Movie/TV Review: Battlestar Galactica - Razor
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

I had rented this from Netflix about 3 months ago, and just this weekend, I finally got around to watching it this weekend. If that sounds criminal, then it probably is. Shame on me! The reinvented version of "Battlestar Galactica" is the best thing on television right now with its character driven storytelling and its complex storylines and characters. But like "The Sopranos," there is an obscenely long wait between seasons that is just maddening. Granted, you have to respect them for doing the best job they can and for not just rushing something out. Still, the cliffhanger from Season 3 of Kara "Starbuck" Thrace returning from the dead had us desperately wanting to know what she was doing back, and to see if she really does know the way to Earth.

"Battlestar Galactica: Razor" does not answer these questions, nor does it intend to. With this movie, it looks more at the reign of Admiral Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes) who commands the Battlestar Pegasus, and who manages to save it from utter destruction just in time. A lot of the things that she did which were discussed in the previous seasons are brought to light here, and we get a good picture of how she acted the way she did. "Razor" also centers around a Pegasus crewmember, Kendra Shaw (played by Stephanie Jacobsen), and we see her going from as a new officer excited about her mission aboard the Pegasus, and then we watch as she is turned into a hard ass veteran of war who is trying to hold on to whatever humanity she has left.

What I love about this show is the complexity of its characters, and the conflicts that are so strong that you share the tension of those moments along with the characters. We may think we know the good guys from the bad here, but the line between them gets more and more blurred as the show goes on. Everyone on both Battlestars are flawed and complicated, and they are all guilty of something. For us to judge them can only go so far, for their flaws in character and judgment may very well reflect our own. Kendra Shaw is first introduced to us as a hard nosed officer who has gotten into a lot of trouble to where she may end up doing kitchen duty for the rest of her days. Our immediate reaction is to despise her for her cold attitude and demeanor, but as we go back in time to when she was on board Admiral Cain's ship, and we see what she is forced to do in order to survive. Seeing what she does, there is no way you can ever come back to being the same person you were before.

The most interesting and intense part of the movie is seeing the action onboard the Battlestar Pegasus as it hovers over Caprica. We are introduced to characters in an innocent state before their lives are forever changed by the sudden Cylon attack. This allows the series' creators to bring back the great Michelle Forbes back as the Admiral we came to hate, but then not so much here. Michelle is always excellent at playing hard edged female characters, and she is perfect for this role. She fearlessly takes this character into the depths of her sorrow and hatred, and even when we despise her for her coldly harsh decisions, she is never simply a one-dimensional villain. She is fully fleshed out to be a commander doing what she feels is best to move her ship away from another Cylon attack.

There is also an interesting moment where we see Admiral Cain having a sweet moment with Gina Inviere, which seems to imply that she is gay. This is looked upon briefly and not for too long as people have better things to do than wonder who is gay and who is not such as, I don't know, keeping the Pegasus and her crew from being destroyed. However, we see Cain become almost completely destroyed and betrayed as soon turns out that Gina is one of the many Cylons played by Tricia Helfer. We come to see how Gina came to be brutally tortured when we first saw her in Season 2, and it illustrates how Cain's heart has become so hardened.

The movie also shifts back to the first Cylon war where we see a young William Adama (played by Nico Cortez in an excellent performance) fighting off a Cylon attack that ravages the fleet and fills him with a vicious hatred of these emotionless machines. This hatred leads him to dive into atmosphere of the planet to blast away a Cylon Raider. Adama ends up losing his Viper and landing on the planet's surface to discover a Cylon laboratory which represents their hideous and barbaric experimentations with humans as they will soon evolve into human form, making them all the more undetectable. Just when you think "Battlestar Galactica" couldn't get anymore darker, it does.

This look back at the first Cylon war allows us to revisit the original Cylons of the original version of this show. Whereas the original show had actors in costumes as these red eyed characters, they are presented here as CGI creations, and they come across as much more threatening and lethal than they were when we were introduced them in the late 70's/early 80's. They are also much better shots than they were when they were fighting against Richard Hatch and Dirk Bennedict among others. They fire more than one shot at a time, their aim is a bit better, and they have machine guns like they should have had at the very beginning.

Seeing the Cylons in this version of "Battlestar Galactica" could have been easily distracting and might have taken away from the show as we now know it to be. But seeing the original version of these machines here put a smile on my face, and it brought back a lot of memories of when I watched the show on ABC as a kid, and how cool it was. Hearing the Cylons say "by your command" reminded me of how much I loved the sound of their voices in their synthesized sounds. I wanted to get one of those "tin cans" for my bedroom. Of course, that was a long time ago…

A lot of the current Battlestar Galactica crew are here in this movie as well. Jamie Barber and Katee Sackhoff continue to do great work here as Apollo (now leading the Pegasus) and Starbuck. Edward James Olmos is also back doing his usual solid work as the adult Adama, leading his rag tag fleet on a lonely quest towards Earth. Having these characters here keeps us grounded as the film shifts back and forth rapidly through time as all the characters come to a point in their lives that will lead them into the world they try to survive in. There is also a great scene between Starbuck and Kendra where she catches Kendra doing drugs. Rather than turn her in, she allows it to past as long as Kendra doesn't let anyone know that she has been going through the liquor closet so to speak. It's a well written scene because Starbuck knows that she would be a hypocrite for turning in Kendra for her personal vice since her own can be every bit as destructive.

