I mentioned this yesterday when LC sent in his
caps. It's an eccentric comedy about dumb criminals, featuring
Jason Lee and Crispin Glover, presumably because Michael
Rappaport was busy.
Lee plays an unemployed slacker and Glover
portrays a gravedigger who is not only dim-witted, but a barely
functioning alcoholic as well. At least he's not fat, so he
followed one part of Dean Wormer's famous advice. They get
hoodwinked by a crime lord into driving some cigarettes across
the border, but their truck blows up on them, and all the
cigarettes are destroyed. Since they used their own truck, the
mobster considers them responsible for the shipment, and they
find themselves in debt to a violent crime kingpin to the tune
of a quarter of a million dollars. Between them they can't come
up with a quarter of one dollar, so their only choice is to
commit additional crimes. The gravedigger remembers that a rich
man's wife was wearing a priceless necklace when she was buried,
so they reason that they need only to dig her up, steal the
necklace, fence it, and pay off their debts.
I'll bet you've guessed that it isn't going to
be that simple. It's one of those movies where nothing is as it
seems, except for the fact that the woman is really dead, which
turns out to be a real problem for our boys, since an incident
involving the cemetery's night watchman leaves the lads unable
to return her to her grave. They lug her corpse around for the
rest of the film's running time. The gravedigger complicates
matters still further because he has sexual longings for the
corpse. He has many lovely conversations with the coroner (Brad
Dourif), who has his own favorite corpse all washed and ready.
Abut halfway through the film it morphs from a
silly "dumb crooks" comedy into a murder mystery. It seems that
the dead girl drowned, as the police suspected. Only one
problem. The cops found her in a lake, and she drowned in
heavily chlorinated water. Somehow, our boys get hooked into
bringing the swimming pool killer to justice, which works out
quite well for them, since it turns out to be the same crime
lord who holds their IOU.
The story would have been sufficient just as I
have described it, but there are many more characters and
sub-plots. There are so many, in fact, that they often seem to
contradict one another. The dead rich woman's best friend, who
is the film's only really sympathetic character, is offended
when Jason Lee insults her dead friend, and talks about how the
deceased was really a wonderful, soulful person who married the
rich guy because he truly cared for her. Yet in other scenes, we
see that she really was the scheming golddigger Jason Lee had
accused her of being. I have a feeling that they must have
rewritten and re-edited this film many, many times, had remnants
of many versions, and couldn't quite fit the various remnants
together properly. The film just couldn't decide whether it
wanted to be one of those excessively complicated film noirs or
a farce, and it ended up a hybrid of the two. Imagine if the Big
Sleep's Humphrey Bogart had been replaced by Abbott and
Costello, but all the other characters remained the same.
There are a few laughs and a couple of memorable
scenes. You have to love a scene where two of cinema's oddest
actors, Brad Dourif and Crispin Glover, sip white wine and
discuss the merits of a naked corpse in romantic candlelight.
(Seen below in the first four "unknowns.") Glover is kind of fun
to watch in this. This is the first time I've ever seen
him with a significant part which was nothing like Crispin
Glover - and with a deep southern accent to boot.
The film premiered at SXSW last March
(appropriate since it was filmed in Austin), but never got any
bites for theatrical distribution. 5.3 at IMDb, which is just
about what I expected.
C- by our scale.
Not a winning comedy, and not mainstream because of the strong
necrophilia thread, but capable of pleasing a cult audience with
some dark, offbeat comedy.
The nudity is kind of disappointing. There is
quite a bit of it, but it all comes from an anonymous corpse and
background strippers. The principals stay clothed - including
the one stripper who is identified!
Melissa Keller
(no nudity, but worth a look)
Unknowns
Third party videos:
This is awesome. Monique Coleman,
who co-starred in High School Musical, falls out of her costume on
Dancing With The Stars!! Zipped
.avi here, samples below.
Here is a
zipped .avi of LC's Meital Dohan clip from Weeds. The capture
can be found in yesterday's edition.
I have to watch Clay Pigeons again. I saw it once, many years
ago, and have no memory of it other than that I thought it was
just OK. Since then, several people who know my taste have told me
that it's really worthwhile. Either way, there's no disagreement
on the naked merits of Georgia Cates. Here are her nude scenes. (Three
.avis zipped together.)
Tuna and I are probably Gorky Park's strongest proponents. The
plot of the Cold War thriller is OK, but just OK. Everything else
in the film is terrific. It features some great atmosphere,
interesting Russian politics, and three great characters played by
Lee Marvin, Brian Dennehy, and Bill Hurt. (Movie
House Review. We both think it is underrated with a 6.5 at
IMDb.). Even better, it features Joanna Pacula without her
clothing. (Two
.avis zipped together.)
