Cobra (1986)

Tagline: Crime is a disease. Meet the cure.

Curiosity: It came bundled with Tango & Cash. Also, did you know that it’s star/writer Sylvester Stallone’s adaptation of Beverly Hills Cop?

Plot: Marion Cobretti (Stallone) has a ridiculously lame name, so he opts to go by “Cobra.” Dude is a lone wolf cop from the “zombie squad.” He takes the jobs no one wants, man, and he gets results, dammit. He blows away criminals while saying things like “This where the law stops and I start!” But there’s one crook he can’t blow: The Night Slasher (Brian Thompson, Luke from season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer!!).

But when TNS leaves a witness (Brigitte Nieslen), Cobra must protect/make-out with her, in the name of street justice!

Thoughts: While I love a few of his movies, I have a tough time embracing Sylvester Stallone. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Rocky series and all, but the guy’s movies reek of calculation, whereas a picture from Dolph Lundgren or Arnold Schwarzenegger will almost definitely come packed with giddy thrills. In Cobra, Stallone goes out of his way to craft a badass character with potential to launch a franchise, and generally fails.

Let’s get this out of the way: I mildly liked Cobra. I was surprised that Nielsen could act, as I only know her really from The Surreal Life (and Rocky 4: Smashin’ Communism!, of course). Ironically, the comedy was strong too, thanks in large part to the banter between Stallone and Reni Santoni as Sergeant Gonzales. They just riff back and forth about food for no reason. Hi-larious!

But all the parts where Stallone tries to make Cobra out to be tougher than Rambo feel over the top, and mind you this was the best decade for movies like that. Cobra dresses all in black. He kills criminals with a minimum of 20 bullets. And he totally doesn’t care about parking restrictions. BAD. ASS.

Thompson, meanwhile, gets saddled with a villain so poorly defined that he was nowhere to go but up. The Night Slasher is apparently part of some sort of ax cult, we never learn what’s up with that. Still, he gets a chunk of lines near the end where he gets to just be all types of crazy/scary, and he kills it.

In fact, that bit of dialogue is probably the only legitimately unnerving moment. Cobra attempts to play like a slasher movie, but it’s completely gore-free. Considering it came out the same year as Aliens, From Beyond, and The Fly, I don’t understand why the film didn’t push for a harder R rating. Hell, the lone sex scene isn’t even a scene; merely a jump cut. Cobra is cartoonishly violent in a way that only eight-year-olds with lenient parents could love.

Reflection: I can’t believe this movie made $188 million in theaters. Anyway, here’s the ending:

Ninja Bachelor Party (1991)

Tagline: Let’s do it! Let’s be ninjas!

Curiosity: It’s the only film starring stand-up legend Bill Hicks, available commercially for the first time on The Essential Collection.

Plot: Clarence (Kevin Booth) is a Robitussin addict looking to kick the habit and pick up ninjitsu. His parents don’t approve, his girlfriend leaves him, and he gets his ass kicked a lot. But one day, during a Robi-trip, he sees a vision: Travel to Korea to study the way of the ninja with Master (Hicks).

Then he gets his ass kicked some more.

Thoughts: While its plot is thin and its production value poor, Ninja Bachelor Party is the kind of low budget curio that I can’t deny. It helps if you’re a Hicks convert (I agree that he’s the father of alt-comedy, but he represents the style’s shortcomings as well as its successes), but it should appeal to fans of weird comedy.

At the same time, though, it’s a legitimate love letter to martial arts movies complete with several training montages. I’m not going to put it in the same league as Black Dynamite, because Michael Jai White is a way better filmmaker, but the final showdown between Clarence and Dr. Death (Hicks, in a dual-role) is much longer than you’d think, and they get in at least a handful of legitimate fighting moves. Granted, Ninja Bachelor Party took eight years (and only $5,000) to make, and it certainly looks like it, but it’s still a solidly entertaining flick.

