I was so happy today and it didn’t even have anything to do with the movies, either! Early this afternoon, I was watching my cat twitch in his sleep (he has very violent dreams, apparently) when I happened to look out my bedroom window and you know what I saw? Snow! “Yay!” I yelled, waking up the cat.
Now, I know that everyone else in the country gets a blizzard every other month but I live in Texas so snow is kind of a big deal to me. I jumped off my bed, threw my Hello Kitty robe on, and went running down stairs. I threw open the door, ran out to the front porch, and then slipped and fell right on my backside.
My neighbor stared at me from his yard. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yay!” I replied, “it’s snowing!”
He nodded and then went, “Better hope those power lines don’t ice over or we might be without electricity.”
At that point, I resolved to never speak to my neighbor again.
So, I was very, very happy but now, the snow’s gone. It’s moved along to Arkansas and Mississippi. Now, the only thing falling rom the sky is freezing rain and the roads will probably be really icy and scary when I’m going to work tomorrow. So, as I sit here all kinds of pantsless with a big purple bruise on my ass, I’m cheering myself up by putting together the latest installment of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers.
From 1970: Dean Stockwell kidnaps and brainwashes Sandra Dee and he’s doing it all in the name of all mighty Cthulhu. This is actually kind of a fun film as long as you can get the image of H.P. Lovecraft spinning in his grave out of your mind.
I’ve never seen this 80s slasher film but I’ve read about its troubled production on various web sites. I’m kinda embarrassed to admit it but I actually get scared when I see this trailer. First off, that mask is disturbing. And secondly, that doll…
Fortunately, even if this world does occasionally give us a demon doll, it can also give us a Black Belt Jones. I loved the trailer as soon as I saw Gloria Hendry shooting the dishes…
Jess Franco has directed close to a thousand films and approximately 12 of them are worth watching. This is one of the lucky dozen, a remake of Eyes Without A Face. The film gave Brigitte LaHaie her best role outside of the films of Jean Rollin and it also co-stars the great Caroline Munro. And since it’s a Franco film, Howard Vernon plays a character named Dr. Orloff. Plus, its got that cute little panther animation at the start of the trailer.
Finally, it’s up to Robert Blake to restore some order. This is actually a fairly interesting little movie as long as you realize that it’s such a 70s film, it might as well be wearing a suit with lapels stretching all the way to the end of the shoulders.
2003 marked a sort of a small comeback for Kevin Costner both as a director and as an actor. The work in question was the very well-done Western, Open Range. Open Range was a moderately budgeted film which has more in common with Costner’s first directorial work, Dances with Wolves than his last big-budget flop, The Postman.
The film was an adaptation of the Lauran Paine novel, The Open Range Men, and it captures much of the themes found in the novel. This was probably due to the fact that screenwriter Craig Storper didn’t deviate from the novel’s basic story. There were no superfluous action sequences and gunfights to ratchet up the action. Everything about Open Range was about the gradual and inevitable final confrontation between the “free-grazers” and the “barbed-wire” men. The free-grazers were played by Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall as Charles Waite and Boss Spearman, respectively. On the other side of the conflict was Michael Gambon playing Denton Baxter, the ruthless land-baron whose attempt to keep the free-grazers from grazing on his land also hides another agenda. Caught in-between these two strong-willed groups were the people in the town Baxter pretty much controls through his “town marshal” (played with fake bravado by James Russo) and the herd helpers under Boss Spearman’s employ.
The theme of freedom to roam the open country versus the rights of a landowner echoes throughout the film. Set in the latter end of the 19th-century, Open Range shows the clash of the more natural ways of the Old West slowly eroding to be replaced by the more industrial, monopolistic practices that became prevalent during the 1880’s, also known in US History as the Gilded Age. Even the personalities of the conflicting characters mirror this theme as the free-grazers only want to use the land as it has been used for years upon years and thats sharing between all men of the West. The land-baron has other ideas in mind and everything boils down to him owning everything around him, even if it means using ruthless tactics to gather even more property.
Open Range also has a bit of modernism in its subplot of Charley Waite’s growing attraction to the sister of the town doctor and the same sister’s well-rounded characterization. It’s not often that a traditional Western shows women in a very positive light instead of the usual submissive and stay-at-home characters of Western’s past. This could also be attributed to the wonderful, underrated performance by Annette Bening who plays Sue Barlow, the doctor’s sister and Charley Waite’s love interest. Bening doesn’t play Sue as the traditional Western female. She also doesn’t go overboard and turn Sue into a 20th-century feminist. She instead plays the character as someone who knows her place in the world, but also one who is strong-willed and willing to stand for what is right.