But aside from the always excellent Michelle Forbes, this movie also belongs to Stephanie Jacobsen who gives us a great performance as Kendra Shaw. She has the most well rounded arc here, and she takes her character from a seemingly innocent woman to a hardened officer almost seamlessly. Kendra knows that she has a price to pay for the horrific acts she has done under orders or not, and by the end, she is prepared to deal with them on her own terms, and not at the expense of anyone else.

A lot of credit also should go to director Felix Alcala for never letting the pace of this movie falter, and for managing to keep everything together with going back and forth in time. In the wrongs hands, this could have been a very confusing story to where you'd think you are watching a David Lynch which is great, but makes no sense.

The main thrust of "Battlestar Galactica: Razor" is of how each of these characters comes to be who they are, and how the choices they make will forever change who they are. How the price of survival is a high one, and the cost is your soul. It also deals with how the past comes back to haunt you, and that you can never escape it. Can you live with your sins, or do you let them engulf you whole? Some of the characters do, others don't but get by just barely by their own wits.

The show continues on to its 4^th season finale in the future, and we will see if this Cylon war will come to an end, and how all these characters we have come to know will deal with the aftermath of what they have been through. But the past will always be there to haunt them no matter how hard they try to put it behind.

Give the makers of "Battlestar Galactica: Razor" some credit. Whereas "The Sopranos" never bothered to ease the wait for the next season, the creative team behind the Sci Fi Channel series at least took the time to give us this. Here's hoping we don't have to wait too long for the second half of Season 4. Speaking of which, I need to catch up on the episodes I have been missing. Excuse me…

**** out of ****

Currently listening : Battlestar Galactica - Season 3 Release date: 2007-10-23

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Movie Review: Hamlet 2
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

This movie starts off with an invisible voice talking about how to be an actor, you have to live in a dream. But dreams die, and the question posed here is where dreams go when they die. If you are Dana Marschz, then you go to Tuscon, Arizona to spend what is rest of your life teaching drama at a high school. Being an actor myself, there is something quite scary about the fate of this particular actor, who is best known for his herpes medication commercials. Here in Arizona, he hopes to pass on his love of drama and acting to high school students, and that is the thrust of the action in one of the most unlikely sequels in history, "Hamlet 2." It stars Steve Coogan, who we just saw in "Tropic Thunder," as Dana Marschz who ends up writing the sequel in order to save the drama program at the high school where he teaches.

This movie was a big hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and while the movie didn't quite live up to the hype in my eyes, it was still a very clever movie that kept me entertained from beginning to end. It is a great look at how art can never truly be suppressed, even if it is not very good to say the least.

We meet up with Dana Marschz as he has already been teaching at the local high school, and he only has two students (Skylar Astin & Phoebe Strole) who really seem to care about drama and acting. When he comes into his new class for the year, he discovers that is largely populated by Latino students who are in the class because their other electives have been cut, and Drama is the only one left. It reminds me of all those kids I went to high school with who were in the drama class because was the only class they could hope to get an easy A in (other than PE). Dana is convinced that this has been presented to him as a challenge that he must face with no fear.

Dana's existence is a pathetic one, as he is a recovering alcoholic with a wife (played by the great Catherine Keener) who drinks a margarita from a gigantic martini glass. They also have a boarder (David Arquette) who is sleeping with his wife while Dana rollerblades to school (Dana can't afford a car). His gift to the high school are plays he wrote that are direct adaptations of movies like "Erin Brockovitch" and "Dead Poets Society," and they get ripped to pieces by a young critic who shows no mercy for Dana's passion. Dana's basic cry for all the negative criticism is:

"He fisted us!"

Dana ends up coming to this unsympathetic teenage critic to seek inspiration, and this kid suggests that he write something original and put everything into it. Thus, he comes up with what in many ways is a completely unnecessary sequel to one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. The fact that everyone dies at the end of "Hamlet" does not deter Dana, and he comes up with a device to solve that problem in the form of a time machine. What goes on in the play ends up pissing off the typically conservative suburban high school which works to stop the play from being performed. But Dana ends up proving himself right in that you cannot stop art.

It's at times hard for me to critique "Hamlet 2" objectively because the fate of Dana Marschz is the one I hope to avoid in my own life. It is made clear from the outset that this guy not particularly talented to say the least. The movie starts off with a montage of scenes that the main character has appeared in as an actor. They are bit parts that at best probably landed him an agent like that scene he had in "Xena: Princess Warrior." The funniest of these commercials is the one he does for medication for Herpes. Do you want anyone in real life telling you this?

"Right now, I am having a herpes outbreak. But you wouldn't know it!"

Please God, tell me that I won't end up like Dana! However, is it all that bad being him? Not necessarily. In the process of his writing and directing "Hamlet 2," his play gets banned from being performed at the high school, he ends up inspiring the Latino kids to put on his show at a location outside of the school, and he gets help from the ACLU to keep his play from being censored. Talk about free publicity!

The movie itself is a great star vehicle for Steve Coogan who is not at all afraid of making a fool out of himself. He has done a lot of hilarious work in movies like "Hot Fuzz" among others, and you will not be able to think of anybody else in this role. Steve shows no fear in playing this character as he makes a total idiot out of himself. This guy is a complete failure as both an actor and as a drama teacher. The fact that he somehow inspires these kids who have grown up in a different environment than any he has been is pretty amazing. In the end, it doesn't matter if he is really bad or good (that's the ACLU's take on it anyway). Dana gets the play up to the excitement and the infuriation of the people of Tuscon, Arizona, where dreams supposedly come to die. Steve proves to be a brilliant comic actor in case we never bothered to notice that fact before.

