Rickshaw Law - The Finale: Rochester Lawyers Enzo Prosciutto and H.P. Barnes are forced to take the law into their own hands to stop all this rickshaw bullsh#% once and for all.
"Hercules And The Captive Women" (1961), Dir: Vittorio Cottafavi
$$$ Unknown Budget vs. Unknown Gross $$$
I once wrote a whole 25 page essay on this movie... and no, I'm not kidding, and no, this one will not be twenty-five pages. To understand this film, one must be familiar with the Italian Peplum (or "Sword & Sandal Films" or "T & A Films") films that were popular genre through the late-1960s, even giving Arnold Schwarzenegger his first role in Hercules In New York. In terms of cinematic history, the Italians made hundreds of these cheap, Neo-Mythogical films, capitalizing on the popularity of biblical films like Ben-Hur and The Robe, but appealing to the drive-in movie crowd through through skimpy costuming and absurdist humor. One could go on for months breaking down what possible importance these films could have or you could simply watch Hercules And The Captive Women and pretty much sum up the main points... and maybe The Colossus of Rhodes, starring Rory Calhoun for kicks.
Firstly, I love this film. Maybe it's because I had to watch months of this schlock for a film course and this installment was at least the best of the worst. I won't even go into the grim details of how bad some were (Hercules Against The Moon Men), whereas this one nails all that was good about them in one movie. Depending on what version you see (I prefer the American), the film opens with a bar fight. Hercules and his entourage of skimpily dressed young men and a midget are overwhelmed by angry drunks. Meanwhile, Hercules (Reg Park, the most awkward and hilarious of bodybuilders to play Hercules) continues to enjoy his meal. Once finished, he casually pushes aside a group of men coming at him with a battering ram and leaves the bar with his friends, completely unscathed.
Upon their leave, they encounter a bright red... something. It's honestly very unclear what they are looking at in the scene, but it's very red, makes the sun shrink, and forewarns them of a dangerous army coming, that could destroy their beloved Thebes. Androcles, King of Thebes, brings this problem to the counsel and neigboring cities, but none can agree to help the king. Worried for his kingdom while he is gone, Androcles asks Hercules who will take care of his throne. Hercules rips the thrown off the floor and smashes it, proclaiming that the people shall build Androcles a newer, better thrown upon his return.
Now, the counsel scene is probably the only real "intelligent" part in the movie. A lot of the humor and farce falls upon being a reflection of the constant incongruity of Italian politics. Historically, the Italians have never had a working government. An example can be found with the good old Red Brigade right here. The country is so fragmented between north and south, struggling with class conflicts, language barriers, extremist political parties that these problems are generally reflected in their movies. In this case, this scene does it very comically, alluding to a fragmented government that cannot work together to stop a looming threat that could destroy them all. For further insight, you can read about The Christian Democrats and it just might make this sequence even funnier.
So with no one else to join them on their journey into the unknown, Hercules and Androcles are forced to go alone. But then, after a talk with his formidable wife, Hercules decides not to go with Androcles either and stay at home and rest. Without any support or fleet to join him, Androcles is forced to drug and kidnap Hercules to take him on their journey. When Hercules awakes on a ship at sea, he completely forgets telling Androcles that he would not be going, assumes everything is going according to plan, and takes a nap... It should be noted that Hercules actually spends the majority of the film unconscious. If not because he is drugged, because he is simply lazy. If not because he is simply lazy, because the task at hand is beneath him. One could argue that Hercules is a very apathetic hero, if not actually hero at all...
In fact, one could argue that Hercules is simply a device of destruction that one transports place to place and is only to be used when absolutely necessary. There are even more direct references this notion later on, but we'll get to that. Back to political references for now and the is littered with them. Logically, it's doubtful that many would have thought these films to be particularly political-driven given their nature, but Italian films are generally very political in their nature. This film in particular has tons of political allegories, but they don't all necessarily add up. For example, Hercules finds himself in the Lost City of Atlantis (when it was above water), which has a population of slaves, female sacrifices to the Gods, and a lot of subecjts diseased from some strange energy source...
