Crank: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor, 2009)

A hyperactive, less arty version of Run Lola Run mixed with the free-range mayhem of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Crank: High Voltage has to be one of the most unbalanced action movies ever made. A shamelessly depraved odyssey across the sunbaked streets and alleyways of Los Angeles, California, the writing and directing team of Neveldine/Taylor have created a scumbag-laden paradise where everyone is either an unwashed whore or a non-white gangster. Sure, there are police officers, doctors, sadistic dog walkers, and degenerate gamblers in this world – you know, the pillars of society. But even they come off as a tad seedy; especially the doctors (I'm eyeballing you, Mr. Yoakam). The prerequisite crazy camera angles, self-imposed nipple abuse, obnoxious soundtrack, a mullet-sporting Corey, garishly dressed prostitutes, porn picketers, close-quarter shootouts, and a bizarre tribute to Japanese monster movies are just a small sampling of the sordid entertainment you get when you sit down and stare in its general direction. Making all other action films seem quaint by comparison, the highly transgressive content bandied about in this film is a refreshing change from all the heroic nonsense that seems permeate popular culture nowadays. The seemingly indestructible Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) goes about rectifying his unique problems with a single-mindedness that separates him from the do-gooder crowd. This guerilla attitude is shared by the, no doubt, overstimulated filmmakers, who literally fill the screen with every wacked-out trick they can think of. And since I don't believe there's such thing as "trying too hard," I was able to appreciate the amount of effort that must went into depicting a universe where random flashback sequences that feature Geri Halliwell sitting with her legs crossed, a strangely attractive Efren Ramirez attempts to use numchucks with Full Body Tourettes Syndrome, David Carradine still acts like he's Chinese, and crowds cheering acrobatic displays of public affection are commonplace.

The story involves a stubbly Englishman with a newly acquired artificial heart spending the better part of his day trying to get back his real heart; all the while, inflicting a lot of pain and suffering on a wide array of ethnic stereotypes – himself being one as well. The fact that the Cockney adrenaline junkie kicks the re-animated head of a former foe soccer-style into a large pool of water proves he's one. (An American would have thrown the head, while a Swede would have disassembled it and sent it on its merry way via a dreadlocks-sporting bicycle messenger.)

Anyway, the film is basically about...No, I think that pretty much covers it, story-wise. I'll just add that after some extremely unsanitary surgery, the monosyllabic Chelios needs to juice his replacement ticker periodically, because the battery has long gone kaput. So that means he must keep it charged by using unorthodox methods. In other words, tasers, cigarette lighters, elderly racetrack attendees, electronic dog collars, and fuse boxes become his best friends.

The epitome of elegance and grace, Bai Ling literally leaps onto the screen as the shy and reserved Ria, a prostitute that shotgun rapist Chelios inadvertently liberates from a dilapidated bordello. Repeatedly bashing the genital region of her obese pimp with a broken BMX, Bai establishes early on that Ria is someone not to be trifled with. Tagging along with the understandably gruff Chelios, Ria, her mouth-watering body fitted with a cyan jean skirt (with a silver purse dangling from a yellow belt), striped knee-socks, a faded purple top with two kitties on it that are saucily separated by a strategically sexy tear down the middle, and adorned with a strawberry necklace and a plethora of multi-coloured bracelets, points him the direction of the guy who has his heart. She thinks of Chelios as her "shiny lunchbox," but he just sees her as this demented chick who won't stop humping and licking him. Which is a shame, because I really thought they had a sweet rapport with one another.

A totally awesome actress, and, not to mention, one of the best human beings walking around on this stink-hole of a planet at the moment, Bai Ling imbues Ria with class and dignity. So what if her aim while wielding duel Tec-9 machine pistols is a little on the poor side, she looked adorable while firing them, and in the long run, that's all that matters. Besides, that groundskeeper should have known better than to prune bushes while black gay bikers, Latino gangsters, and an ethnically diverse gaggle of prostitutes were in the midst of acting out World War III.

