Reviews

Lost River (2015)

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threehalfstar

Sometimes it’s gotta suck to be Ryan Gosling. Not often, but sometimes. Everything sucks sometimes, right? I’m sure being a talented actor & a beautiful human specimen is mostly all perks, but what if no one takes you seriously when you try to let loose the weirdo artist lurking under your perfect skin? Finalizing his gradual transition from pint-sized Mouseketeer to big boy artist, Gosling recently stepped behind the camera to write & direct his debut feature, Lost River. Critically-speaking, it didn’t go well. The film was panned on the festival circuit as “derivative” “poverty porn” and lost its wide distribution detail in the process, eventually being damned to direct-to-VOD status. Gosling’s first outing as a creator instead of a performer failed to secure accolades and the talented sex beast was left having an uncharacteristically bad day in the sun. The dirty secret is that Lost River is actually pretty damn good for a debut feature. It’s far from flawless, but there’s very little justification for the vicious critical beating it received on the festival circuit. If the film were directed by a fresh-out-of-film-school nobody it most likely would’ve had a better chance in the critical eye. For once it didn’t pay to be for Ryan Gosling to be a wealthy, well-known pretty boy.

Both the “derivative” & “poverty porn” complaints feel somewhat like they were aimed specifically at Gosling’s pretty boy swag instead of his final product. The claim that the film is “derivative” is technically true, but not really a problem considering the sources Gosling pulls from here. Names like Lynch, Bava, Korine, Mallick, and Refn are sure to be conjured by any discerning audience, but what film buff wouldn’t love pieces of those five aesthetics gathered in one neon-soaked, dilapidated package? Speaking of dilapidated, the film may also technically substantiate that “poverty porn” critique, as it pulls beautiful images out of economic despair, turning what remains of Detroit into a ludicrous dream world. I also see this complaint as more of an asset than a problem, especially considering how the images tie into the film’s thematic details (foreclosed houses, stealing copper from blighted properties, etc.). Also, it’s an aesthetic that’s worked wonders before in titles like George Washington, Gummo, and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The one legitimate qualm I found with Lost River is that it is poorly paced. There’s a calm, unrushed progression to the movie that plays right into the stereotype that art films have to be boring to be taken seriously. At least while the run time is glacially gliding along, there are plenty of worthwhile images to chew on: flaming bicycles, pink neon lights, glistening Casio keyboards, underwater dinosaur statues, slow-motion house fires, and so on. That’s not even getting into horror legend Barbara Steele’s hermetic mourning or fellow-perfect-specimen Christina Hendricks’ Tree of Life cosplay & blood-soaked burlesque. These images appear slowly, but each with great individual impact, backed by the sleek nightmare sounds of Chromatics genius Johnny Jewel. They’re definitely a sight to behold and it’s a sight I expect to revisit often, even if they do work better as still images than as a feature film. Gosling most certainly has an eye and once he tightens aspects like pacing & narrative, he has untold potential to make something truly great. I just hope that he hasn’t been discouraged from making more films by the negative reception his debut garnered. Lost River may not be a perfect work, but it does demonstrate a wealth of promise and it’d be a shame if that promise were snuffed out in its infancy by sourpuss critics.

-Brandon Ledet

What We Do in the Shadows (2015)

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fivestar

I had previously written on this site that the New Zealand vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows was looking to crowdfund an American theatrical release, a campaign that was ultimately a success. I wrote that the movie “promises to take the same ennui employed by Only Lovers Left Alive into the satiric comedy territory of Vamps. Posed as a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary, the film follows modern day vampires as they navigate mundane activities like nightlife, dealing with roommates, and searching for a bite to eat. They clash with the likes of witches, zombies, werewolves, and plain-old humans in a loosely-plotted slice of (undead) life comedy. From the looks of the trailer, it could be quite funny as well as a fresh take on a genre I once thought hopelessly stale.” Having now actually seen What We Do in the Shadows, I am happy to report that the film not only met those expectations, but even greatly exceeded them. The most essential success of the film, however, was not what it had to add to the vampire genre, but just that it was simply riotously funny from start to finish.

