Summer Fest 5 (Day One): Miami Connection

 There's something you should probably know about Miami Connection (no "the"), and it's not that the movie takes place in Orlando: the story of how Miami Connection came to be, and subsequently, almost "not to be," is more interesting than almost anything that happens in the movie. Don't get me wrong - watching a bunch of non-actor, non-musician, martial arts students and their motivational speaker master try to tell Romeo and Juliet with motorcycle riding ninjas and rocking synthesizer tunes has entertainment value. It's just not as crazy as how Miami Connection even made its way to a re-release, courtesy of Drafthouse Films.

 I don't want to rehash it, because every single review I read had a recap, so I'm just going to put a link to this CNN article that covers the basics pretty well. Just know that Miami Connection only had a slightly longer theatrical lifespan than Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and that we were a hurricane away from never being able to watch this movie. Whether you determine that to be a good or bad thing is entirely up to you.

 For me, I'd like to side-step most of the amateur acting, the fact that Dragon Sound seem to be barely aware of how to play their instruments, or the earnest message promoting non-violence that follows the heroes of the film brutally murdering the ninja gang who ambushes them. If you want a laundry list of the reasons why Miami Connection qualifies as a "disasterpiece," reviews are plentiful. You will laugh quite a bit, you'll scratch your head. You might even hurl.

 But instead of covering well tread ground, I thought I'd point out for all the things that Kim and co-director Woo-Sang Park (Chinatown 2)  - under the pseudonym "Richard W. Park"   - do badly, they do manage to set up plot elements and pay them off later. Not consistently, and perhaps not always very well, but there IS an attempt to introduce a seemingly pointless plot element and then come back to it later.

 For example, let's take the scene where Kim and two students are sparring on the campus of the University of Central Florida for what feels like fifteen minutes. In addition to demonstrating that Kim is very good at making his students look foolish, the scene also establishes knife defense and foreshadows how the climactic battle will end, all while seeming to be playful, pointless padding.

 Much has been made of the "I found my father" subplot of Miami Connection, mostly in the quasi-ironic "for your consideration" video on Youtube, but most of the movie is a series of "Dragon Sound does something, is followed by the rival band, and fights" until it's time to do that all over again. This goofy attempt to add pathos to one of the members at least goes somewhere, and more importantly, leads directly to the final showdown between the ninjas from Miami and our heroes, who spent most of the film never even in the same room together. Dare I say it even tricks us into believing there might be tragedy befalling our happy-go-lucky band of misfits?

Okay, so I'm giving Miami Connection more credit than most people are willing to, but it only seems fair to approach this review in a manner other than "ha ha, it's SO BAD and you're going to laugh at how bad it is" because that's the general consensus. Miami Connection is, at times, like the line in Ghost World when Enid says "this is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again." There's an undeniable earnestness behind all of the lack of acting chops, and everybody's giving it their very best. It's just not always enough.

 But damn if "Friends Forever" and "Against The Ninja" aren't catchy songs. And sometimes, the movie that seems to be going nowhere takes the time to foreshadow, which is more than I can say for some of the movies we're watching this weekend...

 Speaking of which, our next film is Lifeforce, from a list of people who are too talented to make something this boring...

Retro Review: The YAD Archives (Part Four)

 Preamble shamelessly copied from last week's post:

 Welcome back to another edition of the Blogorium's Retro Review. Today we're going to continue looking back at a series of reviews written for defunct online magazine You're All Doomed. Previously we took a look at reviews from 2005 and at the output of guest blogger Professor Murder. Turning the wayback machine a little further, let's take a look at a few more movies from 2004.

 Once again, a bit of a disclaimer: these reviews represent a proto-Cap'n Howdy and accordingly they don't look like what I write today. They're shorter, tend to make logical leaps and assume the audience will simply follow, and sometimes contain erroneous information because I was more interested in getting reactions out unspoiled rather than fact checking and researching before and during the writing process. I am, however, leaving them untouched in order to represent the original material.

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Shaun of the Dead: A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies (if you will)
4.5 stars out of 5

Shaun of the Dead is nearly perfect entertainment. Unless of course, you have a weak stomach or hate zombies. Then it's just very good. As I write this, it becomes very difficult to explain why SotD is so wonderful. Is it that every character is three dimensional? Is it the nods to Romero's "Dead" films? Is it the presence of the star of "Black Books"?

