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A Quick Rant — Daniel Radcliffe

By Tom Kapr

It took me a long time to become a fan of the Harry Potter films (until around this time last year, I had only seen two of the films, Sorcerer’s Stone and Order of the Phoenix, and had only minimal admiration for both). A cram session of sorts (watching Chamber of Secrets through Half-Blood Prince in relatively quick succession) before viewing Deathly Hallows: Part 1 for that film’s Buried Cinema podcast made me realize that this film series is a towering achievement in fantasy cinema on par with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. Rare is this level of consistency of content, story, and characters and actors in a film series; it is unheard of through eight films over the course of a decade. Rarer still is this level of consistency of quality. Sure, not every film in the series is a great film, but every one of them is at least a fairly well-made, enjoyable movie.

But let’s take a quick look at this film series’ most central and consistent quality. It is astounding to me, uncanny even, that the casting for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was so good that, over the course of ten years (which is an eon in the life of a child), every major child role would still be performed by same young actor who originated it, and that every one of those children would turn out to be a charismatic actor who could carry a scene, and carry it well. And none, of course, is more impressive than Daniel Radcliffe in the central role of Harry Potter. (Major props to Stone director Chris Columbus and his casting team Susie Figgis, Janet Hirshenson, Jane Jenkins, and Karen Lindsay-Stewart for scoring the pivotal triumvirate chemistry of Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, especially.)

From the opening scenes of Sorcerer’s Stone to those final moments on the bridge in Deathly Hallows: Part 2, we get the distinct pleasure of watching a talented child actor become an instant star and then slowly mature into an even finer actor, all of 21 years of age, with an eternal cinematic legacy already behind him. It wasn’t until that final scene in Part 2, however, when I realized how distinct Radcliffe the actor was from Harry Potter, his character, and that, indeed, there may be a wealth of talent there heretofore unseen.

 

 

(Warning: Here be spoilers!)

The final scene of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 depicts Harry and his best friends Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Ginny Weasley (now his wife) as adults with children of their own, sending them off to a new school year at Hogwarts. In Harry’s case, he’s sending his son off to his first year, a reflection of Harry’s own moments stepping into the frontier from the first film. (And I don’t care what the guys said on the podcast for Part 2: the age makeup in this scene is perfect–it’s understated, just enough to show that time has passed and their childlike features are gone.)

When I first saw this scene in the theater, and Daniel Radcliffe walked into frame as a man in view of his middle-age years, I was astonished. He walked differently. He talked differently. He moved his face differently. Even just standing, he held himself differently. No sign of an awkward teenager remained. He had the physical confidence of a man who had been through life. And yet, he was without a doubt still Harry Potter. I can’t even do it justice by describing it. It has to be seen. But it has to be seen in the context of a decade’s worth of work. Before this scene, my thoughts were, “Wow, this kid has become a good actor.” As the credits rolled, I was thinking, “I genuinely believe Daniel Radcliffe deserves an Oscar nomination.”

And I do. He won’t get it, but he deserves it, for the final film alone and more importantly as a token of honor for the seven films before it. If not for that scene, I might be in doubt of Radcliffe’s future movie-star career. There have been so many one-trick ponies, especially when it comes to child stars. But in that one closing scene, Radcliffe showed he has  more to him than Harry Potter. (Understand also, this is coming from someone who hasn’t seen his one or two other non-Harry Potter films, nor his work on the stage.)

That final scene is the reason I am excited to watch Daniel Radcliffe’s career from this point on, and why I am looking forward to seeing The Woman in Black next month. It will be Radcliffe’s first post-Potter film role, a starring role in what looks to be a classic-style slow-boil horror film. He plays a young lawyer (a naive one?) on a seemingly routine job who gets caught up in the unfortunate history of the house in which he is staying and the, shall we say, unhappy ghost who still resides there.

 

 

You can watch the trailer here. Not only is it genuinely creepy (what with all those bizarre toys–what child wants those things?), but it looks genuinely artistic in its framing and production value. Thankfully, it also forgoes the usual horror-trailer jump-at-the-end cliché.

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube!)

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2012 01 19 Tom Kapr Articles by Tom Comments (0) Permalink

Expectations — Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

By Nathanael Griffis

I love Alan Tudyk, so that was honestly enough for me to check out this movie. I think he’s got a great taste for genre comedy. So I continue this series with a story about a couple of hicks who are vacationing in their cabin in the woods and are attacked by preppy teenagers, thereby turning the “cabin in the woods” horror sub-genre on its head.

Hypothesis (Expectations):

The posters & screen shots:  The posters seem to feature Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk  holding either chainsaws, axes, body parts, or passed-out  scantily-clad women. Also they’re screaming and covered in blood. In a few of them we get some shots of Katrina Bowden in almost nothing, so it’s covering all the required bases. The screen shots again are frequently of Katrina Bowden wearing little to nothing, or covered in blood. So the director has either done his research or is a 14-year-old boy. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk seem to be in classic backwoods men gear and smothered in blood. The main thing that excites me here is that Labine and Tudyk are, from the screen shots, constantly screaming, which initially may mean nothing, but to me signals a contrasting switch. Normally in horror films it’s the female character who becomes the “scream queen” of sorts. I’m sure there will be a scene where Bowden screams, but to see the men exercise their vocal cords in such a manner already leans to an exciting spoof.  It also looks extremely graphic, which one would expect from a horror film.

The trailer: It just got a whole lot more exciting. The opening of the trailer is wonderful. It makes me expect an awful Friday the 13th or something, but as it progresses I start to see a complex and ridiculous plot grow out. There’s seemingly seven young preppy jerkwads that in a normal slasher would be chopped to bits, except here they’re accidentally killing themselves. There’s a scene where a kid jumps headlong into a wood chipper, which is just so ridiculous. What it really does, which I believe is what makes a good trailer, is it makes you want to see how everything play out. I wonder how they’ll make this whole ridiculous plot work. There’s only so many ways you can kill a teenager, which is often a fault of the slasher genre, before I get bored. Still in this case I’m excited to see these teenagers set afire, impaled, chopped, and slashed.

Didn't your mother ever tell you about running with chainsaws?

The critics: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil has an astoundingly high rating on RottenTomatoes.com, at 85% “fresh.” The Internet Movie Database has it at 7.6 stars out of 10. Metacritic, which just has to be different, seems to begrudgingly score it a 65 out of 100. In general, what I can glean is that everything seems to be resting on two things: the leads (Labine and Tudyk) and the concept.  Labine and Tudyk are appreciated across the board from what I can tell, and I love Tudyk, so no one better disagree.  The concept, on the other hand, seems to drag on for the few detractors, and for others is played for laughs. The idea of the teenagers’ plans accidently, in Wile. E. Coyote fashion, backfiring and causing their deaths could get old.

