Jul
17
Who Watches the “Watchmen” Trailer? (Updated With 100% More Trailer)
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If you haven’t read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ doubleplusgood graphic novel, the trailer for the film version of “Watchmen” might seem a little esoteric. The book in and of itself is just so loaded with ideas and imagination, squeezing selected images from it into a two-minute trailer simply doesn’t do the story justice. That isn’t to say the trailer comes across as a hollow exercise in style-over-substance, like director Zach Snyder’s previous film, “300.” I get a real sense of reverence for the source material in watching this trailer play out, in seeing the characters from the mini-series living and breathing against the backdrop of an alternate 1985.
The trailer’s front-loaded before prints of “The Dark Knight.” Expect a collective love-explosion among hardcore geeks at the midnight screenings tonight. The “Watchmen” trailer couldn’t be a better appetizer for Nolan’s potential Bat-masterpiece. With the pre-release hype at critical mass, I almost expect the experience of seeing “TDK” to be like attending a mega-church.
I’ve definitely warmed up to Snyder’s “Watchmen,” and the trailer has compounded my interest. I’m even thinking of cracking open the graphic novel again this weekend. It’s been a few years. In the meantime, I can’t wait to watch the Watchmen, however briefly, on the big screen.
“The world will look up and shout, ‘Save us!’ and I’ll whisper, ‘No.’” Bad. Ass.
UPDATE: Empire had it up for a blink the other day. It’s back again.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
15
Who Cast “Swing Vote?”
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What’s more incredible than believing that one man’s vote can make all the difference in an election — not with the Electoral College, Diebold voting machines and the Supreme Court, not by a longshot — is that Kevin Costner is still considered a leading man. Now, it’s not like he’s being offered A-material these days. His latest, “Swing Vote,” is just the kind of middle-of-the-road pap that seeps out of studios every once in awhile, movies that seem to have no audience (i.e. movies made for the over-35 crowd) but simply satisfy some producer’s term deal.
So what the happened to Kevin Costner? Well, I think Kevin Costner happened to Kevin Costner. His notorious ego ballooned the budget of 1995’s “WaterWorld” to then-unheard of levels — $175 million. I understand some of this money went into using CGI to fix his receding hairline. Whatever the money was spent on, it’s irrelevant. The bloated budget buzz was enough to convince people before the movie even dropped that it was a dud. I’m still of the opinion that it’s not a bad film in the least. “WaterWorld” has some of the best setpieces of any film of the ’90s, four years before “The Matrix” reinvented the genre and made everyone fanatical about obvious-looking wire work. Costner does something unusual in the film, too, playing a character for a change. His otherwise nameless Mariner is a post-apocalyptic half-fish jerkstore. He softens up by film’s end, but isn’t afraid of being unlikeable for much of the runtime. That approach worked for me because I never really liked Costner to begin with.
“WaterWorld” was the penultimate nail in the coffin of Costner’s A-movie career. 1997’s “The Postman” was the last time he was allowed anywhere near a $100 million budget. I don’t remember the film well enough to be able to speak to its badness. But a 3-hour movie about a guy restoring the American spirit to a dystopia by delivering people’s mail is a hard sell even to the most hardcore genre — or Costner — fan.
Ever since, Coster’s floundered. He’s taken a few stabs at a comeback (like that Sam Raimi baseball movie), but to no avail. Now he’s just the guy you cast when your first, second and third choices have all turned down the role.
I can’t imagine the “Swing Vote” filmmakers gathered together for an early development meeting and all unanimously agreed, “This project has Kevin Costner written all over it!” But what kind of movie is “Swing Vote” anyway? It looks like a softball political satire, a microcosm of what goes on in presidential elections: some rube is torn between the candidates for both parties, candidates that care more about winning than keeping the promises they’re making. Bo-ring. I’m fairly certain that Costner’s character will learn that there’s fundamentally not a dime’s worth of difference when it comes to the two rich, old white men running for office and realize that true change should take place within himself… I’m sorry I nodded off while typing that. Where was I?
Now, it’d be pretty awesome if his character in the movie winds up voting for the more right-leaning candidate, one that would continue removing environmental restrictions and submerging us beneath our melting polar ice caps. “Swing Vote” would then basically serve as a prequel to “WaterWorld” with the Mariner character in the latter being a descendant of the fence-sitting loser from the former. But I imagine the filmmakers elected to do something different with the material.
