'The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh' can't even save itself

CONFESSIONS OF A GEN-X PREMIUM CABLE JUNKIE: THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH (1979)

 

THE MEMORIES

I’ve never been a sports fan. Never. Not baseball, not football, not basketball. The closest I’ve ever come was a period in my late adolescence through my early twenties when I was a fan of professional wrestling, which really doesn’t count. That said, I’ve always enjoyed sports movies. Go figure.

 

And while I didn’t watch basketball games during the seventies, I nonetheless knew who Julius Erving aka Dr. J. was. Like Lebron James, Michael Jordan, and Magic Johnson, he was the sort of athlete who transcended basketball to become a pop cultural icon. If you were alive in the late seventies, you just knew who he was.

 

Even more than Dr. J., though, I was familiar with Meadowlark Lemon, who played for the Harlem Globetrotters. For those who don’t know, much like the professional wrestling matches I would enjoy in later years, Globetrotters games were staged, with the predetermined outcome that the Globetrotters would always win. Also like professional wrestling, the fact that the games were staged in no way meant that the athletes were not highly skilled. But beyond their playing ability, the Globetrotters were first and foremost entertainers. And thanks to their appearances on Saturday morning TV (on Scooby Doo, and later their own show in which they were superheroes of some sort) I was a fan despite having never seen an actual Globetrotter game.

Explore the secret lives of stewardesses in short film 'Wives of the Skies'

[WIVES OF THE SKIES premieres on Amazon Prime on Tuesday September 29^th.]

 

I didn’t really expect a film dealing with 1960s stewardesses and Japanese bondage to be simultaneously charming, sexy, and feminist. But that’s exactly the case with the Honey Lauren’s short WIVES OF THE SKIES. Showing an attention to 1960s period detail and filmmaking technique similar to Anna Biller (VIVA, THE LOVE WITCH), Lauren explores the private lives of two young women whose job it is to cater to the needs of airline passengers and look fabulous while doing it. While objectified by many, the reality of who they are is very different than the typical male fantasy.

 

Our window into this world in the film comes via documentary filmmaker Derrick (Drew Brandon Jones). When he decides to interview stewardesses Fran (Rachel Alig) and Marcy (Madisson Bullock) for a documentary on their profession, he does so with a number of preconceptions and expectations. It isn’t long before his expectations are dashed.

 

WIVES OF THE SKIES is a very skillfully conceived and put together film with a winning cast. I’m just not sure there’s enough here to lift it above the level of a good looking, pleasant diversion, even with the feminist subtext and the respectful depiction of Japanese rope bondage (kinbaku). It feels like the first act of a feature film that then tacks on a majorly abbreviated conclusion more than a self-contained vignette. Regardless, the well-crafted visuals, humor, and subtext make this one worth a look. Besides, it’s a safe bet you’ve got 20 minutes to spare. You probably aren’t going to be catching a flight anytime soon.

 

'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes' Delivers the Groceries

CONFESSIONS OF A GEN-X PREMIUM CABLE JUNKIE: ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES (1978)

Despite this being a little more high profile than most of the movies I’m going to be covering in this series, it was in many ways the definitive “Star Channel” movie for me. So at the risk of ruining a perfectly nice bit of childhood nostalgia, I bought a digital copy and sat down for a trip down memory lane. To add even more pressure, I coerced my 9-year-old son into watching it with me. Would either of us find this seventies artifact, a movie often spoken of as one of the worst films ever made, entertaining in the 21^st century? Let’s find out!

THE MEMORIES

I was 9 or 10 when I first saw ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES, which is just about the perfect age to watch a movie like this. At that age, one is old enough to understand some of the inappropriate jokes and feel like they’re getting away with something, but still young enough to yuck it up at the silly, immature gags that made all the serious, adult critics of the time groan.

But who cares about the critics, especially when you’re a kid? For me, this movie was comedy gold. I made sure to get in a couple of repeat viewings while it was in rotation on Star Channel. I knew the theme song by heart. I drew crayon masterpieces of tomato carnage in art class. I’m pretty sure if it hadn’t been for STAR WARS, I would have told you at the time that ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES was the greatest movie ever made.

