Aug
24
“The Gate” Review
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I’d never seen “The Gate.” It was one of the few horror movies a childhood friend of mine had seen, so he talked about it all the time. But it was never on my radar. I mean, it’s PG-13. We all know how I feel about horror movies rated PG-13.
But last night the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood had a midnight showing of the film. I decided at the very last minute to go. I hadn’t been to that theater in 5 years. Back in ‘03, I’d gone to see a god-awful double bill of “I Drink Your Blood” and something probably equally wretched. I’d only made it through the first third of “I Drink Your Blood” before walking out due to its overwhelming badness. At any rate, for years I was leery of the programming at the New Beverly. I kept reading about these great screenings there, but I remained gunshy about going back.
Finally, I decided to man-up and revisit the theater. “The Gate” seemed like as good a movie as any to see there.
I’d done very little recon before arriving at the theater. It wasn’t until I got there and saw the poster that I realized that Stephen Dorff — Deacon Frost from the first “Blade” movie! — is in it. Then noticed Tibor Takacs had directed the film. Yes, the Tibor Takacs! I’m actually familiar with another film of his, “Mega Snake,” as a former co-worker of mine was a writer on that gem.
Takacs and the writer of “The Gate,” Michael Nankin, were in attendance last night and did a Q&A before the film began. Indeed, people in the audience had some softball questions about the film’s production. We all found it quite humorous that the film had opened opposite the notorious Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman bomb “Ishtar” and trounced it at the box office.
That being said, “The Gate” isn’t a great film, either. I think it works as a nightmare generator for its target audience — adolescents — but the story doesn’t really make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Still, I didn’t walk out, partly because I just wanted to see how much more bizarre it would get.
In the film, a dead tree is removed from the backyard of a young boy named Glen (Dorff). He and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) begin digging around in the hole left by the tree stump and find jewels or something. A whole bunch of moths fly out of the hole. Glen’s sister, Alexandra, throws a party after their parents go out of town for a long weekend. The drunken high school kids make Glen levitate and he breaks a lamp. Terry has a dream that his late mother comes back to life, but she turns out to be Glen’s dog, who’s dead for some reason. Glen gets over the loss of his beloved pet in a record amount of time (”He was old.”), so he, Terry and Alexandra can fight little demons who’ve crawled out of the hole and have something to do with the lyrics in a heavy metal song Terry likes.
It gets weirder.
I guess I sort of liked the idea that none of the characters in the movie ever fully understood what was going on. Movies such as these usually have some resident expert who can provide gobs of exposition and clear up the confusion to some degree. “The Gate” doesn’t bother. In their desperation, the kids simply throw a bible in the hole, hoping that’ll do the trick. It doesn’t, unfortunately.
The movie does have that creepy vibe of a bad dream you had when you were a kid. It’s best to approach the film from that perspective. Or you could be cynical and say the filmmakers are hacks who had no business making a movie in the first place. Still, it outgrossed “Ishtar.” There’s something to be said for that.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
22
Superman Reboot
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“Superman: The Movie” is my “Star Wars.” I was born too late to see the original “Star Wars” when it was originally released in ‘77. But, I was in utero when my folks went to see the first Superman film in ‘79. I don’t remember being fanatical about “Star Wars” when I was a tot. I do remember running around the house wearing a Superman t-shirt and a bath towel for a cape. In point of fact, I still do that to this day.
Unfortunately, Superman’s a character that no one knows what to do with, especially Hollywood. Our popular culture has become so cynical, so bitter, so emo, the Man of Steel is seen as an anachronism, a jingoistic cypher. Thing is, Superman is a product of an earlier period of cynicism, bitterness, and emo, or as it was referred to then, “jazz.” Superman debuted in 1938. A product of the Depression era, Superman took on corrupt politicians, greedy corporatists and gangsters in his early days. Now, those three groups have simply been rolled into one. Still, the thinking that the post-modern era has a monopoly on dark times is short-sighted and lacking in perspective. Superman can work today just as he’s worked before.