Peter Stormare gained a little weight... oh, wait.

Summary: You know, I thought I’d be super excited for this one, but honestly I’m a little wary. I’m not the hugest fan of gore, and the concept leaves me with questions. I’m excited to see things play out, but am worried it’ll become so contrived that it eventually succumbs to the same fault that the “cabin in woods” genre already has of focusing only on absurdly graphic death scenes.

Results (Review):

That was fun. If you like weed-whacker deaths, impalement, and friendship, then this movie is for you. The chemistry amongst the stars is great. Bowden stretched herself from usual 30 Rock schtick, nothing career changing, but she was charming and showed she has good comic timing.  Eli Craig’s direction is promising. It’ll be interesting if he stays within the horror genre. Tudyk and Labine should be in more films together, because they’re near a Simon Pegg-Nick Frost level of chemistry. Calm down people, I only said near. This movie does what good horror should, which is develop full characters and let the psychotic break out around them. Tucker and Dale’s bond of friendship is wonderful–you really feel like these guys have been friends forever.

The horror is great–contrived, but that’s to be expected in a film where eight teenagers accidentally kill themselves. It’s literally as if two friends and a pretty girl stumbled into a horror movie. The comedy is smart, there’s a lot of silly slapstick too if you like that, but for the most part the jokes come from clever dialogue. It’s a smart take on the horror comedy genre, probably most akin to Zombieland. I wasn’t blown away. It won’t “change the game.” This is a really fun horror-comedy movie that’s smartly written and well acted.

See told you there'd be an obligatory scream scene.

Analysis: Expectations are kind of disappointing in their own right. I think this movie fell afoul to the sneaky effect of expectations, that when they’re met we don’t know what to do with them. If something is worse than expected, I can critique it and rant. If it exceeds, I’m ecstatic and rant anyways. When I get what I expect, I’m left a little befuddled. I expected a funny, smart, gory horror-comedy with a touch of heart. That’s what I got, but I feel like I could have loved this movie so much more if it had been more surprising. So if I hadn’t had any expectations, this would have been wonderful. I blame all the work I did. The trailer gives away all but, like, three of the deaths, and not just hints at them, but it literally shows the entirety of the first death. So the joy of experiencing something new is taken away from me. It’s to this movie’s credit that it’s able to still be enjoyable. I just wish I hadn’t known what I was getting into and could have been surprised.

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube!)

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2012 01 16 Nate Griffis Articles by Nate
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The Hacker Under the Stairs: Enhance!

By Steven Moore

On the Buried Cinema podcast I’m sometimes referred to as the curmudgeon. Little things about a movie get to me, reducing my enjoyment of an otherwise perfectly good film. When I watch a movie, I want to inhabit a world. By now, most people are aware of the ridiculous “Enhance!” device in films: the magic phrase that allows an agent to look down your shirt from space.

While there has thankfully been more of an awareness of how ridiculous this notion is in the last few years, it hasn’t kept films and T.V. shows from abusing the general public’s magical thinking when it comes to computer imagery. The real problem is that this little device reminds me that I am watching a movie, that none of the action really matters, and everything is going to be fine. When I am watching protagonists try to escape whatever problems they have gotten themselves into, I must feel the hero’s desperation. I need to want to find the McGuffin as much as she does. Anything that reminds me that that desperation isn’t real puts a dent in the film-watching experience. Too many dents, and I just lose interest. Movies where the climax depends on some discovery made through enhancing an image to reveal a hidden truth, such as Blade Runner and Enemy of the State, can fall apart because no amount of technology, no matter how futuristic, can make something from nothing.

While past films, such as the aforementioned, can be excused because the general public misunderstood so much of computing, there is no longer any excuse. The next time you see an “enhance” moment in a film or T.V. show, don’t sit there and let the writers insult you. Perhaps some screenwriters do believe in the omniscient powers of the Google, but I don’t want to live in their world. Here’s a little video of their work for you:

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube!)

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2012 01 12 Steven Moore Articles by Steve
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Expectations — Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

By Nathanael Griffis

Hyperbole is fun, but it’s also the cute girl that flirts with you at the bar for drinks and then says no to dinner. Not that I’m bitter or that that’s ever happened… Anyways moving on, sometimes I find myself getting carried away with how excited I get for a movie and use hyperbole. I might expect it to be another stupid romantic comedy with no depth and a waste of my precious time and then discover that The Notebook is a great movie. On the other hand, when all the trailers tell me a film is going to be the best comic book movie ever made and I really want Matthew Vaughn to be a good director, then sometimes our hearts are rendered to shreds of… I don’t know, X-Men: First Class was just bad, it didn’t really scar me.

My expectations and how they influence my viewing experience has always fascinated me. Do I like The Notebook more because I didn’t expect to like it, and because the depth or characters surprised me? Was the problem with X-Men: First Class my desire for it to be good or its failure to be good? Our expectations are powerful things, and don’t think for a moment studios don’t know this. That’s why trailers can sometimes be more exciting than the films themselves. If enough good buzz is generated about a film people will see it. On Buried Cinema we did an entire podcast that dealt with this issue after we saw Catfish. I’d sum it up for you, but then you wouldn’t watch the podcast. I will say this, though: the directors of Catfish are now horror directors. I’m happy for them, no doubt, but Catfish is a not a horror movie. The way the film was advertised, though, was almost like a horror film, and you can imagine that that comes with certain expectations.

How stupid am I, this poster clearly screams middling documentary.

What I’d like to do, from here on out, is look into those expectations and try and determine how they affect my film watching experience. I’m going to drown myself in introspective metacognitive processes (i.e., probably just babble a lot) and try to discern, if at all possible, some of the connections between what we expect from a film and how we then judge it.

How this’ll work is simple. I’ll watch a film I’ve never seen before, but before doing that I’ll analyze what advertisement I’m given: posters, trailers, clips of the film, screen shots, probably not everything but enough to get a gist of the film. Then I’ll see what critics have to say. What does the mighty Internet tell us about this film? Is it highly regarded? Is it the kind of film that divides friendships? Does it involve people staring at each other for hours? I’ll sum up my expectations into a sort of hypothesis. Then I’ll watch the film and say my piece. Consider this the results and analysis section, so now it’s got scientific pretensions.