Most of my favorite mockumentaries, titles like Best in Show & Drop Dead Gorgeous, aren’t necessarily well-told stories about personal growth and lessons learned. Instead, they’re more or less glimpses into the lives of already well-established characters as they prepare for a major life event, for instance a dog show or a beauty pageant. Staying true to that format, What We Do in the Shadows follows the lives of a small group of vampire roommates in the months leading up to their biggest annual celebration: The Unholy Masquerade, a grand party for the local undead. The Unholy Masquerade mostly serves as a climactic device that brings the film’s slowly boiling conflicts to a head, but what’s much more important is the characters that the “documentary” crew (who wear crucifixes for protection) follow in the months leading up to the event.

The film’s central vampire coven is a small crew consisting of an 18th century dandy, a torture-obsessed pervert, a 183 year old “young bad boy”, and an 8000 year old Nosferatu type named “Petyr”, who terrifies even his own undead flatmates. The group is mostly a collection of goofs, very much delusional in their outsized egos (a common trope in these Guest-style comedies), but also a true, formidable treat who fly, hypnotize, transform into bats & other creatures, and frequently murder unsuspecting victims with their incredibly sharp fangs. It’s a brilliant subject for an awkward comedy mostly concerned with trivial conflicts like a flatmate who doesn’t pull his weight on the chore wheel, the struggles of an active nightlife when you have to be formally invited into bars, meekly asking Petyr to sweep up the skeletons in his room, and struggling to adapt to the addition of a boisterous 5th roommate who shouts “I’m a vampire!” in public even more liberally than Nic Cage in Vampire’s Kiss. There’s some strange, ambitious concepts allowed by the film’s subject, like the existence of Hitler’s secret vampire army or depressed vampires wistfully watching footage of the sunrise on YouTube. It’s the clash of these ideas with the mundanity of modern life that make the film something special, like when one flatmate angrily shouts, “Just leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet!”

Co-writers/directors Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi (of Flight of the Conchords fame) have crafted a thoroughly funny film here that I expect to revisit often. They have added a few updates to the mockumentary format, like the inclusion of some reality show beats, but for the most part the film is a very straightforward genre execution. It just also happens to be a very funny one. What We Do in the Shadows is as great as a vampire mockumentary could possibly be. An exceptionally funny comedy overstuffed with loveable, but deeply flawed characters (they are bloodthirsty murderers after all) and endlessly quotable zingers, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect, more rewatchable execution of its basic concept. In other words, it’s an instant classic.

-Brandon Ledet

The Sheik (2014)

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wrasslin

three star

Much like with hip-hop or viral content, professional wrestling is all about self-promotion. In pro wrestling, you don’t necessarily have to be the best, you just have to convince your audience that you’re the best. Just ask Hulk Hogan. As the 80s era’s choice for the face of the company (that company being the WWE, of course), Hogan seemingly tore through every formidable opponent tossed his way, from Andre the Giant to “Macho Man” Randy Savage to Zeus. His rapid rise in popularity caused a version of mild cultural hysteria that was even afforded its own name. The Hulkster was smartly branded as not only a single wrestler, but an entire movement. Hulkamania was an 80s phenomenon that gave birth to both the annual cultural juggernaut WrestleMania and the lesser, round-the-year spectacle of WWE as a household sport. Hulk Hogan’s shameless self-promotion in the 1980s built that empire, supported with major backing from the multi-million dollar company pulling the strings, of course.

Last year’s profile documentary The Sheik’s most ambitious (and yet still believable) claim is that the success of Hulkamania (and, by extension, WrestleMania) was largely dependent on the appeal of Hogan’s main opponent, The Iron Sheik. Playing off of Americans’ Islamophobic prejudices during the Carter era Iranian hostage crisis, The Iron Sheik is credited here for being the ideal heel for Hogan, essentially single-handedly putting him over with the crowd. Born in Iran in the 1940s, Hossein Khosrow “The Sheik” Ali Vaziri was raised in a culture where traditional wrestling was a national obsession, where a healthy body meant a healthy state. Describing his teenage life in The Sheik, Ali Vaziri says “I was married to the wrestling mat. I didn’t care about girls; I cared about wrestling.” It was this dedication that landed him the position as bodyguard for the Iranian shah and, after emigration, an all-American coach for the Olympic wrestling team. The Iron Sheik was a mild-mannered American hero with an exceedingly sweet Midwestern wife & three adorable daughters before he found his true calling as a pro wrestling heel (a “bad guy”) that perfectly counteracted The Hulkster’s “I am a real American” persona simply by being a foreigner (nevermind that he has a depthless love for the country that he adopted).