Hmm. They wouldn't be in Atomic Age America, would they? No, no. They couldn't be. Because the superhuman guards dressed in black armor (that are also all identical) are clearly a reference to Nazi Germany... So does that mean that the filmmakers are trying to say America is the new Nazi Germany. Maybe. But that wouldn't make sense because at the end of the movie, when Hercules ignites the volcano and blows up Atlantis, that destructive imagery suggests that that must be a reference Hiroshima, Japan (or Nagasaki), which the Americans bombed, meaning that... meaning that...? Ah, f&%$ it.
The only commonality here is pretty much everything Hercules touches gets destroy and any heroics he performs just end in mass destruction, but he is still the film's hero. Whether or not the Italians were trying to make a bold statement about the United States, or Nazi Germany, or the events that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nothing is more bold than wearing those costumes and managing to keep a straight-face.
You really have to enjoy your bad movies to like this one. One of the film's highlights is when Hercules fights the shape-changing monster Proteus. The clip below is the closest thing I could find for a trailer and goes under one of the film's many names, "Hercules Conquers Atlantis."
For your viewing displeasure, Hercules vs. Proteus!
I had seen North when it first came out in theaters in 1994. I was young, but remember enjoying it. Not until doing research had I discovered North is pretty much universally hated as a film. Both Siskel and Ebert nominated it as the worst movie of 1994 and many consider it to be one of the worst movies of all time. Wow... But to be honest, I don't really get the general hatred towards this film. Maybe my standards have dropped with my increasing age, but this is the first movie on my list where I really don't understand why everyone hates it so much.
One of the few things I can think of that I dislike about North is its opening credits. The film opens with a series of soft-focus shots of North's toys on his desk. Personally, I felt it looked cheap and did not reflect the tone of the film at all. If this was Rob Reiner's way of letting us know that we're watching a kid's film, well, thanks. Apart from Bruce Willis' lackluster voice-over work, I can't really say much else that bothered me about this movie, besides the ending, which we'll get to that...
So what is it that bothered everyone else so much about this movie? Well, firstly, the plot centers around a boy-genius named North (Elijah Wood) who is the picture-perfect son and envy of every family, except his own. Unable to cope with his insensitive parents, North decides to become a free-agent, causing a major media stir as the world follows in anticipation of his journey to find more fitting parents... So, from what I've read from most reviews, people found the plot unrealistic. Okay. But it's a movie, and a kid's movie at that, so it's not really supposed to be realistic, is it? Secondly, North comes across as a bit selfish in his desire to find better parents... but when you have a nagging Julia Louis-Dreyfus (in a terrible wig) as your mother and Jason Alexander as a mid-life crisis father saying that he "found blood in his stool," well, I don't entirely blame him for wanting to explore his options. Thirdly, a lot of critics claimed that the film showed no respect towards parents and didn't treat the family unit as having any value. Maybe so, but if you were a kid growing up in the 90s, it's likely your parents found a great replacement for your babysitter. That's right. Television. And if you're parents were plopped in front of the TV all night until they got back, Bart Simpson and Al Bundy were more likely you're real babysitters; so in terms of knocking down good old family values, North didn't really teach us kids of the 90s anything TV hadn't already...
One thing I will agree with most critics on is that the characters of North are vulgar, callous, and superficial... Can't imagine a movie starring the cast of Seventh Heaven having that many gut-busters. In fact, North's portrayal of children reminded me a lot of the very precocious youngsters of Wes Anderson's movies. Critics also claimed the humor didn't seem intended for children... Maybe it wasn't. The blood-in-the-stool joke made by Jason Alexander did actually throw me off during my most recent viewing, but the 1990 Nicholas Roeg film Witches (based on a book the Roald Dahl) had children being turned to mice and killed, and that holds a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. No one seemed to think that was too much for kids. The only difference between Witches and North is that violence is okay, but toilet humor isn't.
Humor aside, a lot of critics also claimed to find the movie offensive, especially in its stereotyping of, well, Texans, Samoans, The Inuit (featuring Kathy Bates in red face), The Amish, Africans, Chinese, French, etc... but compared to a modern episode of Family Guy or American Dad, the film's cultural insensitivity is pretty mild by today's standards. For me, the most offensive thing about North was the ending. Turns out that it's all just a dream. Yep. The whole movie, complete with voice-over narration, was just one big dream. North had fallen asleep in the mall and his loving parents have been worried sick about him.The family is reunited and all's well that ends well... Just as an aside, if you've ever take a screenwriting class, that is the first lesson in how not to piss off your audience... not to mention the blatant endorsement for Fedex.
