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.

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…

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

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.

Tango & Cash

by TheDavidMo

At first blush, Tango & Cash seems just like another paint-by-numbers buddy cop movie from the 80s.  More than that, it almost seems as though the makers of the movie were adhering to some sort of guy movie checklist  when coming up with it: gratuitous tits shot?  Check.  Pointless series of explosions?  Check.  After-punch quips aplenty?  Check.  So what does this movie offer that others of the same genre don't?


The answer is-- aside from Sylvester Stallone's ridiculous wearing of smart-guy glasses-- not much.  But this is just it: within T&C's rigid formula is a kind of purity that sets us free-- inviting us to have some beers, relax with some friends and hurl insults and wise cracks at the alternatively absurd, illegal, implausible, gay, and downright suicidal antics of Stallone's Tango and Kurt Russell's Cash.  Many a conversation will there be about "what would really happen" if a human being tried to do the things that Tango and Cash attempt throughout the course of the movie; from sliding down a high-tension power line with a belt to being lowered into a drum of electrified water (the dangers of electricity is, inexplicably, a recurrent theme).  And it is guaranteed that the room will puzzle over the various plot holes and absurdities encountered along the way... such as why the LAPD has a lavishly funded research and development arm whose only purpose seems to be the attaching of guns to things, or why Teri Hatcher drums during her stripper act, or why the newspapers in LA seem to have some kind of ranking system in place for cops (as in, Tango is the number one cop in LA, and Cash-- whose bust is featured below the fold-- is the number two cop).
Most of the actual elements are incidental: the by-the-book cop wears glasses, the loose cannon wears Hawaiian shirts.  The bad guy is Jack Palance, and the whole story revolves around a frame-up or a drug cartel or something.  And that's all you need to know, really.  The rest is taken care of by the steady drumbeat of one-liners supplied by Tango, Cash-- and you and your buddies.

Cliffhanger

by Christopher D'Anna

      Snow-covered mountains. Clear blue skies. Automatic fire. Heroic climbers. Sadistic villains. A mid-air heist. A human bobsled. Swinging. Running. Jumping. Climbing. Falling.... Hang on!

     “Cliffhanger” is a shameless entry into the “Die Hard on a blank” Hollywood oeuvre, but is so spectacular and enjoyable that it earns a seat on action movie Mt Olympus next to the original “Die Hard” and not beneath it. (“Speed” has a throne too.) Sylvester Stallone plays Gabe, a rescue climber with a tragic past who happens to be in the wrong place at the... (say it with me) wrong time. An accented John Lithgow leads a group of brutes who have crash landed in the Colorado Rockies and are searching for million dollar briefcases scattered across the terrain. The gang coerces Gabe and his friends into helping them locate the money. Gabe and company have no history of violence and must outwit, outrun and out-climb the terrorists if they want to make it out alive. Sporting unmatched action sequences, the film’s breathtaking scale and Stallone’s star power all make for a great movie ride especially on a big screen.

     Most modern action is derivative of “Bullitt” or “The French Connection”; being gritty urban detective stories. And today you have the ridiculously shaky Bourne franchise, which everyone else, including Bond, is emulating. “Cliffhanger” features no car chases, and the protagonist never uses a gun... in the traditional sense. Sure, the movie is wrought with cliches. However, the actual stunts and sequences are exclusive to this story and this setting. The heist is wild, involving a zip line transfer of money and men between two planes midair; and it’s real. There is another scene where Gabe, first engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one of the baddies, ends up sliding down the slope of a snowy cliff. In the name of self preservation, Gabe slams the head of the creep into the snow and rides him like a bobsled. A pickaxe comes into play a couple of times, and a handy-dandy bolt gun gets Gabe out of a few binds. The most salient moments of uniqueness include actual climbing or repelling. Sure, those moments are shot in ways to hide the faces of the stuntmen, but acknowledging that it isn’t Stallone doesn’t take away from the audacity of the men actually performing those daring feats.

     The movie’s stunning backdrop and soaring music queues create a near-epic sense of scale reminiscent of the German mountains films of the 1930s. It’s an appropriate setting for a film starring a legendary muscleman. Those old German films featured daring feats of strength and will, the subtext being: behold the superiority of the Germanic race versus nature. There must have been some conscious effort here on the part of Stallone and the filmmakers to emulate the metaphor while avoiding the philosophy. It works. The central conflict is man versus man much more than man versus the environment (even though nature is both beautiful and a bitch). The film is truly sweeping and really odd among the action genre. “Cliffhanger” gives audiences an immersive experience which can be attributed to both the amazing location shooting, and Trevor Jones’ score. Jones goes big and orchestral with the music which create a senses of timelessness and grandeur. It’s really quite elegant at times... and seamless at others. It is a perfect score.