Warner Bros. has announced, according to CHUD.com, that Superman will take flight again, just not in a direct sequel to 2006’s “Superman Returns.” I blogged about the rumor awhile back that Louis Leterrier was rumored to be developing a Superman reboot, a la “The Incredible Hulk.” But the Hulk redo didn’t outdo the original film at the box office. One wonders if the Ctrl+Alt+Delete approach to Supes will succeed where “The Incredible Hulk” didn’t exactly.
I’m not convinced that we need to go back to the way beginning, to Krypton. “Batman Begins” and “Casino Royale” shed light on aspects of the respective heroes’ origins we hadn’t seen before. Superman’s backstory is fairly well known. I don’t think we need to look back, but forward. I have origin story fatigue. If Supes’ beginnings must be touched upon again, then the filmmakers should do it in an opening credits montage.
There’s some debate in the fan community as to whether or not this new Superman film is going to follow the lead of “The Dark Knight” and be a darker, grittier tale. Thematically, I don’t think that will work. Batman was created to be an antithesis to Superman. Making Superman more bat-like is sort of pointless when they can just make another Batman movie. Warner Bros. should make a Superman film for audiences that were put off by what the MPAA calls “intense sequences of violence and some menace” in “The Dark Knight.” It doesn’t have to be a kid’s movie, but one all audiences will find appealing. As bad as the “Star Wars” movies have gotten in recent years, I’d hate to think the next generation of kids might not grow up on Superman the same way I did.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
22
“Kick-Ass” Dangerous
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The comic book series “Kick-Ass” debuted earlier this year. It’s not quite monthly. I think Marvel’s only put out three issues to date, not counting variants and reprints. But the title, written by Mark Millar and pencilled by John Romita Jr., has already attracted the interest of Hollywood. Director Matthew Vaughn is quickly assembling a cast and going hat-in-hand to independent financiers.
“Kick-Ass” is a mature readers book about a high school pariah (think Peter Parker before the radioactive spider-bite) who becomes a superhero, albeit one with no super-powers. He gets his ass handed to him in his very first battle. After a lengthy hospital stay, not mention some therapy, he takes up his mantle again and gets into another scrape. But he wins this one. His victory is captured on someone’s camera-phone, and he quickly becomes a YouTube sensation.
Mark Millar is aces at filtering comic book conventions through of-the-moment cultural trends. “Kick-Ass” is a great read. That being said, I’m not quite sure if it’s earned a movie deal quite yet. The first storyarc isn’t even over; Millar’s “Wanted” totally fell apart in its final issue. The first issue of “Kick-Ass” begins in medias res, as he’s being tortured — with the interrogations having attached a car battery attached to his man-parts! — before launching into a flashback. I’d like to see how everything comes together, so I can complain if the movie totally gets it wrong.
The casting of Nicolas Cage as a character in the film, according to Reuters, gives me hope. He’s been orbiting comic book roles for years. He was up for Iron Man in the ’90s before he chased the part of Superman in Tim Burton’s non-starter. Ultimately, he played Johnny Blaze in last year’s “Ghost Rider.” I’d like him to have another go at the genre. Of course, I’m the one and only person, apart from Cage himself, who wanted to see him play Supes. I’ve been a fan of Cage for years, not enough of a fan to have seen “Wicker Man” or “Next,” but I will be attending “Bangkok Dangerous” on opening day. It looks kick-ass.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
21
Jason Would Like to Axe You a Question
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Serial killers and momma’s boys — two great tastes that taste great together. Jason Voorhees is perhaps my favorite mother-lovin’ slasher. Had she not been decapitated in the final reel of “Friday the 13th,” I think Mrs. Voorhees would be proud of her boy. But Jason’s carried on her tradition of showing kids the dangers of drug abuse, premarital sex and plunging an axe into one’s skull. In less than six months, Mrs. Voorhees’ only child — forgetting all that needless retconning of the Voorhees family tree in “Jason Goes to Hell” — will stalk and slash on the big screen again.
I’m actually starting to get excited about this one.
