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SPRING BREAKERS (2013)

Posted in 2013, All-Star Casts, Bikini Girls, Compelling Cinema, Controverisal Films, Crime Films, Exploitation Films, Femme Fatales, Gangsters!, Hot Chick Movies, Independent Cinema, James Franco, Just Plain Fun, LL Soares Reviews, VIOLENCE! with tags , , , , , , , on March 26, 2013 by knifefighter

SPRING BREAKERS (2013)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

Spring-Breakers-International-Movie-Poster

If you think this is going to be just another Spring Break teen sex comedy, then you are in for a surprise. SPRING BREAKERS is another kind of animal altogether, and it’s the kind of pop/art hybrid that will be playing at your local arthouse theater, as well as the nearby multiplex. The arthouse crowd will have some idea what they’re in for, as soon as they see the director’s name, Harmony Korine. The multiplex audience will have no clue, and might just get their heads blown.

So who is Harmoney Korine, you ask? Well, when he was 19, he wrote the screenplay for the movie KIDS (1995), still probably the most notorious project he’s been associated with. But he went on to become a director in his own right, with weirdo masterpieces under his belt like 1997’s GUMMO and 1999’s JULIEN DONKEY-BOY, two movies that will seriously screw with your head. The last movie of his I saw in a theater was 2007’s MISTER LONELY, which is about a Michael Jackson impersonator who goes to live on an island populated by nothing but celebrity impersonators, and there’s Werner Herzog as a skydiving priest. I think there were five people in the audience when I saw it. In contrast, the theater was pretty packed when I saw SPRING BREAKERS.

SPRING BREAKERS is an underground film with above-ground stars, and what an interesting collection of celebs we have.

The movie begins with four girls wanting to go to Spring Break and escape from their boring lives as hard-working college students, but they don’t have enough money for the trip. Fed up with being deprived of fun, Candy (Vanessa Hudgens, who your kids might know from Disney fare like 2006’s HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL and the TV series THE SUITE LIFE OF ZACK AND CODY), Brit (Ashley Benson, currently playing Hanna on the ABC FAMILY series PRETTY LITTLE LIARS)  and Cotty (Rachel Korine, who also happens to be Mrs. Harmony Korine, and who was in the previously mentioned MISTER LONELY, among other films), decide they are going to Florida for the time of their lives, no matter what. So they don some ski masks and rob the local chicken shack, armed with a realistic looking water pistol and a heavy duty hammer. They get enough money for the trip, and bring their virginal friend Faith (Selena Gomez, another Disney star, from the series THE WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE) along for the ride. Faith is sweet and religious and doesn’t seem like the other girls at all, but she goes along for the ride, even after she finds out how they got the money.

Once in sunny Florida, the girls go wild, and then some, everyone but Faith, who has some naïve idea of this being a chance to bond with her girlfriends, when the others are just thinking about drugs and sex and booze.

The stars of SPRING BREAKERS (from left to rigth) Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine and Vanessa Hudgens (standing). Behind them, James Franco.

The stars of SPRING BREAKERS (from left to rigth) Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine and Vanessa Hudgens (standing). Behind them, James Franco.

When a particularly out-of-control party they are at gets busted by the cops, the girls end up in jail. Without money for bail, they are rescued by a rapper, drug dealer, and gun hoarder named Alien (James Franco, who we saw just a couple of weeks ago as OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL). With his corn rows, tattoos and mouth grille, Franco is a force of nature here, and steals every scene he is in.

Alien (“My real name is Al, but I’m out of this world”) is so much the polar opposite of OZ that it’s amazing this is the same guy, and yet Franco works his magic without having to try. Just what does he want in return for springing these cute college girls from the hoosegow? Well, Faith gets so scared thinking about that one that she takes the next bus home (no big loss, since she was the least interesting girl anyway), and the other three find that chicken shack robbery to be just the start of their life of crime, as they take part in a violent crime spree, this time with Alien leading the way.

SPRING BREAKERS is chock full of bikinis, bongs and guns. There’s also lots of Spring Break nudity (although  Rachel Korine is the only one of the main girls to really let it all hang out), and violence. So if you go into the theater expecting to just see some typical drunken behavior, you’re going to be in for a surprise.

Korine’s direction (he also wrote the screenplay) is all quirky and cool, shooting some scenes in slow-motion with musical accompaniment by Skrillex (along with Cliff Martinez, they did the soundtrack). Mainstream audiences might be scratching their heads by the time the end credits roll, but I was completely hypnotized by this one. As a long time Korine fan, I would have seen this one anyway, but the added pleasure of a rip-roaring, bigger than life James Franco, and good performances by the girls, just multiplies the pleasures.

spring-breakers-movie-poster

The girls turn in good performances. I really liked Rachel Korine a lot  as Cotty, the most uninhibited one of the group, and Ashley Benson and Vanessa Hudgens turn in super-intense performances as the two most violent ones, a dynamic duo who even scare Franco in one scene. (Hudgens may have gained fame on the Disney Channel, but she was also in the controversial movie THIRTEEN in 2003 and was in the slightly edgy but ultimately disappointing SUCKER PUNCH in 2011. So she’s not completely new to this “edgy” thing.  As for Benson, she’s my favorite of the female leads here, hands down).

By the time Alien starts taking the girls on missions to rob other college kids at gunpoint (and a wedding!), and Alien’s arch-enemy Archie (Gucci Mane) feels he needs to put Alien in his place and starts some violence that needs payback, we have reached the point of no return, and the drunken parties have become a faint memory, replaced by the barrel of an AK-47.

One especially fun (and demented) scene features the three bad girls in pink ski masks singing along with Alien (who is playing piano beside his swimming pool) as they do a group rendition of Britney Spears’ song “Everytime.”

If the Disney girls climbed aboard this project to change their images, they succeeded,  and Harmony Korine succeeded in churning out his first potential hit with mainstream audiences since he wrote KIDS back in the 90s. And like KIDS,  SPRING BREAKERS will probably seem like a horror flick to some parents (especially of daughters), a nightmare about what could happen during those Spring Break vacations.

SPRING BREAKERS is big and loud and out of control. And I found myself really digging it. In fact, this might just be my favorite movie of 2013 so far.

I give it three and a half knives.

© Copyright 2013 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives SPRING BREAKERS ~three and a half knives.

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UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING

Posted in 2012, 3-D, Cinema Knife Fights, Hot Chick Movies, Just Plain Bad, Vampires, Werewolves with tags , , , , , on January 23, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING (2012)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(The Scene: An Expo inside a huge conference building, demonstrating the latest in 3D technology. The room is full to capacity.)

LEAD ENGINEER: Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself to be wowed. This is truly a historic day. I present to you the newest phase in 3D entertainment. Watch. (Points towards movie screen behind him. Aims remote control device at his laptop.)

(Voice from behind the screen—a man crying out— “Get away from there! What are you doing? Wait— no. No! NO!!!)

(A screaming man bursts through the screen, obviously having been thrown against his will. The audience gasps, and the man lands in the lap of a beautiful woman in the first row. The man quickly stops screaming.)

(L.L. SOARES and MICHAEL ARRUDA step through the huge rip in the screen, dragging a wheeled cart full of cream pies, which they promptly throw at the LEAD ENGINEER and his associates.)

L.L. SOARES (to audience): Yep, folks, the latest in 3D technology! So life-like you’ll swear it’s real! Impressive, ain’t it?

MICHAEL ARRUDA (to audience): Aren’t you glad you’re finding this out now, before you have to shell out the big bucks at the movies?

LEAD ENGINEER (wiping cream pie from his face): Not funny!

MA: Neither is paying extra for 3D.

LS: Stop ripping us off!

(Audience applauds)

MA: Nicely said. Let’s go review our movie. (They leave Expo and head out onto the street.)

LS: I’m surprised you didn’t pick some futuristic setting of our review of today’s movie, UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING (2012).

MA: That was one of the problems I had with the movie. The setting wasn’t all that vivid. In fact, I hardly remember it. These city streets will suit us just fine.

So, today we’re reviewing UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING, the fourth movie in the UNDERWORLD sa—series, (Yikes, I almost said “saga.”) chronicling the latest adventures of the vampire warrior Selene (Kate Beckinsale), as she continues her fight against both werewolves and humans.

When this one begins, Selene has been frozen inside a huge laboratory in a state of suspended animation for the past twelve years. She’s being studied by a group of scientists led by Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea). Of course, if she were to remain in a frozen state, we wouldn’t have a movie, and so she awakens, kills a bunch of humans, and promptly escapes.

LS: Actually, this one begins with a future where humans have finally discovered that werewolves and vampires exist after the first three movies, and have been steadily exterminating them. So the vampires fight the werewolves, and both of them fight the humans armed with “ultra-violet and silver” weapons. Then it goes into the whole “suspended animation” storyline.

MA: So, yes, even after 12 years of suspended animation, Selene wakes up to find that the secret battle between vampires and werewolves is still going on, even though the humans deny they still exist. Secret battle? These creatures have been battling for centuries and humans have never seen them until now? That’s because, in this series, humans must be blind. Carnage is everywhere, but no one notices anything.

(In an alley behind them, a werewolf mauls a screaming man, unnoticed by MA & LS.)

Anyway, the plot point in this movie is Selene discovers she has a daughter, Eve (India Eisley), a vampire/werewolf hybrid, who also escaped from Dr. Lane’s lab. In fact, it was Eve who awakened Selene from her frozen beauty sleep. Selene must protect her hybrid daughter from werewolves who want to kill her, humans who want to study her, and other vampires who want to give her up to get the werewolves and humans off their backs. What’s a vampire mom to do? Well, this vampire mom’s answer to everything is to shoot everybody in her way, which is entertaining for about one or two action scenes, but for an entire movie? I don’t think so.

I didn’t like UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING at all. To be honest, I’m amazed that an action movie can be this boring. I mean, we’re rivaling TWILIGHT boredom here. I know why that series is boring. Nothing happens in it. But here, we have a lot of action scenes, so how can that be dull?

LS: I was wondering that myself. This movie is about 90% action, and yet I still had to pinch myself a few times to stay awake. What is your theory, oh Jedi?

MA: I think it’s because the actions scenes aren’t imaginative. There’s nothing cinematic about them. As I watch Selene battle werewolves and men in body armor, I feel as if I’m watching a video game. That gets old real fast.

LS: I don’t know what it is. I normally love vampires and werewolves. But in these movies, I just couldn’t care less. Here are a few signs I noticed about when a movie with vampires and werewolves suck:

1)      When the vampires and werewolves are rival gangs always fighting each other. Whenever you see this in a movie, run. It means there’s no horror aspect involved and what you’re watching is just a glorified gang movie, and not necessarily a good one. (And just guess who the “Bloods “are in this gang war?)

MA: I agree. I’ve yet to see a vampire gang vs. werewolf gang storyline I haven’t hated.

LS: 2) Whenever you see a movie where werewolves are referred to as “Lycans,” run the other way. They do this in the TWILIGHT SAGA too. It’s become a trendy nickname for werewolves in all of the worst movies. Obviously short for lycanthropes, the first time I remember hearing it was back when role-playing games were all the rage. And that’s part of the problem. As you noted, these kinds of movies seem more like video games than movies. Screw lame-ass Lycans – I want my werewolves back!

MA: The movie also tells a boring story. The whole rival gang thing again. Vampires vs. werewolves vs. humans. Who cares!

(A vampire and a werewolf step out in front of MA & LS.)

VAMPIRE: We care!

WEREWOLF: Why don’t you care? Audiences love vampires and werewolves! What the hell is wrong with you guys?

MA: That’s a big part of the problem. Vampires and werewolves make up so much of movie history. You guys have a lot to live up to, and you’re just not doing it.

WEREWOLF: Why not?

LS (to WEREWOLF): Part of the problem is you look like a 3D Scooby Doo, you goober!

WEREWOLF: Hey! I thought we looked scary in this movie.

LS: Well, at least you’re not just oversized animated wolves like in the TWILIGHT movies. At least you look like a cross between wolf and human – the way friggin werewolves SHOULD look. But you’re still pretty hokey and not very scary-looking. Let’s face it, in the UNDERWORLD movies, the werewolves still look incredibly fake.

MA: A bigger part is your writers aren’t giving you anything memorable to do, other than fight, fight, and fight. Yawn!

VAMPIRE: How sad.

LS: Now get out of our way. We have a movie to review. (Vampire and werewolf sadly walk away, hanging their heads in shame.)

MA: As I was saying, it’s a boring story. If you’re going to tell a story about these creatures, can you at least make it interesting? Give us some memorable characters, some decent motivations, something that will enable the movie to make an impression.

LS: Which brings to mind the HBO series TRUE BLOOD. This show is also about vampires and werewolves (and lots of other supernatural creatures), and yet it doesn’t suck. Why? Well, a big part of it is that we have memorable characters. We have believable motivations. We have three-dimensional people here, who we care about. TRUE BLOOD is the exact opposite of crap like TWILIGHT and the UNDERWORLD movies.

MA: What do we know about Selene? She likes to kill. She was in love with a werewolf hybrid. She has a daughter who she fights to protect. Okay, this isn’t bad. We know a little bit about her, but it’s not enough to make her interesting. Why does she like to kill? Is she sadistic? Wronged? She’s fighting to protect her daughter. Why? Because that’s what all mothers do? She seems pretty happy running around blowing away werewolves and humans with guns. Why would she want a teenage girl following her around?

