Cinemaniac Reviews

Believe it or not, you may not want to see that movie.

23 May 2013
1 Comment

Strictly Ballroom

Review No. 479

Baz Luhrmann, take your Adderall.

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D-MINUS

DIRECTED BY BAZ LUHRMANN. WRITTEN BY LUHRMANN, ANDREW BOVELL, AND CRAIG PEARCE. STARRING PAUL MERCURIO (SCOTT HASTINGS), TARA MORICE (FRAN), BILL HUNTER (BARRY FIFE), GIA CARIDES (LIZ HOLT), LAUREN HEWETT (KYLIE HASTINGS), AND ANTONIO VARGAS (RICO). ALSO STARRING PAT THOMSON, PETER WHITFORD, BARRY OTTO, ARMONIA BENEDITO, JOHN HANNAN, KERRY SHRIMPTON, KRIS McQUADE, SONIA KRUGER, TODD McKENNEY, PIP MUSHIN, LEONIE PAGE, STEVE GRACE. DISTRIBUTED BY MIRAMAX FILMS ON FEBRUARY 12, 1993. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH BY AUSTRALIA. RUNS 1 HOUR, 34 MINUTES. RATED PG BY THE MPAA, FOR MILD LANGUAGE AND SENSUALITY.

STRICTLY BALLROOM WAS WATCHED ON MAY 18, 2013.

“There are no new steps!” –Barry Fife (Bill Hunter)

Director Baz Luhrmann’s films have been rambunctiously different in quality, wildly loopholing around the map as if it were his flashy style. You never know when he’s going to appease a crowd or enrage them; all you know is that, due to his interest in product placement and flamboyant (but, somehow, tame) trailers, he’ll have a crowd to react to him. We didn’t know that Romeo + Juliet would be a complete Baztardization of British literature, but it was. We didn’t expect Moulin Rouge! to be a near-definitive jukebox opera, but it was. We hoped for Australia to be a shorter ode to the outback, but it wasn’t. And no matter how much time we spend praying to whatever deity that Strictly Ballroom is not god-awful, that deity laughs. And he doesn’t stop until Baz is done masochistically torturing us.

I don’t want to spend time reviewing Strictly Ballroom. I don’t want to relive it. I don’t want to compliment it at all. Because I hated it. Fine, the music was decent. I’ll give it that, but if I knew what I was in for, I wouldn’t have gone ahead and pressed play, even on the conditions of these sped-up/slowed-down excerpts Baz has included here. I could be listening to the music while doing something else. Why didn’t I think of that in the first place? Am I that stupid?

Strictly Ballroom wants to put dancing on film. Lovingly. I mean, it’s Hans Christian Anderson’s The Ugly Duckling, except for ballroom dancing. Who doesn’t love The Ugly Duckling? Okay, I’ll be honest, it’s a good story, but if you can connect it to The Ugly Duckling, it’s a flaring cliché. Honestly, it’s an abomination to both dancing and film. There’s virtually nothing cinematic about this movie, other than that it’s filmed with a 35mm camera and has a crew assigned to it. The cast doesn’t know how to act in the least, and the crew goes far over the top with lighting, sound, editing, special effects, and costumes. If you, for whatever reason, are curious about the experience of an epileptic seizure, here’s your chance.

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That’s her reaction to him. For my reaction to “Strictly Ballroom”, please Google “A Clockwork Orange Ludovico torture scene.”

Baz Luhrmann co-wrote with two other mostly unfamiliar men, one of whom is his continuing writing collaborator Craig Pearce. Luhrmann is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the field of pacing, and yes, it is very frightening indeed. He seems contained one moment. Oh it’s just a fine, simplistic dancing movie. People with Australian accents, talking daintily to one another like fine chums and chaps and the amicable blokes we are and whatnot. (Perhaps an Australian could teach me better slang.) Then, his medication wears off in an instant. We’re watching kangaroos hop across the screen to a cover version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”. Except these aren’t kangaroos. These are humans. Moreover, they’re actors claiming to star in a real movie, and getting paid for doing so!

