Teenage Wastelands: Wild in the Streets and G-a-s-s-s-s

Wild in the Streets, by Barry Shear, 1968

In the mid to late 60's, it was becoming clear: for the first time, the youth were calling the shots.  There were more teenagers than ever, thanks to the post World War II baby boom, and they were making sure their voices were getting heard, through protests and pop culture.  It was only a matter of time before this was addressed in a movie.

Barry Shear's Wild in the Streets is a darkly satirical take on the idea of teenagers taking power.  It stars Christopher Jones as Max Frost, a rebellious, but highly intelligent young man who runs away from his parents (but not before taking a few swipes at their prized possessions), and starts a new life of sex, drugs, and rock & roll.  He forms a band, who are also his entourage and think tank, and together, they begin fighting to lower the voting age to 14, by writing hit songs motivating an army of teenage fans to organize and revolt.  Once Max gets what he wants, though, it's not enough anymore, so he keeps pushing for more, and the world quickly turns into a dystopia.  It's basically a crazy dark version of this comic book.

Wild in the Streets pushes all of its ideas to their furthest extreme, and doesn't pull punches.  I think it's aged very well, too.  It's dark and extremely cynical, and it doesn't make any effort to make even the protagonist likeable.  There are no good guys in this movie, and that makes it even more fun.  The soundtrack is pretty good, too.  Usually fake bands in movies don't have good songs, but Max's band has some really good stuff, including one song that became a hit in the real world, "Shape of Things to Come".  Also, the editing in Wild in the Streets got a well deserved Oscar nomination.  It has a great ending, too.  The last line is laugh out loud funny.

G-a-s-s-s-s, by Roger Corman, 1971

G-a-s-s-s-s is kind of like Wild in the Streets if it was stupid.  I mean, it's actually kind of enjoyable, but it's not making any kind of big political statement or anything.  It's about what happens if a mysterious gas is released that kills off everybody over the age of 25.  While the smart teenagers in Wild in the Streets would have probably been ready to take over and pick society back up, Roger Corman's youths are probably more realistic: they spend most of the movie goofing around.

Corman was clearly less interested in making a statement than he was in making a movie that teenagers will shell out their cash for.  It doesn't stand the test of time nearly as well as "Wild", and it wasn't intended to.  It's loaded with pop culture references many of which flew right over my head.  This is a movie for the kids of 1971, not the kids of 2012 or any other time.  He obviously didn't foresee the home video market.  G-a-s-s-s-s has a soundtrack by Country Joe and the Fish, which is not bad, but it doesn't have the punch that the original songs in the other movie had.  It also, like many Roger Corman films, has a cast of several young actors on the rise, including Bud Cort, Cindy Williams, and Talia Shire.

One bit that I liked was that when the end of the world comes, the kids all sort of split into their high school cliques.  When everybody is looting, the jocks steal all the meat.  Later, we learn they're all dying of poor nutrition and want the vegetables that the hippie kids are growing.  I thought that was pretty clever.

I would never trash on Roger Corman.  I love the guy.  He directed and produced lots and lots of stinkers, a bunch of decent, fun movies, and once in a while, a real gem of a film would squeeze through.  G-a-s-s-s-s is not one of the gems, but it's one of those decent fun movies.  It's often doubled with Wild in the Streets, and I can see why, but Wild in the Streets is the superior film by a wide margin.

Sowing My "Wilder" Oats 3: Because We Can't All Be as Clever as Billy Wilder: One, Two, Three, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

I'm back, everybody, for my third installment of my depressingly lamely titled look at the work of the late, great Billy Wilder. I've been having a lot of fun writing these, and even more fun watching the movies. I've watched a dozen of Wilder's films so far, and the guy hasn't let me down yet.

One, Two, Three, by Billy Wilder, 1961


One, Two, Three came immediately after Wilder's triumphant one-two punch of Some Like it Hot and The Apartment, and because of that, it was bound to disappoint at the time of its release. Though it was well received by critics, the satirical Cold War comedy didn't perform well in the box office, and is a relatively obscure title in Wilder's body of work. It's too bad, too, because One, Two, Three deserves to be seen.

Set in West Berlin, One, Two, Three is the story of C.R. Macnamara, or just Mac, a hard working international representative for Coca-Cola, played by James Cagney. He has spent the last several years circling the globe with his family, spreading the joy of Coke wherever he goes. His wife wants to take their kid back to America, but he's vying for a big position in London. This job depends on his ability to introduce the cola to the Soviets.

Then the Coke bigwig back in Atlanta calls with a new task: keep an eye on his boy-crazy daughter, Scarlet (Pamela Tiffin), who he is sending to West Berlin to get her away from some low-life or another that she's taken to. A couple months later, Mac's boss calls with the news that he's coming to visit himself, and Mac discovers that Scarlet has been sneaking into East Berlin and has secretly married Otto Piffl (Horst Buchholz), a hardline Communist who constantly spews his anti-capitalist sentiments to everyone within earshot. Mac must now find a way to clean up this mess without losing his job and causing an international incident in the process.

