Nuggets: The Magic Blade

So this movie got us thinking about how similar westerns and kung fu movies really are.  We're sure we're not the first ones to think that... and we're sure we're not the first to refer to a kung fu movie as an "eastern"; but this movie really did follow a similar trajectory.

We can't say a whole lot without ruining some nice little twists.  However, we can talk about how badass the character Fu is.  The movie starts off with him coming after a gent named Yen Nan-fei that he had once dueled with, intent on killing him.  Before their fight can be resolved, Yen is attacked by some pretty awesome assassins.  Fu lets these assassins know that the only man that is going to be killing Yen is Fu himself.  Fu, in fact, goes so far as to journey alongside Yen to kill all the assassins out to get Yen... so that Fu can later kill Yen.  We know.  Fucking awesome.

The fighting isn't the best, but it does have its moments.  It also features some pretty offbeat weapons, which is nice.  Apart from how badass some of these characters are, the best thing in the movie are the names of the assassins; perhaps the best being Devil Grandma.

In other words, just watch it.

Heat

          Heat.  Heat, Heat, Heat, Heat…  Believe it or not, folks, this movie is the reason the Man Movie Guide exists.  This movie is the quintessential example of what we mean by a Man Movie.  If you survey everyone you know that has seen Heat, a vast majority of people will tell you it was a good movie.  However, if you speak to the men that have seen it, they are likely to get a certain twinkle in their eye.  This movie touches a male nerve that most people won’t be able to explain away.  Interpreting the movie through our primer on what constitutes a Man Movie, it becomes somewhat clearer what separates this movie from countless other good heist movies.  This movie features heavy amounts of violence, manly archetypes of various stripes (on both sides of the law), loyalty, betrayal, brotherhood, honor, epic shootouts, and bank heists.

CORRECTION: Heists with cool fucking hockey masks!

          Al Pacino plays a cop who buries his emotions in his work.  His personal life collapses around him as he focuses on doing what he does, and shielding his family from the details.  His single-mindedness is pointed out in dialogue with other people and how he responds to his wife’s accusations.  Perhaps a better gauge, however, is his dialogue throughout the movie.  One of the most bizarre things about this film is that it seems as though Pacino’s Lieutenant Hanna never has a conversation with anyone but himself.  His answers to questions are nearly complete non-sequiturs, his anger is often unprovoked, his eye contact is all over the place.  At times this is unnerving and almost helps the character who seems to border on the autism spectrum, but at others it leaves us with really funny lines like, “You can get killed walking your doggie!”  Just imagine the trademark Pacino yell-y voice saying that.  The only conversation he seems to be engaged in takes place at a coffee shop across the table from his nemesis, Robert De Niro.  Whether this is intentional or not is undetermined, but it does add a gravitas to the scene beyond the mob movie fanboy ejaculation, “They’re finally in the same room together in the same movie!” that was likely a big selling point to the whole shebang.

Sometimes it feels like the only thing separating Pacino from Gary Busey is The Godfather.

          Robert De Niro plays the head of a heist crew.  His character has at least a partial resemblance to James Coburn’s character in The Magnificent Seven.  The money almost seems secondary to both the challenge and the craft to De Niro’s Neal McCauley.  As with many, many heist movies, this one focuses on the concept of ‘one last big score’.  But don’t let that deter you from the film.  If anything, it just helps to amplify the underlying philosophical premise of the movie.  You see, this film is about as fatalistic and deterministic as it gets.  Characters are constantly and repeatedly going against their own decisions, not to mention against good advice or the smart move.  Each character seems as though they’re traveling on rails towards the endgame, and what makes this movie both wonderful and tragic, is that those rails all inevitably collide in a pleasantly unpleasant way.  Thieves have to steal, cops must fight crime, psychopaths are compelled to kill, criminals are unable to leave their life behind, witnesses can’t not testify despite the implications, and relationships live on in the brutal light of infidelity and incompatibility.  Case in point, during the pivotal shared coffee between Hanna and McCauley, the following exchange happens:

                     HANNA

          I don't know how to do anything

          else.

                      NEIL

         (the shared confession)  ...neither do I.

                      HANNA

          And I don't much want to.

                      NEIL

          Neither do I.

          If you have seen this movie, and it’s been a while, you’re likely forgetting what an unbelievably ridiculous cast was involved.  Granted, not everyone was well known at the time, but De Niro’s gang also includes Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Danny Trejo.  Jon Voight is their awesomely disgusting mulleted fence and advisor.  Pacino investigates flanked by Ted “It rubs the lotion on its skin” Levine.   Natalie Portman is Pacino’s stepdaughter Ashley Judd plays Val Kilmer’s wife.  The movie also features Dennis Haysbert, Hank Azaria, Jeremy Piven, Tone Loc, and Henry Rollins.  It can be distracting, but only momentarily.

          The movie, though it belongs on the Man Movie Mount Rushmore, is far from perfect.  The non-orchestral music is particularly bad.  Much of the time the music has a seedy mid-90s aspect not unlike an episode of Red Shoe Diaries, and a scene in a hip, urban underground club features House of Pain (unlikely even in 1995).  The dialog between Waingro and his prostitute sounds like it was written by Michael Mann while he was trying to watch something on TV at the same time.  If you think we’re making a big deal about nothing, she at one point says this to Waingro, “You fly. You cool.”  Nobody says that ever.  Not ever.  She goes on to say, and we quote, “You a hot dog.  You a cowboy.  You hung like a horse and this was the monster fuck of my young life.  Now I gotta get my ass streetside.”  Really, Michael Mann?!  Really?  It also warrants mentioning that the lighting in certain scenes is completely fake to the point that it looks like actors are in front of a green screen for something as mundane as being on a balcony overlooking the city.  We’re not sure who was in charge of this, but lighting is a craft that was honed to a point so as to be innocuous in ordinary scenes in non-expressionist/surrealist films decades before Heat came out.  There are no less than three scenes that throw all conventional lighting knowledge out the window.

