inkslave Reviews

Machete (2010)

One of the best crappy movies I've ever seen

[7/10 · 23 August 2012]

There isn't enough suspension of disbelief in the world to get you through "Machete." But you won't care. So many blades and body parts are flying, so many really good actors are vamping the hell out of their parts, it simply doesn't matter.

I do wish Danny Trejo got more work that did justice to his talent. His sting on "Real Housewives" showed he's capable of more than just gritting his teeth and chopping people up. And see "Heat" to watch him and his buddy Bobby DeNiro, whose performance in this movie is jaw-droppingly awful because that was what he was aiming for, flex their acting muscles some.

I had a chance to meet Trejo a few years ago on the set of yet another really bad movie. With him was his shaman, who was his only entourage, an older man who also had done hard time and emerged stronger for it. I was deeply impressed by Trejo's spirituality and his intellect, and his very sly sense of humor. Then he went and chopped some people up. It was glorious.

Until the day comes when someone realizes what Trejo could do with a real script, I will blissfully watch him make the most of trash. He's the Marlon Brando of arterial spurts.

Enter the Dragon (1973)

Watch the flags

[9/10 · 27 December 2010]

There is one scene in "Enter the Dragon" that explains it all: When Lee finally faces down the man who forced his sister to kill herself. Lee's opponent is twice his size and a nasty mother to boot. The opponent tries to intimidate Lee by tossing a board into the air and smashing it. Lee doesn't even blink. He simply, quietly says: "Boards don't hit back." Every time I have seen this film in a theater, that line brings down the house.

Then the fight begins. The two square off. And Lee, not once but twice, knocks his opponent down before the big galoot can even move.

Behind them in the shot is a line of flags flapping in the breeze. Why are they there? Because in addition to being a pretty decent fighter, Lee was an excellent fight choreographer.

The flags are the visual clue that shows the audience that the shot is not sped up. Bruce Lee really was that fast.

That's a level of martial arts film making that, to this day, is rarely duplicated. Pity.

Live at the El Mocambo: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble (1991 Video)

Awesome performance, excellent concert film

[10 December 2006]

You'll get exhausted watching Stevie Ray Vaughan crank out this incredible performance long before Stevie does. Sweat pouring off his sparse frame, he delivers heartpounding riff after riff on every song in this movie, leaving you wondering how he possibly had anything left for the next one.

My personal favorite is the 9-minute version of "Texas Flood," which includes some of the tightest, fastest playing ever captured on film. And it's captured well by multiple cameras worked by people who knew what they were doing. What a welcome relief from the drugged-out, out of focus zoom work that has marred so many classic performance movies -- the 1973 docu "Jimi Hendrix" is a prime example, though still worth watching for sure.

But back to Stevie. He was a little guy, all skin and bones, and hands. Like Hendrix he seemed to be gifted with hands belonging to some other, much larger person. His hands were so big that he used extra-wide guitar necks most of the time. He once described his style thus: "I use heavy strings, tune low and floor it. Floor it." See the results for yourself in this terrific film. Buy the DVD so you can jump right to your favorite tracks.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Evocative, touching, but cuts some unfortunate corners

[7/10 · 4 November 2005]

The set-up of this movie, with its strong woman hero and delightfully drawn supporting characters, promises great things. And as we putter up to Gull Cottage along its windswept seaside road we are indeed entranced. The first appearances of the ghost are marvelous, as two lonely, wary spirits strike a bargain and, without saying so, grow quite fond of one another.

But the ghost says what we know to be true and this dooms the movie to be less than it could have been: The widow can't have a living, breathing relationship with a ghost. And so, with a bit of Hollywood voodoo, he vanishes and makes her think it was all a dream.

When her one attempt at romance with a living man is dashed horribly, Mrs. Muir retreats to a life of spinsterhood, not even comforted by the presence of the ghost, whom she remains convinced was but a dream. Why couldn't he have returned to keep her company? It seems to me it would have been nicer all around that way. Instead we are witnesses to her life of long, quiet days, a life apparently spent in lonely isolation. It's redeemed at the end, yes, but still, how sad.

I think the most evocative image in the film is the little girl's name carved in the piling by the sea, and how it's meant to last forever, and how we return to see the wood splitting and the name fading over time, and finally to see it washed into the sea itself. Such is life, and such has been Mrs. Muir's life. How nice she has Capt. Gregg waiting for her at the end to make it all OK. The audience is not so lucky.

