Pom Poko (1994) + My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) – DVDs

September 12, 2005Posted in1990s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan

POM POKO
*½/**** Image A Sound B Extras D+
written and directed by Isao Takahata

MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
screenplay by Isao Takahata, based on the comic strip by Hisaichi Ishii
directed by Isao Takahata

by Walter Chaw Two films by the other guy at Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata's Pom Poko and My Neighbors the Yamadas have the director deviating extravagantly from his masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies–one of the bona fide classics of the anime medium–by hopping from that film's heartbreaking war idyll to these films' anthropomorphic mysticism and broad slapstick. Anime gets a bad rap in the United States for being either pornographic or inscrutable (indeed, much anime pornography is inscrutable)–it's an easy way to dismiss an entire medium as foreign and/or amoral, but as a blanket condemnation it's as misguided at its essence as deriding black-and-white pictures, or talkies, or films altogether–and the truth of it is that for every memorable anime, there are probably fifty forgettable ones. As that ratio holds pretty steady for all films, though, the problem for fair-minded folks approaching the medium for the first time boils down to a picture with, crucially, a pedigree like Pom Poko.

The Baxter (2005) + Pretty Persuasion (2005)

September 2, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

THE BAXTER
*/****
starring Michael Showalter, Elizabeth Banks, Michelle Williams, Justin Theroux
written and directed by Michael Showalter

PRETTY PERSUASION
½/****
starring Evan Rachel Wood, Ron Livingston, James Woods, Jane Krakowski
screenplay by Skander Halim
directed by Marcos Siega

by Walter Chaw Writer-director Michael Showalter swings for the rafters with his anti-romcom The Baxter and ends up hitting into a double play: it's less a satire of romcom conventions than a meek kowtow before their awesome ubiquity. Showalter (also starring as CPA Elliot Sherman) plays the titular schlub, the "Baxter" being a creature of extreme nerdy social incompetence most often glimpsed in frown and tux in the retreating background of Dustin Hoffman rescuing Katharine Ross from the altar. Not a terrible idea (i.e., making the boring, button-down dork the centre of a satirical romance) for a movie as self-serving, self-pitying, neo-Woody Allen ideas go, but as The Baxter unfolds with a suspiciously-familiar series of contrived situations, gentle misunderstandings involving homosexuality and a strange woman in your bed, and a parade of women so far out of Elliot's league as to render his eventual abandonment as inevitable as his ultimate match (with Cecil (Michelle Williams), likewise far out of his league) is unlikely, it becomes clear that the flick is just as stupid as that which it purports to lampoon. The Baxter is actually harder to stomach than its traditional romcom brethren because in place of a leading man locked in its pre-destined narrative, there's barely a supporting character.

Nick Frost’s Danger! 50,000 Volts! (2002) – DVD

September 1, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, DVD, Television, UK

Danger! 50,000 Volts!
Image C Sound C Extras A
"Alligator Attack!", "Thugs with Baseball Bats!", "High Speed Chases!", "Minefields!", "Fires!", "Being Impaled!", "Lightning Strikes!", "Tidal Waves!", "Hostage Situations!"

by Walter Chaw Locating itself somewhere between "Jackass", "Insomniac with Dave Attell", and "MythBusters", "Danger! 50000 Volts!" is a series of semi-improvisational interviews with people in bad jobs, interspersed with the jocular, rotund Frost putting himself in situations of peril for the bemusement of a bemused audience. More British than terrible, "Danger! 50000 Volts!" reminds of a "World's Greatest Chases" hidden-camera show where Scotland Yard chased down a felon at speeds approaching upwards of ten, eleven miles an hour. So the pacing isn't exactly pulse-pounding, but there's an affability to Frost and his willingness to insert himself into dangerous situations that makes the show an agreeable time-passer. Its apocalyptic tone (shades of "Worst Case Scenario")–the idea that you'll eventually find yourself in a minefield after having fallen through ice and been impaled on a pole the very same day you were attacked by a gorilla and hooligans with baseball bats–is ludicrous, of course (in fact, there's very little about the show that's real-world applicable), but watching a chubby comedic actor endure indignity has sort of an archetypal feel to it. It's the Oliver Hardy school of vaudeville, I think.