Why don't the ads do this movie justice?

This is a question I do feel I can address. See, the ads I saw on tv flew in the face of every great thing I'd heard about it. The jokes looked obvious and stupid, the "scares" were neither frightening nor interesting. Even the celebrity blurbs sounded cheesy (I'm sorry Peter Jackson, really I am, but Cabin Fever was not the best horror movie of 2003 or any other year.) So I went in with a grain of salt, expecting to be sadly disappointed in another over-hyped "indie gem." Imagine my shock when in the first five minutes I was laughing. Not chuckles, but outright laughter, which led to sustained belly aching laughs as things really got rolling. Even the scenes they show you on tv, like when Shaun and Ed are singing and the zombie joins in, are funny. Seriously. Yes, taken out of context, they look terrible. When you realize that Shaun and Ed are very drunk and may well be the only people in London that DON'T know the dead have risen... I don't know. It's hard to explain.

Needless to say, just go see it. I've already told everyone I know that it's fucking hilarious and they'll love it. And if you have an aversion to gore or "horror" movies, then you'll be just fine until they lock themselves in the pub. Really. The title of this review doesn't lie. If you do like zombies, then you ought've seen it already, so get out there and watch it!

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5 stars (out of 5)

Charlie Kaufman. Michel Gondry. Kate Winslet as good as she's been since Heavenly Creatures. Jim Carrey as good as he's ever been. Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, David Cross. A true joy from beginning to end. Heart breaking and true. As good as they come, folks. Get it while it's fresh.

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Coffee and Cigarettes
3.5 (out of 5)


It isn't difficult to digest this movie. In fact, the title alone tells you everything that can be expected. Jim Jarmusch takes small groups of people (for most of the vingettes, two) and provides them cigarettes and, well, coffee. However, let me clarify something here. This isn't improvised, or at least, most of the conversations aren't. Too many little phrases and moments echo each other to be an accident (in particular, keep an eye out for musicians who double as doctors, nikolai tesla, and the shady nature of celebrity.) While Coffee and Cigarettes is slight, the segments are never too long to grate, and the really good ones make up for the lesser bits.

To wit:

-Cate Blanchett is a standout playing herself and her cousin, as are Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan in the same beat.

-The White Stripes discuss Jack's Tesla coil while Cinque Lee looks on (Lee, having appeared in an earlier segment with his sister Joie and Steve Buscemi)

-Iggy Pop and Tom Waits test each other and discover the diner's jukebox doesn't play either one of them.

-Bill Rice and Taylor Mead muse about the late seventies and champagne
and, in what's probably the most heard about segment, The Rza and The Gza offer Bill Murray helpful tips of losing that smokers cough (they also refer to him exclusively as "Bill Murray".)

See what I mean? There's really not a lot after the movie ends, but it's a pleasant hour and a half, and even if the Tom Waits / Iggy Pop scene goes on for far too long, and Roberto Benigni is almost impossible to understand in his scene with Steven Wright, well, it's entertaining enough. Jarmusch fans should enjoy it well enough, and most other people weren't planning on seeing it anyhow.
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I Heart Huckabees

4 Stars

I Heart Huckabees may be as difficult a review as I've ever had to write. This is the type of film best experienced, not unlike Being John Malkovich, Bubba Ho-Tep, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If any of those movies turned you off when you read it, I Heart Huckabees probably isn't for you. There's no exaggerating on their part when Fox Searchlight calls it "[an] existentialist comedy", because it's both a parody and the essence of existentialism on celluloid. The film wanders around and throws high concept after high concept at the audience with little concern to explain or wait for you to catch up. The cast is uniformly great, including surprisingly good turns from Mark Wahlberg and Jason Schwartzmann, both actors who've had their share of ups and downs in hollywood. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are endearing and baffling at the same time, and Jude Law is more than capable of taking the villain character and twisting him around. I'd be remiss to ignore Naomi Watts, who arguably has the most character arc in the movie, and she's totally believable all the way along.

That being said, no less than four people walked out of the movie when I went to see it, and a great deal more complained about it afterwards. This is a movie that isn't in the mood to wait for you, and a lot of people didn't understand why I was laughing so frequently and heartily. This is that type of movie, the sort that does horribly in theaters, but a small, devoted base keeps it alive on video and dvd. I hope. See it, but be warned, you may not like what you see.