Fearless and leggy to an almost maddening level, the lovely Amy Smart is back as Eve, Chev Chelios' long suffering lady friend. Providing a slightly saner counterpoint to Bai Ling's "love you long time" theatrics, the lithesome Miss Smart, while not as comically gifted as some of her blonde contemporaries, throws her never-ending organic structure into the cinematic fire. Whether being molested in the back of police car by a fellow stripper (Yeva-Genevieve Lavlinski), or body slamming Corey Haim onto the windshield of a parked car, Amy gives it her all.

Speaking of which, the amount of gusto she displays during the film's obligatory public fornication scene was off the charts in terms of courageousness. I mean, it's one thing to lunge your crotch at a golden pole while wearing black tape over your nipples, it's quite another to perform the reverse cowgirl position in the middle of a horse track. The look of joy on her face as that giant horse cock went flying over top of her in slow-motion as Statham plowed into her with his human cock with horse-like properties is a memory I will cherish for days to come.

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The Young Graduates (Robert Anderson, 1971)

The amount of brain energy I expended while staring at The Young Graduates, Robert Anderson's groovy followup to the equally groovy Cindy and Donna, is nothing to brag about (not that I would brag about such things). But the lessons I learned while watching it were invaluable. The lesson that immediately comes to mind is the one about how to stop lustful hillbillies from chasing you along a dirt road: simply drive across a field. No, really, their trucks aren't equipped to drive on plowed earth, and, therefore, will not be able to sexually assault you or the members of your party. However, since that little nugget of rape preventing wisdom doesn't involve explicit descriptions of Patricia Wymer's acute adorableness; I'm gonna quickly move on to other, more sexier, pastures. A mere day removed from being underage, high school senior Melinda "Mindy" Evans (Patricia Wymer) has suddenly grown tired of making out with her drag racer boyfriend Bill (Gary Rist), and decides to seek out the mature embrace of Mr. Thompson (Tom Stewart), a well-liked teacher at Mindy's school. The initial wooing is mainly initiated by the overly flirtatious Mindy, as she bats her eyelashes, uses come hither body language, and pretends to be interested in his dumb ass photography like nobodies business. On the other hand, Mr. Thompson is a tad slow in terms of reciprocating the youthful scamps playful coquetry. This, however, all changes when his shrewish wife, Gretchen (Jennifer Ritt), refuses to provoke his penis in a gratifying manner for what seems like the millionth night in a row.

Desperate to fornicate with a nimble vagina, the temporarily unfettered teacher excepts the wide-eyed teen's offer and the two of them end up frolicking and fucking until the contents of their chest cavities are content.

Aggressively simplistic at times, The Young Graduates doesn't seem interested in anything whatsoever. After the relationship between the spunky teen and the listless teacher fizzles out, the film goes into weird road trip mode. Where we get to see first hand how aimless and spontaneous the character of Mindy really is.

All of you have to do is look at the casual way she dumps Bill's yellow dune buggy in the middle of the road when it runs out of gas to understand where her flighty head is at. She, along with her gal pal Sandy (Marely Holiday), and a hitchhiker named Pan (Dennis Christopher), decide to go Big Sur.

Of course, their journey is rife with surly bikers, braindead hicks, and a seemingly unending armada of unfriendly drug dealers.

Crisp exchanges of elemental dialogue followed by gorgeously filmed montages set to nonspecific hippie rock is the best way the describe the artistic temperament of this peachy enterprise.

The best example of this stylistic posture are the scenes that involve Mindy and Mr. Thompson exploring the beauty of their natural surroundings, as they make their way to an unsullied stream in the woods for some impromptu naked wading.

Another example can be found when Mindy and Sandy acquirer a motorcycle and we are treated to some lovely shots of rural America. The image of a pink-clad Patricia Wymer riding on the back of a hog was the film's defining moment, as it not only represented her capricious and highly adaptive personality, but also signified her belief in absolute freedom (she despises conformity and outmoded thought patterns).

It's a shame that this and The Babysitter were her only roles of note, because Patricia Wymer has a real infectious quality about her as the forthright Mindy. It's quite telling that all the other characters gravitate towards her. And I'm not all surprised, as she out-and-out radiates while on-screen.