LS: Her motivations are clearer if you’ve seen the other movies, but not by much. For me, the worst aspect of the UNDERWORLD films is that I like Kate Beckinsdale a lot. She first caught my eye back in 1998 in Whit Stillman’s indie drama, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. I think she’s hot as hell. I think she’s a good actress. The idea of her being the star of a horror movie should fill me with joy. But it doesn’t. Because these movies are so damn AWFUL. There’s just something about poor Kate that doesn’t work in horror movies. Remember, she was also in the 2004 special effects crapfest, VAN HELSING (which you just know would have been a 3D crapfest if it came out today). Wait, let me rephrase that. For some reason, there’s something about Kate that doesn’t work in BAD horror movies, and unfortunately that’s the only kind she gets to star in. And as long as the UNDERWORLD movies continue to rake in the dough, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Kate Beckinsdale could easily have been one of my favorite actresses. She’s the complete package. But her movie choices have been abysmal. And every time I see an UNDERWORLD movie, I curse the direction her career has gone in.

MA: Wow, you must really like her.

LS (wipes a tear from his eye): It’s a sad business, I tell you.

MA: And why does Dr. Jacob Lane keep Selene and other vampires frozen for more than a decade? Why is he studying them? He’s looking for a cure? For what? Shouldn’t he be in DAYBREAKERS (2009) then? Why not just kill the vampires? Why not go into private practice?

LS: Because Dr. Lane has a secret. And it’s such a pulse-pounding, shocking secret that it has us on the edges of our seats……NOT. I won’t reveal the secret here, but most viewers will see it coming a mile away, and it sucks. Stephen Rea was another actor with a brilliant future ahead of him. This is the same guy who starred in indie classics like THE CRYING GAME (1992) and the underrated THE BUTCHER BOY (1997). A real actor’s actor. And now he’s in dreck like this. Hell, he was even in a very good werewolf movie once – Neil Jordan’s 1984 flick, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. It’s just too sad to see such talented people reduced to such garbage!

MA: The other characters, including young Eve, Selena’s daughter, I just didn’t care about. And the werewolves and vampires, they’re like the Storm troopers in the STAR WARS movies. They’re there just to be killed.

LS: I actually liked Eve. She’s not very well-developed as a character, either, but when she gets mad she turns into something that looks an awful lot like “Demon Bobby” from the 1977 TV-movie, DEAD OF NIGHT (Mark Onspaugh reviewed that one last August). I thought it was kind of cool she didn’t become just another CGI werewolf.

India Eisley as Eve in UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING

"Demon" Bobby from the 1977 TV-movie DEAD OF NIGHT!

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

MA: As you would expect, the 3D effects add nothing to this one other than a few extra dollars to the admission price. Sure, the movie looks good in 3D, but you know what? It would have looked just as nice in 2D.

LS: Dude, you saw it in just 3D? Lucky you. The best showing time-wise for me was an IMAX 3D version. Cost me $18!!

MA: Wow. I thought I had it bad!

LS: Did it look good? Yeah, sometimes. The 3D effects weren’t always evident – let’s face it, the 3D in this movie sucks – but it was on a nice big screen with Dolby sound. I’m sure that made me hate it a little bit less – but it wasn’t worth the outrageous effin’ price. Because a turd covered with bright lights and whistles is still, unfortunately…..a turd.

MA: I also wasn’t impressed by the special effects. The werewolves are nothing to write home about. Yes, I agree that they are better than what we’ve been seeing in TWILIGHT, but that’s not saying much. CGI werewolves look like cartoons.

LS: Yep. Although I have to say one thing here. There is a scene toward the end where Selene is up against a gigantic werewolf, and even though the monster looks fake as hell, I kind of enjoyed that battle. Maybe it’s the IMAX talking, but that scene rose above the rest for me.

MA: Yeah, that was a decent battle, but by that point in the movie I was scraping the bottom of my popcorn bag in search of un-popped kernels.

LS: And at the same time as that fight, the cool-looking “Monster Eve” gets to fight with Rea’s character (who has since revealed his shocking secret). I dunno, that whole sequence was the only time in the movie when I felt I was even close to enjoying myself.

(A GROUP OF TOURISTS approach MA and LS, taking pictures. One of them steps up close to them)

TOURIST 1: Yes, these are the two guys who jumped out of that 3D movie back at the Expo! They still look so life-like. I feel like I could reach out and touch them!

LS (slaps her hand away): Keep your paws off us, you damn dirty ape!

TOURIST 1: I’m not an ape! What is he talking about?

TOURIST 2: Bad acting, that’s what I say.

(LS and MA start throwing pies at them again, and they run away)

MA: UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING was directed by Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein. It took two people to direct this movie?? Are you kidding me? Even better, it took four people to write it. The screenplay was written by Len Wiseman, John Hlavin, J. Michael Straczynski, and Allison Burnett. Wiseman has lots of experience on this entire series, because he directed the first two movies in this series and received story credit for all four of them. That’s nothing to be proud of, let me tell you!

LS: Oh my God. J. Michael Straczynski helped write this? He actually has some talent. How the hell did he get suckered into this thing?

MA: I hadn’t seen any of the movies in this series until last week, when I rented the first UNDERWORLD (2003) to try to get a flavor for the series. That flavor was boredom. The first movie was also an uncreative snooze-fest. I’m almost insulted by the lack of imagination that goes into these movies.

LS: Lucky you. You only watched one other movie. I’ve seen all of the movies in this series. I guess I just always end up having to review them for some reason. And they all suck. They’re all boring. They all blur together and congeal like a giant blob of boring mucus. And I keep tricking myself when a new one comes out. I tell myself – hey, Kate Beckinsdale is in it. She gets to wear a form-hugging latex bodysuit. She’s one of the most beautiful actresses out there. How bad can the movie be? I always forget how bad the previous ones were and go anyway, and I am always disappointed. It’s just a revolving door of shame.

MA: Yep, the only redeeming value to UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING is that Kate Beckinsale is hot in her shiny costume. She’s got that Emma Peel thing from the THE AVENGERS – 1960s British TV-show going for her. She’s VERY easy on the eyes. Of course, everything in this movie is CGI created, so who’s to say we’re even looking at her real body? They just could have tacked her head onto an animated one. The things you think about when you’re bored in the movie theater!

LS: And, let me make another comment here. There is a scene where Kate escapes from a chamber where she’s been frozen for 12 years. She’s naked. She slithers out from a frosted up glass tube (frosted, so we can’t see anything worthwhile) to fall onto a floor covered in icy mist. In other words, she’s nude, but we don’t get to see anything! I’m not saying she has to show us the goods. But these movies are so friggin bad, it would have at least been a nice treat to see something that would have redeemed the ticket price! Throw us a friggin bone at least for sitting through this crap!

MA: So, yeah, Beckinsale is hot in this one, but she was actually so much better in CONTRABAND (2012) which I saw last week. That was a movie where she was actually allowed to act. Here, she just looks good and struts around shooting werewolves. But even her hot gun-carrying strut grows annoying after a while.

And I agree with you that Stephen Rea, an excellent actor, is completely wasted here as Dr. Jacob Lane, as well. It’s a dull role, and even someone with the talents of Rea can’t do anything with it. Nobody else in the cast did anything for me, as they all played like cardboard video game characters.

UNDERWOLD: AWAKENING is mind-numbing. I give it one knife, and it gets one knife as opposed to 0 knives because Beckinsale looks so good, and I don’t mean that to be a sexist comment. Her Selene is attractive and for a short while she’s fun to watch, but not for an entire movie with nothing else to offer. As both an action movie and a horror movie, UNDERWOLD: AWAKENING is an epic fail.

LS (imitating MA’s voice): “Beckinsdale looks so good, and I don’t mean that to be a sexist comment.” Look at you—Mr. Politically Correct. I’m not ashamed to say it’s not a sexist comment—it’s a friggin true comment.

MA: I agree it’s a true comment. I just don’t want to sound like I’m saying Beckinsale is only good because she’s hot. Although it doesn’t hurt that she is! (laughs).

LS: And—surprise! —I gave it the same rating. For the exact same reason. Kate is the only thing to recommend about this movie, and even that is self-defeating – because if people go see this movie for Kate, it will make money, and she will be condemned to make more bad movies that are beneath her considerable talents!

I also give it, one solitary knife.

One more thing. Sitting in the theater, watching this one in 3D and IMAX, it reminded me of the last time I’d seen an IMAX/3D flick, the last RESIDENT EVIL movie, RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (2010). And it amazes me that the more I think about it, the more it seems like it’s the same exact series. They both feature hot chicks shooting guns (in Jovovich’s case, it’s her indestructible character, Alice). They both have awful scripts and seem more like video games than movies. And both that last RESIDENT EVIL movie and this new UNDERWORLD movie end at a point where we are forced to endure the damned TO BE CONTINUED moment, where it’s clear the whole movie has just been setting us up for the next sequel. We’re like a room full of suckers playing the “find the ball under the cup” shell game, and wondering why we keep losing.

The only difference is, the RESIDENT EVIL movies are actually a tiny bit more fun, and I don’t hate them as much. But really, these are the same exact thing, except in UNDERWORLD it’s vampires and werewolves and in RESIDENT EVIL it’s zombies and the mysterious Umbrella Corp.

Which leads into the revelation that the next RESIDENT EVIL movie will be coming out this year as well. It’s just déjà vu all over again.

MA: Yeah, and as if to rub it in, the theater played the trailer for the next RESIDENT EVIL movie before the new UNDERWORLD movie started. Lardy-flippin-dah! Though I agree with you that the last RESIDENT EVIL movie was better than this movie.

Well, that’s it for now. See you next time here at Cinema Knife Fight!

LS: And remember, an inflated ticket price is a terrible thing to waste.

-END-

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING ~ 1 knife!

LL Soares also gives UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING ~ 1 knife!

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou: SATAN IN HIGH HEELS (1962)

Posted in 60s Movies, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Campy Movies, Hot Chick Movies, Melodrama, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , , on November 10, 2011 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This week’s feature presentation:

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS (1962)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made.  If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk till dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable – then I’ve seen it and probably loved it.   Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open.  Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes.

“They all went where the heat was hottest!” read the tagline for 1962s fabulously trashy musical/comedy/noir/sex/drama SATAN IN HIGH HEELS.  For the early Sixties, this really was pretty hot stuff, although it’s surprising just how entertaining this grindhouse classic truly is.  Chock full of wild and steamy situations and hateful dialogue and (gasp) good acting, this one screams to be rediscovered by someone like Quentin Tarantino, and rereleased upon an unsuspecting public.

Grayson Hall (as "Pepe") admires her newest singer, Stacey Kane (Meg Myles).

Our story opens on a cut-rate carnival, Stacey Kane is a burlesque dancer played by the pneumatic Meg Myles (COOGAN’S BLUFF-1968, and she had roles on SEARCH FOR TOMORROW, ALL MY CHILDREN, and THE GUIDING LIGHT—quite the soap opera diva).  Stacey lethargically bumps and grinds in front of a leering crowd of men, thrusting out her torpedoes.  She returns to her trailer to find her no-good drug dealer ex-boyfriend lurking, after getting out of prison.  He tells her how he’s given up the dope just for her, and he has nine hundred dollars a magazine paid him for “a piece about junkies,” plus he has a taxi waiting to take them to New York.  Being the sweetheart she is, Stacey promptly steals the money as well as his cab and leaves him high and dry.

Once in New York, she seduces the guy in the seat next to her on the plane, and he gets her an audition at a nightclub called Pepe’s, owned by, who else, “Pepe”—played by Grayson Hall, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in 1964’s NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, but is probably better known as Dr. Julia Hoffman on DARK SHADOWS.  Here, as Pepe, she’s a predatory lesbian (was there any other kind in 1962?) and she gives Stacey the once-over, then the job, as a singer at her fancy night club after her torch song audition.  Hall plays Pepe as a butch, bossy-pants wearing men’s suits and chain smoking.  And who is that answering the phone at the club and accompanying on piano, but blond and handsome Paul, played in fey/gay mode by Del Tenney, who stopped acting and produced/directed exploitation greats I EAT YOUR SKIN and THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (both 1964).  After Stacey’s audition, an onlooker, Arnold Kenyon, played by Mike Keene (Dr. Norman Prescott on SEA HUNT) asks if Stacey is available later that day.  She replies she is available “all day . . . and all night.”  Kenyon is the owner of the club and has an odd relationship with manager Pepe.  With no place to stay, what’s a predatory lesbian to do but offer Stacey her own apartment to live in, and Stacey is willing and able to shack up with her Sapphic supervisor.  So let the flirting and innuendo begin!  Pepe says, “Sleep’s a waste of time.”

Stacey Kane will turn on you when you least expect it!

Arnold ditches his wife, under the spell of Stacey Kane, but even though she has a fling with him, she’s much more interested in his son and heir, Larry, played by scrawny Robert Yuro (SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST – 1968, and a dead ringer for Humphrey Bogart).  Enter Stacey’s rival, the gorgeous but terrible actress, Sabrina, sort of playing herself.  Sabrina was an awful actress; she wasn’t hired for her thespian skills, but for her 41-inch bustline.  She was known as “Britain’s Jayne Mansfield,” and she does look great in her hourglass dresses accompanied by her white greyhounds.