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The Day Before Tomorrow

3 Stars


I had such high hopes for this movie. Much like Eight Legged Freaks, I expected to be able to turn my brain off and enjoy some harmless carnage for two hours, then get up and forget about it by the time I got to the car. But then, I forgot, this IS Roland Emmerich we're talking about. Big hearted sap sentimentalist appeal to your inner tree hugger Roland Emmerich. Don't get me wrong, it's fine to express yourself in film, whether you're attacking foreign policy under the guise of alien invasion (Indepence Day) or attracting crass commercial endorsements while destroying New York (Godzilla) or even pillaging William Wallace and placing him front and center in the Revolutionary War (The Patriot). And don't even get me started on Stargate. However, these were all handled with the assistance of Dean Devlin (yep, the asian guy in Real Genius. Seriously, check it out) so I assumed he had a hand in this.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy Disaster flicks as much as any filmgoer, maybe more (I do own The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno own VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD) and The Day After Tomorrow delivers on the gratuitous destruction. By the end of the movie, most of America is covered in ice, and millions are implied dead. Plus we see the destruction of Los Angeles and New York City firsthand, and let me tell you, it is grand. Not since George Lucas got off his fat ass to make the prequels has one film abused computers so. Tornadoes, walls of water (remember the OTHER ending to the Abyss? Ever wondered what'd happen if they didn't buy Ed Harris' plea?) rain and snowstorms out the wazoo, characters introduced only to be killed within ten minutes (check out the mostly pointless scene in Tokyo) and hail. Oh, and for no good reason, wolves.

HOWEVER, the carnage is sullied by the persistent eco-friendly message spewed at every opportunity by Dennis Quaid and Ian Holm, plus a cop out ending and unnecessary jabs at the Bush Administration (see: Vice President that clearly is the decision maker, idiot president that dies instead of being evacuated, etc) When President Cheney gives his final address on The Weather Channel, he tells the survivors of the world that they must make radical changes about the way they think in order to move on as a society (not unlike Bill Pullman's address in Independence Day) when shortly before he was belittling the efforts and warnings of the tree hugging climatologists. The movie even goes so far as to recommend ways to curb the impending doom before it happens.

Thankfully, this makes up the beginning and the end, chiefly, and the global destruction is worth the price of being lectured. Plus Jake Gyllenhall found himself a movie to be in that makes money (wise move, guy, those Donnie fans won't be paying the bills forever). If you dig death on a worldwide scale, some mildly interesting action scenes, and more (implied) corpses than a romero flick, check this movie out, but bring some earplugs, and plan to leave 15 minutes early.

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Team America: World Police

3.5 Stars

AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!!

Team America offends the left and the right, and has been held up by both sides as a paragon of their beliefs. The National Review hails it for it's conservative sense of humour and merciless assault on the media elite, and Leftists use it to explain how America is perceived in the world.

Of course, they're both right. And wrong. Team America is an assault on all sides from the middle, people tired of being told they either side with George W. Bush or Michael Moore. (Personally, I think they're both full of shit.) It's also a crude, bombastic send up of overblown Hollywood Action movies, even lifting direct scenes and lines of dialogue from such hits as Top Gun and Armageddon. With puppets. There's even a clever Star Wars joke about halfway through the movie. The violence at first is ridiculous, but by the end of the film, Team America dispatches the Film Actors Guild in so many disgusting and violent ways that you forget you're watching puppets. Okay, you don't, but the novelty that it's one elaborate puppet show becomes irrelevant about halfway in.

The two best things Team America has going for it are Kim Jong IL as the film's chief villain (packing one hell of a surprise in the final moments) and the ridiculous, over the top songs, designed to copy and rip apart THE BIG SONG of action extravaganzas (one song in particular compares the loss of a girlfriend to how much Pearl Harbor sucked) and executed in a variety of outlandish ways. I'll even let Trey and Matt slide for reusing the Montage song from South Park.

I can't give it perfect marks, because it does miss the mark on some jokes, and like any action movie, things can drag a bit. But what works will leave your ass rolling in the aisles.