Essentially, you get Hicks and Booth riffing into a microphone. Rapid fire one-liners mix with stranger comedy, like when the film opens with 10 anti-piracy warnings and closes with enough made-up credits to eat up one-sixth of the running time. I love it because A) it’s funny in a “What the hell?” sense and B) it shows that Hicks was more than just f-bombs and Goat Boy sex stories. My favorite comedians didn’t hit their stride until their thirties (See Patton Oswalt, Tina Fey, etc.), and I think Ninja Bachelor Party hints at the truly odd depths Hicks could have gone if he’d lived longer. His stand-up material is still pretty good, but I honestly think Party could have lead to something greater.

Reflection: …or maybe it’s just a better-than-average home movie. You tell me:

Season of the Witch (2011)

Tagline: This January raise some hell.

Curiosity: Witches get stitches, courtesy of Nicolas Cage (Wicker Man) and Ron Perlman (Alien Resurrection), as well as a bunch of awesome movies with Guillermo del Toro).

Plot: Behman (Cage) and Felson (Perlman) fight in the crusades for years. Like a decade. But when they’re forced to kill women and/or children this one time during their decade o’ slaughtering, Behman freaks the fuck out and quits. The Church hates defectors, though, so the duo is soon arrested. They are offered a pardon on one condition: Deliver a young girl believed to be a witch (Claire Foy) to a monastery for judgment, in the hopes it will help end the plague ravaging Europe.

CGI wolves come into play at some point.

Thoughts: Season of the Witch is a revision or two from being the best movie of the year. Cage and Perlman turn the movie into a buddy cop picture that just so happens to be set in the Dark Ages, while Foy gets to project such a wide array of states, from predator to prey. The movie doesn’t do much with the “Is she or isn’t she a witch?” angle, but Foy at least makes the procedure bearable with range. Cast-wise, this movie is about as good as it can be.

Where Witch falters is in budget and dialogue. I think that, given another $10 million or so, the fight scenes could pop a little more. The CGI could be crisper. And maybe the same sets wouldn’t seem so obviously re-used as the characters travel from one locale to the next. Script-wise, the movie needs a better sense of humor – Cage and Perlman play off each other really well, but they don’t get much to work with.

The script is perhaps too single-minded in its approach that it forgets to add more flavor, hence the underwhelming dialogue. It also occasionally cuts corners and allows characters to reach conclusions well before they should have. Case in point: The girl uses illusions to trick a guy into falling on the sword of a knight-in-training that I like to call Sir Fuck Up (Robert Sheehan). The goody guys figure out that she did it right away, and they’re right, but if I was in the scene, I would just assume that Sir Fuck Up done fucked up. I can’t see the illusions, but I sure as fuck can numb nuts get all stabby-stabby with his sword. That kid fails so hard so often.

Still, the movie moves a nice pace, has some cool fight scenes, and features a cast that honestly deserves better material. Season of the Witch is sub-Lord of the Rings fare, but it’s still better than most. I can think of three movies named Season of the Witch. This is arguably the best of them.

Reflection: In true LotR fashion, the movie also ends three times before finally ending. Christ.

My Year in Crap 2010

Based on how many “legitimately” good films show up on my list, I think 2010 may have been a good year for cinema. Then again, I also thought Mega Piranha was better than Black Swan or Shutter Island, so take that statement any way you want. Point is, this year I fell in love with the art of storytelling hard. What’s funny is that some of these films aren’t even perfect. I have plenty of problems with, say, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but it’s such an entertaining film, and such a great companion piece to its source material, that I hold it up high. How many adaptations can boast that?

I do want to set some ground rules before proceeding. In order to be considered for 2010, a film has to receive some degree of prominent distribution, whether it be a wide theatrical release or DVD one. Black Dynamite is technically a 2009 film, as that’s when it was first screened, but it wasn’t made available to the masses until this year. A Single Man opened in New York City and Los Angeles in 2009 so as to qualify for the Oscars, but fuck that shit. It didn’t go wide until 2010, so I’m counting it here. As my tolerant, beautiful girlfriend will tell you, I have little tolerance for films released to tactically take advantage of awards seasons. I think art belongs to everyone.

OK, rant over. Let’s talk about boobs and explosions.

15. Edge of Darkness

I’m surprised to find Edge of Darkness, a tepid Mel Gibson thriller here. At the time, I sneered it off the last gasp of Gibson’s career after all those drunken racist/anti-Semitic remarks, but the film delivers great drama, complete with ridiculous death scenes and unbelievable dialogue. Gibson might be washed up and/or a terrible person, but he still knows how to do a cop action flick.

14. Predators

Predators is about as good a sequel as anyone could have hoped for. The original is untouchable in my eyes, but the string of cash-ins and spin-offs have left this brilliant sci-fi staple diminished. Predators actually brings new ideas to the table, as well as a great cast, including Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, and Lawrence Fishburne. There are some great action set pieces (Yakuza vs. Predator? Hell yes) and a nice smattering gore. The original is still king, but at least we can finally call this series a franchise without snickering.

13. Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever

It’s a shame rising horror auteur Ti West couldn’t settle on a final edit of Cabin Fever 2 with his producers: The film he turned is a manic dark comedy in the Troma vein, which is a huge departure from West’s more slow ‘n’ cerebral approach on The House of the Devil and Trigger Man. As is, the movie flows nicely from bit to bit as horny teens contract a flesh-eating disease. Having watched both a director’s cut and a final version, I ultimately prefer the DVD edition that the producers chose – it’s grosser and funnier.

12. Shutter Island

…and we’ve got a serious film on the board. Leonardo DiCaprio had a great year with Shutter Island and Inception, which have the same set-up (Guy with a hot dead wife has trouble separating reality from fiction) but are still awesome anyway. Director Martin Scorsese takes an admittedly flimsy plot – you see the ending coming well in advance – and still turns it into a riveting psychological thriller. Anchored by strong performances and direction, Shutter Island was an early knockout.

11. Machete

Robert Rodriguez has had a long, fruitful creative relationship with Danny Trejo, so it’s about time he gave Trejo his own starring vehicle. Machete isn’t quite perfect – I’d get rid of a stunt-casted Lindsay Lohan and maybe tweak Robert De Niro’s part – but it delivers plenty of baddassery courtesy of Trejo as a wronged Mexican ex-cop looking to avenge his family. And hey, I can finally say I like a Jessica Alba movie. And who knew Steven Seagal had a sense of humor?

10. Expendables

Sylvester Stallone’s latest franchise takes the best action stars of the ’80s, ’90s, and today and puts them all in one movie. It’s sort of a belabored, tongue-in-cheek nod to the over-the-top testosterone movies of yesteryear, and just a straight-up throwback. Stallone wrote and directed in addition to starring, and he deserves credit for giving each cast member a shining moment. Jason Statham is the best overall – he beats up a shit-ton of dudes and ends up with Charisma Carpenter – but Expendables shows love to everybody. It’s like one of those little league soccer games where everybody gets a trophy, even the kids who suck so hard. My favorites here are Dolph Lundgren (the funniest) and Mickey Rourke (who takes hammy dialogue and turns it into fuckin’ Shakespeare).

9. Mega Piranha

That’s right, a ScyFy (ne Sci-Fi) Channel Original Movie cracked my top 10. But you have to understand something. Mega Piranha utilizes its televised roots to its advantage, staging its action-y bits early and often in bite-sized portions. It titillates, it rocks, it has a guy bicycle kick piranhas!

8. The Town

Ben Affleck directs and stars in this homoerotic heist movie. His character wants to quit robbing banks, but his unhinged buddy Jeremy Renner (always great) keeps sucking him back into a life of crime. But when Affleck falls for a pretty lady (who he “may” have taken hostage during a job), things come to a head. The Town is solid in all areas – good cast, decent dialogue, and plenty of great scenery. No one scene is particularly amazing, although I do love Affleck’s shooting style. He so clearly favors the actors above all, packing plenty of close-ups in. The highlight: A topless shot of himself doing chin-ups, with some softcore lighting thrown in. The Town has been done plenty of times by Hollywood, but this outing is thoroughly enjoyable.

7. Black Dynamite

Michael Jai White’s love letter to blaxploitation proves that, in addition to being one tough kung-fu master, the guy is really, really good at comedy. Black Dynamite succeeds no matter what happens. Some jokes revolve around how cheap the blaxploitation films look. Other jokes stem from legitimate budgetary cuts and technical snafus. Meanwhile, White dishes out awesome one-liners and snaps necks, all whilst wearing a sweet mustache.

