The Amazing Spider-Man

Film critics are told to go into every movie rooting for it to be a smashing good time.  I must confess that I had no such thinking walking into "The Amazing Spider-Man." I suppose I shared the consensus view that there was no need to re-boot the franchise so soon after Sam Raimi's trilogy.  I think, though, that after the negative reaction fans had towards the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, there has been considerable efforts from filmmakers charged with the task of rebooting franchises to do it justly, and that's why the James Bond, "Planet of the Apes," "Batman" and other reboots have been so successful. Fortunately, Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man" is another one of these successful reboots.

Andrew Garfield (from "The Social Network") is Peter Parker, the awkward boy Tobey Macguire portrayed in the original trilogy. Here, as Spider-Man (which he finally becomes at almost an hour into the movie), Garfield suffices, but I suspect he needs one more go-around before getting it completely right. He has had a lot of good training from this one, as his co-stars include Rhys Ifans, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen; those three actors are worth the watch of any movie, so to see all three here is a real treat, and they're all in top form, particularly Ifans, who's given a lot of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" moments to have fun with. It's just a shame that we don't only see this portrayal but also Ifans disguised in silly-looking GGI effects. When he's in his full metamorphosis as the Lizard, he looks rather silly (but again, as a sick scientist, he's wonderful). Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy is as likable and funny as she was in "Easy A" and "Zombieland," but unfortunately isn't given much to do here until near the end. Denis Leary also appears as Stacey's strict, traditional "law-and-order" father (who also happens to be the police chief who despises Spider-Man). Finally, Stan Lee, as he always does, has a cameo here, and it probably is the best Stan Lee cameo ever.

But as Peter Parker the teenage high school student, Garfield overdoes the awkwardness, overplaying his nervous stuttering in front of pretty girls. The audience is too smart to believe that Peter could be severely punched in the stomach and face several times and then waltz into class. But still, despite this taunting from a school bully whose behavior is way too unrealistic (and considering what demons high school bullies are, that is saying a lot), the audience is probably willing to suspend its disbelief and cheer when Peter has fun humiliating him in the school gym. That's after he gets his mutant powers, of course. And he gets those powers in a science lab when a spider bites him....oh, what's the point of discussing all the details of the plot? By now, everyone knows it.

And that's a problem Webb's "Spider-Man" has: it hastily checks through the "to-do" list of a "Spider-Man" reboot: Peter gets bullied, he's bitten by a spider, he gets new powers and struggles to understand how to use them. This is a lesson in the subtle differences in listing versus telling.  Webb and his team believe that they need to go through the check list with all this stuff, and these scenes usually are the ones that don't work. Case in point is the CGI scenes with Spider-Man flying around the city or his nemesis, the Lizard destroying the city. They are disguised as "show-me" moments. The parts that really work are the ones where we're being shown something genuine. Not necessarily the visuals, but the human element that makes up the "Spider-Man" mythology. As expected, a lot of this comes from the relationship between Peter and his surrogate father, Ben, played by Sheen. Sheen's character is a simple, working-class man, and yet he has a lifetime of powerful education to pass down to his nephew. But there are other show-me moments, like when Spider-Man must act quickly to save a boy from a burning car. It reminded me of those pictures of the window-washers at hospitals who sometimes dress up as Spider-Man to entertain the children.  It's evidence that the world not only needs heroes, but movies about super heroes.



This review is dedicated to Roger Ebert, who died on Thursday. He wrote the following about "Spider-Man 2," one of his favorite films of 2004: "Now this is what a superhero movie should be...it's a superhero movie for people who don't go to superhero movies, and for those who do, it's the one they've been yearning for." (In his opinion, "The Amazing Spider-Man" was the second best in the series.)












Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, celluloid, cine, cinema, cinematics, cinematograph, feature, film, flick, motion picture,moving picture, photoplay, picture, screenplay, show, silent*, silver screen, talkie,talking picture, videotape, Spiderman, Spider-Man, Spider Man, Martin Sheen, Andrew Garfield, Batman, James Bond, Planet of the Apes, Social Network, Emma Stone, amazing, lizard, rhys ifans, roger ebert

Read More →

Afghan Star

Havana Marking's "Afghan Star," the winner of the 2009 Best Director and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, is perhaps the most interesting look at a country we should, but probably don't, know a lot about. As the title suggests, this is a documentary about Afghanistan. Not about the current and never-ending war there, but, again as the title hints, a documentary regarding the "American Idol"-style television contest, "Afghan Star." To say this show is dangerous for the performers is an understatement, particularly for the female ones. One of them in particular, after she is voted off the show, strips her hair of its cover and dances around the stage for one last performance. The grin of a Westerner's face would likely fade as we then see the reaction of her countrymen and women. They are not pleased. "Afghanistan is an Islamic country," one of them says. Even though she is eliminated, we see her struggle to get back home and avoid the copious amount of threats from conservatives.

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country, as well, and yet their definition of what is acceptable for women is radically conservative, even by Afghanistan's terms. Considering also that the world has gone through great liberalization in this past decade, it's stunning to see that in a part of the world where women not only studied with men but also sang rock music to shouting fans is now a region where young girls are shot in the head for attending school. Music is forbidden? Why? I can only tell through brief conversations that conservative Muslims believe music has traditionally been seen as distracting Muslims from their religious duties. But what about video games? Why is permissible to be distracted by them? This is something I will never be able to comprehend. But this is a documentary made for Westerners who would like to get up and one second cheer and another lecture. My reaction was similar to the one I had after watching Alison Klayman's "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry." While Westerners may be encouraged, what do most folks in Afghanistan and China have to say about these topics?

As hackneyed as it sounds, you're likely to learn a bit more about Afghan culture through this documentary than you do on the nightly news. Consider that the final contestants are from different ethnic groups--Hezara, Pashtun, and Tajik. I suspect the average viewer would be a bit surprised to see, frankly, what these folks look like. Some folks, particularly Westerners, might wonder why they don't look like Arabs, as it seems the rest of the world lumps Islamic countries all together into the Middle East. I remember several years ago, there was an English language learner at our school in the Czech Republic. She was from Kazakhstan (or one of the "-stans," I can't remember which), and a colleague of mine remarked that "she looks so Asian." I think Americans need to be aware that 1) Asia is not simply Japan, China and the Koreas, but a whole host of nations, and 2) we need to rethink how we "see" ethnicity. A person from Afghanistan most likely does not look too similar to a person from Oman. Regardless, there are stories here that need to be told. Those of people who hid radios during the Taliban rule. As the war begins to end (theoretically), it would be interesting and anxiety-inducing to see what kind of stories we can expect in the next documentaries about Afghanistan.
 



Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, celluloid, cine, cinema, cinematics, cinematograph, feature, film, flick, motion picture,moving picture, photoplay, picture, screenplay, show, silent*, silver screen, talkie,talking picture, videotape, Afghan, Afghan Star, Islam, controversial, Westerners, documentary, liberal, conservative, 

Read More →

The Dark Knight Rises

It occurred to me recently that Christopher Nolan's Batman films are mostly about fear. They explore the fears not only of everyday citizens but also of a man most of us likely thought was never scared: the Dark Knight. Batman probably follows the advice to never let anyone see him bleed, but we see his premonition that perhaps one day he won't be able to prevent terrible things from happening. There are some really scary, terrible things in our world. A recent Gallup poll found that the things Americans fear the most are terrorist attacks, spiders, death, being a failure, war, heights, criminal or gang violence, being alone, the future, and nuclear war. All of these (except spiders and to a lesser extent heights) are featured prominently in Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises," his final installment of his Batman trilogy.

Years after defeating the Joker and Two-Face (while keeping the true identity of Harvey Dent secret), Batman has left Gotham largely in peace. The Dent Act has kept police officers on the streets, and there is no need for Batman. Bruce Wayne is still injured from previous events, and largely remains a recluse, with hardly anything to do in the world, certainly not protect Gotham.  

