Sunday, March 27, 2016

Æon Flux (Karyn Kusama, 2005)

It's been widely noted in the annals of noteworthiness that the creator of the Æon Flux universe, Peter Chung, felt helpless, humiliated and sad as he watched Æon Flux, the Hollywood adaptation of his much beloved animated science fiction series, with an audience (the series, in case you didn't know, initially aired on MTV's Liquid Television... Canada's MuchMusic would show the shorts on City Limits). Now, I can understand him feeling helpless and humiliated. I mean, imagine if somebody came along and turned your anti-utopian masterpiece into a bland slab of flavourless tripe. You wouldn't be all that thrilled, now would you? Of course you wouldn't. However, I have to question Mr. Chung's sadness. Sure, watching people you barely know ruin your life's work will make anyone sad, but the film, directed by Karyn Kusama, does sport Charlize Theron walking down a flight of stairs in a runway-quality, sci-fi disco bondage gear. I know, you're thinking to yourself: Why should Mr. Chung, or anyone else for that matter, care about Charlize's outfit? Take a closer look at what she's wearing. Exactly, she's wearing a skirt with massive slit down the front. And what does that massive slit help reveal? That's right, black stockings, baby! Just to be clear. I'm not letting this movie off the hook in terms of being a complete and utter failure. I'm just saying, if you look hard enough, you just might find what you're looking for.


It was also comforting to know that black stockings are still being worn by women in the year 2415. Unfortunately, Æon Flux (Charlize Theron) only seems to wear black stockings when she's casually strolling around Bregna, stopping occasionally  to orally exchange Francis McDormand in pill form from hunky Monicans. For the rest of the time, she's usually infiltrating government buildings in skin-tight bodysuits. Wait. Hold on. That previous sentence doesn't make a lick of sense. No, not the bodysuit one. The other previous one. Bregna? Monicans? Francis McDorman in pill form? What the hell, man?


Hey, did anyone else think that the Monicans, who, it turns out, are an underground resistance movement, were inspired by Monica from Friends? Just me, eh? Anyway, if any of the Friends is going to inspire an underground resistance movement four hundred years in the future, I thought it would have been Chandler Bing. In addition, Chandlerites has a nice ring to it. Seriously, though, I've read that the Chandler character has influenced the manner in which most people speak in North America. I hear it's even called the "Chandler cadence" in some linguistic circles.


Since I kind of explained what the Monicans are. I might as well give you the skinny on Bregna and Francis McDormand in pill form. The former is easy, as Bregna is the name of the walled city where the only humans left on Earth live. If I had to describe Bregna to someone who had never been there, I would say it's like Logan's Run meets the garden center at your local Home Depot. Meaning, things are deceptively peaceful in Bregna. Oh, and there's a sale on ornamental razor grass and weaponized fruit trees.


(Huh?) Seriously, if you want to keep lithe lady ninjas with fly-catching eyelashes and grumpy assassins with hands for feet off your front lawn, make sure your fruit trees are installed with latest poison dart delivery systems.


As for Francis McDormand in pill form. Ah, jeez. Where do I begin? I'm not sure, but I think Francis McDormand is the leader of the Monicans. However, since Bregna is basically a surveillance state that frowns upon independent thought, Francis McDormand's "Handler" must communicate her subversive ideas to her operatives directly to their brains.


If watching Æon Flux ingest the Francis McDormand pill reminded you of a commercial for the nation's leading antacid, you're not alone, as that's first thing I thought of when she took the pill. Once the pill enters your bloodstream, you get to talk to Francis McDormand. Well, you don't exactly get to talk. She basically gives you an order, and if you want to remain a Monican, you will follow it without fail.


And the order Francis McDormand gives Miss Flux involves disrupting the surveillance apparatus that keeps a watchful eye on the residents of Bregna. You know Æon Flux is good at what she does when she infiltrates the facility at night while wearing all-white.


Since that mission went so well, Francis McDormand gives Æon Flux another one right away. And it's one that Æon Flux is itching to do, as she is instructed to assassinate Bregna's leader, Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas), the man she blames for killing her sister.


Only problem being, when Æon goes in for the kill, she can't pull the trigger. Is there something between Æon Flux and Trevor Goodchild? And why did Trevor call Æon "Katherine"?