But as such things happened in the late seventies, ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES was eventually removed from Star Channel’s schedule. I got older, and saw many other, arguably better films along the way. Eventually I watched the film on VHS and found it to still be reasonably amusing. I also saw the so-called “director’s cut” released in 1995, only this time I wasn’t quite as amused. Mainly that was due to the alterations rubbing me the wrong way.

I haven’t seen the movie since. Until now.

Hollywood still thinks the suburbs are weird in 'Greener Grass'

[GREENER GRASS screens Saturday January 18^th at 9:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Everyone in the pastel world of GREENER GRASS seems blandly happy, but (shocker) there’s a darkness underneath. Hollywood has given us similar visions of twisted suburbia in films like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, THE BURBS, and BLUE VELVET. But writers/directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe distinguish their film with a comically surreal flavor of their own. “Jokes” like having housewife Jill (DeBoer) offer up her new baby to fellow soccer mom Lisa (Luebbe) as though it were simply good manners to do so display a level of matter of fact weirdness that recalls Luis Bunuel.

31 Days of Halloween 2019: The Banana Splits

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded. Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

I’m hardly the first person to point out that THE BANANA SPLITS movie bears a strong resemblance to the premise of horror video game/merchandising cash cow/upcoming feature film FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S. Nonetheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it, since it’s painfully obvious that the producers were intentionally copying that premise as closely as possible.

And I’m not even bothered by that. That’s been the B-movie production model for decades. Just ask Roger Corman, whose New World Pictures did their best to crank out cheap imitations of big studio hits throughout the seventies and eighties, occasionally even beating their inspirations to the big screen just as this film has.

31 Days of Halloween 2019: The Dead Don't Die

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded. Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.] 

Review by Bob Ignizio

It’s too slow. That’s the common refrain I keep hearing from those who don’t enjoy the new Jim Jarmusch zombie film THE DEAD DON’T DIE. And yes, the film is as slow moving as a classic Romero zombie. It also has an extremely deadpan sense of humor, a tendency to go off on pointless tangents, and a sense of self awareness that is sure to grate on many viewers. So if you go into this movie hoping for anything close to a typical undead romp, there’s a high probability you will be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you’re a fan of Jarmusch’s quirky sensibilities, or are in general open to unusual, idiosyncratic cinema, this may be just the thing for your Halloween viewing pleasure.

'Heavy Trip' Serves Up Brutal Laughs

[HEAVY TRIP is currently available for rent or purchase on DVD, Blu Ray, and digital formats. Note - dialogue is in Finnish, Norwegian, and some English with subtitles, so if that's an issue for you consider yourself warned.]

Despite their brutal music and intimidating appearance, the twenty-something metalheads who will eventually adopt the collective moniker Impaled Rektum are an affable, and to a large degree, nerdy, bunch. They’ve been playing together for 12 years as HEAVY TRIP opens, and after a particularly good practice the band’s devil-may-care drummer Jynkky (Antti Heikkinen) suggests they finally take the plunge and book a show.

But the band’s most serious member, bass player Pasi (Max Ovaska), quickly puts the kibosh on that idea. He says they can’t play out until they write some songs of their own. Lead vocalist Turo (Johannes Holopainen) is more than happy to back Pasi up, but the real reason he doesn’t want to go on stage has more to do with his shyness than a lack of original material. And since guitar player Lotvonen (Samuli Jaskio) can’t come up with any riffs that haven’t already been used by other bands, it would seem the group won’t be leaving their basement rehearsal space anytime soon.

Movie Review: 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' conquers

22 year old Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is just getting over breaking up with his last girlfriend by dating an Asian Catholic high school girl named Knives (Ellen Wong).  However, Scott soon finds himself attracted to the roller skating, hair-dyeing, super cool Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), literally the girl of his dreams.  After orchestrating a “meet cute”, Scott manages to get a date with Ramona.  There’s a catch, though.  If Scott wants to date Ramona, he has to do battle with her seven “Evil Exes”. 

