Car Wars
August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Seeing DEATH RACE (Reviewed here on MFG) made me think about the car combat genre.
Those movies, usually but not always set in some post-apocalyptic future, where road rage has been made formal with automobiles equipped with weapons, or used as weapons.
The original DEATH RACE 2000 (Amazon) with David Carradine, of course.
MAD MAX (Amazon), THE ROAD WARRIOR (Amazon), and MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME (Amazon), obviously.
TANK GIRL (Amazon).
The recent DOOMSDAY (Reviewed here on MFG), directed by Neil Marshall, with Rhona Mitra as a sort of Mad Maxine.
Stephen Spielberg’s DUEL (Amazon).
Supernatural killer cars:
CHRISTINE (Amazon), THE CAR (Amazon), KILLDOZER (sadly, not on DVD).
The various James Bond cars, and Batman’s batmobiles.
Honorable mention:
The Mega-RV in STRIPES (Amazon), the Landmaster in DAMNATION ALLEY (Not on DVD).
There’s apparently a couple dozen Italian ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any, with the exception of WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD (Amazon) that was done on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 (It has a garbage truck with a lot of scrap metal welded onto it).
That I think is the clincher, you can have a post-apocalyptic movie, but unless you have some credible car stunts, you can’t really be given the status of “Road Warrior” ripoff. Punks dressed in leather do not a Road Warrior ripoff make, doubly so if they’ve got a VW with some styrofoam sections painted silver glued onto it.
Any movies you’d add to this list?
Death Race
August 22, 2008 | 1 Comment
Back in high school, in the wake of MAD MAX and the ROAD WARRIOR, we used to play a paper-and-dice game called CAR WARS, set in a dystopian future where automobiles would be equipped with various weaponry like machine guns, smokescreens, and land mines.
Now comes DEATH RACE, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (RESIDENT EVIL, and the first ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movie), and produced by Roger Corman.
It’s a remake, of sorts, of the 1975 DEATH RACE 2000 with David Carradine. In that one, racers competed in a cross-country road race where the goal was to run over pedestrians. This time, more of an action movie and less of a comedy (though still a satire of televised sports), the race is held within a private prison. Inmates are forced to race, and the games are shown on Pay Per View. The cars are equipped with various weapons.
Jason Statham is a former racer framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and coerced into the race, taking over the role of the legendary masked racer Frankenstein. Tyrese Gibson plays his main rival, Machine Gun Joe (Played by Sylvester Stallone in the original). Ian McShane (DEADWOOD) is part of Frankenstein’s pit crew. And each driver, to help with the pay-per-view ratings, is given a sexy (and largely unnecessary) female convict navigator. Frankenstein’s navigator is played by model Natalie Martinez. She’s sexy, and in case you didn’t notice she’s sexy, every time she gets out of a car, they show it in slow motion, playing a song with lyrics that go, “Yeah, sexy sexy hot girl, gettin’ out of a car, shakin’ her thing, yeah!” Something like that.
Joan Allen plays the bony-sexy-cold evil prison warden. Sadly, she doesn’t get a theme song (”Yeah, sexy-bony-cold evil prison warden, makin’ you race cars in a death race, yeah!”).
All this is window dressing for the race. It’s in three parts, conveniently giving the movie three acts. Their prison is on a man-made island, and the race course looks like a conglomeration of every warehouse and abandoned factory from every ROBOCOP movie. It’s BEN HUR with beweaponed cars instead of chariots.
I was expecting a dumb fun violent action movie, but this movie is slightly better than that. In the beginning I feared it was going to be too much shaky-cam and quick cuts so that you can’t really tell what’s going on in the race, but it settles down. It really peaks in the second part of the race, which has some truly spectacular racing stunts.
The movie falters a bit in trying to arrange an improbable happy ending. In the nihilistic world that it depicts, probably the best that could be hoped for is a draw or a Pyrrhic victory.
Of course, all this is like various violent driving video games, like the Grand Theft Auto series, and others where vehicles are loaded up with weapons. Actually, it provides a reasonable explanation for something I’ve always found weird in those driving games. Often in those games, you’re seemingly driving around in a real world with real physics, but you have the incongruity of floating spheres that give you Power or Shields or Health when you drive over them. This movie provides a credible implementation of that; when the racers driver over certain checkpoints, it sends a signal that activates the weapons in that car.