I like this movie but with these characters, these settings and the incredible score and cinematography, it could have risen to be so much more. A plot twist here and there and it would have been unforgettable.

Reggie's Prayer (1996)

Awful! But worth a look to glimpse Reggie's persona

[1/10 · 17 February 2005]

This film is bad, bad, bad. Badly acted, badly directed, badly lit, you name it. It's full of sentimental claptrap and includes the weirdest (and not in a good way) dream sequences you are likely to see.

But see it anyway, to get a glimpse into what Reggie was like. He comes through, despite the awfulness. You see a little of the real man as he stares down his students on the first day of class (and then "establishes dominance" with a move that would get him fired from any public school in the country). You get a taste of his sense of humor from the outtakes they stuck on the end.

And when he takes off his shirt for that awful staged fight with Paul "The Big Show" Wight, hit the freeze-frame for a second and look at his physique. Reggie never posed with his shirt off in public, and sometimes people thought, especially in his later years, that he was fat. He was not. He was 305 pounds of rippling muscle, and in this one cheesy video moment, you can see how modest a man he must have been. Most guys with a bod like that would have been sure to show it off.

And you'll also understand how he managed to pick men his own size off their feet and toss them aside like dolls.

Reggie was a character. He made a famous speech at the Wisconsin Legislature after he retired that basically ended his public speaking career: He managed to offend virtually every ethnic group, including his own, in 10 minutes. At the time of his death he hadn't been to church in years, despite his oft-noted status as a minister. Instead he was studying Hebrew, looking for his roots, I guess.

All of that is fine by me. He was a football player, after all, not a savior, not a statesman (and clearly not a film producer). He was allowed to be weird. He'll be missed. This movie is worth a look for those reasons alone.

Cat People (1982)

kinky, stylish, hard to forget

[6/10 · 2 February 2005]

This is not a great movie. But you won't soon forget it. It has some of the more explicit sex scenes you'll see in a movie from this period, including one that, well, let's just say it's amazing what people will do for those they love. And it is decidedly creepy when it wants to be, which is more than you can say about of lot of movies. Good performances, especially by Kinski, who had to be a pretty brave soul to sign up for this after reading the screenplay -- especially the last four pages.

And David Bowie's music is used to great effect in most scenes.

Rent it and watch it with someone you'd like to nibble and scratch behind the ears.

Tian di ying xiong (2003)

Good, but not great - more of a character study than a kung fu flick

[7/10 · 31 January 2005]

I liked this movie but I was not awestruck by it. It has some excellent characters and a very engaging plot. There are a few lines that will make all but the most jaded filmwatchers smile.

But this movie has a couple of drawbacks which mark it as a notch below other films like "Crouching Tiger" and the infinitely superior "Hero." Both of these films also had excellent characters and stories but were visually far a cut above. A BIG cut.

"Warriors" uses jump-cuts and too-tight camera angles in an effort to hide the fact that many of its stars are not actually martial artists. The resulting fight scenes are very frustrating to watch. Like I said, the plot carries the movie along and it is indeed a good film, but I hate getting snookered by creative editing.

Compare any fight scene in "Warriors" with, say, the extended battle scene between the two women warriors in "Crouching Tiger," most of which is filmed in medium shots that allow your eye to follow the line of action. IMHO this is a lot more impressive. Even the goofy wire work doesn't take away from that.

But "Warriors" is worth a rent. You will care what happens to the characters. And you will see a very nice meditation on the question of what, as people of honor, we must do.

Summer of '42 (1971)

One of the great movie endings

[15 September 2004]

"Hermie" plays the last 10 minutes of this movie in silence, as his buddy Oscy talks to him about boy things like raiding the Coast Guard Station, and then as he walks through the gathering late-summer wind to the house where his first lover no longer waits. He finds her note, walks away from the little clapboard house as the wind whips the long grass around, reminding you that summer is all but over, and a voice-over tells us that Hermie never saw her again or even heard about her (until after the movie came out, when apparently she made contact: She had remarried and lived a long, full life).

I can't think of another movie ending that I have found so touching, so evocative. What an artistic triumph.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Look at the ratings: all 1s and 10s

[6/10 · 21 June 2004]

This film is going to pack a wallop. People will love it or hate it with not much in between.

All you have to do is look at the IMDb ratings to see that. There's a couple hundred people who gave the movie 10s and a somewhat smaller bunch that gave it 1s and not much in between.