To start us off I’m going with a movie that has a whopper of expectations for me personally: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

My expectations: This’ll be a shorter article than the next few I suspect1 but perhaps deserves as much space as those that follow. The fact is I’ve been waiting for this movie for at least two years. After watching Let the Right One In, I was stunned that a film like that could be made. It was full of depth and perfectly crafted. There wasn’t a flaw in it. Every cut mattered, every performance was airtight and convincing. It transcends the sense that you’re watching a film and engages you in a shared experience. I know, I know, that all sounds very fluffy and as philosophical as it is nonsensical, but I believe it’s the truth and you won’t convince me otherwise. Although bribed with a cookie, I will gladly say otherwise.

It wasn’t long after that I heard Tomas Alfredson, who directed Let the Right One In, was working on an adaptation of John le Carré’s novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I immediately went and told all my friends and it was at this point I began to suspect I am the only John le Carré fan under 50 years old. (These suspicions, by the way, were further indicated by the silver-haired audience I sat with tonight.) My friends did not care, but the fire for espionage and paranoia continued to bubble within my blood. Then mysteriously, casting began to leak: Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy. Clearly Britain has heard of John le Carré. It was like they were making this movie just for me. A stupendous trailer followed that told me nothing except that there was a spy, a mole, at the head of British Intelligence, and suddenly, with as much seemingly swift power as the anticipation had, there was silence and disappointment. My small upstate New York town was not deemed important enough to receive this gem of movie.

Best Poster Ever, nope, Best Poster Ever.

The time and waiting I think built up my expectations; it drove my thirst for a slow-paced, realistic spy thriller. Enough Jason Bourne. I wanted a real spy, an old tired man with a briefcase who goes over files and tapes photos to chess pieces, yeah sexy. Lack only strengthened my desire. It was like the theater deliberately didn’t want me to see this movie and, like a child being forbidden, my thought was that the verboten must by amazing, for all adults are selfish and want to keep all the fun to themselves. So I started to devise this theory. An idea began to creep up in my head. Hyperbole dripped down through my nerves till it fed every bone in my body. I was convinced, plainly, simply, deludedly, that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was the greatest movie ever made.

With all honesty those were my expectations going into the film. I was about to watch something that would leave Citizen Kane in the celluloid dust, a film that wouldn’t even blink at Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie that redefined violence previously exposed in A History of Violence, a movie that struck my heart deeper than Singin’ in the Rain, a film that better understood the craft of filmmaking than WALL-E, something more eternal than Casablanca. So, not a big deal right?

The Result: The best movie of the year. One of the best films I’ve ever seen. But, the best movie ever made? No. Let’s return to the pretty girl metaphor. Forgotten it already because of my stirring prose, I’ll remind you. A pretty girl flirts with you, your hopes travel wildly down the path of the delirious lie that is the male imagination. A single thought drips down a stalactite in far reaches of your brain: perhaps. Perhaps what? Perhaps anything, and that is what is so engaging. This could be the one. She’s pretty smart… and she says yes to dinner. Then comes dinner and it’s wonderful. You have salad, she orders steak, it’s fancifully contradictory. The sad thing is it never really becomes all those amazing things your imagination thought up, does it? Still, it’s something worth treasuring. This film is like that.

Saying a movie is one of the best ever made, a Top 100 film, is not an insult, but it’s a long way from the best. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is, to review the film as a whole, astoundingly perfect. There is a haunting combination of cinematography and sound, a blend of acting and directing like I’ve never seen, and the sharpest editing and script this year or in several years. Alfredson does some amazing things with the camera. He on several occasions pulls back, which seems minute and a simple small choice, but it’s a brilliant subtle reference to the larger picture. We, like the characters, will at first only see a small glint of the truth, but once we stand back…well, you’ll come to realize that perhaps there is still farther back to step. Nothing is completely cleaned up or solved; most things are, but the loose ends and questions remain. There is still farther back we could step, but won’t or can’t. There is a limit to perception, and we have to content ourselves with such limits.

The film is not simple. It’s complex and realistic. There is no over-hyped Bourne tension. No globetrotting action scenes. These are quiet, nervous men with guns, reading books. My father said, as we drove from the theater, “They’re real spys: men getting killed over dangerous, boring things.” He’s right, and it adds a sense of realism to the film that is backed up by le Carré’s past as a commander in British Intelligence. The performances are the best I’ve seen all year. Each man is a unique picture of caged, controlled, and unleashed emotion. Gary Oldman deserves the Oscar, but if Brad Pitt wins I won’t throw a fit. I will, however, if Alberto Iglesias doesn’t win for his score and Tom Brown and Zsuzsa Kismarty-Lechner don’t win for their art direction.

I don’t want to give anything away, yet I suspect that even if I did it might still stand on its own. This is a film for film-lovers, and a film to make a film-lover out of you.

Analysis: So were my expectations met? No, but I think they impacted my view greatly. Trying to be unbiased with this film is impossible. I honestly cannot see any way I would have disliked this film. If something catastrophic, like a random car chase and Hollywood slow-motion suddenly crept up and ruined the film, I would have brushed it off as the producers’ fault. Excuses would have been made for missteps, and the film would have still ended up on my shelf. I just got lucky that it’s a spectacular film. It wouldn’t surprise me if my views aren’t agreed with, but I think I can chalk that up to the difference in expectation perhaps. A viewer expecting something akin to Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, or James Bond, will be befuddled when actions scenes are limited to a few frames. People expecting closure, but perhaps a sequel teaser at the end, will be grasping for answers to a serpentine plot that may come full circle or not. It’s a hard film to dislike, because I think expert artistry is simply noted and appreciated, but not free of the shackles of  bias and expectation. But are any?

 

1: I said this before I finished writing the piece, so this is probably how long they’ll be. If they’re not, I’m clearly even more of a pompous verbose ass than I think I am.

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube!)

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2012 01 09 Nate Griffis Articles by Nate
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Have a Happy New Year!

The Rant Pad will be on hiatus till after New Year’s. The writers are busy with various holiday and end of the year things, and I will be doing some work on past articles to get everything hyperlinked and looking good. Enjoy your New Year celebrations, and we’ll see you in January!

–Tom

2011 12 27 Tom Kapr Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

An Old Toy Chest Christmas Special — The Christmas Toy

By Tom Kapr

The Old Toy Chest: In this series, I review movies I loved when I was a kid but have not watched since childhood–sort of like digging out my old toys that I haven’t played with in a while. (Unburying them, so to speak, in keeping with prevailing themes on this site.) These movies are generally from the 80s and early 90s (the era of my childhood), and they generally are films with which current audiences (i.e., current kids) are not familiar. I will be critiquing them through both the nostalgic eyes of the child within and the lens of the mature *snicker* film critic into which I’ve grown. I hope many of you will remember these films with fondness from your own childhoods.