Personally, I could care less, as it's been almost an hour now, and no-one has shot anyone yet. Every time I would turn on the animated series back in the day, I would see Æon Flux gunning down hundreds of minions. But this movie seems to go out of its way to not show Æon shoot anyone.


Eventually, just after the hour mark, Æon Flux finally does end up shooting someone. However, you have to wait until the final showdown to see Æon Flux blow away hordes of faceless henchmen. The sight of the henchmen falling like dominoes off a ledge as direct result of Æon Flux-orchestrated gunfire was the closet thing this film came to replicating the awesomeness of the animated series.


What I recommend doing is, watch the scene where Charlize Theron walks down a flight of stairs in an outfit that reveals the top portion of her left black stocking and orally exchanges Francis McDormand in pill form to Stuart Townsend (who looks like he just came straight from shooting an ad for Prada's new line of men's coats) and then fast-forward to the part when Charlize guns down lot's of henchmen. You could stop every time Francis McDormand appears on-screen (her character has a large mane of kooky red hair), but it's not really worth it. It's almost as if Hollywood doesn't know how to make an entertaining bad movie anymore. As both this, and the similar Ultraviolet, are devoid of fun and have zero camp-appeal.


Sunday, March 20, 2016

Ultraviolet (Kurt Wimmer, 2006)

While most people, after they finish watching Kurt Wimmer's ultra-lame Ultraviolet, tend to focus on Milla Jovovich's never not unexposed midriff or that ridiculous nostril filter doohickey Nick Chinlund wears throughout the movie, I can't help but think, like I always do, about the staggering funeral costs the families of the 1000 plus henchmen Milla kills in this movie will face when all is said and done. And the crazy thing is, the reason they're killed is to save Cameron Bright. That's right, the creepy kid from Birth. Are the lives of a thousand henchmen really worth the life of some annoying little boy? I don't think so. You could argue, getting back to funeral costs for a minute, that The Archministry, the name of the evil organization the henchmen work for, will pay for the funerals of the dead henchmen. But then again, it's going to be hard for The Archministry to pay for anything now that they don't exist. What's that? Oh, haven't you heard? It would seem that The Archministry has pissed off Milla Jovovich. In other words, you don't really have to watch all the way to end to find out that The Archministry's days are numbered. On the plus side, The Archministry janitorial staff aren't going to have much to clean up. Sure, there's going to be lot's of broken glass and spent shell casings to sweep up. But as far as mopping up gallons of blood, you're pretty much off the hook. Unless, of course, Milla Jovovich decides to kill the janitorial staff. If that's the case, the broken glass, the spent shell casings and the not bloodied henchmen corpses will be staying put for awhile.


As I started to wonder why the henchmen didn't spew torrents of blood after Milla Jovovich slices them up with her sword, I remembered that this film is rated PG-13. Meaning, Ultraviolet has been pretty much neutered. Now, I'm not saying I wanted the walls of The Archministry's colourful hallways to be covered with the red stuff. I just think that a little gore would have made the film less antiseptic.


The other problem was that all the henchmen wore gas masks. This made their deaths even more meaningless. Granted, they looked cool (the henchmen costumes are the film's best non-Milla midriff element), but their outfits robbed them of their humanity. To make matters worse, hundreds of them are killed off-screen. I realize the ADD-infected robots who edited this movie were trying to break up the monotony of the fight scenes. But by not showing some of the battles Milla Jovovich engages in during her one-woman siege of The Archministry, the film signaled to me that Milla was never in any real danger.


And while, yes, Milla Jovovich does have a few close calls here and there, she's never really challenged. Oh, sure. There's a moment during the final showdown where Milla Jovovich takes the time to admire the back-flip a henchmen implements during a hallway sword fight. But other than that, Milla fights one faceless chump after another.


Oh, and when Milla Jovovich does face enemies with faces (the non-fearsome Blood Chinois), they end up accidentally shooting one another (Milla's quickness is no match for bullets fired from guns).


