We Wuz Robbed (2004)

We Wuz Robbed is Sheldon (aka Spike) Lee’s contribution to Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet.

Quick questions – Do grammatically incorrect titles add authenticity? Do they instantly connect the film with the common man? Are they shorthand for ‘street cred’?

Okay, I recently took Lee off of the short list of filmmakers who’s work I refuse to watch*. Though, this film doesn’t explain why I should have done that. An unbalanced array of talking heads reiterate the tense ten minutes just before Al Gore nearly conceded defeat in the 2000 Presidential election. A supposed behind-the-scenes look at a turning point in American history presents nothing new and it mostly this sounds like sour grapes and fish tales of the one that got away. The use of American flags as backdrops is flat our corny.

Yes Sheldon, I was robbed and the thief was you.

Twelve Miles to Toma (2004)

Twelve Miles to Toma is Wim Wenders’s contribution to Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet. Had his name not appeared in connection with the film I would have easily mistaken this for a slick, shallow, student film, the sort routinely cranked out by are so-called finer learning institutions. Nothing more than a ticking clock and some trippy effects, this pointless tale of a man racing to medical clinic after ingesting drug laced brownies almost makes me forget that Wenders was capable of making a good film. It leaves me scared to re-visit Paris, Texas.

They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1963)

The title, They Saved Hitler’s Brain, catches the eye like a sign outside a freakshow. The film creaks along. It’s all just spies and scientists and secret gasses and whispers of Nazi’s who have pickled Adolf’s head. Then in the final minutes, to much disappointment, the attraction that first caught your interest is revealed.

There’s not much to this one, just basic hucksterism, the allure of Nazi’s and perplexing question – “Why is it that dis-embodied heads in films gain telepathic powers?”

See also (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and The Frozen Dead)

or for a better film about Nazi’s in hiding see The Boys From Brazil.

Wizard of Gore (1970)

You know they remade this H.G. Lewis cult classic, right? It’s out this year and it stars Crispin Glover as Montag the Magnificent. Surely, it’s got to look better than the original Wizard of Gore. That would be no magic trick.

But can you really manufacture a cult classic? The original Wizard of Gore is loved not for its triumphs, but for its faults. The blood is too red, the gore is too fake, the monologues are too long, and the acting is too poor. So what? That’s why people seek out the original.

Sure, I’ll see the new one. I’ll even try to have an open mind, but you can’t willfully make a bad film, nor should you try. Was it Basho who warned people not to walk in the footsteps of others, but to seek what they sought? The same advice should be forwarded to those producing re-makes.

Terror Squad (1987)

In these post-9/11 times 80′s terrorists films seem vulgar and short-sighted. The blurb on the back of the video box says, “A terrorist attack in the United States – They said it could never happen…They were wrong.” Just think, if only someone had bothered to watch Terror Squad we might have been better prepared for 9/11.

Of course, films like Terror Squad were a dime a dozen in those pre-9/11 days. Terrorists could strike at anytime, but you could always count on some brash, tough, American(s) to save the day. Here, Libyan terrorists – four of them – attack a nuclear power plant in Kokomo, Indiana. After an exorbitantly long car chase through and around the town, leaving a wide swath of destruction, the two remaining terrorists flee into a high school where they take a detention room full of students hostage.

Surprisingly, the filmmakers take the time to make the terrorists Libyans angered by America’s recent bombing of their country. I give the filmmakers some credit for making the film topical. Still, the terrorists are flat caricatures that love Allah, hate America, and solve everything through violence. Which makes them just slightly different than their captors.

In the detention room you’ve got the cheerleader, the priss, the jock, the punk, the rebel, and of course the nerd, who is also a pervert – all of them white. There is also the black janitor, but staying true to bad movie traditions, he’s the first person to die. The lack of personality or charm make it hard to sympathize with the students. Many simply come across as Ugly Americans.

So, basically what you have here is Red Dawn meets The Breakfast Club.

Chuck Connors is the biggest star they could drag to Kokomo. He plays the town’s police chief and does little more than forcefully curse and chase the terrorists in his car, Not his best performance, but he adds a little shine to an otherwise by-the-numbers picture with more than average action sequences.

The true stars of the film appear to be the fine folks of Indiana. Shot in Kokomo and Michigan City, Indiana, the towns must have felt like they were literally under siege. Water towers tumble, smoke stacks explode, the town square is littered with bullets. In a film were action replaces all drama it appears that the film crew was given free reign over each town. For all the hassle of having Hollywood invade your quiet community, I am sure Kokomo is still proud to helped make such a patriotic film. I hope one day to go to there and see a plaque downtown that says, “The little city who stood up to the Terror Squad.”

All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)

A depressing film on two levels.

All About Lily Chou-Chou is a grim, stylish look at young Japanese teens. They love and devotion they for the an ethereal singer named Lily Chou-Chou is only compared to the cruelty they express towards each other. The modern generation’s idea of acceptable cruelty goes far beyond gossip and humiliating pranks and extends to rape and murder.

Director Shunji Iwai does a brilliant job of depicting the lives of teenagers. The toughness they express through their bullying of one another is nicely undercut by the open expression of their fears and desires spilled out in online forums dedicated to Lily Chou-Chou. In Cyberspace the come together. In the real world they tear each other apart.

The film itself is strikingly beautiful. Overly saturated colors and isolated figures in landscapes make for memorable images. Iwai is even able to make Internet chatting cinematic, a feat I once thought impossible. However, for all the breath-taking winsomeness there is something so unappealing about the incessant camera movement that undercuts each image. An ever shaking camera may speak to unstable times, but that is not excuse enough. When the camera’s movements become so radical that they completely abstract the imagery there are wonderful moments of great splendor that show off what digital video can really do.  It is when the camera is more stable, but not fixed that my aggravation grows. Plain and simple it feels lazy, obnoxious and tiresome. It is a cheap trick to transpose the state of the subject upon the viewer.  Lock down the camera and let the actors loose. The world we inhabit is not an ever quaking fault line. The world around us is more stable than we suspect, but our emotions make it feel that way.