The director and co-writer of the movie is Andrew Flemming, and he does a good job of not taking many things very seriously here. Andrew started off his career as the writer and director of "A Nightmare On Elm Street" wannabe, "Bad Dreams" (the title says it right there). He went on to direct "Threesome," "The Craft," "Dick," and last year's "Nancy Drew." Suffice to say, Andrew has been around for awhile, but I'm not sure if people are aware of that or not. This movie will probably make people more aware of who he is and what he has directed. The movie was also co-written by Pam Brady who is also one of the writers from "South Park." I imagine most of the skewering of religion in the movie comes from here. She probably looks forward to pissing off people like that Westboro church group that picketed Heath Ledger's funeral because he played a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain." Hell, I hope they get really pissed off at this movie and have heart attacks in the process. That would make my day!

The movie also features a terrific performance by Elisabeth Shue playing herself. Elisabeth has given up on acting, and she appears to be a lot happier working as a nurse in a sperm bank. Dana goes gaga over her and invites her to speak with his class, but they have no idea who she is. I always found it tragic that Elisabeth never got the same caliber of roles that she should have gotten after her phenomenal performance in "Leaving Las Vegas." A lot of the movies she did afterwards like "Hollow Man" almost made you forget how great she could be. I don't know if "Hamlet 2" will give her career the boost it deserves, but it is great to see her enjoying herself here.

Anybody who has ever been involved with community theater or in high school plays will get a kick out of this flick. In a sense, the students are the ones who manage to get the show up and running, and that was always the case when I was in shows during high school. The fact that Dana manages to inspire these kids through his embarrassing ways is astonishing. When you are already deep into the production of a show, and your director flakes out or becomes useless, you can't just give up. As Dana's personal life hits rock bottom, it's those kids who pull him together.

I also like how the movie got into the conflicts that Dana has with the school and the parents because everyone in these situations always acts in an overly conservative way. As time goes on, I get more interested in what DOESN'T offend people because it seems like we are always looking to get mad about something. Granted, you can see why people might object to Jesus Christ French kissing Satan or with a song entitled "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" (a worthy contender for Best Original Song at next year's Oscars).

But everyone is saved in the end due to the protected freedom of the 1^st amendment of the Constitution. That pisses a lot of people off, but that's their problem.

The ACLU eventually gets involved when the show is threatened to be shut down, and a lawyer comes to visit Mr. Marschz to lend her help. She is played in a kick ass scene stealing performance by "Saturday Night Live's" Amy Poehler. Amy's character of Cricket Feldstein is a ball buster about protecting the production and in making sure that everyone involved gets to put it up. Her disinterest in whether or not the play is any good ("It's irrelevant" she says) is hilarious, and Amy continues to show why she is one of the funniest actresses working today. She is a real kick to watch here!

"Hamlet 2" is a lot of fun to watch, and the show that comes out of it is a hoot as it is a quasi-musical in which Hamlet and Jesus team up to change the past with the help of a time machine. Granted, they take all the drama and tragedy out of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," but it is a little hard at times to argue with Dana who calls that play "a real downer." In addition to "Rock Me Sexy Jesus," there is another song called "Raped In The Face" which is Dana's stab at the critics who keep taking apart his plays based on movies. Somehow, I don't think we will be seeing the latter song getting nominated at the Academy Awards.

All the same, "Hamlet 2" is not quite a great movie. It has a lot of great things about it, but I wish they had pushed the envelope a bit more with this one. You have to expect that when one of the writers is from "South Park." I'm not saying that the movie has to be insidiously evil, I just wished that the satire in parts was a little sharper. Or maybe I got just a little too depressed with Dana's station in life because it is one that I hope to avoid myself, and that made it a little hard for me to be more objective about what I saw. Still, in terms of the comedies that have come out so far this year, "Tropic Thunder" is still the funniest, but "Hamlet 2" is every bit as memorable in its own way.

The month of August is typically filled with crap movies that studios couldn't open in January because there is too much testosterone in them. It is a great to save money on the movies because there is not a lot worth seeing. But "Hamlet 2" is one of the few really good movies you can hope to see before the summer fades away into the beginning of the school year.

Just remember, all the world is a stage!

*** out of ****

Currently watching : Battlestar Galactica - Razor (Unrated Extended Edition) Release date: 2007-12-04

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Movie Review: Tropic Thunder
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

"Tropic Thunder" takes us back to the Ben Stiller we like the best. The satirist of everything movies and of celebrities who take themselves WAY too seriously. This is the Ben Stiller we have been missing since "Zoolander" where the humor knows no boundaries (just ask those protesting the movie over how mentally challenged people are portrayed). In the last few years, we have gotten the Ben Stiller of "Along Came Polly" and the remake of "The Heartbreak Kid" to name a few. This was not the Ben Stiller we were initially weaned on. Those movies made us get sick of Ben Stiller and made us forget how funny he was in such lunatic classics like "There's Something About Mary." But now, we have the Ben Stiller we like back in crazy shit mode as he directs, co-writes, and stars in this action movie spoof that gleefully lampoons self-serious actors, ridiculously insecure directors, and just about anyone else involved in the movie industry or behind the scenes.