In her debut at Pepe’s, Stacey wears an S&M corset, thigh-high boots, and a riding crop.  She proceeds to belt out a wild song while whipping and taunting all the men in the audience.  “I’ll beat you, mistreat you, till you quiver and quail.  The female of the species, much more deadly than the male!”  It’s a crazed scene, dripping with suggestion, and Myles dives into it full force, lashing out at paying customers and gyrating like her carny days are coming back.

Stacey goes after Larry, but Pepe disapproves.

Stacey: I need fresh air . . . and a man.

Pepe: Larry isn’t a man.

Stacey: Then, I’ll make him one.

Arnold dates Stacey, Larry dates Stacey, Pepe exchanges lustful glances with Stacey, and Stacey just loves Stacey, even taking time out to have a nude swim in the woods, which probably raised a few eyebrows in 1962.  And then, the drug dealer boyfriend reappears with a switchblade to get what’s owed him.  This isn’t gonna end well.

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS is a fun romp as written by John Chapman and Harold Bonnett and briskly directed by Jerald Intrator (STRIPORAMA-1953, ORGY AT LIL’S PLACE-1963).  The black and white cinematography is crisp and full of appropriate shadows.  Other than the abysmal (but hot) Sabrina, the cast is quite good.  Tenney vamps it up in full-on queen mode (Stacey calls him ‘Paullette’), and Grayson Hall is quite wonderful, dropping double entendres faster than she can light her cigarettes.

Pepe: This is my last season.  I’m buying a rocking chair and keeping a cat.

Sabrina (enters in low cut gown): Hello, Pepe!

Pepe: I’ve changed my mind.  Who wants a cat?

But the acting prize goes to the wonderful Meg Myles, who really puts her all into the role of Stacey Kane.  With her long hair displayed in at least ten different hair-dos, she’s sexy, funny, and a sheer delight as the bad girl who uses everybody to further her own career.  She makes wicked look like a hell of a lot of fun!  Thank you, Ms. Myles!

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS soundtrack album by Mundell Lowe

And the music calls out for a special mention.  This is easily one of the best jazz scores ever produced.  I even own it on a CD.  The be-bop was scored by famed jazz guitarist Mundell Lowe, who also did the scores for BILLY JACK (1971) and Woody Allen’s EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX, BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK (1972).  Lowe worked with greats like Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Charlie Parker and Carmen McCrae, as well as touring with the Andre Previn Trio.  This is one of my favorite scores ever, bouncy be-bop and slinky stripper themes featuring blaring trumpets, xylophones, and great ensemble sax work.  For a sample, watch the opening credits here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IktXk2PhwMk.  You won’t regret it.

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS is a well-made exploitation melodrama that will make you “quiver and quail.”  It’s fast moving and deserves to be better known, as does Meg Myles.

It gets three and a half predatory lesbians out of four.

I got my copy from the good folks at Something Weird Video.

© Copyright 2011 by William D. Carl

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou: WONDER WOMEN (1973)

Posted in 1970s Movies, 2011, Action Movies, B-Movies, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Campy Movies, Drive-in Movies, Hot Chick Movies, Kung Fu!, Low Budget Movies, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , on September 29, 2011 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

WONDER WOMEN (1973)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made . If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk till dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable – then I’ve seen it and probably loved it .  Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open . Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes.

What do you get when you take Nancy Kwan, the lead actress from the classic musical FLOWER DRUM SONG (1961) and THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG (1960), Ross Hagen, the lead actor of such marvels as SUPERCOCK (1975)(it’s about a rooster, now get your mind out of the gutter!) and AVENGING ANGEL (1985), toss in great exploitation actress Roberta Collins from CAGED HEAT (1974) and EATEN ALIVE (1977) with a little Sid Haig, that stalwart character actor who’s illuminated movies from SPIDER BABY (1968) and FOXY BROWN (1974) to this year’s swamp non-epic CREATURE (2011) along with Vic Diaz, who was probably in every movie ever filmed in the Philippines, such as VAMPIRE HOOKERS (1978) and PROJECT:KILL (1976)?  What happens when you feature a story full of bikini clad women, muscular jocks, a basement of mutants, mad scientists, and film it in the Philippines by Robert Vincent O’Neill, who helmed the 1970 classic BLOOD MANIA and drive-in staple ANGEL (1984)?  Well, you get WONDER WOMEN (1973) aka THE DEADLY AND THE BEAUTIFUL, a real mess of a movie that, nonetheless, is never, not even for one second, boring . This mish-mash of genres is proof positive that anyone could make any old movie they wanted in the early 1970s and somehow get the son-of-a-gun distributed.

When our story begins, we see a James Bond-type sequence with three topless women doing water ballet in colored water while other beauties practice their kung-fu in miniskirts or fill syringes . After a brief battle, the kung-fu ladies kick the topless synchronized swimmers unconscious and inject them with something . Next, we’re watching a polo match, and the same hot women shoot one player, pull another man off his horse and pummel him, and drive a car onto the polo fields and haul the bodies into it . Next, a lone black man playing basketball is surrounded by the same racially diverse team of beauties who shoot him with a dart gun . This is all before the credits, folks!  My curiosity has been piqued .

After the credits during a crowded jai-alai game (!), the star player is jock-napped by the women who kill a cop to steal a car and the unconscious man . They toss him into a coffin and gas him, loading him into a hearse marked Chapel By The Sea . Cue groovy wah-wah guitar and theme song (“We are Wonder Women, yes we are . Got that super power…Wonder Women!”)  The girls strip their groovy duds and don mourning dresses and veils . They take him to an island fortress where mad scientist Dr. Tsu (Nancy Kwan) is performing surgery in head to toe shower curtain plastic . Dr. Tsu is snatching the healthiest men around and transplanting their organs into rich, ugly people through her slimy, yet debonair lawyer and accountant Gregorious (Sid Haig) . They are aiming to make a fortune by planting the mega-rich Mr. Paulson’s brain in the jock’s body.

Nancy Kwan is the villainous Dr. Tsu in WONDER WOMEN!

Arriving on a jet plane is Mike Harber (Hagen), who rocks a great disco white suit . His cab driver is Vic Diaz, ubiquitous star of over 110 movies made in the Philippines, and he is just as sweaty and smarmy as ever . Harber is being offered ten thousand dollars by Lloyd’s of London to find the missing jai-alai player .

Meanwhile, Dr. Tsu’s henchwomen bicker amongst themselves, play chess, shoot guns, and play with their ‘toys:’ the muscular, hot men they’ve kidnapped . Sometimes, they go to Dr. Tsu’s shiny, color-flashing laboratory, chock full of things that light up and go beep beep boop boop, and they have brain sex . Attached to machines, they enjoy the sensations of sex without all that messy emotional aftertaste .

Harber visits Won Ton Charlie at the Chinese City of Death (I can’t make this stuff up!) . He is sent by Won Ton to No No the Fisherman at the local cockfighting ring, where we are privileged to witness a real sickening cockfight . In slow motion, nonetheless!  This is just after Harber is attacked by men with guns riding on mopeds with sidecars . Once again, people, I just can’t make this stuff up.

One of the Wonder Women, the gorgeous Maria De Aragon (BLOOD MANIA-1970; she was also Greedo, the would-be assassin in STAR WARS-1977) seduces Harber, and then points a gun at him . He knocks it out of her hand and they proceed to destroy the entire hotel room brawling with some of the hokiest martial arts moves ever . I mean, she really beats him up, slamming him through coffee tables and walls . It’s a hilarious scene, and it continues as he chases her through the streets of Manila . Keep an eye on the people on the streets . Obviously, they didn’t warn anyone that a movie was being shot or get permits or anything . Half the people look bemused and the other half watch with shocked wide-open mouths . And what the heck was that shot of the eel squiggling down the sidewalk?  Or that long parade of motorcycles and sidecars?  They hop into little tiny jeep taxis and have a medium speed car chase all over the city, complete with cars going into fruit stands and a flipping ox cart getting sideswiped!  Let’s not mention the 70s porn music that plays behind the mayhem.

Maria DeAragon kicks butt in WONDER WOMEN!

Of course, our hero drives her into a lake where she gets wet . And of course, she leads him back to the island fortress of Dr. Tsu (Gee, this sounds a lot like a Jess Franco flick.)  She gives him the slip, informing Tsu that he’s on the island . Dozens, maybe hundreds, of hot girls in mini-skirts with giant machine guns are unleashed to find Harber and bring him back . Now, we get the long gun battle through the jungles, but Harber’s a real manly stud and the girls can’t shoot for crap, so it’s up to Maria de Aragon to bring him to Dr. Tsu’s table where she’s eating fiery volcano soup . Really.

She shows him her Simon-esque lab, her vaults of organs, and her mutants in cells in the basement . Tsu explains, “I call this one Tyrannosaurus Rex, after the dinosaur, to remind me that evolution also made mistakes.”   The make-up on these monsters looks like something out of an R. Crumb cartoon, and some are just rubber masks. One tall guy has a blinking light bulb on top of his head encased in a plastic dome!  After all this, Dr. Tsu hooks up Harber to have brain sex with her . Wearing crazy Lite-Bright covered head-pieces, they hilariously emote ecstasy while lying back in red bean bag chairs and never touching!  Oh yeah, that’s hot.

The mutants break loose . Explosions happen . Gunfights start again . And, yes, there is a catfight .

Mmmmmm. Brain sex via electrodes in WONDER WOMEN (1973)!

Kwan plays it all straight, but Haig really seems to be having a great time portraying someone suave and intelligent with just a bit of swish in his mannerisms . I’m so used to seeing him play psycho rednecks, it was nice to see him in such a different kind of part . Ross Hagen was also the producer of this miracle of trash cinema, and he handles the role just fine . With his sun-tanned to leather skin and his gravelly voice, he seems like a second string Lee Marvin . Roberta Collins is also just fine, sniping and bitching with the other girls or pretending to know kung-fu . She really is quite stunning, as is Maria De Aragon, as are all the women at the fortress . It’s enough to maintain the attention of any red blooded heterosexual male.

The costumes are a riot and make this worth a rental by themselves . During surgery, Dr. Tsu and her nurses wear head-to-foot plastic suits loaded down with zippers . The women often sport bat-wing sleeves and color-coordinated mini-dresses . There’s a LOT of hair, either long past the shoulders or in gigantic afros .

WONDER WOMEN is truly a wonder of exploitation cinema . Full of brain transplants, mutants, hot girls with guns and knee-high boots, some nudity, clumsy kung-fu, sexual innuendo, slumming actors, a Thomas Crowne chess scene rip-off, car chases, bike chases, foot chases, animal cruelty, and more action than would normally fit in ten movies – it really is one of a kind. And somehow, the damn thing’s rated PG!  Now, I’m not saying it’s a good or well-made film, but it sure as hell entertains!

I saw my copy on a SOMETHING WEIRD DVR .

I give WONDER WOMEN three moped sidecars out of four.

© Copyright 2011 by William D. Carl

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Suburban Grindhouse Memories: LADY TERMINATOR!

Posted in 2011, 80s Horror, Action Movies, Cult Movies, Cyborgs, Exploitation Films, Grindhouse, Hot Chick Movies, Nick Cato Reviews, Suburban Grindhouse Memories with tags , , , , , on September 8, 2011 by knifefighter

SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES
“She Mates . . . Then She TERMINATES!“
By Nick Cato


June, 1989. I see an ad in the NY Daily News for what promises to be a real wild one. I venture out of the safety of my suburban neighborhood (alone) and hit the still-sleazy pre-Guiliani Times Square for what would be my final visit to the famed area before it was cleansed a few years later. Getting off the train around 36th Street, I see a HUGE billboard poster for LADY TERMINATOR, and attempted to peel it off. No luck. I was offered weed and other substances at least five times during my eight-block trek uptown to the theater. One guy claimed to have switchblades. I kept walking, keeping my eyes straight ahead, hoping I made it to the theater in one piece.

MAN, do I miss the old NYC.

LADY TERMINATOR played solo, a rarity for a Times Square feature at that time. I attended an afternoon showing, and the place had at least a dozen people in attendance…yet I was thrilled about ten minutes into the film when screams and comments were flying as loudly as any midnight screening of ROCKY HORROR could hope for.

Check out the plot of this Indonesian import: An anthropology student named Tania Wilson (played by the beautiful Barbara Ann Constable in her ONLY credited role) becomes possessed by some ancient queen—while exploring her underwater lair. In a surreal/dream-like sequence, Tania finds herself swimming one second then tied to a huge bed the next. An eel-like creature wiggles up the sheets and into her vagina, causing her to become possessed. She soon emerges on shore (stark naked) and interrupts a lame drinking party where she wastes a couple of losers. After taking one of their leather jackets (yeah, this follows THE TERMINATOR (1984) quite closely at this point), she begins an all-out attack that’d make Hurricane Irene green with envy. While it’s never clear why this ancient sea witch is bent on revenge, the audience (and I) really didn’t care. Tania (aka the LADY TERMINATOR) goes TOTALLY BALISTIC, creating a body count ten miles high via machine guns and a couple of brutal sex scenes (Remember the tag line: “She mates…then she TERMINATES!” One blurb that lives up to its promise).