Unless Mac Tonight is standing right behind you, this is not how night looks.

          Flaws and all, this movie is an essential.  The first heist holds up just as intense and indispensable as when it first came out nearly 20 years ago.  The acting and the script (with the one noted exception) is phenomenal.  The movie is thrilling and suspenseful and gut-wrenching.  It also manages to accomplish what so few movies do; it humanizes both sides.  Some people grew up wanting to be the good guys, others grew up thinking being a bank robber would be awesome… but it’s safe to say that the movie makes you understand the allure and the grief of both.

Skyfall

          Probably one of the most interesting things about Skyfall is that, in its 23^rd volume (24 if you count the original Casino Royale), the James Bond series has finally succumbed to an overarching theme in action movies (particularly sequels) from the last six or so years.  The protagonist not only has to battle against a mastermind foe and his scores of henchman, but also aging and obsolescence; mirroring the same fear that this kind of movie’s once-core baby boomer demographic is grappling with of late.  The hero is a creaking shell of his former self, held together with gobs of spit and disdain for the establishment.  Gone is the somewhat more youthful tallyho mentality, and in its stead we find a “gotta die sometime…” philosophy.  Couple that with an acute techno-fear, and we begin to see a pattern emerge.  The most egregious example of this is Live Free or Die Hard; but it can also be found to a lesser extent in Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (a work of utter blasphemy), The Dark Knight Rises, The Expendables, and Red to name a few.  The biggest difference between Skyfall taking the plunge and the others is because there were functional reasons for each above and beyond just the plotline.  For some movies, it’s a function of the franchise star himself getting too old to do it and must therefore pass on the mantle in order for the franchise to live on.  In others, it’s because the director and/or star is bowing out of the series, and it allows a more poignant and understandable exit for the whole series as we know it.  And for yet still others, the entire premise surrounds the notion of persons too old or too forgotten to be taken seriously enough.  The thing about James Bond is that the precedent has been set up where a young-ish actor can take over at any point in the series.  It’s possible that Daniel Craig is signed on for ‘x’ number of sequels, but given the history of Connery and Roger Moore, there was no real impetus for explaining away Craig’s craggy and rugged middle-aged appearance.

Murtaugh and Bond: "Too old for this shit"

          And going back to the mention of techno-fear, Skyfall falls prey to a movie cliché as old as personal computers in movies themselves.  The writer (and by extension, the director) view computers and computing language as magic; where symbols, pictures, animation, and other nonsense take the place of actual hacking, programming, and even the foundations of an operating system.  This reviewer isn’t sure if it is that the people creating the movie are tech-retarded, or if they just think the moviegoing public is too daft to take cues from the dialog about what’s happening on a screen.  Frankly, this reviewer finds it demeaning in a way that few other tropes in movies can be.  If you’ve seen Hackers and its Technicolor nightmare depiction of what hacking is and does, you then understand the complete break from reality that happens on computer monitors in Skyfall.

Computers... as seen through the eyes of Hollywood

          One last strange move by this film, and the reviewer should note, SPOILERS are in yon paragraph… this movie makes a lot of unnecessary moves to sew up canon.  A longtime debate amongst Bond movie fans was whether or not each actor portraying James Bond was in fact portraying the same person.  That is to say that there is a theory floating around that the name ‘James Bond’ is a code name just as ‘007’ is… and that Connery, Moore, Craig, etc. are actually playing different men who all happen to be code name ‘James Bond’.  Skyfall diminishes that theory (but doesn’t entirely extinguish it); we know that Daniel Craig’s real name is James Bond.  What we don’t know, technically, is if the other actors assume that mantle or they are playing the same guy.

          But enough of complaints and theory.  Let’s take a look at what actually qualifies Skyfall as a Man Movie.  The fact that this is a James Bond movie automatically confers Honorary Man Movie status.  Some of the Bond movies are pretty horrible.  Some of the pretty horrible Bond movies are pretty damn entertaining; but that doesn’t give all of them an automatic MMG pass.  This one, however, had all the markings of a good action movie on top of the Bond brand and mystique.

Also part of the Bond brand and mystique

          The action sequences in this movie are pretty unrestrained.  The chases have a floaty feel to them that diminish their impact, but the fights and the destruction have a visceral feel to them that more than makes up for everything else.

          Javier Bardem got this reviewer thinking that he should legitimately contend for all the major acting awards as a Bond villain (unprecedented, but warranted).  He managed to encompass everything the character was about:  devious and a slave to obsession, unbalanced and a badass.

          Overall, this title is a very solid movie.  It continues the trend of lacking the hi-tech trappings of previous Bond titles; instead focusing on Bond as an operative more than a novelty-wielding dandy.  Overlooking the play-it-again themes and events of the film, we are presented here with a refined take on the super spy film… directed finally by someone with a gorgeous and artistic eye and sense of pacing.