"Tropic Thunder" is kind of a hit and miss comedy, but the stuff that does hit had me laughing so hard that I felt light headed and wondered if I was going to pass out. It may very well be the best comedy released so far this year, and it gave me the opportunity to head out to The Grove in Los Angeles to see it, and to walk by James Woods who was sitting in a restaurant across from a blonde haired woman who was probably young enough to be his daughter. But anyway…

The movie starts off with a bunch of mock movie trailers which introduces us to the main actors of the movie. Ben Stiller plays action star Tugg Speedman (is that his real name?), and we see him as the hero who saves planet Earth in the "Scorcher" movie series that has even more sequels to it than the "Saw" movies. We meet Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) who has made millions off of a product called Booty Juice. Then we meet Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) playing a whole family of obese farters called "The Fatties." Picture if you will the family dinner scene from Eddie Murphy's version of "The Nutty Professor" as a full length movie (I hope they don't show it in "Smell-O-Vision"), and you have "The Fatties." And finally we see 5 time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) playing a priest who is ever so eager to get in the pants of Tobey Maguire in "Satan's Alley." After the brilliant mock trailers, we are thrust right into the making of a Vietnam War epic where everything that can go wrong does.

Ben Stiller is here doing what he does best, playing Ben Stiller, and for this movie that is just fine. As Tugg Speedman, he gives us an action movie star who is ever so eager to be taken seriously. This eagerness of his ends up getting him to play a mentally challenged man in "Simple Jack" which ends up being a box office disaster. With this new movie within a movie, "Tropic Thunder," it represents his last chance (other than "Scorcher VI") to stay on the A-list in Hollywood. Ben in his performance gleefully satirizes those actors who feel that playing a "retard" is a deadlock for an Oscar nomination, let alone the Oscar itself. This leads to one of the movie's funniest moments between him and Robert Downey Jr. as they discuss other actors who have won Oscars for playing "retards" and what they had over Tugg Speedman when he was in "Simple Jack." Famous actors are not spared in this talk.

This brings me up to the recent protest launched against the movie by advocates of the mentally challenged. They claim that the movie ridicules those said people with stereotypical behavior that they see as very offensive. Why they are entitled to feel the way they do about this movie, they completely miss the point. The joke is not on mentally challenged people at all, but on the actors that play them. The joke is especially on the actors who think that they can become retarded in the process of playing these roles. I guess you have to be pretty retarded to think that could happen to you in the process of playing a role!

We can now officially say that this has been the summer of Robert Downey Jr. Robert started this summer off with a bang with "Iron Man," and as the summer draws closer to its final run towards Labor Day weekend, he gives us another brilliantly inspired performance as Australian actor Kirk Lazarus. We all know that his character of Kirk Lazarus ends up going through a medical procedure that dyes his skin black so that he can play the role of one of African American troops. Robert's performance is inspired lunacy as he portrays an actor who will not even think about breaking character as soon as the cameras stop rolling. This leads to some truly hilarious moments between him and Brandon T. Jackson as they seem to compete with one another as to who is the blacker one of the two.

Jack Black is also a riot as Jeff Portnoy, a movie star who is also a drug addict. When the action of the movie moves to a drug factory where Tug Speedman has been taken prisoner, Black has to fight off his fiending need for heroin which threatens to completely destroy him. As he screams, "don't judge me," you have to wonder how this guy can last through an entire film shoot. Jack is always a hoot to watch in a movie, and this one is no exception.

"Tropic Thunder" also features a great supporting cast of actors who you have seen before or who you will be seeing in the future. Brandon T. Jackson is great as Alpa Chino (nice name) who plays the sole black actor of the troop. Jay Baruchel, who we saw last year in "Knocked Up," is great in a supporting role as Kevin Sandusky, who is the only one who can supposedly read a map. We also get to see Danny McBride who we just saw in this summer's "Pineapple Express," as a special effects technician who loves his job a little bit more than he should. Matthew McConaughey is also on board to play Tug Speedman's agent Rick Peck, who will do everything in his power to get one of his favorite clients Tivo. When Tug doesn't get Tivo, Rick gets super pissed! And you also have the grizzled Nick Nolte on board as Four Leaf Tayback, the man who wrote the book the movie everyone is filming is based on. Stiller definitely did a great job picking out his cast.

But the movie is almost completely stolen by an uncredited cameo by fallen star Tom Cruise. Cruise plays Les Grossman, a studio head who is filled with an uncontrollable rage as the movie spirals out of control and over budget, a nightmare for any film executive. Cruise shows a brilliant sense of comic timing that we really haven't seen since "Jerry Maguire," and his performance almost makes me completely forget about that video Scientology video he did which the church tried to take off the internet. Watching that video gave me a massive headache, but watching him here almost made me forget that he did that. Almost completely unrecognizable as a balding an overweight bull of a man in constant need of a Diet Coke, Cruise gives us the last performance that we would ever expect to see from him. Could this save his career? Quite possibly!

"Tropic Thunder" is a go for broke extravaganza where not everything works, but what does work will live you in stitches. There were parts where I was laughing so hard that I started to get light headed. It's a good thing that I didn't pass out. This is the kind of comedy I look forward to, the one which makes you laugh your ass off and leaves you all giddy as you walk out of the movie theater. After making a bunch of formulaic comedies, Ben Stiller gets back to his satirical self and gives us one of his best movies to date.

Still, I can't help but wonder how the characters in the movie within the movie got the film on to the big screen. I also couldn't understand a good portion of what Robert Downey Jr. was saying. Of course, that gives me a reason to check it out again at some point.