Please try and reason with me as to why this is one of the greatest movies of all time. I’m astonished that critics seem to think so. But at this point, when Rotten Tomatoes reports that “95% of critics liked it,” that statistic means absolutely nothing to me. Because, guess what, 20% of me liked it. That’s a generous twenty for something as simple as the renditions we hear in the audio, especially when I could be listening to it elsewhere.

I know what you’re thinking. You want me to shut up at this point. I should, or else I’ll start directing movies, and my obnoxious, vocal, repetitively flamboyant attitude may transform me into a theoretical “Son of Luhrmann”. As in Son of Dracula, or Son of Frankenstein, but Son of Luhrmann, which is ten times more horrifying. Oh, look at the exit music cutting me off. It appears to fit the occasion quite nicely, and it seems as if spoken by the great Roger Ebert himself:

“I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”

STAY TUNED FOR MY “WAYNE’S WORLD” REVIEW @ 4:30

Posted in Comedy, Drama, Music/Musical, [Film Reviews] and tagged ,
22 May 2013
3 Comments

A Quick FYI

B

Hey all,

I’ve been playing with the idea of changing my grading scale’s look for a while now, and I’ve finally done it. In all future reviews, it’ll be off to the right, a full display of my grading scale, with the highest full-color grade representing the grade I give it.

For example, the grade off to the left is a solid “B”.

Please let me know if you want me to make any adjustments, i.e. if there needs to be a box around the grade for emphasis, or if the lower values should be blotted out in grey as well.

Thanks, as always.

–APKD

Posted in [Miscellaneous]
22 May 2013

Coming Soon: Review No. 500

A while back, I had you guys vote on Facebook for my 500th review.  I had narrowed it down to a cult film, and the results came down to David Lynch’s Eraserhead.  This is an update to let y’all know that I have already watched Eraserhead by now–and if not, I will soon.  The projected date for this review will be Thursday the 12 of June (a 4:30 review), but it will most likely be later.  Keep your eyes peeled.

Regards,
“The Cinemaniac”

Posted in [Miscellaneous] | Leave a Comment
21 May 2013
2 Comments

Room 237

Review No. 478

Enter “Room 237″ and you’ll never see “The Shining” the same way.

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DIRECTED BY RODNEY ASCHER. FEATURING BILL BLAKEMORE, GEOFFREY COCKS, JULI KEARNS, JOHN FELL RYAN, AND JAY WEIDNER. ALSO WITH ARCHIVE FOOTAGE FEATURING STANLEY KUBRICK, STEPHEN KING, JACK NICHOLSON, SCATMAN CROTHERS, JOE TURKEL, DANNY LLOYD, BARRY NELSON, PHILIP STONE, KEIR DULLEA, MARTIN POTTER, TOM CRUISE, AND NICOLE KIDMAN. DISTRIBUTED BY IFC FILMS AND IFC MIDNIGHT ON MARCH 29, 2013. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 42 MINUTES. NOT RATED BY THE MPAA.

ROOM 237 WAS WATCHED ON MAY 11, 2013.

“Remember what Mr. Hallorann said: It’s just like pictures in a book, it isn’t real.” –Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance (as “Tony”) in The Shining

I’ve seen The Shining twice. With my second viewing, I picked up on one thing that shocked the living hell out of me: a twist ending. It’s not until I watched Room 237, an artful documentary that investigates the film, that I began to see it as a work of genius.

Of course, I understand that Stanley Kubrick is a genius. As mentioned in Room 237 he has a 200 IQ(!). It’s why we can view 2001: A Space Odyssey as such a powerful analogy, engrossing because, although it has a lack of action, this simplicity represents every action since the genesis of humanity. His genius is why A Clockwork Orange can be hilarious when its main character is imposing graphic violence on others, yet whenever he is the subject of this terror, the movie is simply unsettling. Sometimes Kubrick’s genius is too difficult to explain. But with The Shining, it was just too difficult for the average person to analyze.

Many of the analyses in Room 237 could be valid. So long as you found The Shining interesting, it’s undeniable that all points made here are intriguing, even if you don’t believe very many of them in conclusion. Room 237‘s overall thesis is that The Shining was not a horror film in particular, and that it had a greater, underlying meaning (something true, albeit more obvious, with other Kubrick works).