I lamented a couple months back that Michael Bay’s soulless remake machine, Platinum Dunes, was giving Jason the “Batman Begins”/”Casino Royale” treatment. That they felt the mythology of the “Friday the 13th” saga needed to be rebooted sort of misses the point, considering how each film is basically a remake in and of itself. Teens arrive in woods; Jason destroys them. The end.
Still, the articles I’ve been reading about this film, particularly the casting of Nana Visitor as Mama Voorhees (long before “Star Trek: DS9,” she was on “MacGyver” twice, as two different characters!), has given me a modicum of faith that this film might be a worthy entry in the series. Yes, director Marcus Nispel is going to stylize the hell out of it. That’s all these music video vets know how to do. What they don’t realize is the absence of showy cinematography in the earlier films was how they achieved their grittiness. Nowadays, hacks just think bleach bypass is all you need for instant atmosphere ’cause Spielberg does it sometimes.
CHUD.com, the Internet’s preeminent apologist for the upcoming “Friday the 13th” film, has a new image up of Jason chopping wood, or humans, or perhaps both. I hope the radioactive cloud behind him doesn’t turn Jason into The Amazing Colossal Slasher. And with that being said, I’ve given myself a fabulous idea for another screenplay. Maybe someday it’ll be made into a film…then further down the road, remade by Michael Bay!
-Brad Lohan
Aug
20
Bored of the Rings
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I dunno why, but “The Lord of the Rings” movies did not work for me. I thought they were hammy, overlong and at the end of the day, simply not up my alley. No, I never read the books. But I hadn’t read “Nothing Lasts Forever” before I saw “Die Hard” and loved the hell out of that movie. I heard that the LOTR books go on for pages about the topography or whatever, not really something I felt was missing from the films. To be honest, with the amount of story there is to be found in the trilogy, I think everything could’ve been condensed into one two-hour feature. It’s the bloat that bogs down those movies. That they released Extended Editions of all three of those films goes to show how out-of-touch I am, huh?
Now they’re making two more — an adaptation of “The Hobbit” and a “bridge” film that links “The Hobbit” to the LOTR trilogy. Wait, a bridge film? Are Tolkien fans so obsessed with Middle Earth that they need five of these damn movies? I mean, I think if anything interesting happened between “The Hobbit” and LOTR books, I imagine Tolkien would’ve written about it, not to mention — in loving detail — the dirt upon which their hairy feet stood. I hope this bridge movie is Warholian and is just hours and hours of the little buggers sleeping.
I inexplicably never bought into Peter Jackson’s vision for the LOTR. Considering that I enjoyed Jackson’s Australian-made cult films — “Bad Taste,” “Meet the Feebles” and “Dead Alive” — I’m still perplexed as to why he failed to capture my imagination with a significantly larger budget.
Yet I remain somewhat conflicted about the new films. Guillermo del Toro is attached to direct them. Now I love GDT. “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” is a great bit of comic book fantasy, the kind of fantasy that works for me. Maybe, just maybe, del Toro can sell “The Hobbit” on me.
According to Reuters, del Toro and Jackson are co-writing the screenplays for the two films. I’d prefer that del Toro tackled the material by himself. If anything, I want to see a fresh approach to this material. The best “Star Wars” film — “The Empire Strikes Back” — wasn’t written or directed by George Lucas; he got a “Story by” credit and served as an Executive Producer. Jackson should let del Toro have the keys to the kingdom or the Shire or wherever the hell they are. I don’t know. I never read the books.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
19
I discovered Bill Hicks when I was in college. A friend of mine loaned me one of his comedy albums, and having never even heard of the guy — Hicks had died of pancreatic cancer in ‘94 — I was a little leery. As far as I was concerned, stand-up comedy was a dying art. Stand-ups in the late-’90s were for the most part simply auditioning for safe, family-friendly sitcoms. The truly edgy comics, the ones that also happened to be funny, were literally a dying breed. Kinison was gone. Pryor was in failing health. It’s almost as though being riotously funny was a death sentence. That being said, Dane Cook is probably immortal.