If you're wondering why Milla Jovovich's Violet Song Jat Shariff is able to dispatch her foes with such ease. It's simple, really. She's Milla Jovovich. It's what she does. Seriously, though. She's able to get the jump on her adversaries because she's a Hemophage. I know, a Hemo-what? Infected with a vampire virus, Hemophages are blessed with super-human strength and lightening fast reflexes. Unfortunately, Hemophages have a shelf life of only twelve or so years after being infected. If that wasn't enough, the germophobic human population are determined to wipe them out.


In charge of making sure all this happens is Vice-Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus (Nick Chinlund), the leader of The Archministry, a corporation dedicated to eradicating the Hemoglophagic Virus or HGV for short.


When word gets out that  Ferdinand Daxus has come up with a weapon designed to solve the Hemophage problem once and for all, the Hemophages send Violet to steal it.


After an invasive security screening at The Archministry (every Jovo-hole you can think of is poked and prodded), Violet gets her hands on the weapon. Or does she? Either way, when The Archministry discover that Violet is an impostor, a twenty minute chase sequence gets underway. Well, I wouldn't call it a "chase sequence." It's more like an extended Nice 'N Easy commercial, as more attention seemed to go toward making sure Milla's hair looked just right than making sure the CGI looked halfway decent.


Using "flat-space technology" and "dimension-compressing" during her escape from The Archministry, Violet can defy gravity (she rides her motorcycle up walls) and can cause guns to materialize in her hand just by thinking about them. While everything I just mentioned sounds pretty cool, the execution is poor. You would better off watching Ghost in the Shell or the Æon Flux shorts that aired on MTV in the early 1990s.


Hell, you would probably be better off watching the Æon Flux movie with Charlize Theron. Which, for some strange reason, is what I plan on doing next. It's got to better than Ultraviolet. I mean, this movie is just plain awful.


Anyway, after babysitting Cameron Bright's Six (it turns out the weapon is a boy) and hanging out with William Fichtner (he wears non-hypoallergenic sweaters and wrap-around sunglasses) during the film's dull middle third, Violet fights some long-haired Hemophages in a cemetery (fighting Violet with a ponytail is never a good choice) and eventually musters up the courage to take on The Archministry all by herself. Since a large number of Vice-Cardinal's henchmen are killed off-screen, it's hard to say how many she dispatches during the final push to his office. But I think I overheard the Vice-Cardinal mention that he has 750 men under his command. And given that Violet kills them all, that means that there could be over 750 children whose daddy won't be coming home tonight. And it's all because some vampire ninja with a super-flat stomach doesn't want the scientist's at daddy's work to cut up Cameron Bright's brain. Ugh. Easy, breezy, dreadful.


Sunday, March 13, 2016

Porky's (Bob Clark, 1981)

It's finally come to this. I'm writing about Bob Clark's Porky's, the most successful Canadian movie of all-time. What's that? You didn't know Porky's was Canadian? Yeah, well, it is. Whenever you see Doug McGrath (Goin' Down the Road), Art Hindle (The Brood) and Kim Cattrall (Mannequin) in the same movie, chances are, it's Canadian. Anyway, I can't believe I'm about to review Porky's. It's not that the film is beneath me or anything like that. It's just that I've seen it so many times. Or have I? You see, Porky's is one of those films I've seen hundreds of times, but never from start to finish. What I think I'm trying to say is, I've gone out of my way more times than I care to admit to watch Coach Brackett fuck Miss Honeywell in the boys locker room. In other words, what happens before and after this scene has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Okay, maybe it's not a mystery, but I'm sure nothing that occurs before or after the sight of Kim Cattrall being boned on a pile of dirty gym socks can top it in terms of being iconic and junk. And trust me, it's iconic. Whenever Porky's would air on late night television back when I was a smallish person, I would stop everything I was doing the moment I saw Kim Cattrall in a gymnasium setting. Only problem being, there are, like, four separate scenes that feature Kim Cattrall in a gymnasium setting. Yeah, I said, four (there's a shitload of gym in this movie).


On top of there being four separate Kim Cattrall-related gym scenes, there's an intolerance subplot and a child abuse subplot. Though, to be fair, these two subplots are kind of related, as they both involve Tim (Cyril O'Reilly), a rampant anti-Semite with a dick for a dad. So, as you can see, there's a lot of stuff to wade through to get to my favourite scene.