At times, the documentary’s look at Kubrick’s intentions frightened me more than the 1980 work itself, just with its logical explanations of every possible subtlety Kubrick offers. He naturally hides more in his films than any other director. There’s always a bathroom scene in one of his movies, for example, and they always mean something. Remember A Clockwork Orange, when Alex starts “singin’ in the rain”? Oh and there’s the far better example in The Shining, of course, with Jack Nicholson’s “little pigs, little pigs”-turned-”Heere’s Johnny!” ad lib. Or you could go with the accusatory encounter between Jack’s “parallel” (I’m trying not to spoil the 1980 classic for the sinners who have not seen it). Both scenes are set in a restroom, and they are perhaps the most important moments in the film. Yet Kubrick digs deeper.

This investigation explains the differences between the film and the Stephen King novel. King wrote Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) as having a red car. Kubrick made it yellow and wrote a scene in which the red car had been destroyed in a roadside accident. As if King wasn’t angry enough for the huge destruction his novel had gotten, that very scene was meant to give him a slap in the face. The bigger change to the novel is one that has been well fabled in the film world: that maze scene at the end. Perhaps the scene was foreshadowed from the very beginning as objects, as we were focused on the characters’ interactions instead.

The film looks at The Shining inside out and, literally, forward and backward. There are several theses about what is represented by the hiding of objects across the film. Perhaps The Shining was Kubrick’s use of the horror genre to tell of the Holocaust, which was all over the news when he grew up. Or perhaps it was meant as an analogy about Indian-Americans. It sounds valid to me, having the prior knowledge that Stephen King had originally titled his book The Shine, but it became The Shining upon discovering that the Shine was a tribal name.

The one thing I’m sure about with Room 237 is that it’s thought-provoking. I’ve said way too much about it, but there are countless other points brought up in this study. Who knows what Kubrick was actually intending: he is no longer alive to say so, his family never approved or endorsed the documentary, and the 200 IQ could mean there’s a whole universe living inside his mind. If you are a fan of Kubrick’s The Shining, you may have the same reaction I did. The word “jaw-dropping” is thrown around like a figure of speech, synonymously with “mind-blowing,” as if a movie can’t make one’s jaw drop. But Room 237 was, in quite the literal sense, a jaw-dropping experience.

A MINUS

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

Coming Soon: Review No. 500 (an announcement)

Posted in Documentary, [Film Reviews] and tagged
20 May 2013
3 Comments

#Fedoracast – Episode #0002

Here it is:

#Fedoracast

Posted in [Podcast]
19 May 2013
2 Comments

The Producers

Review No. 477

“Where did I go right?” Just about everywhere, Mr. Brooks.

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DIRECTED BY SUSAN STROMAN. WRITTEN BY MEL BROOKS AND THOMAS MEEHAN. STARRING NATHAN LANE (MAX BIALYSTOCK), MATTHEW BRODERICK (LEOPOLD “LEO” BLOOM), UMA THURMAN (ULLA), AND WILL FERRELL (FRANZ LIEBKIND). ALSO STARRING GARY BEACH, ROGER BART, JON LOVITZ, MICHAEL MCKEAN, DAVID HUDDLESTON, RICHARD KIND, EILEEN ESSELL, DEBRA MONK, ANDREA MARTIN, JOHN BARROWMAN. FEATURING A CAMEO BY BROOKS. DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL STUDIOS ON DECEMBER 16, 2005. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 2 HOURS, 14 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA, FOR SEXUAL HUMOR AND REFERENCES.

THE PRODUCERS WAS WATCHED ON MAY 11, 2013.

“Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Winter for Poland and France
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Come on, Germans, go into your dance”
–”Springtime for Hitler”

“That’s it, baby, when you’ve got it, flaunt it! Flaunt it!” The moment Zero Mostel uttered that timeless line in 1968′s The Producers, an update was on the horizon. This was an impressive directorial debut for Mel Brooks, and it’s outrageous black comedy set high standards for the rest of his career. But the film was in 1968, and it clearly needed to be politically incorrect enough to offend any decade.