Open Range was a wonderful throwback to what made such modern Westerns like Unforgiven and Tombstone such a success both for traditionalists and new fans. Kevin Costner’s direction was very low-key. Allowing the story to tell itself at its own pace until the final confrontation. The final gunfight in the end gets a lot of well-earned attention from critics and fans. The entire sequence takes at least 10-15 minutes from start to finish. The fight itself was done in a realistic fashion. There was no sharpshooter dead-eyes in this film, but individuals who had skill but still missed. It was a fight where it wasn’t who was the fastest, but who was the calmest under fire. There’s also a suddenness to the brutality in the final gunfight that demystifies the old-style Western shootouts of past. Some complained that the film was very slow and took too long to get to the “good stuff”, but I actually thought the gradual pacing of most of the film’s length gave the final confrontation even more impact. Costner seem to have learned the lesson all good directors know: less means more.
Open Range won’t go down as a great piece of film making. It surely won’t go down as one of the best in history. What Open Range did accomplish was putting the Western back to its epic and majestic roots, but at the same time keeping the intimacy of a character-driven story. In time, Open Range would probably go down as one of the underrated gems of the last decade and find a place next to its closest comparison, Unforgiven, as one of the best Westerns of the new era.
It’s been a while since I reviewed a real grindhouse/exploitation film on this site so I want to remedy that by talking about an English slasher film called Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas.
As the movie opens, we find ourselves in England with Christmas quickly approaching. The fog-drenched streets of London have apparently been besieged by drunk old men dressed up like Santa Claus. However, at least one citizen has taken things into his own hands by wandering the streets at night and killing anyone he comes across dressed as Santa Claus. Seriously, we see a lot of Jolly St. Nicks meeting an untimely end in this film. Most of them are done in by straight razor but at least one ends up getting shot and then another ends up bursting into flame and one Santa even up getting a spear driven through the back of his head.
That Santa has a daughter named Kate (Belinda Mayne) and Kate has a boyfriend named Cliff (Gerry Sundquist). While they make most of their money by standing out in the middle of street and playing the flute, Cliff also has a side job as just a generally sleazy guy. The day after Kate’s father dies, Cliff tries to convince Kate to take part in a pornographic, Santa-themed photo shoot. Needless to say, Kate doesn’t react well to this and storms out. So, Cliff convinces another model to wear the Santa suit. That model is later caught outside in that Santa suit by the killer. However, after opening the suit and giving the camera an excuse to linger over the model’s body the killer leaves without harming her. This would seem to indicate that he’s only looking to kill men in Santa suits. Normally, I’d be all for this development because fair play is fair play except for the fact that its eventually revealed that the whole Santa suit thing is pretty much just a red herring. But, more on that later.
Anyway, Kate wants justice for her father but unfortunately, the police investigation is being headed up by Inspect Harris and you know that Harris isn’t going to be much help because he’s played by Edmund Purdom. Purdom appeared in a lot of Italian and Spanish horror films in the 70s and 80s and he was always the epitome of British incompetence. Purdom is also credited as being director here but again, more on that later.
Now, by the time the 100th Santa has been brutally murdered, you might think that people would just naturally stop dressing up as Santa Claus when they’re out in public but no, that doesn’t appear to occur to anyone. Instead, we get a mall Santa getting castrated while standing at a urinal. And then we get another one getting killed while visiting a local sex shop and talking to a character credited as “the Experience Girl” (played surprisingly well by Kelly Baker). Yet another Santa finds himself getting murdered while backstage at a TV variety show. His body is discovered by Caroline Munro (star of Starcrash and Maniac) who plays herself and gets to sing a disco song before finding the body. She also gets to wear this really amazing red dress that I would kill to own because, seriously…
Suddenly, this guy named Giles (played by Alan Lake, who apparently died right before this film was released) pops up and tells Kate that he’s a reporter and he starts asking her all theese questions about her father. Kate gets mad and tries to call up Inspector Harris just to be told that Harris is out for the day taking care of some personal business. Hmmm…could Harris be our killer? It makes sense since he’s played by Edmund Purdom. Then again, Cliff could be the killer as well because, while Kate is doing all this, Cliff is making money by selling her sexual favors to his friends. Then again, it seems that Giles might be the killer because he then promptly shows up and kills Kate.
Meanwhile (we’re only about 40 minutes in to the film by this point), the Experience Girl is being interviewed by Harris’s partner, a tall guy named Powell who hates women. The Experience Girl tells Powell that she would know who the killer is if she saw the killer smile. Powell tells her she’s an idiot. So, the Experience Girl goes back to work. Giles shows up and smiles. Experience Girl screams. Giles kidnaps her but instead of killing her, he takes her to his flat and chains her up. Giles explains that he’s a killer because Inspector Harris is his brother and Giles is jealous. The Experience Girl knows who Harris is despite the fact that we’ve only seen her meet Powell.
