Machete (2010)

Tagline: They just fucked with the wrong Mexican.

Curiosity: C’mon, Danny Trejo deserves it.

Plot: Machete (Trejo) is an ex-Federale slumming in the U.S. after the ruthless druglord Torrez (Steven Seagal) killed his family when he picks the wrong oddjob: Killing a U.S. senator. But when Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey, at his most gravelly) promises Machete $150,000 to assassinate Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro, in his first good movie since, like, Heat) and end his anti-immigration hate speech, he can’t pass the opportunity up. Turns out he should’ve, though, since the offer was a set-up. With an army of friends, including cop Santana Rivera (Jessica Alba) and taco merchant/revolutionary Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), Machete sets out to claim revenge.

Thoughts: Machete is basically a testament to writer/co-director Robert Rodriguez’s love of Danny Trejo. He gives Trejo killer fight scenes, a starring role, and the chance to simulate sex with Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, and Michelle Rodriguez. Of course, Trejo deserves it, having consistently turned in solid work over the last 25 years. Machete proves what Rodriguez knew all along: That Trejo could and should be the next Charles Bronson.

The film isn’t for everyone, and admittedly it’s a little flawed. It’s very much in the Grindhouse tradition, so if you didn’t come for gore, tits, and ridiculosity, then you might as well leave. And the cast is perhaps a bit overstuffed. Lohan and Tom Savini (You might remember him from m.f.-in’ Dawn of the Dead) are wasted here. Well, Savini is; Lohan is just a waste of time. Cheech Marin gets a great but brief role as Machete’s holy brother. Alba and Rodriguez are solid love interests/fighters. And the endless parade of villains is excellent. As exciting as it is to watch De Niro, Fahey, and Don Johnson play heavies, the real winner is Seagal, who embodies all the hamminess and awesomeness a good B movie needs. Machete is a little long at two hours, but it’s still a great action flick.

Reflection: Best Nash Bridges reunion ever.

Monsters (2010)

Tagline: Beware.

Curiosity: Absurdly cost efficient sci-fi film that Scott Muir told me to watch.

Plot: Six years ago, a NASA probe crash landed in Mexico, bringing with it a strange alien species that grows up to be like these giant Cthulu motherfuckers. They’re like octopi/elephant hybrids or some shit. It’s nuts. Mexico and Southwestern U.S.A. are lousy with ’em. During this mess, photographer Andrew (the impossibly named Scott McNairy) is shepherding Samantha (Whitney Able), the daughter of a wealthy businessman, home in exchange for credentials that would allow him to photography these majestic, pants-shittingly terrifying creatures.

They do SO MUCH WALKING.

Thoughts: The hullaballo behind Monsters is that it didn’t cost much to make. Like, slap-your-momma cheap. Reportedly, the budget was $15,000 American. And for every corner the film cuts – sets and extras shot without permission, a two-person cast, minimal interaction with the creatures, terrible voice acting – Monsters still comes out looking like a better film that any with a $100 million budget.

Granted, my appreciation is definitely tied to the budget – even Clerks cost more, and Kevin Smith made that movie with a couple of credit cards – but even without that information, Monsters is a compelling sci-fi study. The script isn’t terribly original, but filmmaker Gareth Edwards makes it work. The film dodges plenty of clichés – I won’t name them here to avoid spoilers – but for the most part, the film subverts a lot of expectations by simply telling a straightforward road movie that just so happens to feature Cthulu.

Reflection: Yo, so what do you think the ending means? …Is it a spoiler if I ask that question?

Hard Gun (1996)

Tagline: This movie is fucking called Hard Gun.

Curiosity: It’s one of Tony Jaa’s early films. Also it’s called Hard Gun. WHAT. UP.

Plot: After a gang of bandits gets into a shootout with some cops, their leader (Panna Rittikrai) swears revenge on the policeman who killed his brother Norm. When this officer returns home to visit his family, he finds himself in a rather sticky situation. As if fighting methheads wasn’t enough, now he’s got Rittikrai and a young Tony Jaa to contend with. Hilarity ensues. Also, kickings and shootings.

Thoughts: I appreciate Hard Gun for what it is, an action/comedy that showcases Jaa’s talents as a martial artist but doesn’t emphasize his ability like The Protector. He gets to show some very brief but nice stuntwork in the beginning, but Jaa ultimately doesn’t factor into the movie until the last 20 minutes. His big fight scene at the end looks pretty good, but it’s nothing compared to the four years of intense training that culminated in Ong-Bak. Bearing in mind that he was only like 20 when he made Hard Gun, though, I respect his results.

The rest of the movie, though, is a long, slow walk through people who aren’t Tony Jaa. Hard Gun oscillates too wildly in tone. The fight scenes are brutal, especially one scene where a drug addict beats his wife in public, but the humor is so slapsticky that it clashes with the violence. It doesn’t balance it out so much as undercut it. Yet in spite of this shortcoming, the story is surprisingly well-rounded for an action movie. When the fight scenes do roll in, they’re powerful. The film is often funny, though unintentionally so, like when an actor looks straight into the camera and says that drugs ruin society. It could not get any more PSA than that. Still, I can only recommend this film to people who already like Jaa’s work. Ong-Bak and Protector assert Jaa as the successor to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. Hard Gun helps explain how he got there, but that won’t make it any better for the uninitiated.

Reflection: DON’T GOOGLE “HARD GUN.”

SLC Punk (1998)

Tagline: God bless America… They’re going to need it.

Curiosity: I’m testing my love of another childhood favorite.

Plot: Steve-o (Matthew Lillard) talks about his life as a punk during the summer of 1985 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He and his friend Heroin Bob (Michael Goorjian) are struggling to get by, and their dedication to the anarchy ideology isn’t exactly helping. What follows are a series of vignettes about drugs, sex, and comedic mayhem as shit slowly but surely gets real.