(Given that you have now seen Porky's from start to finish for the first time, the big question is: Is the Coach Brackett and Miss Honeywell locker room sex scene still your favourite scene?) After giving it much thought, I've decided... What am I talking about? Of course it's still my favourite scene. Did I mention that Kim Cattrall is fucked on a pile of dirty gym socks? I did? Good. Did I mention that she wears a blue skirt that's the size of a dish towel? No? Well, she totally does... wear a blue skirt that can't be bigger than a dish towel.


The coolest thing about watching the entire film is that I got to see the build up to Coach Brackett and Miss Honeywell's locker room tryst.


It all starts in the gymnasium of Angel Beach High - located in the swampy wilds of Florida (it's 1954, by the way), when Coach Warren (Doug McGrath) implies to Coach Brackett (Boyd Gaines) that Miss Honeywell (Kim Cattrall) is a demon in the sack. No, actually, he implies that she's like Lassie, and that if you take her up the boy's locker room, she'll have sex with you. Either way, Coach Brackett is curious to learn more about Miss Honeywell and her Lassie-complex.


Even though Coach Warren tries his best inform his co-worker that he's about to be taken on the vaginal ride of his life, Coach Brackett still doesn't seem to fully-comprehend the magnitude of the sex fiend he currently has access to.


If only there was a way to get her up to the boy's locker room. It's no secret, but Coach Brackett finally does manage to get Miss Honeywell up there. And when he does, the whole school's going to find out why Miss Honeywell is called "Lassie." I'm guessing she's called that because her moans, or, I should say, her howls of pleasure, are canine-like in their application.


While the sight of Coach Brackett fruitlessly attempting to stifle Miss Honeywell's howling mouth hole as he plowed into her silky smooth vagina hole with his erect penis is the only sane reason anyone would watch this movie more than once. I have to say, Doug McGrath's equally fruitless attempt to stifle his laughter as he listened to Miss Honeywell howl is just important to the scene's success.


In fact, the film's two funniest scenes both involve Doug McGrath failing miserably when it came to stifling his laughter. The first one, like I've already mentioned, involves him trying not to laugh when he hears Kim Cattrall being screwed upstairs. And the second one has him unsuccessfully trying not to laugh as he listens to Miss Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) explain to the school's prudish principal that she wants put out an all-points bulletin for the teenage boy-penis she saw (and grabbed onto for a spell) in the girl's shower.


Convinced that the wayward adolescent cock belongs to Tommy (Wyatt Knight), Miss Balbricker wants the principal to allow her to stage a sort of penis lineup. As you might expect, Miss Balbricker's emphatic plea comes off as funny to the male coaching staff.


However, there's actually more to Miss Balbricker's grievance than simply a fugitive pecker. Ridiculed, fat shamed and sexually humiliated throughout the film by Tommy, Miss Balbricker sees the penis in the shower incident as her last chance to give Tommy his comeuppance through conventional channels. Of course, it being 1954, no comeuppance is forthcoming. And white male privilege continues unabated... for a little while longer.


Someone clearly benefiting from white male privilege is Dan Monahan's Pee Wee, a short basketball player with a small penis. Wait a minute, small penis?!? The opening scene shows Pee Wee waking up with quite the pup tent. Sure, he's not sporting John Holmes-quality morning wood, but it's not exactly tiny either. What gives?


Desperate to get laid, Pee Wee begs his friends to let him attend a gang-bang party they plan on holding in a shack in the woods. Only problem being, the whole thing is a ruse, as his friends have hired a large black man to play the hooker's machete-wielding husband.


Hold on, why am I writing about the Pee Wee subplot? Other than the "Mike Hunt" crank call he makes to Wendy (Kaki Hunter), this Pee Wee guy is a bit of a bore. Oh, and he calls "Blubber McNeil" a "lard ass" during the famous shower peepshow/glory-hole scene. Hey, Pee Wee. Just because "Blubber McNeil" doesn't fit into your narrow view of feminine beauty, doesn't give you to right to call people hurtful names. I know, I just got finished stating that white male privilege basically gives you that right, and she was blocking your view, but what you did was totally uncool.