But all in all, it's a bit shocking to me how violently opposed people are to this movie. I didn't think it deserved that much disdain. Am I alone in this? And for your viewing displeasure, Siskel and Ebert's initial and hateful review of North...
"Highlander 2: The Quickening" (1991), Dir: Russell Mulcahy
$34 million in Budget vs. $15,556,340 in Gross
Oh, the cunning Franchise Killer. Yes, the Richard Donner Superman franchise and Tim Burton's Batman franchise were among many of its victims (arguably surviving, just to run the same course again), but some victims of thismurderer of artistic merit never even had a chance. The Highlander franchise is definitely one of those victims...
Having aged greatly on my part and seen the first Highlander movie several times now, the most credit I can give the original is that it still holds up as a neat idea. Immortals walking amongst us to do battle in the streets with swords is pretty cool. The rest of the original is a bad 80s special effects film (looking a lot like a Queen/Pink Floyd video) with a soundtrack by Queen (arguably the best part of the movie). But in the end, Connor MacLeod (Christoper Lambert) conquered the bad guys, was granted the ability to live a normal life, and retired to Scotland. How could they ever imagine bringing the character back after all that? Well, they couldn't really, but did anyway, resulting in this giant, unimaginative, steaming pile of stool.
One of the charms of the first Highlander film for me was its narrative simplicity. Early on in the film, we are introduced to MacLeod, learn that he is immortal, and that the Kurgan (the unforgettable Clancy Brown) wants MacLeod's powers for himself. Four hundred years earlier, Ramirez (played by Sean Connery) gives us a quick rundown of the rules of the immortals, so the cards are on the table and we're set to take part in this badass game of elimination. Simple. Effective. To the point. The subsequent sequel, however, had to get fancy and throw all that simplicity out the window for stray cats to nibble on.
Highlander II: The Quickening is set in a future where the ozone layer has evaporated and a force field is the only thing keeping earth alive (invented by Connor MacLeod, who was an antiques dealer in the first movie and never mentioned anything about having a scientific background). Now much older, he is hated by everyone and treated like garbage for saving human existence... Ungrateful jerks. No wonder he's looking forward to dying. But suddenly Connor has a whole whack of problems when the evil immortals from his home planet come to earth to f%$& sh$% up...
Wait. Let's back up a second. The Highlander is an alien?! Really?! Since when did that happen? The first movie made no point or hint of that. Most audiences would've thought "Wait, isn't the Highlander from Scotland?", hence the name Highlander and most of the first film taking place in Scotland, but no, this Highlander's apparently from Planet Zeist... So yeah, this second movie just slips in some crappy alien origin storyline as if none of us with a working brain would have even noticed. Now, apparently back on Planet Zeist, MacLeod and Ramirez (not the most alien-sounding names) were captured as part of some treacherous rebel group and exiled to be reborn on earth. How they accomplish that God-like feat (not to mention the evil immortals would've had to do the exact same thing for all the other hundreds of immortals who were somehow magically reborn on earth for the first movie) is beyond me. But all that aside, this entire subplot is, well, a rip-off Superman's origins... Yeah, I know. Who cares?
Anyways, led by everyone's go-to-casting-choice-for-a-villain, Michael Ironside, General Katana and these evil immortals somehow manage to penetrate the shield protecting earth's atmosphere. From there, they fail at killing a very tired, very old man, and accidentally restore MacLeod's powers of immortality so he can be young and handsome again. But while MacLeod does the old Highlander electric-light-show song and dance, following the advice he got on Planet Zeist, MacLeod screams out Ramirez's name. Then (somehow) brings his old friend back from the dead... so they can kill people and make hammy jokes about it... and then Ramirez just dies again...