The original movie was as much a satire and a comedy as an action movie. This can’t really make that claim; it condemns the mentality that would make a television death sport of car gladiators, but it’s also, let’s face it, creating this fantasy world so that we can partake of it and revel in the mechanical mayhem. So, don’t take it seriously and think of it as an escapist fantasy that you’ve had when stuck in traffic. If you had some heat-seeking missiles mounted on your car, you’d be through this traffic jam in no time!
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
August 16, 2008 | 1 Comment
Not to be confused with the 2003-2005 animated series on The Cartoon Network done by the SUMURAI JACK crowd, STAR WARS: CLONE WARS, this is *THE* CLONE WARS, computer animated this time around. A lead-in to a new animated series starting in October on the Cartoon Network. George Lucas is planning to do around 100 22-minute episodes of this.
This theatrical movie takes place between STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES and STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH.
Anakin and Obi-Wan continue to lead clone soldiers in battle against the droid armies on various planets. Anakin Skywalker has just been promoted to Jedi, and he’s been assigned an apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, an orange-skinned alien with 3 head tails. Apparently not the same species as the blue-skinned aliens with 2 head tails. The dress code for Padawans seems to have been relaxed, because she runs around in a halter top and shorts.
Darth Sidius and Count Dooku want control of the Outer Rim systems, and to do this they need the cooperation of gangster Jabba the Hutt. So, they’ve kidnapped his son, Rotta the Huttlet, but made it look like somebody else did it. Their plan is to “rescue” him, return him to Jabba, and get in Jabba’s good graces. Their minion, Asajj Ventress, a bald pale-white goth Sith (She appeared in the 2003-2005 CLONE WARS series), is holed up in an ancient monastery atop a mountain with the little bugger.
Anakin and Ahsoka head to the planet where Lil’ Hutt is being held, while Obi-Wan goes to Tatooine
to deal with Jabba.
Meanwhile, in the film’s most bizarre scenes, Padme, Anakin’s secret wife, goes to a nightclub on Coruscant to try to negotiate with Jabba the Hutt’s gay uncle, Truman Capote the Hutt.
It took me about a half hour to warm to the animation style in this, but then it was fun. The Good Guy assault on the mountaintop monastery where the bad guys are hanging out is truly spectacular, with big crawling tanks going vertically up the cliffs while droids plummet all around.
Either you’ve had enough of STAR WARS or you haven’t, and if you want some more, this is enjoyable. And it’ll be interesting to see what they do in the TV series (Apparently the focus of the series won’t be on Anakin and Obi-Wan, but will follow various characters in the STAR WARS universe).
Fly Me to the Moon
August 16, 2008 | 1 Comment
Most of this summer’s animated movies have been about space: WALL-E, SPACE CHIMPS, STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS. But FLY ME TO THE MOON isn’t science fiction (well, not if you can accept cute anthropomorphized flies, anyway)
It depicts the 1969 Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, from the point of view of some kid houseflies who stow away on it.
And perhaps appropriately for a film featuring houseflies in space, the real astronaut they got to recreate his voice is… BUZZ Aldrin!
This is the first theatrical-length animated film made completely in digital 3-D, so you’ll have the glasses in the theater (it’s not being shown in any theaters without the 3-D effect). The 3-D animation is impressive.
Can you make an animated housefly cute? This movie manages it, although they don’t look much like flies. Also, we even get cute maggots.
Our hero, Nate, is a young housefly fascinated with the impending first Moon landing, and as it happens, his housefly family lives right across the water from the launchpad in Florida. His pals, a nerd and a fat kid (and this movie isn’t afraid to poke fun at the fat kid!) are also space-crazy.
Nate’s grandfather (Voiced by Christopher Lloyd) tells Nate how back in 1932 he stowed away on Amelia Earhart’s solo flight across the Atlantic (Mysteriously, she lands in Paris; in reality, she landed in Ireland). So we get some Amelia Earhart 3-D sneezing and snot effects.