But then Bane enters. He is played by Tom Hardy, as chiseled and intimidating as he was in last year's "Warrior." Bane's main goal seems to be to give the power of Gotham "back to the people." But democracy without rules isn't a democracy, it's anarchy, and this is perfect for Bane. He plans on getting his hands on a nuclear bomb and doing a whole lot more to severely disrupt the order of things. Batman is hardly a match for Bane's strength, and Bane seems to enjoy taunting him. "Oh, you think darkness is your ally," he mocks. "You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, modeled by it...The shadows betray you because they belong to me." (This is Shakespeare compared to the last time we saw Bane, in the dismal 1997 film "Batman and Robin.") How haunting he sounds as he instructs Bruce Wayne that once Gotham is ashes, only then does he have Bane's permission to die. But it's not simply Bane and his malicious army Batman has to worry about--Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), is causing quite a bit of mischief as well.  

Nolan is a director who knows his visuals. The opening sequence is a reminder of his talent for unusual, acrobatic stunts, and he seems more prone to use minimalist makeup and a lack of green suits for his characters (which certainly makes him part of a minority among directors). When he does use visual effects, he convinces the audience that every effort was taken to make it look as realistic as possible. One of the previews before the movie was for Sam Raimi's "Oz: The Great and Powerful." The movie looks like it will be filled with computer-generated effects. I was reminded of the visuals of "The Wizard of Oz" from 1939 (the same year as the first "Bat-man" comic) and I thought to myself that while I basically know that Raimi and his team used CGI for the effects, decades later I still don't know how the effects were made for "The Wizard of Oz" and yet they look so much better. The feeling I get from "The Wizard of Oz" is the feeling I get when I watch a Christopher Nolan movie; I'm so amazed at the attention to detail, and his appreciation of visual imagery and his shunning of lazy film making.
 

There are some flaws, of course. Do we need all of these characters? Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, and Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox are all back, but why have Matthew Modine here as an ambitious cop? What purpose does Marion Cotillard's character really have here?  I'm as big a fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as anyone, but what is he doing here?  (My question was answered at the end of the film, and I had mixed feelings about it.) There's a henchman who kind of looks like Willem Dafoe, and I was more interested in him than I was in numerous other characters. The Catwoman scenes are nice, but also are unnecessary. Additionally, this might be the most confusing Batman movie ever. There's something about the stock market and something else about a congressman or something like that. Three hours is a lot to ask for from an audience, and "The Dark Knight Rises" is unjustifiably long, overly ambitious, and increasingly clunky as it moves along. My reaction to "Batman Begins" was excitement that Batman was back; my reaction to "The Dark Knight" was excitement because I recognized that I had just seen a masterpiece. My reaction to "The Dark Knight Rises" was a bizarre sense of being simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed, though ultimately feeling that it was efficient and satisfying.

Likewise, I had mixed feelings about Tom Hardy as Bane.  I admired his physical force, his performance that relies heavily on his voice and eyes, and the thought he likely put behind it.  Still, my reaction to his peculiar voice was similar to my reaction towards Bale's voice as Batman.  At times it works perfectly, and at times it sounds utterly ridiculous.  

At times I was so bored with the movie that I began to compare it to the previous Batman movies by Tim Burton; I still believe his "Batman" from 1989 is the superior one, as I have a preference towards fantastical stories and prefer it to the grittier Nolan versions. Still, one cannot deny Nolan's talent or understate our appreciation for him resurrecting what was surely a dead franchise. Beyond saving it, he brought it back with intelligence and force. Nolan toys with our emotions, as is the case with the scene where Bane and his crew shoot up Wall Street; Nolan shows us the criminality and horror of such weaponry and visualizes the chaos of terrorism.  

Batman has been such an important part of Americana. Originally meant to be a complement to the pride and patriotism (and frankly, lack of realism) of Superman, Batman, particularly Nolan's version of him, has intrigued Americans as the darker, more psychologically and sociologically interesting of the two, and indeed of any American character. Britain recently has shown us a lot of its pride with the Olympics, and who can blame them? After all, they have Bond, the Beatles, and Mr. Bean.  But America has and always will have Batman.

Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, cinema,  film, flick, motion picture, Dark Knight Rises, Bane, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Batman, Anne Hatheway 

Read More →

Prometheus

"Why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused only to be disappointed and punished...like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse..."
-Edwin Abbott Abbott

Ridley Scott's "Alien" is famously about a group of "truckers in space" who, out of contractual obligations, must investigate an unidentified object deep in space, where no one can hear you scream. Their ship becomes a haunted house, as a chest-bursting alien hunts them down. Here, in Scott's prequel "Prometheus," there is no economic reality but instead a thirst for knowledge and the reminder that curiosity kills. Its scientist, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), and her fellow scientist and lover Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) believe they have discovered an invitation from an alien species on a far away planet. These aren't simply aliens, but in fact some kind of scientific creators of human beings. Their project is funded by an aging Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), and their crew features a groovy yet hypothesis-providing captain (Idris Elba) and the supervisor of the operation, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a stern, by-the-book woman, as well as an android (Michael Fassbender), practically in control of everything.

I couldn't help but constantly compare this movie to "Alien," as I should have, and compared to "Alien" it disappoints. Some might argue that it would be unfair to compare the two, considering that living up to the legacy of "Alien" is too difficult a task. But many find James Cameron's "Aliens" to be superior to its predecessor, so the comparison is fair. Whereas "Alien" is one of the most visually stunning films of all time, "Prometheus" often is a mess, overboard in its computer generated imagery, looking like a cheap computer game and not utilizing its impressive sets enough. While "Alien" features one of the greatest casts in cinematic history, only Fassbender provides a comparable performance.

But is "Prometheus" a bad film? Not really. It has its moments and indeed gets better as it goes. It prefers, for better or (more often) for worse, to tackle bigger questions than the conventional horror approach of "Alien." Here in "Prometheus" there are questions on the origin of humans and end of times. Some have complained that there are too many questions left unanswered, but remember that one of the screenwriters is Damon Lindelof, a creator of and screenwriter for "Lost," a show famous/infamous for not revealing many answers. But the questions are unnecessary, as is the teasing of its audience as it hops from enigma to enigma. There are strange holograms. One of the crew members is poisoned. Another is somehow impregnated with some sort of alien; she figures out how to get a machine to perform a Cesarean surgery on her...the absurdities continue.

But as mentioned before, Fassbender is terrific in the film. His character is David, the film's android, and is impossible to ignore, simultaneously serving as an intelligence compass for the crew and yet having a cruel lack of emotion. The only times he does seem to emote are when he either is jealous that he's "not a real boy" or when his fierce loyalty to his master compromises the safety of others.  He playfully apologizes as he seemingly is aware that his actions are making the situations more dangerous. One can find obvious influences from "2001: A Spacey Odyssey," "Lawrence of Arabia" (which David studies), and one would imagine the previous "Alien" films, but Fassbender has stated that he avoided watching those. But other than this, there is not too much else to write about, and it unfortunately feels like a missed opportunity. There are talks of a sequel, but for better or worse, it seems like "Prometheus" should be the final installment and serve as the "Godfather Part III" of the series.


Alien, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Michael Fassbender, Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, cinema,  film, flick, motion picture

Read More →

Ferngully: The Last Rainforest

"Ferngully: The Last Rainforest" was released in an era of "Captain Planet" and "The Reading Rainbow," among other shows and films serving the dual purpose of entertaining and educating the generation soon-to-be-called the Millennials. "Ferngully" is, as the title suggests, an environmentally-themed movie, and yet despite the famous film's message, Generation Millennial seems to be stuck between not buying cars and overracting to the banning of DHMO. But enough about that.  There's more to the movie than just the environment, as "Ferngully" serves as sort of a nostalgic trophy for the Millennials (and how could it not--it even has a song by Raffi.)  