The Sheik is not only credited in this flattering profile as contributing to the success of Hulkamania, but also for creating the priceless term “jabroni” (later popularized by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, of course) as well as the arguably-more-important public revelation that pro wrestling is, in fact, rigged. Once upon a time the ultra-macho ballet known as pro wrestling was assumed to be a true-to-life physical competition until (as this doc tells it) The Iron Sheik & supposed opponent “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan were arrested together on a beer & drug binge. It was the first time a face & a heel were ever proven to be hanging out as buds outside the squared circle. This “revelation” eventually lead to WWE magnate Vince McMahon seeking (and achieving) the tax breaks that come with being classified as a form of entertainment and not a professional sport.

If The Sheik is to be believed its subject would be credited as the sole launching pad for the very existence of modern pro wrestling itself and not just as the highly effective, very much timely heel that’s most likely closer to the truth. However, it isn’t until the film relaxes on the revisionist history lesson and profiles The Sheik’s more recent transition from drug addict with a broken body & a heart of gold to reformed family man that it loses a good deal of its credibility. It’s true that The Iron Sheik has a truly fascinating Twitter, YouTube and Howard Stern presence, but the movie conveniently sidesteps the racist & homophobic tendencies of his statements in those forums. As a journalistic, documentary endeavor, The Sheik fails to uncover answers that doesn’t support its central thesis that The Iron Sheik is 100% awesome, no faults. As a rose-colored profile of a very storied man who calls everyone “Bubba”, never says anything offensive about minorities, and most definitely quit mountains of crack cocaine, it’s much more effective. Supporting interviews with pro wrestling staples like Jim Ross, The Rock (who was apparently babysat by The Sheik’s wife as a child), Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Mick “Mankind” Foley, Brett “The Hitman” Hart, Jimmy Hart, and King Kong Bundy are sure to please any “sports entertainment” fan who are looking for a collection of anecdotes and not a controversial expose. The Sheik may be an exercise in shameless self-promotion, but that’s far from a new concept in the world of pro wrestling and (much like with the “sport” it covers) it’s a much more satisfactory proposition if you know what you’re in for before you arrive.

-Brandon Ledet

Swearnet: The Movie (2014)

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Sometimes artists are so great in their respective niches that it truly hurts to watch them branch out into areas where they’re far from experts. Think Michael Jordan playing baseball or Madonna trying to act or nearly any actor you can name’s blues rock band. It’s tough for an audience to admit that the entertainers they love are only good at one specific thing, but I imagine it’s even harder for the entertainer. Being labeled as a one-trick pony and getting begged to repeat the same act over & over again has got to wear on you after a few years and I’m sure after a decade or two it’s absolutely maddening. Still, that doesn’t mean that anyone should have to suffer through Shanghai Surprise just because they like jamming out to “Material Girl”. It’s a lose/lose situation.

That’s exactly what makes me feel so bad for the Canadian writer-comedians behind the cult television series Trailer Park Boys. First of all, I love them dearly. After nine seasons of television, four feature length films, and two extended specials I am still hungry for more content from Sunnyvale Trailer Park. I’ve really got these guys’ bellies. The cycle of the show works the same way in every iteration; “the boys” get released from jail at the beginning of a season/movie, they commit various harebrained, criminal schemes to get rich quick, and then they inevitably go back to jail. This pattern repeats itself continuously, which is a brilliant reflection of the cycles of depression, poverty, and alcoholism that the show finds dark, cartoonish humor in despite the severity of those themes. As an audience, it’s comforting to know that “the boys” are always up to fucking up, never leaving the vice grip Sunnyvale has on their souls. As performers, I’m sure it’s got to be exhausting to have done this same schtick for more than a decade now, no exit strategy working out, trapped within their own creation just as much as “the boys” they portray are trapped within the prison system. No matter how much fun they have making the show it’s still got to be a little bit of a chore at this point.