6. Toy Story 3

Pixar continues its streak of beautiful/traumatic kiddy movies. Granted, Toy Story 3 isn’t as emotionally affecting as Wall-E or Up, but its themes of growing up and moving on still hit hard. The characters go from facing irrelevance to death and back, in scenes that forced audiences to respect Pixar as a storyteller for all ages. Plot-wise, it nicely rounds out the series while leaving things open-ended. Overall, it’s yet another artistic triumph for the studio, although Cars 2 will probably ruin the party.

5. True Grit

Jeff Bridges is the hi-lariously ornery cowboy. Matt Damon fails at everything. Hailee Steinfeld is too smart and headstrong for her age, and that applies to her character and her acting. Give that girl more roles. But more importantly, let’s hear it for Ed Corbin as a character I call Dr. Bear. Dr. Bear rides around bragging about his bear skin, even if you didn’t ask. Dr. Bear will sell you a dead body, but he gets to keep the teeth. Dr. Bear should have his own TV show.

The rest of the movie is good too.

4. Inception

What I love about Christopher Nolan is that he takes basic movie concepts and gives them a highly involved, rewarding effort. Memento is a murder mystery. His Batman films are still just superhero movies. But he has a firm grasp of drama and takes traditionally B-movie premises and elevates them to high art. Inception was perhaps Nolan’s most difficult, un-mainstream movie yet. Not since Memento has he expected so much of an audience. Leonardo DiCaprio leads a gang of thieves as they attempt to plant false information in Cillian Murphy’s mind through a process called inception. It’s essentially a bank heist movie with sci-fi trappings, but it’s artfully done and compelling. Inception takes the old cliché “It was all a dream... or was it?” and makes it new again.

3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I was a little hard on Scott Pilgrim when it first came out. It attempts to house seven books of plot within one movie, and it can’t. The best adaptations stand on their own. They don’t necessarily hit every plot point (The Godfather, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), but they recreate the tone of a certain world and make you believe. The worst adaptations butcher the tone and fuck with the facts, or worse, hit the key points but go about it all wrong. Those versions depend on you already loving the source material. Pilgrim is somewhere between the two. I have friends who loved it without having read the books, but I still feel that it works best with prior knowledge. Having read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s wonderful series, I can say that Edgar Wright’s adaptation functions well as a companion piece. It captures the comic’s spirit. It gives some characters the shaft (Kim Pine), but it also fleshes out others (Knives Chau). It has a bitchin’ soundtrack and a great sense of humor. It’s the greatest video game movie since Mortal Kombat, despite not actually being based on a video game.

2. How to Train Your Dragon

DreamWorks Animation is still second-tier to Pixar overall. But thanks to How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda, they’ve finally begun to move away from disposable pop culture riffs into something less cynical and more heartwarming. Furthermore, this is the first year they actually beat Pixar. As much as I love Toy Story 3’s emotional resonance, How to Train Your Dragon is the movie I see myself viewing more often. It’s a thrill ride about Vikings fighting dragons with a message of tolerance thrown in. The voice cast is stellar – check out my man Craig Ferguson – and the animation is pretty darn neat. Between this and last year’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Pixar finally has some real competitors.

1. A Single Man

Oh man, this list gets topped by a “legitimately good” movie that wins on a technicality? Lame sauce. Still, A Single Man, the story of a gay English professor coping with the death of his lover, was my favorite film of the year. First time director Tom Ford utilizes his fashion background to create an impossibly beautiful film. No other movie on this list better uses color to convey mood. You know exactly what Colin Firth’s character is feeling at all times thanks to the work Ford puts in. Of course, Firth is a stellar actor (I still need to catch The King’s Speech), so he fills in where Ford can’t, projecting a performance equal parts melancholy and sexual longing. Brokeback Mountain made a big splash a few years ago for delivering a gay love story, but I found it too over-the-top. A Single Man is the better film, simply because it stays away from politicizing homosexuality and instead focuses on common human feelings like love and longing. That I, a heterosexual jackass, could identify with Firth’s character is much more important than the fact that the character is gay, and in a way is also the more important sociopolitical statement. It’s a movie about love. That the kid from About a Boy, now all kinds of grown up, shows up super tan and super naked, is beside the point.

And hot. My gosh that guy turned out alright.