This tale inspires Nate and his pals to stowaway aboard the Apollo 11 space capsule.
It occurs to me that, for some kids who will see this, this movie will probably be their main source of info about the Apollo program. As such, it’s a fairly accurate Cliff Notes of how Apollo 11 went.
This movie was made by Belgians, but it’s very gung-ho about the American space program of yesteryear.
This is definitely a film for younger kids, but the 3-D animation is pretty cool.
Tropic Thunder
August 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tropic Thunder is not a war movie.  Instead it is a war movie movie.  But this isn’t the same sort of silly send up as something like Scary Movie. Although you’ll see nods to movies like Platoon and Rambo, this is almost more of a parody of actors and Hollywood in general.
Ben Stiller stars and directs. We were scared of that combo because we kept having Zoolander flashbacks.  This time he again goes over the top, but stops short of being nauseating.  This is at least partially thanks to being surrounded by other strong cast members who help dilute things.
Ben, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson and Jay Baruchel play 4 actors starring in a Vietnam war film.  However, they end up in real combat with Vietnamese drug lords.  What makes this work is the mix of characters, each actor plays a stereotype of a different “problem” personality type.  Ben is the washed up action hero trying to prove he’s a real actor.  Jack Black is the druggy.  Jay Baruchel is the star struck unknown.  Jackson plays the rapper turned actor. And the scene stealer is Robert Downey Jr. playing a blonde haired blue eyed Australian 5 time Oscar winner.  Who could they possibly be thinking of when they wrote that character?  Oh, and by the way, he is such a character actor that he got his skin dyed to play a black man, and he of course refuses to slip out of character until “the DVD commentary is done”.
This makes for a funny funny combination with each of the characters having some really great memorable lines.  Tropic Thunder has potential to be one of those movies that guys quote from for years.  It may also be one of the most politically incorrect movies shot in a long time.  But so far not a lot of controversy even with Downey going “black face”.  The reason?  The movie is hysterical, it’s not offensive it’s just funny as heck.
Tropic Thunder is likely to end up being one of those late summer releases that does ok at the box office, but quickly goes to DVD and really mops up.   We give it a very strong 4 stars.  We laughed til our sides hurt.  And if nothing else, you have to see this one to see what has to be Tom Cruise’s best performance ever.  I wont spoil that, just go see for yourself.
Hell Ride
August 8, 2008 | 2 Comments
In the 1960s, motorcycle gang movies were a whole genre. American International Pictures (Samuel Z. Arkoff, producer) made a slew of biker movies, starting with WILD ANGELS (1966) directed by Roger Corman. Larry Bishop (Son of Rat Packer Joey Bishop) was in three of these, THE SAVAGE SEVEN (1968), ANGELS UNCHAINED (1970), and CHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971).
35+ years later, he’s written, directed, and stars in this homage to biker movies. Produced by Quentin Tarantino, this could be a third feature in GRINDHOUSE, after DEATHPROOF and PLANET TERROR.
Pistolero (Bishop) is the leader of The Victors biker gang. Back in 1976, his Old Lady (that is, like all the women in this movie, an improbably hot biker chick) was immolated by a rival gang, the 666ers.
Now, 30+ years later, a similar murder starts off a war between gangs, and a quest for revenge. He’s joined by The Gent (Michael Madsen), and Comanche (Eric Balfour), who was just a boy in 1976 and witnessed the events that set all this in motion.
The rival gang is led by Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones). Biker movie honored veteran Dennis Hopper is along for the ride, and David Carradine makes an appearance.
These guys live in a biker universe, a high desert that could be something out of THE ROAD WARRIOR, only it seems to be set in our time, more or less. But it’s a very rarefied world; there’s no cities or even towns; there’s desert, and there’s occasional stand-alone buildings: Road houses, biker bars, strip clubs, bordellos.
There’s not even other cars on the roads. There are no cops (and apparently, no problems with leaving trails of bodies in your wake as you go on your revenge quest). There’s not even the scene where the bumbling idiots walk into the wrong bar and get the crap beat out of them, or bump into the biker’s bumper at an intersection and get the crap beat out of them, because there are no civilians in this movie, there’s only bikers, and biker chicks (played by a beautiful and exotic group, Cassandra Hepburn, Leonor Varela (Who guested in a STARGATE ATLANTIS), Laura Coyouette, Julia Jones, and others).