And here we have 2005′s The Producers, nearly four decades later. This rendition is a movie musical based on a Broadway musical based on Brooks’s own movie about musicals. It’s offensive by any standards, but we’d rather not care. We’re too busy splitting our sides at every outlandishly dark, witty joke this one has in store. I’d go as far as to say that this edition is better than the classic to which it traces its heritage. It’s not directed by Mel Brooks himself, but knowing that he operates as producer, musician, lyricist, and co-writer, there isn’t much surprise.

The Producers reprises a story that is radical in every sense of the word. Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) is a man who desires money more than anything in the world. He is a theatrical producer with a good amount of money as it is, and yet he “shtupps” every senior woman in the Bronx, on a daily basis, to earn more money. When a somewhat reserved accountant, Leopold “Leo” Bloom (Matthew Broderick), comes to work for this famed man, it becomes apparent that not only does he desire incredulous amounts of money, he is still holding onto a ridiculous amount of cash that he was supposed to use for financing his most recent production–a comedic rendition of Hamlet entitled Funny Boy.

At this point, Leo just doesn’t know Max well enough to realize that he shouldn’t be helping out at all; in fact, he discovers that the two of them (which, of course, means just Max to Max himself) can become rich instantly if they produce a “surefire flop.” They find Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell), a psychotic man who fanatically worships Adolf Hitler, and purchase the rights to his play, Springtime for Hitler. They find the aptly named Roger de Bris (Gary Beach), an ostentatious, stereotyped gay man who could probably direct the play into the flop that it is, if not worse. They find a Swedish blonde, Ulla (Uma Thurman), who is fit for a “secretary-slash-receptionist” job in every way, except that it’s impossible to understand her accent. And despite all this, the play is a hit, which puts Bialystock and Bloom not only in financial crisis, but also in legal crisis.

The film does have its missteps. An over elongated, rewritten ending can do that. And if it weren’t for the cast, this would be merely a farcical schlock with a little bit of Mel Brooks’s touch. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick are the perfect “odd couple.” They can act ridiculous in normal situations (instead of the preferred: acting normal in ridiculous situations) and it’s still funny. Their characters are developed from the moment we begin, simply because they know the musical well enough to present its theatricality with chaotic fun. In addition to Susan Stroman, who directed both musical and movie, the entire Producers cast is from the 2001 Broadway musical itself, save for Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman. Even among these flamboyant nutcases, both steal every scene they have–Ferrell for his bizarre, riotous, Nazi-esque behavior; Thurman for her amusing Swedish accent.

I’m not a fan of theater, simply because the flashiness drives me nuts; thus when it comes to mocking theater, you can’t avoid the naturally over-the-top attitude of theater, or else it’s not funny. You could say The Producers hits a satirical bull’s-eye.

“Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!” –cameo by Mel Brooks

A

Posted in Comedy, Cult, Music/Musical, [Film Reviews] and tagged
18 May 2013
7 Comments

Pulp Fiction

Review No. 476

As eternally transfixing as Marsellus Wallace’s luminous suitcase.

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WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY QUENTIN TARANTINO. STORIES BY ROGER AVARY AND TARANTINO. STARRING JOHN TRAVOLTA (VINCENT VEGA), SAMUEL L. JACKSON (JULES WINNFIELD), UMA THURMAN (MIA WALLACE), HARVEY KEITEL (WINSTON “THE WOLF” WOLFE), TIM ROTH (“PUMPKIN”/”RINGO”), AMANDA PLUMMER (YOLANDA/”HONEY BUNNY”), MARIA DE MEDEIROS (FABIENNE), VING RHAMES (MARSELLUS WALLACE), ERIC STOLTZ (LANCE), JODY (ROSANNA ARQUETTE), CHRISTOPHER WALKEN (CAPTAIN KOONS), AND BRUCE WILLIS (BUTCH COOLIDGE). ALSO STARRING PHIL LAMARR, FRANK WHALEY, BURR STEERS, PAUL CALDERÓN, BRONAGH GALLAGHER, MICHAEL GILDEN, SUSAN GRIFFITHS, STEVE BUSCEMI, ANGELA JONES, KATHY GRIFFIN, DUANE WHITAKER, PETER GREENE, STEPHEN HIBBERT, QUENTIN TARANTINO, AND JULIA SWEENEY. DISTRIBUTED BY MIRAMAX FILMS ON OCTOBER 14, 1994. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 2 HOURS, 34 MINUTES. RATED R BY THE MPAA, FOR STRONG GRAPHIC VIOLENCE AND DRUG USE, PERVASIVE STRONG LANGUAGE AND SOME SEXUALITY.