Not Quite There: The Man With The Iron Fists

Going For It:

• Fairly bloody
• Doesn't take itself too seriously
• Created by a true kung-fu film devotee
• It might convince some people to dig deeper and find a really good kung-fu movie?
• RZA

The Case Against:

• So quick of a pace that most of the movie fails to keep up
• Half of a movie, that should be a trilogy, masquerading as whole
• Not enough cameos
• Not enough true kung-fu film fighting
• RZA

MMG Says:

RZA is a beautiful, beautiful man.  He has legitimately changed the landscape of music from his Wu-Tang days.  We are not going to take anyone seriously who says otherwise.  He was a delight in his Jim Jarmusch acting roles and on Chappelle's Show.  He is also a real, true fan of kung-fu movies, and seems to take from them the best of what there is to take from them. However:

1) He should NOT be an acting lead under any circumstances other than a Bobby Digital road movie or something like that

2) It is questionable whether he should be directing anything (jury's still out for the moment)

3) While it's possible to tell that he's a true fan of kung-fu movies, the fighting has more in common with any 2000s-era generic action film than anything from Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest

So what is left from a kung-fu movie that only allows shadowy glimpses of wire work and fighting styles named after animals and eschews balletic orchestrated bouts of fisticuffs?  Plenty... in fact, way too much.  This movie has some brilliant ideas behind it, and some very colorful characters.  Having a town run by animal-based clans that are constantly warring? Fantastic!  But why not actually show them really having it out against each other?  And why tease us with a fucking bird man if you're only going to show him for 15 seconds?!  The Gemini Killers? Great, old-school idea.  But how about a little hint of backstory?!  Brass Body?  Very cool.  But maybe throw us a fucking bone about how he turns into metal.  Oh, and Lucy Liu's cadre? A nice bit of an admittedly inconsequential twist... except that we have no idea why they are doing the twisting!  Explain shit to us!

Here's the problem: this movie was mangled.  It's unclear if this is a RZA or Eli Roth problem, notes from the studio, or the result of test audiences imposing their ADHD all over the place.  What is clear is that RZA and Roth were unsure they'd every have the opportunity again to take the studio money and run with a martial arts movie... so they crammed it with dozens of great ideas and characters and moments, and sensible Western updates to countless classic kung-fu tropes.  Whether though it found its way to the cutting room floor, or just the pink butt end of a pencil during a rewrite, there is another half of a movie lurking around somewhere.  Everything was just so partially conceived or poorly explained that there is no doubt in our mind that the explanation exists somewhere.  This is not a case of depicting archetypes and scenarios from old school movies and we're just expected to go with it; it is very apparent just from the pacing and certain ineffable qualities that what we are watching is not whole.  Hell, this is likely 3 or 4 movies even... and what we are left with is a tame smile, a couple chuckles, and an empty feeling as to how this movie really could have been and meant something.

-------------------

P.S. We hate to be a broken record.  This site isn't called the Titty Movie Guide or anything.  But how the hell is it that much of the movie takes place in a brothel, and there is an extended scene of multiple couples having sex, and we don't get so much as one single boob or butt cheek?  This movie has numerous spurting decapitations... they couldn't finagle one damn nipple?!

P.P.S. The ad campaign of having multiple hip and unconventional posters was a great idea.  We think this might be one of the best movie posters we've ever seen:

Not Quite There: Hell Comes to Frogtown

Going For It:

• Wrestling legend "Rowdy" Roddy Piper
• Frog people with decent make-up/costumes
• That's about it...

The Case Against:

• Severely uneven tone for the protagonist in the writing
• Severely dull
• Severely disappointing

MMG Says:

While we are a proud people here at the Man Movie Guide, we are not afraid or ashamed to admit when we were wrong.  This is one of those instances.  You will have noticed that some time back we posted, on its lonesome, the trailer for 'Hell Comes to Frogtown'.  In MMG-ese, that is our way of saying that we approve of that movie and that it qualifies as a true Man Movie up for review on down the road.

Let us set the stage for you:  Post apocalyptic.  Starring Roddy Piper, wrestling legend and pitch perfect star of MMG favorite 'They Live'.  The protagonist is named Sam Hell, one of the few times we endorse a cute/clever character name.  Sam is an exceedingly rare fertile man in a world that consists only of the following: fertile women, desert wasteland, fertile women, mutant frog people, and fertile women.  Sam is contracted by the government to begin repopulating civilization.  This, dear reader, is a can't-fucking-lose proposition... right?  Not so.  Not so.

The movie starts off nicely enough.  Piper is detained for a crime before the movie begins.  In the initial few scenes he is a wisecracking jokester; and while not every line hits its mark, it is a very good indication that we are getting our hands on the one-liner wisenheimer brand of action hero in this movie.  Only this never really happens.  The viewer must slog through an entire movie as bare and bereft of life as its arid backdrop. The action is few and far between, fairly somnambulent, and Piper doesn't do quite the ass-kicking job that we'd come to expect from either the ring or 'They Live'.  Piper's character even loses his charm pretty quickly; as his 'sit-on-it-and-spin' attitude largely falls prey to a messianic mope routine with occasional bouts of slapstick (centering around his genitals in an electric chastity belt and his ability to cross his eyes... which is oddly not related to his balls' predicament).

As for the supporting cast, it's a mixed bag.  We get a super butch/fairly attractive commando who shows off her tits while escorting Piper.  And if you have a thing for Katey Sagal, then perhaps you can make a case for watching the movie, since there are extended scenes of her bordering-on-malnourished doppelganger prancing around in assorted lingerie.  Then we have poor Rory Calhoun, who genuinely looked and sounded like his handlers had to unhook his oxygen tank between takes (he seemed so close to death that we actually had to check on the proximity of this movie to his actual demise... and astonishingly he held on for another 11 years, and worked another 5).  Lastly, there are the frogs.  There isn't a whole lot to say about them, except that looking at them was one of the scant pleasures this reviewer got from the movie.