Yeah, this whole movie is just a mess. As well as being one of the elusive Franchise Killer's many victims, it's also early signs of Sean Connery's inability to recognize a bloody awful script from the 1990s (having three of his films from that era on this list). The latter Highlander films aren't much better. From this one, I enjoyed seeing MacLeod as an old man (for fifteen minutes), learning insults of the future ("Hey, cheese-di$%!"), and enjoyed the future battle between Old Man MacLeod and the two meth-head immortals with jet packs. What I didn't enjoy was the lack of coherence for one, the fact that there was no gratuitous Highlander sex scene (as in the first, third, and fourth), and a sore lack of Queen soundtrack.
Two sequels followed this, a bad TV series and some animated films. The franchise clearly peaked after the first entry and has been in a state of decay ever since. Last year, there was rumors of a reboot with Taylor Lautner in the works, but those have disappeared, thankfully. I'll stick with my VHS copy of the original, thanks...Wait a minute. This franchise has for the most part sucked ass. Maybe it's ripe for a fixin'... or maybe not and just come up with something original.
And for your viewing displeasure, the opening of the movie including the Planet Ziest storyline, bad voice-over narration, and crappy special effects...
Last Tuesday, a good friend came into my apartment and took my baby away from me...
Well, technically, it was his baby. He was the director-producer and I was just the editor. But after two years of editing while my friend was out shooting and producing content, I was the one probably closest to the material itself.It stayed in the same room I slept in, taking up more space than just two hard drives. It became my baby after a while, and that experience has led me to think of the editor's role as that of a surrogate parent or nanny, raising the child while daddy is out conducting business.And of course, once those ties are made, it becomes very hard in the end to simply let go.
Like a child's birth, the footage arrives to you a raw, bloody, screaming, confused mess. And like a good career-minded father, the director has no time for this; so he leaves it with you and simply says "Fix this." Hmm. Right... The first few months of this faux parenthood are rough, as I imagine real parenthoodis. The unrealized film screams and spikes in your eardrums like a teething newborn in the middle of the night. And of course, there's definitely sh%$ to be cleaned up. Lots and lots of sh&^%.
But unlike the nurturing mother, the editing process isn't about nurturing. No, not at all. You gotta take this baby and cut that kid up. Oh yeah. Trim that flab, tone the muscles. In actuality, you're probably more like Geppetto shaping Pinocchio than say Sarah Connor raising her child to be a badass. It's a different kind of paternal relationship: sculpting as opposed to teaching.
And with time, once that little film starts realizing what it is (or developing "a spine" as the first editor I worked with called it). You teach it how to walk (through story motions at first), then run (so our bladders can keep up), but inevitably realize that there's only so much you can do. A film shouldn't just be edited well. An editor needs to identify the holes in his own work so that they might be smoothed over at a later date.... by someone else. That all takes time. And by time you're near picture-lock, even the slightest adjustment changes the course of your child's destiny, no matter how small. Your baby is barely recognizable by that point. Definitely not what showed on your doorstep in a basket.
And so comes that fateful day where there is literally nothing left for you to do; where whatever is left is beyond your abilities. That is the day you are done and, like some bad TV drama, father's coming to collect his child... And he's not even taking your baby back home! Oh no. He's taking him to some place where groups of men will poke and prod, and tinker, and toy with him until your baby is ready for the world to see. Oh yeah. All the clothes you bought him and the haircuts you gave him aren't good enough. This baby needs to be like a Baby Charlie Chaplan, or Annie, or Beauty Pageant Kid, prepped and ready for the spotlight for millions to see like a f*&%ing puppet show... That's exactly how it feels.
Either way, as soon as those drives and USB sticks leave the editing suite, that's that. Your role as editor/surrogate parent is over. Now what do you do? I suppose real parents ask themselves the same when their kids go off to college. Working on another film might be easier than up and having another kid... I think I'll do that instead.
Back in my Blockbuster Video days, I was stuck working the Thanksgiving Day shift and going home to nobody. At the time, a co-worker of mine was from Sri Lanka and in the same boat, so rather than both spending our night by our lonesome, we decided to join forces and watch an array of bad movies instead. Of our three picks, each will be reviewed in this blog. There was Boa vs. Python, Waterworld, and the king of stink, Dracula 3000... Oh, Dracula 3000. Completely unrelated to Dracula 2000, which has Star Trek Voyager's very own 7 of 9 getting staked in the boobs, Dracula 3000 is about a team of space aboard a craft called Mother III (Alien rip-off #1), a salvage ship that finds a derelict craft called Demeter. The crew of this ship is led by Captain van Helsing... Yeah, that's his name. Clever, huh? And better yet, played by Starship Trooper's own Aryan-bred Casper Van Dien. The film also stars Baywatch's Erika Eleniak (the not-so-hot one), Tom "Tiny" Lister (the president in The Fifth Element), and former rap sensation Coolio in a performance let's hope he's terribly ashamed of. We'll get back to that later.