It’s Christmastime once again, which means it’s time to bring out those beloved holiday movies and TV specials that we’ve seen a hundred times before. But what about those beloved holiday movies and specials that we haven’t seen a hundred times — or at least, haven’t seen in years and years? Sure, we all know and love specials like Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the Chuck Jones version, not that abysmal Ron Howard movie), and we’ve seen timeless classics like A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life and Die Hard 2 over and over again.

But what about The Christmas Toy? What about The Small One? When was the last time you watched The Snowman? These are Christmas specials that I look back on with fondness but have not seen since I was just a boy. These just don’t get the attention, or the airplay, that Rudolph and Frosty and The Grinch get, so they get lost over the years in the shuffle. But that is why God invented the Internet.

So, I curled up with a cup of eggnog and scoured Netflix and YouTube for old holiday favorites, some of which I haven’t even thought of in years, and settled on The Christmas Toy for my special holiday installment of “The Old Toy Chest.”

 

 

(Warning: Here be spoilers!)

The Christmas Toy is a pre-Toy Story toy story from Jim Henson and his Muppeteers that involves similar themes of an old favorite toy’s fears of being replaced by a shiny new toy. The shiny new toy is even a space-themed action figure who believes she really is a space warrior-queen — but “Meteora,” as she is called, is a far cry from a Buzz Lightyear action figure. She actually seems like a really lame Christmas present — like a cheap rip-off version of a Masters of the Universe action figure that your parents might have gotten you because the real thing cost more. Her place in this story becomes more perplexing when it’s revealed that the other child in this story received an old-timey toy British soldier as his Christmas present. Also, mom walks around the house in the evening wearing business casual. What era are these people living in?

 

Cool.

 

Super cool.

 

Lame.

 

The Christmas Toy also posits a much, much scarier consequence for being seen alive by a human. If a toy is seen out of place, it is “frozen” forever; i.e, it “dies.” There is a scene early on that shows this happen, and I remember being profoundly affected by it as a child — to this day, that image of the little clown doll sticking his head out the door, being seen by the kids’ mom, and slumping to the floor has stuck in my mind. What I did not remember was the other toys trying to waken his lifeless body, then conducting a funeral procession and laying him out in a corner with other “dead” toys of the past.

 

Normally I'd be okay with the death of a clown. But this made me sad.

 

It makes the danger feel very real to the viewer when Rugby the tiger, last year’s favorite Christmas toy, tries to get back to the living room so he can climb into the box marked for his little girl, Jamie, and be opened again. He thinks Christmas is about him, and does not understand that Jamie will be getting a new favorite toy. After a rescue mission led by a red-haired doll named Apple, who was Jamie’s favorite toy before Rugby came along, there is an even more affecting “death” scene when Mew the mouse, who is constantly discriminated against by the other toys for being a cat toy, doesn’t make it back to the toy room in time. He is the most selfless character, the only one who stuck by Rugby despite his egomania and his constant slurs against cat toys. Rugby goes back to try to save him but is too late, and finds him “dead” in the cat’s bed.

 

 

What follows surprised me. It is one of the best dramatic presentations of a friend mourning the loss of a friend I have ever seen. It’s a cat puppet saying goodbye to a mouse puppet, and it hits closer to the truth about death and loss than I’ve seen in most human performances. I can easily imagine Rugby’s song in this scene being sung at a funeral. And I, a nearly 30-year-old man, cried.

The end result of this scene may be a bit controversial. Rugby’s expression of pure love for his friend brings Mew back to life. Dramatically, this is perfectly satisfying for me. Christmas is not just a bunch of traditions to me. See, I truly believe in the things we are celebrating this season — that God enacted humanity’s redemption through the birth of Jesus, his Son in human flesh. I also believe in the rest of that story — the life, the death, the resurrection. To see a Christmas special that focuses on the traditions of trees and toys turn into a story of redemption and a bringing-to-life through an outpouring of pure love is incredibly profound to me. A Christmas story about resurrection — I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

This is heavy stuff for a children’s Christmas program. The controversial part, at least to me, is that young minds are impressionable; and what does Mew coming back to life teach them about the realities of death? However, I applaud Henson and company for addressing these themes of life and death and new life without pandering. The Christmas Toy is one Christmas tradition I would like to pass on to my own children someday, but not passively. They will need an understanding adult to guide them through these heavy themes and to answer questions that will undoubtedly arise in their fragile little minds (especially if they are anything like I was at so young an age).

I suppose, in the spirit of fairness, though, that I should point out that I found some of this show just the slightest bit creepy. Some of that creepiness is inherent in the idea that when you leave a room, dolls come to life. Dolls are creepy to begin with, especially clown dolls and those cherub-faced porcelain dolls that some people collect for some demented reason. I don’t like the idea of them watching me. But without being cynical, I am fine with the idea of toys coming to life in the dramatic sense. I absolutely love the Toy Story trilogy and the story of The Velveteen Rabbit.

The extra creepiness comes through no fault of The Christmas Toy itself. It’s just that any clown doll character is going to remind me, firstly, of actual clowns, who are inherently creepy, and secondly, of the clown doll that came to life in Poltergeist. Add to that equation the character of Apple, who looks a lot like Chucky from Child’s Play, and Meteora, who reminded me quite a bit of the Leech Woman from Puppet Master (both films came out a couple of years after The Christmas Toy), and the creepiness factor gets amped up considerably. Then there’s Mew’s weird crush on Meteora, which… I just don’t know what to do with that.

 

Right? Even the outfit!

 

Putting aside its bizarre aesthetic connections to various horror films, The Christmas Toy is one of my favorite Christmas specials, and I am very glad I finally was able to watch it again. I definitely got a lot more out of it now than I did when I was a kid, and that is what the best children’s stories should do.

The Christmas Toy is currently available for instant streaming on Netflix, but you can watch a free (albeit much lesser quality) version on YouTube.

Merry Christmas, Rant Pad readers. May the joy of Christ be yours this holiday season. And may you enjoy many a special Christmas movie.

–Tom

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube!)

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2011 12 25 Tom Kapr Articles by Tom
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Great Performance, Bad Movie — The Nativity Story

By Tom Kapr

I’m not supposed to bash Christian-themed movies. I’m supposed to champion them. Declare them inspirational, categorize them “must-see,” form church groups to go see them at the theater to show moral support and help boost ticket sales and organize youth events when the DVD comes out. Growing up in the Bible-believing Christian church culture, that’s just what you did.