***1/2 out of ****

Currently watching : Natural Born Killers [Blu-ray] Release date: 2008-06-10

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Movie Review: Birdy (1984)
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

I first became aware of this movie through the soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. I first bought it years ago on audio cassette, long before I saw the movie. It became one of my all time favorites with both adrenaline running pieces and beautifully peaceful music that you can fall asleep to. It almost made me afraid to see the movie because I feared that it would forever change the way I listened to this music. But certain pieces like "The Heat" have been used in so many movie trailers now that it doesn't matter where you first heard it. So eventually, I had to rent the movie on videotape and see what all the fuss was about.

"Birdy" was the second part of a double feature I saw last Thursday at the New Beverly Cinema on a double bill with "Angel Heart." Both were directed by Alan Parker who as a director seems particularly interested in characters that are lost in their obsessions and need others to bring them out of it and back into reality. It stars Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine in some of their earliest roles on film. They play friends from Philadelphia who are in many ways complete opposites, but they become the best of friends through Birdy's connection with birds and his desire to become one.

"Birdy" is a great movie, a great character study about two young men who grow up together, and who are forever changed by the war they are drafted into. The movie is based on a book by William Wharton which chronicles two characters who are thrown into World War II. For the film, it was changed to Vietnam which would soon become a major location for films like "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket among others. The movie starts with the two main characters who are now out of the Vietnam War, but who are forever scared by it permanently. In the end, all they have is each other.

The movie goes back and forth in time as we start off with Nicholas Cage's character coming out of the hospital after his face has been seriously disfigured in combat. Bandaged like a Frankenstein creation, he is no longer the ladies man we see getting to first base like before. Al ends up going to an army hospital where Birdy (we never learn his real name) is holed up in a cell not saying a word. After the damage the war has done to him, Birdy has seemingly accomplished what he has set out to do – to become a bird in his own mind.

We then see these kids during their high school years in Philadelphia where they seem like complete opposites, but who both want the same thing in life. They want to fly away from their problems, but Birdy is a little more literal about it. With Al, he has an abusive father to deal with who thinks nothing of smacking his son around when he screws up, and being on the high school wrestling team helps him deal with his frustration of not being able to stand up to him. With Birdy, he has a tough as nails father who is nowhere as sympathetic and understanding as his janitor father, and who is always taking away the baseballs that the kids unintentionally keep batting into her yard. Both Al and Birdy get together in money making schemes like carrier pigeons they feel they can make a profit from. They later turn their attentions to a car in a wrecking yard that they manage to get running again.

Al really represents Birdy's strongest link to the outside world as Birdy falls deeper and deeper into his obsession with birds and in wanting to fly away from all the troubles in the world. Birdy never shows any interest in anything else that you expect teenagers to indulge themselves in like girlfriends, making out, or being normal. One of the funniest expressions Birdy has is when he talks about how bad he feels for women that they have to have breasts that they just have to carry around and how they flop all over the place. I can't think of anyone else who would make that argument (man or woman).

The scenes that Birdy spends with a beautiful yellow canary he ends up getting and naming Burda are some of the most interesting scenes here. It's not just some National Geographic special you are watching as we see Birdy studying these birds ever so closely, almost making love to them. There is one amazing sequence where he is dreaming that he is flying like a bird and Parker shoots the scene from a bird's eye view as we go around people and fly over cars and then way up into the sky above. All this done to the instrumental tune to Peter Gabriel's "Not One Of Us." Even without that song

While all this may make the movie sound like a nostalgic journey to the past, it is actually a very hard hitting movie which has its funny moments, but also has its awkward and painful moments. Seeing Matthew Modine going to a prom, only because his mom threatens to get rid of his birds if he doesn't, is painful in terms of how much we know that he doesn't want to be there. Hell, I would have killed to date the girl he goes out with! And seeing at the start of the movie where these two characters are at a moment where they are forever changed, we know that these two are on a descent which may permanently rob them of their humanity. We know things are not going to end well for these two, so there is a strong air of unease as we get towards the point where they are drafted into a war that they are lucky to come out of alive.

Seeing these two young actors early in their careers (this movie came out in 1984!) reminds you of just how talented they have always been. Nicholas Cage's role of Al is one of my favorites of his as we see him as a fun loving guy, and then as a frightened war veteran who is terribly uncertain of what lies ahead for him. Having to spend so much of the movie in bandages could seem so limiting to some actors, but not to Mr. Cage. I heard that before he started making this film, he had his wisdom teeth taken out, and he insisted on having it done without Novocain. Just hearing about that makes my mouth hurt! Talk about suffering for your art! And the suffering Cage goes through as this character is pretty raw and genuine. I like to see him play more roles like this in the future instead of him doing another movie like "Ghost Rider."

Matthew Modine is an actor we haven't seen much of recently. The last thing I remember him being in was probably "Transporter 2" with Jason Statham. His role is especially hard to play because it could easily look so broad and ridiculous, but Modine makes Birdy's love for birds seem so real that it almost doesn't matter that he has cut himself off from the world around him. When we see him at the hospital, he is almost completely speechless and has to convey how he feels through expressions, and that is something you need to learn to be a great film actor so that you don't emote all over the place. This is one his best performances as well, and it lead him to a career where he has played many different roles.

This is one of Alan Parker's best movies, and it stands alongside his best work like "Midnight Express" and "Mississippi Burning" among others. Alan has not just made some simple antiwar movie about how unnecessary the war in Vietnam was, but of the bond of friendship and how it can never be completely broken, especially when you are in need. In essence, the scars (both physically and mentally) that are inflicted on them in combat bring them together because it seems like no one else can fully understand them. The heart of this movie is in the way these two guys lean on each other, and how they recognize each other's strengths. Parker gets that and makes it the main thrust of this excellent motion picture. In the end, most of his movies deal with people in a place that seems so alien and unwelcome to them.