So the crew finds the dead captain of the Demeter clutching a crucifix. During this discovery, their own ship Mother III decides to take matters into her own hands (Alien rip-off #2) and abandons the crew on the Demeter... without any explanation. It isn't long before Tiny and Coolio discover a cargo bay full of coffins. Thinking the coffins might have been used to smuggle drugs, Coolio opens one and is attacked by a vampire. Now under Count Orlock's control, an army of vampires intend to force the crew to bring the Demeter back to earth (Alien rip-off #3), and release a blood-sucking, vampire clusterf*&% (as if the earth's population couldn't possibly fight off 20 to 40 vampires).
Now, for all its terrible plottery, terrible actors, and a set that looks like the back of a grocery store (but turns out was a re-used set from the short-lived series Space Rangers), the biggest flaw of the film is Coolio. In mentioning my co-worker from Blockbuster at the beginning of this review, I wasn't just trying to highlight that I once had a friend, and that friend was a black-friend too, and a woman for that matter, but that her reaction to Coolio's performance was what put Dracula 3000 on this very list. If you were around in the 1990s, you remember Coolio's 1995 hit song "Gangster's Paradise." For this socially-conscious tune, Coolio received the reputation of being a street philosopher and a positive role model for black youths. Flash-forward ten years to Dracula 3000 and Coolio is playing a pot-smoking cargo specialist named 187... Yep. 187. His interests are getting high and sexually harassing Erika Eleniak. When finding the corpse of the Demeter's dead captain, Coolio insists they search it for drugs. When Coolio turns into a vampire, instead of killing Erika, he goes on a rant describing in great detail how much he fantasized about, well, you might as well just watch the clip... And unfortunately, I cannot find the clip where Coolio chases Erika around the produce department -- I mean, ship, trying to run along the walls after her. Now, typically, when attempting something like that, a film production would employ special effects. But since this particular production didn't have any money, instead, what we get is Coolio trying to run along the walls himself, and for some reason making offensive monkey noises, leading to a speech where he actually refers to himself using the N-bomb. At that point, my co-worker screamed, "Holy sh*%! Coolio just sold-out his entire race!" And for the guy who used to speak out against negative black stereotypes, to do a complete 180 for Dracula F*&%ing 3000, I would agree.
As for the rest of the movie, once Dracula (or Count Orlock) actually enters, that's when everything just starts raising too many questions: Why was a cargo ship transporting coffins into space? If it's the year 3000, why is Dracula still dressed so Elizabethean? Did the vampires at some point learn how to navigate an interstellar spaceship? And if they did, why then do they need Capser, Tiny, or Coolio to do anything? Unfortunately, the only reason one really has to watch this film is if you wanna see Coolio make a fool of himself, and he does, dearly.
For your viewing displeasure, the title character Dracula gets one of his only scenes in the whole damn movie. Poor guy.
Watching movies from the 80s, I realize how it easy it was to sell things to children back then, or at least get children to convince their parents to buy it for them. But even back in the 80s, Mac and Me would be a tough sell, to anyone, including its sponsors and McAffiliates who abandoned the project shortly after it's abysmal inception. It's also become a regularly featured joke on Conan O'Brien. Almost identical in plot and score to E.T., it's about a family of aliens (who get more and more frightening with every scene) that accidentally get sucked into the vacuum system on a probe (which happens more than once), and end up on earth. While on earth, they get separated from their youngest child (nicknamed Mac, I'm assuming after McDonalds because they were a heavy sponsor) as he wanders the country until adopting a human family. Eventually, Michael (Johnathan Ward), a wide-eyed young boy bound to a wheelchair, befriends Mac and decides to help him find his alien family. Sound familiar?