The way she chirpily utters her no-nonsense dialogue while smiling seductively is no match for the men who populate the unsophisticated world of The Young Graduates. Well, a pre-Godfather Bruno Kirby seemed to be the only person not enamoured by her. But then again, his character was banging the curly haired Sandy, who was kinda foxy in her own right.

Anyway, I thought Patricia, on top of being coy and junk, displayed a subtle form of legginess in this film. Now I don't know how exactly one goes about being subtly leggy. But the scenes that feature the tiny actress getting in and out of dune buggies in slinky pink dresses and engaging in late night telephone chats with married teachers had a definite air about them that just screamed subtle and leggy. Trust me, I know.

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Hardware (Richard Stanley, 1990)

The longer it remains unavailable through conventional means, the bigger its cache seems to get. Much like the state of the art trash languishing underneath the red, desolate landscape in this film, Hardware (a.k.a. M.A.R.K. 13) seems to gain power with each passing year. An industrial curiosity during my William Gibson-fueled days as a semi-productive member of society, I recall that my desire to see this film in theatres was quite pronounced back when it came out in 1990. However, since seeing movies in a public setting between the years 1987-1992 was inexplicably frowned upon, I had to give it a pass. I did cut out the film's newspaper ad as a keepsake. Fast-forward to 1998, when the opportunity arises yet again to see its metallic glow on the big screen when it plays a week long cult horror film festival. Unfortunately, my disinterest in the horror/sci-fi genre at the time prevented me from producing the required amount of motivational moxie. So the scrappy film remained unseen. Well, my never-ending quest to become less lame has gotten a little easier, as the arid red dust of this deadly robot gone amok tale, that is an allegory for the breakdown of civil order, has finally been stepped on by my eyeballs. Yep, I can finally stand up and say that I have seen Richard Stanley's strange ode to the not-so distant future. Taking place in a dystopian time frame where peeping toms use infrared, scrap metal is currency, and getting swept by Geiger counter has replaced hugs and handshakes, the film depicts a world where hope is nonexistent and the government is untrustworthy.

Living in this world are Moses (Dylan McDermott), a metal-handed junk merchant, and his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis), a chick whose hands love to work with fire and steel (everything in this universe is metal-based). One day, a scavenging nomad (Carl McCoy from Fields of Nephilim) delivers to them a giant bag of mysterious robot parts that he found buried in the desert. It turns out though that these robot parts have a bit of a sinister past, and that they're quite dangerous. Of course, Jill is left all alone in her bunker-like apartment when the M.AR.K. 13 (its official nomenclature) starts to rebuild itself through sheer ingenuity (it taps into the buildings power supply). Armed with a ghoulish array of stabbing and cutting instruments, and boasting a steadfast dedication to self-preservation, the glorified tin can causes the attractive blowtorch enthusiast to think on her feet in order not to end up being killed by the aforementioned accoutrements (which include a drill and a buzz saw).

Staying on the topic of Jill and her cybernetic encounter; Hardware may have started off as a visionary yarn about a post-apocalyptic netherworld, but when you cast aside all the high-minded pretense, what you're essentially left with is a gritty and claustrophobic flick about a feisty girl vs. a harebrained robot. Now, I'm not complaining or anything like that, because what this means is that the phenomenal Stacey Travis is given the rare opportunity to get in touch with her plucky side and kick some serious metallic butt.

Best known to me as Tammy from Earth Girls Are Easy and Seymour's short-lived girlfriend from Ghost World, Stacey is tremendous as the combative Jill. Whether she was using a blowtorch on doll parts to the strains of Ministry's "Stigmata" or swinging a baseball bat in the general direction of a deranged clump of circuits, the underused actress made a deep impression on me. Take, for example, the scene where she casually puts the fire that is burning on her right arm, her nonchalance was absolutely exquisite.

On top of Stacey's superb performance, the film's cyberpunk aesthetic (lot's of wires and metal mixed with unwashed flesh), brief clips of Psychic Televison (plus Sogo Ishii's Halber Mensch and other weirdness), an infrared sex scene, gory deaths (the abundant arterial spray was a nice touch), and the double usage of the supercool "Order of Death" by Public Image Ltd ("This is what you want, this is what you get") also solidified my love of this crunchy film.