Starstruck (1982) – DVD

August 31, 2005Posted in1980s, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Musical

***/**** Image A Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Jo Kennedy, Ross O'Donovan, Margo Lee, Max Cullen
screenplay by Stephen MacLean
directed by Gillian Armstrong

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By all rights, Starstruck shouldn't be as much fun as it turns out to be. Chief amongst the film's faults is its insistence on laying a '70s template over an '80s milieu: the harsh straight lines of new wave get rounded off, making for a completely incongruous let-it-all-hang-out attitude. Things are not improved by the tentative approach of director Gillian Armstrong, not known for extroverted behaviour in the past and seemingly unsure of herself here. Yet although it's rather like watching Meat Loaf belt out Gary Numan's "Cars" at the top of his lungs, the combination of bright happy colours and an aw-shucks demeanour is undeniably infectious. You wind up grinning uncontrollably despite Starstruck's decidedly uncool approach to being cool.

Lilo & Stitch (2002); Stitch! The Movie (2003); Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005) – DVDs

August 29, 2005Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

LILO & STITCH
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
written and directed by Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois

by Bill Chambers Lilo (exceptionally well-voiced by Daveigh Chase) enjoys arts and crafts–she's in her "Blue Period"–and resents her vain classmates. Her homelife is less than ideal, since she has yet to become accustomed to thinking of her sister, Nani (Tia Carrere), as her dead mother's replacement. The dissent is mutual, and put in a pressure-cooker by child protective services, under whose watchful eye the siblings have fallen. Like a couple on the brink, Lilo and Nani try to patch things up by finding a use for their pet door, but what they bring home from the pound is not common and definitely not housebroken. Bent on destruction, Stitch (Chris Sanders, channelling Howie Mandel's Bobby), a six-limbed Miyazaki koala known on his planet as Experiment 626, escaped intergalactic incarceration and fell to Earth, only to be run over by a big-rig and placed in an animal shelter. The lenience and affection Lilo shows him deprograms Stitch, which in turn stuns his mad-scientist creator.

The Greatest American Hero: Season Three (1982-1983) – DVD

August 29, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Superhero, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"The Price is Right," "30 Seconds Over Little Tokyo," "Divorce Venusian Style," "Live at Eleven," "The Resurrection of Carlini," "Wizards and Warlocks," "Heaven is in Your Genes," "This is the One the Suit Was Meant For," "The Newlywed Game," "Desperado," "Space Ranger," "It's Only Rock 'n Roll," "Vanity, Says the Preacher"

by Walter Chaw Aliens come to earth in a giant metal calamari ring and give a nebbish schoolteacher a red superhero outfit with the Chinese symbol for "centre" on the centre of its chest. They also give him an instruction booklet he promptly loses, leading to a couple of seasons of Ralph (William Katt) trying his best to figure out how to use his special jammies with the help of his attorney girlfriend Pam (Connie Selleca) and rogue FBI agent Bill (Robert Culp). It's on-the-job training, though, as the reluctant crime-fighting trio find themselves, weekly, pitted against a Saturday morning cartoon's rogue's gallery of two-bit hoodlums that reek, somehow simultaneously, of desperate invention and formula contrivance. (How else to explain the second-season search for a sea monster in the Caribbean?) But there's something that remains effective–sticky, even–about a show more at home in the Shazam! posture than in the prime time slot it was asked to fill. (Indeed, I discovered the show in syndication, seeing as I was too busy during its regular run watching "Knight Rider" and "The A-Team" on a rival network.) It's wish-fulfillment of the flavour towards which most superhero creations tend, sure, but it also speaks to what is essential in the American ethos: that the least of us believes we can be heroes under the right circumstances.