Speaking of Powell, he investigates Kate’s death and realizes he may have made a mistake dismissing the Experience Girl. Then he tries to open a car door and gets electrocuted until he eventually ends up blowing up.
Now, none of this qualifies as being a spoiler because, even at this point, there’s still nearly 40 minutes of plot left.
Like a lot of 80s grindhouse films, the production of Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas is shrouded in mystery. Shooting on the film apparently started in 1981 but it the film wasn’t actually completed and released until 1984. Reportedly, Edmund Purdom was the original director but he ended up walking off the set which led to screenwriter Derek Ford taking over the movie for two days before he was apparently fired. The film was then completed by Alan Birkinshaw (and possibly a few other people), working under the name of Al McGoohan.
Certainly, this explains why the film is such a huge mess but it’s also a part of the fun as watching the movie becomes a game of trying to figure out who directed what.
Since Purdom walked off the film, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that he directed all of the scenes that he appears in. (It also explains why his character disappears from the movie after the first 40 minutes.) These scenes are all distinguished by the general immobility of the camera. Purdom’s scenes are so static and so defiantly dull that they almost work in a strangely Warholian way. The actors wander into frame, the actors wander out of the frame, the out-of-focus lens rebelliously refuses to follow them.
The non-Purdom scenes — the scenes in which men dressed like Santa are graphically murdered and the scenes featuring the “Rxperience Girl” — appear to have snuck in from a totally different movie and often, they’re only link to anything we’ve seen in the Purdom scenes is some awkwardly dubbed dialogue. These scenes feel as if they’re drenched in sleaze. The camera not only moves, it lingers and it invades like a voyeur looking at dirty pictures in a public library. Unpleasant on their own, these scenes somehow become even more distasteful when compared to the aritificiality of the Purdom scenes.
It all makes for a very disorienting viewing experience and if the film isn’t really well-done enough to ever become disturbing or nightmarish, it still had a very odd dream-like feel to it. Major characters wander through the film without every actually meeting each other. Seemingly important plot points are brought up just to be quickly abandoned and forgotten. Even all the multiple murders turn out to have very little to do with Santa Claus or Christmas. If nothing else, this is a unique slasher film in that the murders are pretty much just red herrings.
There’s a lot in this movie that doesn’t work but, as with many grindhouse films, that just adds to the charm of Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas. Even the ending — which everyone seems to criticize — is oddly appropriate in that it makes as little sense as everything else we’ve seen on screen. Also, like most grindhouse films, there’s a handful of memorable moments that actually do work. For instance, the killer’s mask is genuinely creepy. The scene where Giles chases the Experience Girl through the streets of London is also handled well and is even more suspenseful in that it takes place during the day as opposed to expected dark and foggy night. And again, Kelly Baker is a sympathetic, if unexpected, protaganist in the role of the Experience Girl (though you get the feeling that the role was created and cast long after Purdom left the initial production). Finally, this is a film that epitomizes the spirit that makes the Grindhouse great — i.e., it may have taken two years and multiple directors and the end result might be kind of chaotic but, in the end, the movie got made.
I ended up watching Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas last night because there have been reports that its about to finally snow here in North Texas and, as a result, I was in a holiday mood. Since this is apparently one of those movies that has entered the public domain, the version I own is a part of one of those “50 Horror Classics” collections that Mill Creek puts out. As a result, the transfer looked and sounded terrible. But you know what? That terrible transfer added a certain charm to the film. Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas is a movie that was meant to be seen with a lot of random scratches and faded colors flashing across the screen.
So, in the end, Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas is a pretty bad movie but it’s an undeniably watchable and oddly memorable one. Plus, it features that really great red dress. Seriously, just to die for…
What is there to say about Dodgeball – A True Underdog Story other than it’s a no-brainer of a hilarious movie that doesn’t aspire to lofty heights. What it does do is come out firing with some of the funniest physical comedy and one-liners since The Farrelly Brothers’ Something About Mary. First time director Rawson Marshall Thurber does a good enough job to keep the laughs coming one right after the another to keep Dodgeball from becoming too repetitive.
The movie is a riff from the stock underdog sports genre with a Peter La Fleur (played by Vince Vaughn with his usual sardonic wit) having to find a way to save his Average Joe’s Gym from being foreclosed by his bank and turned by a rival hi-tech gym next door into a parking lot. Who else would be the perfect foil for Vince Vaughn’s Peter La Fleur but none other than Ben Stiller as the former-fatty turned workout fitness Nazi, White Goodman. Goodman’s Globo Gym is a state-of-the art, sterile and BALCO-like gym where insults and making its members feel ugly, fat and useless is the way to clean health and the perfect bod.