Why this woman is turned into a cyborg-type revenge creature by an ANCIENT sea witch is anyone’s guess, but that’s not even a quarter of a quarter of the flaws in this insanely ridiculous action romp. And when Tania starts her killing spree, you’ll either overlook these flaws, ride with it and have the greatest time of your trash film life, or shut the DVD off and continue to be a dullard (This film is actually playing in NYC at a rare screening in a couple of weeks—I’m freaking out that I can’t attend— hence the inspiration for this week’s column).

What put the crowd into a screaming frenzy were several repeated scenes, especially one of Tania spraying a group of military men with machine gun fire: that had to be shown at least five times. I’m guessing this saved the film crew from having to shoot from different angles? Either way, this is the type of thing that makes “so-bad-they’re-good” movies memorable.

I’m a big fan of the original TERMINATOR. BUT, I can sit through LADY TERMINATOR a thousand more times without being bored, as it contains more car chases, explosions, gore, violence, nudity and sheer insanity than a dozen low budget rip-offs combined. (It should be noted that star Barbara Ann Constable is also credited as doing the make-up for the film, too).

The most amazing aspect of LADY TERMINATOR is it’s ability to entertain to the CORE, despite a plot that’s all over the place (or not even there, depending on who you talk to), dialogue that’s beyond inept, and question after question after question and confusion on top of confusion. SOMEHOW this pile of Indonesian trash WORKS. It’s a true miracle of low-budget filmmaking that I’ve been contemplating for the past twenty-two years, made worse by my second viewing via a VHS screening in the early 90s.

I think I’m finally ready to seek this out on DVD…although when I do it’ll be hard not to toss it in the DVD player for weekly viewings.

LADY TERMINATOR was one of the greatest exploitation films I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing on the big screen with my fellow Noo Yawk trash hounds at the near-end of the GENUINE grindhouse era.

I think I’m gonna go cry now…

© Copyright 2011 by Nick Cato

LADY TERMINATOR (Barbara Ann Constable) begins her body count that makes the original TERMINATOR look like an episode of SESAME STREET!

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Suburban Grindhouse Memories: LUNCH WAGON (1981)

Posted in 2011, Exploitation Films, Hot Chick Movies, Nick Cato Reviews, R-Rated Comedy, Suburban Grindhouse Memories with tags , , , , , on August 25, 2011 by knifefighter

SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES
30 Years Ago: Hormones and Whoremoans…
By Nick Cato

 

September, 1981: after having enjoyed screenings of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 and a re-release of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) only a few weeks earlier, it was time to take a break from the gore and scares.  Along comes a sex comedy titled LUNCH WAGON, with its enticing poster and newspaper ad (enticing for a bunch of thirteen year-old boys, anyway) nearly DARING us to try and get in without adult accompaniment.  And thanks to Staten Island’s Amboy Twin Cinema (who let ANYONE in, so long as they had CA$H), my buddies and I waltzed right in and were set for who-knew-what (remember this was a full year before the sex comedy craze that came after PORKY’S and FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH were released).  If not for the Amboy Twin Cinema (that has long since been replaced by a Perkins Restaurant), I wouldn’t have seen half the films I write about in this bi-weekly column.  Man do I miss that place!

Two girls (played by Pamela Jean Bryant and Roseann Katon, both with impressive exploitation film credits) are roommates who also happen to be auto mechanics (!).  They’re sick and tired of their sleazy boss spying on them as they dress for work (because, as you know, all female mechanics get undressed AT the garage), and when they confront him about their crappy salary and a host of other issues, the guy flips out and fires them.  Aggravated, our two lovely ladies stop for lunch at a local lunch wagon (owned by Dick Van Patten, who goes unaccredited here although there’s two other Van Pattens with higher billing) and, after a talk about their future, manage to buy the lunch wagon off of Van Patten and start their own business.  Realizing neither one of them can cook, they get their friend Diedre (played by Amazonia blonde Candy Moore, the woman who modeled for the cover of the classic album CANDY-O by THE CARS) then set up shop by a local construction site, where the girls start to get hit on by the workers and their business starts to take off.  Deidre is the funniest of the group: she has a thing for short, dorky guys, and manages to control them like a dominatrix in the sack…

While the boobage wasn’t as high as our young perverted minds were hoping for (nor the laughs for that matter), we were treated to a surprise—another unaccredited appearance by a band called TERRI AND THE ROUGH RIDERS.  One of the two songs they perform was quite catchy, and a few weeks after seeing the film I found a 12” single with said song (‘Mental Hopscotch’) by a band called MISSING PERSONS, and sure enough, it was the same band.  I’m assuming MOST of LUNCH WAGON’s budget went to paying this up-and-coming new wave act.  The band was made up of three members and two actors, one who our girl Diedre ends up dating in the film.

Despite the rockin’ tunes and cute cast (who call their lunch wagon “Love Bites”), the film doesn’t work too well as a comedy, and after a recent re-viewing, it doesn’t even hold up good as a teenage T&A feature, either.  And yet for some reason I still can’t figure out, it’s quite entertaining.  The screenwriter tried to deliver a bit of a story: a rival lunch wagon sets up shop near the same construction site, and of course it turns out to be a front for a bunch of jewel thieves.  Even with the added gangster goofballs, LUNCH WAGON only offers an occasional chuckle and an even rarer flash of flesh.  With everything it has going against it, the film is still worth it for the horrendous spandex outfits every female character seems to walk around in (which drew howls from the crowd, even in 1981), the great soundtrack, and it’s overall positive vibe: here’s a trio of girls with (seemingly) no future, making the best out of life by serving sandwiches at a construction site!  If that doesn’t make you feel better about your own mundane existence I don’t know what will…

The déjà-vu I felt while watching this the first time in 1981 must’ve been due to the aforementioned female cast, who had previously starred in exploitation and horror epics such as H.O.T.S. (1979), DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE (1980), THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS (1974), and even DEATH RACE 2000 (1975).  In researching this article, I discovered the beautiful Pamela Jean Bryant had just passed away in 2010, which added a sad undertone to my recent viewing.

If you want to taste a pre-PORKY’S sex comedy that’s easy on the comedy and the sex but big on horrible fashion and kick-ass music, give LUNCH WAGON a try.  (The film was also seen on late night cable TV under the title LUNCH WAGON GIRLS, and was released in Germany as HAMBURGER GIRLS).

Suddenly I’m in the mood for ham and Swiss on rye…

© Copyright 2011 by Nick Cato

The late great PAMELA JEAN BRYANT (the blonde in the white top), ROSEANN KATON (center), and Amazonian beauty CANDY MOORE are the LUNCH WAGON GIRLS

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TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Posted in 2011, 3-D, Action Movies, Blockbusters, CGI, Cinema Knife Fights, Daniel Keohane Reviews, Hot Chick Movies, Michael Arruda Reviews, ROBOTS!, Sequels with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2011 by knifefighter

(Editor’s note: Listen to Pink Floyd’s album “The Dark Side of the Moon” while you’re reading this, for an extra kick.)

 CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011)
By Michael Arruda and (special guest star) Dan Keohane

 

(The Scene: The interior of an office building. MICHAEL ARRUDA is seated at a table when suddenly the building begins to tilt dramatically, and people and objects begin to slide past MA, who remains calmly seated. One of the people grabs onto the table and manages to take a seat across from MA. It is DAN KEOHANE).

MA: Hey, Dan. Glad you could join me.

DK: No problem. (Brushing himself off) Thanks for giving me such a dramatic entrance.

MA: Well, this is one of the more dramatic scenes from TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, and I thought it would be a cool way to start our review. Besides, I thought you’d get a kick out of sliding down a tilting building.

DK: Well, when you know it’s fake, it’s all in good fun.

MA (looks uneasily at camera, and then over DK’s shoulder as two screaming people slide through a broken window into oblivion.) Yeah, fake. Anyway, ready to start our review?
DK: Yep.

MA: Welcome folks to another edition of Cinema Knife Fight. Today I’m joined by Dan Keohane, who’s filling in for L.L. Soares today (who’s gone to Norway to get us the lowdown on TROLLHUNTER), and we’ll be reviewing the new Transformers movie, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011).

I’ll say right off the bat that I had zero expectations for this one, other than I expected not to like it, but for the most part, I was entertained and felt like I got my money’s worth.

DK: Well, almost. Linda wanted to see the 3D version so I relented, being the chivalrous chap I am. Until the movie was about to start and she realized we were seeing TRANSFORMERS and not GREEN LANTERN (2011) as she’d thought. But, we already had the glasses and the popcorn, so we stayed. Good thing, too, otherwise this review would have been pretty confusing.

MA: Chivalrous? Sounds like you pulled a fast one. “Sure, honey, let’s go see (covers mouth with his hand) Trans-gree- lan-mers. Yeah, the 3D one.”

DK: I saw the first TRANSFORMERS movie at the drive-in a few years back and was pleasantly surprised, so I figured I would be entertained at the very least with this one (caveat, never saw the second one). If you came for alien robot monsters destroying things and CGI effects on steroids, then yeah, I guess it delivered.

MA: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, the third film in the TRANSFORMERS movie series by Michael Bay, gets its name from its opening sequences, in which we learn that a Transformers ship crash-landed on the dark side of the moon, and this ship was discovered by the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission. And the reason we have never gone back to the moon is because of the manipulations of evil Transformers here on earth who don’t want us going back. Until now. And this sets up the rest of the movie’s plot, as we switch to present day.

DK: I have to reluctantly toss in here that it was pretty entertaining how they messed with history like this, mixing footage from the original NASA moon landing with pretend stuff. They even had astronaut Buzz Aldrin in a cameo explaining the cover up. That was cute. Anyway, carry on….

MA: Yeah, the opening grabbed my interest, too. I liked the whole “dark side of the moon” bit, the whole NASA conspiracy, the “real” reason we got involved in the space race. I thought this was fun, and a strong way to open the movie. I also liked the way they did the historical footage, the mixture of actual JFK footage, for example, mixed in with new footage with an actor playing JFK. These opening scenes worked.

DK: Though they could have gotten better actors, or better makeup for the ones playing the presidents.

MA: Once we switch to present day, we meet up with Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) the young hero from the previous TRANSFORMERS movies. Sam is living with a new gorgeous babe Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) as he’s broken up with babe Megan Fox from the previous TRANSFORMERS movies. Gee, this guy has it rough! Sam is out of a job, and he’s depressed and frustrated about this, and during his job search he gets to utter one of the better lines of the movie, “I’ve saved the world twice, and I still can’t find a job!”

DK: Yeah, he had some cool lines. Hell, this movie was littered with clever lines. By the humans. The robots were annoying, but I jump ahead.

MA: Sam does find a job, working in the mailroom for a company run by an eccentric crackpot Bruce Brazos (John Malkovich). Malkovich is hilarious here and in top form. It’s too bad this character isn’t in the movie more. At this new job, Sam meets another crackpot Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong, basically doing a watered down variation of his Mr. Chow character from THE HANGOVER movies) who tells Sam of a conspiracy by the evil Decepticons that involves the dark side of the moon.

(VOICE from somewhere off to the right)

VOICE: Did someone mention Chow?

MA: Before Sam can learn more, Wang is sent hurtling by a Decepticon through his office window, falling to his death on the street below.

(On cue, a man hurtles past them and crashes through a window. He shrieks as he falls to the ground.)

DK (nodding approvingly): Very realistic. Well done.

MA: Yes— we —strive for realism here.

So, Sam decides to seek out answers, and he soon hooks up with old friends like former agent Simmons (John Turturo), and Autobots Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. However, he also has to deal with Secretary of Defense Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand), who, in a realistic turn, wants Sam to have no part in the operation since he’s a civilian who—in spite of his past—has no business working with the government at this level.

DK: I was SO psyched to see McDormand and Malkovich in this film. Both were terrific, and I agree, the film would have done well to have more Malkovich in it. I can never have enough of him.

MA: It turns out that on the dark side of the moon is the famed autobot Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy), and Optimus Prime must revive him so they can defeat the evil Decepticons once and for all. Of course, once Sentinel Prime is revived, there’s a twist in the story, which all leads to the ultimate battle between good transformers and bad transformers, with the humans in the middle. If I said this wasn’t predictable I’d be lying.

DK: Yeah… (cough…) I saw that coming too… yeah, I really did, sort of…. Nimoy had some cute lines as well, homage’s to his Spock character throughout.

MA: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON provides decent entertainment for 2/3 of its excruciatingly long running time of 157 minutes. Yes, this movie failed on the “butt comfort” meter. I was in pain by the end!

DK: Have to agree there. This movie was WAY too long. “Butt” seriously, what do you expect? They give someone like director Michael Bay a gabillion dollars and tell him to go ahead and do whatever the hell he wants. You get an exhausting two and a half hour movie with so much friggin’ violence, I actually checked the marquee to see if it was rated R. Nope, PG-13.

MA: You thought it was really violent? Either I’m getting desensitized, or you haven’t seen too many violent R-rated movies lately. I didn’t find it violent at all.

DK: Well, I was watching it with the idea that it’s kind of supposed to be aimed at kids. Wrong assumption I think, but in that light, it’s pretty intense. For an action film over all, not too bad.

MA: I have to give credit to Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger. They filled this movie with likeable characters who really held my interest for most of this movie, before it turns its attention to the Autobots and Decepticons. If this movie hadn’t been about Transformers, I would have loved it! But it could have been much worse. It could have been one of those colossal special effects bores, where there are no characters to speak of. This is not the case. The human element of this movie is very good.

