The Swayziest Christmas of Them All

Patrick Swayze passed away Monday September 14, 2009. I'll admit I never found him to be a great actor. He was, however, someone who knew what worked for him and he was able to capitalize on it. For that, he should be admired. A wise man once told me "bloom where you're planted." he did. I don't know for sure but I hope he made a fortune off of his chick flix and lowbrow action movies.

I think Mike Nelson said it best in his book Movie Megacheese:

What I really believe is that a film should be judged on how well it comes off compared with the Patrick Swayze film Road House. For Road House is the single finest American film. Certainly it stinks, but I believe the filmmakers meant it to, and succeeded grandly.

Therefore, films not containing poor performances by Patrick Swayze or Kevin Tighe will be judged harshly. Those that lack Ben Gazarra as their evil villain will be roundly castigated. There is no excuse for not telling the story of a legendary bouncer who finds love and confronts his demons at a small bar just outside Kansas City. And while adherence to a Road Housian standard certainly should be a requirement for every film, it needn't be the only requirement.

Some of you may recognize parts of this quote from when this blog was still in it's "annoy my friends with unsolicited e-mail about a movie" phase.

The Satellite of Love performed a wonderful salute to Patrick Swayze in the form of a Christmas Carol some years ago.

A Patrick Swayze Christmas

I tried to embed a video but it wouldn't let me use anything that wasn't already on my computer.

Rest in Peace Patrick.

Trailer for Roadhouse
Rifftrax Roadhouse Fight Scene

The Dark Side of the Baseball

It was a slow August. We did go see a dollar movie before school started for the kids but it was Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and, well... y'know. There wasn't a whole lot there. If, however I think of some things about it while writing this post then I'll be sure to try and make it interesting. No, this time I'm talking about Field of Dreams. Or, maybe sports movies in general, or maybe that Hobbit movie that is supposed to be coming out in a year or so. Just stay with me, we'll find out together where this ends up.

I did see Field of Dreams the other night. I really only saw it once before if I remember correctly. Aside from the ham-handed, eye-rolling, 1960's hippie sanctimony it was very entertaining. I mean, in case you haven't seen it yet. I don't want to spoil it for you. That's just the kind of guy I am. I don't mind telling you it got me blubbering like a schoolgirl after a triple feature of Steel Magnolias, Dying Young, and... um... some other movie where Julia Roberts dies. Geez, there must be over half a dozen of those things. Anyway I was thinking of the scene near the end of the movie where Darth Vader is talking to Lt. Dances With Wolves and Vader is explaining how the field will attract visitors and he says "It's Baseball Ray". Man, that really hit home. It was right up there with all those other memorable movie lines like "Frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn" , "Play it again, Sam", and "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto". Wait, none of those lines were ever actually... uh... well it doesn't matter.

I really tried, by the way, to get video of each of the lines that were actually used in the above movies but I ran into a brick wall with copyright laws and The Wizard of Oz. It did however try to steer me to the Wizard of Oz sinc-up with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. You may have heard the urban legend wherein if you mute the movie and start the Dark Side of the Moon album at the exact moment the MGM lion stops roaring in the opening credits then the music and lyrics follow the movie "exactly". It's entertaining but it's a bunch of bunk. No, if you want a real freak out then sinc up Citizen Kane with Weird Al Yankovic's album Poodle Hat. It was mind blowing, I couldn't sleep for days knowing the implications of what I saw.

OK, maybe I'll talk about Night at The Museum next time, or the sports movie thing. I like the sports movie thing, I could probably plow through a few paragraphs wrought with hi jinks and hilarity with little effort on my part. Stay tuned.


Trailer for Field of Dreams

Trailer for Steel Magnolias

Trailer for Dying Young

Trailer for The Wizard of Oz

Trailer for Citizen Kane

Trailer for Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian

Who's the "Sucker" Here?

I mentioned in earlier posts that I have been very interested in seeing the spaghetti western movie Duck You Sucker. I had seen A Fistful Of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good The Bad and The Ugly and really liked all of them. So when I found myself home alone for a few days I got a chance to see the lesser known Duck You Sucker I was really excited! I mean, it was the same director (Sergio Leone) as those other movies so it had to be good... right? Armed with Dr Pepper and Moon Pies (1:23) I settled in for the show.