That premise is essentially what Swearnet: The Movie is about. Playing exaggerated versions of themselves, the three main actors from Trailer Park Boys (John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells, and Mike Smith) branch out from their Sunnyvale past and create their own entertainment network called Swearnet (which is a real thing). As fictionalized in the film, Swearnet is an entire media conglomerate dedicated to the idea that excessive swearing is always funny. It’s not. In fact, as Ben Kingsley proved in Jonathan Glazer’s excellent heist film Sexy Beast, excessive swearing can actually be kind of pathetic. Now, the three comedians at the helm of this film are very funny people and they do pull some great material out of the limited premise, like the odd phrase “Cancer can go fuck itself” and the concept of “swearaoke” (which of course is when you drunkenly substitute words in karaoke songs with references to “cocks” & such). I also really enjoyed the concept for the self-explanatory Swearnet show Acid Cannibals and the idea that Tremblay keeps his deceased father’s ashes in a doll shaped like his dad, (which he of course refers to as “Dad”), but these are a few isolated ideas in a film that doesn’t give itself much to stand on. It’s a thin concept that feels progressively thinner as the run time drags on (with an extended drag race climax, no less).

Written & filmed sometime around 2012 (just following the also-disappointing The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour), Swearnet: The Movie is a document of a time when “the boys” didn’t know what to do with themselves. Just a year later they would thankfully acquire the rights for the then-temporarily defunct Trailer Park Boys for their real-life Swearnet network (along with a killer deal with Netflix), but in the meantime they were lost. They wanted to move on to other projects, but it was a hard sell for anyone who was just hungry for more antics from Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles. The movie is very self-aware in that way and they do their best to distance themselves from their Sunnyvale past here, with Mike Smith’s cruel bully version of himself getting the most distance from his kitten-loving sweetheart Bubbles. The self-awareness extends itself even to the cameo casting, featuring fellow left-by-the-wayside niche comedians Tom Green & Carrot Top.

The sheer hubris “the boys” display in Swearnet: The Movie is impressive. In the film, they’re bigger than their Sunnyvale past, they “get the girls”, and they launch a new project that’s bigger & better than anything they’ve done before. Unfortunately, the film itself doesn’t live up to its own mythology and simply reinforces the idea that they are much more entertaining as Trailer Park Boys. I’m so happy that they were able to acquire their own show from their old network and the two seasons of television they’ve produced since their break and the birth of Swearnet have been as funny as anything they’ve ever done before. I just hope that the feeling is mutual, that these talented people are happy with what they’re doing and it’s not as if Tom Hanks had to return to crossdressing sitcoms to pay his bills or as if Mark Wahlberg was driven back to rapping in his underwear. I hope they’re still having fun making Trailer Park Boys, because I’m still having fun watching. Hell, I hope they had fun making Swearnet: The Movie, but that’s another story.

-Brandon Ledet

Furious 7 (2015)

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fourstar

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The true story at this point of the Fast and Furious franchise is the story of an ever-ballooning budget. The 2001 debut installment cost $38 million to make, which it of course spent on fast cars & Ja Rule, depending on ultra-macho cheap thrills like rap rock & lipstick lesbianism to fill in the gaps. In 2015 a Fast and Furious movie costs $250 million to make, which gives it the freedom to tear down entire cities on the screen, no Ja Rule necessary. The first three or so Fast and Furious movies serve mostly as cultural relics, time capsules of bad taste in the early 00s. As the budget continued to expand (along with Vin Diesel’s delightfully long winded musings on the nature of “family”) so did the scope of the action sequences and the feeling that the franchise had actually started to pull its own weight as a unique intellectual property. The street racing & Ja Rules of the early films are mostly gone, but far from forgotten as the series has become completely wrapped up in its own mythology, pretending that the past was more significant than it was and pushing what they can do in the present to any & all ridiculous heights allowed by the strengths of an ever-sprawling cast & budget. Furious 7 may have taken my top spot in the franchise (although that may just be the post-theater buzz talking) simply because it’s so much movie.

Furious 7’s charms depend greatly on the six films that precede it (this marks the first time that the Tokyo Drift storyline is in the rearview), but it uses that well-established history to its advantage as a launching pad for its larger-than-ever set pieces and relentless fan service. It’s difficult to imagine just how much a newcomer would get out of early scenes where Vin Diesel’s Dominic struggles to keep his “family” together, including the significance of details like the house they worked so hard to hold onto, the struggle to keep Paul Walker’s Brian out of danger, and the faulty memory of Michelle Rodriguez’ Letty. There’s an excess of callbacks to seemingly insignificant details like a tuna sandwich from the first film, images & music lifted directly from Tokyo Drift (within which Lucas Black ages a decade in the blink of an eye), a return to the Race Wars (the ludicrous name of a street racing competition I still can’t believe no one in that world finds fucked up), outrageous stunt casting of flash-in-the-pan rappers (in this case the most-insignificant-yet, Iggy Azaelea), and increasingly obnoxious product placement for Corona. There was even a return to the excessive ogling of the early films, but with a modern update. If the gratuitous leering of the early 00s was Generation Lipstick Lesbian, Furious 7 poses the modern era as Generation Dat Ass, featuring a peculiarly intense focus on the female posterior. The only thing that was really missing was a backyard cookout. To a newcomer these callbacks could feel superfluous at best and grotesque at worst, but for a fan (even a recent convert such as myself), they’re pleasantly familiar.

