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.

GIFs: Death Race 2000

Tonight we look back on a truly bizarre and amazing movie, and our first review: Death Race 2000!

Manly as fuck...

All intros should look like this...

Bye Bye, baby...Hello seventy points...

NOW don't you want to see it?

Raiders of the Lost Ark Trailer

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…

The Blues Brothers Trailer

The Blues Brothers

by Phil     

     About halfway into The Blues Brothers, long after the movie's first iconic chase scene in which the unflinching titular brothers lead a few cop cars on a blissfully destructive romp through a suburban mall (during open hours, of course), we are treated to a thunderous and nasty street performance of "Boom, Boom" by John Lee Hooker. Sure, we've heard that song in about a dozen cheesy car commercials by now, but here, through the film's grainy, coked-out, late 1970s lens, it's gritty as hell. Hooker growls his lines as his backing band stutters and stops at a feverish pace, while dozens of passersby and street merchants haggle over their dirty ass wares. Shot on location (as was much of the film) at Chicago's famed Maxwell Street Market, this particular sequence makes it feel more like a documentary than an action comedy. So by the time the Brothers -- who at this point have been party to the destruction of not only a mall but also a flophouse and a Nazi rally -- roll up the street to stir up some shit, it becomes quite clear just how big and authentic this movie's balls are: very.

     It certainly takes balls that big to package all of this movie's silly shit into a grand, unified statement; and they manage to pull it off. Pissing off local authorities, bigots, blue-bloods, and rednecks, the Brothers -- fiercely loyal only to each other, to their band, and to their God-given mission -- deadpan their way through the film; leaving a massive path of destruction in their wake, and breaking a few hearts along the way. All throughout, we see countless examples of the abject poverty in which our Brothers seem to thrive: their seedy flophouse where they cook toast on an electric radiator, the highfalutin fancy-pants restaurant where they clearly do not belong, the musical instruments that are loaned to them by a man who seems resigned to the fact that he'll never get paid. These characters are downtrodden, plain and simple, and are pursued relentlessly by law enforcement seemingly the world over. But you never once feel sorry for them. You identify with them and root for them. Why? Because fuck the police, that's why. Somehow, director John Landis and writer Dan Aykroyd managed to craft a perfect anti-authoritarian statement out of what is ostensibly an old Keystone Cops silly chase, peppered liberally with some late-night comedy, and a few of the finest musical performances ever intended for cinema.

     Now to that last point, I mean, I'll admit: there probably aren't many films on this list that have several extended and fully choreographed musical numbers. But this movie knows what the hell it's doing with them. For example, in an early sequence, when Belushi's character has a crisis of faith and is in need of a raucous gospel sermon to quite literally show him the light, who better than the Hon. Reverend Drugged-out Sex-fiend James Brown to deliver the goods? And then there's Arethra Franklin's number in which the Motown diva -- whose signature song has her demanding respect -- soulfully but unsuccessfully warns her man not to leave her sorry ass to join the Brothers' band. And let's not forget about Cab Calloway's hoary rendition of "Minnie the Moocher." So OK, the film may be filled with musical numbers, but it's the freakin' BLUES we're talking about; it's gritty and everyone feels bad. And somehow it's hilarious.

     And still, if that's not enough for you, just wait for the last ten or fifteen minutes of this thing. You'll see dozens upon dozens of cop cars crashing into each other with reckless, reckless, reckless abandon. And remember: because it was made well before computers ruined action movies, they really did have to crash all those fucking cars. They had to. That final chase sequence is still, to this day, one of the most dangerous-feeling moments in film history. Enjoy it.

Point Break Trailer

Point Break

by Danny

     Set in Southern California in the early 1990's, Point Break follows the story of Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), a rookie FBI agent fresh out of Quantico, assigned to investigate a series of bank robberies. Suspecting the masked perpetrators (known as the Dead Presidents) to be a tight-knit group of surfers, Utah goes undercover, learns to ride waves, and immerses himself in the local surf culture in an attempt to ferret out the Presidents and bring them to justice.
     Reeves' Utah stumbles through the film armed with a badge, a pistol, and an arsenal of semi-hoarse, monotone one-liners. Keep in mind that this was between Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey and The Matrix, so chalk up the one-dimensional portrayal to Keanu still cutting his teeth as a serious actor. Patrick Swayze fills what is arguably the movie's most memorable role as Bodhi, the soulful adrenaline junkie. Other notable performances include Gary Busey as Angelo Pappas, the reluctant veteran FBI agent assigned to babysit Utah, and Lori Petty as Tyler, Johnny's free-spirited foil/love interest. John McGinley also shines as Ben Harp, the straight-edge head of the FBI's Robbery Division.
     A modern cult classic, Point Break is a movie that most people either love or hate. Belonging to the former camp myself, I can't really fault the haters. The dialogue generally falls flat and is, at times, laughable. In the pantheon of American cinema, Point Break doesn't bring much to the table. But somewhere under the caricatures and the silliness beats the heart of an honest, gritty cop movie. All the elements are there, including the ubiquitous car chase, which still looks good after 20 years. This is followed by an even better foot chase, which (not to be outdone) is punctuated by the use of a pit bull as a projectile weapon. To top it off, you've got loads of excellent surfing, fighting, and partying. Who knew working for the FBI in the 90's was this radical? Between Fox Mulder and Johnny Utah, why boys of the day would choose any other career path is a mystery to me. But I digress.
     Point Break is more than a cop movie. It's a movie about living life on the edge, and perhaps more importantly, it's about making the right choices; even if it's the hardest damned thing to do. When he takes on the Dead Presidents, Johnny paddles out into waves that are way over his head; when it turns ugly, he rides it all the way in. Like a man.

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.