a route into your GPS. Sometimes the long way is better. And never put a bullet in the chamber beneath the hammer.
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Big Driver, Full Dark No Stars, Lifetime network, Lifetime Theater, Maria Bello, Stephen King, Stephen King Lifetime movie, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption
January 16, 2015
Now Fear This: Ironclad
That blood is truth in advertising.
There’s nobody better than Akira Kurosawa. That’s not a debate, incidentally. You can argue (incorrectly, in my opinion) that the man had equals, but there is no convincing case that he had superiors. This is the man who invented the buddy cop genre, who made the defining laconic badass movie, and is responsible for the plot of Star Wars. In many ways, Kurosawa’s catalog is the cinema equivalent of the Bible: directors have based entire careers on portions of Kurosawa films. Most importantly for me, and for this week’s Now Fear This, Kurosawa directed The Seven Samurai.
Quick sidebar. If you haven’t seen Seven Samurai, stop reading right now and go watch it. You’re welcome. You can watch the rest of his oeuvre at your leisure. When you’re done, you’ll understand all of film history, mostly because he invented all of the good parts.
After watching Seven Samurai, you might have noticed that it felt a wee bit familiar. Maybe you saw that it had the exact plot of Three Amigos or was eerily similar to Galaxy Quest. Maybe you’re kind of slow and thought, “Hey, that’s The Magnificent Seven!” Congratulations, you’re all correct, and those are three more great movies everyone should see. Simply put, Seven Samurai has one of the simplest, yet most satisfying iconic plots of film history. It’s about a group of awesome badasses, each with a gimmick to define him against the others, defending a group of helpless people — and teaching them to fight at the same time — against a superior enemy. It also kicks so much ass, it can’t legally be in the same room as Kim Kardashian or the world will explode.
That brings us to this week’s Now Fear This, the 2011 swords and armor epic Ironclad. It’s totally Seven Samurai and there are absolutely zero things wrong with that. We’re all suckers for certain kinds of stories, and this is one of those for me. You get a movie about a group of badasses doing badass things for badass reasons, and you have my undivided attention for the next 120 minutes.
In this case, the action is set in England in the year 1215. This was back when the chief activity of most people was dying of a lingering affliction. The film gives us a bit of a history lecture (playing fast-and-loose with history to the point that TV Tropes has it listed as alternate history, but who cares, right? There are warhammer murders to watch!). The barons have just finished forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta, which is a super important document in western history. It’s basically the first time anyone thought to tell the king that he couldn’t be an asshole all the time to everyone. It asserted the rights of a tiny group of extremely wealthy white men and absolutely no one else, so if you’re keeping track at home, it’s literally the only document in history that is still upheld today. Still, John is totally butthurt about it, and he decides he’s going to take his hired army of Danish auxiliaries (not mercenaries, and yes there is a distinction) and systematically slaughter every baron who signed.
That axe ain’t gonna bloody itself.
The problem is, on his first stop, he happens to run across a group of Knights Templar, led by an abbot, who are spending the night at the castle of one of the signatories. The Templar, who had fought for the barons, are done with the whole fighting thing. Well, until John orders the tongue cut from the abbot’s head. Then we learn why the Templar stopped killing: they are too good at it. Seriously. Three Templar, led by our hero Thomas Marshal, head down to the courtyard unarmed, then begin to slaughter Danes with their own fucking weapons. It is seriously awesome. Eventually the Danes are like “oh yeah, three guys versus an army,” and kill two of them. Marshal gets away and vows the mother of all ass-whuppings on King John.
The linchpin to John’s success is Rochester Castle. If he takes that, he gets all of southern England and a clean path right to London. Marshal recruits a group of misfits, led by the battle-hardened Baron d’Aubigny, and go to defend Rochester Castle against King John. It’s twenty men against a thousand, and those twenty guys are also handicapped by lugging around their massive balls. Then the badassery starts. I don’t know that this movie was made; it might have been cut from the chest of a screaming berserker. This movie is what happens when a broadsword has an orgasm. All I want to do is describe every incredible act of violence, but I can’t do that without all my action figures and sixty gallons of plasma.
The cast is also surprisingly good, especially as I don’t recall Ironclad getting a theatrical release. As the lead, Thomas Marshal, you have James Purefoy, who is generally known for being the best part of whatever he’s in. This is a strange role for him, since he has to tamp down on the devilish charisma that makes him such an appealing presence, but it totally works. The great Brian Cox is d’Aubigny, Derek Jacobi is Baron Corhill the master of Rochester Castle, Charles “Tywin Fucking Lannister” Dance plays the sympathetic Archibishop, noted That Guys Jason Flemyng and Mackenzie Crook are two of the badasses, Kate Mara is Isabel, the baron’s wife, and Paul Giamatti is King John. It’s the last two — the Americans — that are the problem. Nothing against Mara or Giamatti, especially the latter who is one of my favorites, but they are a bit out of place. Giamatti tears into the role, his accent hovering somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic Trench. His trademark exasperation, though, is kind of funny in the mouth of the king.
Mara’s character is a little more problematic. She does fine work here, but the film crawls to a stop whenever it focuses on her. She’s the much younger bride of the baron, and he’s not doing his husbandly duties (something you should probably expect when marrying Derek Jacobi). She realizes that James Purefoy is in her castle, and as I assume happens whenever James Purefoy goes anywhere, she decides she’s going to get her some of that Templar gold. (That’s the term, right? The kids are saying that?) It’s adding runtime the film doesn’t need, and serves only to reassure the audience that Marshal isn’t a virgin, because real men aren’t. See, Marshal is an original recipe Templar, which means he is quite literally a warrior-monk. He’s taken vows before god not to go to Pound Town. She gives him the traditional happy ending (no, not like that) as well, which doesn’t jibe well with the previous two hours. Still, it’s a small complaint, and not one that does much to sour me on what is otherwise such a great action flick.
Ironclad is nothing you haven’t seen before, but there is no shame in doing a classic story well. It is well worth the time of historical action fans, especially those who enjoy pointing out some of the more egregious cases of artistic license.
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Akira Kurosawa, Brian Cox, Ironclad, James Purefoy, Kate Mara, King John, Knights Templar, Now Fear This, Paul Giamatti, Seven Samurai
January 9, 2015
Yakmala: Catwoman
Her powers include forehead enlargement.
The 2004 Halle Berry vehicle Catwoman has been on Yakmala’s radar for a long time, but we’ve never had the courage to take the plunge. Spoiler alert: it’s just as bad as everyone says, if not worse.
Tagline: CATch Her in IMAX
More Accurate Tagline: Catch her in a giant cardboard box.
Guilty Party: This is probably unfair, but I’m blaming director Pitof for this one. Why? Because he has one name. I don’t care who you are — Wez, Galactus, or Cher — if you have only one name, you’re an asshole.
Synopsis: The credit sequence — which we’ll be seeing again, so you don’t have to pay too close attention — is a montage of images that establish a secret clan of Catwomen all over the world. They’re royalty, spies, circus performers, luchadores, courtesans; if there’s an occupation that can be performed in a ridiculous cat mask, they’re doing it. And yeah, this is somehow easier to explain to an audience than the idea of a cat burglar who just takes the “cat” part a little far.
“I don’t get it. Where’s the appeal there?” — Studio Executives
The story starts up with some narration. “It all started on the day I died.” It then immediately flashes back to before she died, which makes that first line a total lie. Anyway, Patience Phillips (Halle Berry), sporting the worst name since Constance Justice worked as a rural juror, is a shy, mousey woman. See what they’re doing there? Mousey? Catwoman? I hate myself.
Right, so she looks like Halle Berry, but she’s clumsy, she wears what look to be a collection of festive blankets. She appears to have an aggressive case of vertigo as she runs into everyone on the way into work. She’s a graphic designer for a cosmetics company, working on the campaign for their new anti-aging cream.
In another fit of irony, they’re shunting aside their former model Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone) for a younger woman (Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Picture), despite the fact that they are patenting anti-aging cream, and using an older model would kind of be perfect for that. Laurel is also the wife of the CEO George for no real reason. George is super mad at Patience for fucking up the exact shade of red on the advertisement, and gives her until midnight tomorrow night to fix it. Why midnight? Why not, say, first thing in the morning the day after tomorrow when the offices will be open? Because if he did that, Patience couldn’t stumble on his evil deeds!
Patience takes her corrected work (now with the kind of red George likes) to this waterfront warehouse where George works on the products and possibly importing snuff films from Eastern Europe. She walks in right when they’re revealing that the skin cream is addictive, and if you stop using it, rots the face right off you. Patience freaks out and George sends his goons after her. She ends up getting flushed out to sea and drowned.
Fortunately, a bunch of CGI cats find her body and breathe new life into her. They also turn her partly into CGI, which is the source of her powers. She wakes up in her apartment and finds the main cat — a breed called an Egyptian Mau (that’s like calling a dog a German Woof, but whatever) — who resuscitated her. For some reason, the cat has a paper with the name of Ophelia Powers on the collar… rather than, you know, the standard info on a collar which would have let Patience track Ophelia anyway.
Ophelia Powers (Frances Conroy at her Frances Conroyest) lives in the house from Up with all the cats ever. It has to smell like raw cat piss in there. Ophelia rants a little, but Patience is more interested in nuzzling the shit out of some catnip. Then she heads out. The craziness continues with her eating a bunch of tuna and hissing at dogs. It’s… I don’t even know.
One night after being kept up again by a loud party (and the lead party guy is played by one of the Volturi), Patience puts on some leather, cuts off her long hair, and goes to rob a jewelry store that’s in the process of being robbed. She steals some stuff, but returns it the next day along with cupcakes and a note with “Sorry.” The cop investigating, the unlikely named Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt) recognizes that “sorry,” as it was written on a cup after Patience stood him up for a coffee date because she was busy being dead. Oh yeah, Patience is dating a cop. I didn’t mention it earlier because it’s not that important.
The robbery and her CG-scampering inspires Patience to return to Ophelia. She gets a crash course on Catwomen and a retread of the credit sequence. Told you it would be back. Basically, the idea is that women all have the good/bad dichotomy in them and this just feels weird and sexist. So it fits right in, is what I’m trying to say.
Now in her full Catwoman outfit, while terrible music plays and the camera leers at her butt, she’s off to get some revenge! She breaks into the warehouse, beats up a goon, but then gets caught with the corpse of a scientist. It’s obvious he was killed before she showed up, but now the world thinks she’s a murderer.
So she ends up making a truce with Laurel who’s being all nice all of a sudden. Except she’s not. It’s a total set up to frame Patience for killing George (who has been already been shot). The gun is also the one that killed that scientist too, and Laurel added some clawmarks to complete the picture. This is all so that beauty cream gets to the market on time. Yeah, those are the stakes we’re looking at. Patience escapes (on the way out she pauses to look at herself in the mirror, and her expression is like, “I left the house wearing what?”), but Tom is waiting at her apartment and arrests her. In the interrogation, Patience spills everything.
Patience gets out of jail pretty easily — she literally just walks out between the bars — teleports once because why the fuck not, then carjacks a guy. Meanwhile Tom confronts Laurel about killing her husband. Laurel just shoots him, and it’s clear Tom didn’t think this through.
Patience shows up in full costume and fights Laurel. I should mention that, Laurel is super tough now because of that anti-aging cream. The movie barely cared about establishing it, so why should I? Also, her powers come from lotion. I don’t even know, guys. I just write what they do and a little part of me dies.
Patience drops Laurel out a window, then dumps Tom. She wants to be good and bad and Catwoman. And CGI, I guess.
Life-Changing Subtext: All women are bi-polar, and the most important thing in their lives is skin cream.
Defining Quote: Laurel: “Game over!” Patience: “Guess what? It’s overtime!” This is the culmination of the film’s bizarre flirtation with sports. It doesn’t really make any sense as an exchange between the two of them but it’s framed as the line of the movie. But you know, people do say that. It’s a thing that’s said. Thankfully, it’s only the second-dumbest thing Berry has uttered in a superhero movie.
Standout Performance: Alex Borstein plays Patience’s oversexed friend Sally, and she really rips into it. To her credit, Borstein is utterly without shame and will attempt to sell even the most underwritten dialogue she’s given. Basically, when some screenwriter thinks it’s hilarious when non-models like sex, but also has no idea how a woman might reasonably express human emotion, you end up with Sally.
What’s Wrong: Catwoman is one of the easiest comic book characters to get right. She’s basically a distaff Indiana Jones: she’s a cat burglar, she uses a whip, she’s all about adventures, and she’s extremely attractive. For whatever reason, though, studio executives see “cat” in her name and promptly go fucking insane. They think she has to act like a cat: lapping milk, playing with catnip, freaking out in the rain, and so on. This would be like making a Batman movie where he screams in a high-pitched voice and shits on his enemies.
Flash of Competence: While on a date with Tom at an outdoor carnival, Patience saves a little boy from falling off a broken ferris wheel. This officially makes her more heroic than the Man of Steel.
Best Scenes: Tom Lone’s biggest problem is that he’s an idiot. He notices that the “sorry” on the coffee cup matches the “sorry” on the bag of returned jewels, but instead of using that as a clue, he goes to a handwriting guy. This scene only serves to have the handwriting guy be like, “Oh yeah, these are two totally different women. Based on these letters, I can totally analyze their personalities.” He doesn’t then point out that handwriting analysis is total bullshit. He does imply a catfight though, because feminism.
Tom’s idiocy continues. After having sex with Patience (oh yeah, terrible sex scene despite the fact that a Halle Berry/Benjamin Bratt sex scene has to be sex scene easy mode), he finds one of Catwoman’s diamond claws on the floor. He’s like “hmm…” and instead of making the reasonable conclusion that Patience is Catwoman, he has them analyze the lipstick stain Catwoman left on his cheek vs. a picture of Patience’s lips. No one at any point raises a hand as is like, “Guys? Are we seriously doing this?”
The whole time she’s Catwoman, this awful music plays, sounding like Beyonce getting tested for a hernia.
Transcendent Moment: Patience and Tom’s attraction gets consummated in the only logical way it could. I’m sure you can picture it — in a movie about a sexy cat burglar, there’s really only one logical thing that could happen.
I’m talking about sexy basketball.
Of course, right? So she now has super basketball skills, because cats are known for that, and he’s athletic or whatever. For some reason, this involves him flashing abs, her waving her butt around, and finally a dunk from the free throw line that looks like a prelude to mashing pelvises. I wish I were the coach showing this as game film.
This is why it’s known as the Game of Love.
Catwoman was an attempt at launching a feminist heroine. It failed on every single point. It’s rare to find a blockbuster this fundamentally misguided yet weirdly devoted to its madness.
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: cat burglar, Catwoman, Halle Berry, Laurel Hedare, Patience Phillips, Tom Lone, Yakmala!
January 6, 2015
THE LAST SON OF AHRIMAN is on kindle!
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Son-Ahrima...
January 5, 2015
GET BLANK is one of the best crime books of the year!
GET BLANK, the anarchic sequel to MR BLANK, has gotten some great online love. I couldn't be happier.
http://www.dosomedamage.com/2015/01/b...
Have you gotten Blank yet? Because you totally should.
January 2, 2015
Lifetime Theater: Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever
Let me get this out of the way right up front: I don’t get Grumpy Cat. I mean, I get it. It’s an ugly cat who looks angry all the time. I smiled the first time I saw it, and occasionally get some minor amusement out of it still. What I don’t get is the rabid cult that has sprung up around Grumpy Cat. It makes me think I’m missing something, but cultists — which includes my wife — assure me that it’s just that the cat looks angry. Seriously, guys. Tell me what the fuck am I missing here.
I probably should have seen that coming.
Most people who know me would probably call me a cat person, too. This is because I have two and am in the process of adopting the Grace Kelly of stray cats. It’s more accurate to say that I’m an animal person. I think they’re cool. I even find it funny when animals talk like people but express animal ideas (about half of Wilfred’s humor was this, and it still cracks me up). I just don’t get the big deal about Grumpy Cat.
I think that is the reaction that anyone on the outside of a meme has to the meme itself. When Richard Dawkins coined the word, he probably didn’t have things like Grumpy Cat, or the Numa Numa Guy, or Affirmations Skeletor in mind. The thing is, even by his definition, they qualify. To those who get the meme, they have the reassuring buzz of familiarity. Being funny is part of the human dominance game, and memes are a shortcut there, chopping out the difficult parts of being creative or clever, just by sticking a weird bear into a picture to imply that everyone in it is a kiddie fiddler. I’m not saying I’m above memes, either — Rick Grimes telling dad jokes will always be one of the funniest things I will ever see. To those outside of a specific meme, they can feel insular, baffling, and rage inducing. I’m not there with Grumpy Cat. I’m just kind of confused.
It puts me on equal ground with the movie. (Jesus, that was a shitty segue. Even for me. I feel like I should apologize to someone.) Lifetime seems to understand that basing a two hour — 80+ minutes once commercials are factored in — movie on an internet sensation whose main form of communication is impact-lettered “NOPE,” is a pretty terrible plan. They made the smart move of hiring Aubrey Plaza to voice Grumpy Cat, a decision I’m comfortable saying she made because she thought it was just as ridiculous as everything else. So they have her as Grumpy (though once busting through the fourth wall to have her appear on camera as herself), offering post-modern commentary (along with a halfhearted “meow” or two) over the movie itself, which is a little closer to your standard lifetime fare. It’s a like watching a Christmas Lifetime movie at Aubrey Plaza’s house, although probably not as fun or dangerous.
But here’s the thing. The Lifetime movie? It’s their version of Die Hard.
I’m not even kidding. The Lifetime network made a version of the greatest Christmas movie of all time, starring Aubrey Plaza as a cat. Okay, so basically, it goes like this. Instead of all the bearer bonds, the score is an extremely rare dog who is worth a million dollars. Instead of Karl and that annoying computer guy, they have two members of presumably terrible band Dragon Tail, Donny and Zack. Instead of Hans Gruber — okay, spoilers here — they have security guard and traitor George (Daniel Roebuck, most recognizable as the ill-fated Arzt from Lost) as the mastermind. He even pulls a total Bill Clay on the heroes. Those heroes are Grumpy Cat and tween cat-whisperer Chrystal. It should be noted that all the animal characters (Grumpy lives in the pet store because no one wants her) have human voices, but Chrystal can only hear Grumpy. It’s a distinction that serves only to flummox someone coming in halfway through. “Why can’t the little girl hear the dog? I don’t understand! ALL WILL SUFFER FOR MY LACK OF UNDERSTANDING!”
So Chrystal ends up getting trapped in the mall with Grumpy, while Donny and Zack try to steal the dog. She does some John McClaneing, but because this is Lifetime and not actually Die Hard, she uses a paintball gun rather than an MP-5. I’m not saying that I think Lifetime movies should feature ultra-gory shootouts, but… actually, no. That’s exactly what I’m saying here. Eventually, Chrystal finds George tied up by the glam bandits (glamdits?), and he plays along until his story unravels. He was the mastermind all along. Using some quick thinking and the other unwanted pets, Chrystal defeats the bad guys. Just kidding, she beats them by stealing a Camaro and playing chicken. I’m not even joking. Chrystal is hardcore.
Aubrey Plaza cracks wise over all of this, with the detachment that she’s honed over her tenure as the second-best character on the best sitcom on TV. I said before that Lifetime gets that this is a terrible idea? Well, at every commercial break, Plaza harangues viewers for sticking around. The protests ring pretty hollow, though, what with the movie staying on its relative Lifetime rails. Had it gotten completely insane, it would have fared better. They’re leaning on the fourth wall, they might as well knock the damn thing down. Lifetime had to have its cake and eat it too.
What did we learn? Well, if a possibly drunk Santa gives you a wishing coin, you take that shit seriously. Also, cats might be angry, but they also like to feel loved. Aubrey Plaza is almost good enough to elevate even this.
And, most importantly, meow.
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: Aubrey Plaza, Grumpy Cat, Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever, Lifetime Theater
December 26, 2014
Merry Christmas from the City of Devils!
http://www.candlemarkandgleam.com/201...
A Bad Movie Roundup
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! If you’re anything like me, you love terrible films. In the bad movie club to which I belong, Yakmala, we’ve watched a lot of truly awful crimes against good taste. Here are some reviews to keep you nice and warm and maybe pick an enjoyably bad flick to work off that Christmas/New Year hangover.