Samantha Mathis provides the voice of Crysta, a fairy bored of the stories of humans destroying the last rainforest and instead desperately wanting to see an actual human (though the stories she is told say that humans no longer exist). Her wish finally comes true when she encounters humans; one of them is a young boy named Zak (Jonathan Ward), spray-painting away at the trees ready to be cut down. To save his life from a falling tree (which he helped cut), Crysta shrinks him, but now must make things right and send him back again. This being the case, it seems that the two of them fancy each other; even though he's a human and she's a fairy, he tries to teach her some of the great American slang the 80s and 90s added to our lexicon, such as "bodacious babe" (wasn't funny then; not funny now). The chemistry isn't going well, particularly because Zak is responsible for cutting down her home. But he's a city boy, and while it doesn't take him too long to comprehend the fact that he has been shrunk to the size of a bug and is talking to fairies, he has a harder time understanding the need to protect the environment. "How can you live without trees?" she asks him.  That's a good question for all of us as we watch a movie like this. Reading Al Gore's groundbreaking "Earth in the Balance," one gets a sense of alarm, that humans should shake off their apathetic laziness and turn off the air conditioning, get rid of the car, and plant a tree. Except that book was written in 1992, the same year that "Ferngully" was released, and so his scenes of fishing boats forever trapped in a vast ocean of sand are only becoming more prevalent.  (Incidentally, 1992 was also the year Gore was elected vice-president.)

With that in mind, some will say that this kind of environmental "propaganda" has no place for children. Perhaps then, the movie had and will have a limited audience. After all, this is a cartoon about tree-hugging fairies who don't have jobs--not exactly the things that make conservatives happy. But as entertainment, it gets much better as it goes, despite a rough start. The exposition is a bit silly, but then again, most mythology stories are. In the early scenes, its animation is too often not as ambitious as that seen around the same time from Disney. But at times it does provide some wonder, particularly the evening scenes when the characters climb through the forest and such.  (This movie is the original "Avatar.")

Unfortunately, it's not particularly humorous, even with Robin Williams, Cheech and Chong.  Robin Williams' character, Batty, a fruit bat who has survived a torturous ordeal under the probing of scientists, is a character way too arbitrary, even for Williams. Eventually, the character becomes more likable and fitting, especially his musical rap scene.  (1992 was also the year Williams dominated in Disney's "Aladdin" as the Genie.)  The villain here is not some lion or evil witch, but greedy human beings. The personification of their economics, though, is Hexxus, some kind of oil demon, controlling the "monster that ate the trees." Tim Curry, the man who gave us Pennywise the Clown, might be at his creepiest in this form, easily morphing his voice from one octave to another as he sings about oil, acid rain, and capitalism. Curry has that frightening devilishness he famously displayed in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and is at his best here as the villain.

The climax, featuring the epic battle between Zack and the fairies of Ferngully versus Hexxus and human machinery, lags and wears on bit in an unexciting fashion. But I have to admit ultimately liking the film then and now. On a scale, it falls short of an animated environmentally-themed masterpiece like "Princess Mononoke" but is far better than "Happy Feet." Overall, it's fun, educational, and, as any movie about the environment inevitably is, depressing. But it ends on a hopeful note, and even though "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest" is twenty years old, perhaps the Millennials and other generations will heed its call, particularly the final dedication which also serves somewhat as a warning: "For our children and our children's children."

Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, cinema,  film, flick, motion picture, FernGully, Tim Curry, Robin Williams, 1992, animated, Cheech and Chong, environment, Hexxus

Read More →

The Grey

It's my understanding that the perception of the wolf has evolved from two different areas. One (seen in Rome and Japan) viewed the wolf as god-like; in the other (European nations), the wolf is associated with malevolence. Unfortunately, "The Grey" takes the latter view of wolves. At a time when wolves are greatly perceived as being far more dangerous than they are--with occasional attacks in India and the former Soviet nations and only one fatal attack in North America in the past decade--"The Grey" unfairly portrays wolves as malicious man-hunters that can kill by the dozens.

Fortunately, that was practically all I disliked about it, for "The Grey" is surprisingly suspenseful, ignoring most cliches while providing lots of suspense and thrills. Take a look at its silly trailer and compare it to its practically Hitchcockian way of presenting the situations. These characters are lost in the Alaskan wild, and the blistering cold is the least of their concerns: there be wolves about them, and they are vicious and numerous. Beyond the wolves, there are several ways to die in the wild, not to mention compromising with other lost, angry, scared survivors. The crash scene reminded me a lot about "Lost" with its famous opening crash scene, and then I thought about how in "Lost," while the characters may have been running from smoke monsters, polar bears, and all sorts of stuff, they were still on a tropical island with apparently loads of conditioner and only needed to really worry about the occasional sand in their shoes. Not so in the frozen north, in which the only food you eat is a wild animal you might be able to kill. According to Liam Neeson, the film's star, it was -40 degrees during the filming in British Columbia and the blizzard was not accomplished with CGI effects.