One, Two, Three is a relentlessly fast-paced comedy, about as screwball as a movie can get. Cagney is on fire, too. Most of the movie is on his shoulders, and it must have been exhausting, because this movie actually did drive him into retirement. He's constantly scrambling around, talking quickly with ridiculous amounts of dialogue, and orchestrating deftly executed comedic setpieces with his costars.

Wilder lets the jokes fly fast, and as such, there's little time for the emotion of some of his deeper works, but he still makes sure to cram One, Two, Three with a healthy dose of social commentary. He takes swipes at the Soviets and the Cold War itself, and even a few digs at the nature of capitalism. Mac's German right-hand man who claims to have been conveniently absent for the entirety of World War 2 is another great gag.

Since I haven't in previous entries, I thought this would be a good place to mention I.A.L. Diamond, Wilder's co-writer for every movie he made (except one) from 1957 all the way to his final film in 1981. Diamond was a perfect fit for Wilder's sensibilities, and together they crafted a long series of sophisticated comedies. One, Two, Three is an extremely smart and ridiculously precise comedy, and easily one of Wilder's most ambitious films. It's well worth your time.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, by Billy Wilder, 1970


I've been a fan of Sherlock Holmes for a long time. He's my favorite character in all of literature. I was intrigued by the idea posed in the title of Wilder's film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. What goes on when Holmes isn't solving mysteries? What keeps him ticking (besides cocaine) when he isn't occupied by some case? Well, to be honest, this film doesn't really go very far to answer these questions.

Robert Stephens stars as Holmes, and Colin Blakely as Dr. John Watson, whose chronicle of Holmes' adventures in The Strand Magazine has made him a celebrity. At the start of the film, a bored Holmes is intrigued by an invitation to the Russian Ballet. Backstage after the show, the star ballerina, Madame Petrova, makes him an offer: she wants him to give her a child. Flustered by this prospect, Holmes turns her down and gets out of dodge.

This only makes up the first act of the movie. After that, a different woman comes knocking and Holmes and Watson embark on a new case that involves the Loch Ness monster, German spies, and even Queen Victoria herself. It's all a very good, somewhat comedic Sherlock Holmes adventure, and as clever as you would expect from Wilder and Diamond, but we've seen it all before. That first act is where the movie should have been found. I wanted to see a deeper exploration of how Holmes would have dealt with this request from the ballerina.

It's too bad about that, but the movie is still very fun. Stephens and Blakely make an adequate Holmes and Watson, and additionally, Christopher Lee plays Sherlock's brother Mycroft, which is some very cool casting. Genevieve Page plays Gabrielle, the woman who sets Holmes off on his mission to Scotland, and steals his heart.

I guess I don't have a great deal else to say about The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I wish the movie was actually about his private life, but at least it's a Sherlock Holmes movie, and very well crafted. It was made fairly late in Wilder's career, at a point when directing jobs appeared to be thinning out for him. It had been four years since his last film. Maybe he was losing some of his fire at this point. This is far from a classic, but it's still very good.

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More Billy Wilder reviews on I Probably Liked It:
Ace in the Hole
The Front Page
Sowing My "Wilder" Oats: The Seven Year Itch and Sabrina
Sowing My "Wilder" Oats: Witness for the Prosecution and Kiss Me, Stupid

Shadows and Fog and Walker: Two Comedies About Sticking Our Noses Where They Don't Belong

Shadows and Fog, by Woody Allen, 1991


I've seen most of Woody Allen's films at this point, although I've fallen off in recent years. I was pretty sure I had seen most, if not all, of the best ones, which left me pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed his 1991 film, Shadows and Fog.

A darkly comedic homage to German Expressionism, Shadows and Fog has some really beautiful black and white cinematography. In fact, there are tons of shadows and lots of fog in the movie, as I suppose should be expected. Set, I think, in the 1920's, a serial killer is stalking the streets and strangling his victims. Kleinman, a nebbishy 50-ish Woody Allen type, played by Woody Allen, is awakened in the middle of the night by the men of the neighborhood, who are forming a vigilante group to hunt this guy down. He is peer pressured into joining, despite his well-founded reservations.

At the same time, at a travelling circus outside of town, a couple, a sword swallower (Mia Farrow) and a clown (John Malkovich) to be exact, get in a fight over cheating and having kids, and the sword swallower, Irmy, leaves the clown. In the city, she falls in with a prostitute (Lily Tomlin), who takes her into her whorehouse for safety, and the two main stories begin to collide.