Tuna got a kick out of Neil's Party (Movie
House Review), which is what American Pie would have been if
it had been British Pie instead. Here are the stars:
"Jackie works as a CCTV operator. Each day she watches over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze. One day a man appears on her monitor, a man she thought she would never see again, a man she never wanted to see again. Now she has no choice, she is compelled to confront him."
"A stylistically daring CGI feature, 'Surf's Up' is based on the groundbreaking revelation that surfing was actually invented by penguins. In the film, a documentary crew will take audiences behind the scenes and onto the waves during the most competitive, heartbreaking and dangerous display of surfing known to man, the Penguin World Surfing Championship."
A professor even wrote in with a scientific term that string six vowels together. And it's not even from Hawaii. As I understand it, Polish still hold the opposite record, having five and six syllable words with no vowels at all, in fact no other letters besides w, k, r, and z.
The trailer for Starter for Ten, which focuses on a working-class student (James McAvoy) who stumbles romantically and academically through his first year at a posh private university in England.
When Lars Torvik’s grandmother Inge dies in 2004, he is faced with a decision - sell the family farm on which she lived since 1920, or cling to the legacy of the land. Seeking advice, he turns to the memory of Inge and the stories that she had passed on to him.
Get your tickets WAY in advance for this one, because the lines are gonna make Pirates of the Caribbean look like an arthouse film.
THE German Government tried yesterday to defuse an international row that erupted after a nervous opera house called off a Mozart performance because it featured the decapitated head of the Prophet Muhammad
Well, the censor made a good call, as I see it. If you close the opera, crazy turtle-necked wimps write passionate letters to the editor. If you show the opera, crazy Muslim dudes burn down your country. I'd rather deal with the wimps any day.
Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
Shotgun (1985)
Shotgun (1985) is being re-released to DVD. Had I investigated this
actioner, I might not have purchased it. It is the stereotypical "tough cop
runs afoul of Internal Affairs" story. While investigating the murder of his
hooker sister, he is suspended, so he takes to the streets alone, and
single-handedly ends all evil n the known universe for all time.
I suppose I should fill in the plot details. Stuart Chapman and Riff Hutton
are partners, and they're not popular with Internal Affairs because they tend
to be a little heavy-handed. IAD finally gets enough on Chapman to get him
suspended, so he becomes a bounty hunter. His partner is promoted to Sergeant.
Meanwhile, a high-powered attorney simultaneously sets up his new drug
headquarters in Mexico, and decides it would be amusing to beat the crap out
of hookers. He has an employee solicit the woman, then leaves them near death,
at least until he gets to Stuart Chapman's sister, whom he kills. When the
procurer skips bail and Chapman's ex-partner is killed, our hero collects a
friend, builds an armored assault vehicle, and heads for Mexico to kick some
ass.
Not only is the plot less than imaginative, but it features some of the
worst acting I have ever seen.
IMDb readers say 3.2, which includes the high scores votes from those that
see this as one of the worst films ever made, and consider that a good thing.
So, take your choice on the grade. As a police actioner, it is an E. As a bad
movie, C+.
Rhonda Gray
Donna Ball
Dann reports on Chaos:
This
2005 horror/drama is billed as the most brutal film ever made, and if it
isn't, I'm not sure I want to see the one that is. According to the
producers, it's a lesson for young women in avoiding the kind of risky
behavior that can get them into trouble. According to others, it's a
blatant rip-off of Wes Craven'sLast House on the Left, but
since I haven't seen Last House, I can't confirm or deny that
claim.
Two young women go to a
rave in the woods. Eager to score some ecstasy, they agree to follow a
young guy to a cabin where he claims to have friends that have all the
ecstasy they want, and for free. Hint: this could have been the risky
behavior the producers were talking about.
The "friends" are actually
a gang of killers who have already killed several young women, so they eat
these two up like candy. The depictions of the assaults and murders are as
graphic as you're likely to see, thus earning the "most brutal film"
billing. It pretty much deserves it.
There definitely are
lessons to be learned from the film. There are at least three times when a
different decision by the girls would have taken them out of harm's way,
especially the initial decision to leave the large group at the rave to go
with the guy. As for whether the depictions needed to be so graphic, I'll
leave that up to each individual viewer.
Chantal De Groat
Maya Barovich
It's Elizabeth Banks day in Flauti's corner, as she appears in three
separate movies.