Jack’s Back (1988)

Rowdy Herrington.

Does it ring a bell? It should he’s the genius behind Roadhouse. But, before he made what is arguabley the greatest, unintentionally funny, homoerotic, shitkicking film ever made Mr. Herrington cut his teeth on Jack’s Back.

It’s a hundred years since Jack the Ripper terrorized London. Now, a copycat is striking fear into the heart of Los Angeles; Echo Park to be exact.

James Spader does double duty playing both John and Rick Westford, twin brothers at the center of the police’s investigations into the killing. John’s an idealistic medical student who rebels against his supervisors. We know he’s a rebel because he wears a seersucker suit jacket and a Cubs baseball cap in the place of scrubs or a white coat. After walking in on the latest murder John finds that the only life he can’t save is his own. When John’s body is found hanging from rafters its chalked up as a suicide and the copcat murders are pinned on him.

Fortunately, brother Rick, a manager of a shoe store, sees John’s death in a dream and sets out to clear his brother’s good name. For the remainder of the film the killings cool off and the story turns into an interesting little whodunit, with enough turns and twists to keep you guessing. Ultimately, there is little guess work to the mystery. As a general rule with most films of this ilk – the largest asshole has the red hands.

It’s nice to see Robert Picardo pop up as a psychiatrist. There are also a few great moments of unintentional hilarity, the best being when John comes to the aid of a knocked-up hooker only to have us find out later that she was his prom date back in 1978. Only in movies; only in a Rowdy Herrington movie, that’s for sure.

Jack’s Back is no Roadhouse and Spader is not as great in this as he was in Less Than Zero or The New Kids. But, it beats the wooden crap out of Mannequin.

Hit List (1989)

Hit List is like a London Fog jacket. It’s proof of the 80′s existence, but anyone who says they really like it, even ironically, is suspect. But, maybe I’ve just watched too many 80′s films for one day. Perhaps, I’m not giving it all the credit it deserves.

My friend Don says he actually likes it and I believe him. The film has likable elements. Jan Michael-Vincent as a pissed-off father fighting to get his kidnapped kid back. Rip Torn as a cocky untouchable crime boss. Lance Henriksen as a cobbler/killer. The film was directed by William “Maniac” Lustig. Rumor even has it that Quentin Tarantino was a script doctor. And still, the film feels like a let down.

There are a few memorable lines, decent stunt work, and one could have a field day guessing just how intoxicated Jan Michael-Vincent was during each take. But, the bottom line is that Hit List is too similar to too many other 80′s films. In the war against drugs Hit List is simply a decent soldier lost in a large company.

The Ladies Club (1986)

The devilish imp in me want to simply call The Ladies Club a Lifetime movie with balls. Victims of rape further abused by an emasculated court system decide to grow a pair and take the law into their own hands. Banned together as sisters, a cop, a doctor, and the sister of a rape victim, plus other victims of rape seduce, drug, and surgically castrate rapists and child molesters.

Strangely, the film is not as exploitative or gruesome as it sounds.The film is clumsy and forceful, wishing to be both a tale of growing female friendship and an extremely masculine revenge tale. More television movie glossy ( than drive-in sleaze (i.e. I Spit On Your Grave), the film has a softer than usual touch, another hint at the film’s intended audience.

Like many films of the 80′s The Ladies Club needs to be studied more in soci0-political terms, not cinematic ones. During this era there was a prolific rise in films that championed renegade heroes doing what a seemingly inept government or police force could not do. The trend started in the late 70′s, one could potentially link its birth to the inglorious end of the Nixon. During the 80′s and Reagan’s New Dawn in America the clean-up continued with a fury.

What makes The Ladies Club interesting, aside from the chuckles it can produce, is the strange ironic strange gender politics at play. The source material for the script was a novel penned by two women. Their inspiration was surely the low conviction rate for rape. The film itself is directed by a female, but other than a few girlfriend jokes and an absence of gore and gratuity during the rape scenes, the film and its solutions to a serious problem fell overly masculine.

Extra kudos to Arliss Howard for playing a Wild Turkey swiggin’, wife-beater wearing, unsympathetic husband. His grandstanding is worth pursuing this rare film.

The Frozen Dead (1966)

It’s 20 years since the fall of the Third Reich and German Scientists living in Britain race to defrost an army of frozen Nazis. The only problem is that all the defrosted test cases turn come brain dead. Needing a living human brain one of the doctors decapitates a young college student. While the doctor’s niece wanders about, wondering where her friend went, her friend’s head sits in a box in the doctor’s secret lab. The severed head sends out telepathic messages leading the niece to the basement. Finally, the head uses its powers to bring an end to their mad plot, but not before begging to be buried along with her body.

It’s as campy as it sounds and the whole production has a claustrophobic feel. Not only is most of the film trapped on a sound stage, but this sort of movie has a way of making the viewer feel trapped as well. Horror films liked this often played late at night on UHF channels and were introduced by horror hosts. Back then, due to a lack of options, one would relegate themselves to watching such fare. Today, in a time of digital cable, movies-on-demand, and NetFlix, it seems almost foolish to waste time on cheesy, mediocre flicks like the The Frozen Dead. Yet, at 1 AM in the morning I did just that. Then again, I don’t have cable and I do own a copy of this film. What that says about me, I’m not sure.