It's about a Mexican Highwayman and his family of stagecoach robbers and how they join up with an ex-Irish Republican Army explosives expert to rob a big bank in a town taken over by the Mexican Army. Juan (Rod Steiger) is the patriarch of the band of robbers and wastes no time becoming unappealing to the audience. Sure, the movie tries to inject a reason for sympathy for Juan in a flashback scene but it pretty much falls flat. And it was kind of gross in a mastication close-up sort of way.

Before too long John (James Coburn) shows up on a motorcycle. Now as disappointing as a motorcycle is in a Western movie, it wasn't nearly as "meh" inspiring as the cool-guy act John puts on during his introduction to Juan and his "merry men". There is a point, albeit brief, that it seems the movie will start to take itself less seriously and become sort of a tongue-in-cheek Western/Comedy but that was just a tease. After it dipped it's toes in the humor pool it veered as far away from The Apple Dumpling Gang as a movie can go. Wait, that's not fair. The humor it flirted with was less The Apple Dumpling Gang than Rustler's Rhapsody but it did use a little of 1960's Disney animation overlay on live action. Confused? I was too.

John wasn't safe from the cheesecloth-intensive flashbacks either. This poor guy must have had people staring at him in confusion all the time as he often stared off into the distance, lost in an Irish memory of his Ireland days in the Irish IRA involving an unidentified Irish woman and an unidentified Irish man who don't say very much but are Irish. As if that wasn't irritating enough, those flashbacks are accompanied by a mysterious soundtrack with a female voice singing "shom-shom", or something. These flashbacks, by the way do nothing to distract from the fact that John's Irish accent comes and goes without warning.

The two heroes (anti-heroes?) finally get together and set up a plan to rob the bank of Juan's dreams but plot complications make short work of that idea. They become heroes of the Mexican Revolution! The problem is, the movie never really decides what it wants it's identity to be. Is it a buddy movie, an action movie, a comedy? If the decision was made, they didn't bother telling the audience. As I mentioned before Juan and John are aggressively unappealing as heroes and equally lousy as anti-heroes.

I could be wrong but it looks as though the end of the movie tries it's hand at a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid conclusion but it seemed strained at best. *SIGH* I really wanted to like this movie.

C-

If it comes on the TV on a Sunday afternoon you don't have to change the channel but don't stop vacuuming the floor or whatever else you're doing because of it.

Trailer for Duck You Sucker

Trailer for A Fistful of Dollars

Trailer for For A Few Dollars More

Trailer for The Good The Bad and The Ugly

Trailer for The Apple Dumpling Gang

Clip from Rustler's Rhapsody

Trailer for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Dog Day mid-Afternoon

I really don't remember if it was during the kid's Spring Break or Summer of '08 that we saw Beverly Hills Chihuahua in our trusty dollar cinema. It was unclear, a blur, a haze. Like an overripe peach in a blender. We hadn't seen a movie in a while and with good reason. The pickings were slim. As evidenced by our ending up in a Disney talking-dog movie.

Now please don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Disney, nor do I make it a point to avoid talking-dog movies. My youngest son happens to really like Snow Buddies which is a delightful adventure invol... no it's not. It's a kids movie that uses as many catch phrases as it possibly can in hopes of staying "current". Again, there's nothing wrong with that. There's an audience for that. I'm just not included in that audience, which is fine. Wow, that sounds cynical.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua uses the same formula. Cram as many catch phrases in the movie as possible and pass them off as jokes. Throw in a few worn out colloquialisms in hope that people have either forgotten about them or still haven't heard them yet. This formula is framed around a chihuahua named Chloe (Drew Barrymore) who is the pet of a very rich woman "Vivian" (Jaime Lee Curtis) who treats Chloe like a spoiled child. The Mexican gardener "Sam" who is apparently a confidant of Vivian. Hmm. Gardener, rich woman in large house... Nah.

Anyway Sam has a dog "Papi" who is also a chihuahua that he takes with him to his gardening duties for some reason. Papi falls for Chloe and is determined to impress her but Chloe is having none of it. Throw in other spoiled dog friends of Chloe (who seem to be as fond of dog clothing as Chloe and Vivian) to be the smack talking comedy relief of Beverly Hills petdom.