I’m still a Bible-believing Christian living in the church culture, and I love a good Christian-themed film. But The Nativity Story is just so… not good. I hate saying that, because the story of the birth of Jesus is endlessly fascinating, though you might not think so if this was your introduction.

The movie in a nutshell – Well, the plot is fairly well-known: The long-awaited Messiah is incarnated as a human when God immaculately conceives a child within the womb of a Jewish virgin named Mary (played by Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was something of a “flavor of the year” at the time), who is betrothed to a carpenter named Joseph. He does the noble thing by not publicly humiliating her, then does the faithful thing by trusting and obeying God and marrying her anyway. They travel to Bethlehem during the Roman census, where overcrowding forces Mary to give birth in a stable. They name the baby Jesus, because that is what God told them to do, because this baby would be the savior of mankind. Lowly shepherds, wise men from the East, donkeys and angels and all the Scriptural trimmings. It’s the story of Christmas.

The main problem is a strange one: every scene taken directly from Scripture is played out and filmed in the most cliché manner possible, and every line of dialogue spoken verbatim is delivered in such a stilted manner that you’d think you were watching a Christmas Eve skit at church; yet the film is at its strongest when it is taking dramatic license and filling in the narrative gaps. The movie just gets worse and worse as it goes along, until the uninspired ending (which is just pathetic considering this is supposed to be one of the defining events in history), which includes the traditional but historically inaccurate arrival of three wise men at the side of the manger. There is even a UFO light shining down from heaven when Jesus is born. The whole thing ends up feeling like a Hallmark Channel original production, which is a cryin’ shame when you think of all the historical, cultural, and geographical detail that went into it. Failure, writer Mike Rich and director Catherine Hardwicke.

 

I wouldn't have been surprised at this point in the film if a choir chimed in singing Friedrich Schiller and Ludwig van Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

 

The performance – This is not to say that The Nativity Story does not have a few things going for it. It has some acting pedigree in its favor including performances by Iranian thespians Shohreh Aghdashloo and Shaun Toub, as well as an affecting performance by Oscar Isaac as the noble but unsure Joseph. But the performance that sticks with me to this day, five years later, is that of Ciarán Hinds as King Herod.

Ciarán Hinds (pronounced keeran) is one of those actors most filmgoers would recognize by face but not know by name. He’s not what you’d call a movie star, but has had an impressive career on stage and in film and television, mostly as a character actor. He’s played Richard III with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jane Austen’s Captain Wentworth in a well-done BBC production of Persuasion, and Julius Caesar in the HBO series Rome. He appeared in some of the best films of the past decade, including Road to Perdition, Munich, Amazing Grace, There Will Be Blood, and In Bruges. Just this past year he had short but memorable roles as a former Mossad agent in the brilliant thriller The Debt and as the reluctant hero Aberforth Dumbledore in the two-film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

But the performance that stands out the most for me is Herod. Hinds is so brooding and intense and downright scary as the paranoid and ruthless King Herod “the Great” that you have no problem believing he would have his own wife and sons murdered in order to keep his place on the throne, not to mention order the slaying of every infant boy in the Bethlehem area. The Christmas story in the Bible isn’t all joy to the world and silent night. It includes the bloody government-sanctioned massacre of babies. Herod “the Great” was a vicious ruler, and Hinds’ performance in The Nativity Story is appropriately, and memorably, menacing–and he does it almost entirely with his eyes and a handful of lines.

 

"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out. Don't make no difference to me, I'll make another one look just like you!"

 

That this same man could endear himself both to lovers of Georgian prose as the romantic lead in a Jane Austen story and to legions of Harry Potter fans as a benevolent wizard is a testament to a truly great actor.

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube!)

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2011 12 17 Tom Kapr Articles by Tom
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Die Hard 2: Making an Awesomely Bad 90s Action Sequel

By Dan MK

(Warning: Here be spoilers… and a bit of strong language.)

Die Hard 2 is a fitting introduction to a series of reviews about bad films from the 1990s. It was released in July of 1990 (despite its Christmas theme). We weren’t even a full year into the new decade. But it’s clear the filmmakers wanted this film to be hilariously dated. Very early in the film, John McClane’s beeper goes off (a beeper!). He doesn’t recognize the number, so he finds a pay phone (a pay phone too!) and makes a phone call. Here’s the masterfully written dialogue that ensues:

John McClane: “Yeah this is Lieutenant McClane. Somebody there just beep me?”

Holly McClane: “I’d like to think I’m somebody.”

John: “Honey! What are you doing? Where are you? Did you land yet?”

Holly: “Honey, it’s the 90s, remember? Microchips, microwaves, faxes, airphones.”

John: [laughs] “Yeah, well, as far as I’m concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza.”

Oh boy! They’ve got airphones in this movie? What about microwaves? Will we get to see microwaves too???

Airphones! (actual footage)

Immediately after hanging up her AIRPHONE!!!!, Holly McClane has a conversation with the little old lady sitting next to her on the plane.

Lady: “Isn’t technology wonderful?”

Look everybody. An old person who’s excited about technology. The film’s believability rating just dropped eighty points.

Holly: “My husband doesn’t think so.”

Lady: “Well I do. I used to carry around those awful mace things. Now…”

The old lady reaches into her handbag and pulls out a TASER (!!!).

Lady: “…I zap any bastard that screws with me!”

The movie’s blatant focus on early 90s technology simply begs us to raise some rather awkward questions. Did the filmmakers think that tasers were going to be as popular as microwaves? Isn’t it telling that my edition of Microsoft Word doesn’t even recognize “taser” as a real word? Maybe they assumed that tasers were soon to become a typical feature of any old lady’s purse. Merry Christmas, Grandma! I got you a taser! You hold it like this, see? No Grandma, you’re only supposed to use it on- GAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Occupy this, hippie!

Whatever the filmmakers were thinking when they put this scene together is anyone’s guess. But there is some obvious foreshadowing here. Not only is 90s technology going to be playing a key role in this film, but something bad is going to happen to some bad guy with that taser. You can just feel it! Maybe that’s how McClane will get the upper hand over the main villain, as opposed to say, I don’t know, biting off his finger!

Let’s see how the technology theme plays out. John McClane wants to get information on a set of fingerprints, against the advice of Airport Security Man Carmine (played by Dennis Franz, whose naked butt does not appear at any point in this film, thank God). So McClane sends a fax to his pal from the first film, Al (played by Carl Winslow from Family Matters). Here’s the very first thing that McClane says to Al on the phone:

John McClane: “Take that Twinkie out of your mouth and grab a pencil, will ya?”