Neeson is John Ottaway, a man hired by oil companies to protect workers from wolves. His wife has left him, and he is suicidal. The call of the wild (literally) changes his mind; he lives another day, to enter the fray and the fight. Now lost in the wilderness with only several other survivors, he more or less is the leader of the group, though there is the expected amount of competition over what to do. Some of the other survivors are played by Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, and Dallas Roberts.
 
There are some additional flaws in the film. There is almost one "oh-come-on" moment after another, with several plot holes involved. Someone kept asking me afterward why they didn't simply stay put near the plane wreckage. But how thrilling would that be? The wolves aren't going to chase them in circles for two hours. Thus, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required, and it works in ways similar to other man-versus-wild films like "Jaws." You're frightened of the animals, but you can't hardly blame them for ripping people to shreds. But the film's grittiness and scares almost become gratuitous.

Neeson has been able to successfully reinvent himself numerous times, and now he is undoubtedly the toughest guy in the movies. He has several similar intimidating moments here, at one point threatening to beat a fellow survivor to the point where he will be choking on his own blood and another where he goes head to head with an alpha male wolf. As mentioned, Neeson has noted the terrible filming conditions in merciless cold. One day, according to Neeson, Nonso Anozie, who plays one of the survivors, started to recite Shakespeare at the top of his lungs and the experience happened to warm them. This has made me think of "King Lear." Upon relinquishing his kingdom to his ungrateful daughters, Lear went into a terrible storm. Allegorically, the storm represents the chaos Britain is in because his kingdom is divided. He is insignificant in such circumstances; he is mad. Mad indeed, "mad that thrusts in the tameness of a wolf..."  

Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, cinema,  film, flick, motion picture, Liam Neeson, The Grey, wolves, wolf, LOST, Jaws 

Read More →

The Strangest Movies of the 1970s

El Topo
Alejandro Jodorowsky's Western features a man in black accompanied by a naked child throughout the desert against little people and maimed people and naked women with a background of religious symbolism and drug-induced cinematography. This film, recently released on DVD and once a feature of midnight cinemas, is a better film than his follow-up, the even more psychadelic "Holy Mountain," and has its share of famous fans, from John Lennon to David Lynch. The element of absurdism is admirable and it's not an intolerable film; it's certainly an interesting step further to the left of Serigo Leone's Westerns, and it sure would make John Wayne furious. Still, this is one odd movie.


Arabian Nights
Famed Italian Pier Paolo Pasolini spent over two years in various different countries filming this silly wonder. The third part of his "life trilogy," (the other parts are a more watchable "The Decameron" and "The Cantebury Tales"), there is a nude character--full frontal, guys and gals--about every five minutes or so, and they're usually giggling, rarely acting, and often poorly-dubbed (even in its original Italian). Still, Pasolini somehow managed to get these naked actors to feel comfortable, and it properly prepared him for his next film and his actual masterpiece "Salo: 120 Days of Sodom." Beyond that, "Arabian Nights" is a chaotic, seemingly hastily-made movie that jumps from scene-to-scene with little thought. For further reading/viewing, read here, here and here, and view here (not work appropriate).


Black Samurai
Kierkegaard's "Fear and Tremblin" tells us that absurdism does not necessarily mean what is logically impossible but what is humanly impossible. "Black Samurai" is both. From 1977 (the year of "Star Wars" and "Annie Hall") this was blaxoitation gone far, far wrong. Jim Kelly from "Enter the Dragon" is a badass agent out to get a whiteass bad guy (who simultaenously plays with snakes and worships pagean gods). And Kelly has a pretty cool rocket pack.