I really liked Shadows and Fog. The story is complex, funny, spooky, and interesting, Allen's directing is at its best, and the cast is top notch. It includes Allen, Farrow, Malkovitch, Tomlin, Madonna, Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster, Donald Pleasance, John Cusack, and even a brief appearance by William H. Macy. I especially enjoyed Pleasance's small part as a coroner, and Cusack as a young student infatuated with Farrow, who he believes to be a prostitute. The payoff at the end is pretty great too.

Woody Allen has made a lot of movies. I'm not sure where Shadows and Fog would rank among them, but I'd put it somewhere in the top half, and that's saying quite a lot.

Walker, by Alex Cox, 1987


I didn't know what to expect when I turned on Alex Cox's trippy anti-Biopic, Walker. Cox, director of Repo Man and Sid & Nancy (which I still haven't seen!), brought his punk-rock ethos to the Historical Biography genre, and destroyed his own Hollywood career in the process. Walker is a truly strange mess of a movie, and I kind of loved it.

Walker is the story of William Walker (Ed Harris), an American soldier of fortune in the 1850's who leads a group of mercenaries into Nicaragua to liberate the locals, only to take over and become dictator himself. Cox is not so much interested in historical facts, however, and he plays fast and loose with the truth. He's more interested in commenting on what America was actually doing in Latin America in the 1980's, and he viciously comments on it throughout.

There's lots of hilarious black comedy in Walker, such as the battalion drummer who asks to sit out on the next day's battle because he's noticed in all the war paintings that the drummer is always one of the corpses. Walker looks him in the eye like a holy man and says "as long as I am your commander, no harm shall come to you." Of course, at the battle he is gunned down violently and repeatedly, as Walker is somehow able to walk through all the carnage magically unscathed.

In addition to the comedy and the carnage, there is a surrealist element to Cox's film as well. As the movie progresses, he starts sneaking in historical anachronisms, to remind us that this isn't the 1850's he's talking about, this is today (1987). At first it's something like someone lighting a fuse with a Zippo lighter, or a guy drinking a bottle of Coke, but by the end, there are helicopters disrupting the period authenticity.

Add to all this an excellent, moody musical score by Joe Strummer of The Clash, and you have in Walker a great piece of anti-establishment cinema; shocking, funny, violent, and rebellious. I think it was slammed by critics at the time of its release, but like the best cult movies, has later experienced some rehabilitation and found an audience. Some even hold it up as Alex Cox's best film. I still need to watch Sid and Nancy, so I don't know yet. I sure dug it, though.

The Campaign

The Campaign, by Jay Roach, 2012

The circus that American politics has become over the last decade has just been begging to be turned into the most ridiculous comedy imaginable. All the controversies, sex scandals, and embarrassing gaffes we've been witness to from our governors, congressmen, etc. have provided a goldmine of comedic opportunities. Just watch The Daily Show and laugh and laugh (and cry a little), and you'll see it's true. Now, with Jay Roach's The Campaign, we're finally getting that movie. And hey, it's pretty good.

The Campaign is about a vicious North Carolina Congressional race between two inept buffoons. Will Ferrell is Cam Brady, the current Congressman, who doesn't seem to care about governing, so much as using his position to get lots of money and sex. After he's caught in the act, the "Motch Brothers", two billionaire siblings (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) who use their vast resources to manipulate the government at their whim, decide to find a new candidate to act as their pawn in office. That man is Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), a small town tour guide, an effeminate, dimwitted but good natured weirdo, perhaps not the ideal candidate.

What follows is a campaign consisting entirely of increasingly vicious attacks, flubs, and sabotages, as both candidates fight dirty. Roach, Ferrell, Galifianakis and company use this opportunity to take a swing at as many of the bizarre and hilarious controversies that saturated our airwaves in the last few years as they can, and a few that are definitely made up, but don't feel entirely outside the realm of possibility.

As low brow as The Campaign gets, and it gets pretty low, it still manages to stay pretty clever. In fact, it's a little light on laughs at times, and stuff does fall flat, but I didn't mind because there were some pretty smart jokes in there too. I loved that not a single actual issue is brought up by either candidate in the whole movie, the entire campaign is just smear tactics. Roach has experience directing both smart political movies (HBO's Game Change and Recount) and the dumbest comedies imaginable (The Austin Powers movies, baby!), so it's fun watching him combine the two. There are even some handheld scenes that visually mimic his HBO movies.

I'm on record as a big fan of both Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, and they're both having a good time here. The supporting cast is good too, including SNL's Jason Sudeikis as Ferrell's campaign manager, Dylan McDermott as the man the Motch Brothers assign to transform Marty Huggins into a viable candidate, Katherine LaNasa as Cam Brady's opportunistic wife.