That’s not to say that a pair of fresh eyes would have nothing to enjoy here. At a remarkably brisk 137 minutes, Furious 7 is packed to the gills with action movie surface pleasures: self-described “vehicular warfare”, flying cars, smashed buildings, absurdly intricate martial arts sequences, drones (or as Tyrese Gibson’s Roman calls them, “space ships”), hacker technobabble, rap music, and the aforementioned near-naked asses. On the gender-swapped side of that butt fetish is a gratuitous shot of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s mostly nude, entirely exceptional body lounging in a hospital bed that is sure to raise a couple heart rates. Although The Rock isn’t afforded much screen time, he makes the most of it. Besides appearing undressed, he also puts his pro-wrestling background to good use in some epic shit talking (“I’m gonna put a hurt on him so bad he’s gonna wish his mama had kept her legs closed”) and a fist fight in which he delivers his signiature “Rock Bottom” move to Jason Statham. However, even that fight pales in comparison to the stunts performed by legitimate hand-to-hand combat artists Ronda Rousey & Tony Jaa. The film could’ve used more of crowd favorite The Rock (and personal favorite Jordana Brewster), but the additions of newcomers like Rousey, Jaa, and total weirdo Kurt Russell more than filled the void.

There was also something missing in the absence of longtime Fast and Furious director Justin Lin, particularly in the scaled-back “family” talk that reached its fever pitch in Fast & Furious 6. Considering the real-life loss of Paul Walker, however, the “family” speeches that are included feel all the more significant. When Dominic says “I don’t have friends. I got family,” you could easily substitute the word “friends” for “fans”. Anyone who has made it this far into the Fast and Furious ride (or at least tuned in after the not-so-great fourth one) is likely to feel an affinity for the franchise that not only excuses, but emphatically embraces its trashy, trashy charms. Paul Walker’s transformation from a “sandwich crazy” undercover cop to an action movie legend was a gradual one that has now sadly come to a close. It’s always a bummer to watch a family member go and Furious 7 does a great job of giving him a proper send-off. The focus on fan-pleasing callbacks and the transition from the “family”-heavy Justin Lin run into a new era (in which Walker will not be joining us) distinguishes Furious 7 from the six previous installments, while still honors them with a lofty reverence. It’s sure to please the franchise’s established fans as well as gather some new ones along the way. There really is just so much movie here that anyone who enjoys loud, obnoxious action films in any capacity is likely find something to latch onto.

-Brandon Ledet

Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

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fourstar

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Surprisingly, it wasn’t until the fifth film in the Fast and Furious franchise when the series cracked the code and found its own distinct voice. That voice just happened to be Vin Diesel’s increasingly slow, gruff droning about the importance of family. Fast Five had an infectious way of making the central “family” bond feel truly important, despite the disconnected quality of the first three films that made the same characters feel entirely unrelated. Fast Five solidified that Dominic Torreto (Vin Diesel) and his ragtag gang can actually function as a cohesive unit. That gang’s-all-here vibe, paired with a ballooning budget, made the film one of the highlights of the franchise so far, right up there with the driving-sideways oddity Tokyo Drift.

Fast & Furious 6 plays right into this increasingly intense concern for tying the series together by kicking things off with a plot-summarizing montage (complete with a Wiz Khalifa rap) over its opening credits. If the gang started properly functioning as a unit in the last film, this is where they individually become eccentric cartoon versions of themselves. The Rock has essentially transformed into a flesh-tone version of The Hulk (putting that pro-wrestling background to good use early & often), Sung Kang’s Han is pretty much an anime character, Ludacris rigs an ATM to literally “make it rain”, etc. The series starts to get wrapped up in its own mythology the way the individual characters are wrapped up in theirs. Han’s threat that they might actually tie the storyline into Tokyo Drift continues for the third film running now with the exchange “We always talk about Tokyo.” “Tokyo it is.” (a promise they finally make good on in a ridiculous post-credits stinger). Paul Walker wistfully remarks upon how much the gang loves cookouts and Corona in the line “We got everything, down to the beer & the barbeque.” Most absurdly, the series continues its blend of policing & criminality by recruiting Vin Diesel as an honorary cop, which is a hilarious development at this point in the series. Now that the “family” has come together as a tight unit, they’ve finally found a way to go truly over the top.