There are others, like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy" and "Harold and Maude" which are all absurd in a good way. They are also more widely known and therefore not as relevant for a discussion here. I can't necessarily say if these first three films are recommendable or not. Pasolini was a gifted man and his "Salo" is a haunting film worth the watch for brave viewers; "Arabian Nights" was not. Jodorowosky is an acquired taste and not for everyone. "Black Samurai" might rank as an it's-so-bad-it's-good film. Regardless, they are three of the oddest movies I have ever seen.

Read More →

A Tribute to Tim Curry

When I was a kid, Tim Curry was in everything. He was the creepy (and by creepy I mean so scary that his fellow cast members avoided him) clown that helped make "It" regarded as the most frightening television miniseries in history. He was singing as a river of destructive oil in "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest". He stole the show from Tom Cruise as a demonic lord in Ridley Scott's "Legend" with hours of Oscar-nominated makeup on him. He was the best part of an all-star cast in "Clue," stumbling his away around a mysterious house with one or several murderers, and the only good part of John Huston's "Annie." He was also hysterical in "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York," as a hotel manager accused by a movie-within-a-movie character of smoochin' with a gangster's brother. He was practically omnipresent.

Before my time, there was of course the film that first made him famous: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in 1975. After the successful run in London and Los Angeles as "The Rocky Horror Show," the film version, with Curry as a Dr. Frankenstein-esque character singing and dancing his way around the house/space ship, has obviously become a cult class. It has also been in the news recently: "Glee" dedicated an entire episode to it, and Curry was honored as celebrities, including Evan Rachel Wood, Danny DeVito, George Lopez and Jack Nicholson, recreated the show on the stage for a benefit concert. (It didn't hurt, also, when vintage footage of a younger Russell Crowe performing in the show recently turned up.) "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," a film he once grew sick of due to the passionate (to say the least) response it had with many fans (it is the longest-running movie showing in history), acknowledged in an interview on "Fresh Air" that he recognizes it as a right-of-passage film for many. (One of the film's biggest fans, he claims, was Princess Diana.)

Curry will appear in John Landis's "Burke and Hare," and fellow star Simon Pegg seems thrilled enough that he has posted a picture of the two of them on Twitter. But to suggest that suddenly Curry has rebounded out of nowhere would be an inaccurate way to describe this talented individual. According to IMDb, he has appeared in over two-hundred projects as an actor, eight this year alone. Three of his films ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Clue," and "It") will soon be remade.

Roger Ebert wrote in his review of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," a film he didn't like, that Curry was the most enjoyable cast member to watch because, for one, he was the only one (according to Ebert) who looked like he was having fun. Indeed, Curry seems to be always having fun in his films. He has a taste for the hyperbole, which heightens the enjoyment, whether he's complimenting Sylvester Stallone's daughter's big, round diphthongs in "Oscar," or going toe-to-fin with Kermit the Frog in "Muppet Treasure Island," or butchering a Romanian accent in the guilty-pleasure film "Congo."

Tim Curry has never quite been a main-stream actor. Often he is "the guy from..." or something like that; many of his performances may forever be lost in the Nickelodeon vault of history and time. But many of his films have gained cult film status, such as "Times Square," in which he played a radio show host. The film was not particularly well-reviewed upon its release in 1980, but since has become celebrated by the queer community for its portrayal of young (implied) lesbians. "Clue," likewise, virtually became unknown despite its all-star cast, solid reviews, and famous title. It was only with the popularity of home video and its frequent showing on Comedy Central that it became well-known. Of course, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in 1975 was the firm visualization of surreal camp, with its tribute to B-horror and science fiction movies, rock 'n' roll, and transvestism. Curry, likewise, has never really been a leading man, and he has claimed in interviews that he doesn't want to be one. He usually is his best when surrounded by other talented performers.

He has won several awards, like an Emmy in the 1990s for providing the voice of Captain Hook in the animated show "Peter Pan and the Pirates." He has also been nominated for a Tony twice, first as playing the title role in "Amadeus" opposite Ian McKellen in 1980 and again as King Arthur in "Spamalot" in 2005. Still, something even as prestigious as a Golden Globe or even a Hollywood Star has been kept from him. (But he did open the Oscars one year.) In essence, Tim Curry is Hollywood's best kept secret for a quarter-of-a-century.

Read More →