Listening to Hicks’ mad genius for the first time as an angry young man was one of the few college experiences I truly found rewarding. I quickly sought out all of his comedy albums and spend hours in the computer lab, downloading his MP3’s and drooling on the floor with breathless laughter. Here was a man who could transform his anger, his confusion, and his perversions into comedy gold. He made the medium his own. Every bit is just as fresh today as it was in the early-’90s. That we have another Bush in the White House, another war in Iraq and another all-singing, all-dancing Cyrus keeps his material still oddly relevant.
According to CHUD.com, Russell Crowe is developing a Bill Hicks biopic. Crowe’s sort of an intense personality himself. I could almost imagine him in the role. Most fans seems to be opposed to the idea of a biopic about the comedian. If anything, it’ll increase people’s awareness of him. There have been a few more comedy albums of his released in fits and starts over the years, but he’s nowhere near as posthumously prolific as 2Pac. A film about him might have previously unreleased material, filtered through an actor who can be quite a chameleon.
How would Hicks feel about a biopic? Well, he was always very outspoken about his extreme dislike for people who sell out. But I can’t imagine this film would be a major motion picture, costing in the hundred million dollar range. I imagine an indie — part concert film, part dramedy. I’d love to see it shot all in black-and-white like his album covers. It needs that raw quality, not to look like audition material for an ABC sitcom.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
18
Iron Man vs. “The Dark Knight”
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Today is a slooow day for entertainment news. Last weekend, “Tropic Thunder” bumped “The Dark Knight” from the top spot at the box office. It’s hardly the most newsworthy thing in the world. TDK has been out for a month now. It’s rare for a flick to be #1 for two weeks. Four is almost unheard of nowadays. Fittingly, one of the stars of “Tropic Thunder” — the indispensable Robert Downey Jr. — has panned “The Dark Knight” in an interview with MovieHole.net. Here’s an excerpt from IMDb:
“Downey said that he ‘didn’t get it. … [I] still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character.’ He said that while watching the movie, it dawned on him, ‘I get it. This is so high-brow and so f—ing smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ He then added, ‘You know what? F— DC Comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.’”
I believe this fall, University of Phoenix will begin offering “The Dark Knight” as a major.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that the movie has a bit of a downer ending and steers the character in a direction that isn’t what you’d expect. As I pointed out in my spoiler-filled review, I’m not sure the resolution works all that well. Clearly, it left Downey scratching his head. I do, however, find his negative reaction more than a little humorous, considering how he played the title character in “Iron Man” earlier this summer.
The character of Iron Man owes a lot to Batman. A rich playboy suffers a personal tragedy, designs a super-suit and an arsenal of non-lethal gadgets, and takes on a gallery of colorful rogues. But Iron Man’s alter-ego, Tony Stark, ultimately became an alcoholic in the comics. Marvel has always been more interesting as publisher than the Distinguished Competition in that they have characters with human weaknesses. Their super-powers or what-have-you are more of an affliction than gift. Marvel characters are more psychologically complex than DC characters. In the comics, Batman possess a genius-level intellect, the physique of an Olympic contender, and knowledge of all martial arts. He’s flawless and a bit of a bore. He doesn’t even chase girls. The more recent films have stripped him down a bit, giving him vulnerabilities that he sorely lacks on the comics page.
I don’t think that’s what Downey’s complaining about. Where “Iron Man” addresses global terrorism, war profiteering and personal redemption in a more audience-friendly and populist way (i.e. the good guy wins and the bad guy loses), “The Dark Knight” upends those very same themes, turns the heroes into villains and presents a world where the bad guy and the good guy finish in what amounts to a tie. What’s remarkable about the success of “The Dark Knight” is that it’s a very subversive summer film. Maybe audiences have grown up, or they simply got caught up in hype and walked out of the theater going, “Huh?”