Wow. John McClane is a jerk – oh wait, Al actually was eating Twinkies. Plus he’s fat! Get it??? Fat people love Twinkies!!! The 90s are off to a terrific start. Poor Carl.

(Also, my edition of MS Word suggested “twinkles.”)

A substantial portion of the conversation between McClane and Al is about how to use fax machines properly. I’m very grateful for how the film takes the time to educate its audience. Later on in the film, a fight takes place in a section of the airport that is under construction, and John McClane uses it as an opportunity to talk to us about the importance of wearing face masks when dealing with asbestos. Then he makes fun of fat people some more.

No, no, no, Al -- you can't fax a Twinkie!

On the airplane, in an astonishing coincidence, a cartoonishly annoying news reporter by the name of Richard Thornburg (played by William Atherton) is seated near Holly. Thornburg, as you may recall, had put both McClanes’ lives in jeopardy in the first film when he exploited their little children in order to win journalism awards (that probably sounds worse than it should). At the end of that movie, Holly punched him in the face. It was a wonderful moment. In the second film, we learn that Thornburg actually lost a couple of teeth because of this, and subsequently filed a restraining order against Holly.

Now before going any further, here’s something that needs to be pointed out. When Thornburg is introduced in this movie, he is being forced by two flight attendants out of the first class section, and into the coach section (where Holly is). They tell him that he already knew first class was overbooked, so obviously he shouldn’t have been expecting to sit up there. But wait a second. A few scenes earlier, on this very flight, Holly told her husband that they’d all be landing shortly. Why did it take so long for them to remove him from first class? If there were no available seats, what was he doing up there??? Perhaps he was crouching in a corner somewhere, hoping that nobody would see him. Perhaps he was showing off his beeper to one of the flight attendants (again, that probably sounds worse than it should). Whatever the answer may be, rest assured that this is the least of the film’s plot holes.

But let’s get back to the taser. As luck (i.e., the lazy screenwriter) would have it, Thornburg gets seated near Holly McClane. Now I understand as well as anybody that this man is a jerk. But Holly is viciously merciless toward him in this film. Yet the film really hasn’t set him up to be the kind of character who should just have all of this profound verbal abuse heaped upon him. Instead, it shows him whining about not being able to ride first class. That’s Steve Martin from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. If you haven’t seen the first film, Holly’s invectives seem way out of line.

That is, of course, until Thornburg inevitably puts the lives of the passengers in jeopardy in order to win journalism awards. Holly’s response is to grab the old lady’s taser and electro-shock Thornburg right in the freaking heart. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the woman whose lack of affection sends John McClane into a terrible spiral of alcoholism by the time of the third Die Hard film – this woman, the one who almost certainly just killed a man for acting the way people in coach always act. Now the movie is raising profound psychological questions about its main characters that I am not equipped to answer.

Not moving. Not breathing. Dead eyes. Yeah, he'll be fine.

Thornburg’s idiocy centers around his use of the airphone. This leads me to my absolute favorite plot hole in the film: The airphone on the plane can be used at any time during the story, even while terrorists are causing a major crisis at the airport. Since this is the case, then why, when the communications tower is prevented from contacting their airplanes by the terrorists, doesn’t anybody think to use the magnificent, wonderful, state-of-the-art airphones? Why was there so much buildup about them?

The main plot of the movie is not much more coherent than that. Here are some of the film’s highlights:

  • John McClane talks out loud to himself.
  • John McClane uses spray paint to subdue an enemy.
  • John McClane kills Charlie McCarthy with scaffolding.
  • John McClane bites off a bad guy’s finger.
  • John McClane sends a fax!!!
  • Most importantly, John McClane befriends Marvin, the world’s weirdest and most irritating action hero ally in all of cinematic history.

What about the bad guys? Well, the first thing we see of the main villain is…um, rather awkward to explain. It’s him, in the nude, practicing martial arts. Again, this raises some difficult questions about what the director was trying to accomplish. Is this what he thinks the audience was paying to see? Who was the target demographic here? When I picture a stereotypical Die Hard fan, I don’t think of anyone who wants to see this man naked. To make things worse, the film seems like it’s trying to make a joke out of how much of this man’s nudity it shows us. If you’re going to watch this movie, then here’s a very important piece of advice, learned from a mistake I wish I’d never made: Do not – I repeat, DO NOT – look in the mirror.

Tai chi hard.

Fred Thompson plays the man in charge of air traffic control. I don’t know how airports work, or what the chain of command is, or even what Thompson’s character’s position is supposed to be. From what I can tell, his job title must be something like “Supreme Chancellor of the Airport.”

Supreme Chancellor Thompson delivers the most annoying lines in this movie, including his awful inspirational speech to the rest of air traffic control, which concludes with, “Stack ‘em, pack ‘em, and rack ‘em. Move,” after which the airport employees do indeed get moving right away on stacking, packing, and racking, um, “them,” whomever “they” may be.

"Stack 'em, pack 'em, and... oh, I'll never get to be President!"

Bruce Willis has a lot of stupid lines in this movie. My favorite is when he and Airport Security Man Carmine finish having an argument, and Willis says, “Hey Carmine, let me ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first: the lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?” I’m probably a nerd for even saying this, but it’s not a very smart comeback. Feces doesn’t set off metal detectors — or at least, mine doesn’t. But who knows? Maybe, if you’re an action hero like John McClane, you eat lead for breakfast.

So, how do you make a top-notch action movie sequel that’s cool enough to inaugurate the 90s? I can make three crucial suggestions.

First, have your characters make a lot of pointless references to the first movie, with a strong emphasis on how awesome it was (thus inviting the audience to compare the two).

Second, make sure the main characters talk about how strange it is that they just so happen to be going through a series of unusual, improbable circumstances that are remarkably similar to what they experienced in the first film (thus inviting the audience to think about the realism of the film).

Finally, and let me make myself very clear on this, make your main character so important, so ridiculously, face-meltingly awesome, that grenades fail – nay, refuse - to blow up in his presence until he has managed to escape.

"aaaaaAAAAHHH!!! this movie blooooooooows!!!!"

If you’re anything like me, you’ll understand why this movie is ridiculous. On the other hand, if you’re a highly esteemed film critic who gets paid to say critical things about movies – like say, I don’t know, Roger Ebert – then you’ll be convinced that this is the best Die Hard movie ever made, hands down, no questions asked, especially compared to the awful first movie!!!

(Enjoying the Rant Pad? There’s more! Visit our podcast home page at BuriedCinema.com. Then you can also Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Flickchart, and Subscribe to us on YouTube! We’re everywhere!)