I liked The Campaign. It's worth looking into, especially if you like the leads, because really, they're just doing what they do. If the Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis schticks make you laugh in other things, then it will work here. But in addition to these guys, you also have a pretty smart, satirical script that feels like, I don't know, one part The Daily Show and one part Talladega Nights.

Hyper-Violent Sci-Fi Satires by Guys Named Paul Double Feature! Death Race 2000 and Robocop

Death Race 2000, by Paul Bartel, 1975

I love the way Roger Corman worked. He would give his writers and directors near total freedom to make the movie they wanted within the parameters he assigned them. He might give them a title and a star they had to use, and they had to include a certain amount of violence and nudity (these were exploitation movies, after all), but the rest of the decisions were up to them. Sure, he brought a lot of garbage into the world. Some of that garbage is totally watchable, but a lot of it isn't. And every once in a while, he would give us a true gem. Paul Bartel's action packed satire Death Race 2000 is one such gem.

In a future totalitarian state (in the year 2000, naturally), the government holds a violent race, as a means to keep the masses in check. The object of the race is to drive across the country in souped up cars, earning points along the way by running over civilians (extra points for children!). The champion and star of the Death Race is Frankenstein (David Carradine), a mysterious masked driver who finds himself in the middle of an underground resistance's attempts to assassinate the dictator, AKA Mr. President.

Death Race 2000 is over-the-top, ridiculous, full of gratuitous violence and nudity, and very, very funny. Carradine is great as Frankenstein, and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone also stars as his rival, Machine Gun Joe Viterbo. Paul Bartel at his best (this and Eating Raoul in particular) was a sharp and witty satirist, and with Death Race 2000, he's giving the moviegoing audience exactly what they need to satisfy their bloodlust, just like the spectators of the Death Race itself. At the same time, he's maybe getting some of his more observant audience members to question that bloodlust. So maybe that violence and nudity isn't all gratuitous after all. OK, it's still pretty gratuitous.

There's also a bit of a subtle feminist message in there, just by having male and female racers on equal ground and no attention being drawn to that fact. Sure there's also plenty of nudity that might negate that message, but as I said before, including the nudity was part of the deal, and Bartel did try to throw in some male nudity to balance things out a little.

Death Race 2000 is a whole lot of fun, and with some great social commentary that was maybe even a bit ahead of its time. I was thinking a great double feature might be to partner this with Albert Brooks' hilarious 1979 mockumentary, Real Life, which basically predicts reality TV a good two decades before it blew up. OR, if you want to keep the violence coming, you could partner it with...

Robocop, by Paul Verhoeven, 1987

Yes, this is the perfect double feature partner for Death Race 2000. Another hyper-violent science fiction super-satire, Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic Robocop gives us a near future run by corporate interests and crime lords. It's scarily prescient and in some ways may be even more relevant today than it was in 1987.

In a run-down future Detroit, a huge corporation called Omni Consumer Products has its eyes on replacing the police force with its own robotic force. When a prototype for a giant crimestopping machine called ED-209 malfunctions, another plan goes into place, one to convert a cop, recently murdered in the line of duty, into a cybernetic killing machine. That cop is Murphy (Peter Weller), a good man, with a wife and a son. Murphy must then overcome the programming his corporate overlords imbued in him, and rediscover his own humanity in order to bring peace to the streets of Detroit.

I had seen parts of Robocop here and there, but this was my first time watching the movie from beginning to end. The violence is excessive to the point of being downright comedic, and if Verhoeven's intent with that wasn't evident, the hilarious interstitial news reports and commercials woven into the narrative should make it clear. He's using the violence to make a point.

Something that really stood out about Robocop for me was the fact that, besides all the extremely horrific content, it still feels like a kids movie. Robocop's even got a little kid he wants to impress with his gun twirling skills. It's hilarious to think that in the 80's this actually would have been marketed towards kids. There were surely action figures and everything. I remember Robocop toys when I was young, but I don't remember if they were for this or the sequels.

Anyway, Robocop is great. Peter Weller is great, too, though I will always prefer Buckaroo Banzai over this role. I love the stop motion animation of the ED-209 and the animatronics and all the other effects, too. I don't know what took me so long to watch this movie. Both of these movies, really. Watch em watch em watch em!

Mon Oncle

Mon Oncle, by Jacques Tati, 1958

The word "delightful" is surely applied to a lot of films, but few embody delight as wholeheartedly as Jacques Tati's gently satirical comedy, Mon Oncle. I think I was probably smiling through the whole film. Winner of the 1958 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Mon Oncle is the story of, well, not so much a story as an episodic progression of events, of Monsieur Hulot, played by Tati himself, his signature character. He lives a relaxed life in an old building in a more traditional part of France. He is worshiped as a hero by his nephew, a little boy whose parents take great pride in their ultra-modern, high tech, comically unwelcoming, house of the future. There's a series of events, and a beginning and end, but that simple premise is pretty much the bulk of the story.