Already, within the first fifteen minutes, we know who to root for and who to boo. In one corner we have the Average Joe’s guys played with comedic timing by Justin Long, Stephen Root, Chris Williams, Alan Tudyk and Joel Moore. Stiller’s Goodman and his consigliere Me’Shell (Jamal Duff channeling Barry White) with a hand-picked ringer of a dodgeball team he calls the Purple Cobras. With the two sides set the dodgeball carnage begins as Average Joe’s must win the Las Vegas Dodgeball Invitational to earn the $50,000 needed to save the gym. To round out the Average Joe’s team will be the bank accountant who ends up sympathizing with the Joe’s, Kate Veatch (played by Stiller’s real-life wife, Christine Taylor) and Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn in a scene-stealing role).
Rip Torn is hilarious as the acerbic and insane former dodgeball great Patches O’Houlihan. He pretty much gets all the best one-liners in the movie the moment he appears on the screen. He coaches the Average Joe’s team by browbeating them, insulting them and, failing that, throwing wrenches at them to help them in learning the 5 D’s of dodgeball: Dodge, duck, dip, dive, dodge. In fact, I would say that if it wasn’t for Rip Torn’s character dominating the middle part of the movie, I think Dodgeball‘s constant ball to the groin shots would’ve gotten old. Instead Patches O’Houlihan constantly gave people watching a reason to laugh out loud.
Dodgeball – A True Underdog Story is a movie that the Academy voters will not go about showering with praises and awards, but I’m sure most of them will be watching it and laughing out loud like the rest of the general public. Dodgeball is one hilarious, one-liner after one-liner ball to the nuts funny and it doesn’t aspire to be anything else but that. This movie will never get old with each viewing and will continue to make people laugh out loud.
I have to write this review quickly because I have a feeling that, in another 30 minutes or so, my body’s immune system will succeed in destroying any trace of Season of the Witch.
In Season of the Witch, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play two Crusaders who eventually get disillusioned with killing people so they desert the army, end up in a small village somewhere, and are informed that the town is being destroyed by the plague because a curse has been put on the town by a witch. Cage and Perlman are then recruited by the local town’s cardinal (Christopher Lee, who is pretty much wasted under all of this really nasty plague makeup) to take the witch to a monastery that is located somewhere else. You’re never really sure where any one location is in relation to another in this film, which is a bit of a problem since the majority of the film is taken up with the journey to the monastery.
Anyway, the Monks at the monastery have this ancient book that apparently contains all these incantations that can be used against evil. This book is the only one left in existence which leads to the question of why nobody ever bothered to make more than a handful of copies of all of these amazingly important books. I mean, seriously, people. So the idea is to take this witch to the monastery and read this book which will end the plague.
So, we go through the whole journey thing and a few unimportant characters are killed off along the way and Cage and Perlman discuss the meaning of life and faith and, at first, we’re led to doubt whether or not the accused witch is actually guilty but then she starts causing all of these supernatural, witch-like thing to happen so I guess the filmmakers got bored with that whole subplot early.
Then we reach the monastery and a whole other movie starts. Seriously, I cannot begin to put into words just how massively the tone of the film changes once they reach the monastery. The film actually becomes good in a kind of silly, over-the-top way as soon our knights are dealing with all of these flying demons and there’s disfigured monks all over the place, and the priest gets to say, “We’re going to need more holy water,” at one point. (“Yay!” I nearly shouted out in the audience, “Catholic action movie one-liners!”) The tone changes so massively that Season of the Witch actually becomes a really fun and entertaining little action movie but, unfortunately, just as soon as things start to get really fun — bang! Movie is over. Thank you for coming out tonight, folks. Now get the Hell outta here.
Season of the Witch is, to put it politely, a mess. This isn’t all that surprising as the movie is being released in January and January is, of course, reserved for either Oscar contenders going into wide release, films starring Jason Statham, or movies that are being released because the studio is contractually obligated. Ron Perlman, being a veteran of both Guillermo Del Toro and Jean-Pierre Jeneut, knows exactly how play his role but Cage just rides around on his horse looking like he’s late for Halloween party. Director Dominic Sena appears to have a mancrush on Zack Snyder and does the whole speed up the camera randomly then go into slow-mo even more randomly thing but it doesn’t really add up to anything more than just confusion.
Finally, I left this film feeling very betrayed because, seriously — how can you call your film Season of the Witch and not feature the classic Donovan song?