This is a movie steeped in modern pop culture, especially comic books, video games, anime, and indie rock.  Sound effects appear as stylized lettering.  Fight scenes have characters jumping towards each other with lines trailing behind them like in anime, the losers bursting into video game coins that add to the victor’s score.   Little text pop-ups appear to help explain back story and plot points.  It’s all driven by a soundtrack of ragged post punk and throbbing techno.  In the hands of a lesser director, this could be very annoying.  Luckily Scott Pilgrim was helmed by Edgard Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame.  While Wright is certainly capable of arresting visuals when he needs to be, his strong suit lies in characterization and story telling.  Plus he really gets pop culture and the fanboys who obsess over it, as he proved in two seasons of the BBC comedy series Spaced.

This summer has been dominated by sequels, remakes, and rip-offs, so Scott Pilgrim vs. the World really stands out as one of the few true original movies of the season.  It’s smart, funny, and visually inventive, and despite being a total fantasy, a film that has more truth at its core than many supposedly more realistic films.  The fact that this movie works so hard to speak accurately to a particular subculture is sure to secure it a loyal following on the one hand, while alienating and baffling wider audiences on the other.  Still, provided you speak its language, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is some kind of masterpiece.  3 ½ out of 4 stars.

DVD Review: 'Smash Cut' colors the screen blood red

Able Whitman (David Hess) is a horror movie director whose films are loathed by critics and fans alike.  His bargain basement special effects in particular are singled out for their phoniness.  Driven over the edge by constant derision, Able comes up with a novel solution for improving his gore scenes:  using real human blood and body parts.  In order to keep his supply of blood and gore well stocked, Able starts killing his critics and anyone else who gets in his way.  Meanwhile, local television reporter April Carson (Sasha Grey) has been investigating her sister’s disappearance with the assistance of private eye Isaac Beaumonde  (Jesse Buck).  The clues all lead to the mad director, so April takes the lead role in Able‘s new film hoping to get some answers.

Directed by Lee DeMabre (Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter), Smash Cut is a loving homage to/rip-off of H. G. Lewis’ 1965 gore fest Color Me Blood Red.  Star David Hess, best known for playing sleazebag Krug in the original version of Last House on the Left, displays a real knack for comedy here.  Sadly the same can not be said for his co-star, porn star Sasha Grey, in her first mainstream role.  The only knack she seems to have is for imitating a two by four (that’s my clever way of saying she’s wooden).  Grey got better in her second mainstream flick, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, but that doesn't help us here. Luckily the rest of the cast, including genre veterans Michael Berryman, Ray Sager, and even H. G. Lewis himself in a small role, pick up the slack.  No, it’s not a great movie, and the script won’t win too many points for originality.   But if you’re looking for something fun and trashy to watch with your friends and a few beers on a Friday night, Smash Cut has more than enough laughs and gore to satisfy.  2 ½ stars out of 4.  

'Despicable Me' is surprisingly likable

Depsicable Me is clearly product made by craftsmen rather than artists, but for what it is, it’s surprisingly enjoyable.  Gru (Steve Carrel) is a super villain feared by the general populace and respected by his evil peers.  He’s committed numerous high profile crimes in the past, and he’s working on securing financing for his coup de grace, a heist of the moon.  But there’s a flashy young villain named Vector (Jason Segal) trying to steal Gru’s thunder, not to mention his plan.  Further complicating Gru’s schemes are three little orphan girls (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier and Elsie Fisher) who just want to sell cookies to the two villains.

This is a film that manages to work for both kids and adults without pandering to either. The insipid pop culture references and lame double entendres some kid vids use to appeal to adults are thankfully kept to a minimum.  At the same time, the film is anything but saccharine sweet.  The humor is dark, at times even acidic, with the opening scene in particular reminding one of Roald Dahl’s views on spoiled children and their even worse parents.  Even the obligatory message at the end doesn’t feel shoved down the audience’s throat.  Gru may learn a lesson or two, but he does so without completely losing his dark side.  Despicable Me isn’t quite on the level of the best Pixar films like The Incredibles or Wall-E, but it’s certainly better than most of the 3D animated toy commercials that pass for kids’ movies these days.  3 out of 4 stars.

