Hey folks, Harry here… banged this out a tad early so that I wouldn’t be behind – as this ‘release day’ is Yoko’s birthday and she gets my full attention. And you all deserve this week’s column. As always the box art and titles link over to Amazon where you can learn more or purchase the title, which would lead to a bit of the profits going to support this column, which I hope you think is a worthwhile column. Well, let’s get on with it, shall we? Here ya go…

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

APPALOOSA

This is a small little film directed by Ed Harris – and man… this is a story about a pair of badasses that are wanting to settle in to a small town sheriff job. In some ways, the story is similar to TOMBSTONE, minus the intense and constant badassery of that film. Here you have a far more understated film. A quiet film – that in some ways introduces something entirely new to the ‘western’ in Rene Zellweger’s innocent piano playing lady. I love her character and all the twists and turns she takes – HOWEVER, several friends disagree – and wished the film had been entirely about Viggo and Ed’s struggle against Jeremy Irons’ character. However, Ed was less concerned with action and thankfully more concerned with character work – of which there is plenty to appreciate. Good work here.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

In my opinion this is the jewel release of the week. Now – I’m not some long time fan of this movie. I remember seeing it and thinking it was a pretty weak installment into the realm of slasher films. However, this rather excellent disc has strengthened the main weakness of the film… the gore factor. It turns out that director George Mihalka had some fairly brutal fights that he lost making MY BLOODY VALENTINE, but 28 years later – this MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D has given his film a release that allowed him to find those original missing elements and put them back into the film – thus… for the very first time… giving teeth to MY BLOODY VALENTINE. I still prefer the new 3D release, but this is now a very respectable horror release. If you love 80s horror – you really owe it to yourself to check out this rather excellent release!

WALKER, TEXAS RANGER – 6th Season

Who doesn’t love Chuck Norris? Sure – he has piss poor taste in politicians, but as a screen icon – he’s kinda the shit. I find myself having a real Love/Hate relationship with WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. At one level… it brings me more Chuck. At another level… I really wish I had the chance to see a really cool feature film career with Chuck Norris as an aging hero. But at least I have this series… and OCTAGON and SILENT RAGE and RETURN OF THE DRAGON… and all the others.

MIRRORS

I love Alexandre Aja. HAUTE TENSION was insane and fantastic. His HILLS HAVE EYES remake was bug fuck nuts. I haven’t quite decided if I love this film or think it’s just tolerable. The first time I saw it was a less than preferable situation. However, Home Video gives me a second chance with this film and I’m looking forward to watching it the way Horror films sometimes work best… alone… in a dark room. At this point, CANDYMAN and POLTERGEIST give me more reasons to fear the mirror… But this one was fun, let’s see how it plays at home.

SWING VOTE

I found this film to be almost entirely intolerably fucking stupid. That adorable lil girl on the cover? Her character is written like a 17 year old Political Savant in an adorable 9-10 year old girl body and it’s fucking annoying. She’s way too young for the type of character they have her as. And Costner makes me seethe in his role. The idea of Dennis Hopper as a political Presidential candidate scared the fuck out of me. CAN YOU IMAGINE THE HELL THAT WOULD ENSUE? All that said though – there is one gag – a political spot that is Pro-Life that is shot in the film that may very well be the funniest and sharpest witted commercials that made me laugh for about 5 minutes… and my wife and I have had a couple of dinners with friends since we’ve seen this film where we’ve tried to describe the awfulness of it all – and have just resulted with people saying, “I’ve got to see that!” I’m not recommending that – but if you’re flipping channels and realize that the film is about halfway through – watch till the Pro-Life commercial is over and then turn it off – you’ve seen what there was to watch from the film.

MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL

Ok – last week when I was writing the DVD column – I put this on as I was writing it. And found myself distracted by the film. Howard Deutch does have some cool films to his credit – and he does a serviceable job on this film. The unrated film isn’t unrated for mass amounts of nudity – but for language. Dane Cook’s professional asshole dater is really nasty. His character is all at once a complete nightmare and a hopeless romantic. He’s a guy that has the remarkable capacity to be an unflinchingly rude motherfucker… a nightmare date. The sort of date that if your girl friend were to say she felt you should cool it, that perhaps y’all should “see other people” – that if you hired this guy, she’s come running back to you begging for matrimony… rather than risk finding another asshole. Kate Hudson is kinda adorable in this… well, let’s face it, she is adorable. Alec Baldwin is kind of an amazing lecher. And Jason Biggs has zero growth as an actor since AMERICAN PIE. This is not a great film, but an ok one.

GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE (Blu-Ray)

Story wise, this film isn’t as great as the original GHOST IN THE SHELL, but Mamoru Oshii did some amazing work here. Shit so cool that it’s still light years ahead of the American science fiction dream yet, in terms of film. And on Blu-Ray… this thing is just one of those films that you can just sit at and stare with your mouth hung open thinking, “FUCK ME!” I know that doesn’t sound deep, but it really does boggle the visual mind.

TOKYO GORE POLICE

Yoshihiro Nishimura brought his TOKYO GORE POLICE to Fantastic Fest this year and it blew the minds of nearly all that saw it. This isn’t a film about rational plots or thoughts or reactions. There is shit in this movie that no amount of drugs would ever conjure in your mind. As a film freak in this age of being able to rent or buy pretty much any movie ever… and video games which have some pretty amazing shit… and then porn – where you can see … well… anything the human body could rationally fit into it. Well… If you’ve seen it all, you still haven’t seen TOKYO GORE POLICE. And for people like us that want to SHOCK THE WORLD with the shit you can say you’ve seen… seriously… this shit makes Miike look chaste. There’s a level of insane insanity at play that just makes you all Robby The Robot shooting Leslie Nielson. Seriously.

THE TAKING OF POWER BY LOUIS XIV – Criterion Collection

Criterion again has done a great job with a great filmmaker’s film. This time out it is Roberto Rossellini and his TAKING OF POWER BY LOUIS XIV. Rossellini wrenches the godhood out of this king, by treating him as a flawed human – and the environment as well a setting that confines as well as adorns a man. This is an outstanding film. The Criterion treatment has us with a great documentary on Rossellini’s later career – along with video interviews with collaborators. Then there’s the fantastic essays and multimedia work. This is great.

TRAFFIC (Blu-Ray)

I love a lot about this film. In fact I already had it on HD-DVD, so this was a double dip for me. Soderbergh’s epic… every part is solid, but ultimately, Benicio’s character and role just overwhelmed the rest of the movie. It was just that fucking great. It’s nice to have this title hit Blu-Ray.

WARBIRDS

This is one of those Sci-Fi channel movies that dammit… the geek in me that loves all those old Dinosaur Island comic books that DC put out back in the day… well, it killed me to see a movie that basically robbed that premise done on such a shitty shoe-string budget and bad script and not very strong talent… Dinosaurs and WWII army men is a fetish that will one day be done right, and that will be a truly great day. This cover has a promise that the film comes nowhere near keeping. Be warned.

FATHER OF THE KAMIKAZE

I haven’t seen this film, I can find zero information about it other than:

“Vice Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi could see that Japan's defeat in WWII was inevitable. He came to realize that the only way to force a negotiated solution was to convince the Americans that invading Japan would cause massive casualties on both sides. The cold logic of suicide attacks, where one man and one plane could kill hundreds, seemed the only solution. In one of the cruel ironies of fate, Ohnishi actually succeeded; he convinced the Americans that invading Japan would be too costly in lives. But what he could not foresee was that America had another way of ending the war.”

Which is on Amazon. The AMAZON story details have me intrigued, how about you?

That’s it for this week… Next week we’ll be checking out MOONLIGHT – The Complete Series, KING KONG Blu-Ray, REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA, MAX PAYNE, SAW V, THE EXPRESS, MGM: WHEN THE LION ROARS, CITY OF EMBER, MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION – Criterion, SPAIN… ON THE ROAD AGAIN, THE NOTEBOOK Blu Ray, IGOR, HENRY POOLE IS HERE, EL NORTE (Blu) Criterion, THE POWERPUFF GIRLS: The Complete Series, DOMINO (Blu Ray), FRANK ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: IN THE 1960’s, ELECTION (Blu Ray), MACHINIST (Blu Ray), National Lampoon’s STONED AGE and a little more.