This movie, like so many others that fall short, failed to achieve true Man Movie status because it tried to walk in both the light and the dark.  If it resorted to Lloyd Kaufman (Troma) antics?  We have ourselves a winner.  If it went the route of all the killer action movies of the 80s, the Golden Age of the one-liner action film, and focused more on making Piper an ass-kicker who always says something droll after offing a frog? We'd worship it as a direct-to-video masterpiece.  Instead we're left with a movie that gets a passing grade only because we're proud they tried.

Conan the Barbarian

Note: Conan the Barbarian is the most recent film to take on the classic Robert E. Howard character popularized in film by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  However, this reviewer will not do any comparison work to the older iterations of the films, the serial novels, or any of the numerous comic book versions.  This movie will be reviewed on its own merits.

          Conan the Barbarian does a number of things very well straight out of the gates to let the viewer know that they are in store for a Man Movie.  The movie starts with a small narration from a surprise gravitas-imbued actor.  We then see Conan born, cut by a sword out of his mother’s womb on the battlefield… because she is badass, his father is badass (the ever-present  and awesome Ron Perlman), and we need a reason to know Conan is badass even as an infant.  The next scene goes on to show a child Conan out-badassing basically everyone ever ever.  Point of the story is: Conan is a badass.  That is all.

          In fact, in an odd decision, the first 30 minutes of the movie are Conan as a child.  The actor playing young Conan doesn’t really have much of a handle on how to be a badass (how many kids really do?) so he plays the character with the same low-slung scowl as the kid down the street who tortures squirrels.  While we were all rightfully fearful of our own primary school psychos, it’s pretty safe to say that none of them grew up to wield a hot topless woman in one hand and a gigantic sword in another… while carrying a full tankard of ale hanging from their mammoth cock.

Little Conan has been making blowtorches from aerosol can in the woods again...

          That said, the obviously well-Man Movie-informed writers and director pulled a couple more textbook maneuvers to help set the tone of the movie.  Firstly, they showed that they weren’t afraid to show some blood and gore.  When someone gets nailed by a sword or arrow, there are spurts… not fountains on the level of a 70s Japanese samurai film, but good enough.  There is also a fantastic mini-motif of nose mutilation, and an instance of someone head-butted with a severed head (we know, that’s awesome).  The filmmakers also introduce us to the antagonist’s minions very early on in one of the classic roll call styles, wherein each has a featured fight sequence during one of the first battles.  This ably sets up multiple villains with personality, that the viewer has an emotional stake in seeing fight and die.

          The titular barbarian is respectably played by Jason Momoa, or as he’s better known, the guy on Game of Thrones who keeps talking about a horse fucking things*.  Respectably only because Momoa never really pans out as a leading man; he is far too brooding and understated for his star to burn bright enough.  But the rest of the movie is strong enough to carry him through.  The movie succeeds in having multiple well-done fights, including two good monster scenes, despite one of them being an almost seemingly-requisite octopus creature.  It also has a fantastic trick riding horse-chase scene where even the extras are rad and doing stuff like jumping 180 degrees around on their saddle in order to shoot people with arrows.

Fantasy movies need octopus fights like 80s beat-em-up games need an elevator level.

          But there are letdowns and disappointments in the movie as well.  There is a strong promise of continued nudity towards the beginning of the film, where it seems as though every young and attractive actress will be performing sans-blouse.  But that doesn’t hold and we’re only treated to a pair again just prior to the start of the third act.  Along those same lines, one of the two main bad guys is Rose McGowan as a witch.  Her character likely would have been best served as a sort of evil sexpot, but she is instead in heavy makeup and a baldcap with no eyebrows in order to make her look foreign and sinister (and if that weren’t enough boner repellant, there is a creepy implied incest scene thrown in as well).  And there is an uncalled-for tonal shift for an oddly tender love scene that comes off as lip service to whatever wives and girlfriends were dragged to the movie; it plays like a Playgirl/Red Shoe Diaries moment and allows the audience a glimpse of Momoa’s chiseled posterior.

Dear Rose, Thank you for giving our penis nightmares.

          All told, however, this movie was a fantastic surprise.  It shows heavy evidence of studio suit tampering, and was a pretty significant box office flop.  But this movie has strong writing and direction, combined with a cast mostly able to handle the material… not to mention a time-tested character who largely stays true to his roots.  Conan says at one point, “I live, I love, I slay… and I am content.”  So are we, big guy, so are we…

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* There are actually a couple Conan alums in Game of Thrones.  It is sometimes a bit distracting.

Not Quite There: Drive Angry

Going For It:

• A movie about someone who escapes from hell in a muscle car to shoot the shit out of people
• Female lead, Amber Heard, is literally just a walking Maxim spread, replete with witty banter and cut-off jean shorts
• Features the music of T-Rex, Unkle, and Peaches
• Muscle cars
• Car chases
• Violent bloody deaths
• Satanists
• One-liners
• Shot for 3D for maximum in-your-face Xtreme-ness©
• Tits

The Case Against:

• We at MMG are Nicolas Cage apologists, but even that has its limits...
• No movie hero, especially an anti-hero, should be called Milton through the whole movie (we don't care if it is a last name!)
• Did we mention that the movie hero, who escapes hell, is named John Milton?!  Yeah, real subtle...
• The music is jarring and distracting, often with little-to-no place in the scene it's played
• 3D Xtreme-ness© isn't pulled off very well
• Terribly written
• The tits belong to a busted ex-stripper type

MMG Says...