The Blues Brothers (1980) [25th Anniversary Edition (Widescreen)] – DVD

August 29, 2005Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Music, Musical, Road Movie

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway
screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis
directed by John Landis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Long before Quentin Tarantino would run a tear across the super soul sounds of the '70s, there was the strange case of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in the deadly "Blues Brothers" affair. Sitting somewhere at the low end of White Negro trickle-down, the Blues Brothers were two conspicuously white soul singers who made up for in enthusiasm what they lacked in talent–though their "Saturday Night Live" clowning conveniently omitted this bit of information, half-expecting us to take them seriously as they tumbled and caterwauled their way through various musical numbers. Where a true hipster would have meticulously re-created their favoured forms, Joliet Jake Blues (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd) had nothing but "heart" and "sincerity"–a nice way of saying they were rank amateurs doing primitive karaoke. They were compellingly frantic performers, but they weren't the blues and never would be.

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

August 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Czech Republic, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

*/****
starring Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Lena Headey
screenplay by Ehren Kruger
directed by Terry Gilliam

Brothersgrimmby Walter Chaw A film with all the drama and flair of a Tuesday Morning tchotchke shop, The Brothers Grimm is the only Terry Gilliam film since Jabberwocky that I've actively disliked. It's the star-crossed director's most conventional, most compromised work, the first to betray the behind-the-scenes strife–the desperation that has defined Gilliam's career to this point. Already pre-emptively disowning the finished product (citing various impasses with the Brothers Weinstein), Gilliam doesn't, this time around, have the aegis of a subversive finished product to hide behind. There may be a lot of people responsible for what's wrong with The Brothers Grimm, but the bulk of the responsibility for its failure is parked square at Gilliam's doorstep–and the rest of it belongs to nitwit screenwriter Ehren Kruger, whose flavour-of-the-month status might finally be souring. It's perhaps unfair to expect the director to constantly pull his Waterloos out of the woods, but The Brothers Grimm is finally the film that his detractors have always accused him of making: busy, unfocused, obnoxious, and lousy.

Illegally Yours (1988) – DVD

August 23, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Rob Lowe, Colleen Camp, Kenneth Mars, Kim Myers
screenplay by M.A. Stewart & Max Dickens
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The '80s drove a lot of talented filmmakers to desperate lengths, but few sank to the levels of depravity that Peter Bogdanovich did with Illegally Yours. Like so many before him, the once-unstoppable cineaste was forced to rethink his auteurism along cheesy romantic-comedy lines; unlike so many before him, he chose to ignore the ugly implications of a disturbingly infantile screenplay, instead committing to a literal interpretation as tedious as it is unpleasant. Watching Rob Lowe pester a suffering woman on the flimsiest of pretexts isn't at all funny (it's like watching a stalker get rewarded for his predations), and as he's surrounded by some of the most irritating "hilarious" types ever to grace the screen, the only variation is in the switch from creepiness to frustrated annoyance.

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

August 19, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Romance, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco
screenplay by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
directed by Judd Apatow

40yearoldvirginby Walter Chaw You should go just for the spectacle of Elizabeth Banks masturbating in a bathtub, but the real surprise of the piece is the disarming understanding that the usual Greek Chorus of man-friends giving bad advice seem to spring this time from a piquant desire to recapture something of their own lost youth. With a title like The 40 Year Old Virgin (and with a marketing campaign that borders on genius), you know that, as with other “losin’ it” pictures (Losin’ It, Revenge of the Nerds, Hardbodies, The Last American Virgin, and on and on), the hero’s going to get laid–most often to a fireworks accompaniment (or selections from Hair, as the case may be). The only question is if he will get there via the respectable, wife/long-term girlfriend method or bust his cherry against some kind of Tara Reid-esque trollop. But what elevates The 40 Year Old Virgin beyond the same old musty sex-quest flick is the feeling that at its heart it believes there is actually something precious about chastity–even when its preservation has slipped past pathetic. The film is essentially sweet-natured and occasionally insightful about the ways that men never really grow up; small wonder it was co-written and directed by one of the co-creators of “Freaks and Geeks”.