If anything, this summer the DC character became more complex than the Marvel character when translated from the page to the screen. Tony Stark pounds a few drinks in the “Iron Man” movie, but he hasn’t entered “Demon in a Bottle” territory yet. Still, “Iron Man” was a franchise-starter. “The Dark Knight” is a sequel; its prequel, “Batman Begins,” plays things pretty safe, too. It’s quite possible “Iron Man 2″ will take the character to a much darker place as sequels often do. Let’s just hope Downey picks up on what’s happening and doesn’t have to go back to school to understand the script.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
16
“Midnight Meat Train” Review
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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how Lionsgate had decided to dump “Midnight Meat Train” in dollar theaters. The film did about $30,000 in business the weekend it opened. That said, “The Love Guru” has at the very least outgrossed one movie this summer. But why did Lionsgate doom the movie to box office failure? There’s clearly an audience for it. I know. Last night I saw it in a packed house at the Nuart.
The Nuart had managed to get their hands on a print of “Midnight Meat Train” and gave this film its one and only Los Angeles premiere — appropriately at 12 a.m. I got there about a half-hour before the movie started, and the line had already wrapped itself around the block. With virtually no publicity, the film had sold out. I’d fortunately bought my ticket in advance. The only trick was finding street parking in the same zip code as the movie house.
The director Ryuhei Kitamura and writer Jeff Buhler were in attendance to give brief, butt-hurt rants about how the studio had screwed them over before the film began. We were then all encouraged to boo the Lionsgate logo, like that wasn’t already a given with this crowd.
I enjoyed the film. I’ve seen far, far worse horror flicks — “House of 1,000 Corpses,” “Underworld,” and “House of the Dead” immediately come to mind — that have had wide releases. “Midnight Meat Train” isn’t something I’d pick up on DVD, but it’s a better than average horror movie, based on a short story by Clive Barker. I think it’s about a half-dozen kills shy of being a gorefest and a little convoluted at the end to work as a straight slasher flick. But the audience seemed to be into it, particularly the scene when a guy gets hit on the back of the head with a hammer so hard that his eyes pop out of their sockets.
The film is about a photog named Leon (Bradley Cooper) who’s trying to ingratiate himself with the artistic community. He’s encouraged by an art dealer played by Brooke Shields(!) to dig deeper. So Leon goes from taking pictures of drunks on benches to pretty girls being mugged. When he thinks he can tie the disappearance of a model to a creepy guy (Vinnie Jones) in a three-piece suit with a doctor’s bag on the subway, Leon goes through all the paces of movies like these: he can’t convince the cops of anything, he grows distant from his girlfriend (Leslie Bibb) and he uses my favorite movie cliche of all time, “I know this sounds crazy…”
The plot is just what happens between the scenes of carnage. But for a movie called “Midnight Meat Train,” it’s not overwhelmingly gory. There are some inventive scenes of dismemberment. A woman gets decapitated, and you can see from her point-of-view as her head’s separated from the rest of her body. Granted, they did that in last year’s British slasher “Severance,” another film I saw at the Nuart coincidentally, but I’m not bored by the gag yet. I simply found myself wanting a little more overly-stylized splatter.
I think the supernatural weirdness in the final reel is probably the weakest element of the film. By day, Vinnie Jones’ character works in a slaughterhouse. It’s rather chilling to think that he’s getting rid of his victims by grinding them up with dead animal carcasses. It makes Leon’s vegetarianism seem like a worthwhile character trait. But at the end of the day, the big bad isn’t killing commuters and feeding them back to us; they’re being fed to someone — or something — else! Denying us the payoff that ordinary citizens are unsuspecting cannibals sort of diminishes the horror. Scary movies should make you rethink some banality in your own daily life, like eating a steak or riding the subway or taking pictures of people getting their skulls caved in.
All that being said, I’m disappointed Lionsgate let this movie die on the vine. It’s got a few flaws, sure, but it’s still great fun with an audience full of gorehounds. We here in L.A. were lucky that the Nuart was able to make that experience possible. Maybe this movie will become a staple of the midnight movie circuit and an underground hit, sort of fitting for a movie that takes place on the subway.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
15
This movie is so funny, it’s retarded. And I mean that in the best possible way. “Pineapple Express” had left me a little cold last week, so I was kind of jittery going in, worried that all the best jokes are in the trailers. No, “Tropic Thunder” has LOLs in spades. This was one of those comedies that kept me laughing on my way out of the theater, in the car on the ride home, and even now as you’re reading this review.