The birds, the bees and the mutants in Frank Hennenlotter's 'Bad Biology'

Frank Henenlotter, the man responsible for such twisted cult classics as Basket Case and Frankenhooker, finally returns to filmmaking after an almost 20 year hiatus with Bad Biology.  The screenplay, co-written by Hennelotter and producer R.A. Thorburn, revolves around two people afflicted with strange mutations, a recurring theme in Hennenlotter’s films.  However, the sexual subtext that bubbles just beneath the surface of previous works like Basket Case and Brain Damage is brought to the surface here.

Bad Biology focuses mostly on Jennifer (Charlee Danielson), a woman born with seven clits.  Her orgasms are so intense that she occasionally kills her partners while in the throes of ecstasy.  After sex, she almost immediately gives birth to mutant babies, which she casually discards.  To her, they aren’t “real” babies because they gestate so quickly.  Jennifer is convinced that her mutation is proof she is destined to have sex with God himself.  Despite being delusional and a homicidal nymphomaniac, she still manages to hold down a steady job as a photographer. 

Our other mutant is Batz (Anthony Sneed).  When he was born, it seems they missed the umbilical cord and snipped something else in the vicinity.  The doctors managed to sew him back together, but the accident left Batz impotent.  Through a highly unorthodox regimen of pills and injections Batz has managed to cure himself, but not without side effects.  His schlong is about two feet long and has a mind of its own.  Up till now, Batz has been able to keep his massive member in check with more drugs and a heavy-duty masturbation machine, but those measures are becoming less effective. 

Hennenlotter has always maintained that he doesn’t make horror movies, he makes exploitation films, and that’s never been more true than here.  Bad Biology has no interest in traditional scares or gross-outs, opting instead for excessive nudity, sick humor and general weirdness.  It should be a hoot, but it just doesn't quite connect.  The movie takes its time building to Jennifer and Batz getting together, only to give us an ending that's just, well, anticlimactic.  Danielson also seems miscast in the lead.  She's just doesn't have a knack for this kind of over the top comedy.  Bad Biology is still an okay time waster provided your sensibilities are warped enough, and it's nice to have Hennenlotter back, but I was really hoping for something more after all this time.  2 1/2 out of 4 stars.

Bad Biology is out now on DVD and Netflix instant view.

'Black Dynamite' Explodes on the Screen!

Michael Jai White IS Black Dynamite!  When his younger brother is murdered, Black Dynamite springs into action to take down those responsible in this spot-on homage/parody of seventies blacksploitation movies.  I know what you’re thinking.  Didn’t Keenan Ivory Wayans already do this in I’m Gonna’ Git You Sucka?  Not exactly.  Wayans film was a fairly slick production that drew it’s inspiration mainly from bigger budget blacksploitation films like Shaft and Superfly.  Black Dynamite draws on those films as well, but it’s mainly inspired by really low budget stuff like Rudy Ray Moore’s Dolomite and The Human Tornado, or the Jim Kelly vehicle Black Belt Jones.

Every effort has been taken to make Black Dynamite look like an authentic low budget action flick from the seventies.  Not only are the clothes and sets convincingly vintage, boom mikes occasionally pop into frame, the editing is choppy, and the fight choreography is often less than convincing.  And White, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is about as perfect a seventies action hero as you could ask for.  He’s got the fro, the sideburns, and the mustache.  He’s ripped as fuck.  He knows kung fu.  And just like Shaft, he’s a sex machine to all the chicks, at one point in the movie satisfying three lovelies simultaneously.  The only time the illusion of a lost seventies classic is spoiled is one brief scene that uses CGI fire.