Dracula III: Legacy (2005); Hellraiser: Deader (2005); The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005) – DVDs

August 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Revenge, Romania, Thriller, Vampire, Wes Craven

DRACULA III: LEGACY
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Jason Scott Lee, Jason London, Alexandra Westcourt, Rutger Hauer
screenplay by Joel Soisson & Patrick Lussier
directed by Patrick Lussier

HELLRAISER: DEADER
*/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras B
starring Kari Wuhrer, Paul Rhys, Simon Kunz, Doug Bradley
screenplay by Neal Marshall Stevens and Tim Day
directed by Rick Bota

THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER
½*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Edward Furlong, Tara Reid, David Boreanaz, Emmanuelle Chriqui
screenplay by Lance Mungia & Jeff Most and Sean Hood
directed by Lance Mungia

by Walter Chaw This is the game plan if you’re in the business of producing direct-to-video schlock for Dimension: go to Romania (the poor man’s Czech Republic, itself the poor man’s Toronto–itself the poor man’s New York), show some tits, throw buckets of blood against the wall, and scrimp, wherever possible, on niceties like script and direction. It’s sure-fire–particularly if you can skim a month or two off the shooting schedule and lure a few has-beens in serious decline. But the question with urgency is, “Sure-fire what?” Not good art–because they seldom have anything to say about the society that spawned them (and because the directors of these messes are generally assclowns)–and not good travelogues, either, these little straight-to-home penny dreadfuls tend to be tired variations on the same quasi-Christian mythos, tarted up with surprisingly good production values and the kind of cheap thrills that kept EC Comics, then Hammer Films, then Italian giallos, in business.

Weekend at Bernie’s (1989) – DVD

August 16, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kiser
screenplay by Robert Klane
directed by Ted Kotcheff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Film comedy ceased to be the realm of the inventive and the stylish some time ago–about 30 years ago, to be precise, after wit and flair gave way to the Brightly-Lit Comedy (BLC). In order to domesticate the laffer, the architects of the BLC invented a lighting style that a) ensured that every stick of poorly-chosen furniture was impossible to miss, and b) destroyed the possibility of shadow play or other flourishes that might call attention to themselves. The BLC flooded the set with white light, banishing nuance and paving the way for stuff like Weekend at Bernie's–a black hole from which not even humour itself can escape.

Ice Princess (2005) [Widescreen] + Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) – DVDs

August 12, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, Drama, Family, Sports

ICE PRINCESS
***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Michelle Trachtenberg, Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall, Hayden Panettiere
screenplay by Hadley Davis
directed by Tim Fywell

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
*½/**** Image N/A Sound B+ Extras C+
starring AnnaSophia Robb, Jeff Daniels, Cicely Tyson, Dave Matthews
screenplay by Joan Singleton, based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo
directed by Wayne Wang

Iceprincesscapby Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Sort of a distaff Friday Night Lights, Tim Fywell's Ice Princess transcends its myriad stigmas–not the least of which that babyish title–with a candour I dare say is unsolicited. In fact, the lesson of the picture is that despite that it wasn't strained of conflict by some sensation-fearing executive, no riots broke out, no claims were filed, and no bills were passed. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is it a sustenance-free afternoon at the Ice Capades.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005); Murderball (2005); The Aristocrats (2005)

August 11, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Documentary, Sports, Theatrical

DEUCE BIGALOW: EUROPEAN GIGOLO
*/****
starring Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin, Til Schweiger, Jeroen Krabbé
screenplay by Rob Schneider and David Garrett & Jason Ward
directed by Mike Bigelow