The film is about a group of pretentious actors filming a bloated Vietnam War epic. Ben Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, a hit-starved action hero, trying to restart his career after his serious turn in “Simple Jack” bombed badly; that said, I’d love to see a Tugg Speedman “Scorcher” movie, which we see a fake trailer for at the top of the film. Jack Black is a coked-up comedian, Jeff Portnoy, who typically plays multiple ass-blasting roles in the “Fatties” films, a series that’s a not so subtle dig at Eddie Murphy’s recent output. But it’s Robert Downey Jr. who truly owns the film as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian Method actor who surgically altered his appearance to play an African American role.
In “Tropic Thunder,” filming of the movie-within-the-movie has gone massively behind schedule because of all the trappings of contemporary big-budget movie-making. The self-conscious Speedman can’t cry on cue, while Lazarus blubbers and drools everwhere, like any “serious” actor trying to look unglamorous for Academy voters. Effects man Cody — Danny McBride in a fantastic fro-mullet — levels part of the multi-million dollar set by accident. Tom Cruise as studio chief Les Grossman, a balding brute who curses a blue streak, is inches from shutting the project down. It’s “Apocalypse Now” all over again. Director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is convinced by Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), veteran and author of the “Tropic Thunder” book, to drop his cast in middle of the jungle and shoot the film guerilla-style. Speedman, Portnoy and Lazarus — along with rapper turned actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and newcomer Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) — are dumped in what turns out to be the Golden Triangle, the hub of Southeast Asia’s drug trade. But when armed men come at them, the actors think they’re still making a movie.
The plot gives each of these scene-stealers a chance to keep one-upping each other, and everyone’s game. But at the end of the day, Robert Downey Jr. walks away with the movie. He’s third-billed in the credits, but you get the feeling that he’s the hero. It’s sort of fitting that RDJ kicked off the summer with “Iron Man” and now bookends it with “Tropic Thunder.” He delivers in both. I think it’s because he never goes “full retard.”
-Brad Lohan
Aug
14
Let’s All Give Shia Labeouf a Hand
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I like Shia Labeouf as an actor. I didn’t think I would when he first came onto the scene, but the weakest thing about the first live-action “Transformers” movie certainly wasn’t him. It was, in fact, everything else. Then his performance in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” sold me on him. Most fanboys hated the inclusion of Mutt Williams in Indy 4. Bully for them. But he did most of the heavy-lifting in terms of both the action and comedy in that film, and he got to use a cutlass. At any rate, love him or hate him, he has the career that every young actor in Hollywood wishes he had. That said, I’m interested in seeing what else he does.
His fame of course has made him tabloid fodder. So when he gets booted out of Walgreen’s for trespassing(?!), or a finger-wagging for smoking in the Smithsonian, everyone hears about it. Things like that aren’t the end of the world. He’s young. It’s not a big deal. Then he flipped his pickup a few weeks ago in an alleged DUI-related crash and smooshed his left hand. That incident made me realize Shia might be on the brink of becoming a celebutard.
Rumors abounded that Shia might lose his pinky finger or was suffering from severe nerve damage. His injury also caused a lot of nervousness on the set of “Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen,” and not because they finally realized the title makes no sense. If the lead actor starts losing digits, it could play hell with continuity. Word came down that shooting might be delayed up to four weeks, a move that would truncate the post-production schedule, making it more difficult to finish all the crappy effects before the film’s summer 2009 release date.
For the past few days, I’ve thought, Why don’t they just write his injury into the script? Maybe he could punch a Decepticon in the man-parts and break every bone in his hand. I’d pay to see that; heck, I paid to see the first one and there wasn’t a gag nearly as brilliant as that, save for the Transformer peeing on John Turturro. All that being said, according to CHUD.com, filming has resumed with Shia and his broken wing.
I hope Shia’s learned his lesson and will start behaving himself. He’s got a career ahead of him if he doesn’t get himself killed. And I’m more than a little burned out on reading obituaries for promising young actors.
-Brad Lohan