We get a lot of gunfights (and some more exotic weapons like crossbows) and some barroom fist fights. We get a lot of nudity in their visits to various strip clubs and bordellos.
It’s violent, with bikers riding around killing each other, for revenge or money or just because. It’s got the feel of a Sergio Leone-style western.
Some of the dialogue is pretty snappy and witty, particularly Michal Madsen’s.
One thing this movie isn’t about is a lot of stunts; there aren’t impossible gunfights at high speeds on motorcycles, there’s not MATRIX-style slowmotion with CGI additions. These bikers go places on their bikes, then they park, get off, and fight. They have too much respect for their motorcycles to fight on them, just as a gunslinger doesn’t want his horse hurt.
I’m giving this movie 4 stars, with a caveat: Either you like the idea of a recreation of 1960s biker movies, or you don’t. If you’re wrestling with whether to see this or SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2 this weekend, this probably isn’t the movie for you. But if you got the joke of GRINDHOUSE, this is a good time at the movies.
Paradise by the dashboard light
August 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment
In the late 1950s and early 1960s there were nearly 4000 Drive-In theaters in America; today only a handful per state are left.
Earlier this week here in Atlanta there was a screening for the new movie HELL RIDE, Larry Bishop’s homage to 1960s motorcycle movies (Produced by Quentin Tarantino, and in effect a third movie to go with GRINDHOUSE’s DEATHPROOF and PLANET TERROR).
HELL RIDE is a Drive-In theater movie if there ever was one, and to give it a sense of occasion, there was a promotional event, HELL RIDE REBELLION, at the Starlight Six Drive-In.
Before the movie started at 9:30 PM, they had two bands play from 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM, and a burlesque show with two tattooed biker chicks and a ’50s greaser. All this MC’ed by Saspirilla the Blue Gorilla. That is, somebody in a blue gorilla suit.
Atlanta motorcycle clubs had a lot of motorcycles out in force, and there were also a few vintage cars there (They do a thing on Labor Day weekend at the Starlight Six Drive-In, Drive-Invasion, where they encourage people to bring their 1950s/60s/70s cars and show Drive-In movies from those decades).
After HELL RIDE, they showed HELLBOY II, and then WANTED, so it was an evening that wound down around 2:50 AM or so.
Drive-In Theaters of course came into their own in the 1950s, when Post-World War II baby-boomers decided, if it was worth going to a movie, it was worth going to a movie in your big old car.
It was a social event. You could get out and walk around and check out other boss cars. You could make out with your date, which is why Drive-Ins became known as “Passion Pits.” You could walk to the snack bar and bring back provisions to get you through the next movie.
Drive-Ins continued through the 1960s, but by the 1970s, television and Daylight Savings Time had taken their toll, and by the 1980s home videotapes and cable TV encouraged people to stay home. Plus, Drive-In theaters took up valuable real estate, and many of them were torn down.
Some still exist though. There’s this webpage, www.driveintheater.com, that lists remaining Drive-In theaters by state. I don’t know how up-to-date it is, but, for example, it lists only 4 Drive-In theaters in Georgia, but some 41 in Ohio. Here’s another list in wikipedia. Check your state and see if there’s still an operating Drive-In theater near you!
Biker flicks
August 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment
HELL RIDE, Larry Bishop’s homage to 1960s biker movies, is released this weekend (Produced by Quentin Tarantino, and in effect another GRINDHOUSE movie).
It made me curious which of those 1960s biker movies are available on DVD. This isn’t a definitive list, but it’s got a lot of the highlights.
American International Pictures was ground zero for biker movies:
THE WILD ANGELS (1966), directed by Roger Corman, with Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, and Bruce Dern (Amazon).
DEVIL’S ANGELS (1967), With John Cassavetes. Apparently not on DVD (IMDB).
THE BORN LOSERS (1967), Directed by Tom Laughlin. The first Billy Jack movie (Amazon).
THE GLORY STOMPERS (1968). With Dennis Hopper and Casey Kasem! Apparently not on DVD (IMDB).