PULP FICTION WAS WATCHED ON MAY 10, 2013.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord…when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” –Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson)

Cue up Dick Dale’s “Misirlou”. Or Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie”. Or Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell”. Writer-drector Quentin Tarantino uses these songs just as he uses every other stylistic element in Pulp Fiction: to add an extra dose of dark, humorous flavor to his quixotic screenplay. Tarantino approaches the project with a simplistic intent of being carefree and fun, and through this, he achieves genius. Pulp Fiction is so carefree, so fun, and so delightfully outrageous, that the urge to play it again is irresistible.

I had the entire movie spoiled for me. I didn’t know it front to back, but I knew how it was going to end and, for the most part, why. And yet Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction still struck me like an unpredictable lightning bolt. Tarantino doesn’t play god with his works, he is god with his works. And as the genius that he is, it’s a harsh understatement to refer to such brilliance as a “comedy” or a “thriller.” He throws both those genres for a wild loop.

Pulp Fiction sets us up with several stories of corruption and, later, redemption. Even if not all at once, these stories have tied together by the end. Essentially, the one connecting the stories is Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), a high-profile mobster in Los Angeles, California. We don’t realize it immediately, but the film’s leading plot focuses around his fabled power: you screw him over, you die; and yet so many of his trusted subordinates are bound to screw him over. He is taking vacation on his own, and he asks Vincent Vega (John Travolta) to take his wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), for a “fun night.” It starts out with dancing, and before she knows it, she’s already overdosed and gone comatose. Marsellus agrees to provide Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), a hotheaded boxing champ, with a large amount of money, so long as he can cheat his way out of a match. Instead, he takes the money and refuses his half of the deal.

Pulp Fiction is your ideal “black comedy.” Its depiction of violence marked revolutionary extremities upon its initial release, and that’s not all there is in this landmark look at depravity. But the through-the-eyes view allows us to see through the eyes of the main characters. It’s an incredibly dark movie, but it’s surprisingly lighthearted. The levity John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson add, via their philosophical debates, is absolutely immeasurable. The villains aren’t their characters or Marsellus or Butch or Mia. If anyone, they’re the characters we don’t see very often. The story progresses due to the mess the characters get caught up in with one another. As Samuel might put it, it’s because of “the iniquities of the selfish,” not “the tyranny of evil men.” I’ve said too much already, and I mustn’t spoil any more. It’s impossible not to rock along with Pulp Fiction; you will know the auteur is Tarantino when he lays his genius upon thee.

Jules (Samuel L. Jackson): “English, motherf___er! Do you speak it?!”
Brett (Frank Whaley): “Yes.”
Jules: “Then you know what I’m saying.”
Brett: “Yes.”
Jules: “Describe what Marsellus Wallace looks like.”
Brett: “What…?”
Jules: “Say ‘what’ again! Say! ‘what’! again! I dare you! I double-dare you, motherf___er! Say ‘what’ one more goddamn time!”

A PLUS

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

The Producers

Posted in Comedy, Crime, Thriller, [Film Reviews] and tagged
17 May 2013

Tomorrow, on Cinemaniac Reviews…

I don’t know which was harder to believe: that I was finally scooping up the godsend chance to see it, or that–even with my exponentially increasing hopes–it was ten times more awesome than I had anticipated.

Depending on how well you know me, either in person or through the blogosphere, you may be just as shocked as I am that the movie to which I am referring is Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

I’ll try and be brief with this post, but I’d like to say that I saw it a week ago and I’m dying to see it again. Hell, I was dying to see it again from the second it was over. I thought I was lost for not having seen it. I don’t mean to offend you if you were sinking in the same boat as me, but I was right.