After the shower peepshow scene, a traumatized Miss Balbricker tries to convince the school's principal to take disciplinary action against Tommy (he inadvertently taunts Miss Balbricker with his tallywacker through a hole in the shower wall). When this scenes ends, the credits should begin to role. But they don't. What we get instead is a thirty minute plus sequence where the gang, including Billy (Mark Herrier) and Meat (Tony Ganios), plot their revenge against Porky Wallace (Chuck Mitchell), the owner of a bar/brothel named... Porky's.



When the gang first show up at Porky's in the early part of the film to get laid, it ends badly. Dunked in water, the thoroughly degraded gang slink back to Angel Beach with their tails beneath their legs. Well, not Mickey (Roger Wilson), who apparently goes back repeatedly, only to get his ass beat. Now, I used the word "apparently," because we never actually see Mickey get his ass beat. The lack of visual evidence regarding Mickey's many trips to Porky's is the film's biggest flaw. I mean, I had completely forgotten about Porky by the time the revenge subplot gets underway. Meaning, the film's final third is pretty much a colossal waste of time.



In fact, the only bright spot of the "Porky's"subplot was the brief shot of the three ladies Pee Wee and the boys were supposed to have sex with had they not been deceived by Porky. The brunette on the right in the black hold-up stockings was my favourite, in case you were wondering.


Despite there only being four, maybe five genuinely funny moments in the entire film, I can see how Porky's managed to inflame the imaginations (and the genitals) of countless sex-starved teenage boys back in the day. Personally, I prefer to get my  old school juvenile kicks from films like, Private School (mmm, Betsy Russell). Or better yet, My Tutor, Beach Girls, or pretty much anything else teen-related released by Crown International Pictures.


Thursday, March 10, 2016

Inferno (Dario Argento, 1980)

When most of us get a hankering to explore the subterranean depths of creepy big city apartment buildings, we dress appropriately. Meaning, we don't wear pleated skirts, puffy blouses and strappy heels. However, since the subterranean depths in this movie aren't being explored in any old movie, beige slacks, bland sweaters and ho-hum sneakers are just not going to cut it. In other words, the sight of a fashionable blonde slathered in Bulgari jewelry exploring every nook and cranny of the cellar of an alchemist-designed apartment building isn't that far-fetched. You see, in Dario Argento's Inferno, if you're going to foolishly poke around the underground caverns where evil usually dwells, you better look fabulous while doing so. I mean, seriously, who wants to watch a bunch of poorly dressed slobs explore the depths of pure acid hell? I know I sure don't. Granted, the film does boast a "final man" instead of a "final girl." But we do get to see three stylish women slowly make their way through a series of sinister hallways (four, if you include the mysterious cat lady). And we get to see  the alluring Veronica Lazar befuddle the living shit out of some guy in beige slacks. Actually, I shouldn't call him "some guy," as Mark, played by the ridiculously named Leigh McCloskey, is the final man. In a way, you could view the decision to make the last person standing a man as a bold one, as men don't often make it to the ends of these types of movies. Then again, Inferno isn't your typical Dario Argento movie.


And you know it's not your typical Dario Argento movie when your favourite character turns out to be the differently-abled, unibrowed owner of an antique bookstore. In case you're not familiar with the bookstore owner, his name is Kazanian (Sacha Pitoëff) and he limped (he walks with the aid of crutches) his way into my heart. Of course, I didn't approve of his method of getting rid of the cats that have an annoying habit of hanging around his store. No, I simply liked the way he interacted with Leigh McCloskey and Irene Miracle (the woman in the pleated skirt), and his final moments are wonderfully horrific.


In fact, I would go as far as to declare Sacha Pitoëff's death scene to be one of the most effective death scenes to appear in a Dario Argento movie. And that, of course, is high praise, since everyone of his twenty-plus movies has a surplus of gruesome death scenes.


Stuffing a cat that was lounging underneath one of his bookshelves into a sack filled with two, maybe three other cats, Lazarian, the owner of Lazarian Antiques, ties the cat sack shut and proceeds to make his way to a nearby rat-infested creek.


After failing on his first attempt to dump the cat sack in the sewage-laden water, Lazarian gets the cat sack to sink on his second try. Obviously feeling good about himself (after all, he just drowned a sack of cats), Lazarian begins to leave. As he's doing so, he slips and falls into the very same sewage water the sack filled with cats are currently drowning.