Mon Oncle is basically a silent film. There's dialogue, but it's mostly inconsequential. The narrative is carried by elaborate comedy set pieces and sight gags, commenting on, among other things the coldness and lack of function of modern 1950's design, as compared to the warmth and charming inefficiency of the old world. Monsieur Hulot's sister is obsessed with showing off all the pointless flourishes and gadgets of her home to all who visit, eager to impress them and be the envy of her neighborhood with her spitting fish statue, which she noisily turns on whenever somebody walks to the front gate. Her front yard is a labyrinthine series of stones, the lawn is off limits.

Hulot, on the other hand, fumbles through the modern world, never quite in step with it. This is demonstrated as his meddling sister tries to get him out of her son's life by getting him a job and setting him up with a lady. Tati plays Hulot much in the way Buster Keaton played his characters, with a cryptic expression that we the viewer can apply all sorts of emotions to. Is he annoyed or is he just baffled? Or is he amused? He quietly observes, and never seems to judge, or at least is too polite to do so openly.

The comedy set pieces are truly masterful. These aren't big pratfalls and stunts. Tati's physical comedy is much smaller in scale and more mundane. He sets up a plethora of motifs and recurring jokes and then builds them through repetition and slight variation, and they get funnier and funnier as they progress. The timing of the gags are some of the most intricate I've ever seen, and not just the comedic timing of the actors, but also of the world around them. It's like watching a symphony of comedy.

And speaking of music, the music and sound effects are just as important as the visuals. Tati does some truly incredible stuff with sound. Each location has a theme, and each recurring joke has its own recurring sound effects to go with it.

This is the first of Tati's scant six films I have seen, but I have a feeling I'll be seeking the rest out in the coming months. I think Tati is going to join the ranks of my favorite filmmakers.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

We've all seen the movie a million times, a bunch of dumb college kids go camping and stumble across a mysterious spooky cabin, where they are then picked off one by one by some sort of monster or another. Heck, I just wrote about The Cabin in the Woods a few days ago, which was pretty much the ultimate deconstruction of the genre.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil would actually make a great double feature with The Cabin in the Woods. Though a much sillier movie than Cabin, Tucker & Dale also takes the premise of the camping kids getting killed and turns it on its head. This time, the rednecks aren't the enemy, the prejudice and hysteria of the stupid kids is the real killer.

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are two good hearted best friends who also happen to be rednecks going on a vacation to a run-down old cabin that Tucker bought with the intention of fixing up. On the way, they encounter the group of college kids, who believe them to be scary inbred hillbilly murderers. When one of the kids, Allison (30 Rock's Katrina Bowden), falls off a dock and hurts her head on a rock, Tucker and Dale rescue her and take her back to the cabin to fix her up. The kids think she's been kidnapped and taken to a torture dungeon or something, and in a panicked attempt to rescue her, begin getting themselves violently killed one by one, through their own clumsiness and idiocy. Tucker and Dale can do nothing but watch these morons pick themselves off.

It's all very cleverly executed. Kind of Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Ladykillers. Tucker and Dale are loveable guys, though a little dim. If you think teens behave stupidly in serious horror movies, wait until you see these kids. Their dumbness is exaggerated to a hilarious degree. It's nice to see southern stereotypes busted up a little bit, we northerners can be a little unfair.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is director Eli Craig's first film, and hopefully it will attain a cult status that will allow him to work some more. He put an interesting spin on well worn territory; not an easy task at all. This is a funny movie with a good heart and plenty of gore, in case the good heart is not enough for you.

Ace in the Hole

I didn't know anything about Ace in the Hole before I watched it. I knew it was by Billy Wilder, who has made some of my favorite movies. From the premise, I actually thought it was a comedy, and it even started out somewhat light. But I didn't expect what I got at all: A dark, cynical, noirish satire.

Ace in the Hole is a 1951 film starring Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, a disgraced New York reporter who must now resort to begging for a job at a tiny, inconsequential newspaper in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has been fired from so many other jobs that he is perfectly honest and upfront with the editor about his past indiscretions. The editor gives him a chance anyway.

Tatum wiles away the time until, on assignment to cover a rattlesnake hunt, he lucks his way into a man trapped in a mine. Seeing his opportunity back into the big time, he uses every dirty trick in the book and manipulates the story of the man into a national sensation.

The man in the hole, Leo Minosa, is everything a reporter could want: He fought in the war, he worries that he's awakened an ancient Indian curse, and he has a wife and family waiting for him back home. Tatum manipulates the facts to his favor, going so far as convincing Leo's wife, Lorraine, just about to run out on him, to stay and reap the benefits of her husband's plight.

As the story goes national, crowds begin to form, gawkers camping in front of the mine to watch the rescue effort and be a part of history. The site becomes a carnival, both figuratively, and quite literally, as vendors come and set up rides, live music, and food. Leo's family's little roadside shop, once devoid of life, is now booming with business.