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2011 12 14 Tom Kapr Articles by Dan
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Anthologies — The Decameron

By Nathanael Griffis

A cover for the book. See, it's all medieval and stuff.

In my research through easily available anthology films I came across Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron, which is an adaption of nine shorts from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron. Quick literature lesson, students: The Decameron  is a 14th Century text with 100 thematically tied-together stories. There’s a frame story involving the black plague and a group of people fleeing to live in the country and tell stories to each other. As far as the book goes there’s a lot of interesting analysis to be done. It’s a great way to find out about 14th century Italian values, but we’re talking movies. Listen, what you need to know is it’s a bunch of medieval tales taking place in Italy.

It’s a natural book to adapt into an anthology film and, I am told, an important anthology film. Pier Paolo Pasolini is a name that had passed between my ears before, I’m sure. I knew he was Italian. I knew he made movies before my time. I knew that film people watched his films. I knew he liked nudity for some reason too. I knew all these things, so I was clearly prepared to watch The Decameron. Then I started reading up on it, and as the words “lewd,” “provocative,” and “shocking” came up, I became intrigued. It seems to have made quite a stir in its time.

What I was rewarded with was an accurate adaptation of The Decameron that is not nearly as interesting as the rumors about it are. Yes, there are a lot of full-frontal nudity shots, and perhaps this is Pasolini’s point, but they’re shot so naturally and become so ubiquitous that they become boring. It’s an interesting effect to be bored by a completely nude man or women, but when a nude woman is played up for laughs and I’m bored, it’s a failure on some level. There are nine stories, most being humorous and revolving around sex and poop jokes, which is an accurate adaptation of The Decameron. Turns out people have always had dirty minds.

I suppose I should give you a rundown of the nine segments, huh? That’s the critical thing to do, and of course that’s why you read a review of The Decameron. So here’s what I’ve got: a summary and moral for each segment follows.

Here's exactly what it looked like when ten people got together and talked in the 14th century.

#1 – A rich young  horse merchant, sporting an afro, by the way, gets robbed of his money by falling into a toilet and is then tricked into falling into a coffin, which is full of jewels.

-Moral: As long as you have a period-inappropriate hairdo, it doesn’t matter how much shit you get into, it’ll all be okay. (P.S. This segment’s not that bad–it’s probably the funniest.)

#2 – A handsome young gardener pretends to be a deaf-mute so he can carouse with a bunch of sex-deprived nuns.

-Moral: I’ve got 99 problems, but a nun ain’t one.

#3 – An adulterous wife hides her lover in a big jar, tricks husband into thinking she’s selling the lover the jar. Husband cleans jar, which is very big, and wife and lover get it on while he’s cleaning it.

-Moral: Jars are big and dirty, and brushing one’s teeth is a good thing.

#4 – The world’s most despicable man, who dies during an Italian drinking song, lies during his last rites and is giving a sainthood.

-Moral: You can murder, cheat, steal, lie, rape, and anything else, but if you so much as miss a note, well then… it doesn’t matter ’cause you can just lie some more.

#5 – Allievo di Giotto tries to find inspiration for a mural. Oh yeah, and there’s a couple of gay priests holding hands. (This segment is interspersed throughout the remaining four segments.) In the end, though, everyone’s happy, but Giotto prefers dreaming about his painting to its completion.

-Moral: Artists are lazy.

#6 – A boy sneaks onto the roof to make love with a girl. Parents see them and “trick” the boy into marrying beneath his stature.

-Moral: Don’t have sex or you might wind up with a pretty wife.

#7 – Three brothers protect their sister from the shame of intercourse with a servant by killing the servant. Sister then chops off dead lover’s head and puts it in a flower pot.

-Moral: Family is complicated.

#8 – Priest tells a man who has a beautiful wife that he can turn a woman into a horse. Man asks priest to show him. Priest shows man how to do this. You do this by playing a precursor to pin the tail on the donkey.

-Moral: ?

#9 – Two friends, one a sex fiend and the other a virtuous religious man, make a pact to come back from the afterlife, whichever of them dies first, of course, and tell the other what the afterlife is like. The sex fiend dies and tells the virtuous man they don’t care about sex. Virtuous guy runs in elation to the woman he’s been pining for, on the way punting a cat, to engage in relations.

-Moral: Sex is fun, but you’d better hope they don’t care about animal cruelty, too.

There, for all you undergrads writing papers and looking for a quick summary, you’re welcome. I understand if you skip the rest. Now, back to my honest review.

I don't know, really -- um, this guy on the horse was mad he wasn't invited, I suppose, so he loosed a naked woman on the party, then charged in and killed them all?

I knew the acting was going to be crappy, so that wasn’t a detractor. It’s just the jokes fell flat for the most part, and because each story leads up to a punchline, or a supposed dramatic climax, flat jokes ruin too many of the segments. It could also be a sign of a different time. We just have different tastes today. We like our jokes rapid fire, but Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks had that style for years, so what’s the deal, Pasolini? His film relies on slow scenery shots to build some semblance of symbolism that isn’t obvious to me at least. They also were probably funnier in the 14th century, because a man pretending to be perfect on his death bed and earning sainthood probably slayed at The Globe, but falls flat on Netflix.

Pasolini was clearly trying to push boundaries with how much male and female nudity he could show, but that in and of itself isn’t a film. It’s also not porn. I want to be clear, what he’s doing is artful in some ways, that’s not the issue. The issue for me is, it’s boring. We can see the lecherous priest seducing the farmer’s wife a mile away and the punchline falls flat, because there’s a long awkward strip scene that Pasolini seems more concerned with.  He himself seems to be conflicted with the end product as he quotes the painter Allievo di Giotto (whom Pasolini also plays), “Why create a work of art, when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?” Kind of a challenging question, right? One that could keep you up at night if you think about it. It also challenges the entire film, because it falls short of any ideal it’s trying to achieve.

The work of art placed before us is not nearly as good as an idea. It would be an amazing thing to make an accurate depiction of The Decameron, to really challenge convention, to show male and female nudity in such a way that they became a natural thing–yeah, that would be amazing. I guess the genius of it is that he acknowledges this in his final statement, but just because you know you burnt the food doesn’t mean I have to eat it.

I was going to watch the other two anthology films Pasolini made in his pretentiously titled Trilogy of Life, but The Decameron simply wasn’t good enough to warrant it. So, how about an anthology film were each short is based on an aria?Alright, yeah, that sounds… bizarre. Next up, Aria.