And of course, I can never get sick of Peter Gabriel's score to the film. Some say that is dated, but I say bullshit to that. While it may seem weird to compose music to a movie that takes place in the 60's with an electronic score, it fits perfectly into the themes that Director Parker portrays in this movie. Like the characters, it is in its own world and dwells in both the beauty and the pain of life. The music is cribbed from a lot of Peter's other albums (he freely admits this in the album notes), and it would have been interesting if he did include some of the lyrics to songs used here like "Wallflower" as it deals with the mental state these characters are stuck in and need to fight out of.

"Birdy" is one of those great movies that stays with you long after the movie has ended, or long after your VHS tape of it is all faded and worn out. It also has one of the best endings of any movie I have ever seen. I refuse to ruin it for you. You just have to see it for yourself!

**** out of ****

Currently watching : Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: Live Release date: 2005-04-21

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Movie Review: Angel Heart (1987)
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

"Harry Angel is searching for the truth... Pray he doesn't find it."

Right now, I cannot think of a truer tagline for a movie than the one for "Angel Heart," an Alan Parker directed movie starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and "The Cosby Show's" Lisa Bonet. It follows the story of Private Detective named Harry Angel played by Rourke who is hired by a mysterious man named Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro in his best impersonation ever of Martin Scorsese) to track down the last whereabouts of a famous singer. This singer is presumed dead, but it turns out that may not be the case as Harry finds that he was transferred out of the hospital years ago, and while people say that this singer is dead, they cannot convince themselves of that. Angel's journey into discovery takes him from the snowy and gospel filled streets of Harlem all the way out to the sweaty bayous of Louisiana. In "Angel Heart," curiosity may not kill the cat, but it can sure frazzle and scar it for life. We search for the truth throughout our lives, but we never taken into account the possible consequences of what we may find.

I caught "Angel Heart" last Thursday at the New Beverly Cinema where they were showing it as a double feature with another Alan Parker movie, "Birdy." Sitting in the theater with a very tiny audience on a weeknight (let's leave the pun out of this), I can't believe just how long it has taken for me to get out and see this movie. I remember when it was first released, and how it got an X rating (NC-17 today) for this sex scene between Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet where as they make out, the water dripping from the ceiling turns into blood. The version of this movie was the R-rated version that was released theatrically 20 years ago (yikes!), but the unrated edition can be found today on DVD. In fact, when it first came out on VHS, I think it was actually one of the very first movies to be shown on video in the way it was intended to be seen, without the MPAA breathing down its neck. Of course, this was years and years before Blockbuster Video came into play with its "family friendly" policy that did not allow for any NC-17 movies. I hate censorship of any kind, especially sanctioned censorship!

Was the movie deserving of its X rating? I doubt it. Considering that there are other acts of violence throughout this movie like a heart being cut out, someone blowing their brains out, and another person getting a very sensitive part of their body being cut off, the sex scene should seem almost tame in comparison. It's depressing to see that this hypocrisy of the MPAA goes on to this very day where they find sexuality in movies more unnerving than violence or someone getting blown away literally. Of course, it did offer the movie some free publicity which must have tickled the producers to death.

"Angel Heart" is a heavily atmospheric movie that makes you feel the coldness of New York, and the never ending heat that makes you sweat like never before in Louisiana. It is not a loud slam bang movie, and it does take its time in setting up the story and of the locations that the movie was shot in. Each city in the movie is an important character, and they reflect the nightmares and dreams of the main characters in the film. If this movie were to be made today, I imagine the studios would want the characters to be younger and more hip and take away some of the dark stuff… I hope this is one movie that filmmakers can leave off of the remake table. It does have some exciting moments and some shoot outs and chases, but they never seem put there to "liven" up the film so to speak.

Back when this movie was made, Mickey Rourke was a much bigger star, and this is one of the movies he seemed to do without the benefit of shampooing his hair. This fact continually dogs him to this very day. As Harry Angel, he does excellent work in making his character seem tough and sleazy, yet resourceful and vulnerable. Harry's life unravels faster and faster as he digs deeper and deeper into the mystery that surrounds him. Watching Rourke in a roll like this reminds you of what a strong and brave actor he can be. Back then, he was not afraid to play on the dark side of a character and to give us someone who was not so morally sound. His off screen antics seem to get the best of him these days, but thanks to his performance years later in "Sin City," we can never forget how great of an actor he can be.

The movie credits itself for having "a special appearance by Robert De Niro." Special appearance? That seems to imply that you see him in the movie once. On point of fact, you see him several times throughout the movie as Louis Cyphre (pay close attention to that name). It's one of the few performances where De Niro never goes over the top and gets all threatening like he does in movies like "Mean Streets." This film was also made way before De Niro went into making nothing comedies ("Righteous Kill" should correct that). As Cyphre, De Niro gives a delicious performance of a man endlessly fascinated by the corruption and decay of the soul. His character feeds on that just as he feeds on hard boiled eggs. When he says that the egg is the symbol of the soul and then slowly bites into it in front of Rourke's character, it is a very chilling moment. De Niro looks like he had a blast playing this part.