In fact, I went ahead and bought it shortly after my initial watch.  I know, I know, there’s an inevitable 20th anniversary edition on 2014′s queue; once it is announced, that will be the time (and the ONLY time!) when I’ll auction off the Blu-Ray I have now, and preorder the whole shebang.

Sorry if I’ve made any of you feel old with that whole “20th anniversary” thing.  I guess I just don’t understand how that might feel, since my own “release date” was three years later.

I’m getting terribly sidetracked so, ANYWAY…

My review goes up tomorrow, and although it’s impossible, I hope my writing quality is as outstanding as Tarantino’s.  One of the (many) cool things about Pulp Fiction is that the clocks are always stopped whenever we see them.  The time varies (sometimes noon, sometimes, 8:20, sometimes 10:20, etc.).  But the first of these “clockstoppings” is at noon, so that’s when my review will go up tomorrow (as opposed to 2:00PM).

I should shut up now.

Stay tuned.

Posted in [Miscellaneous] | Leave a Comment
16 May 2013

Evil Dead II

Review No. 475

“Evil Dead II” – Where cabin fever becomes hemophilia.

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DIRECTED BY SAM RAIMI. WRITTEN BY RAIMI AND SCOTT SPIEGEL. STARRING BRUCE CAMPBELL (ASHLEY J. “ASH” WILLIAMS), SARAH BERRY (ANNIE KNOWBY), DAN HICKS (JAKE), KASSIE DEPAIVA (BOBBY JOE), AND RICHARD DOMEIER (PROFESSOR ED GETLEY). ALSO STARRING TED RAIMI, DENISE BIXLER, JOHN PEAKS, AND LOU HANCOCK. DISTRIBUTED BY ROSEBUD RELEASING ON MARCH 13, 1987. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 24 MINUTES. CURRENTLY DISTRIBUTED UNRATED; PREVIOUSLY RATED R BY THE MPAA.

EVIL DEAD II WAS WATCHED ON MAY 10, 2013.

“You’re goin’ down. Chainsaw.” –Ash (Bruce Campbell)

You know how it’s going to begin. A man makes the big mistake of bringing his girlfriend to a cabin. He doesn’t know it’s the same cabin that killed his friends when he was in college, because the bridge–the single route there–has been refurbished. When he enters, he finds the Necronomicon, the “Book of the Dead” that unleashes spirits when it its recited. Clearly, he doesn’t want to recite it, but there is an audio recitation already loaded in the cassette player. And we know how it’s going to end. (Well, sort of.)

Evil Dead II preserves 90% of its predecessor’s plot, which, contrary to one’s expectations, is a brilliant idea. It’s difficult to follow through your typical sequel, but this one must have been a Herculean task; beyond the story, there’s no job here that we can call simple. 1981′s The Evil Dead was distributed simultaneously to theaters and VHS; it became a hit, regardless, and lives on as a tremendous “cult classic.” The rave it earned in the early ’80s demanded a sequel, and once that project went into production, the film crew became far larger than that of the original. What’s worse, the project was budgeted at $3.6 million, and it had to be as far from a Hollywood flick as possible. It needed to seem like what it was: a follow up to something that five college students made with less than $500,000.

Consider that it takes more effort to look like you did absolutely nothing, than to look like you’ve created a masterpiece. It’s probable that within a matter of six years, Sam Raimi’s natural writing doesn’t look like a mess of clichés and written ad lib, so he has to make it look like that, without making the clichés obvious. And Bruce Campbell’s acting ability has improved, so it’s impossible to not act. But he can’t look like a good actor either, nor can he look like a god-awful actor. He has to act like someone who doesn’t have a clue how to act; someone who spontaneously looks at the camera, someone who accidentally recites his lines with the wrong facial expressions. And none of this can look intentional. Amazingly enough, none of it did.

Although Evil Dead II is a lot of fun, it tends to restrain itself–something its predecessor never would have dreamed of doing. You can tell that there are several great ideas it just isn’t sure about putting onscreen; it’s increasingly self-aware, as well. But I can excuse it for not being the perfect Halloween movie. It has its moments, and they come numerously. Perhaps the most side-splitting scene occurs after Ash tries to shoot his possessed (and dismembered) hand after it has crawled inside a hole in the wall. The result is a hurricane of blood that looks like paint. And as the red paint runs out, you can almost hear these special effects supervisors yelling, “Get some black paint!” There’s several of these scenes in this sequel and, although they don’t pervade the film, they make it well worth watching (so long as you enjoy the outrageously bizarre, gruesome attitude).