The ridiculous caricatures and ever-expanding budget for the action sequences (which include crumbling buildings and a return to extensive street racing here) are what make Fast & Furious 6 feel like a far cry from where the series began, but it’s not what makes the film important. The heart really is in those “family”-obsessed Vin Diesel pep talks. If you’re on board with the series at this point it’s strangely satisfying to see the film’s major triumph be the gang coming together for a climactic backyard cookout, Coronas proudly lifted in the air. The film’s central conflict is with a rival gang who, as Tyrese Gibson describes in an especially hilarious monologue, poses as the gang’s doppelgangers, because they do not believe in family and treat their gang like a business. There are some returns to the hallmarks of the early films in the franchise: new toys that hack into power-steering systems to cause crashes, brutal fistfights (between women this time), new vehicles like a Batmobile knockoff and a goddamn tank, etc. The film also finds more room for street racing & driving-related set pieces, something that had faded to the background in the last couple pictures. What’s most impressive here, however, is that in addition to these trashy surface pleasures Fast & Furious 6 makes the audience feel like part of the “family”, like we’re all in for the silly ride together. Everyone involved has seemingly gotten comfortable with how ridiculous the series is and found their own ways to make it work as its own unique action franchise, with Vin Diesel standing tall as the most comfortable of them all. It’s adorable.

-Brandon Ledet

Sextette (1978)

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three star

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Mae West clung tightly to her sex symbol status until the day she died and that effort is more than evident in Sextette. West was 85 years old when she starred in what would be her final film, and while it’s definitely a train wreck, it’s the kind of trashy entertainment that I live for.

Marlo Manners (Mae West) is an international celebrity that just got married for the umpteenth time to Sir Michael Barrington, portrayed by a young Timothy Dalton (who would later star in one of my favorite film’s, The Beautician and the Beast). The newlyweds arrive at a lavish London hotel for a peaceful honeymoon, but all sorts of shenanigans occur because everyone wants a piece of Marlo, whether they’re an ex-husband or a news reporter. I didn’t think that West could get any stranger than her role as Leticia Van Allen in Myra Breckinridge, but she really outdoes herself in this one. She kept the same facial expression throughout the entire film while struggling to walk in her tight fishtail gowns and every single line from her character was a perverted one-liner. For example:

Sir Barrington: “I feel like the first man who landed on the moon!”
Marlo: “In a few minutes, you’re going to be the first man who landed on Venus.”

Classic Mae West! All of her jokes were beyond cheesy, but I laughed at just about all of them. There’s nothing better than an old lady with a filthy mouth. Rumor has it that she had an earpiece on during the production and the director, Ken Hughes, told her exactly what to say. I’m not sure if this is true, but it’s obvious that something fishy was going on due to the unnatural way she delivered her lines.

I can’t go without mentioning the numerous celebrity appearances: Regis Philbin, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, and Alice Cooper, just to name a few. Anytime a film has 5 or more cameos, it’s probably not going to be that good. This is especially true in Sextette. The film heavily relied on Mae West and the motley crew of celebrities for success, and not enough attention was given to the more important parts of the movie (dialogue, acting, etc.). There were also a couple of terrible musical numbers, and some of them even involved choreographed dancing! Of course, West got to do most of the singing, but I enjoyed Dalton’s version of “Love Will Keep Us Together” the most. He put Captain & Tennille to shame.

I think that Sextette was the best way to end West’s film career. She was a camp queen at heart, and her soul shines through every moment of this bad, bad movie.

-Britnee Lombas

God’s Not Dead (2014)

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“You prayed and believed your whole life. Never done anything wrong. And here you are. You’re the nicest person I know. I am the meanest. You have dementia. My life is perfect. Explain that to me!”
– Mark

Friedrich Nietzsche first proclaimed “God is dead” in his seminal 1882 work The Gay Science. Finally, 133 years later, a counter-argument has emerged: a cinematic, philosophical treatise to reawaken our godless secular culture, the 2014 Christian drama featuring Kevin “Hercules” Sorbo and Duck Dynasty, the bluntly titled, God’s Not Dead.