Thoughts: I loved SLC Punk when I was 14, and I still love it now, although for slightly different reasons. The cast went on to do so much after this movie that it’s almost surreal watching them in bits parts. Jason Segel alone has delivered for me time and again (Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Til Schwiegger went on to do m.f.-ing Inglourious Basterds. Goorjian’s IMDB page is stuffed with credits. And Lillard… was in In the Name of the King? Point is, I like the cast. And the music’s pretty great too.

I used to relate to this movie because it captured a lot of what I felt living in a similarly square town. Blue Bell is by no means Salt Lake City, but it’s still a beat scene, daddy-o. I had issues with the bummer ending and the protagonist’s love of anarchy (I’ve always taken my politics from Joe Strummer, not Sid Vicious) when I was younger, but not so much anymore. Ultimately, the film is about growing up. Taking your ideals and trying to integrate them into the real world, compromising what you can while still maintaining your dignity if you can. Oh, and getting the fuck away from all your stupid drugged out friends, because they’re only going to hurt you in the end and possibly kill your best friend [SPOILER].

Even the film’s flimsier parts – Steve-o’s occasionally misguided rants, any bit of melodrama really – seem beyond my reproach, because they capture how I remember my high school days. Being punk rock means arguing how punk rock things are or are not ALL THE TIME. I listen to a wider array of punk bands now than I did when I was like 16, but I’m sure 16-year-old me would still hate the 24-year-old version of me for listening to Wilco and Sarah McLachlin.

Reflection: BEST USE OF GENERATION X EVER.

Walker (1987)

Tagline: Before Rambo… Before Oliver North…

Curiosity: Joe Strummer wrote the score and played a bit part, although that hasn’t paid off in the past. That said, Rudy Wurlitzer wrote the script, and he touched up Two-Lane Blacktop.

Plot: William Walker (Ed Harris, whom I like a lot because of The Abyss and A History of Violence) is sent by businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle) to take over Nicaragua and set up trade routes. Initially a “good soldier” type, Walker becomes corrupted by the sudden, absolute power thrust upon him down south. With no one to oppose him, he sets himself up as president. But if Scarface taught me anything, it’s that sooner or later warlords piss off too many people.

Thoughts: Walker is the second best film by director Alex Cox, behind his debut Repo Man. The cast is significantly more talented and naturalistic than the one in Straight to Hell, released the same year. Harris gives a strong, stoic performance, showing just how easily we can become the villains in our own stories. His shift is so minute that you don’t realize just how off he is until shit gets real.

Unfortunately, the movie itself is just as imperceptible, rendering the first hour of its 94-minute running time dull and repetitive. People scream. Walker looks spiffy in his suit. Other people get pissed at Walker and his spiffy suit. Repeat. But when a rebellion rises up against Walker in the third act, Cox’s cinematography finally comes alive in an orgy of fire and Joe Strummer’s mellow Latin score. The characters besides Walker are interchangeable, but when they start getting mowed down, you still feel it all the same.

The same goes for Cox’s idiosyncratic placement of contemporary items like Marlboro cigarettes and machine guns in a story set in the mid-19th century. It’s largely distracting for the majority of the film, but it eventually pays off during the glorious ending. It’s supposed point out a connection between Walker’s dictatorship and the Reagan administration similar actions in Nicaragua during the ’80s, but until Cox spells it out, it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Still, the music is good and Harris turns in a solid performance. Walker feels like a waste of time most of the time, but that finally half-hour really is a whiz-bang experience.

Reflection: Now to locate a VHS copy I Hired a Contract Killer…

Tidal Wave (2009)

Tagline: There is no escape from nature’s wrath.

Curiosity: My girlfriend and I were out renting movies and, oddly enough, she was the first one to grab on to this South Korean disaster flick. Best. Girlfriend. Ever.

Plot: After the 2004 tsunami that devastate Asia, geologist Kim Hwi (Park Joon-hoon) is pretty darn sure it’ll happen again, this time taking out Korea. Nobody believes him.

The rest of the movie is about the citizens of the city Busan, specifically their love lives.

Thoughts: My girlfriend hated Tidal Wave. I loved it. The special effects are pretty iffy, but the script is surprisingly solid. Even though it’s at times pretty boring – the tsunamis don’t appear until the final half-hour – Tidal Wave manages to be more realistic than other disaster movies like 2012. See, here’s the thing: Most people don’t give a darn about all the ways we could be wiped out of existence. We’re perpetually dodging asteroids; people just don’t know it. And Tidal Wave shows this view (or lack of a view). Most of the characters contribute nothing to the plot as far as tsunamis are concerned. Rather, they live their lives. They raise children and go to work and try to find love. Just as in the 2004 tsunami, most of these people

don’t know what’s coming. And that’s relatable.

It doesn’t always make for perfect cinema, though. Movies without central plots can fall apart easily, and there are long stretches where Tidal Wave doesn’t do a whole lot. Luckily, the characters are sufficiently batshit insane to entertain anyway. Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu) is pretty thoroughly nutso – just about all of his scenes involve brawling and getting uncomfortably drunk.

Once the tidal wave finally hits, though, director Yoon Ke-jyoon is pretty brutal. He has no qualms about beating up his characters, even the ones who are pure of heart. Despite an overextended ending, the final half hour is riveting shot after shot of devastation. In particular, a sequence in which a ship collides with a bridge is alternately humorous and intense. I feel a little hypocritical watching a film inspired by a real tragedy - I won't watch 9/11 movies - but Tidal Wave still delivers.

Reflection: We also rented Thirst. It’s like a mini-South Korean film festival up in here.