A MINUS

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

Tomorrow, on Cinemaniac Reviews… (no, this isn’t a typo)

Posted in Action, Comedy, Cult, Horror, [Film Reviews] and tagged | Leave a Comment
16 May 2013
12 Comments

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Review No. 474

Watch watch “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” now now.

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DIRECTED BY SHANE BLACK. STORY AND SCREENPLAY BY BLACK. STARRING ROBERT DOWNEY JR. (HARRY LOCKHART) AND VAL KILMER (“GAY PERRY” VAN SHRIKE). ALSO STARRING MICHELLE MONAGHAN, CORBIN BERNSEN, DASH MIHOK, ANGELA LINDVALL, ALI HILLIS, LARRY MILLER, ROCKMOND DUNBAR, AND SHANNYN SOSSAMON. DISTRIBUTED ON NOVEMBER 11, 2005 BY WARNER BROS. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 42 MINUTES. RATED R BY THE MPAA, FOR LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE AND SEXUALITY/NUDITY.

KISS KISS BANG BANG WAS WATCHED ON MAY 5, 2013.

Gay Perry (Val Kilmer): “Look up idiot in the dictionary. You know what you’ll find?”
Harry (Robert Downey Jr.): “A picture of me?”
Gay Perry (Kilmer): “No! The definition of the word ‘idiot’! Which you f###ing are!”

So here we are in L.A. We have Harry (Robert Downey Jr.), a thief who has been mistaken for a method actor and used that to reach a sudden career pinnacle; Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), the femme fatale who wanted to be an actress, but never earned any recognition for her talent; and “Gay Perry” (Val Kilmer), Harry’s own lifelong friend. The plot is a murder mystery, which is anything but simple: over the course of four days, Harry and “Gay Perry” are determined to prove that they didn’t commit a murder, often times “playing detective” according to the pulp novels Harmony reads in her spare time. Sounds bizarre? Let’s just say there’s a severed finger used as a major plot point, and I couldn’t help but think of the severed ear that set Blue Velvet into action.

A great film can melodically separate style and substance. A work of genius can blend the two with dynamic results. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is in the latter camp. While the story darkly satirizes old-fashioned crime capers, it also feels just like them. There’s atmosphere everywhere, and for nearly two hours, we finally have something definitive of unique: an indie movie that echoes the Golden Age of Hollywood. And as if this isn’t enough, the “fourth wall” seems to be composed of drywall; the movie has Robert Downey Jr., so it’s obvious he’d be the one to break it down. Yes, he is a “bad narrator,” in a sense that he often forgets what to mention (and humorously acknowledges this misstep); he tells us to stop complaining about how he’s ending the film on several notes (could the movie, you know, not end?); etc. But he’s not doing this on purpose–writer Shane Black is, and it’s fully original. Nobody’s really written a “bad narration” before, so it makes Downey’s character even more unique and likable.

I had a blast watching Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The film toys madly with realism, yet at the same time, I can envision myself quoting it on a daily basis. It’s wild, rowdy, violent, hardboiled, dark, and unforgettable. In any politically correct state of mind, it should be flat-out depressing, but god, does Shane Black give it levity. The film is well-written, well-acted, and well-played. That’s to say it’s the perfect crime, it’s the perfect crime about crime, and it’s the only crime we’ve ever needed. Right?

Harry (Robert Downey Jr.): “I peed on the corpse. Can they do, like, ID from that?”
Perry (Val Kilmer): “I’m sorry, you peed on…?”
Harry (Downey): “On the corpse. My question is…”
Perry (Kilmer): “No, my question, I get to go first: Why in pluperfect hell would you pee on a corpse?”
Harry (Downey): “I didn’t intend to! It’s not like I did it for kicks!”

A PLUS

STAY TUNED FOR MY “EVIL DEAD II” REVIEW @4:30!

Posted in Action, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, [Film Reviews] and tagged

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