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Observe and Report (Jody Hill, 2009)

Shamelessly promoting random acts of violence, drug use, multiple pronunciations of the normally flavourless expression "fuck you," copulation between unmarried adults, and misanthropic behaviour in general at every turn, Observe and Report is a refreshing return to the family friendly values that I've been known to nuzzle inappropriately against the supple smallness of my overly pierced nipples. I mean, movies nowadays don't seem too shy when it comes to sporting corrupted agendas that rarely ever gel with my levelheaded approach to all things moral and spiritually righteous. But this film is different, it seems intent on creating an atmosphere I can breathe without wanting to gag. Tantamount to a swift, yet tender blow to the side of the head, the Jody Hill (Eastbound & Down) written and directed exercise in extreme uncomfortableness had me nodding along to it in such a self-satisfied manner, that I wanted to hug attractive strangers on the street when it was over. Portraying humanity as a mindless horde of brainless twits whose only desire is to consume and destroy everything in its path, the film is a darkly funny look at some of the deluded people who populate the lower echelon of the United States' vast security network. Now, the shopping mall is an easy place to mock, as it is basically a large concrete box containing lots of smaller boxes that's unable to defend itself from scornful barbs and playful ribbing. The people who are forced to work in these malls, on the other hand, are a prime target for ridicule.

Self-absorbed, unaware of reality, and surprisingly agile, Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), head of mall of security, is one mall employee who takes his job way too seriously. Which makes him the perfect subject for this unpleasant journey into the psyche of a man who dreams of becoming a police officer – you know, so he can thwart the ominous cloud that threatens random playground children by shooting it with a large shotgun. In the meantime, trying to nab a parking lot exhibitionist with an abundance of confidence when comes to showing others his cock and balls, leering at a cosmetics consultant named Brandi (Anna Faris), and exchanging insults with a guy (Aziz Ansari) who works at a skin care kiosk have become his main priorities. Actually, the skin care guy is just a minor annoyance; it's the parking lot pervert and Brandi who become Ronnie's main obsessions.

Playing, what has to be, the most well-rounded and dignified role of his career, Seth Rogen imbues the unstable Ronnie with a frightening amount of pathos. Touching in his scenes with his mother (the always wonderful Celia Weston), unbalanced and creepy with Faris' Brandi, belligerent with a detective played by Ray Liotta, godlike when with the Yuen brothers (John and Matt Yuan), and free and loose while in the presence of fellow guard Dennis (an hilarious Michael Peña), the range of emotions that the actor, who is handsome from certain angles, displays in this film were limitless and highly unexpected.

Speaking of which, the relationship Ronnie forms with Nell (Collette Wolfe) was probably the film's most unexpected aspect. Proving that underneath all that paranoia and revenge fantasies lay an almost decent human being, this subplot was just as awkward as all the others, but there was something sweet about their banter. In fact, these short little scenes proved to be a nice break from all the anti-social activity that permeates this film. Moreover, I found Collette to be quite adorable as the recuperating coffee vendor (she's got a huge cast on her leg).

Unlikable, hot, and profoundly stupid, Anna Faris brought a trashy innocence to the character of Brandi, a fan of alcoholic beverages and one of the victims of the dick wielder (Ronnie sees this attack as an opportunity to get closer to her). Anyway, the sight of her hawking lipstick and blush under the florescent lights of the mall's iridescent cosmetics department was pretty awesome (he many looks of ornery indifference were precious).

However, it was Anna's parking lot work in Observe and Report that impressed me the most. With her pretty blonde hair always tied in a purposeful ponytail, I loved the way Miss Faris would gingerly make her way across the dark, asphalt expanse in a desperate attempt not to get sexually assaulted by the flasher. I also dug her predilection for swearing and drooling during her date with Ronnie. Sure, the fact that she was technically drugged kinda put a damper on things – from an ethical point-of-view. But I'm not gonna let a little thing like that ruin the image of a drunk and leggy Anna peaking over Ronnie's shoulder while riding on the back of his motorcycle. She looked so cute in that black crash helmet.