Getting the details right is certainly commendable, but it wouldn’t matter if the film wasn’t entertaining.  Thankfully, it is.  Even its most ridiculous gags are played completely dead pan, which makes them even funnier.  Just about every joke, and there are a lot of them, hits its target.  There are several memorable scenes, including a great animated zodiac sequence.  From the opening Anaconda malt liquor ad to the final climactic battle between Black Dynamite and “The Man”, this is one immensely enjoyable movie.  If I had caught this a little earlier, it would have made my top 25 list for sure, maybe even my top 10.  It’s certainly as funny as either The Hangover or In the Loop, the other two comedies on my top 10.

Black Dynamite received a limited theatrical release, playing a few days in one city before moving on to another.  I was lucky enough to catch it this past Saturday at the Cleveland Cinematheque, and it’s definitely the kind of movie that plays great with an audience.   So when it hits home video on DVD and Blu Ray February 16^th, be sure to invite a few friends over to enjoy the fun.

'Up in the Air' is a good, but light-weight film

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a professional hatchet man.  When businesses have to downsize, he’s the guy who gets called in to deliver the bad news.  Bingham has no close friends or family, and loves having a job that keeps him constantly on the move from one city to the next, living out of airports and hotel rooms.  He finds a kindred spirit in businesswoman Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga).  The two strike up a casual “fuck buddy” relationship after meeting in a hotel bar, and soon they are coordinating their schedules so they can get together for booty calls.

Ryan’s freewheeling lifestyle gets put in jeopardy when young computer programmer Natalie (Anna Kendrick) comes up with a way to do his job over the internet.  Dreading the thought of being tied to a desk, Bingham convinces his boss (Jason Bateman) that Natalie needs to see what it’s like to do the job face to face before implementing her plan.  The two then set off to relieve hundreds of American workers of the burden of employment, stopping at various famous locations along the way to take pictures of a cardboard cut-out of Bingham’s sister and her future husband for a wedding present. 

While it is Bingham’s job that drives the plot forward, the movie is more concerned with the idea that happiness is impossible without meaningful relationships.  That's fine, but then the movie takes it further to say that happiness is impossible without a spouse and children.  This is most clearly expressed by Natalie, who looks at Alex and Ryan as though they were insane for not wanting a more traditional relationship.

At times the movie shows some ambivalence towards this idea - Natalie is dumped by her boyfriend, one of Ryan’s sisters is shown having separated from her husband, and there’s a final twist regarding Alex that I won’t reveal.  But that ambivalence is undermined by the film’s closing montage of (real) fired workers talking about how their wives and children gave them the strength to cope with their situation.  Look, whatever helps a person deal with something as serious as losing a job, I’m for it.  But the implication here is that those without family, like Bingham, are somehow worse off than they are.  Ah yes, poor little rich boy.  This is the film’s final word on the subject.  It kind of reminds me of the scene in They Live where Roddy Piper puts on his special sunglasses, looks up at a billboard, and instead of the ad that should be there sees simply the words “marry and reproduce”.  No doubt the evil aliens from that film would approve of Up In the Air’s message.

Still, as Roger Ebert often says, it’s not what a movie is about, but how it’s about it.  And for the most part, Up In the Air is a well made, enjoyable, and funny film.  Clooney is perfectly cast.  I can’t imagine any other actor making this character likeable as he goes about destroying lives while bragging about his fancy hotel and rental car membership cards.  Vera Farmiga is excellent, as well.  With this film she should make it onto the ‘A’ list, and hopefully won’t have to star in crap like Orphan again anytime soon.  The one weak link for me is Anna Kendrick’s Natalie, though I blame writer/director Jason Reitman rather than the actress.  As written, the character is a comic relief caricature that just doesn’t seem to exist in the same universe as Clooney and Farmiga’s nuanced, believable characters. 