DK: Yes! I really enjoyed the cast (most of them). I actually said at one point that this would have been a far better movie if they had fewer Transformers in it. At least, give them fewer lines. Actually, thinking about it now, the filmmakers seemed to do just that. Over such a long stretch of film, the Transformers themselves had very few speaking parts. In a way, I think Bay pulled a fast one on the producers and used their money to film quite a stunning alien invasion movie by writing the Autobots and Decepticons (man, those are the dumbest names—obviously I was never much a fan of the cartoon) just enough to get his paycheck.

MA: As I started to say before, I really liked the characters in this movie. Shia LaBeouf makes for a very likeable young hero as Sam. I think that of the three TRANSFORMER movies, this was probably his best performance.

DK: Agreed. LaBeouf was good. He plays his character straight, and his frustration with his job situation and girlfriend issues was well done.

MA: Speaking of best performances, John Turturo delivered the best performance in the movie as former agent Simmons, still interested in alien conspiracies, and as eccentric as ever. He was my favorite character by far, and although he is in the movie for a decent amount of time, I wish he had been in it more.

DK: Yeah, he was good, but I have to disagree. Along with Malkovich, my favorite was Alan Tudyk’s portrayal of Dutch. Tudyk (FIREFLY, DEATH AT A FUNERAL) has to be one of the funniest actors around. His fake German accent (and I think he tried to make it as bad as possible) and bizarrely out-of-place scene in a Russian bar was absolutely hilarious.

MA: Yeah, that was a good scene, but I still like Turturo better. His performance intrigued me more, while Tudyk just made me laugh.

Patrick Dempsey makes a good villain, as he plays Dylan, Carly’s boss, who at first just seems to be a weasel for putting the moves on another man’s girlfriend, but as the story unfolds, he’s up to things far more sinister.

Frances McDormand, as you would expect, is very good as Secretary of Defense Mearing. John Malkovich is hilarious as Bruce Brazos, Sam’s weird boss. While Malkovich is terrific, sadly the role is a thankless one and is nothing more than an extended cameo, since Bruce disappears for the entire second half of the film, which is too bad, because he’s a hoot.

Kevin Dunn and Julie White return as Sam’s parents, and I found them much less annoying in this movie than in the previous ones, mostly because their screen time has been greatly reduced. However, that being said, the brief scenes they share with Sam are excellent. Ken Jeong is also on hand as the outrageous Jerry Wang. Again, Jeong pretty much reprises his Mr. Chow shenanigans from THE HANGOVER movies, though here he’s giving us the PG-13 version.

VOICE: Did someone mention Chow?

(Mr. Chow is slowly crawling toward them, through the debris, when he loses his grip and slides through the window again, with a scream)

DK: Yea, the guy is a scene-stealer, especially in the bathroom scene (of course), but the actor seems grossly pigeon-holed into this kind of role. Like you say, though, every actor in this film, from the soldier grunts to Jeoong’s psycho-scientist, gave 110% to their roles. Everyone seemed to be having a BLAST making this movie.

(On cue, there is a huge explosion outside.)

DK: Even the sound effects seem real.

(Behind DK, blood spatters a glass window.)

MA (winces): Where was I?

DK: The cast.

MA: Yes, this is a veteran cast that does not disappoint. To Michael Bay and Ehren Kruger’s credit, they really stock this film with likeable characters. The problem is eventually they all take a back seat to the Transformers, which I find silly and boring.

DK: Me too. Visually, they were stunning to watch (because of the very cool CGI, NOT because of the 3D glasses).

MA: What would have made this movie succeed at a higher level, would have been including more of these characters at the end of this movie. During the final battle, Sam and Carly are pretty much the only main characters directly involved. Had John Turturo, Frances McDormand and John Malkovich also been there in on the action, we’d be talking about a much more entertaining movie.

DK: I have to disagree there. The soldiers (Josh Duhamel and Lester Speight, to name just two) were the main characters in the second half of the movie.

MA: I know. That’s why I didn’t like the second half as much, because I didn’t like these characters as much, nor did I consider them main characters.

DK: Well, the soldiers are involved at the end because, once the bad alien robots take over Chicago, it becomes a war movie. Sam and his always-stainless Stepford girlfriend were simply the visual constants running among the cast. For a war movie, it was pretty awesome to watch.

MA: Speaking of Stepford girlfriends, one cast member who doesn’t fare as well is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, as Sam’s beautiful girlfriend Carly. Yes, she’s absolutely stunning and beautiful, but she’s also strictly eye candy here. Not that her acting was necessarily bad, because it wasn’t. She’s fine. She’s just rather dull, and if not for her beauty, we wouldn’t be talking about her. Another gripe, though not her fault, is during the film’s climactic battle, she’s running around in heels!

DK: Listen, this movie is geared to guys of our generation who watched the original cartoon (me being the exception), but it’s also aimed at teenage boys. Whiteley’s Carly is not a real character in any sense of the word. In fact, if we want to add any depth to the plot—just for kicks, because Bay and company had no intention to have this be the case—Carly is not real, she’s a figment of Sam’s imagination, a wish fulfillment of a young boy in a man’s body. Why else could she have been in a war zone for so long, in a building which was crushed and destroyed, tossed out a window, nearly crushed by a hundred blocks of concrete and a bus, and yet not have one stain or blemish on her flimsy outfit? Because she’s not real. Did you ever wonder why no one ever spoke to her except Sam and the bad guy (and, being the Bad Guy, he uses Sam’s delusions against him!). Actually, that’s quite clever. I’m a clever guy, did you know that?

MA: Well, you heard it here first, folks, on Cinema Knife Fight, the truth behind Carly’s character! Pretty neat theory. I don’t buy it, but it’s a fun theory. I mean, I think John Malkovich’s character talks to her at one point, doesn’t he? As does John Turturro’s character, and Frances McDormand— okay, toss out that theory!

There’s also a veteran cast voicing the Transformers. Peter Cullen returns once more as the voice of Optimus Prime. Cullen has voiced Optimus in all three movies, and also did back in the animated cartoon series from the 1980s. Cullen is also the voice of Eeyore from the WINNIE THE POOH cartoons.

DK: Really? I like Eeyore. He’s funny.

(Eeyore goes sliding past them.)

EEYORE: These things always happen to me.

(EEYORE slides off the edge of the building.)

DK: Was that—?

MA: Nah!

Hugo Weaving voices the villainous Megatron— we’ll be seeing Weaving soon as The Red Skull in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER and Sentinel Prime is voiced by Leonard Nimoy, which opens the door for a bunch of STAR TREK in-jokes in the movie, as Dan mentioned way up at the beginning of this review. At one point, Mr. Spock is seen on TV in a STAR TREK episode, and as Sentinel Prime, Nimoy gets to deliver one of his more famous lines from the STAR TREK movie series, from STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982).

So, it’s quite the cast, and that took me quite a long time to get through. Nearly 157 minutes!

DK: I had to go pee at one point. That’s a long movie.

MA: I enjoyed the screenplay by Ehren Kruger. The first half of the movie was very witty and good for some laughs, and Kruger did a nice job creating a bunch of likeable characters.

Even director Michael Bay gets some high marks for this one. The movie looks great, the action scenes are decent and entertaining, and for the most part they don’t go on too long.

DK: Yes, visually this movie was amazing and the scenes were short enough to not drag on. It’s just that there were so many of them.

MA: I loved the sequence in the tilting office building. It was completely unbelievable, but it was still fun!

DK: Totally over the top, but a hoot to watch.

MA: I saw the movie in 3D, too, though I knew I was going to see TRANSFORMERS and not GREEN LANTERN, and once again—so much so, I’m growing tired of saying so—the 3D failed to impress. It added nothing to the movie. In fact, again, midway through, I forgot I was even watching it in 3D. So, if you have the choice, save your money and see it in 2D. I didn’t really have the choice, because the 2D version was playing only once and at an oddball time, compared to the two convenient showings of the 3D version.

DK: Definitely, yes. The 3D is pointless here. Actually, one of theaters in Worcester had more showings of the 2D version than the 3D, which tells me even the theaters are growing weary of this gimmick.

MA: So, what’s wrong with TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON? The biggest thing wrong with it is it’s about TRANSFORMERS. I mean, regardless of the humongous budget, the impressive special effects and the veteran cast, this is, after all, just a big-budget big-screen kids’ movie about giant robots. It’s difficult to take this film seriously, and I certainly can’t classify it as satisfying adult entertainment.

Sure, this movie is probably the darkest of the series, but how dark can a TRANSFORMERS movie be? You know Megatron is not about to mercilessly murder our young heroes. Sure, he’s going to try but—I mean, it’s Scooby Doo stuff! Megatron would have taken over the world, if not for “those meddling kids!”

Lastly, the relationship between Sam and Carly is a microcosm for what’s lacking in these TRANSFORMERS movies. Sam is desperately in love with Carly, so much so, we’re supposed to believe he’d go to the ends of the earth and risk his life to save hers. Really? Why does he love her so much? Is it because she’s absolutely beautiful? Is that why he loves her? Because she’s an incredibly hot babe? It must be, because they share no on-screen chemistry. Nothing we see them do convinces us they’re in love. Their relationship is eye candy without depth, and that is the central problem with this movie.

You want me to care deeply? To really care about what’s going on? Then give me real characters, real relationships that I can believe in, give me a reason why two young people love each other so much, and I’ll return to your movie series time and time again, because I’ll care about your characters and won’t sleep unless I know what’s happened to them. If this were the case, then we’d be talking about raising TRANSFORMERS up a few notches.

DK: Okay, you just spent WAY too much time talking about Sam and Carly. Their relationship is merely there to serve as wish fulfillment for teenage boys. Period. And to show the mental delusions of Sam, who has suffered such serious post-traumatic stress from saving the world, that he invented a new girlfriend.

MA: I disagree. Sam is driven in this movie by his “love” for Carly. I’m simply saying I didn’t find this “love” believable, and had I found it believable, I would have liked this movie more.

DK: No, the driving force behind the character Sam is to keep moving before the clowns in the walls can get him and eat him up.

MA: Oka-ay.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON could have been much worse. As it stands, it’s a fairly entertaining movie that’s got enjoyable characters, a humorous script, decent action sequences and eye-popping special effects, but at the end of the day, it’s all fluff, the stuff that 10-year-old boys dream about. I give it two and a half knives.

DK: One point to make, and worth seeing, if you take a 10-year-old boy to this movie, keep one thing in mind: it’s pretty violent. You see innocent people in the streets of Chicago blown to pieces over and over again. Two of the good Transformers die pretty horrible deaths, one execution-style. It might actually be too traumatic a movie for kids under 10. Seriously.

MA (laughing): Seriously? I mean, there’s no blood in these scenes at all. I wouldn’t classify them as violent. However, the film is rated PG-13, so parents probably shouldn’t be taking their 10 year-olds in the first place!

DK: Trying to take what little kids will think (which isn’t hard, being a dad myself) into account, I thought the Chicago invasion and liberation section of the movie (the last third) kicked major butt. And the Transformers spoke very little, which helped a lot. And it could have been a shorter film, I agree. But despite all the money, all the special effects and all the cool actors, well, I kind of wished we’d gone to see GREEN LANTERN instead, because I didn’t enjoy this one much.

MA: Actually, GREEN LANTERN was worse! The characters in this movie were much more entertaining than the characters in GREEN LANTERN.

DK: But dinner was good afterwards (at least until the police called because, unbeknownst to me, I knocked over my neighbor’s mailbox on the way to the movies—but that’s another story for another time). I give it two knives.

MA: Well, that about wraps things up here. Thanks again, Dan, for filling in for L.L. today.

DK: Happy to do it. It was fun. Speaking of fun, now I can ride the slide.

MA: Excuse me?

(DK lets go of his chair and slides down the tilted building towards the edge.)

MA: No, Dan, wait!

DK: Geronimo!!! (DK slides off the edge of the building.)

MA: That’s not good.

(Cell phone rings. MA answers it.)

MA: Hey, L.L.! Yeah, we’re just finishing up now. Dan? Oh, he’s—he’s not here right now. He’s—

well, how do I put this?

(Suddenly DK flies into view outside window and gives MA a thumbs-up while in midair.)

DK: Trampoline! I’m okay! (DK falls out of sight once again.)

MA: He just had so much fun he had to go off and jump around some. You know Dan. Oh yeah, I’m sure he’ll be back to do this again sometime. (DK flies by again, dancing with Eeyore.) I hope.

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and Daniel G. Keohane

Michael Arruda  gives TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON - -  2 and a half knives!

Dan Keohane gives TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON - – 2  knives!

1 Comment »

BAD TEACHER

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Comedies, Hot Chick Movies, LL Soares Reviews, R-Rated Comedy, Sexy Stars with tags , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: BAD TEACHER (2011)
By L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: The teacher’s lounge of a typical American middle school. A PRINCIPAL, a short, wiry man with glasses, is standing before the group of teachers, giving them a pep talk for the day to come. The teachers include an overweight woman (TEACHER 1), a muscular ex-football player (TEACHER 2) and a peppy young go-getter (TEACHER 3) who can’t sit still. There are other teachers, but the rest are a bunch of faceless idiots.)

PRINCIPAL: And so I zipped up my pants. And she said, “So when is Christmas, already?”