     Stallone was a great leading man. The Rocky series, particularly the first, is his ultimate contribution to American cinema. Unfortunately, each entry lost heart as they went on. The Rambo movies fulfilled a mindless action film obligation every Hollywood muscleman has to fill. And yet again, each was worse than the last. In the early 90s, Stallone was getting old and had to reinvent himself. He tried doing comedy and it didn’t resonate with audiences the way Arnold’s movies did. “Cliffhanger” was his big comeback. Stallone’s screen persona works best when he plays the underdog. Here is no exception. Once again, the odds are against him and that’s the majesty of Stallone. When John Lithgow orders “Take his jacket for insurance,” as an audience member you think he’ll freeze out there! Another henchman screams “FETCH” into Stallone’s ears, you think hey man, he doesn’t deserve that. Stallone has these beautiful, sad eyes that create so much empathy with audiences that you can forget, for just a moment, what kind of movie you’re watching. Schwarzenegger always wins. Stallone always wins too... although, he can make you think that maybe he won’t.

     The movie is chock full of gasps, funny quips and moments worth cheering. I’m surprised I haven’t seen “Cliffhanger” on a revival theater bill because it plays really well on a big screen and with a crowd. It does pop up on basic cable from time to time but check it out uncut if you can. It has a nice hard R-rating. And if you think this film is just Hollywood action nonsense, think of a movie formula as being the framework to a roller coaster. Just because you can see it and know what’s coming, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the ride.  

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.

Goodfellas

by Danny

     You know the type of movie that just makes you feel good? Toy Story and The Sandlot come to mind. What about the type that takes you back to a simpler time, like Forrest Gump or Apollo 13? And don't you love movies like The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty, the type that make you realize that despite all the cruelty and injustice, the world is truly a beautiful place? The 1990's were full of these movies. Goodfellas ain't one of them.

     From the opening credits to the closing scene, there is neither a warm nor a fuzzy feeling to be had. It's a movie about life in the mafia as seen through the eyes of someone who lived it, and it doesn't pull any punches. For an organization centered around respect, these guys don't bat an eye when it comes to stealing, abusing their women, and stabbing each other in the neck with whatever writing implement happens to be at hand. Come to think of it, an eye is pretty much the only thing they don't bat. Even the most admirable of the movie's protagonists have their best friends whacked (they just don't do it themselves). Greedy and underhanded at their best, diabolical at their worst, at the core of it they're immoral opportunists in a city full of opportunity. The movie's title is truly ironic, as these fellas are anything but good.

     It's also a veritable Who's Who of mafia actors in film and television. Pick a name from The Sopranos, or Casino, or a Bronx Tale, and chances are pretty good that they were in Goodfellas. If they weren't, it's a safe assumption that they got whacked before the opening credits. Ray Liotta plays the film's central wiseguy, Henry Hill, a man who is literally raised by the mob in 1960's New York, along with his best friend, the stocky powder keg Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci, appropriately). Under the tutelage of the steet-wise Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), Henry works his way up through the ranks. The journey takes him from small-time hijacking to a multi-million dollar airline heist; in the process, we see the highs and lows in the life of a blue-collar gangster driven only by greed, impulse, and cocaine-fueled paranoia.

     Director Martin Scorcese and writers Scorcese and Nicholas Pileggi (author of "Wise Guys", the book upon which the film is based) have created a raw and unrelenting cinematic landscape, which is not without its share of spectacle-- if skin could literally crawl, there are scenes in Goodfellas that would cause it to. Did I mention that a guy gets stabbed in the neck? I was mistaken. Two guys get stabbed in the neck. I could drone on about the violence in Goodfellas, but the IMDB Parents Guide has already done a fine job (on a 1-10 scale, Goodfellas scored a perfect 10). I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you plan on screening Goodfellas for your 2nd grade class (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/parentalguide). Some excerpts:

- A man is shot in the back of the head; blood splatters all over the room he was in and he flops to the ground. He is then shot three more times and his body is seen with bloody bullet holes and blood leaking out of them.

- A man repeatedly pistol whips another man and the man's nose practically breaks off.