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2011 12 12 Nate Griffis Anthologies
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The Art of Awesomely Bad 90s Movies: An Introduction

By Dan MK

If you’re reading this, then I’m already dead.

It’s my fault. I’m the one who told my brother Tom that he couldn’t use my movie reviews for his website unless he pried them from my cold, dead hands. Of course, my reaction was completely uncalled for. My brother had taken me out for a nice brunch at a classy diner to discuss an opportunity for me to submit some movie reviews, and he was being perfectly reasonable. He had just asked me how my wife was doing when I responded with the comment about my cold, dead hands. I spoke in a loud, commanding voice to make sure that my point was clear. For dramatic effect, I had risen to my feet and thrown my fists into the air. I was just trying to employ a business negotiating tactic that I had learned from one of my old college roommates. But I was nervous, and my timing was probably a bit off.

Things got tense after that. All the other conversations in the diner came to a halt. A baby started crying, and several families with young children promptly left. I saw the hostess pick up the phone and speak nervously to whomever was on the other end, keeping her eyes on me the whole time. After the initial shock wore off, Tom relaxed a bit, and stared down at his half-eaten sandwich for what felt like an eternity. Eventually I lowered my fists and sat back in my seat, but he just kept staring. Finally, I broke the silence. “M-maybe that could be, like, a joke in one of the articles,” I stammered, “right?” I tried to follow up with a laugh to ease the tension, but I was so nervous that it came out sounding like some kind of weird cough. Tom looked back up at me, cleared his throat in his usual fashion, and said, “Maybe we should just go.”

He paid the bill and we walked outside and I made a terrible joke about how unbelievably snobbish some of these suburban diners were. He just nodded in an ambiguous fashion before getting in his car and driving away, leaving me standing alone in the parking lot.

That was the last time I saw him.

Ever since then I’ve been hiding out in a cabin in the woods, since I’ve become paranoid that he might actually take me up on my offer. I broke off all contact with my wife and friends, because I knew that if I made so much as a single phone call, he would find me.

All of the waiting in endless solitude has given me a lot of time to organize my thoughts. Or rather, my thoughts seemed to have organized themselves. They recently started to manifest themselves in the form of three other people who live in the cabin with me. One of them represents my stomach, and always tells me how hungry he is. Another one represents my face, and always complains about how ugly he is. The last one is a talking bear. The bear is always trying to convince me to kill Stomach-Man. Things are starting to get a little weird around here. And I’m pretty sure Face-Man watches me while I sleep, which seems kind of impossible.

In any case, I’d like to say a few things about movies. I assume that you are some kind of film buff (or maybe just a friend of Tom’s who is reading this because Tom is looking over your shoulder, waiting to “see what you think.” Ewww). You’ve probably devoted time, money, and… time… and money to your passion, and in all that time (and money) you’ve learned to appreciate film as an art form, and as a medium of storytelling that trumps all other mediums.

Mediums. Media. Medias? Medias, I found it in a dictionary. Shut your face, this is about movies, not grammar.

I’ve decided to make a serious effort of my own to explore the wonderful world of motion pictures–even motion pictures with SOUND in them! (Around the cabin, we refer to these kinds of movies as “talkies,” except the bear thinks it’s funny to call them “speakies.” I don’t know why. But I try not to give him a hard time.)

I’m devoting myself to movies from the 1990s–specifically, to movies that I would describe as terrible, in a breathtaking sort of way. “Awesomely bad,” if you will. These are movies that so blatantly challenge the normal conventions of reason, logic, and sanity, that you can’t help but admire their gusto even while being forced to ask the question, “Who the heck would make a movie like this?”

Before getting into the reviews, I thought I might offer some initial thoughts on what it is, precisely, that sets the films of the 90s apart from those of any other decade. After all, I’m not just an amateur film critic; I’m also an amateur philosopher. I come up with all kinds of crap to think about in my personal quest to avoid manual labor. So the question I want to explore here is, “What is 1990s-ness, and how does 1990s-ness exhibit itself in movies?”

After thinking seriously for a number of seconds, I came up with the following: The 90s was a time when film studios were making a concerted effort to be cooler than cool (without Jason Statham to help them, the poor things). Think of the catchphrases. It seems like every other movie back then was trying to start a new catchphrase. Of course, the “catchphrase craze” started before the 90s. “I’ll be back!” was obviously not from a 90s movie. But the public’s love affair with stupid catchphrases really reached its peak during the 90s. (If you don’t believe me, I have two words for you: Jim. Freaking. Carrey.)

Most of the 90s catchphrases sucked, and somehow, “must go faster” was used, not once, but twice, in two totally unrelated blockbuster megahits, by the same freaking actor. (Are you starting to understand what I mean by 1990s-ness?)

The bear has just reminded me that the quest for “awesome” catchphrases began well before the 90s. Remember Happy Days? People have been experimenting with sound-bitish one-liners even since the days of Jesus, who was known to try his own catchphrases from time to time. (I know what you’re thinking: “You will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven” isn’t really box office magic. But imagine how much the literary quality of the Bible would have suffered if, after rising from the dead, Jesus had jumped out of the tomb and shouted, “SSSSSSSSSMOKIN!”)

Growing up during the 1990s, I witnessed firsthand the way so many ridiculously stupid movies were received by the general public with shouts of joyous acclamation. In retrospect, I think the 90s generation feels a bit silly now. Back then, we thought we were so much cooler than the 80s, what with our elastic-band sweat pants, and our tuna sandwiches, and our Christian rock music, and our Wishbone posters… Face-Man and Stomach-Man are now making fun of me for what was apparently not a normal childhood.

Whatever. These movie reviews are my own feeble attempt to continue avoiding manual labor, and to highlight some of the more awesomely bad movies of the 90s. These movies are, in my opinion, the absolute epitome of what that decade was all about.

–Dan MK

 

POSTSCRIPT

I’ve just received a letter from my brother. He says he doesn’t want to kill me, and that I don’t have to put my movie reviews up on his website if I don’t want to. But now the bear is saying that he and Face-Man will kill me if I don’t do it. Maybe I should see a therapist.

I don’t feel like writing a whole new introduction, so I’ll just leave it as is. All in all, I’m looking forward to reconnecting with friends and relatives, and revisiting my favorite breathtakingly horrible films of the 90s, and hopefully talking to my wife again for the first time in years.

Stay tuned for the movie reviews, and remember, MUST GO FASTER! ALRIGHTY THEN! WELCOME TA EARTH! IT’S NOT A TOOMAH!!!

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2011 12 08 Tom Kapr Articles by Dan
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