(The entire room explodes with laughter)

(L.L. SOARES enters the room, looking confused)

PRINCIPAL: May I help you, sir?

LS: Is this the teacher’s lounge? I was supposed to meet Michael Arruda here, to review a movie.

PRINCIPAL: Mr. Arruda has been sent to the high school across the street. He was needed there. So you’re the other substitute teacher, huh?

LS: Me? Naw, I ain’t no teacher. I’m just here to talk about the movie, BAD TEACHER, that’s all.

TEACHER 1: BAD TEACHER? That sounds horrible!

TEACHER 2: As if the teaching profession doesn’t have enough obstacles. Low pay, long hours, unruly kids. Now we have to deal with bad P.R. in the shape of a movie “comedy” making fun of us.

TEACHER 3: This is unacceptable.

LS: Calm down, people. It’s only a movie. And I didn’t make the damn thing. I’m just here to review it.

PRINCIPAL: Well, as I told you, Mr. Arruda has been sent off. You’ll have to do this one by yourself.

LS: Err, okay.

PRINCIPAL: Okay? What are you waiting for? We don’t have all day. We’ve got classes to teach. If you’re going to review this BAD TEACHER movie, you had best do it quickly.

(PRINCIPAL moves out of the way and ushers LS to the front of the room. The TEACHERS watch with rapt attention)

TEACHER 3: Well? Cat got your tongue?

LS: Cool your jets. I just never spoke in front of a roomful of teachers before, that’s all.

TEACHER 1: We’ll be grading you, you know.

TEACHER 2: So far, I’m not impressed. Stand up straight! Stop slouching.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

So BAD TEACHER stars Cameron Diaz as this mean lady who got into teaching because she wanted summers off and short hours and she wanted to put as little work into it as possible.  She just took the job to kill time before her big wedding to a rich guy who will be her sugar daddy for the rest of her life.

TEACHER 1: What the heck kind of attitude is that? Teaching isn’t an easy profession!

TEACHER 2:  “As little work as possible?” What’s that about? A teacher’s work is never done! I’m gonna beat you up after school!

TEACHER 3: I’m sorry, I just find this review deplorable. If I had to grade it right now, I’d give him an “F.”

LS: C’mon, you guys. Gimme a chance here! I just started talking.

PRINCIPAL: Now, now, people. Give the gentleman a chance here. Don’t be so quick to judge!

LS: Thank you.

PRINCIPAL: Although, I’m not very impressed, either. Get on with it.

LS: Yeah, sure. So her fiancée, Mr. Moneybags, decides to break it off before the ceremony. He has figured out she’s only in it for his moolah (with the help of his annoying mother), and he’s appalled that she really isn’t even interested in his constant talk of opera. She was just humoring him to get to his cash.

TEACHER 1: I love opera.

TEACHER 3: Me, too. Like WEST SIDE STORY and THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

TEACHER 1: No, that’s not opera. Those are musicals!

TEACHER 3: It’s not very nice to contradict a person.

PRINCIPAL: Ladies, ladies! We have a guest here.

LS: So, without a walking ATM to marry, poor Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz’s character) has to go back to teaching for real, to support herself. She’s horrified by this turn of events, but is hell-bent on finding another rich guy to hook on to. She decides the reason why she can’t keep a man is because she needs bigger boobs. So she looks into getting breast implants. But she can’t afford it, so she comes up with all kinds of schemes to get the money.

These include a car wash for the 7th graders, where she shows up in short-shorts and a skimpy top and “washes cars,” as the kids’ fathers look on, drooling.

TEACHER 1: That sounds like god-awful behavior.

TEACHER 3: Abominable!

TEACHER 2: I dunno, this movie suddenly sounds kind of good to me.  (Flexes his muscles)

LS: When a new substitute teacher shows up, Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), it turns out he’s the heir to a fancy watch company, and he may just be the man of Elizabeth’s dreams.

PRINCIPAL: You know, you look a little like Justin Timberlake yourself, young man.

LS: Why thank you!

PRINCIPAL: If he lost all his hair and put on another 200 pounds.

TEACHER 1: And if his face got stuck in a lawn mower!

(The TEACHERS erupt with laughter)

LS: That’s not very nice.

PRINCIPAL: Life can’t always be a bowl of cherries, young man. You should have learned that as a youngster.

LS: Yeah, yeah. So bitchy Elizabeth Halsey suddenly becomes all nice and perky, trying to get herself a new sugar daddy. But Scott is very square, and annoyingly upbeat. They don’t have a lot in common, except he has access to a lot of money, and Elizabeth wants some.

There are some other teachers in Elizabeth’s orbit. One is Lynn Davies (Phyllis Smith, who some people will recognize as Phyllis from the NBC series, THE OFFICE), who is sad and overweight and who latches on to Elizabeth, trying to be her friend. Instead, Elizabeth bosses her around, telling her to do things like smoke pot and approach men in a bar. The thing is, Phyllis seems to like hanging around with Elizabeth.

TEACHER 1: She sounds like a lovely character.

LS: There’s also Russell Gettis (Jason Segel), who has the hots for Elizabeth, and they flirt, but she won’t give him a chance because he’s a struggling gym teacher who doesn’t have the big payday she’s looking for. Even though she won’t give him the time of day, he’s rather “earthy” and much more like her, personality-wise, than the other teachers.

TEACHER 2: Hey, I’m a gym teacher, too. Do you think Cameron Diaz would like me?

LS: I doubt it. There’s also Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), the hyperactive teacher across the hall from Elizabeth, who starts out trying to be Elizabeth’s friend, but who turns into her arch-nemesis. Amy is the kind of teacher who likes to role-play and dress up in costumes and do “zany things” to keep the kids interested and learning. Where Amy is perky and upbeat, Elizabeth is lazy and mean. Amy starts to try to look into some of the more shady things Elizabeth has been up to, in an attempt to get her fired.

TEACHER 3: Amy Squirrel? What a funny name. But she sounds like a wonderful, motivated teacher!

LS: Yeah, yeah. So Elizabeth finds out that if her class gets the best test scores in the school on the upcoming state exams, she can win a bonus that will pay for her implants, and hopefully make Scott hers. So she suddenly stops showing movies every day and instead starts drilling her kids, getting them ready to win her that bonus. She even cooks up a scheme to steal the test answers from a goofy state official, Carl Halabi (the funny Thomas Lennon, who is probably best known as Lt. Dangle on the Comedy Central show RENO 911).

So does Elizabeth get her boobs and the dim bulb substitute teacher? Or does she have a change of heart and stop her gold-digging ways to try and find a real relationship,  not based on the size of a man’s wallet?

Well, this is a big, Hollywood movie. So what do you think?

TEACHER 1: I don’t have a clue.

TEACHER 3: Me, neither. Although this movie suddenly sounds very romantic to me!

LS: I actually liked BAD TEACHER. It wasn’t great, but it was a nice enough diversion. I liked Cameron Diaz in this role, and I like it when she does comedy.  Elizabeth Halsey is mean and superficial, and she’s the exact opposite of the super-sweet character Diaz played in one of her biggest movies, THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998).

She’s still hot, and she’s funny playing a mean character. I just wish she had been even meaner and more, well, bad!

The rest of the cast is actually pretty good. I didn’t care for Justin Timberlake’s “Gee Gosh Golly” character that much, but he plays the role well enough. Phyllis Smith is very funny, and I always enjoy an appearance by Jason Segel. He’s one of the best things in the movie. And John Michael Higgins as Principal Snur is also very good. But, aside from Diaz, the best character here is Lucy Punch as Amy Squirrel. She’s a decent nemesis and brings a lot of energy to her performance. I thought she was pretty funny.

There’s also a subplot about one of the kids being shy and unpopular and not knowing how to talk to the girl he has a crush on. At one point Diaz’s character gives him some pointers. But for the most part, the kids aren’t all that interesting, except for Kaitlyn Dever as goody-two-shoes Sasha Abernathy (Dever has also been very good as the girl Loretta on the FX series, JUSTIFIED, this season).

The direction by Jake Kasdan is serviceable enough. This isn’t a great movie, but it’s okay. And the script by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg has its moments. But, for an R-rated comedy, BAD TEACHER seemed to be holding back, to me. This movie never really go far enough. Here, it seems like they’re playing it safe. Never going far enough to really shock anyone. And for that reason, it’s not as funny as it could have been. I give it two and a half knives. It’s a fun movie, and certainly not horrible. But it could have been so much funnier.

PRINCIPAL: So that’s it? That’s all you’ve got?

LS: Yeah, I guess I’m done.

TEACHER 1: What a horrible review. You’re an awful man!

TEACHER 2: Yeah, I don’t like him at all.

TEACHER 3: Yeah, let’s escort him off school property, already!

PRINCIPAL: Well, we gave you your chance, but it doesn’t seem like you’ve made any friends here. I think you should go.

LS: But I gave you an honest review. Isn’t that worth anything?

PRINCIPAL: Actually, no. It’s pretty worthless.

TEACHERS: OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

PRINCIPAL: They’re getting unruly. I really suggest you leave.

LS: Okay, okay. (leaves the room to hoots and boos)

PRINCIPAL: I thought he’d never leave.

TEACHER 1: Me, neither.

(They all huddle toward a closet, where the PRINCIPAL opens the door, to reveal MICHAEL ARRUDA, tied up to a chair and looking terrified)

PRINCIPAL: And now, staff, I will teach you how to properly discipline a bad student.

TEACHER 1 (licks her lips): Yes, please show us, Mr. Snoodle.

TEACHER 2: And don’t’ leave anything out. I’m taking notes.

(TEACHER 3 faints from the excitement)

-THE END-

© Copyright 2011 by L.L. Soares

L.L. Soares gives BAD TEACHER - 2 and a half knives!

Michael Arruda has mysteriously disappeared this week. If you find him, please let us know.

1 Comment »

SUCKER PUNCH!

Posted in 2011, Action Movies, Cinema Knife Fights, Dreams, Fantasy Films, Highly Stylized Films, Hot Chick Movies with tags , , , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: SUCKER PUNCH (2011)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(The Scene: The skies above a World War I battlefield, filled with fighter planes and huge zeppelins. There are the sounds of gunfire and bombs exploding. A close-up on one of the zeppelins reveals MICHAEL ARRUDA & L.L. SOARES are flying the giant airship.)

MA: Wow! What a view!

LS (Looking at magazine with scantily clad women battling soldier zombies on the cover): I’ll say!

MA: Put that away! We have a movie to review! (Swipes magazine from LS).

LS: Hey! I was just getting to the best part!

MA (looks at opened centerfold LS had been eyeing): I’ll say! Anyway, let’s get to today’s movie. I’ll start since you’re flying this thing

LS: Me? I thought you were flying it.

MA: I’m not flying it!

LS: Errr..maybe it’s flying itself?

MA: I hope not. I seem to remember something from history called the Hindenburg. Try to figure out how to fly it. I’ll start the review.

LS: Sure. There must be a manual around here somewhere.

MA: Today we’re reviewing SUCKER PUNCH (2011) , the new fantasy action movie from writer/director Zack Snyder, the man who brought us the ambitious superhero movie WATCHMEN (2009).

LS: I liked WATCHMEN a lot. Snyder also directed 300 (2006) and the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004). I thought those two movies were just so-so. (While looking for manual he discovers another magazine, this one with gorgeous busty babes battling a dragon on the cover. He grins ear to ear.)

MA: SUCKER PUNCH is a feast for the eyes, full of wild visuals like the one we’re flying through right now, a World War I battle scene with fighter planes and zeppelins filling the sky, and hot babes and soldier zombies battling it out on the ground below. However, the story SUCKER PUNCH tells is average at best, and the movie isn’t strong enough to succeed on the strength of its visuals alone, and so the final product is a mixed bag.

LS: The story is average? Did we see the same movie? I wasn’t aware there was an actual storyline at all in this movie! I must have missed something.

MA (sees LS looking at magazine): I’m not surprised.

The film gets off to a great start in an opening montage that shows Baby Doll (Emily Browning) and her little sister grieving over the death of their mother, and their evil Stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) attacks them, and in the fight the little sister is killed, and the Stepfather brings the nearly mute Baby Doll (from shock, perhaps?) to an institution for mentally disturbed women. This sequence plays like a music video, with lots of music and no dialogue, but it worked for me. It was a neat little piece of storytelling, a cool way to open the film.

LS: Are you kidding? I agree, the opening plays like a music video. But that’s not a good thing. I found it incredibly annoying that there was no dialogue at all throughout his section, and characters do things like move in slow motion as they run. It was just awful! I wanted to know more about this back story. I wanted to know more about what was going on. But it’s superficial and stylized to the point of being soulless. What this did for me was turn me off to the movie right from the beginning. I didn’t care about any of these characters.

MA: Wow. You’re harsh. We’re talking about the first five minutes of the movie here, not the entire thing. I thought it worked.

At the institution, the Stepfather arranges for Baby Doll to have a lobotomy (nice guy!) which will happen in a few days once the doctor arrives. There’s then a jarring transition in which we learn that Baby Doll’s not really in an institution at all, but in a  whorehouse, where the girls perform dances and entertain the guests. Baby Doll learns this from two of the women she meets there, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and Rocket (Jena Malone).

Now, I don’t want to give anything way, but I didn’t buy this transition one bit, and I knew from the get go where this film was going, and so the ending wasn’t much of a surprise for me.