Vivian is called away on something or other probably involving whatever business she's in. I don't remember if it was mentioned. So she leaves her niece "Rachel" to take good care of Chloe and everything works out just fine and the movie ends. HAH! Thought you were going to get off easy did you? Nope. The self-centered niece takes off with her friends to Mexico and takes the self-centered dog with them. Dog gets lost. Ensuing plot complications lead us to a heroic-tragic German Shepherd named Delgado, a rat and iguana that fill our R2D2 and C3P0 requirement, and some diamond thieves that fill out our villain quota nicely. Our villains even get an evil dog with witch to interact with our heroes.

It's a Kids, Buddy, Comedy, Road-movie to Mexico. It really succeeds as a kids movie if nothing else. I remember talking with my neighbor as we exited the movie with our kids and agreeing that it was well worth the $1.50 for the ticket. But not much more.

*UPDATE* 3:21pm 7/30/09
It has been brought to my attention that the trailer (below) for Bevery Hills Chihuahua can be confusing if you don't speak German. If that is indeed an issue for you then please follow this link to see the trailer in English.

Trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Trailer for Snow Buddies

The Results are In, dadgummit

The people have spoken. All four readers of our little Cow Town Movie Blog have had their voice heard and even though there is no clear majority...

I vow, by the end of July, there will be a review of Drew Barrymore's magnum opus, Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I will do this not because it will be easy, but because it will be hard!

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go psych myself up for this.

Standby.

The X-Files... For Kids!

The usual suspects and I were not able to see Monsters Vs. Aliens during it's first run in the theaters so they were quite interested to find out that it had made it's way to the dollar cinema a week or two ago. Which, of course falls right into my plans BWAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem... please excuse me.

Far be it for me to deny my children a first-run movie simply because my blog deals (on occasion) with dollar movies, and would somewhat legitimize my writing about it here. Anyway, we met the neighbors there and for reasons I'd probably discover if I paid attention to that sort of thing, the tickets were back down to $1. from the $1.50 they seem to be charging there now. I decided not to complain.

Monsters vs. Aliens is, on the surface, about a group of monsters that have been hidden from society in a top-secret underground (presumably) facility for the last 40 some-odd years. When a one-eyed UFO crashed down to Earth they are called upon to save it as nothing else seems to have any effect on the gigantic egg-shaped robot, thingy. The underlying theme of the movie is that the soon-to-be newlywed Susan is hit by a meteor on her wedding day and grows into the 50 Foot Woman. It explores how she deals with becoming a "monster". I was pleasantly surprised at this turn of events because it's an uncommon direction for a kid/buddy movie to turn.

The voice for Susan is played by Reese Witherspoon who does a wonderful job adding her voice to this flick. In my opinion she really should stick to voice acting as a primary source of income. I only say this after her aggressively average performances in which she has to both speak and act in the live action movies I've seen her in. Drew Barrymore should also take a hint from Witherspoon on this front. Granted, Beverly Hills Chihuahua is no Monsters vs. Aliens but Drew is a much more convincing chihuahua than she is a person when it comes to acting. I'll re-live said chihuahua movie here if you really want me to. Maybe if I can figure out how to place a poll on this blog then you can make your voice heard about voice-actors in dog movies.

The other monsters are a The Blob character named Bob (Seth Rogen), a Creature from the Black Lagoon type monster named the Missing Link (Will Arnett) I think they could have done more with this character but what do I know, and Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie) who has a giant cockroach head on a human body from an experiment reminiscent of The Fly. People now seem to associate Hugh Laurie with the TV show House but I've never watched it so I always equate him with the buffoonish Hugh from the BBC Blackadder series. Much funnier than a cranky doctor if you ask me. There was also a nod to the Japanese giant monster movies with an enormous (apparently) baby caterpillar that is Mothra, or something.