I’ve already mentioned my distaste for the film’s trite message that marriage and kids are the only road to happiness.  I also can’t help but think, given the current economic climate, that more of substance should have been said about all the people Bingham fires.  Mostly, though, the movie just plays being fired for laughs.  And yeah, watching Zach Galifianakis and J.K. Simmons respond to the loss of their jobs is funny.  But losing a job in real life isn’t.  The movie only offers one moment in which we see just how serious that can be, when we learn that one of the people who lost their jobs committed suicide.  The scene does have some power, but its main purpose seems to be moving the plot in a new direction rather than any sort of serious commentary. And then we’re on to the montage of happy jobless people.  Up In the Air is still a good movie; it's just not a great one.  3 out of 4 stars.

Why So Serious?

A Serious Man
4 out of 4 stars 

An early scene in A Serious Man, the latest from writers/producers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen, references the paradox of Schroedinger’s cat.  It’s an illustration from the field of quantum physics in which there is a cat inside a box that may be either alive or dead, or possibly both simultaneously.  According to the illustration, the cat will remain in this indeterminate state until someone actually looks inside the box.   In other words, we don’t know what we have until we examine it.  Until then, all possibilities remain, but none of them are “real”.   That’s a major simplification of a pretty complex idea, but it should do for this review.

The man who provides this illustration is college physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who doesn’t realize how apt a metaphor it is for his own state of unexamined existence and unrealized potential.  That all changes one day when Larry wakes up to find everything he believed to be true is wrong.  His wife (Sari Lennick) is leaving him, the only time his son (Aaron Wolf) has any use for him is when the TV antenna on the roof needs adjusting, his daughter (Jessica McManus) is stealing money out of his wallet, and his freeloading brother (Richard Kind) is tying up the bathroom draining his sebaceous cyst and getting into small time trouble with the law. 

It’s just as bad at work as it is at home.  Larry’s tenure could be in jeopardy due to a series of anonymous letters accusing him of moral turpitude, he’s having trouble with a student trying to bribe him for a better grade, and someone from Columbia House Records keeps calling to collect on the last four selections of the month, which Larry is sure he never ordered.    How and why is all this is happening ?  Is it bad luck or a curse from God, and what can be done about it?  No one, including the rabbis at Larry's synagogue, seems to have any answers.  Larry could use a hug, but the only one offering is Sy (Fred Melamed), the man his wife is leaving him for. 

That’s an awful lot of misfortune for one man and one film, but this being the Coen Brothers, comedy and tragedy walk hand in hand.  Some of the film’s funniest moments are its darkest, proving the old axiom that it’s tragedy when it happens to you, it’s comedy when it happens to someone else.  The film gives the audience a lot to think about, including issues of faith, the nature of truth, the power (or lack thereof) of storytelling, and what it’s like to be a middle class Jew living in the suburbs.  It probably requires more than one viewing to fully digest, but like most of the Coen Brothers’ works, it also functions as pure entertaining cinema.  Each member of the mostly unknown cast is a perfect fit for their role, and the writing and direction are the Coens at their best.  No doubt the ending will annoy some, but it’s completely in keeping with the central theme.  Two characters are left hanging between life and death.  What’s their fate?  You’ll have to look inside.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The Men Who Star at Goats
3 out of 4 stars

Based on Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare at Goats and his BBC documentary The Crazy Rulers of the World, this movie tells how the United States military, demoralized by Viet Nam, set out to create a new kind of soldier.  Turning to new age philosophy and the paranormal for inspiration, a special unit code-named Project Jedi was created.  The unit was involved in a great deal of goofiness such as trying to walk through walls and stop the hearts of farm animals with the power of the mind.  It also led to the creation of a fairly nasty hand-to-hand combat weapon called "The Predator" that looks like a harmless piece of plastic, and most infamously to the use of music like the Barney theme in the torture and interrogation of Iraqi prisoners of war. 

These facts are weaved into a fictional story in which reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) inadvertently runs into “Jedi” Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) while on assignment in Iraq.  Cassady allows Wilton to accompany him on what he claims is a secret mission.  As the two men get in and out of one scrape after another, Lyn tells Bob how the Jedi unit was started by Viet Nam veteran turned new age space cadet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges).  Cassady was the most promising member of the unit, much to the chagrin of fellow “super soldier” Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey).  Eventually, Lyn reaches his objective and we learn the final fate of Project Jedi.