After Earth: Charisma is real. Nepotism is a choice.
After Last Season: *stunned silence*
Alex Cross: Alex Cross is here to promote family values and kick ass. And he’s all out of family.
Ator, the Fighting Eagle: A baby bear was destined to help him marry his sister
The Avengers: Mmm… quite.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000: Prepare to go for the exits
The Beaver: He’s the last nail in the coffin of Mel Gibson’s career.
Blood Freak: A Dracula on Thanksgiving!
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo: My community center is being torn down to make a shopping mall. I dance for pennies on the street, and spend all of it on day-glo rags and leather gloves. I have no health insurance and have to go to a hospital staffed entirely by strippers. I am the 99%.
Bride of the Monster: Lugosi was paid in morphine. Cheap morphine.
The Cocaine Fiends: The white dust from Walgreens!
Color of Night: One Killer, and No, She Didn’t Gnaw Her Victims to Death With Her Giant Horse Teeth.
The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course: Crappy!
Devil: Bad things happen because The Sixth Sense made a lot of money.
Diamond Ninja Force: His mustache demanded vengeance…
Fireproof: Women Are People Too, Just a Lesser Version
From Justin to Kelly: The embarrassing contractual obligations of two American Idols
Glen or Glenda: The ordinary case of a man who changed his CLOTHES!
Gor: Gor! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Gymkata: The skill of gymnastics, the kill of karate, the thrill of lawn care.
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: …is the hand that punches Rebecca De Mornay in the face
The Human Centipede (First Sequence): 100% medically accurate. In Germany.
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: Rise and farm
Man of Steel: In the grim darkness of the present, there is only angst.
“Manos” The Hands of Fate: I’m the Master, and I Approved This Message!
The Man Who Saves the World: The Scarecrow was only half right.
Miami Connection: Tae Kwon! Tae Kwon! Tae Kwon Do!
Next: Nicolas Cage owes the government millions of dollars. Let’s see what he’ll do now.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge: Someone is coming on Elm Street’s back!
Ninja Thunderbolt: We’re not racist, but…
No Holds Barred: No Shirt. No Shoes. No Homo.
Omoo-Omoo the Shark God: Terrible Acting! Baffling Camerawork!
Paparazzi: Bo knows homicide
Passion Play: Thank goodness, helpful Indians!
Perfect Stranger: How Long Can You Stay Awake Watching People Chat Online?
Plan 9 from Outer Space: Who Did What To the Who Now?
Prometheus: Seventeen idiots shot into space. No way this goes bad.
Quigley: Dog backwards is God. So this is high concept stuff.
Samurai Cop: He’s here to chew bubblegum and disrespect Japanese culture… and he’s all out of bubblegum.
Sex Madness: Keep that dick holstered, cowboy. There are laws in this town.
The Spirit: What are you, dense? Are you retarded or something? I’m the goddamn Spirit!
Starcrash: A long time ago in a galaxy free of litigation…
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: A Jedi Shall Not Know Anger. Nor Emotion. Nor Acting Lessons.
Stealth: Fear the Vag
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li: Some fight for real estate. Some fight for pianos.
Street Trash: Um… so… that happened…
Sucker Punch: You Will Be Unprepared (As With Most Rape)
Tiptoes: Midgets, Midgets Everywhere!
Troll 2: The original boogeyman called in sick, so we dressed some midgets in sacks
Tuff Turf: Meet Morgan Hiller. He just wants his bike back.
Twilight: What’s a little pedophilia between friends?
The Twilight Saga: New Moon: Necrophilia or Bestiality: One Girl’s Sexy Choice
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: Two men must choose: an unattractive girl or hot, hot gay sex.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1: Forever is only the beginning
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2: The epic finale that seems to last forever
There you have it! A bevy of bad for a (really) long weekend!
Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion, Yakmala! Tagged: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, After Earth, After Last Season, Alex Cross, Ator the Fighting Eagle, Battlefield Earth, Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000, Blood Freak, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Breaking Darn Part 1, breaking dawn part 2, Bride of the Monster, color of night, devil, Diamond Ninja Force, eclipse, Fireproof, From Justin to Kelly, Glen or Glenda, Gor, Gymkata,