(Makes me wonder how many of these folks have actually seen the film.)

I saw it. I think it ranks with "Columbine" as a powerful but deeply flawed presentation. Mike's work, as always, uses a lot of very gripping images that cannot be argued with: recruiters lying to kids to get them to sign up, babies burned and mutilated by US bombs, and the incredible seven minutes that the Commander-in-Chief of the US military spent sitting in a classroom reading "My Pet Goat" after he had been told the second tower had been hit and the nation was under attack. You think Bill Clinton would have sat there waiting for someone to tell him what to do? Or even, God forbid, Richard Nixon? Hell no.

Now, on the other hand, Mike is as fast and loose with the facts in this movie as ever. He always shoots himself in the foot by making dumb fact errors and editing footage to show his point of view in the best possible light. I wish he wouldn't. Because so much of what he has to say is really important, and really deserves to be heard. Leaving your enemies a big hole through which to drive is just dumb.

Go see the movie for yourself and judge for yourself. You're smart. You don't need Michael Moore to tell you what to think, or Move America Forward to tell you that all good Americans will close their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and hope this movie goes away.

The West Wing (1999–2006)

The Best. Period

[21 May 2004]

This is the finest show ever produced for TV. Each episode is a triumph. The casting, the writing, the timing are all second to none. This cast performs miracles.

The secret to this show is that it is, at heart, a comedy, even when tragic things are happening. That gives Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff et al. the room to work. And do they ever.

It works because it is deep, the characters are well-drawn. Early in the first season, CJ gets a root canal and walks around for the rest of the episode with cotton stuffed in her mouth, yelling things like" The Pwesident must be bweefed!" This has to be seen to be believed. It had me literally on the floor, laughing until I feared I would hurt myself. I don't know how many shows have tried cheap stunts like that and they are just that, cheap. On "The West Wing" it works because we know CJ, we know how unlike her, and yet like her, that moment is. And Toby's slow-burn reaction is pitch perfect.

Bravo.

My Breakfast with Blassie (1983)

A buried treasure, especially for wrestling fans

[8/10 · 9 December 2003]

Andy Kaufman was his own brand of genius, and his particular style of nonsense is on display, for good and ill, in this often overlooked gem of an indie film. It's gross, over the top, and as always Andy has fun making you guess whether what you're seeing is real or an elaborate gag for the camera (hint: that's his longtime co-conspirator Bob Zmuda sitting behind him for much of the film, and later getting rather nosey).

And then there is Blassie, one of the superstars of old time wrestling. We hope he's goofing for the camera too but some of his coarse comments seems to be coming from the heart. He reveals himself -- as a sexist clod, as a seasoned world traveler, as a garrulous guy who has played a ridiculous role all his life and loved every minute of it -- in a hundred little ways in this movie, as when he admits that he loves to kill time wandering through hardware stores, never actually buying anything, just "picking stuff up and playing with it." The hand towel gag may be over the top but it sure looks like it has roots in some personal issues for Freddie -- maybe even compulsions -- about keeping his hands clean. Check out his spotless fingernails.

I saw Freddie wrestle in the Garden when I was a kid, cheered my head off when Bruno Sammartino made him submit with a bearhug, and watched him on UHF TV in New York many times, and I always suspected he was a smart man behind all the wrestling BS. This proves it, and also gives a lot of insight into the good and bad aspects of his character. All in all, I wish I'd eaten breakfast with him too. (Especially if he paid!)

Dear God (1996)

Who bankrolls this swill?

[2/10 · 8 June 2003]

You have to assume there came a moment when the director saw a cut of this film and said, I have wasted the last year of my life. Yeech! How does trash like this get made and distributed? Didn't they know, couldn't they tell from watching people wander through the wretched scenes that make up this turkey?

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

Another messy, wretched Peckinpah masterpiece

[8/10 · 29 October 2002]

This is not Peckinpah's best movie. My vote would be for The Wild Bunch. He paints everyone into an awful corner and the ending is unsatisfying, even though it's the only ending this movie could have. But there are moments you will never forget, like Slim Pickens in the most heartbreaking death scene on celluloid, and Billy's escape from jail. Bob Dylan is a terrible actor and proves it here but his music lights up the film, especially ol' Slim's demise. The soundtrack album makes for good road music too.