-Brad Lohan
Jun
15
“War, Inc.” Review
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Last year, John Cusack starred in “Grace is Gone,” an indie film about a father whose wife was recently killed in Iraq, and he can’t find a way to tell his two daughters. So he takes them on an impromptu road trip, trying to avoid the issue altogether. I thought it was a very effective and original anti-war film. Of course the movie was largely ignored, even on the art house circuit. After all the movie was about something. American audiences don’t like that. Movies that have some artistic value interrupt people’s text-messaging.
Cusack’s latest film — another anti-war piece, this time a satire called “War, Inc.” — opened in extremely limited release in New York and L.A. a few weeks ago. But this one has “legs,” as people in the know call it, and it’s quietly been finding an audience and expanding to additional cities amid all the sound and fury of the major summer releases. I finally caught it this afternoon and thought it was great.
No one plays an introspective, black-clad hitman quite like Cusack. In “War, Inc.,” we’re first introduced to his character Hauser while he’s doing a job in the Arctic Circle. When he’s not blowing people away, he drinks shots of tabasco sauce and has deep, meaningful conversations with his GPS system. These little nuances are what Cusack often brings to the table and makes them work brilliantly. At any rate, after a successful hit in the Great White North, Hauser sells his services to the ex-Veep (Dan Aykroyd playing Dick Cheney even better than Dick Cheney) and goes to the occupied country of Turaqistan, where he’s to assassinate an uncooperative oil baron.
Hauser poses as a trade show coordinator (the ongoing conflict in Turaqistan has been completely privatized), tasked with organizing the wedding of Middle Eastern songstress Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff). Left-wing journo Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei) catches his interest, real-life sister Joan Cusack plays his high-strung liaison Marsha Dillon, and Ben Kingsley with a southern drawl and Bush’s odd gesticulations appears as Hauser’s former CIA boss.
This is sort of the “Airplane!” of anti-war films. Reporters are herded into a motion simulator theme park ride instead of being allowed outside the Green Zone to experience real combat; the “Viceroy” is personified by a giant, Big Brother-style screen with shifting images of American icons from Babe Ruth to John Wayne to Pam Anderson; military vehicles are covered with corporate logos like they’re something out of NASCAR. But these touches are organic, not at all like the bonk-on-the-head gags in the witless “Scary Movie” clones. As weird as things have gotten over the past eight years or so, “War, Inc.” doesn’t feel that far removed from our own reality. And that is what makes it so tragically funny.
I’m pleased that “War, Inc.” is showing some staying power on the art house circuit. It’s angry, and it’s clever, and it’s designed to piss off all the Right[-wing] people. I think it connects better with audiences than “Grace is Gone” because it’s a comedy. Audiences would rather laugh at our bass ackwards foreign policy than be made to feel all sad and crummy. I don’t know what that says about them, but as long as the movie gets people to use that lump of tissue between their ears, the filmmakers can declare mission accomplished…and mean it.
-Brad Lohan
Jun
15
“Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” Review
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I first discovered Troma movies when I was about 13. I’d recorded all three “Toxic Avenger” films when they were shown on the USA Network — in reverse-order for whatever reason — and watched them in one marathon, commercial-heavy, edited-for-TV sitting. Without the overabundance of nudity and graphic violence, they’re not quite as entertaining as the versions I now own on DVD. But they had an impact on me nonetheless.
The cheapo effects and criminally bad acting and clunky camerawork are enough to challenge the average movie-goer’s suspension of disbelief. But that’s sort of the point. Troma movies are intentionally god-awful. That they can be so craptacular and still entertain is the magic behind Lloyd Kaufman’s ouerve.
But not all Troma movies are gems of the grindhouse circuit. The ones I have are almost all exclusively produced in-house. Their negative pickups — with the exception of “Cannibal: The Musical” (directed by Trey Parker!) and “Bloodsucking Freaks” — are movies that aren’t films you watch, but power through. You think you’ve seen some bad movies? Pfft. I’ve seen some bad movies.
At any rate, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” is not a bad movie. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that I found a lot to like about it. Judging the film by its visual treatment, its performances, and its plot is what elitist film critics would do. They’d be missing the point. Director (and Troma co-founder) Lloyd Kaufman has a style all his own. He rejects the overly polished and focus group-approved conventions of today’s big-budget films. There’s a quick and dirty charm here, a true wit at play.