MURDERBALL
**½/****
directed by Henry Alex Rubin & Dana Adam Shapiro

THE ARISTOCATS
**/****
directed by Paul Provenza & Penn Jillette

by Walter Chaw Oftentimes, as if in a freaky mescaline dream, I find myself defending in polite company Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, this story of an astonishingly ugly, balding little troll enlisted into the man-whore trade by myopic pimp T.J. (Eddie Griffin). Homophobic in a chiding, self-deprecating way, the picture has going for it a surprising tenderness that sees Deuce (Rob Schneider) demonstrating real humanity towards his disabled clients–finding him, for instance, taking a Tourette's Syndrome-stricken young lady to a ballgame, where her outbursts are cause for celebration. It also found Griffin, with his astonishing arsenal of insane euphemisms (twat-sicle, mangina, she-nis, he-pussy, and so on) delivered rat-a-tat with his manic, immaculate comic timing, crafting in frenetic T.J. a character with a penchant for savouring water-logged food and capped teeth that predict Hilary Duff's recent funhouse makeover. But most importantly, it had the benefit of Kate (Arija Bareikis) as Deuce's love interest: a beautiful, feminine, smart, funny woman who happens to be missing a leg. Disability is rarely, if ever, proudly on display in American cinema–funny to find it in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.

Monster-in-Law (2005) [Platinum Series] – DVD

August 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D
starring Jennifer Lopez, Jane Fonda, Michael Vartan, Wanda Sykes
screenplay by Anya Kochoff
directed by Robert Luketic

by Walter Chaw I felt real pain as Monster-in-Law unfolded. It was the variety of headache that begins behind the eyes before settling somewhere in the gorge. Two whole lines in my notebook were devoted to the word "hate," and true enough, it took all of five minutes for me to know that I despised this film. Five minutes being the same amount of time it takes for the picture to resort to a dog-humping gag, something that has never been funny in any incarnation and is always, always a sign that the oft-dredged barrel bottom is getting scraped once more, with feeling. Monster-in-Law has Jane Fonda playing a fossilized Barbara Walters manqué who attacks a Britney Spears manqué on the day that Fonda's Viola Fields is fired. (The faux-Britney has mistaken Roe Vs. Wade for a boxing match, a crime of ditz maybe less egregious than, say, cheerfully having your picture taken on a North Vietnamese gun battery circa 1972.) Meanwhile, Jennifer Lopez continues to do a whinier, Puerto Rican Melanie Griffith. But the picture isn't about the age issue or the class issue or the race issue–how could it be when Viola owns an eye-rolling, foolishness-talking mammy slave archetype named Ruby (Wanda Sykes)? No, Monster-in-Law isn't about anything on purpose except Fonda's too-real desperation, great draughts of random ugliness, and extorting money from people who will say once the dust settles that I'm out of touch.

Kung Fu Hustle (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

August 7, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Comedy, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Stephen Chow, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Lam Tze Chung
screenplay by Stephen Chow, Tsang Kan Cheong, Lola Huo, Chan Man Keung
directed by Stephen Chow

by Walter Chaw There's a moment near the beginning of Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer where a reverie about sweet buns turns into a spontaneous, slightly Asian-fied street recreation of the zombie shuffle from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. If Chow is going to break through into the American mainstream with more success than fellow Hong Kong émigrés Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, Jet Li, Ringo Lam, and Sammo Hung, it'll be because of his savvy and respect for Western pop archetypes. Evidence of this has surfaced with some regularity in all of his pictures to date, no less so in Kung Fu Hustle, a delirious-verging-on-surreal send-up of Kung Fu attitudes and traditions mutated with a Tex Avery cartoon. It's the film Joe Dante has been trying to make for the whole of his career: a multi-cultural pop explosion cross-pollinated to produce a fevered hybrid of the post-industrial standard of Asian innovation of Western invention. Chow is Asia's answer to hip-hop: fugitive poetry primed to gratify the Yankee ruling culture while laying out a subtext of Chinese pride that would feel like a threat if it didn't get your hips shaking and your fingers snapping.