Yeah, well, that about sums up the plot or anything relevant that happens in the movie. The rest is just a string of events that drift from one product placement to another. For example, Mac leaving Coke cans with flowers in them for Michael to find. Subsequently, Michael starts noticing his remote control cars are acting strangely. When they discover Mac, he's ill and the kids have to nurse him back to health using -- you guessed it -- Coke. From there, they then dress him similarly to a Talking Teddy Ruxpin, if you remember those, and this all leads to the birthday party scene... Oh, the birthday party scene... set at the local McDonalds... featuring rappers dancing by the drive-through, Ronald McDonald himself, and a complex choreographed dance (contest) sequence that I'm sure the employees of McDonalds just winged, much like an 80s McDonalds Commercial. It's an appalling sequence that makes you feel... exploited. (As a side note, explain to me how an alien from another planet knows how to do the same f*&%ing dance as everyone else in the restaurant.)
From there, they rip off the famous flying bike sequence in E.T. with a wheelchair instead. This takes them to the Sears where Michael's mom works, and where more remote controlled cars are employed to distract the agents. Losing them, the kids drive Mac to the desert (explain to me how kids can drive a van across states and not be noticed) to find his family. When they do, the family (that looks like relatives of Sloth from The Goonies) are dehydrated and dying. But no worries! They got more Coke! And use it to revive Mac's creepy family... seriously.
**Spoiler Alert** To save you the pain of enduring the last twenty minutes of this giant commercial flop, the movie ends Mac and his alien family (dressed like suburbanites and even more terrifying now) being made into American citizens as appointed by congress and then driving away in a pink caddy with the tag-line appearing, "We'll Be Back." Thank God they never were! We can all just hope that that pink caddy crashed and then someone went to jail for thinking that aliens would somehow know how to drive a human car.
This movie is worth watching not to remember what it was like being a child, but rather to see how McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and countless toy companies viewed you at that age. And I'll repeat, the aliens are absolutely terrifying.
Yep. That's the trailer. And for your viewing displeasure, the infamous birthday party scene, which makes me realize now why nobody ever came to my birthday as a child. I didn't have no creepy dancing teddy bear.
Whoever thought that Death Race 2000 would make for a good franchise of serious action movies obviously never saw the original, and they missed out. Watching Death Race 2000 in all its B-movie glory, what you essentially have is David Carradine in a gimp suit, Sylvester Stallone so high on coke that you can't understand a word he is saying, and a whole bunch of ridiculous-looking cars trying to rundown innocent people to score points. Question is, what more could you want?? A sardonic sports film with cheesy production values, ludicrous violence, and silly social commentary, Death Race 2000 is a milestone in the exploitation genre with howls of laughter never ceasing. Who would have thought that of Carradine and Stallone that Sly would come out the less sleazy at the end of his career, having started out as a porn actor? Probably the gem of the Roger Corman collection, Death Race 2000 is the perfect bad movie to get drunk to and watch with your friends. It's a fiesta of bad taste that was never meant to be taken seriously. For your viewing displeasure, Sly's best moment in cinema.
"Star Trek: Generations" (1994), Dir: David Carson
$35 Million in Budget vs. $120 Million in Gross
If one were to trace back to where Star Trek really departed from being stories about the ethics of the future, it would probably be with Star Trek: Generations. For the first outting of The Next Generation crew, it feels less like a celebration and more like the franchise's garage sale. Up for grabs was William Shatner's integrity in the Captain Kirt role. Some would argue the Shat never had any to begin with, but Patrick Stewart certainly did in the enlightened, forward-thinking role of Jean-Luc Picard. Instead, this deflated cinematic adventure just marks Picard's gradual transformation into a geriatric Bruce Willis. And finally, there was a clear fire-sale of whatever uniforms were leftover from the previous films and Deep Space Nine. The outcome was the most disappointing writing for Star Trek since the original series (and that tar monster episode in TNG). The rest of the Next Gen movies would be rocky or forgettable, and now that the studio's have rebooted the original crew in action movie form, I have a feeling the characters of Next Gen will be forgotten in the world of cinema... for the better, probably... They were TV people, unlike the radiant Nichelle Nichols. Pff! Zoe Saldana, my ass. For your viewing displeasure, my favourite critic since Roger Ebert, Mr. Plinkett, does an indepth analysis of this... thing.
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