So many people are quick to rip on Nic Cage.  We here at MMG will eventually convince you otherwise; he was brilliant in Adaptation, and far more than capable in MMG-favorites The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. This movie, however, will not convert you to the Church of Cage (which, coincidentally, is on one of his private islands).  He is dreadful in this movie: mostly he drawls sleepily through his lines as if he were just shoved onto the set from his trailer while still in the middle of a Quaalude haze.  His delivery lives on another planet from the other actors, the script itself, and even the scenarios he is put in.  Other times his actions are stilted, jerky, and sudden with no pacing whatsoever, such as when he creepily mouth-rapes a once-raring-to-go diner waitress.  It's difficult to tell if he picked this role and this movie and this acting style for any reason other than to further his own legend as an eccentric with no real place on film.  Mission accomplished, Mister Cage. Mission accomplished.

The movie itself is written a pair of fellers (one of whom doubles as director) who knew they wanted to make a Man Movie.  Unfortunately for us, the viewers, their resume features a lot of dreck with the same failings.  Their heart seems to be consistently in the right place, and we as lovers of all things Man Movie laud  any return to grindhouse, exploitation, and cheeseball horror... the problem is that they are just not very talented.

And so we find ourselves with a movie full of ripe premises and promising situations, that falls completely flat.  This could have been the movie that every father would show to their sons on their 13th birthday.  Instead, this is just another 90+ minutes relegated for an eternity of dollar bins at Wal-Mart and liquidations at video stores everywhere.

One last plea to the writers, Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier.  Guys, we get it.  You like Stephen King and Sam Raimi.  You think you're clever for being able to work in a wink and nod to an epic poem about the devil and the fall of man.  But do us a fucking favor and don't name your characters King, Raimi, and Milton.  It's pretty sophomoric, and that's saying something... considering what your movie is about.

Not Quite There: Dredd 3D

Going For It:

• Not the Sylvester Stallone/Rob Schneider vehicle
• Good balance between one-liners and violence
• Decent writing
• Couple 'splosions
• 3D because it was actually originally intended for 3D; not some crappy post-conversion
• Managed to explain away the gorgeous slow-motion sequences by way of a street drug called "Slo Mo"

The Case Against:

• For being a violent, jokey romp of a movie... really rather joyless
• The bad guy was nearly completely generic and bland
• Despite over-the-top source material and an R-rating, it did not get ultraviolent enough
• Suffering for lack of nudity (see R-rating comment above)

MMG Says...

Dredd 3D is based, like the Stallone disaster, on a British comic about a cop in a dystopian future America in which overcrowding forces the police to act as judge, jury, and executioner with no real due process.  This  backdrop, combined with an R-rating, really should have meant consistent over-the-top violence in glorious 3D.

The biggest problem with this movie was that it suffered from something of an identity crisis.  It was almost as if it were purposefully toned down to try to get a PG-13 and appeal to more people.  There were moments where, in slow-motion, body parts rippled and exploded from bullet wounds and droplets of blood flew through the third dimension straight into the audience's popcorn-burdened laps.  And then there were the wasted opportunities; the moments where limbs would explode but wouldn't really be shown off, or the moments where sex was shown in the most abstract and oblique ways with nary a nipple or buttock.  

The movie really had only one option: fully embrace, even bear hug, the source material and the camp factor.  They should have reveled in the notion that they didn't have to do a whole lot of explaining: future cop, has to shoot stuff for his job, too many people, life worth less...we get it!  To have performed its shootout through the mega-slums with the same sort of zest or zeal of a Machete or a Planet Terror, it would have punched its own golden ticket into the hearts of countless viewers (of course it would have put off just as many people... but better to be loved and loathed than completely forgotten).  Instead, the movie was nearly as muted, dingy, and tepid as its color palette.

Another big waste was with the setting.  The idea, and this really isn't a spoiler, is that Dredd has to fight his way up the levels of a mega-slum the size of Wilmington (yes, really).  In setting things up, the movie shows off a handful of colorful gangs (this reviewer guesses they are from the comic) that controlled the different sections of the building (the slum is all one massive building).  Apart from a montage, however, they don't show off the other gangs.  This could have been a vertical The Warriors... but no.  The reason for this, is that they don't exist anymore... they were all wiped out by the Mama Gang.

Yes, the bad guys are the Mama Gang.  Yes, the leader of the gang is named Mama.  Yes, the word Mama sounds so juvenile that this reviewer cringed every time he heard it uttered.  No, Mama was not cool.  You would think with a name like that, she would either be some absurdly obese woman barking orders while spitting up chunks of fried chicken, or at least an actress in heavy prosthesis to make her look ancient.  Instead what we get is Lena Headey, nonchalantly limping through scene after scene.  She is supposed to be maniacal and bad-ass, but the delivery was flaccid and she didn't have a catch phrase or M.O. for hurting people that set her apart from anything whatsoever.  There were several extras with more pop that were more memorable than the main villain; that's never a good sign.

That all being said, the movie is not by any stretch of the imagination a bad movie.  It was entertaining, if a tad too long.  It was fun, and not entirely forgettable.  There are some very good sequences and visuals that you will not see in any other movie.  Karl Urban, the titular Dredd, pulls off a very admirable performance that had to be done through a silly-looking helmet while still looking and acting tough.  This reviewer enjoyed the movie.  It was pretty good, it was just not quite there...