LS: There were supposed to be surprises in this movie? That’s funny, because I sure didn’t see them. Just about every aspect of this movie was completely predictable. I saw the trailer for this movie like 20 times before the movie came out. I thought it looked pretty lame. Turns out almost everything you need to know about the movie is in the trailer. And it’s nice and short. I could have skipped the movie entirely and still written my part of this review.

MA: I’m guessing you didn’t like this one?

Anyway, the girls’ pimp is Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), the man we saw as the orderly who arranged the lobotomy with the stepfather, and he’s a sufficiently slimy fellow, and there’s also Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) who serves as the girls’ madame. The whole thing plays like a dream, and nuff said, I guess.

LS: Wow, that sounds exactly like another movie we saw recently, INCEPTION. Yeah, the lame music video beginning was supposed to be the “real world,” then we get treated to the whorehouse stuff which is a dream, and the battle sequences which are dreams within dreams. The whole time I just wanted to wake up and see another another movie!

I like Gugino, though. She deserves better than this.

Another odd thing is that the setting is a whorehouse, and yet we see no signs of anyone having sex. Ever. Instead, the girls just do dances for the clients that we never get to see, either. The entire setting is a cheat. Of course the PG-13 rating doesn’t help matters. But why set a story in a whorehouse, if you’re going to keep it so sanitized?

MA: The gimmick in this one has Baby Doll, whenever she’s about to dance, close her eyes and at these times she finds herself in a fantasy world where she meets the Wise Man (Scott Glenn). He tells her that in order for her to escape, she must find five things—a map, fire, a knife, a key, and the fifth thing is a mystery . She’ll have to figure that out for herself later. Well, thanks dude! That was helpful!

Baby Doll then gets to fight three giant monster samurais, in what I thought was one of the movie’s best sequences.

LS: This is the one point where I thought the movie was going to deliver the goods. Carla Gugino as the Dance Instructor/Madame plays an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape player. Music begins. It’s Bjork’s amazing song “Army of Me,” which if you’re familiar with it, is a powerful song that sets a real mood. Then Baby Doll is transported to a Buddhist temple, where she goes up against three giant monsters dressed as samurais. All of this was pretty cool. I was totally getting into it. Unfortunately, this is the only scene that really captured my imagination. The movie didn’t really start for me until this scene. Unfortunately, when the scene’s over, so is the best part of the movie. They should have just released this one scene and deleted the rest of the movie.

MA: SUCKER PUNCH is similar in structure to SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010), as both movies play out like a video game. In that one, Scott Pilgrim has to battle “seven evil exes” and here Baby Doll has to gain five items. The difference is SCOTT PILGRIM was a comedy and the screwball antics were easier to accept, because the film was loony. Here, it’s supposed to be a serious action movie, but with so much of the story based on complete dream-like fantasy, it’s hard to take seriously, and it doesn’t work as well.

LS: The difference is SCOTT PILGRIM had an actual story to it. It had developed characters. It used the video game aspects in an innovative way. I thought it was cleverly done. As for SUCKER PUNCH, it has no story, one-dimensional characters, and everything that happens is pretty predictable. They put a lot of money into SUCKER PUNCH’s visuals, and there are parts that look great, but they FORGOT TO BUY A DAMN SCRIPT!

MA: So, Baby Doll tells her friends about her plan to escape, and they agree to help her so they can all escape, and what happens is each time they go for an item in “real life” Baby Doll closes her eyes and they all enter the fantasy world of the Wise Man where he tells them how to get the item their looking for.

For example, the map they’re looking for is in Blue’s office, but in the fantasy world, they have to battle World War I soldier zombies to steal the map. When it comes time for the fire, they have to steal a cigarette lighter, but in the fantasy world, they must battle a dragon.

LS: Actually, whenever Baby Doll closes her eyes and goes into the battle sequences, she is supposed to be doing a provocative dance in the “whorehouse” reality that hypnotizes everyone who sees it. We never see her actually dance. I would have liked to see that at least once. Everyone goes on and on about how great a dancer she is – but we never see proof of this.

MA: That’s a good point. I figured we’d see her dance at least once, but nope!

So that’s how the movie goes, as the girls battle their way through these different set pieces to get the items they need to escape, and whether or not they ultimately make it of course is what the ending is all about.

Again, visually I loved SUCKER PUNCH, but its story needed a lot of work. I didn’t buy the “whorehouse” bit at all. It was so obviously dreamlike that you just knew where this film was going in terms of its revelations at the end.

LS: Another giveaway is that in the “real world” things are drab looking (but just as stylized), but in the whorehouse world, all of the girls are perfectly made-up and look like supermodels. Not once does a character smear her mascara or smudge her lipstick. In the battlefield, they’re even more stylized. Sure, they look great, but they also could have easily been replaced by CGI characters.

MA: And as much as I liked this film visually, I thought the battle sequences fell flat. I liked the first battle a lot, between Baby Doll and the three giant monster warriors. It was a really cool scene. But later, when the movie should have taken off, in the big World War I battle sequence, I was unimpressed. While this grand scope of battlefield images with the planes and zeppelins is certainly satisfying, I thought that the actual battle scenes between the babes and the zombies were mediocre and flat.

(A ZOMBIE SOLDIER pops up from behind some machinery)

ZOMBIE: Brains! Brains! I wish someone with brains had written this movie!

LS: When we see the giant samurai creatures, it’s all new to us. And it looks great. By the time we get to the other battles with other kinds of creatures, it’s old hat. And the battle scenes are repetitive and monotonous. When even the action gets boring, you know there’s a problem.

MA: Yes, the same can be said about the dragon sequence. While the dragon itself was very menacing and cool-looking, the actual battle was hardly exciting. So, director Zach Snyder gets a gold star for creating amazing and memorable images in this movie, but in terms of generating suspense he doesn’t do so well.

The one scene that I thought was really suspenseful was towards the end, when Blue Jones discovers that the girls are trying to escape and deals with them accordingly. This was a suspenseful, violent and dark scene, one that succeeded in making me feel that what was going on was real, but there weren’t many of these true scenes in the movie at all. As a total package, I liked WATCHMEN much better than SUCKER PUNCH.

LS: There’s no comparison. WATCHMEN was based on a legendary graphic novel and had a solid, well-developed story, and fleshed out characters. You cannot compare it to cinema bubblegum like SUCKER PUNCH.

MA: The story was just average. I liked the idea of Baby Doll entering the fantasy world, and I liked how it gave the film the excuse to do all these neat battle scenes, but the scenes weren’t as good as they could have been. The bigger problem with the story is that the reality Baby Doll is escaping from, the whorehouse, isn’t real. Had this part of the story remained rooted in reality, I would have bought into it much more. It was like a dream within a dream within a dream, and I’ve made it no secret that I don’t like dream plots.

(LEONARDO DICAPRIO runs through the room)

DICAPRIO: It’s a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream….(he disappears)

MA: The acting in this one was pretty much nonexistent. Like you said, these characters could have been all CGI created. They don’t really get a chance to do any real acting. Emily Browning is OK as Baby Doll, but she never wowed me. Abbie Cornish was OK as Sweet Pea. Cornish is also starring in LIMITLESS (2011) and I liked her better in that movie. I did like Jena Malone as Rocket, as she seemed to have more personality than the others.

LS: I think Jena Malone as Rocket was my favorite, too. She and Sweet Pea are the main characters after Baby Doll. Poor Amber (Jamie Chung) is given hardly anything to do. In the battle scenes she’s always flying a plane or stuck inside a robot. Disney Channel alum Vanessa Hudgens is also in it, as a brunette character named Blondie (how funny), and she’s the weakest of the girl characters. With her big hair and baby face, she looked like a little kid playing dress-up and didn’t really belong there. I wish they’d used someone better.

The girls in this movie, for the most part, are hot and are made up to be even hotter. Like I said, they look like a group of supermodels most of the time. They’re part of the reason the visuals work so well. But there’s no real depth to them. They’re predictable, stock characters.

Y’know, teenage girls running around like superheroes isn’t anything new. Japanese anime has been doing this for decades. And doing it with better stories.

MA: Oscar Isaac makes for a competent villain as Blue Jones, but through most of the movie he doesn’t do all that much. He doesn’t get to shine as a true bad guy until the end. Scott Glenn as the Wise Man could have played this dull role in his sleep, and at times it looks as if he just woke up, but it was still good to see him.

LS: I thought Oscar Isaac was actually pretty annoying as Blue. He never seemed menacing enough. He seemed like an underling who thinks he’s in charge. An irritating weasel. I kept expecting one of the girls to kill him off without much effort.

Scott Glenn is okay, but once again it’s a role that takes no effort. And he does look like he’s doing it in his sleep!

And don’t forget about Jon Hamm (Don Draper from the excellent AMC  TV series, MAD MEN). Here’s a great actor reduced to playing what are essentially cameo roles as someone called the “High Roller” in the whorehouse sequences (we see him in the audience once, but he has no dialogue and we don’t even really meet him) as well as the “Doctor” in the real world who performs lobotomies (and who has just a few lines of dialogue). What a complete waste of his talent!

MA: Gerard Plunkett as the Stepfather has minimal screen time and hardly any dialogue, but he sure makes a good evil bastard. I think he gave the best performance in the film, and he’s hardly in it at all.

LS: I wanted to know more about him, and about Baby Doll before she was brought to the asylum. I hated the opening montage/music video thing. I wanted some real character development, some real insight into what was going on, instead of the same old “by the numbers” version. We’ve seen all this before, so much so that Zack Snyder didn’t even have to use any effort in that part. And it could have been so much more effective. It’s like he didn’t want to bother with the effort developing things. He was too busy thinking up elaborate monsters for the battle sequences.

MA: SUCKER PUNCH is a mixed bag. Is it worth it seeing it on the big screen? Well, for its neat visuals, I’d have to say yes, it is worth seeing at the movies, but be forewarned, as a complete package it doesn’t hold up. It’s in desperate need of a much better story.

LS: Or any story at all.

MA: I give it two and a half knives.

LS: Man, are you generous.

MA: Well, I enjoyed the visuals a lot.

LS: Okay, here’s what’s good about the movie. The girls are hot. The battle scenes are visually interesting (well, mostly the first one with the samurais, but each of the battle sequences has something that stands out. I also liked the use of music. The use of that Bjork song as a centerpiece was inspired – it’s a good song and it fits its sequence perfectly – like a good music video….er…maybe that’s the problem. SUCKER PUNCH plays more like a big-budget string of music videos than a movie.

Overall, the choice of music is pretty good. We’ve got Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” performed by star Emily Browning (which wasn’t completely awful; she also sings a cover of The Smiths’ “Asleep”), The Stooges’ classic “Search and Destroy” covered by Skunk Anansie, Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” covered by Emiliana Torrini, and even Carla Gugino and Oscar Isaac get into the act with a cover of Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug” during the closing credits. Some of the covers work, others don’t, but they’re all interesting choices. And thankfully they didn’t have someone sing a cover of the Bjork song – it’s the real deal. Hell, the soundtrack is more inspired than the movie is.

MA: I agree. I loved the soundtrack.

LS: But the thing is, SUCKER PUNCH is more like a series of music videos, and sequences from video games, than an actual coherent movie. And by the end, it just feels so predictable and pointless, you wonder why they ever bothered.

I give it one knife. I wanted to give it even less, because it was such a waste of time. But the visuals are well done, and look good on the big screen. I can’t imagine it would look as good on a television screen. But seriously, it’s not worth the price of a theater ticket to see it. Once you dig beneath the look of the movie, it has no substance. It’s a void. Even the things that are good about it aren’t strong enough to overshadow what’s bad about it. SUCKER PUNCH? It’s more like a love tap.

MA: Well, it sounds like we agree the visuals were superb, and while you found the story nonexistent, I found it average. All right, that about wraps things up. Have you found those zeppelin instructions yet?

LS: Yep. I have them right here.

MA: What does it say?

LS (reads): “To drive this zeppelin, you need to find five items—a map, a key—.”

MA (groans): No way!

LS: Screw this. I’m jumping!

MA: Hold on. I’m coming too. (The two of them strap on parachutes as missiles explode in the sky around their airship). All right everybody, we’ll see you next week with another review of another new movie!

(They jump from zeppelin as the dirigible explodes in a gigantic fireball. They parachute to the ground, landing safely in the arms of beautiful, busty babes.)

LS: I love this job!

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives SUCKER PUNCH – two and a half knives

L.L. Soares gives SUCKER PUNCH – one knife!

3 Comments »

THE ROOMMATE

Posted in 2011, Cinema Knife Fights, Garbage, Hot Chick Movies, Psychos with tags , , , , , on February 7, 2011 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE ROOMMATE
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares


(The Scene: A college campus. MICHAEL ARRUDA and LL SOARES sit on a bench in the middle of a vast green lawn in the middle of the campus, as college kids go about their daily routine.)

MA: Ahhh, college in spring time. Is there a better place to be?

LS: Considering our real bodies are back in snow-covered winter? No. But I don’t want to go back. Our astral bodies are doing just fine here.

MA: But we’re here for a reason. We’re reviewing the new movie THE ROOMMATE.

LS: Did you have to remind me? Yes, I suppose that’s why we’re here.

MA: Stop leering at the young co-eds!