Lisa Bonet was deep into playing Denise Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" when she was cast in this. I imagine the MPAA tricked themselves into giving this film an adults only rating because they got all hot and bothered at one Cosby's TV daughters showing her breasts. I can see them now:

"We can't let kids see this movie! They will never look at one of television's famous daughters the same again! This will destroy their innocence!!"

A lot of the controversy surrounding this movie almost hides the fact that Bonet was actually really good here. A lot of people probably assumed she got this part because of her success on "The Cosby Show," but Alan Parker made it clear when the movie was released that he picked her because he felt she was right for the part. Having seen this movie, I completely agree. I also have to admit that it was fun seeing her naked, but anyway. Lisa's character of Epiphany (perfectly named by the way) is a mysterious person who seems to say everything yet reveals nothing, and she captures the mystery of this character very well and keeps us guessing of what she really knows. It's almost a shame that her career has descended into obscurity, although I get the feeling she doesn't mind it all that much.

Director Alan Parker has made a lot of great movies over the years like "Birdy" and the experience that is "Midnight Express" to name a few. Like "Angel Heart," they deal with lost souls trying desperately to free themselves of whatever is holding them back. There is a lot holding Harry Angel back in this movie, but when he finally gets to the truth, he will find that being held back was actually a blessing that he could never see. Alan gives the movie a distinctive look as it takes place in the 1940's. Parker also directs his actors very well and gives them each a memorable moment that sticks with you long after you have seen the movie.

Trevor Jones did the score, and I'm wondering if I can possibly find it anywhere. It's probably out of print at this time. Trevor does great work capturing the tension and the atmosphere, and of aiding the filmmakers in realizing the horrifying truth that Harry has spent this movie trying to find.

The trailer for "Angel Heart" goes out of its way to make it look like this is the second coming of horror by comparing it to "The Exorcist" and "Chinatown." This movie does not reach those heights and was never in a position to do so, but it is still a very good movie worth seeing for those who have an interest in the devil and/or the occult. Both play a big part in this movie.

***1/2 out of ****

Currently watching : Batman Begins (Limited Edition Gift Set) [Blu-ray] Release date: 2008-07-08

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Movie Review: Hell Ride
Current mood: disappointed
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Quentin Tarantino attempts (intentionally or not) to resurrect the dormant acting career of one of his favorite actors from the 1970's: Larry Bishop. Larry he has acted in many movies and guest starred on numerous TV shows, but he is best known for his fine performances as badass bikers from movies like "The Savage Seven," "Angel Unchained," and "Chrome and Hot Leather." Tarantino himself gave Larry a fantastic and hilarious cameo as the manager of a strip joint in "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" where he tells Michael Madsen's character that he is not working for him again anytime soon. Now Tarantino has given Larry a chance to bring back the biker movies that he loved watching in his youth. The result was "Hell Ride" which was written, co-produced, and directed by Mr. Bishop himself. Larry also plays the lead role of Pistolero, the leader of the Victors biker gang.

In short, here is what I can say about "Hell Ride:" Great look, awesome cast, crappy screenplay shitty movie. "Hell Ride" is a mess of a movie that wastes some very talented actors in a story that makes almost no sense at all. The movie only runs about 83 minutes, but it sure felt like a LONG 83 minutes all the same. The movie involves, as far as I could lift out of the mess of a story, Pistolero and his gang going after a rival biker gang known as 666 to revenge the death of one of their own. I can't really explain it anymore than that because all the little details got lost on me. This is a loud movie to be sure, but I almost passed out while watching it.

The story, like many a Tarantino movie, shifts back and forth in time to help give more depth to the story and the characters. What it really ends up doing is confusing the hell out of me and the rest of the audience. We see a young kid on his bicycle, and we think that's Pistolero, but it could be someone else. We see the names of other characters who knew this kid, and we see other bikers burn this Cherokee woman to death because she stole money or something like that. By the end of the movie, I really didn't care much who did what because I was too busy looking at my watch waiting for the movie to end. When I look at my watch while I am watching a movie, that is NEVER a good sign.

"Hell Ride" also features a plethora of naked ladies and bloody violence. The look of the movie is very rough, and it is one of the very few pluses here. To its credit, the movie never glamorizes anything about the lifestyle of these beer-hungry gang bangers, and shows the hideous nature of these outlaws for what they are. There are not really any good guys to be found here. I cannot say that I didn't enjoy the naked ladies here, but I am glad to say that they are not bad actors. I wish some of the ladies in this movie would talk to me the way they talk to Pistolero.

This movie does want to make me see some of Larry's earlier biker movies to see what was so great about them, and to see how good he was in them. I am sure they make for a great drive-in movie going experience. But Larry's performance in this movie is so one-note, and he brings nothing more to it than a growling menace. He speaks just about every line in the movie the same way, and I kept wondering if he was one step away from getting a tracheotomy. I have heard a lot of people arguing about the voice Christian Bale gives Batman in "The Dark Knight," but if you really didn't like his voice there, you will hate the way Bishop speaks even more.

As a director, he shows no signs of pacing at all, and there are too many lingering shots of men on their motorcycles driving their way down that lonesome highway. Those scenes could have been shortened, even at the threat of turning this into a short film. Yes, yes, they all look cool on their motorcycles and even more so without helmets, but that gets boring after a while.

As a screenwriter, Larry's dialogue falls flat no matter how good the actor is delivering it. It's clear that Bishop was trying to ape the Tarantino style and make it his own, but there is no flattery in his imitation. It's bad enough that the movie makes no sense, but for the dialogue to suck as well is a darn shame. I can forgive the "Star Wars" prequels for their hideously hollow dialogue, but I cannot forgive it here.