Ace in the Hole doesn't let up for a minute. It's about as vicious and viciously entertaining as a movie can get. Kirk Douglas' Chuck Tatum isn't exactly likeable, but he sure is fun to watch. Blinded by greed, he makes dirty deals with the sheriff, cleverly cuts all the rest of the news reporters out of his story, and even works to keep Leo in the hole longer to drag things out.

I read that Ace in the Hole was not very well received. That doesn't surprise me. It's not exactly a feel-good movie, and I can't imagine it was something an audience from 1951 would go nuts for. Fortunately, it has aged ridiculously well. The dialogue sounds as good and real today as it did then, and the ruthless skewering of the press milking a story for all its worth is only a million times more relevant now than it was sixty years ago. It actually reminded me of Sidney Lumet's Network in its prescience, though Network was so on-the-nose it's scary.

Any lover of classic films should definitely watch Ace in the Hole. The same goes for pretty much every Billy Wilder film, from what I can tell. He was smart, observant, versatile, and unafraid to shy away from adult issues. I'm sure there's a Billy Wilder movie for everyone. I think my favorite will always be The Apartment, but I still have a lot more to watch.

The Cabin in the Woods

Cabins in the woods get bad reputations from horror movies. My family owns a cabin in the woods and sure, it's a little creepy at night, but it's a perfectly pleasant place to be. No Deadites, no deranged undead campers, no monstrous inbred hillbillies. Just peace and tranquility and the occasional bat or spider.

Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's horror comedy The Cabin in the Woods is about none of those things and all of them. More than anything it's about the modern mythology that cabins in the woods have been given over decades of horror movies. It's about why we watch horror movies, and why we gain some sick kind of pleasure from watching young, dumb, and horny teenagers getting dismembered.

On one side of the story, we have the five typical college kids about to go on a weekend of debauchery at one of their cousin's cabins. Of course, the cabin is creepy and unsettling and they find a mysterious cellar that awakens a horrible evil.

But from the very first scene, we also know something these kids don't: they're just puppets. They're being monitored and controlled by a large scientific facility, for (at first, anyway) unknown reasons. The guys in charge of the facility (scene stealers Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) watch with a casual detachment as the kids are manipulated through one dumb horror cliche after another.

I won't go any further, though. There are some really surprising twists and turns along the way, and if they haven't been ruined for you yet, I don't want to be the one. The entire third act turns the whole movie on its head, and it's hilarious. I basically laughed for the entire last half hour or so.

The five college kids are all great. They have the challenge of playing both the stereotypes of the movies they're reenacting, and also just five normal teenagers who can't quite understand why they're acting so stupidly. Kristen Connolly in particular is good as the typical innocent good girl character, as is Fran Kranz as the goofy stoner comic relief.

Co-writer/producer Joss Whedon and co-writer/director Drew Goddard wrote the movie together and shot it 3 years ago, and due to the financial problems of MGM, sat on a shelf awaiting release until it was purchased by Lion's Gate and freed from purgatory. It couldn't have come out at a better time, with Whedon's The Avengers just about to explode and make him into the biggest, most in demand writer/director this side of J.J. Abrams. The script and the direction couldn't be more sure of themselves. The dialogue and story are whip-smart, funny, and at times, thought-provoking, and through all of its deconstruction and self-awareness, it never forgets that the victims are people and not just avatars.

I know you're probably all seeing The Avengers, so why don't you make it a double-Joss weekend and catch Cabin in the Woods, too? And please remember, not ALL cabins are like this one. I've been going all my life and haven't once been molested by an evil tree.

The Long Goodbye

Wow, before we start this review, just take a look at that poster. Click on it and make it big. Look at that! If you don't recognize the style, that's by legendary Mad Magazine artist Jack Davis. The reason I'm pointing this out is that only a kooky Robert Altman movie from the 1970's could get sold with a poster like that. And it's appropriate that Altman himself narrates it, since his movies liked to poke fun at their own conventions, much in the way a Mad parody would do. I would totally hang that poster on my wall (hint, hint, gifters!).

The Long Goodbye is Altman's take on the Film Noir genre, adapting the famous Raymond Chandler novel featuring Elliott Gould as his detective, Philip Marlowe. The movie kicks off with Marlowe's buddy Jim coming to his run-down apartment, asking for him to take him across the border. He, of course, needs to cool down for a while. Upon returning, Marlowe finds out that Jim's wife has been killed and the cops think Jim did it. Believing his friend innocent, Marlowe attempts to crack the case, digging his way through L.A.'s seedy underbelly in the way that all great Film Noirs do.