Black Caesar

              “Did you know a man’s beard keeps on growin’ even after he’s… dead?” quips Tommy Gibbs before he plugs his first man (in a barbershop, so you understand  why he says it) on his path into, up through, and up against the mafia in order to reign supreme.

Montages like this should be required of all mob movies.

               In an era where all you had to do was add the adjective “Black” to the front of any single word in order to create a movie, Black Caesar still oozes style and grit even these nearly 40 years later.  Former all-pro defensive back-turned-actor Fred “The Hammer” Williamson plays an ambitious kid from the streets of New York; looking to elevate his and his family’s status above the white people they used to work for/be abused by.

What better way to stick it to the man than to pull a Blanket Jackson with fur coats?

                This movie is not for the squeamish in terms of racial issues.  There’s hardly a line in the whole script that doesn’t couch one epithet or another.  If you can look past that, you have a very potent combination of machismo that carries out throughout the whole film in a way that will put a smile on your face: the early/mid 70s urban soul influence and the quintessential mobster archetype.

We would pay these guys to make us pay them for protection.

  

              Williamson spends a good deal of the movie chomping on a cigar, strutting down the streets in a sharp suit and mean sideburns.  His patronizing air and put-on Italian mob accent when dealing with the Cardoza Family is pretty hilarious.  The only time his character really goes off the rails as a tough-as-nails antihero masculine role model is when he doesn’t let no mean no with his own fiancée.  Not coincidentally, this is when things begin to spiral out of control for the character of Gibbs.  It is his hubris that leads to an epic and bloody downfall, just like the makings of any classic Greek tragedy.

There must be an aftershave or deodorant commercial in here somewhere...

                You can’t talk about this movie without talking about its music.  The soundtrack is scored nearly completely by one Mr. The Godfather of Soul, James Brown.  His impassioned singing (screaming) and his quintessentially tight band elevate nearly every scene of the movie in a way that makes the Man Movie Guide wish their life were accompanied by a soul band too.  Brown’s masterpiece does falter, however, during the only car chase in the movie… which is itself pretty silly and poorly constructed.

Not silly: Stylish men with afros gunning you down from a rooftop

                But we didn’t come here for the car chases, did we?  Or the bright orange-ish blood and bizarre gunshots (like the very top of someone’s hair), or even the bizarre inclusion of a Prussian World War I pistol (check it out: http://bit.ly/TOLeGo), for that matter.  We came here for the style, and we came here for the soul.  And that’s just what we got…

Predator

      When we were polling folks for Man Movies that absolutely had to be reviewed, one of the movies that kept coming up again and again was Predator. It seems to occupy a similar hallowed ground for nearly everyone we spoke to. So when it came time to review it (yes, we'd all seen it before), it came as quite a shock to this reviewer. You see, dear reader, you probably haven't seen it in quite a while (beginning to end). It is not as good as you remember it. Don't mistake that inflammatory statement for dislike. The movie is good, and very deserving of a review on the Man Movie Guide. It is just a very flawed film that is airbrushed into classic status by nostalgia and a distance from actually having seen it.
      Predator is a roll call movie that is partially derailed by the sheer star power of a mid-80s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold plays "Dutch" (likely a way of haphazardly writing off the fact that a US Military officer sports an accent more Colonel Klink than Sanders). His team of special ops falls flat due to a lack of screen time for each of them, but most of them get at least one chance to shine and show off their machismo before being offed as fodder. Sonny Landham plays stoic Native American tracker "Billy", who is so hardcore that he mutilates himself before standing up to the titular alien hunter. Jesse Ventura (yes, that makes two future governors in the movie) isn't a very good character, but he does have one of cinema's all-time coolest guns in the movie: a mini-gun with an overhand joystick-esque trigger fed by a metal backpack full of bullets. And Apollo Creed himself, Carl Weathers, plays a one-time operative turned pencil pusher who gets it in the coolest/funniest scene in the movie [Note: This movie is about an alien hunter that picks off people one by one. Not many people survive. That doesn't count as a spoiler so get over it.]
     So the pacing of the movie is off due to bad editing. So the music by Alan Silvestri sounds as if it was written for an entirely different movie. So the continuity of much of the action is uneven and subject to interpretation. Predator will not soon be mistaken for high art. But let's talk about what it does have going for it. This is vintage Arnold, where he is kick ass and spitting one-liners like only he can. It is a 7 foot alien with dreadlocks blowing the shit out of people with lasers in a jungle and taking pieces of them as trophies. It is explosions and machine guns and a dense and verdant jungle belonging to some anonymous South American country. It is a popcorn movie at heart, and will never allow you to treat it as anything else. The movie is damn fun; and that's probably why you remember it more for what it is than what it isn't.

Duel to the Death

     1983's Duel to the Death is among the best there is in the martial arts genre. It isn't a meditation on the beauty of the Orient like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... but it is highly stylized and surreal, juxtaposing portrait-worthy scenes of imminent death and disfigurement in exotic locales, and bizarre visuals like dozens of people hanging by their outstretched arms in a pitch black void. It isn't a crafty and clever ballet along the lines of a Yuen Woo-Ping epic (Once Upon a Time in China, Iron Monkey, etc.)... but the action is nuanced and guided, letting you discern every intention and thought of the person fighting.

     The plot focuses on a Chinese swordsman from Shaolin and a Japanese swordsman, both selected as representatives to duel one another (yes...to the death!) in a once-per-decade national pissing contest. It would seem that with true mastery over fighting techniques comes virtue, as these two are far and away the most principled characters in the cast. You will find yourself still rooting for the Japanese fighter (you'll root for both the whole time, by the way) even after he does one of the most dickish things you could ever conceive of.

     As the Japanese fighter makes his way to mainland China, treachery and sabotage and awful people doing despicable things in the name of national pride is the name of the game. We learn several things during this journey:

1. The Chinese fucking hate the Japanese (true of the characters, true of the filmmakers)
2. If you're a martial arts master, flying ain't no thang. The laws of the universe bend to the will of kung fu fighters (the wire-work is abysmal, but not without its charm)
3. Ninjas are super-wizard exploding robot people who can do whatever the hell they want (church!)

     The only real letdown in the movie is an absurd change-of-pace scene when the Chinese swordsman leaves Shaolin to visit his master before the duel. The master is an obnoxious hodgepodge of the worst martial art movie stereotypes... a clown prince/beggar type who scampers up trees with reckless abandon. He flips and flies around and none of it makes a lick of sense. And to make matters worse, there's a talking cockatoo for a double (shitty) dose of comic relief in a wholly unnecessary segment.

     By the end of the movie, though, you'll have seen a talking decapitated head, a gigantic ninja made of several other ninjas, someone flying butt-first through a wall while sitting Indian Style, and an ancient ninja technique that's never explained but consists of boobies. There will be a plot twist that even the most jaded movie-goer won't guess. And then there's the Duel to the Death itself, a fight so awesome that despite its rather short length, it really and truly deserves a whole movie named after it. If only every propaganda piece could be so entertaining...

The Omega Man

     The Omega Man is the kind of movie that really has to be seen to be believed. Good 'ole Chuck Heston, stars as a survivor of what one can only conclude is an apocalypse brought about by the Chinese fighting the Russians that resulted in both nuclear and germ warfare fallout (causing people to choke suddenly and look hilarious dead with their eyes and mouths open). This movie bleeds “attempted return to relevancy” on Heston's part; and it really warrants mention here. Here is Heston, who we can only assume has already been outed as a conservative, nearing 50 and in the middle of the hippie boom. So what does he do? He dresses up in ruffles and crushed velvet in his wood-paneled bachelor pad and makes googly eyes at a 'woman of color' with an afro in a terribly awkward fashion, as if to say, “Hey! I'm still with it! Isn't that what you kids say? With it?”

     Probably one of the best things about this movie is it's almost as if the director, too, were reaching out to the youth. When the albino cult of hooded, anti-technology mutants make mischief (these are the villains, by the way), it is set to a Herb Alpert-esque silly jazz number instead of anything remotely tension-inducing. The whole movie reads that way; what could be terrifying and suspenseful in the right hands simply winds up camp in the director's hands. Now, make no mistake...this isn't necessarily a bad thing. A movie full of cornball diatribes, irrational car crashes, and illogical sped-up-camera instances makes for a wildly enjoyable hour and a half.

Much of the movie has Heston talking to himself and working hard to convince the audience that three years of scavenging through a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles by day isn't the best thing for one's sanity. We get to see him drive like a complete idiot, despite the fact that there are no other cars to worry about. We get to see him machine gun anything that he thinks moves without so much as hesitating. We get to see him shop for track suits in the track suit store.

     There are some pretty good fight scenes between Heston and the mutants. And considering the fact that there is only one woman in the whole movie, there's a surprising amount of breast screen time. But what really elevates this movie to something worth watching is just how little of it makes sense; especially the whole Christ/messiah imagery and symbolism.

     One final note: if this movie sounds familiar, that's because it is one of three adaptations of the story “I Am Legend”. While not really Man Movies, both The Last Man On Earth and I Am Legend (yes, the Will Smith movie) are worth a rental.

The Big Lebowski

     What do you get when you craft a noir around a slacker ex-hippie, porn, a gang of German nihilists, bowling, and a Busby Berkeley-esque musical number? Try a pantheon Man Movie that belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of Man Movies, if there were such a thing (and you know there really ought to be).

     Jeff Bridges is powerfully believable as Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski; a burnout of epic proportions who spends his days listening to classic rock, smoking weed, drinking white Russians, and bowling. He becomes ensnared in a world of intrigue, crime, and emotionless sex due to a case of mistaken identity (he happens to share the same name as a handicapped altruist) and a befouled rug. His constant fuck-ups, and they are constant, lead him further down the rabbit hole as he decides to do some sleuthing along with his bowling buddy and semi-crazed Vietnam vet, Walter, as played by a born-for-this-role John Goodman.

     The plot gets convoluted very quickly, and involves twists and turns as only the Coen Brothers can bring on. The ensemble cast is highlighted by Sam Elliott (you might recognize that mustache and voice from any number of westerns) as an omniscient cowboy, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers as one of the aforementioned nihilists, Julianne Moore as a painter with unusual (and nude) methods, and John Turturro as a comically over-the-top pedophile.

     Not to get too religious or anything, but if God were asked to make a movie, it might well be this one. The best part of that statement is that this might be underselling the movie a bit.

Army of Darkness

     There is no way that a movie featuring shotguns, chainsaws, knights in armor, and muscle cars could be left off this list. Army of Darkness is a movie that just never lets go. Starting with a concise and entertaining recap of what led wise-ass protagonist Ash to his current predicament as a slave bound for a gruesome death in the medieval times, the movie blends H.G. Lewis gore, Harryhausen-esque skeleton fight scenes, 3 Stooges slapstick, and a liberal dose of one-liners into one of the most beloved midnight movies around.