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Fahrenheit 9/11 / Celsius 41.11

3 stars (combined)

I'm gonna do this quickly, because I'm so fucking sick of these movies:

Both movies alter the same facts to make different points. Both pretend to hold reverence for their subjects and yet rip them new assholes mercilessly. Both don't care about the truth if it gets in the way of their narrative. Fahrenheit is at least a palatable movie, Celsius doesn't want to be a movie, but rather an attack piece. Moore likes to think he's making high art, and he's not, but whatever. Seriously, Celsius is funnier, if only because they try even less to disguise the attack on John Kerry (which is funny, since the cover promises to correct Moore's mistakes) At the end of it, neither one of them has a point, and Fahrenheit only wins out because it's ballsier in scope. Fuck politics, fuck attack ads, fuck these "movies".

Spoiler for the Day: Freddy vs. Jason

 Jason wins by ripping off Freddy's arms and decapitating him. He later rises out of Crystal Lake with Freddy's head, who opens his eye and winks.

 Tomorrow's Spoiler for the Day: Shit Coffin

Not Funny People, but Maybe Funny Ha-Ha*

I'm still working on the Funny People review, so in the mean time the Cap'n would like to let you cool kids in on a special development. Unbeknownst to many of us, Dr. Uwe Boll was hard at work making a new movie based on a recent video game: Far Cry.

As is to be expected, it looks right up your alley. See for yourself:



I can't be 100% certain (okay, I can), but the music in the beginning sure sounds like it's from The Dark Knight. The music at the end sounds like every action movie I've ever seen Wesley Snipes in (but specifically Blade), but if someone would be so kind as to identify it, you'll win a special prize.

Without having seen Far Cry (or, for that matter, ever seeing Far Cry), I notice that Dr. Boll managed to snag Udo Kier and Hugo Stiglitz from Inglorious Basterds. Good for him. Enjoy, you masochists.

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Speaking of masochism I'm very willing to partake in, there's a new Universal Soldier movie coming out. This one doesn't necessarily eschew the Burt Reynolds and Gary Busey chapters of the U.S. saga, but is a sequel to Universal Soldier: The Return.

Instead of getting Bill Goldberg to come back to fight JCVD, the producers aimed high and plucked Dolph Lundgren out of the cloud known as The Expendables. I don't actually know how they plan on explaining the "death by corn tiller" ending from Universal Soldier, but you can't really complain about getting a much older Van Damme and a less-older looking but it's still 17 years later guys Dolph Lundgren together to fight each other, and possibly UFC guy I'd never heard of Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski.

Again, I'll let the evidence speak on its behalf:



My guess why this looks classier (albeit filmed in one location) than Far Cry is the director. See, he's the son of the director of 2010: The Odyssey Continues, which is a favorite film of Major Tom's.

All snarking aside, I already added this to my Netflix queue. I'm kind of sorry to see that the movie JCVD didn't open more doors for the man JCVD, but at least he's making direct to video sequels to movies I kinda liked now. Hopefully he can be retconned into TimeCop 3...



* but not that piece of shit indie movie Funny Ha Ha. Fuck that movie.

The Winnahs!

On Saturday Night, we'll be watching the following films:

Black Sheep

Blood Car

Hillbillys in a Haunted House

Night of the Lepus

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

Terrorvision

There were... a lot more votes than I was expecting. It looks like a fair chunk of you REALLY don't want to watch Hillbillys in a Haunted House again, so I'll promise you that it has the Matinee slot. Accordingly, I will try to find places for Slither, Drag Me to Hell, and Teeth elsewhere in the fest.

Speaking of 2012...

For some reason, I let Adam talk me into watching 2012: Doomsday via streaming Netflix tonight. As I suspected I would when he asked me to queue it up, I regretted watching the movie. However, I'll be more than happy to fill you in on all the details of a movie most of you never knew existed.

To begin with, I erroneously assumed 2012: Doomsday was from the same company who makes Terminators and Transmorphers: Fall of Man (and, not coincidentally, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus). You can hardly blame me, since its release is suspiciously timed with Roland Emmerich's forthcoming 2012. Alas, this was not so. Perhaps you can guess what this movie is about by the production company: Saved Pictures.

Yes, Virginia, 2012: Doomsday is a religiously themed disasterpiece with a much (MUCH) lower budget and more of the preachiness. I guess. It's really hard to argue that most of the movie isn't about proving that God is more reliable than science, but I didn't notice it that much for two reasons:

1. The volume was turned down for most of the movie, especially after Adam called to provide in-film commentary about why I shouldn't turn it off out of boredom.