The film begins with the statement "more of this is true than you would believe".  Unfortunately, more has been changed or omitted than I would have liked.  Like, for starters, an actual point of view.  The movie tries to have it both ways, showing Lyn and his fellow Jedi as delusional buffoons one moment, and as the real deal the next.  It also tries to whitewash some of its characters by blaming the more controversial techniques that came out of the project on breakaway members who had turned to “the dark side”.   This timidity dulls the film’s efforts at satire considerably, turning what should have been a biting indictment of military madness into a light-hearted romp.  As far as light-hearted romps go, it's an entertaining one, and there's no doubt the cast is great.  So check out the movie for a few laughs, and then check out Ronson's book or documentary for a few more laughs as well as some disturbing truths.

Taking a Break From the Halloween Blogs to 'Whip It'

I've already botched my attempt to do a horror related blog every day in October, anyway, so screw it.  I'll get back to the horror soon, but today I'm going to do a quick review of Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It.


Bliss (Ellen Page) is a fairly typical 17 year old girl whose mother pushes her to take part in beauty pageants.  It's not exactly her thing, but there doesn't seem to be much else to do in her small hometown of Bodeen.  Then one day Bliss discovers there is a roller derby team based out of nearby Austin.  She goes to see a match and decides to try out.  This being a sports movie, the team Bliss tries out for are the roller derby equivalent of the Bad News Bears, perenial losers The Hurl Scouts.


The plot hits a lot of the beats you'd expect a movie like this to hit, and by the end there's probably more extraneous drama piled on than necessary.  On the plus side, Whip It has a few unexpected twists on the usual formula, the characters are likable, and the jokes are funny and flow naturally from the situations.  It's not a great movie, but it's an enjoyable one.


Ellen Page is excellent in the lead, playing a more vulnerable and realistic teenager than she did in 'Juno' and coming across as completely believable.  Good supporting cast, too, including director Barrymore, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig, and an almost unrecognizable Jimmy Fallon.  As for Barrymore's direction, it's nothing flashy.  Just solid meat and potatoes storytelling, which is fine in my book.  3 out of 4 stars.

Dracula Yucks

It’s always a risky proposition to go back and watch something you enjoyed as a kid but haven’t seen in decades since.  Nonetheless, when I saw a new shrinkwrapped copy of Love at First Bite for sale for a mere 3 bucks, I couldn’t resist.  I last saw this movie when it played on Star Channel (the predecessor to The Movie Channel) back in 1980 or so.  I thought it was funny at the time, but there are a lot of things a 10 year old kid thinks are funny that seem pretty stupid now.

Believe it or not, George Hamilton actually makes a pretty good Dracula, and Arte Johnson’s Renfield is great.  Richard Benjamin’s commitment-phobic psychiatrist and Susan Saint James’ neurotic fashion model seem even more relics of the past than Hamilton’s centuries-old count, though.  While the civil rights movement and feminism had made considerable strides in American culture as a whole by 1979, you wouldn’t know it from this movie.  There’s plenty of cringe-inducing racial humor, casual gay bashing, and Saint James saying things like, “A career for a woman is kind of like fooling around for a man.  It’s fun until the right person comes along.”  Every single black character in the movie, most of whom are comic relief petty criminals or gang members, calls white people “honkys”.  And just for pure seventies nostalgia, I had to laugh when Richard Benjamin ordered an “uncola” at a restaurant (that’s a 7-Up to you youngsters).  There’s also one significant change to the film’s music on the DVD – the song “I Love the Night Life”, which became a hit in part because of this movie, has been replaced with a less appropriate number.  Bummer.  Some of the jokes still work, but not enough to really recommend to anyone who isn’t nostalgic for the disco era. 

For some reason the trailer for the movie isn’t on Youtube (that I could find, anyway), but here’s a TV promo from when it aired on the CBS Wednesday Night Movie: