Two Movies: Role Models and To Live And Die in L.A.

I saw two movies this weekend, which is quite the accomplishment considering that I’ve got two kids and am in the middle of the academic rush season. (”What’s that student of mine? You say you can handle another paper? Fair enough then; it is assigned!”) Still, it was nice to get away from all that to revisit movie watching, also known as what was once my favorite activity.

I saw Role Models, which was perfectly profane and fantastic, which meant that the guys over at the The Onion AV Club had to bemoan the fact that the movie was in anyway sweet. Because, yknow, god forbid a film be both profane and sweet. That’s just ostentatious. Representing the cultural vanguard has got to be a daunting proposition, because you’re never allowed to just enjoy something; you constantly have to be lecturing even moviemakers sympathetic to your cause (like Role Models’ David Wain, who is about as AV Club as it gets). For once though, couldn’t the reviewer (in this case Nathan Rabin) explain how he would have handled a plot that has two man children sentenced to 150 hours of community service with actual children at a Big Brother/Big Sister facility? How else can you wrap it up other than the two adults, profane to the end, taking a bit of pleasure in their experience and ultimately giving something back to their younger comrades? What in the hell are you supposed to do? Because the only other obvious answer, and again it should be noted that I am nowhere near as smart as these hipper than hell reviewers, is to have the adults do their time with the kids, not learn a thing, and leave as if the experience didn’t matter. Of course, the film is a comedy, and it isn’t much fun seeing children abandoned, but then, I don’t think Modest Mouse is a particularly good band.

Then I saw what might be a critical darling: William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. which, quite frankly, sucked. In fact, that descriptor may not quite be doing the film justice when you consider Friedkin was responsible for both The Exorcist and The French Connection. Both of those are good movies; this was just boring. The only good part - the twist toward the end - was marred by the partner’s transformation immediately afterward. That was stupid piled high on a fail sandwich. So predictably, in this article’s third paragraph, we see that the A.V. Club’s heavy hitters recommend this movie to somebody not particularly into the Friedkin oeuvre. Because nothing says pleasure like seeing Jane Leeves from Frasier as one of the movie’s sex symbols; likewise, does it ever stop being fun seeing William Peterson freaking out for the millionth time while inexplicably calling people amigo?

Needless to say, the AV Club and I disagree yet again. Yet it is the only collection of reviewers that I trust. God only knows what this means.

Interviewing Robert Davi

I quibble with The Onion AV Club from time to time, but this is inexcusable: how do you interview Robert Davi and not mention his dynamic performances in the brilliant Maniac Cop 2 and Maniac Cop 3?

Both of those movies are classics and by “classic” I mean amazing cinema verite. At least, for posterity’s sake, find out about working with Z’dar

(This is probably the most insider post ever on my site, likely only to be enjoyed by Mitch the Killer. These are the benefits of having personal website.)

Damn The Onion’s AV Club 2: Electric Boogaloo

I have a decidedly love-hate relationship with The Onion’s AV Club - generally I enjoy reading it, and certainly trust its reviews, but it occasionally things go bad. There’s just something about its writers that don’t seem to realize that they don’t have to take everything so damned seriously.

Earlier, I podcasted about the irritating way in which people will hide from the things that they enjoy by claiming that they really enjoy a certain whatever’s kitsch value. Among the response that I got was a sort of boggle from people who seemed to indicate that they weren’t sure about the claim that I was making.

The AV Club stepped up in my defense thankfully, with this review of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo which comes under the title of: I Watched This On Purpose. Right away you’ve got all the evidence you need that the review’s author, Tasha Robinson, is attempting to separate herself from a movie that she enjoyed. “Guys, I didn’t stumble across this. It was so bad that I Watched This On Purpose.” You can imagine the conversation.

The gist of the I Watched This On Purpose reviews is to act as if the author is willfully standing between the viewer and a bullet. (When you think about it, Tasha Robinson is the Mother Theresa of our time, helping the lepers that we want to ignore…) Right away, the movie is described as “cultural garbage” that is “trashy looking.” The author acknowledges hoping to discover in the film some sort of real reward, but is cautious. There’s this:

Much to our surprise, Breakin’ 2 turned out to be pure, laugh-a-minute cheeseball entertainment. Granted, it’s utterly terrible, with stiff, amateurish acting, enough vivid Day-Glo to blind an army of sunglasses-wearing Corey Harts, and the thinnest and hoariest of thin, hoary old plots.

In other words, “I really enjoyed this film, but acknowledging that would be a bad thing to do without qualifying my enjoyment, so I’ll add that it was an awful movie that was terrible for the following reasons.”

And there’s this conclusion:

At an absolute minimum, 85 percent. Breakin’ 2 is utterly hilarious. Many of the dance sequences are redundant and overlong, but even so, there’s always something ill-conceived and hysterical to look at, from fluffy ’80s hair to terrible fashions. (Apparently full-on school-band uniforms were really hot in the ’80s San Francisco breakdance scene.) The cheesy acting, monumentally trite storyline, and all-around camp level kept our whole musicals-watching party howling in disbelief. It’s a lousy movie to watch alone, or with any serious expectations in mind. But in the “so bad it’s good” pantheon, it ranks surprisingly high. It’s almost—almost—a pity there was never a Breakin’ 3: Electric Jubilee.

Reading those claims is important, because what you’re being asked to do is believe that this movie is totally worthless trash while simultaneously being asked to believe that it is completely enjoyable. Maybe I’m not as subtle as hipsters, but how is it possible that something be both complete trash and wonderfully enjoyable? Based upon her description, she got some friends together, they popped in Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and enjoyed themselves watching it. That sounds like the makings of a good movie, doesn’t it, one in which you and your friends can sit around and enjoy yourselves watching it?

But in hipster world, there are levels of enjoyment and this wasn’t enjoyed nearly as much as something serious by somebody serious. Let’s use, for this argument, the German Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose movies I’ve never seen but whom my friends Mitch the Killer and Married Mike rave about. Let’s suppose you had two parties, one of which watched Breakin 2 and the other of which watched something or other by Fassbinder. People who seriously believe this stuff would claim that even though they enjoyed both movies, the Fassbinder was enjoyed more because it was art. The Onion AV Club has a section of movie reviews about films that they can’t believe that their staffers have missed - as if they’re shocked that somebody could have made it to hipster adulthood without having seen Scorcese’s Raging Bull. The horror!

Go back and read Robinson’s conclusion, in which she writes:

But in the “so bad it’s good” pantheon, it ranks surprisingly high.

What is the “so bad it’s good” pantheon? I assume that’s different from the “so good” pantheon, even both both presumably represent movies watched and enjoyed by the possessor of said pantheon. Despite the claims made by hipsters and other snobs of varying colors - does, “I don’t enjoy reality TV, I just watch it for the camp value!” sound familiar? - I don’t think it is possible to rank order pleasure in this way, to suggest that some movies create “so bad it’s good” pleasure and other movies create “so good it’s good” pleasure. There’s simply no way to tell the difference. If something is “so bad it’s good” then it must then be good, right? When Tasha Robinson writes something like, she’s trying to signal that she understood that there’s a difference between Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and Raging Bull. Except there isn’t one.

People that try to differentiate between various songs, or books, or poems, or movies, or television shows, or pieces of art, or whatever, are doing so because they’re trying to stake their own claim about relative bests. But those bests are relative, and should never be forgotten. No movie is objectively better than any other movie. All movies are the same. Some produce pleasure, and some don’t. But they produce those differently for each person. For Tasha Robinson to claim that Breakin 2 produced one kind of pleasure and Fast Times at Ridgemont High produced something else is just plain lying. I wouldn’t even be against a claim that she enjoyed one more than the other, but to claim that the pleasure produced was somehow different?

Come on. One of the longest running arguments that I’ve ever had, and I’ll have it with anybody at anytime, is about the equality of all things produced by people. There’s no such thing as a good or bad movie, intrinsically. They’re all equal. I enjoy some more than others, but that doesn’t reflect upon the movie, but rather, upon what I do and do not enjoy. Anybody who claims any differently, particularly in regard to objective realities, is lying.

The Matrix Reloaded

Farmer Evan and I were discussing bad movies. We’ve seen a lot of them. We saw that the Matrix was on television and watched it. We realized that the sequels - two of the biggest disappointments ever to hit the big screen - had to be viewed. Fortunately, neither of us owned them. Then, at Blockbuster, they were both for sale. This is my agony.

1. When a movie is as highly as anticipated as was this sequel, it’s hard to imagine it starting worse. Morpheus is completely insufferable…”I do not believe it to be a matter of hope. I believe it to be a matter of time.” Great. The time, in this case, is 138 minutes, because when it came to editing, the Wachowskis found literally nothing to leave on the cutting room floor. Nothing.

2. Oh right. Keanu Reeves is a terrible actor. How could I forget?

3. Black man enters a room and says, “There’s my pus…” before realizing his nephews are with his wife. Black people. They sure love poon. The stereotypes are groan inducing. Also, the Wachowskis think we care about the private lives of their characters. Actually, we liked the guns, the wire fu, and … well, the Agent Smith was a cool character. Otherwise…incidentally, the black man (”Link”) eventually gets his poon.

4. “Horrible machines are massing to kill us all indiscriminately…let’s dance.” I have no fucking idea what they were thinking when they did the rave scene. Also, 200 years in the future and under the threat of robot attack, and rave music is still totally derivative?

5. Also:

“I miss you.” Neo
“I can tell.” Trinity.

I think she was referencing his junk. Excuse me while I perish the thought. Then they proceed to “plug in.” Credit goes to Farmer Evan. Incidentally, Neo was a computer nerd in the Matrix, before he knew the truth. Does knowing the truth make him some sort of stud? Because I’m caling bullshit. I doubt that a guy on his computer 23 hours out of every day also happens to be a sexual dynamo once his mind is set free. I think he sees Trinity’s nudity and loses it almost immediately. Just saying.

6. “So we need machines, and they need us.” So says philosopher Neo.

7. The meeting between the Oracle and Neo is completely, and totally, incomprehensible. Nothing being said makes a bit of sense. Oh, and programs that run amok are aliens and ghosts and werewolves. Got that? Good, neither do I.

8. The Keymaster. The Merovingian. Later, the Architect. Do your best to keep track of these outrageous characters. Because, again, I can’t.

9. Here’s where the movie goes off the rails: the fight between Neo and the freed Agent Smiths. Agent Smith can and does replicate. He attempts to assimilate Neo. And fails. At which point, we see Neo fight hundreds of Agent Smiths. And then, after ten interminable minutes, he flies away. Which he could have done immediately. There was no point. The directors have told us that what we’re watching doesn’t really matter. Talk about a terrible decision. Besides some good evil courtesy of Hugo Weaving, who as Agent Smith is probably the only capable actor in this whole mess, the rest of the entire fight sequence is completely besides the point. Also, the sound of the bowling pin when Neo chucks the one Agent Smith into the rest? Wakka wakka wakka, fail.

10. The car chase is why we watched the Matrix movies. It’s completely over the top action with nobody talking…much. Just like the first movie. Too bad most of it couldn’t have been like this sequence.

11. The meeting with The Architect is awful…ly confusing. And just awful.

12. Also, Neo loves Trinity “…too damned much.” Gag. It’s an action movie. An action movie.

13. The movie is over. Thank God. We’re watching the final movie, but I don’t want to. I already regret my decision.

Nerding Out

I like The Onion’s AV Club. I’ve been a fan since I first realized that the satirical news magazine was doing serious reviews, interviews, and giving Dan Savage a place to publish. That said, it is a publication that has the tendency to really condescend beyond all reason to its readership.

Today’s The Knights Who Say “Nerd”: 20 Pop-Cultural Obsessions Even Geekier Than Monty Python is just ugly. There’s no merit to it, because nowhere do the authors indicate that they themselves might share in some of this fandom; it reads instead as if the hipsters are just making fun of the nerds in an attempt to feel better about their own cultural obsessions. And yes, these are people that are culturally obsessed.

It takes genuine cajones to believe that spending all of your available income on the latest European release of a Modest Mouse EP before heading over to your friend’s house for a Fassbinder Film Festival is somehow better than dressing up like your favorite anime character. Hipsters, of course, do prioritize the world this way, believing that their own obsessions are somehow superior to everybody else’s and using that idea to condescend to everybody around them. “Oh, really? Frank Zappa? Thanks, but no thanks. Rilo Kiley’s the thing now.” (Or, you know, whatever band is the thing now. I have no idea. I still think They Might Be Giants are fantastic.)

In the movie “The Apostle” with Robert Duvall, he is walking over a bridge in Louisiana when he sees Catholics celebrating a Christian holiday. Himself a Pentecostal minister, he watches for a few minutes. “You do things your way, and I’ll do them mine.” He says, laughing to himself, because while he isn’t a Catholic, he understands that ultimately, they’re both praying to the same god.

The hipsters at The Onion’s AV Club could take a lesson from that. Hipsterism isn’t in any way superior to the sort of nerdish behavior decried in the article above; rather, it is precisely the same sort of behavior focused on (barely) different pursuits. Acting as if the other is true is both offensive and shockingly dense. (One wonders if they have any idea what kind of people are reading and enjoying The Onion itself?)

Dreamcatcher The Movie…Oh God

I read this and had to experience. Regret is a dish best served cold. Or maybe that’s revenge. I’m barely alive right now. My god.

1. Everybody in this is psychic. That’s the first thing we need to know. Not so psychic that they know that traffic can be found in the street, but psychic, yknow…

2. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I insist on watching these things? What is wrong with me?

3. Anthony’s here. So’s Evan. Everybody’s dead silent. This is painful.

4. They just saved a boy from the “retarded” school. Evidence of the boy’s retardation? He can’t speak particularly well. Seriously?

5. A man appears, sick to his stomach. He claims to have eaten berries that made him sick. Evan says, “What berries are growing late in the winter in Maine?” Anthony says, “Booberries.” I was too busy slamming my face off the wall.

6. Four guys go to a cabin deep in the woods. On a trip to town, a local warns them that two snowstorms are converging on the cabin called “Hole In The Wall.” On the drive back, the two guys who went to town for beer - why wouldn’t they have taken beer with them? - crash their car. Get it? They’re stranded. They’re at a place called “Hole In The Wall” without a vehicle with two snowstorms converging. This movie struggles ever-so-slightly with overkill.

7. Characters in this movie fart a lot. Why? Because the aliens in this movie plant themselves inside of the human body, and eventually, emerge from their assholes. The military calls them “shit weasels.” The military, in this case, is played by Morgan Freemen. In other words, the esteemed Morgan Freemen just said “shit weasels.” He must have a hell of a mortgage payment.

8. Tom Sizemore! “For me, the action is the juice!” What a human nightmare he is.

9. Oh hey, it’s Morgan Freemen’s last day on the job. Of course it is.

10. There are only two main characters left. Oh, dammit, there’s a third. I thought the mother alien ate his face - but no. The alien is possessing him. You can tell because he’s got a silly grin on his face. I’m not possessed. I’m just sad.

11. For being psychic, these guys are fucking stupid. Now there’s an alien biting his junk. These things happen.

12. Oh, all the kids got psychic powers from their retarded friend. I see. Stupid. I want my life back.

13. When the trailer for this movie came out, I remember thinking it that it was going to be amazing. The scene in which all of the animals run from something while the guys watch them, wondering what it is? That was awesome. I had no idea what this movie was really all about. Absolutely no clue. I hate myself.

14. The troops are starting to get viscerally angry. Evan is begging to understand why. Anthony is in a bad mood.

15. Tom Sizemore is walking amongst the infected. It must be like walking through a house of mirrors. “For me, the action is the juice.”

16. My brain is melting. One of the main characters just answered his gun, which was acting as a phone, and if that doesn’t make any sense to you, think about what was happening here while we were watching it. And now the one main character left who isn’t infected with “shit weasels” is reunited with his retarded friend from childhood. Who has cancer.

17. “It all makes sense now,” says the remaining main character. No, it doesn’t. That’s a lie. Incidentally, one “shit weasel” will in the Quabbin Resevoir will infect Boston and thus, kill the world. Got that? I hate this movie.

18. It’s over. So am I. Terrible, terrible mistake.

Juno Is Fantastic

I really like Bill Simmons, but the other day on his Podcast, he and his buddies Cousin Sal and Mysterious Brad were whining about Juno. To them, the movie wasn’t “funny.” Frankly, having seen the movie, I don’t understand how that criticism is possible. Ellen Page was fantastically funny, as was Michael Cera, and both parents (have J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney ever failed to be great?) were super.

However, I appreciated the movie for reasons far different from the complaints of those three men. In it, Juno becomes pregnant at 16, and decides to keep the child. She finds a family to adopt the child. In the end, things work out in basically the way that she wanted them too. In other words, her life didn’t end because she got pregnant.

When Trusted Source Bobbi got pregnant when I was 20, I was encouraged by some to believe that my life was in fact going to end. This is an attitude shared by the three men on the Podcast, all of whom have children, and while they occasionally celebrate the fact (Simmons wrote a story about teaching his daughter to love basketball), they seem to object to children in equal parts.

It took me a long time to understand just how awesome having a child is. I hate to say it, but having Hollywood positively portray the experience doesn’t hurt things. Which isn’t to say that I came to love the parenting experience because Hollywood told me it was great. Far from it. But movies like this will hopefully help people to understand in some small way that having a child is just another phase of life, not the end of things. Earlier this summer, “Knocked Up” encouraged people to understand the same thing, particularly during Harold Ramis’s talk with his son, in which he said that having children was the greatest experience of his life. It was a disaster he said. “Floods and hurricanes are disasters.”

I’ll spin this off onto something about the pro-life movement sometime. It says something when Hollywood does a better job of endorsing parenthood than do people so very concerned with it.

Golden Ninjas Invade Your Existence

Tonight’s film? Golden Ninja Invasion. Interestingly, nowhere will you find any obviously golden ninjas in this film.

1. Within the first five minutes, men attack a pedestrian, whose hand is chopped off in a saw. It is then replaced with a mechanical hand. Can you believe this was only a buck at a flea-market? The hand is made of a uranium and titanium alloy - don’t bother trying to understand this. Also, the engineer’s advice to the man who received it? “Take it for granted.” Don’t bother trying to understand this either. Finally, the hand helps to protect from the next attack from the Red Sun Ninjas.

2. The head bad guy recommends, “Send some guys to kidnap the daughter of the scientist.” If that doesn’t get the plot rolling, what the hell will?

3. “I need you to come with me. There is emerging business.” I could quote movies like this all night long. Also, I don’t care what happens with my website. My daughter observes, “The guy’s mouth goes before his voice!” Also, she says, “Wow, look at his shirt tucked into his pants.” As if there was any doubt she was my daughter.

4. Four guys sit around playing cards. The game works like this. Each player gets thirteen cards, looks at them, arranges them, and then everybody mutters loudly.

5. “Don’t blame yourself. Failure is the mother of success.” And suddenly, we’re into our fourth inexplicable ninja fight of the evening. My daughter says, “How can that hurt?” These characters don’t have names. They don’t have allegiances. Nobody has any idea who is siding with who. It probably makes more sense in the original language…so much is lost in translation. For instance, “I’m not easily threatened. I’ll fight anyone, be them big or small.”

6. Time for the greatest shootout ever, in which unknown people in tightly framed closeups shoot and get shot. Absolutely no idea what is going on. Also, “Make good plan before you take action.” That’s solid advice.

7. So far, no Golden Ninjas. At all.

8. Alex continues to be perplexed about why everybody in this movie tucks in their shirts. It is a completely reasonable question. She also doesn’t approve of sixteen-year-old gunmen. For the record.

9. A blue ninja appears (not golden) who does a hilarious series of moves culminating in a jump backwards onto a rock. The clip was shown in rewind in the movie, which makes it even better. If I was technologically capable, I’d put it on the webpage. I’m not.

10. A woman appears with hypnotic eyes. Umm…they’re green, and they’re hypnotic…and…uhh…hypnosis!

11. Evan asks, “Are any of these characters recurring?”

12. Some black ninjas make an appearance and are tasked to murder the blue ninja. By black, I mean they’re wearing black ninja outfits, not that they’re Thai-Africans.

13. Browns are mentioned - I assume they mean brown ninjas and not the Cleveland football team. Meaning we have Browns, Reds, Blues, Blacks, and no Golden Ninjas. In a movie called Golden Ninja Invasion.

14. Guy walks into a restaurant, trips over a table, falls into a man, gunfight breaks out between everybody in the place and some passersby on the street.

15. This is a terrible movie. “What in the world is going on?” Evan asks.

16. I have completely derailed. This movie, allegedly made up of two separate movies mashed together, is horrendously awful. I have no concept of what’s going on. I’m done with this.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween Abor…Movie (19 Reasons This Movie Sucked)

Remaking somebody else’s work is a difficult thing to do. Sometimes, it is a stunning success, as in Jeff Buckley’s remake of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleleujah.” A proven piece of work was improved when reimagined by another creative force. The same goes for Cat Power’s interpretation of Oasis’s Wonderwall, and her remake of the Rolling Stones “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is similarly satisfying. But occasionally, an attempt to remake somebody else’s work goes horribly, horribly awry.

I am currently, as I write this, enduring the nightmare that is Rob Zombie’s inexplicable remake of Halloween, one of the truly great horror movies. I am 37 minutes into this, and at literally every turn, Zombie has made the wrong decision. So far, I’ve witnessed - oh Jesus, Mom just shot herself because she was horrified about birthing Michael Myers, which isn’t what happened in the first movie. Oh, the first movie. How I wish I was watching the first movie.

1. In the first movie, we had no inclination of what drove Michael Myers to commit his evil deeds - making him all the more frightening. Zombie went a different route. He showed us everything that ever happened in Mike Myers life, so we know enough to think that Myers might actually…be justified in his endless killing? His family is awful. He kills them all. His guards in the mental hospital? Awful rapists, so he kills them both. The bully at the very beginning? He kills him. It’s a festival of dead people who are created to look as if they deserved it.

I’ve heard a rumor that the snarling Predator only attacked those, at least in the first two movies, who weren’t innocent. The reason it leaves the woman living in the train is because she’s pregnant. Zombie seems to try to set up the same thing with Myers, except he kills everybody. Unfortunately, we’re torn as viewers because we don’t know whether to loathe this fearsome killing machine - he killed Danny Trejo, a guard at the mental facility who loved him - but he also killed the rapists. What are we to do in this sort of moral quandary?

Answer: not care.

2. In the first movie, Myers kills his family as a young, young child, making the crime all the more inexplicable. Because when we first see him, we don’t know anything about him, we aren’t given reasons to disbelieve his later actions. In this movie, he’s allegedly ten, meaning that when we see him full-grown, we know to disbelieve the fact that he’s six-foot-nine, 280 pounds of muscle. He was tiny as a ten-year-old. There was no chance he grows into an enormous monster while living on hospital food.

3. Really Rob Zombie? A goddamned hour until we meet the more adult Laurie Strode? The first Halloween movie drops us into the action within ten minutes, if that. We don’t know anything more than a kid killer has apparently returned to his hometown. This movie? It takes us almost an hour to learn Myers’s backstory. What a total waste of time.

4. Everybody in my house is angry right now. Nobody is happy with this movie. We still have an hour to go.

5. Rob Zombie loves young women. To the point that it goes beyond disturbing. His female characters are naked, suggestive, aggressive, and generally act inexplicably. So the teenage girls see somebody they think is a pervert. Is the first instinct really to ask if he wants, “Some of the young stuff?”

6. Why are their placards in this movie? Am I really expected to say to my friends, “The movie really reminded me of Fassbinder’s work during it’s Trick Or Treat chapter?” Because, really, I’m never going to say that.

7. On the great list of horror movie kills, Bob getting lifted up into the air and stuck into the wall with a kitchen knife, as phsyics defying as it might be, is one of the all time greats. If it doesn’t happen in this movie, I’m turning it off….and….it doesn’t happen in the kitchen, but at this point I’ll take whatever I can get.

8. According to Bobbi, Rob Zombie loves the shot of a woman, laying on her side, from her feet, so that you can see her ass and, if you manipulate the dvd through use of its pause function, maybe see the slightest hint of a vagina. Grow up Rob Zombie. We have the internet. If we’re that desperate, we’ll find it.

9. Really? Michael kills the adoptive parents? Are you serious? Lame.

10. “And besides, the gravestone weighs half a ton…” Oh my god. Light my friggin hair on fire. What, Myers is hauling around a thousand pound gravestone? Stop giving me reasons to hate this nightmare.

11. Only 40 more minutes…I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

12. My God! It’s amazing how women have to get naked in horror movies to have sex, but men do not. How is it even possible to have sex through a pair of boxer-briefs? It isn’t that I want to see anybody’s junk, but if you want to make a gritty horror movie, then make it, and include the realistic nudity. Zombie couldn’t seem to decide what, exactly, he was making. Other than an unabated shitstorm.

13. “Loud Noises! People Screaming! I Don’t Know What We’re Yelling About!” Brick Tamland’s conversation with his coworkers in Anchorman is a pretty good way to describe this movie as we approach its ending. Its merciful ending.

14. Laurie Strode, running from Michael Myers, afraid, nervous, leads him right back to the younger children. What a cheap way to create tension. Rob Zombie = douchebag.

15. Yep. Michael Myers was hauling around a headstone that allegedly weighs a thousand pounds. Sigh.

16. In the original Halloween, Myers is obsessed with killing his family. In this movie, Michael Myers inexplicably seems to love his younger sister. Excuse me while I throw up all over this computer.

17. Everybody in my living room is terribly angry right now.

18. Loomis, with a .357 and no shooting experience, hits Michael three consecutive times and hardly recoils. It’s the little things Rob Zombie, you jerkoff.

19. “Is that the boogeyman?” “As a matter of fact, I do believe it was.” Michael reaches into the car, grabs Laurie Strode, and starts dragging her around…”Michael, it was my fault, I failed you.” Loomis is being a total loser right now…and now Michael has him, and squeezing his face to the point of crushing his skull…

“Rob Zombie, you are a master of the art,” says Evan, angrily.

Loomis is dead?!?! God, now we can’t have Halloweens 4, 5, and 6, which are hilariously bad. You haven’t lived until you learn that Michael Myers is the embodiment of Samhain, and that evil druids control his movement, and that blah, blah, blah, nobody cares. Back to this shmshmortion.

Michael clobber! Michael break! Michael crush! Michael heap strong, like bull! Michael make smashy! Oh, here’s Michael staring at Laurie while Loomis lays dead at his feet…no wait, he’s alive and grabbing Michael…and now he’s dead again. Michael crush!

Also, was it really necessary to suck for two hours? Couldn’t this movie have achieved similar levels of suckitude in less time?

“This is just tedious,” says Evan, as Michael continues to smash.
Bobbi is moaning. This movie has defeated her.

Laurie’s a bloody mess. And she has Loomis’s gun. And Michael tackles her off the balcony, instead of being shot off in the first one. Laurie’s completely broken now. And she’s got the gun at Michael’s head…and it is out of ammunition. Seriously Rob Zombie? You’re not even trying. Michael grabs her, the gun suddenly has a bullet, and she shoots her older brother in the face. Cue the classic Halloween music, and for me, bed.

Avoid this shitstorm at all costs.

Good Movies

Please ignore the above photo’s low quality. For what it’s worth, I thought I had fixed it.

This weekend, I saw two movies: Hot Fuzz and The Host. Both were excellent, the sort of films that make tolerating the usual crap from Hollywood all the easier. If you were talking to me, I’d probably say something like, “Sure, Star Wars Episode 3 was awful, but The Host was so good!”

I saw both at Morgantown’s Warner Theater, a wonderful old theater that definitely doesn’t suck. Well, the chairs suck. And sometimes the picture sucks. The sound can definitely suck. But the theater is the sort of place where films should be watched.

It isn’t that I’m necessarily against the newer, brighter, bigger theaters. There’s something to be said for watching a movie under ideal conditions. But there’s just as much to be said for watching movies in cool places, especially cool movies. To put it another way, there is a part of the movie going experience that needs to feel authentic, and when watching movies that are off of Hollywood’s beaten path, it helps being in a theater that is off the beaten path.

Also, for the record, I have numerous good memories about the Warner. I made out with two of my first girlfriends there. I started my love affair with awful movies there (Charlie Sheen’s The Arrival was jaw-droppingly terrible). I saw great films too, including Antonio Banderas’s Desperado, one of the best action movies ever made. The point is that, although seeing a movie somewhere else might lead to a better technical viewing of the film, seeing a movie at the Warner leads to a better experience.