For some reason, I didn’t see Easy A during its initial run even though it was one of those films that, every time I saw the commercial, seemed to be beckoning me to come down to the theater. All of my girlfriends saw it and loved it and told me that I had to see it because apparently they sat through the whole movie going, “Oh, that’s so Lisa.” And then, before long, every guyfriend of mine ended up seeing the film and they all came back to me and said, “You have to see this film because my date kept going, ‘Oh, that’s so Lisa!'” Of course, when I heard that, it was time for me to start doing the whole talk-to-the-hand motion and going, “Oh no, she didn’t!” because that’s what you do when a guy says that his girlfriend was talking about you. Anyway, I got so busy pretending to be on Maury that I ended up missing my chance to see Easy A in a real theater.
Instead, I had to settle for seeing in a dollar theater on Thursday and can I just get off topic here for a few minutes? Can I? Will you indulge me for just a second for me to speak the truth? Okay, I know that some people kinda think I’m a film snob because I’m always raving about the Angelika and finding excuses to mention that I don’t have the read the subtitles when I go to a French film. Well, so be it. Call me a film snob because I am now convinced that Dante’s Inferno is a dollar movie theater. Seriously, until I saw Red and Easy A this week, I just assumed that people with really bad hygiene just didn’t go to the movies. Now, I see that they just hang out at the dollar theaters. And here’s the thing — even though they’re only paying a dollar, they still can’t show up for the freaking movie on time! Seriously, what is the deal with these dumbfug toadsuckers who just want to come in to the theater 30 minutes late and then spend 10 more minutes wandering around in the dark looking for a seat. Look, you can look in a newspaper, you can look online, you can call the mutherfracking theater — IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO FIND OUT WHEN YOUR FREAKING MOVIE IS STARTING, PEOPLE! And then, you not only show up late but you bring your own food with you because, of course, who doesn’t want to spend an hour listening to you trying to open up one of those loud, crinkly bags of Sun Chips while everyone else is trying to pay attention to the movie? I mean, you’re already late, you only paid a froking dollar to get in — JUST BUY SOME FRICKING POPCORN, YOU SELF-CENTERED, MYNA BIRD-LOOKING, DUMBFUG MOTHAFRACKER! I MEAN…GAWD!
I’m sorry…where was I?
Oh yeah, Easy A. It’s a good movie, probably one of the best high school films I’ve ever seen. How good was this movie? I still loved it even though I was watching it in Dante’s Inferno.
Emma Stone plays Olive, a high school student who — in order to get out of going on a weekend camping trip with her best friend — tells a lie about having a date with a boy named George. (And I can’t blame her because seriously, camping? BLEH!) The next Monday, Olive is asked for the details of her imaginary date and her inability to give anything more than the vaguest of details is interpreted to mean that she lost her virginity over the weekend. (Vagueness being interpreted as sluttiness happens far more often than most of us like to admit.) Olive’s story about losing her V-card is overheard by Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and soon the entire school is aware that Olive is no longer hymenally challenged. In short, Olive is now … a girl with a reputation! (Cue ominous music and Vincent Price laughter.)
Soon, Olive — previously a perfectly content wallflower — is the most notorious student at school. Popular boys want to talk to her. Unpopular girls want to be her. At first, Olive tries to tell people the truth, that she was just telling a story. After people refuse to believe her, Olive starts to go with the flow and enjoy the benefits that come from being extremely popular. After her gay friend asks her to pretend that she had sex with him in order to help him survive the homophobic world of high school, Olive finds herself being given money and giftcards from other boys in school, all of whom are paying for the right to say that they’ve had sex with her. Olive decides to embrace her new role of faux-fatale by dressing like she’s on the CW and stitching an A (a la the Scarlet Letter) on all of her clothes.
And then, she starts to discover the truth about having a reputation in high school. A reputation makes you both popular and an outcast at the same time and Olive finds herself trapped in a web made up not so much by her lies as by everyone else’s assumptions. Can Olive escape and find happiness? Can she find true love with Todd (played by Penn “Oh. My. God! He’s so freaking hot!” Badgley)? Will she get a chance to have the pointless musical number that she assures us, at one point, her story truly does need? Will Emma Stone receive an Oscar nomination for her performance as Olive?
Well, the answer to that last question is probably no (though she did receive a Golden Globe nomination) because Easy A is not the type of movie that usually gets nominated for Oscars. And that’s a shame because Stone gives one of the best performances of the year here. In the comedic scenes, she manages to generate a hundred more genuine laughs than Annette Bening did in The Kids Are All Right and in the dramatic scenes, she proves herself to an actress of true range. If you want to see some truly great acting, just consider the scene where Olive goes on her first actual date since becoming known as “the school slut.” Staring out nervously talking too much and giddily laughing at her own private dates (one of the many scenes that made me go, “Oh my God! I do that too!”), Stone effortlessly transitions to having an emotional breakdown in a parking lot after discovering that her date has no interest in her and is only with her because he heard she would be an easy lay. I don’t think there’s a girl over the age of 15 who doesn’t know how painful that feels, to be reduced only to what strangers think of you. It’s a pain that stays with you and Stone captures it perfectly and, silly as it may sound and at the risk of going all girl power here, I almost felt that when I saw Olive triumphing over it that there was hope for me and for everyone else.