The General that is in charge of the monsters is W.R. Monger who is played quite well by Kiefer Sutherland and is eventually portrayed as a good guy despite his name. I know! Modern day Hollywood made a military figure into a good guy! Will wonders never cease? The character of the president is played by Stephen Colbert who is only a bumbling fool in about half of his scenes but he does get to show off his mad piano skillz. The alien is played by some guy I never heard of but fills the generic alien badguy role just fine. That is if you consistently apply the "when in doubt give the bad guy a British accent" rule. Susan's TV news reporter fiance' is also played by some guy I never heard of but fills the generic-but-all-too-accurate role of self centered, arrogant, aloof, empty suit of a TV reporter adequately.

This is a really good kids, buddy, action, comedy if you like that kind of thing. We'll probably get in on DVD when it comes out.

Trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens

Trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Trailer for The Fly

Trailer for The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Trailer for The Blob

Trailer for Attack of the 50 foot Woman

Trailer for Mothra

Little Donnie Cotton Tail

Weird movies are not normally my cup of tea. That being said I do occasionally appreciate a good one. When discussing "good" weird movies I do have a very specific set of parameters that I will get into. Donnie Darko qualifies.

Poor Donnie is a mess. He's a teenager in suburbia that occasionally finds himself waking up in strange places around the neighborhood. His parents have put him in therapy but it doesn't seem to be working. His home life is unremarkable, in that he's in a loving family without too many unusual stresses other than normal teenage angst. The problem is that Donnie's angst proves to be a little more complicated. One night he hears a strange voice telling him to come outside. Once outside he meets up with a strange "person" in a horrific bunny costume telling him exactly when the world is going to end. That same night an airplane engine crashes into Donnie's room and no one (government or otherwise) seems to know where it came from. Donnie is spared because he's outside talking to a giant rabbit (Frank).

Now in many cases this would be more disturbing than a beach volleyball scene in a 1980's Naval Aviation movie. In this movie, things are just getting warmed up.

The next day he meets the new girl (Gretchen) in school and despite his clumsy fumblings with the English language, they hit it off. As the movie progresses Donnie starts to realize things happening around him are happening for a reason but the disjointedness of the movie only offers hints as to what they are. It also keeps distracting the audience with Drew Barrymore's bewildering attempt at acting. Not to mention (even more frustrating) Patrick Swayze who kicks exactly no one in the ear and cleans up ZERO roadhouses in the movie, much to my dismay. A sad waste of Swayzian Justice if you ask me.

The ending leaves itself open to multiple interpretation (and it has been) but the real value of this film comes during a scene where Donnie and his buddies are having a serious discussion regarding the anthropology of Smurfs and the impact of Smurfette on their (Smurf's) society. It's a heady topic to be sure but Donnie explains it in a way that gives proof to the importance of paying attention while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

I mentioned earlier about having qualifiers for disturbing movies. I'd like to explain that here. To me disturbing movies are first separated into two types. The "Disturbing for the sake of being disturbing" type, and the "Disturbing to shock all those middle America hicks" type. In my opinion, making a disturbing movie for the sake of itself is honorable. The other kind is just for shock value and is in my opinion being dishonest and more than a little smug. Both kinds I usually rank on a scale of one to ten. One to five is increasing levels of strange, six to ten are disturbing to the point that they are no longer watchable in my opinion.

Here is a sample list of the Honorable List of Disturbing movies, this is by no means unalterable.

1. Time Bandits / Baron Munchhausen (tie)

2. Repo Man

3. A Clockwork Orange

4. Pink Floyd's The Wall

5. Donnie Darko

6. 1984 (arguable tie for 5th)

7. Jacob's Ladder

8. After Hours

9. Brazil

10. Eraserhead

You might notice that these are not horror movies. That's not my intent at all when it comes to disturbing movies. Often those are nothing but shock value shlock. I'm going for more of a Twilight Zone/ X-Files class of discomfort rather than gore.

Some of the movies that fall into my disingenuous "Shock The Man" type of drivel are: (All unwatchable)

Naked Lunch
Jonnie Got His Gun
Natural Born Killers
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I'm sure there are plenty more but I've decided not to waste my time with them since the producers have decided they are better than me.

In summation, Donnie Darko is worth your time.

p.s.- Manos, The Hands of Fate is a disturbing movie that deserves Honorable Mention status in the unintentionally funny category.



Donnie Darko Trailer

'80s Naval Aviation movie Trailer

Manos, The Hands Of Fate Trailer