The film’s about a fast food restaurant called American Chicken Bunker that opens on an old Indian burial ground for deceased poultry. Protesters outside the establishment aren’t happy about this new fast food franchise desecrating the graves of dead chickens. High school grad Arbie (Jason Yachanin) decides to put in for a job at the establishment to get back at his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Kate Graham), a protester who went off to college and came back with a girlfriend of her own. Contaminated food begins to mutate the restaurant patrons and protesters alike. Arbie and Wendy quickly find themselves in the fight for their lives against man-eating, beak-mouthed chicken zombies.
And it’s a musical.
I’d always wanted to see a musical in which the actors can’t really sing, the choreography looks like it was made up as they went along and an entire number is done topless. Apparently so did Lloyd Kaufman. After watching the tired and unimaginative “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” last Christmas, I was happy to see a horror movie musical that actually had fun with the songs. They didn’t treat them like something they had to get through to move on to the next scene.
The movie also gives Kaufman 90 minutes to put as many sacred cows through a meat grinder as he can. Troma has never been easy on Corporate America, and “Poultrygeist” stays true to Tromatic form. Fast food franchises and the military industrial complex are the film’s biggest targets. But where Morgan Spurlock couldn’t shut down the McDonald’s, and Michael Moore couldn’t bring an end to the Bush Administration and by extension the Iraq War, Kaufman’s learned to stop worrying and love our screwed up society. It’s his muse. If we lived in a Utopia, there’d be no Troma films. And who’d want to live in one then? Well, most people, probably. But I wouldn’t be among you.
-Brad Lohan
Jun
4
“Dirty Harry” DVD Review
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Warner Bros. has double-dipped the Dirty Harry franchise and released a new boxed set yesterday with all five films, a documentary about Clint Eastwood and an Inspector Harry Callahan police badge, should you be interested in emulating his style of policework in your off-hours; his .44 Magnum that could “blow your head clean off” is not included. I haven’t had a chance to go through all the content in the collection, but I did watch the first film last night.
Last week, I discussed at length the myth of the Western hero in regards to the latest Rambo film. Those same heroic attributes are just as easily applicable to Insp. Callahan, only now in the context of the detective genre. Dirty Harry operates simultaneously inside and outside of the law. He’s part of a bureaucracy that’s at its wit’s end in trying to apprehend the serial killer Scorpio, but he is every inch a vigilante, just one with a badge.
There have been so many copycats in the 37 years since the release of “Dirty Harry,” that it’s almost difficult to imagine the film was ever controversial in its depiction of police brutality. For more than a generation, cop movies have aped Dirty Harry’s unique brand of justice. The “Lethal Weapon” series turned vigilante cops into a thing of comedy. “RoboCop” brought Dirty Harry into the future. “Training Day” won Denzel Washington a long-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor.
How many films since “Dirty Harry” have ended with the policeman hero throwing away his badge? “Point Break” and “The Fast and the Furious” immediately spring to mind. Dirty Harry’s badge, however, is really just a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, his license to kill. Cops like Callahan are driven by some other force to dispense justice, one that’s not symbolized by a gold shield or a police manual or the Constitution.
“Dirty Harry” and the movies it spawned have always appealed to my reptile brain. As human beings, our thirst for balance and order amid the chaos is always satisfied by a lawman who shows the lawless a thing or two about what lawlessness really is.
-Brad Lohan
May
30
“Rambo” DVD Review
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The Western is a dead genre. Every year or two or three, a straight Western might make it to theaters, but the genre’s played itself out insofar as movies about cowboys and Indians go. Elements of the Western myth have since been appropriated by action/adventure, science fiction and comic book films — the lone hero who restores order to a lawless community by confronting “the other.” Did you see that one? It’s fascinating — if you’re a film geek anyway — to explore how the key components of the Western genre have been contemporized. Cowboys are now cops, stargazers or meta-humans. Indians are now mobsters, aliens or supervillains. The small town out West that’s beset by bureaucracy, corruption and some external threat personified by outlaws or savages is now a major metropolitan city, a galaxy or — ahem — another major metropolitan city. Justice is, as always, meted out by a hero who’s an outsider, someone who doesn’t operate within the law or “by the book.” The system is broken. In order to repair it, one must create new parameters for bringing about utopia.
By that definition, the Rambo movies are all Westerns at their core. The fourth chapter, economically titled “Rambo,” takes the fight to Myanmar (nee Burma), where Sylvester Stallone’s reluctant war machine goes on a rescue mission to save some Christian do-gooders from the country’s brutal military junta. And it’s a helluva flick. At 91 minutes, the film briskly builds to a crescendo of .50 caliber chain gun violence that rivals the final act of Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.”