Easy A rang very true to me, not the least because I was one of the girls with a “reputation” while I was in high school. Then again, I don’t think there’s many girls who didn’t have a reputation for something in school. Some of us had a reputation for doing it and some had a reputation for not but in the end, it was usually all used to keep us in the same prison of insecurity, resentment, and entrapment. To its credit, Easy A not only captures the negative side of having a reputation but also realizes and show that having a reputation can be fun and liberating as well.
Even beyond such larger concerns, Easy A is an entertaining, funny movie that not only rings true but is genuinely likable in way that a similar film like Juno never was. I mean, I loved Juno but in the end, you couldn’t hep but feel that the film was mostly about screenwriter Diablo Cody trying to make herself into a cooler teenager than she actually was. (And that’s not meant as a criticism, just an impression.) Juno was almost too perfect and too brilliantly sarcastic. You liked her but never quite believed in her. Olive, as played by Emma Stone, is a normal teenager who doesn’t always say the perfect thing and, who most of the time, is just as much of a dork as the rest of us. My favorite sequence in the whole film is one where Olive ends up spending a weekend growing obsessed with the song “Pocketful of Sunshine” and it wasn’t because it fed into some sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy. Instead, it was because it was a scene that made me very honestly think, “Oh my God, I’ve done that so many times.”
Easy A is a surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent movie that just happens to be disguised as a breezy, teen comedy. That high school, in general, is a world full of fucked up ideas and attitudes about sex is no great secret but Easy A is smart enough to realize that the real world is pretty much just one big high school. I saw the movie too late to include it on my list of the Top 25 Films of 2010 but it is one of the best films of 2010.
Made in Dagenham, an immensely likable and even inspiring film from England, is based on a true story. It dramatizes the 1968 strike of sewing machinists at the Ford assembly plant in Dagenham, England. The all-female workforce walked off the job in protest to the fact that they were not being paid an equal rate with their male co-workers. Going from being treated as a sexist punchline to eventually shutting down production at the Dagenham plant, these women brought the issue of equal pay for equal work to the world’s attention and, ultimately, played a large part in the passage of legislation designed to guarantee equal pay regardless of sex. And, while it might sound like the material for standard, overly sentimental move-of-the-week, Made in Dagenham is both a warm-hearted tribute and an immensely entertaining film.
Usually, I’m wary of films that claims to “pay tribute to strong women,” largely because they always 1) seem to be rather condescending towards the women they’re claiming to pay tribute and 2) always seem to be intent on providing a very narrow definition of what it means to be “strong.” Far too often, either stridency or an idealized noble savagery is presented in the place of “strength.” What makes Made in Dagenham a true tribute to strong women is that it portrays women as individuals and as human beings (as opposed to idealized figures of either reverence or loathing). What a novel idea! All of the strikers — from Sally Hawkins as the strike’s leader to Geraldine James as the oldest striker to Jaime Winestone as the youngest — are treated with a definite (and refreshing) respect yet at the same time they’re never so idealized as to become plastic saints. They’re not presented as being models of perfection. Instead, they’re just working mothers and wives who are simply standing up for their rights and you would have to be heartless not to end up rooting for them.
On my list of my 25 favorite films of 2010, Made in Dagenham was number #22 and that’s largely because of Sally Hawkins’ performance as the strike leader. Hawkins is hardly a household name but if you’ve seen her in films like Happy-Go-Lucky, An Education, and Never Let Me Go, then you know that Hawkins is one of those rare performers who is capable of both being ordinary and a star at the same time. She brings an authentic feel to her working class characters even when she’s acting for a condescending and elitist director like Mike Leigh. To understand just how important Hawkins is to the success of this movie, just try to imagine the exact same film but starring either Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts. One can imagine that either Bullock or Roberts would be given a lot more inspiring speeches (complete with triumphant music in the background) and a few scenes where they would get to say something sassy (and ultimately pointless) to all the one-dimensional male chauvinists standing in their way. They also probably would have contracts to keep from having to act underneath the hideous (but historically authentic) beehive hairdoes that Hawkins and the other women in the film have. Hawkins, however, gives her performance without any of the usual Hollywood safety nets and she is completely and totally winning playing a strong-willed but inherently nice woman who struggles to be a wife, a mother, a worker, and an activist all at the same time. As I watched her performance, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my mom who raised four daughters on her own and who was the strongest woman I know. I ultimately felt as if Hawkins performance was a tribute to not only my mom but every other woman throughout history whose strength is, far too often, ignored by those who do the recording.