Unable to reach his crutches, Lazarian flails about like a turtle on its back (except he's on his front). The hundreds of rats doing rat stuff close by notice this and begin to swarm around Lazarian. As you might expect, he begins to scream loudly when the rats start nibbling on his flesh. These screams attract the attention of a butcher, who comes running to help Lazarian. Or does he? I'm not going to say anything more, but what the butcher does is, uh... Let's just say, it's unexpected.


While Lazarian struggles in the water, Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) is not only adept, she's downright fish-like. And she has huge balls. Curious about a book called "The Three Mothers" by an alchemist named Varelli, Rose discovers that one of these "mothers" are connected to an old apartment building in New York City. Deducing that the secrets of the book lie beneath the building, Rose begins to eyeball the grate located in the adjoining alleyway.


Where does it lead? She must be wondering to herself.


Instead of getting some man to help her, Rose simply walks down there and starts exploring.


Did I mention that Rose does so in a pleated skirt, a puffy blouse and a pair of strappy heels? I did? Good. This can't be stressed enough, as having your characters wear clothes that are interesting to look at is integral to interesting cinema. At least to me it is.


As she's wondering to herself about where the stairs lead, you'll notice that the wind is having a field day with Rose's pleated skirt and puffy blouse.


Accidentally dropping her keys in a flooded section of the building's basement, Rose decides to do a little underwater exploring. That's right, I said, "underwater exploring." Who does those chick think she is, Aquawoman and/or Aquagirl?


I'll admit, I wasn't expecting much from this film. I mean, it starts with a woman reading a book while a mysterious male narrator drops a ton of exposition in our laps. What is this? A horror movie or a homework assignment? However, my attitude changed somewhat when Irene Miracle starts doing her impression of Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure. What I think I'm trying to say is this, I found the underwater sequence to be suspenseful and I was impressed with Irene Miracle's submerged acting.


According to Dario Argento, Irene Miracle was cast because she was a synchronized swimmer as a teen. In other words, she has the skills necessary to stay underwater for an extended period of time.


You might have noticed that Rose mailed a letter before exploring the building's cellar. Well, that letter was for her brother Mark, who studies musicology in Rome. While in class, Mark decides to read the letter. When he gets to about the third sentence, he notices a woman... a strange beautiful woman (Ania Pieroni), holding/stroking a cat.


Unable to concentrate, Mark zones out. The fact that Keith Emerson's synthy prog rock has started to blast on the soundtrack isn't helping matters. Following the cat woman, Mark leaves, forgetting his sisters letter in the process.


Did anyone else find it odd that Sara (Eleonora Giorgi), Mark's friend/classmate, reads his letter? Either way, after reading it, Sara develops an interest in The Three Mothers. In fact, she's so interested, she heads straight to the library to pick up a copy. To the surprise of no-one, spooky shit starts happening to Sara as soon she starts poking around. Hell, it starts to happen before she even enters the library (she cuts her hand while getting out of the cab).


Not wanting Rose to suffer the same fate as Sara, Mark tries to contact her. Realizing that his sister is in serious danger, Mark hops on the next flight to New York. And this is when the fun really starts to begin. My first question would have been, upon arriving at the Three Mothers building, what's the deal with the red hallways? Call me crazy, but it's almost as if the building is alive. The red hallways being blood vessels and the blue stripes on the walls being veins.


Oh, and pay close attention to Veronica Lazar's nurse character's demeanor when she chats with Mark in the elevator. I can understand her being not too bright (not everyone is scholarly and junk), but no-one is that dumb. No, she's hiding something. And there's definitely something shady going on with that old dude she's pushing around in a wheelchair.


While not as gory as Dario Argento's other films, or technically proficient, for that matter (the knife through the neck effect during the sequence where Sara is peril was poorly executed), Inferno has great atmosphere, top-notch production design (the interiors of the New York building are gorgeous), Daria Nicolodi's bangs were pinpoint perfect (as per usual), excellent animal stunts (rats, cats, ants, lizards and moths) and the Keith Emerson score slowly grew on me (Mater Tenebrarum is the shit - and we get to hear it twice within the span of five minutes). Good stuff.