The carnage in the film is not like the toothless slapfighting in last summer’s PG-13 “Live Free or Die Hard.” I hate when filmmakers cop-out and “leave it up to the audience’s imagination” when it comes to screen violence. Why doesn’t the director just read me the script then? That’ll really give my imagination a workout. No, “Rambo” doesn’t leave anything up to your imagination. You’re shown every bullet hit, every exploded head, every dismembered body– almost all executed (zing!) with surprisingly effective CGI trickery. Yet the violence isn’t as gratuitous as it’s cathartic. The junta jerkstores’ idea of fun is making innocent villagers run across a mine field. You really find yourself hating these guys and wanting Rambo to reduce them to puddles of goo.
Stallone — who co-wrote and directed — hasn’t made a pure comic book like “Rambo: First Blood Part II.” Granted, there is an element of absurdity to the proceedings. Stallone’s in his 60s, in peak physical condition and nearly invincible; he takes a bullet to the shoulder, but it seems to do more damage to his shirt than to him. He’s also able to outrun the bomb blast from a WWII blockbuster that’s been sitting the jungle for six decades. Still, that’s all part of the myth of the Western hero. If anybody could do what Rambo can do, well, there wouldn’t be any need for Rambo.
I’m terrible about watching all the special features on DVDs. I used to do it religiously, but after the one millionth canned, EPK interview, I got a little burned out. The only featurette I watched on the disc was “It’s a Long Road: Resurrection of an Icon.” The film’s been in development for as long as Indy 4, but they didn’t spend too much time on the different incarnations that had been proposed over the years. No mention was made at all of the Rambo vs. Osama bin Laden concept. Stallone did discuss a potential idea that would’ve sent Rambo to Mexico to rescue a kidnapped girl…not nearly as compelling as taking on bin Laden though.
When it comes to hellholes with rat-bastard regimes, Burma works quite nicely as a shooting gallery for John Rambo. That being said, watching a mythical Western hero — in any genre — achieve what cannot be done in real life never loses its appeal.
-Brad Lohan
May
9
This October…Prepare…To Get…Bush!
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A few weeks ago, I read a script review on Slate.com for Oliver Stone’s upcoming Bush 43 biopic, “W,” and felt a twinge of disappointment in regards to screenwriter Stanely Weiser’s approach to the material. George W. Bush’s presidency is more or less a self-parody to begin with. A parody of a parody isn’t funny. And from what I gathered in reading the review, which isn’t terribly well-written (I couldn’t care less which page something happens on, Ms. Lapidos), the script seems to emphasize Bush’s alcoholism, war mongering and daddy issues with all the subtlety of a Wayans Brothers film. I don’t like Bush. I don’t want to have a beer with him, and not just because he’s an untreated alcoholic. But I’d be more enthusiastic about the film if it had a little nuance.
Stone’s rushing “W” into production and hopes to have it in theaters by October, just weeks before the election. Why this is so important to him is anyone’s guess. Bush is ineligible for a third presidential term, so it’s not like the movie could hurt him politically. I think the film would be better suited for a January release, like the weekend before Inauguration Day. Dumping the movie in October will simply confuse audiences into thinking it’s a horror film or one of those pieces of potential Oscar bait that a studio doesn’t believe in enough to roll out around Christmas; think of last year’s “Lions for Lambs.”
As an actor, Josh Brolin won me over last year with his roles in “Grindhouse,” “American Gangster” and “No Country for Old Men.” I think he’s a little young to be playing Bush in his early-60s; he’d be better suited for Indiana Jones if Spielberg and Lucas were inclined to do a prequel or two or three, but I digress. Still, Brolin’s on the cusp of establishing himself as a solid character actor as well as a leading man. I’m sure he’ll make the most of the role, capturing the wildly inconsistent cadence and word-mangling that have made Bush’s speech patterns such a cottage industry for people who make desk calendars and publish books of Bush quotes. But if the film fails, I hope the blame falls solely on Stone and not him. After I saw “World Trade Center” in ‘05, I realized that Stone had finally proven himself as a very talented director of toothless made-for-TV movies.
Who knows? I’m speculating at this point. The movie could be brilliant and the review I read in Slate might have completely — ahem — misunderestimated the script’s finer qualities. Maybe this will be an October Surprise of a different sort.
-Brad Lohan