Made in Dagenham is not a perfect film. For all the authentic moments in the film, there’s a few that are a bit too obvious and, when they show up, they fit in so awkwardly with everything else on-screen that they temporarily throw the whole film out of whack. This is the type of film where, as Sally Hawkins gives the most important speech of her life at a labor conference, she looks up just in time to see that her husband (Daniel Mays) has shown up in just the nick of time and is now standing in the back of the room, watching her with an apologetic smile on his face. It’s a sweet scene and, for all I know, it actually did happen that way but it still temporarily makes the movie feel like a self-consciously inspirational Lifetime movie.
And then there’s the issue of Miranda Richardson, who essentially has an extended cameo role as Barbara Castle. Though Castle is known not at all in the States (most of the people in the theater with me seemed to think Richardson was supposed to be playing Margaret Thatcher and I might have thought the same if I hadn’t looked the movie up on Wikipedia before seeing it), she was quite prominent in the UK. A left-wing member of Parliament and a pioneer for women in politics, Castle was Secretary of State for Employment at the time of the strike and, as shown in the film, she eventually intervened in the strike and helped to bring about legislation designed to guarantee women equal pay with their male co-workers. As such, Castle is as much of a part of this story as the actual strikers and you can’t fault the movie for including several briefs scenes featuring her watching the situation from afar. What you can fault director Nigel Cole for is allowing Richardson to overact to such an extent that her scenes come across as so heavy-handed that they epitomize every negative cliché of a feminist film. Richardson plays her role with an attitude that seems to shout, “The real star is here,” and I found myself resenting her because she seemed to be determined to ruin a truly inspiring film.
But the thing is, despite these flaws, Made in Dagenham is an inspiring film. It’s inspiring because of Hawkins and it’s inspiring because of an ensemble of actresses (including Hawkins’ Education co-star Rosamund Pike who does a great job in a role that could have felt artificial if performed by a lesser actress) who come together perfectly. I saw Made in Dagenham on January 1st and it was the perfect film to start 2011 off with.
Red (which I saw at the dollar theater this previous Monday) is a lot like the boy who took you to Homecoming: likable, occasionally enjoyable, but ultimately rather forgettable. It’s a movie that you enjoy for what it is but, at the same time, it’s hardly a film I could ever imagine watching twice. I never went out with Taylor again after Homecoming either.
Anyway, the movie itself is about a retired CIA agent (Bruce Willis) who spends all of his time flirting on the phone with Sarah (Mary Louise Parker) who works for the company that sends Willis his pension checks. (Willis always rips the checks up so he’ll have an excuse to call Parker.) As the Christmas season approaches, Willis is paid a visit by a bunch of men dressed in black who proceed to blow up his house. Willis escapes death, kidnaps Parker (under the pretense that her life is in danger because of how much they talk but mostly just so he can date her), and sets about getting all of his fellow retired spies (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren) together. Meanwhile, a determined, young, and hot CIA agent (Karl Urban) has been assigned to track Willis down and kill him.
The plot is really pretty standard but director Robert Schwentke keep things interesting by both playing up and acknowledging just how ludicrous the standard action movie is. If nothing else, this is a film that respect its audience. It undesrstand that we understand that we’re watching an action movie and it assumes that we’ve seen enough action movies that we know how the genre is supposed to work. And while Schwentke pulls off all of the standard action moves like a pro, what makes the movie memorable are the small moments where he plays with and subverts our expectations.
He’s helped by his cast, a solid group of professionals who could play these roles in their sleep but yet, to their credit, still appear to invest themselves in the film. All of the performers make strong individual impressions yet still manage to gel perfectly as an ensemble. As opposed to most films of this sort, you really believe that these characters are old friends and that they do have a shared history. One of the film’s main strengths comes from observing how all the different characters respond to each other — nobody has the exact same reaction. This is kind of what Sylvester Stallone tried to pull off with The Expendables. The difference here, I suppose, is that Red features John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and Bruce Willis while Stallone had to work with Jason Stathan and Terry Crewes.
Among the cast, Malkovich is probably the real crowd pleaser as a former MK-Ultra experiment. He is convincingly insane in his role and he gets almost all of the film’s best one liners. He also has a scene where he deflects an incoming rocket in a way that made the audience cheer. However, for me, the best part of the film was the unexpected chemistry between Parker and Willis. Through all of the action sequences and self-referential humor, you really do hope they end up together.
That said, there’s still something missing from the film. It never quite goes as far as you would like in embracing the inherent absurdity of the action genre and, after a strong start, the film does have some trouble maintaining its frantic pace. Add to that, Richard Dreyfuss shows up and and throws the whole ensemble out of whack by attempting to chew any piece of scenery he can get his teeth on. Still, for what it is, Red is an enjoyable little movie and sometimes, that’s enough.