2. There's actually so little that happens in the movie that you tend to forget the frequent references to faith being stronger than science.

Instead, you get the following plot points, listed thusly because it's really all I can remember. After all, I did almost turn it off out of boredom.

- In the first hour (of an 80 minute movie), the plot jumps around from location to location, each time indicated by a slowly typed text indicator of where we are and how many hours until DOOMSDAY.

- The explicit statement that the Mayans were visited by Christianity waaaaaay before Cortez, and that the end of the Mayan calendar is the biblical Apocalypse. All of this because one of the characters finds a golden cross (with crucified Jesus on it) in a Mayan temple.

- Said cross is taken to another Mayan temple, turned sideways, and used as a key (like in a Resident Evil game) to open an altar room conveniently in time for someone to give birth.

- Cliff DeYoung (Shock Treatment) is flying in a plane with the pilot through lightning and tornadoes, and when they land the pilot is conveniently raptured. This movie never mentions this again.

- The worst Med-Student turned Photojournalist on Earth is killed by a baseball sized hail stone that blows a hole in his chest. He still gets a three minute monologue, post-wound, ala Trinity in The Matrix Revolutions.

- Some dude falls into a crack in the earth. It's not as cool (or as funny) as it sounds, even though he was using the cross to keep himself from falling into the abyss.

- I'm pretty sure that if there's a Tornado in San Diego, you won't have silly string thrown at you. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.

- When it finally hits DOOMSDAY, the movie jumps around to various cities that aren't in Mexico or California, usually to show them burning (London) or collapsing (Jerusalem), with the name of the city and the word DOOMSDAY beneath it. It's kind of funny, but far too short.

- They couldn't actually afford a baby (or even a baby doll), so when the woman we don't really know gives birth, they conveniently wrap her child in a jacket and never show you what's inside the jacket.

The movie doesn't actually end, nor does it really ever explain the necessity of the religious affirmation subplot(s). It's one of the ways I forgot that it was supposed to be like Left Behind or Fireproof, because so much of the film is totally arbitrary that you can easily forget what's supposed to be going on.

2012: Doomsday jumps around so much in the first 45 minutes that the characters just barely register, let alone have any resonance. It's dumb, but not very funny, and not preachy enough to offend the atheist contingent. The effects are pretty lame, and despite the desire to be epic, it never feels like more than a cheap knock-off.

Adam's pretty insistent that if you come over early for Horror Fest (like in the afternoon), you'll be watching it with him. It's not a horror movie, and I'd barely call it a Bad Movie Night contender, but maybe you'll be tickled by it like he was. Me? I can barely remember what happened.

Pick your poison, please.

One of these trailers for next year's Golden Raspberry winners made me laugh so hard I still haven't stopped, and the other is so stunningly awful that I had to share it. I'm going to leave it up to you to guess which one is which.

No, I'm not. The Tooth Fairy is such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea that I challenge you not to laugh at how awful this movie looks.

'Tooth Fairy' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

On the other end of the "really" spectrum, I'm not going to pretend that I watched Alvin and the Chipmunks the movie (because I didn't), but I have the feeling it's as instantly dated as its *shudder* Squeakquel will be before the year is out. Witness for yourself:




Finally, because it proves a point about why remakes are problematic, I present to you the "five minutes" of Roland Emmerich's 2012 making its way around the interweb. Rather than remaking a disaster movie, Emmerich continually recycles his own ridiculous "end of the world by ____" motif. This time, apparently the whole world ends not by Global Warming or Space Aliens, but by... uh, the end of the Mayan calender.

Let's not even pretend the plot matters, because it certainly doesn't in this clip. 2012, like most of his disasterpieces, is about watching cities being destroyed by something. In this case, we finally see Bill Hicks' "Arizona Bay" bit come to fruition, with John Cusack hilariously driving Amanda Peet, some other dude, and some kids around in a limousine. And then a plane, both of which somehow find a way to go between imploding buildings.



As sad as the Cap'n is to say this, Roland Emmerich is setting the bar for non-remakers by at least pretending he's not making the same movie. Even though he clearly is. I bet I could substitute footage from The Day After Tomorrow and you wouldn't know the difference. Platinum Dunes could learn a thing or two from this guy...

Wow, did I really just say that? You'll have to excuse me, I just watched The Tooth Fairy trailer again and I can't control my laughter.