LS: Stop leering at co-eds? You might as well ask the wind to stop blowing. The sun to stop shining.

MA: Get on with the review.

LS: (Chuckles) Okie doke. THE ROOMMATE is a riveting tale of obsession and murder, set on a college campus. Young freshman girls Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly) and Rebecca (Leighton Meester) are frolicking in the leaves of autumn…..

MA: Wait a minute. That’s not the movie I saw. Stick to the real movie!

LS: Do I have to?

MA: Yes!

LS: Okay, okay. Sara arrives at school, a fresh-faced (if slightly older than she should be) freshman, eager to fill her head with knowledge. When she gets to her dorm, her roommate isn’t there yet, so she bonds with suite-mates like Tracy (Alyson Michalka), who likes to get drunk and have sex (in that order). When her dorm room roommate does show up, it’s Rebecca, a very intense art student who seems a little bit overly concerned about Sara’s coming and goings.

MA: She’s downright nuts!

LS: I was getting to that. At first, Rebecca just seems like she really needs a friend and wants to bond with her new roommate. But things get creepy from there, as we spiral into Obsession Land. Rebecca starts doing odd things like threatening Tracy’s life in the shower (she changes dorms and stays away from Sara as a result) and setting up the pervy professor (Billy Zane) who hit on Sara, so that he gets fired.

It just goes downhill from there, as threats and intimidation make way for slicing and dicing, including poor Jason (Matt Latner), Sara’s ex who can’t seem to let go. Rebecca leads him on just so she can get all sharp edges on the poor guy. And don’t forget Sara’s long-time friend and fashion insider, Irene (Danneel Harris), who offers a way out (she offers to let Sara move in with her to escape her obsessive roommate)  and who gets seduced by Rebecca in a nightclub bathroom. When Irene takes Rebecca home, Sara suddenly stops getting phone calls from her friend. Anyone who is close to Sara is a target in Rebecca’s world. Mostly because the poor girl won’t take her meds!

MA:  I’m sure none of the young teens who were in the theater with me were thinking about this, but I found the characterization of Rebecca somewhat insulting to people with mental illness and mental disabilities. Rebecca obviously needs help, obviously needs to be on her meds, and yet no one seems to make this simple suggestion to her – “Ah, Rebecca, don’t you think you should take your meds?”  Even Sara, once she discovers that her roommate needs to be on meds, doesn’t say anything to her about it.

LS:  Yeah, Sara also doesn’t tell her R.A. or any adults in authority. It just seemed stupid to me. I guess she was worried Rebecca would flip out and kill her, but if that’s the case, and she really is afraid for her life, wouldn’t she try to get some help from the people in charge?

MA:  Which is why I found this characterization insulting. Nobody even mentions Rebecca’s doctor or suggests that she should see one. Oh well. I guess it’s just a silly horror movie, which is another reason not to see it.

LS:  A rather interesting part of the film involves Sara going to Rebecca’s family’s house for Thanksgiving (before she realizes her roommate is a full-on psycho). Actually, it’s not as interesting as it could have been—if only this movie had better writing—but it’s funny how even Rebecca’s parents seem terrified of her. A definite sign that something is very wrong.

MA:  I’d say!  Something is wrong with her parents!  What a pair of frightened wimps!  The mom whispers to Sara, “Is she taking her meds?”  Is she taking her meds??  Don’t you know?  It’s your daughter!  If your daughter is as sick as this movie makes her out to be, what the hell are you doing sending her off to college without the supervision of someone in the medical profession?

LS: Yeah, not only is that irresponsible to their daughter, it’s also putting a lot of other people in danger. And you know her parents are aware that Rebecca is dangerous, or else they wouldn’t be practically shaking with fear every time they see her. I guess they let her go away to live on campus just to be free of her!

MA:  And it’s like you said, this part of the movie could have been more interesting had the writing been better and the story followed up this relationship more, because when they first meet Rebecca’s parents, it’s such an odd uncomfortable meeting that I was thinking, this is going to be interesting, and then it goes nowhere.

LS:  Yep. Also during this Thanksgiving visit to Rebecca’s home, we get to meet a girl who might have been Rebecca’s earlier “crush” before she met Sara. Another potentially creepy scene that could have been done much better.

MA: And, as we predicted in last week’s COMING ATTRACTIONS column, this one was pretty much a by-the-numbers rip-off of the 1992’s SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, except made for a younger, college crowd.

LS: They even both have an “I’ll change my hair color so I look even more like my really cool roommate” scene. And that’s my number one problem with THE ROOMMATE. It’s so damn predictable!! There’s not one scene in this movie that I didn’t see coming a mile away!

MA: Same here. I found this extremely irritating, to be honest. Even though the setting, the ages of the characters, and the actual criminal acts committed by the psycho roommate were changed, all the thrills were pretty much the same—the only difference is this psycho isn’t as deadly as the Jennifer Jason Leigh character in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, who I believe left a trail of dead bodies in that one.

And since THE ROOMMATE doesn’t do anything to improve upon SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, it doesn’t blow you away, and so if you’ve seen that first movie, this one is predictable and actually less intense than the original, though just as mindless.

LS: Now to the acting. First off we’ve got Minka Kelly in a leading role, as Sara. That’s a good thing.

MA:  Yes, I definitely liked Minka Kelly. She’s beautiful, and she can act, too. If I had to pick one thing I liked about THE ROOMMATE, it would be Kelly.

LS:  I’ve been a fan of the TV show Friday Night Lights since it began, and Minka has the pivotal role on the show as Lyla Garrity. This is the kind of well-written, strongly acted show that is ignored by viewers but constantly makes critics’ Top 10 lists. It really deserves a bigger audience. Friday Night Lights is one of the best shows on television, and everyone in the ensemble cast is pretty terrific. It’s always cool to see actors from this show go on to bigger and better things, but so far, the projects they’ve gone on to do not have the same level of quality as Friday Night Lights.

Perfect examples are Adrianne Palicki (who played Tyra on the show) who went on to be the pregnant girl in the so-so horror flick LEGION. And Taylor Kitsch, who is so good as Tim Riggins on the show, was just plain horrendous as Gambit in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. Minka Kelly joins the ranks of good actors gone bad here, because THE ROOMMATE is pretty awful.

MA:  I wouldn’t call it awful. Mediocre, maybe.

LS: You’ve got to be kidding me. THE ROOMMATE is downright lousy. Although Kelly and Leighton Meester (also a TV vet, coming from the show Gossip Girl) certainly give it the old college try!

MA:  Forgive me if I don’t jump up and down and defend this movie. It’s hard to get excited about “mediocre.”

LS: Sure, Minka Kelly proved she was a good actress in Friday Night Lights, and she even recently got chosen as GQ’s “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Unfortunately, that’s not enough to save this movie.

MA: No, she doesn’t save this movie, but she is one of its best parts, and she does keep it from being horrible.

LS: Leighton Meester really tries to be creepy as “off-her-meds” Rebecca, but she falls a bit short. There was nothing she did in this movie that I didn’t see coming a mile away, so it was hard to see any of her behavior as all that scary. Then again, this is more the script’s fault than hers. In some scenes, she actually pretty good.

MA: Yeah, I thought Meester was sufficiently crazy, but nothing in her performance lifted it above the very predictable material.

LS:  Not only was THE ROOMMATE a complete rip-off of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, it’s also a complete waste of time. Hell, even the “Sexiest Woman Alive” couldn’t save it.

MA:  I wouldn’t call it a complete waste of time. I actually think Kelly is worth watching, though don’t run out and see this one by any means!

LS:  The rest of the cast was just so-so. Cam Gigandet, playing Minka’s love interest Stephen, a fratboy with a soul. I guess he’s okay in the role, but his constant smirk made me want to punch him in the face.

MA:  I actually liked Gigandet’s performance. I thought he came off as sincere and likeable.

LS: And poor Danneel Harris as Irene isn’t given much do to at all, except be a victim. Although I wish I could have tried out her cinnamon lipstick.

MA:  I thought Billy Zane as the perverted Professor Roberts was pretty good. I wished he had been in it more. I thought he would have stuck around to seek revenge against Rebecca, but he just kinda disappears.

LS: Yeah, once Rebecca “deals with them” they all conveniently disappear. Can’t have any actual tension or suspense in this movie.

It’s funny. Throughout this movie, this young-ish crowd I saw it with was constantly yelling and jumping in their seats to THE ROOMMATE, which annoyed me no end. How could they have such strong reactions to scenes that were so damn predictable? And then it hit me. These are the same kids who made the TWILIGHT movies box-office hits. They don’t care about originality or real scares. So why am I expecting them to be more savvy than they are?

MA:  You know, I had nearly the same exact experience. The theater was packed; there was barely an empty seat in the house. I do believe that 90 percent of this young crowd were seeing their first horror movie ever. People were screaming, and squirming in their seats. There’s a scene where Rebecca picks up their cute little kitty, and you know she’s going to harm it, and nearly the whole theater erupted in a collective gasp, and it only got worse as Rebecca carried the animal into the laundry room towards its inevitable fate. I thought the people in front of me were going to have a coronary. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been chanting “Kill the kitty! Kill the kitty!”

LS: Thanks for bringing that up. Obviously they were going for a “boiling bunny” kind of scene here, like in FATAL ATTRACTION. But everything is implied, everything happens off-screen, and it’s not scary at all.

MA: But seriously, I was sitting there bored, and people—young people—were gasping and chattering nervously. I didn’t get it.

LS: You can say this movie was not made for us; it was made for a younger crowd. But the truth is, a good movie is a good movie, no matter who it’s meant for. And this movie isn’t good.

So here’s my rating. I give THE ROOMMATE half a knife. And I only give it that because I dig Minka Kelly, and she’s done work in the past that proved to me she really is, deep down, a serious actress. You would never tell it from watching THE ROOMMATE.

But I can’t give more than that. This movie is just embarrassingly bad.

MA:  I liked it better than half a knife. As I already said, I enjoyed Minka Kelly a lot in this movie, and, taken as a whole, the acting in THE ROOMMATE was pretty darn good.

The writing, not so much. Sonny Mallhi wrote the screenplay, and it’s average at best. Considering that it’s based almost exactly on SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, with really no improvements to the original story, I’d say that’s disappointing. If you’re going to remake something, you really should try to make it better.

LS: And if this is a remake, then give the original some credit. (Of course, they’d deny that.)

MA: That’s a good point.  There’s nary a mention or a nod to the original.  It’s like the filmmakers were pretending this was an original movie, which it’s anything but!

And there was an odd moment when Sara phones Rebecca, and it’s a collect call!  What’s up with that?  There are still collect calls in today’s age of cell phones and wireless service?  I didn’t get that. Today, who would need to make a collect call?

THE ROOMMATE was directed by Christian Christianson. I wonder if he’s religious?  He does an adequate job in telling this average story. Where he fails is in generating suspense. THE ROOMMATE isn’t really all that suspenseful. Plus this movie feels less like a horror movie and more like a made-for-TV thriller.

LS: It almost would be right at home on the LIFETIME channel.

MA: It’s OK. Like I said before, mediocre is the word that comes to mind, but since oftentimes I see films that I think are downright awful, with horrible acting, writing, and special effects, I hesitate to place THE ROOMMATE in this category.

LS: I’ll do it for you.

MA: I did find one scene scary, when Sara discovers her friend Irene tied to her bed. In restraints, Irene jumps up at the camera, and I thought this was a good quick fright. I also liked the belly ring scene in the shower. That caused a few winces.

LS: Yeah, the scene where we find Irene tied to the bed works. It might be the only scare in the movie.

MA: But I’m not surprised that you hated this movie, since ultimately it was a watered down version of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, which I believe was an R rated movie, and this one was PG-13. Gone is all the nudity and all the murders. Not that that made SINGLE WHITE FEMALE any better, because I was never a big fan of that movie either, but THE ROOMMATE is definitely lacking, and any kind of an edge would have been a good thing, so the decision to water down the original material probably wasn’t a good one.

LS:  Well, despite being R-rated, I wasn’t that impressed with SINGLE WHITE FEMALE either—and it had better acting and a far better director—it just wasn’t that great a movie. THE ROOMMATE is even worse.

MA: THE ROOMMATE is an average passable movie that is okay if you want to watch it on DVD and have nothing better to do, but it’s hardly worth the effort of seeing it at the theater. I give it two knives, mostly because all the actors in this one do a good job and they’re easy to watch. Too bad I can’t say the same for the rest of the movie.

LS: Okay, enough chit-chat. We have some other work to do.

MA: Work?  What the hell were we just doing?

LS: Writing Cinema Knife Fight is fun. It’s not work. Well, most of the time.

MA:  That’s true. Okay. So what work are you talking about?

LS:  Did you think we could just sit here, enjoying the sun and watching skimpily-dressed co-eds?

MA:  Well, the thought had crossed my mind.

LS:  You are very naïve, my son.

(Pulls out shovels)

MA:  Are we robbing a grave?

LS: We need to clean up the trash on campus.

MA:  Are you kidding me?

LS:  Nope. That’s why we’re really here. And the first heap of garbage we have to shovel is none other than THE ROOMMATE!

MA: I am dumb-founded!  Well, like I said before, it’s hard to defend mediocrity. Let’s get shoveling!

—END—

© Copyright 2011 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives THE ROOMMATE – 2 knives

LL Soares gives THE ROOMMATE – 1/2 knife


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