     Army of Darkness turns the traditional messianic tale on its head by handing over the responsibility to a suaver-than-thou meathead amputee in Ash. Handled hammily and ably by Bruce Campbell, Ash is the absolute centerpiece of this movie; and it is easy to get the feeling that something as simple as picking up dry cleaning would be entertaining and adventurous in Ash's hands (or hand, waka waka).

     Finding himself transported by the same deviltry that haunted his cabin, Ash becomes the purported “Chosen One”, tasked with retrieving the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis from its cemetery home. Bungling the whole ordeal as only Ash is capable, all hell breaks loose when the titular army rises from the grave to steal the book back.

     Fueled by Sam Raimi's emphatic, Looney Tunes-informed directing style, the over-the-top action scenes underscore lessons of finishing what you started and finding friends in the face of danger. Ash, almost by accident, becomes a machismo role model in his ability to spit quips while kicking ass and sweet-talking any girl that happens by. Look to the blacksmith for a highly underrated performance as exactly the kind of bad-ass we would love on our side in a fight.

The Magnificent Seven

     Suppose you were in charge of the world, and you wanted the next crop of youngsters to be the spiritual successors to “The Greatest Generation”, here is what you would do: When kids are in health class, and they separate the boys and girls so that girls can learn about their periods and boys learn about boners...show the boys The Magnificent Seven instead and afterward, just say, “Pick one.”

     It seems as though the Western is rife with nothing, if not archetypes that embody the Teddy Roosevelt, “Speak softly and carry a big stick...” quote. The king of all these is The Magnificent Seven, and that is no accident... as it was smartly remade from the feudal Japan masterpiece, Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. The personalities, quirks, and Achilles' heels of the titular Seven transcend language, era, and preferred method of fucking shit up (guns, swords, etc.).

     There is so much manliness crammed into this movie that lesser folk have been known to curl up into a fetal ball, cowering from the overpowering radiance of masculinity coming from these cowboys. Actually, that's not true. But if it were true of any movie, it would be this one.

     Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen are introduced to us first, and, just describing their initial scene will put hair on your chest. It seems as though a transient Native American met with an untimely demise and, due to the racism of the locals, they are threatening death upon anybody looking to bury him in Boot Hill. Yul Brynner says, essentially, “fuck that noise”. He borrows a shovel and the hearse and heads towards the cemetery, despite having no attachment to the injun. McQueen sees this and his reaction is to take someone's shotgun and jump onto the hearse to shoot anyone who gets in the way of the coolest damn funeral of all-time.

     Brynner and McQueen are contracted by a Mexican village to defend against a despotic bandit and his bandit army. Against dozens of men, the plan is to raise an army of six. The thinking is that the testicular fortitude of these six will substitute for the other fifty-plus men realistically needed to even the odds.

So, joining this crew is a knife-toting James Coburn. And get this, he signs on, not because the money is even close to decent (because it's not), but because all he cares about is proving that he's the best... at killing people. Charles Bronson is conscripted because he essentially has nothing better to do with his time. And then you have Harry, played by Brad Dexter (yeah, I haven't heard of him, either)... who is convinced that there is some sort of con to be had on the other side of killing nearly a hundred ruthless Mexicans. Robert Vaughn's character is a little on the precious side, but that almost makes him more cool. For instance, he doesn't take off his dandy gloves, even when smoking fools. And then there's the impetuous seventh, played by one Horst Buchholz, who is out to impress the rest of the cowboys. While the eager puppy routine is a bit grating, it does lead to some of the most heroic/awesome antics in the movie.

     When you take the time to tally up all the key ingredients of the movie, there's no mistaking it for anything other than Man Movie Royalty...the kind of movie that 50 years of celluloid testosterone is built on the hairy and ripped back of. Watch this movie and try not to smile or clench your fist in an appreciation of its awesomeness, I dare you.

Death Race 2000

     If movies like Rollerball, Logan's Run, and Soylent Green have taught us anything, it's that the future looks an awful lot like the 1970s. And, moreover, that things are going to be awfully violent. 

      The good news is this world of undying 70s aesthetic also comes equipped with coolest damn cars ever; from Calamity Jane's roadster sporting horns and a bull-ring, to Machine Gun Joe Viterbo's convertible, replete with tommy gun headlights and cartoonishly oversized hunting knife hood ornament. The bad news is that these badass cars are gunning for you (no pun intended). The national sport is never explained down to its finest detail, but it consists of some combination of driving from the East Coast to the West Coast in a race, and running over as many people as possible for points; babies and old people are worth the most, by the way. How Americans went from baseball to vehicular manslaughter is presented in a very ham-fisted set of social commentaries about our fascination with violence. The preachiness, however, is short and completely overshadowed by sped-up film segments of the cars and the luckless schmoes that unwittingly find themselves on the road during this national event... and the even more luckless shmucks that dare the harbingers of four-wheeled death (spoiler: if you tease a 200mph dragon car, you will not live to tell your grandchildren about it).

     Sylvester Stallone turns in an early gem as the raging asshole Machine Gun Joe. All four female participants get topless. There's a solid amount of blood spilled and explosions. There are hilariously memorable segments and lines without it being a one-liner fest. And, in this writer's humble opinion, there is a good example of how we can make our nation's flag look even more awesome. Oh, and the main character's name is Frankenstein, and is played by David Carradine! It's all enough to make you wish there really was a World Crash of 1979.