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Best Group Performance on Gatling Gun

[10/10 · 6 June 2002]

This is one of those movies that has so influenced everything that has come since, when you see it you might not recognize how groundbreaking it was. It's not just that the bad guys get shot and fall down in slow motion. It's not just that Holden and Borgnine and Oates and Ryan give some of the best performances of the great careers. It's all those things and a lot more, the celebration of the anti-hero, the bizarre balance of comic relief with pure horror, and an unblinking look at a moment in time when everything had just changed forever, through the eyes of men who had seen it all and done it all and decide to go out with one hell of a bang, because It's the Right Thing To Do.

The best moments come at the end: When the Bunch assembles for one last walk into the shadow, and all the fissures and disagreements fall aside as they recognize their common destiny and rise to stand together; when Bill Holden fires 300 bullets from the Gatling Gun and kills 320 guys, when the Bunch finds itself at the center of 2 million armed soldiers and not one person knows what the hell to do for a minute (except for Ernest Borgnine, who drinks it all in and laughs his ass off), and when Robert Ryan finally lets us all see what he has known for the last hour of the picture, and what he has been waiting for.

See it, buy it.

The Way of the Dragon (1972)

Campy, corny, and some of the best fight scenes ever filmed.

[26 July 2001]

The last time I watched this I leaned over and kissed the fast-forward button on my VCR. The "plot" is a joke, most of the characters are buffoons and even Bruce's natural charisma takes a beating. It's a lot less painful to just buzz through this stuff.

But when he walks into the alley to defend his cousins against the gangsters, all is forgiven. Bruce demonstrates how one little guy could indeed beat the crap out of 20 people in a dark alley, basically by being one critical step ahead at every turn.

Bruce's technique in this movie is actually pretty limited. Most of his kicks are right leg only, for example. By the time he made "Enter the Dragon" he had evolved a great deal. Indeed, his whole body shape had changed. But that's hardly a criticism. I could watch him kick Chuck Norris's butt every day.

I've always wondered what happened to the kitten in the Coliseum....

The Green Hornet (1966–1967)

Poor Bruce deserved much better

[18 July 2001]

There is a scene that describes everything that was wrong with The Green Hornet -- oddly enough, in a crossover episode of the Batman TV show. At one point Batman and Robin, unaware of the heroic nature of Green Hornet and Kato, are faced off against them, everyone dancing back and forth with fists cocked. "It's a standoff!" cries the announcer.

Yeah, right. Methinks Kato could have polished off all three of those bozos in about 11 seconds.

But the genre wasn't ready for Bruce to be Bruce. Hollywood just didn't get it.

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Francis hasn't been the same since he crawled out of the Philippine jungle

[4/10 · 3 July 2001]

What the hell happened to Francis Coppola? How could the man who made I and II be the same guy who dropped this stinkbomb? Every movie he's made since Apocalypse Now has reeked of a guy who has lost his grip on reality and who is so powerful, and surrounded by so many people who kiss his butt all day, that he is doomed. It's the same thing that happened to Oliver Stone and George Lucas.

I hate this movie, because it tries to change the way we think about characters from the first two films, because it resorts to weird '90s crap like the helicopter attack, because the ending plays like it was written in 15 minutes and filmed in 20, and because, worst of all, it's boring.

So much could have been done with this. Michael's son an opera star, who berates his dad with corny speeches? C'mon, in II the kid was practically a clone of Vito, the sins of the father being visited on the son. George Hamilton? Puh-leeze. The pope? Who exactly was Coppola trying to impress?

Almost the only thing I like about this movie is Sofia Coppola. She can't act, but she's gorgeous. And Andy Garcia proving whose son he is by wiping out the two hit men, that's at least entertaining. Otherwise, as Roger Ebert once said about another clunker, this film should be cut up and distributed to the poor for use as ukelele picks.

The Matrix (1999)

Ambitious, not a classic but lots of fun.

[7/10 · 6 April 1999]

This movie cheerfully borrows from damn near every action/adventure/sci-fi genre in recent memory, and a fair sampling of recent video games to boot. The plot is a tad too ambitious for the script -- for a movie that makes so much about obeying and/or bending the rules that govern reality, its own rules are pretty shaky at times. But who cares? It's fun to watch, from the electro-insects to Keanu Reeves trading snap kicks in cyberspace with Laurence Fishburne, to Carrie-Anne Moss' turn as the world's most dangerous leather freak. (Her opening sequence is one of the movie's best.)