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960) – DVD

August 5, 2005Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Spring Byington
screenplay by Isobel Lennart, based on the book by Jean Kerr
directed by Charles Walters

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Please Don't Eat the Daisies is not a seismic work of filmic mastery, but instead a rather modest (if well-upholstered) domestic comedy with Doris Day thanklessly holding down the fort as she so often used to. David Niven is her husband, recently hired as one of the "Butchers of Broadway" who decides which shows live or die; he's British enough to be classy, yet Hollywood enough to believe that a play's first mission is "to entertain." And there are the "four little monsters," the children who go through babysitters and hugely inconvenience poor Doris. But as you wait for Please Don't Eat the Daisies to turn condescending or cute, it somehow never does–creeping up and gently holding you until the curtain finally falls. Sometimes we critics thank heaven for small mercies.

Broken Flowers (2005)

August 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Mystery, Road Movie, Romance, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy
written and directed by Jim Jarmusch

by Walter Chaw I think that humour is a sharply-honed defense mechanism: something ingratiating in its ability to transcend taboo and thus, through laughter, enlist others in a secret club where the only law of membership is mutual transgression. And I think that comedians–the good ones–work from a well of demons deep and dire. It's no surprise to me that Robin Williams can actually manage a human performance in Dead Again, or that Jim Carrey can be brilliant in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, since so much of comedy is knowing what's acceptable and, more importantly, what's not. More to the point, it's no surprise that Bill Murray could refashion his career from the drunken bully of "Saturday Night Live" into this aging penitent, seeking absolution from some unnameable sin forever regenerating itself like a Promethean liver. It only took a couple of decades, but Murray has finally become Somerset Maugham's pilgrim Larry Darrell (whom he played in 1984's underestimated The Razor's Edge)–true maturity having a lot to do with the understanding that it doesn't take a shake-up as seismic as WWI to turn a man to blue moods. Often the first step in an existential journey is spurred by something as simple as a realization of how big of an asshole you used to be.

National Lampoon’s Movie Madness (1983) – DVD

August 1, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Satire

National Lampoon Goes to the Movies
Movie Madness
*/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Robby Benson, Richard Widmark, Diane Lane, Candy Clark
screenplay by Tod Carroll, Shary Flenniken, Pat Mephitis, Gerald Sussman and Ellis Weiner
directed by Bob Giraldi and Henry Jaglom

by Alex Jackson There is a Japanese restaurant in Beverly Hills called Ginza Sushi-Ko where some dishes are only in season for two days. The owner imports 90-95 percent of his fish from Japan and so his menu is contingent upon the current geographic conditions of the country. If the fishermen can't go out because of a typhoon, he'll close down his restaurant and cancel reservations. National Lampoon's Movie Madness is a film like that: it's as hyper-topical as a late-show monologue–every reference is isolated in 1981 and unable to expand itself onto a greater context. By the time the picture was actually released a mere two years later (direct-to-video in most territories), many of its jokes had already become dated. Just think of what an additional twenty-two years has done. Reviewing this thing isn't film criticism, it's archaeology.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) – DVD

July 24, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Family, Musical, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image B+ Sound C
starring Anthony Newley, Mackenzie Astin, Katie Barbieri, "The Garbage Gang"
screenplay by Melinda Palmer & Rod Amateau
directed by Rod Amateau

by Alex Jackson I don't think that there is any getting around the fact that any true connoisseur of trash cinema has to see Rodney Amateau's The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. This was, after all, the feature film debut of Mackenzie Astin, a.k.a. the horny kid from "The Facts of Life", and of Spanish soap star Katie Barbieri. Just as the picture marked the start of a career for some, it marked the end of a career for others. The presence of child star, singer, and Joan Collins's bitchy ex-husband Anthony Newley is a chief selling point in the film's trailer, but he was on his way out. And The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was the last feature from television director Amateau, who seems to have viewed it as his own personal Fanny and Alexander, taking on writing and producing chores in addition to casting other Amateaus (J.P. and Chloe) in minor roles.