Josh is an evangelical college student that makes the mistake of enrolling in a philosophy course taught by vocally atheist Professor Jeffrey Radisson. On the first day of class, the professor propositions his students that if they write “God is dead” on a sheet of paper and turn it in, they will pass for the semester. Seems easy, but Josh, the fearless God warrior, declines and stands up to the tyrannical, liberal heathen. This clash of faith and reason leads to a repetitive series of classroom debates and subplots that drive home the film’s central point (Atheists bad, Christians good) ad nauseam.

The way God’s Not Dead unabashedly stacks the deck against the nonbelievers is one of the only truly entertaining things about it. Throughout the film, Christians are portrayed as caring and virtuous while every single atheist is mean-spirited and morally bankrupt. Radisson belittles his religious girlfriend Mina in front of his colleagues. Josh’s wholly unsupportive girlfriend Kara breaks up with him because he will not renounce his faith. Mina’s atheist brother Mark is a sleazy businessman who won’t visit their mother suffering from dementia and dumps his girlfriend when she gets cancer. Without God, how can we make moral decisions? God’s Not Dead‘s answer is we can’t.

In their final debate, Josh crushes Radisson’s soul with the question “Why do you hate God?” The broken professor admits that he began to hate God after his mother died and storms out of the classroom amidst triumphant chants of “God’s not dead”. All this culminates in a particularly nasty ending that leaves Radisson fatally injured after a car accident. Luckily, there is a priest nearby who absolves him of his sins and converts him to Christianity moments before he painfully dies on the rain-soaked pavement. Does it matter if someone converts under duress? God’s Not Dead says no.

Evangelical Christianity celebrates its self-righteous victory as the film concludes with a performance by Christian rock band The Newsboys and an appearance by Duck Dynasty‘s Willie Robertson, who speaking on behalf of the always “tolerant” Robertson family, states that “reports of God’s death were greatly exaggerated.” The concert attendees are then asked to text the phrase “God’s Not Dead” to every contact in their phone. It’s an amazing evangelical strategy, but I suspect few people received these messages, as most viewers weren’t able to make it through the film’s almost two hour minute run time.

To be fair, the actual classroom debates in God’s Not Dead are pretty informative and do offer some balance and insight, but the film is still blatantly manipulative and the ridiculous ending negates much of the film’s redeeming qualities. Compared to other recent Christian exercises like Left Behind, God’s Not Dead has a decent script, is well acted, and shot competently but its sermon-heavy tone and overbearing, melodramatic moralizing will turn off viewers who don’t already agree with its message, even if they only tuned in looking for a laugh.

-James Cohn

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

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witch

threehalfstar

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I expected to feel indifferent at best about the 2013 horror-action comedy Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. First of all, I had no idea it was a comedy. Something about the advertising made the film look like the dour psuedo-goth post-Dark Knight action snoozers I, Frankenstein & Dracula Untold. Instead, Hansel & Gretel has something essential that both of those films lack: a sense of humor. The idea of giving the gritty Nolan-Batman treatment to non-deserving pre-existing properties has the potential to be fun as long as the juxtaposition is humorous, something that helped make Michael Bay’s much-hated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot a fun watch for me. In giving the classic Hansel & Gretel fairy tale a gritty origin story, Witch Hunters nails the tone of how to make that proposition entertaining. It’s just as much Nolan’s Batman as it is Raimi’s Army of Darkness. Yes, the basic concept of the film is dumb, but it’s so deliciously dumb (and exceedingly violent to boot).