Is there anything good about this movie? Sure. Some of the actors are definitely on their game and rise above the ridiculousness of the material. Michael Madsen puts on his Nice Guy Eddie persona for the role of The Gent. Michael excels in this kind of role, and he is a funny fight scene between him and Eric Balfour ("24") which helps redefine the term "tough love." Dennis Hopper has a small role here as Eddie 'Scratch' Zero, and he is always a crazy hoot to watch as he channels his "Easy Rider" mojo while riding his motorcycle. David Carradine is barely in the movie, but he has a strong presence here just like he did in the "Kill Bill" movies. David remains an intimidating presence however softly he speaks.

This movie has a very rough look to it which fits the movie and its characters perfectly. After being subjected to so many slick and sterile Hollywood productions where everything is spick and span, it is actually refreshing to see a movie that is willing to get down and dirty to the utter annoyance of studios trying to make everything as inoffensive as possible. There is nothing clean at all about this movie and its characters, and that proves to be both a positive and a negative.

In the end, this movie is irredeemable trash. I certainly didn't go in expecting anything epic. This was clearly meant to be a B-movie along the lines of last year's "Grindhouse." That movie unfortunately bombed at the box office, and this movie is not likely to do any better. Tarantino obviously wanted Bishop to make the best motorcycle movie ever, and it didn't happen. At best, this movie is a fight against what the late George Carlin termed:

"the continued pussification of the American male in the form of Harley Davidson theme restaurants. Harley Davidson used to mean something! It stood for biker attitude! Grimy outlaws and their sweaty mamas full of beer and crank, rolling around looking for a good time!"

Carlin would like the fact that "Hell Ride" fought against the pussification of that, but it doesn't change the fact that this is a crappy movie with a barely existent plot and schizoid characters who can never seem to figure out if they want to shoot their friends or hug them. It's not enough to have biker attitude. You need a good film to go along with it, and this was a blown opportunity. All the same, it makes me want to check out some of the biker flicks Larry Bishop became famous for. They certainly can't be any worse than this.

* out of ****

Currently watching : 24 - Season Two Release date: 2003-09-09

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Movie Review: Frozen River
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

It is so great to see Melissa Leo doing so well in her career right now. She gave us one of the greatest female detectives ever to grace television in "Homicide: Life On The Street," and no other actress on the show (however good they were) could match what she had brought to that show. But then she got kicked off the show which was painful to hear about, especially considering that she was dealing with a lot of shit from an abusive ex-boyfriend who had become overly concerned about their son. She seemed to disappear for awhile, and then she came back in a variety of guest spots on all sorts of TV shows before reappearing one last time as Sgt. Kay Howard in "Homicide: The Movie." But then she was in "21 Grams," and people started to give her the attention she has deserved all along. Much praise went to Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Naomi Watts, but Melissa was every bit as compelling as Benicio's wife who is ever so conflicted about her husband and what he has done.

Now, Melissa finally has a starring role in "Frozen River," the movie that won this year's Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie was directed by Courtney Hunt, and it marks a very strong directorial debut of a movie based on one of her short films. Melissa stars as Ray Eddy, a woman who lives in a trailer with her two boys in upstate New York. When the movie opens, her husband has left her and the kids alone, and who has also taken the family savings to most likely gamble with in Atlantic City.

The first shot of Melissa sitting alone in her car in the cold winter with a cigarette in her hand and tears streaming down her face is a great study in film acting. Her face is far from the botox-ravaged faces we see in most major movies today, and it shows the hard knock life she has been through up to this point. Youth-obsessed Hollywood should pay attention to this because while they attempt to craft the perfect body, they forget about the importance and the power of acting.

Thanks to her gambling-addicted husband running off with all that she had saved, Ray does not have the money to pay for the new double-wide trailer home, and she is in danger of losing her $1,500 deposit. Her situation is desperate as she has little money for much of anything, be it food or the final payment on the new wide screen TV. This is especially tough on the kids who are basically forced to eat popcorn for dinner. Ray's sole source of income is a crappy job at one of those everything for a dollar shops that is on every other block in the town we live in. She is desperate to be promoted to assistant manager, but her boss considers her a "short timer" and does not take her all that seriously. This despite the fact that she has worked at the store for over 2 years.

Then she comes across her husband's car which has been taken by a young Indian woman named Lila played by Misty Upham. She said that her husband left on a bus and left the keys in the car. Ray goes to Misty's trailer, which is only a fraction of the size of hers, to get her car back. However, Misty tells her that she knows of a guy who can buy the car and give her more for it than it is worth. But this turns out to be a ruse as we come to see that Misty is part of a ring of people who smuggle illegal aliens across the border and into Canada. Ray is at first disgusted at being a part of this and really wants nothing to do with this, but then she sees how much money there is to be made. She ends up coming back to Misty's trailer to do another smuggling run with her. What these two are doing is clearly illegal, but it is impossible to be angry with them as we completely understand why they are doing this.

Sony Pictures Classics, which is distributing the film in limited release, has promoted this film as a thriller. It is indeed a thriller, but at its core, it is really a movie about two very strong women who despite their cultural differences, are basically trying to get by and are desperately trying to keep their families together. We come to see that Lila has a baby boy that was "stolen" from her by her mother-in-law. It features two of the strongest roles for women that have been missing from many movies recently. These two roles are inhabited by very gifted actresses w