But Altman would never settle to just make a Film Noir. He could never just make a genre movie. He had to find ways to explore and deconstruct the genre, twist it around and flip it on its head. In the case of The Long Goodbye, he takes a rumpled, unkempt 1950's detective, and transports him into the present in order to explore the shallow, health-obsessed Los Angeles of the early 70's. Marlowe radiates unhealthiness, with his chain-smoking and squalorous, filthy apartment. His neighbors are healthy, young, new-age, yoga obsessed girls. His investigations even lead him to a corrupt rehab clinic.

Elliott Gould creates something truly unique and utterly bizarre with his characterization of Marlowe. Altman was well known for giving a ton of leeway to his actors, and I think in this case he just let Gould do whatever the hell he wanted, and in doing so hit upon something kind of magical. Marlowe mutters to himself constantly (and hilariously), possibly Altman's twist on the voice-over narration of detective movies of old. He also wisecracks endlessly, presses his face up against windows, and talks to his cat as though they were equals.

The other cast member of note is Sterling Hayden, possibly best known for being the lead in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. As a drunk, unstable old writer, he is the only other anachronistic character in the modern world Marlowe inhabits. I don't think he even had a script, Altman probably just said, "just go, be drunk."

I think this is the 10th or 11th Altman film I've seen so far, most of them being the important ones, and The Long Goodbye is quite possibly my favorite. It's extremely funny and weird as a comedy, but still works on the level of a good old fashioned detective story. I wish the types of movies that warranted Mad Magazine posters could still get made, but alas, there was a time and a place in cinematic history for that, and that was the 70's.

Citizen Ruth

I'm not sure why it took me so long to see Citizen Ruth. I love the films of Alexander Payne. So much that I can't even pick a favorite between Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways. So with the very imminent release of Payne's new film, The Descendants (which I will surely be reviewing this weekend), I thought I would go back to the beginning and finally watch his first film.

Citizen Ruth stars Laura Dern as a paint-huffing mess of a human being who, after being taken in from her latest binge by the authorities, finds out she is pregnant. This is nothing new to her. It will be her fifth child that society deems (correctly so) her unfit for. The judge gives her a choice. She either must terminate the pregnancy, or go to prison for placing her unborn child in danger through her excesses.

While being held in jail, Ruth meets a group of Pro-Life protesters who, after hearing her situation, decide to pay her bail and take her in, with the intention of using her as a figurehead for their cause. Soon enough, the Pro-Choicers get their mitts on her too, and Ruth finds herself caught in the middle of an escalating battle between the two.

The satire in Citizen Ruth is sharp and Payne does a great job of walking a fine line. He does this by making the activist groups on both sides of the issue both pretty equally corrupt and self-centered. They are both willing to do anything to get Ruth's endorsement, even though she really doesn't care about what either side thinks.

Laura Dern's portrayal of Ruth is excellent. She and Payne (and co-writer Jim Taylor) have created a perfect foil for these two groups. Even though she is a complete wreck, Ruth is also innocent in her way; not particularly smart, not interested in the greater issue at hand. Her main concern is getting her hands on some cash so she can score again and get high. Despite all this, Payne shows a great deal of empathy for Ruth and her plight. The situation she is pressured into forces her to rethink her priorities and consider maybe getting herself together.

The supporting cast surrounding Dern is a good deal of fun to watch as well. Kurtwood Smith and Mary Kay Place are hilarious as the Pro-Lifers who take her in. I especially liked M.C. Gainey as one of the Pro-Choicers. Burt Reynolds has a small part, in the midst of his post-Boogie-Nights mid-nineties career revival.

Citizen Ruth was a strong first film, but it is still a first film. As much as I enjoyed it, I think Alexander Payne was still working out his trademark style and tone. The subject matter is bold, and was surely a great way to get his name out there, but I felt the satire in his second film (Election) was a lot funnier, if not quite as edgy, and his (and our) empathy for his often hopeless characters has only grown in his later films. Still, Citizen Ruth is totally worth checking out if you haven't yet, especially if you're a fan of Payne's other work.

The 10th Victim

There's a certain European sci-fi aesthetic from the 60's that drives me crazy (in the good way). It's that sexy, mod-era, Andy Warhol-ish design style you see in movies like Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik, Planet of the Vampires, even the early James Bond films. Barbarella is probably the absolute pinnacle of that style, in that it created an entire well-realized, bizarre universe out of it. It's one of my favorite movies. So, when I recently found out about Elio Petri's 1965 film, The 10th Victim, I scooted it right up to the top of my queue.

The 10th Victim is a science fiction film loaded with action and social satire. Set in the not-too-distant future, in a world where all war has been eliminated. Mankind's lust for violence has been diverted into a legal system of murder-as-entertainment: The Big Hunt. If you register for The Big Hunt, you must go through ten rounds, five as the Hunter, five as the Victim. The Hunter hunts, the Victim runs. Whoever lives wins. If you manage to survive ten rounds in the hunt, you gain fame, respect, and a million dollars. A not entirely unfamiliar, but very cool premise so far, right?