- A dead man is shown hanging by his neck on a meat hook in a refrigerated meat locker in the back of an 18-wheeler.

     Violence aside, Goodfellas really is a pleasure to watch. It belongs alongside the likes of The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, and Clockwork Orange-- grotesque at times, but nuanced and complex. Scorcese and Pileggi's screenplay gives dimension to characters that could have fallen flat in less capable hands. Liotta, Pesci, and De Niro are in top form. Lorraine Bracco plays Hill's wife, Karen, who tries to remain simultaneously ignorant of, and complicit with, his activities. Paul Sorvino is eerily convincing as a Godfather-type. Also, watch for Michael Imperioli as the unfortunate Spider... and Martin Scorcese's own mother, Catherine Scorcese, as Tommy's mother.

     Do yourself a favor-- cook up some pasta, grill a few steaks, open a bottle of red wine and watch Goodfellas. Indulge your fascination with organized crime. Satisfy your gratuitous violence sweet tooth. Enjoy a great film by one of America's top filmmakers. And while you're at it, get your shinebox.

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.

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.

Starship Troopers

by Christopher D'Anna

     Johnny Rico yells to the roughnecks, “Do you want to live forever?” Machine guns fire. Giant bugs splatter. Jets fly overhead. People splatter. Spaceships burn. A coed shower. Nuclear explosions. A teenage love... triangle. Bowie. And just before he gets his brains sucked out, Xander tells the Brain Bug, “Someday, someone like me is going to kill you and your whole fucking race!”

Would you like to know more?
     Starship Troopers, aside from featuring more ammunition fired than any other movie to that point, is a biting social commentary on 20th century war. Paul Verhoeven’s film is a vastly different animal than Robert Heinlein’s original novel. Heinlein, a noncombat vet, developed a near-fascist opinion of justifiable warfare. He uses the novel to play out his philosophy through a serious of flashbacks wherein the characters as students debate civic duty. There is little combat in the book. Ironically, Verhoeven, a World War II civilian who witnessed more violence than Heinlein did as a soldier, creates a film brimming with action... and yet the tone and message is in direct contrast to the book. Verhoeven himself admits to getting so depressed by the first few chapters of the book that he didn’t bother to finish. He uses the novel’s base of a future war between humans and space bugs to deliver a unique antiwar message that doesn’t criticize on moral grounds, but on futility. He lampoons war by way of Hollywood showmanship but never gets preachy. The violence, effects, and drama are all blown drastically out of proportion... which makes for a great action movie, one of the greatest. Verhoeven, from experience, also places a fair amount of emphasis on naive young people set amongst the horrors of war. And where there are naive young people, there is sex.
     Dizzy, the heart and breasts of the movie, is hopelessly in love with square-jawed Johnny Rico. Johnny, an infantryman, is hung up on Carmen, an air force pilot played by Denise Richards. (Ha!) Carmen’s got the hots for Xander, an older more experienced airman. Carl, the brains, has no sex drive, is psychic, and is driven by duty even if it means sacrificing all of the above characters. In what is perhaps the best casting of the movie, Carl is played by post-Doogie Howser/pre-How I Met Your Mother Neil Patrick Harris. Most of what these characters want is each other; but as mere soldiers, they are all at the whim of Carl, who’ll stop at nothing for the elusive Brain Bug... the Osama Bug Laden of the arachnids. While we’re piecing all that together, there’s a completely gratuitous coed shower scene among infantrymen and infrantrywomen. Johnny gets it on but I won’t spoil with who. Finally, the sex de résistance is the Brain Bug herself, which looks as if one overlapped a few slides from 9th grade health class. Hell, I’ll just tell you: It’s a giant vagina.
     Ultimately, Starship Troopers is R-rated boy’s fantasy, which was Paul Verhoeven’s mid-career forte. (Check out Robocop & Total Recall) That’s not to say it isn’t broad and engaging enough for everybody. There’s plenty of humor, the scope is huge and the effects are amazing. In fact, the first time I saw this was with my parents who both loved it. They still do. Anyone that’s seen it has to admit that this boy’s fantasy is tailor-made. It’s about a young man torn between two hot girls, his parents getting killed by an asteroid, traveling to another planet and fighting hoards of alien bugs with his buddies. In the end, Johnny Rico wins, sort of. The war is too big for any one man’s victory to matter. Win or lose, it’s how you play, or fight, or whatever. See the goddamn movie. Did I mention the coed shower?

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.