Hi there! Welcome to the first edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers for 2011. All 6 of our trailers in this edition are Italian. And, as always, most of them should be watched with caution and definitely not watched at work. (Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Youtube yanked one or two of them offline within a week or so. So, watch while you can.)
This is actually one of Umberto Lenzi’s not that terrible movies. Which doesn’t mean it’s good. Just means that it’s not that terrible. This is the movie in which Lenzi manages to turn the Jonestown Massacre into a cannibal film. Ivan Rassimov, who looks like a Russian Charlton Heston, plays Jim Jones. Also, you might recognize the music because it ended up being used in about a 100 different Italian exploitation trailers.
One of the most misleading titles of all time as Warhol had very little to do with this film beyond lending Paul Morrissey and Joe Dallesandro. This is better known as Flesh For Frankenstien. The trailer really doesn’t do justice to the movie but I had to include it because, even if it’s not my favorite trailer, it’s a classic exploitation trailer in just the shameless way that Andy Warhol’s name is used to sell the film.
Believe it or not, this movie is actually a lot of fun. One of the stars is apparently a gay porn star but I’ve never been able to figure out who he’s playing in the film.
I had to finish out this all-Italian edition with a little Lucio Fulci. And I had to go with Murderock because it features a lot of dancing. The trailer is also memorable for revealing the identity of the killer.
1981 was a great year for wolf movies. There was the excellent An American Werewolf in London by John Landis and Joe Dante’s equally creepy The Howling. To finish off the trifecta of werewolf films for the year there’s Michael Wadleigh’s Wolfen. Wadleigh’s film was a very good werewolf tale that added a bit of Native American folklore to the typical lycanthrope story, but it’s slightly overlong running time keeps it from being as great as Landis’ and Dante’ contributions.
Wolfen takes place in the city of New York and its growing urban jungle of decaying and condemned buildings in the city’s ghettos. One has to remember that the late 70’s and through on the mid-80’s the inner-cities of most of the major metropolitan cities in the US have turned into rundown ghettos rife with drug problems, high-crime rates and unemployment. It is in this setting that Wolfen takes place in. The film used the screenplay co-written by horror veteran novelist Whitley Strieber and his quirky style heavily influences this werewolf story. Strieber’s screenplay mixes together a police procedural, political intrigue, business corruption, race and class relations, Native American lycanthrope folklore and horror. Wolfen tries to combine all these different elements together as well as possible and it mostly succeeds, but there’s times when the film gets dragged down a bit trying to accomplish this.
The cast was made up of mostly new actors (well young and new at that time) with a few veteran actors holding things together. Albert Finney gets the choice role of NYPD Detective Dewey Wilson who begins investigating a series of brutal murders of three individuals whose race, class and personal status brings no discernible clues that ties them together. Joining him in his investigation — which Wilson gradually suspects has some sort of supernatural angle to it — were the very young Diane Venora and Gregory Hines. Edward James Olmos plays a Native American whose knowledge ties to who or what was involved in the killings might be closer than everyone thinks. The performances from all involved were pretty good though Hines comic relief performance was a bit too blackface in its tone and execution. 1981 Hollywood was still not ready to discount such racial stereotypes and it gives Wolfen a certain sense of creepiness and insensitivity. Maybe the screenplay was written just that way to highlight one of the film’s themes of racial and class inequality. If it was then Strieber sure did an excellent job of hammering home the point.
There’s a point in the film where we find out the nature of these wolfen and it does stretch the usual definition of the typical werewolf story. But looking back on it now this version told by Strieber and Wadleigh does lend credence to native folklore about wolves who were cunning as men and who preyed not just on the animals in their territory but hunted men as well. Whether they’re wolves or men in the shape of wolves really is left to the audience’s imagination even after the brief explanation of the wolfen and it’s role in the legends and myths of Native Americans.
The film had very creepy moments whenever the story switches over to be told through the viewpoint of the wolfen. The skewed perspective the camera takes on to signify that we were seeing things through the eyes of the wolfen was disorienting and creepily well-done. Wolfen never really has pure horror moments in the film though in the hands of a director like Carpenter these sequences definitely would’ve raised the level of dread and horror. Wadleigh does a good enough job, but it seemed like he was treating the horror aspect of the story with less attention than it was its due.
Wolfen marks the weakest of the werewolf trilogy of 1981, but thats not to say that it was a bad film. The finished product was a well-done film and its attempt to be very ambitious in its storytelling has to be commended. The fact that the filmmakers and all involved were able to keep all the different themes and genres together without having the film spiral into utter confusion makes it a worthwhile werewolf film. It may have been the weakest of the three films mentioned but it wasn’t by much.