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Land of the Minotaur (Kostas Karagiannis, 1976)

Out of all the films I've seen this year that go out of their way to denigrate ritualistic murder, Land of the Minotaur (a.k.a. The Devil's Men) is definitely the most egregious offender of the lot. A veiled attack on secular values and, like I said, the killing of the physically constrained while wearing shiny robes, the hokey, yet ultimately serious-minded film makes fools out of young people and their disbelieving ways at every turn. Now I don't mean to sound like I had a problem with the film's overall position (so-called good triumphing over evil can be a refreshing change sometimes). But implying that sacrificing inquisitive white people who insist on exploring subterranean caverns is wrong is not only culturally incorrect, it's downright kooky. As the kindly Lithuanian couple who ran the Satanic commune I grew up on during the early 1960s used to tell me: "Overly curious Caucasians and sacrificial slaughter are a match made in Hell." This nugget of seemingly pointless wisdom is repeatedly plays itself out throughout the film, as countless white people seem to wander aimlessly into a ritualistic demise of their own making.

I wasn't a Satanist, by the way, I just liked to hang out there because they had an air hockey table and the best chicken wings this side of Kapuskasing.

The only problem with killing white people to appease a stone deity that shoots fire out of its nostrils is that other white people will no doubt begin to notice that their white friends, white loved ones, and white acquaintances are missing, and come looking for them.

Which, invariably, shall bring much unwanted attention to your cult or alternative lifestyle. And that's exactly what happens to a congenial group of devil worshipers in a small village in Greece, who are under the command of the Minotaur, a large creature with the body of a gay porn star and the head of a tempestuous bull.

Their homicidal ways are disturbed by Milo (Kostas Karagiannis), a non-believing American detective, the equally heathenish Laurie (Luan Peters), the lady friend of a missing white person, and the obnoxiously devote Father Roche (Donald Pleasence), a smug priest who knows for a fact that the Devil is real. These three party poopers think evil is wrong and junk, and want to put a stop to Baron Corofax (Peter Cushing) and his merry band of cloak-wearing fiends.

Sporting lots of close up shots of eyeballs while in the midst of staring intently at something, a wonderfully sinister music score by Brian Eno, and a creepy Greek girl in black knee socks (Christina), Land of the Minotaur succeeds in creating an atmosphere where religious mysticism and pagan rituals are commonplace.

The film, however, takes itself so seriously, that the overly earnest scenes that involve theology come off as clownish, as supposed to deep and contemplative. The fact that the scene where Karagiannis and Pleasence take turns calming an hysteric Luan Peters using the face slapping technique reminded of a gag from Airplane! didn't help matters, either.

I loved Greek mythology as a listless ten year-old: The Hydra, the dog with many heads, Medusa, and the Cyclops, they were all tops in my book (I even remember getting reasonably high marks for a picture book I did on the mythical monsters). However, since that kid doesn't work anymore (I asphyxiated him with a plastic bag laced with guacamole), I had to scan the screen for something else to latch onto. And I must say, the chiseled splendour of Peter Cushing's exquisite bone structure intrigued me immensely (you could chop lettuce on that face).

Nevertheless, I needed something much more substantial than that.

The sheathing of Luan Peters and Vanna "Gelsomina" Reville's attractive lower halves in fabric-depleted short shorts was just what this movie needed in terms of perverted charm. Listening to the amount of nonsense that is uttered in this film was a small sacrifice to pay in order to gaze upon the insanely short nature of the shorts worn by Luan and Vanna throughout this banal undertaking.

The former looked her best, short-short wise, while being chased through the woods by a gaggle of Minotaur fans in black robes, and the latter, well, I thought she did her best short-short work while tied to a wall.

I was planning to go on at length about the huge camel toe Luan sports during her first trip into the realm of the Minotaur, but since I don't want to come off as a depraved lunatic obsessed with the crotch-based lumpiness of others, I'll pass...for now.

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