THE MINI-SKIRT MOB (1968). Women bikers. With Sherry Jackson (who was a sexy android on the original STAR TREK), and Harry Dean Stanton (Amazon).
ANGELS FROM HELL (1968). Apparently not on DVD (IMDB).
THE SAVAGE SEVEN (1968), with Larry Bishop. Penny Marshall’s film debut. Apparently not on DVD (IMDB).
HELL’S ANGELS ‘69 (1969). Some of the cast are real Hell’s Angels (Amazon).
ANGELS UNCHAINED (1970), with Larry Bishop, and Tyne Daly (Amazon).
HELL’S BELLES (1970). More women bikers (Amazon)!
CHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971) with Larry Bishop, Erik Estrada, Marvin Gaye (in one of only two acting roles), and Cheryl Ladd’s first film (Amazon).
Other biker pictures, not from American International Pictures:
HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS (1967). With Jack Nicholson (Amazon).
RUN, ANGEL, RUN (1969). (Amazon).
THE CYCLE SAVAGES (1969), Bruce Dern, and Casey Kasem again (Amazon)!
EASY RIDER (1969) with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson (Amazon). Definitely the best movie in this list.
HELL’S BLOODY DEVILS (1970). (Amazon).
KNIGHTRIDERS (1981). Strange George Romero film where a traveling carnival of motorcycle-jousters (Think Medieval Times restaurant with bikers) does a King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot themed-show and start to emulate the characters they play (Amazon).
Of course, there’s the post-apocalyptic biker gangs of MAD MAX and THE ROAD WARRIOR.
And, as for comedic motorcycle gangs, there was the bumbling “Ratz and Mice” motorcycle gang, led by Eric Von Zipper, which tried to hassle Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in the Beach Party movies. And the inept “Black Widows” biker gang, led by Cholla, in the Clint Eastwood orangutan movies (EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE and ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN).
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon
August 1, 2008 | 1 Comment
In a summer filled with sequels, why not dust off another mummy?  That’s right Brendan Frasier and friends are back to do battle with another mummy who has come to life in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon.  The previous two installments, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns both received 3 stars from us, although we definitely prefer the first movie over the second one.  Neither are the type of movies we watch over and over, but they were good mindless fun.  So we went into this installment with similar expectations.
This latest installment of the series is set after World War II, a decade or so past the previous movie.  The O’Connell family is retired, and son Alex is now grown up and away at college. Or so his parents think. He’s actually in China and has discovered and entered the tomb of the Dragon King, played by Jet Li.
As usual, the king ruled the world as he knew it but still made the mistake of ticking off a woman.  In the ancient times in a mummy movie this ends with a curse being put on you.  But wouldn’t you know it, an O’Connell shows up and wakes him up from his 2000 year dirt nap.  And the old boy is quite peeved about the whole situation.
Most of the original cast is back.  Brendan Frasier is still the star and looks to be really having fun with the whole thing as always.   His wife is now played by Maria Bella, and Luke Ford plays the grown up Alex.  Rob Cohen is the director of Tomb of the Dragon and it shows.  This is by far the best looking of the Mummy movies with lots of great effects and action.  But at many points it all comes across as too much.  I suspect the cast is just having fun, but at times they play the parts so over the top that you feel they are overacting. This combined with Cohens style of pushing an audience’s ability to suspend disbelief off the roof of a tall building left us wishing they’d take it down just a smidge.
One thing that is toned down though is Jet Li.  He gets a couple of good fight scenes, but dont go expecting to see a lot of fight sequences from him or something you’ve never seen him do in the past.
So what’s the verdict?  Well, have you have tried to follow one of your mom’s recipes for one of your favorite childhood dishes?  And you follow the recipe to the letter, but when you pull the dish out of the oven it just isn’t the same?  All the ingredients are there, mixed and cooked as instructed, but it’s just not as good.  That’s how this movie feels.  We cant put our finger on any huge flaw that wasn’t also in the first two, but an hour or so in we catch ourselves checking our watches and wishing the ride was over.
We’re going to give The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon a 2 star rating.  This should make a pretty good DVD, but there’s plenty of better options out on the big screen right now.
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