The traditional fairy tale part of the story is dealt with early & abruptly. Hansel & Gretel’s almost-got-eaten-in-a-candy-house childhood is but a brief prologue for the real story: after killing their first witch in that candy house, they grew up to be heroic action movie witch hunters who rescue orphaned children from the mythical wretches. The witches alternate from mildly annoying to legit terrifying here, but rarely overpower the appeal of the action movie tropes on display: cartoonish violence and posturing one-liners, like the two life lessons Hansel gathered from his childhood trauma: “Never walk into a house made of candy,” and “If you’re going to kill a witch, set her ass on fire.” The modern shit-talking is scattered among more archaic vernacular like “I accuse this woman of craft of witchery.” That dichotomy is the film in a nutshell: ridiculous, over the top action movie surface pleasures set in a world where it sticks out like a sore thumb. A surprisingly hilarious sore thumb.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is way more fun than it has any right to be. It’s surprisingly heavy on gore (especially decapitations), is unashamedly dumb (as most fun action movies are), and acknowledges its ludicrous superhero pedigree with casting choices like The Avengers’ Jeremy Renner and X-Men’s Famke Janssen. There’s also a super cute (and super huge) troll named Edward, some modern touches like Hansel’s need for insulin after being force fed candy as a child, and a laughable excess of late-90s goth aesthetic. What makes Hansel & Gretel enjoyable is its commitment to its own ridiculousness. It is a dumb action movie at heart and takes that role very seriously, as evidenced by the witch hunters’ machine gun bow & arrows and penchant for corny jokes. Jeremy Renner is no Schwarzenegger and there isn’t much going on below the basic genre surface pleasures, but it’s a very sleek, fun 90min popcorn flick that’s surprisingly efficient & self-aware. And dumb. The stupidity on display here is as relentless and delicious as being force fed fist-fulls of candy.

-Brandon Ledet

Night of the Lepus (1972)

/ swampflix / 8 Comments

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fourstar

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There’s a very strange inner conflict at work in the drive-in schlock classic Night of the Lepus. The film (also known as Rabbits) can’t decide if it wants to be a hip & trippy update to the sci-fi monster movie format (like its contemporary Phase IV) or if it wants to be a tragically square Rory Calhoun Western. The strange middle ground it finds between those two aesthetics is what partly makes it such a bizarre viewing experience. Well, that and the thousands of gigantic, murderous rabbits that plague the small ranching town it’s set in. Yes, Night of Lepus is a horror film about killer bunnies and there’s just as much tension between whether those bunnies are cute or terrifying as there is between the film’s dueling hip & square tones.

Posed initially as an allegory for over-population, Night of the Lepus immediately muddles its message with some musings on pesticides and reckless scientific research, to the point where no specific intent really holds water for the film. Here’s all you really need to know: a towheaded Rhoda Penmark-type accidentally introduces a chemical into the natural environment that causes thousands of wild rabbits to mutate into gigantic, bloodthirsty monsters. The most amusing part about this mutation is that the movie can’t decide exactly how large they are. The rabbits’ exact dimensions vary from shot to shot depending on the technique used to make them appear abnormally large. A lot of the film shows ordinary, cute-as-a-button bunny rabbits trampling all over an even cuter miniature of a small Western town but in other shots it’s grown adults in bunny rabbit suits tackling and swiping at the terrified citizens. This combination of effects is disorienting as well as alternatingly hilarious and terrifying. To the movie’s credit, they do find a way to make close ups of the bunnies’ blood-soaked teeth & paws genuinely disturbing, even if other scenes are just herds of adorable bunnies hopping across miniature sets.

Speaking of blood, the rabbit attacks in Night of the Lepus are surprisingly gruesome. The bright red acrylic that apparently everyone out West bleeds is splattered all over the film, sometimes during attacks, but mostly on the mangled corpses that the bunnies leave in their wake. This striking affinity for gore combined with weird nighttime shots of rabbits menacingly hopping to strange sounds, heavy breathing, and animal roars suggests a very strange atmosphere that the rest of the film just has no interest in keeping up. Janet “Psycho” Leigh, Rory Calhoun, and a dude that looks awfully similar to Rory Calhoun all play the material straight, like the rabbit attacks are just part of a particularly bizarre episode of Bonanza. Only the Rhoda Penmark stand-in, who of course feels no remorse for causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent people (and rabbits), gets in frequent laughs with her outrageously oblivious dialogue.

For the most part, Night of the Lepus is entertaining more in its indecision than its dialogue. Is this a Western or a monster movie? Is it more influenced by John Wayne or marijuana-smoking hippies? How large are the rabbits, exactly? Are they cute or terrifying? The answer to all these questions, confusingly, is a simple yes. Night of the Lepus is a lot of things all at the same time: both generic & bizarre, both adorable & nightmarish, both super cool & super lame. These inner conflicts are partly what makes it such a fascinatingly re-watchable cult classic. Well, that and the gigantic, murderous rabbits.

-Brandon Ledet