The movie opens with a woman running through the streets, and a man with a gun chasing after her. He frequently misses, and she stops and taunts him whenever she gets a chance. Eventually, she lures him into a S&M club, where she comes out as the entertainment, wearing a silver bikini and a mask over her eyes. She comes to him and seductively tells him to remove her mask, and then she turns around, and shoots him. Wait, there's more: With boob guns! She shoots him out of her bikini top.

We find out that this woman is Caroline Meredith (I suppose the Italians' idea of an American name), played by the most legendary of Bond Girls, Ursula Andress. She just finished playing the Victim in her 9th match. In the next and final match, she gets to be the Hunter.

Next, we see a jockey about to start a horse race. That is, until his boots explode. These boot bombs were placed by Marcello Poletti, played by Marcello Mastroianni. This was his 6th time in the hunt. In his next match, he'll be the Victim.

Marcello is in for a challenge. Caroline has corporate sponsorship from a Ming Tea company, who has given her pretty much unlimited resources to get her 10th kill in front of their cameras. There's a scene where Caroline and her corporate overlords are flying over Rome in a helicopter, scouting out locations for her to perform her deed. They settle on The Temple of Venus.

Marcello, on the other hand, is broke, and having all of his possessions repoed. A neat little detail, I thought, was his comic book collection. They were actually treated as something of value in a 60's movie! Unheard of.

Caroline then starts formulating a plan to get Marcello to the Temple of Venus. She "runs" into him, telling him that she's an American journalist writing a piece on the "sexual habits" of the Italian male. She says that she's representing "millions of unsatisfied American women" and she offers to pay him for the "interview". Although unaware that she is his Hunter, Marcello is suspicious of her, as he should be of everyone.

They get to know each other, and of course, they fall in love. She is moved by a sermon he conducts for a cult of "Sunset Worshipers". He takes her to his ex-wife's house, where she discovers he is hiding his parents, not wanting to turn them in to the state to be eliminated for being old. He explains most Italians hide their parents, usually surgically altering them to look like teenagers. As they fall for each other, they also keep at arms length. Marcello is reasonably sure she's his hunter, but can't do anything unless he's 100% sure, since he would get 30 years in prison for killing anybody else.

Anyway, I'm not going to explain any further, because the movie is a whole lot of fun. It gets crazier and crazier towards the end, with one double-cross and fake-out after another, until flying completely off the rails into absurdity. That's not meant to be a criticism, the movie is a comedy, and it knows what it's doing. The final scene is ridiculous and funny.

There are a lot of very funny little asides thrown into the movie as futuristic social commentary. While scouting locations, one of the Ming Tea reps mentions that he went to the Vatican on his honeymoon with his 18th wife. A news reports in the background that the "National Association of Homosexuals in France have outlawed The Big Hunt". Marcello nonchalantly walks by a fist fight in progress. When Caroline, watching via surveillance cam, asks who those people are, she is informed "just some students discussing art". The hilariously ironic slogan of the Ming Tea company.

The production values are pretty cool. You know, because of that sixties thing. Marcello has this pet robot thing with baby doll arms. There's this awesome outdoor lounge with inflatable chairs all around. A practice arena where hunters and victims run around shooting guns and dodging cars. And, I was surprised to discover, the movie is subtitled, instead of the usual crappy dubbing I usually find with Italian B-movies.

The two leads are both fun to watch, apart and together. Marcello Mastroianni is a badass in it, and Ursula Andress is strong, capable, clever, and (of course) sexy. The movie is surprisingly progressive for its time. They never question Caroline's abilities as a hunter. She and Marcello are adversaries on an even playing ground.

In conclusion, go find yourself a copy of The 10th Victim and watch it! Especially if you're a fan of the retro sci-fi stuff.

Four Lions

So much of the best satire comes out of England. There's a fearlessness over there that's pretty much unheard of over here. Chris Morris is very much a driving force behind this. Over the last two decades, he's tackled just about every taboo under the sun on his various television projects. Recently, with Four Lions, he brought his edge to the movies.

Four Lions is the kind of movie that is absolutely impossible to get made in Hollywood. It's pitch dark. It's uncompromising. It's politically inflammatory. It's not for the easily offended. And also, it's funny as hell.

What Morris has managed to make is a zany screwball comedy, about an inept group of Islamic terrorists planning, and botching, an attack. A story like this is not an easy task to pull off. He has to walk a lot of tightropes. The whole movie is a balancing act; it has to press buttons to get a point across, but it knows the right buttons to press. For example, one very important and wise move is making one of the terrorists (and probably the dumbest and most zealous of the group) a white guy.

The characters, though mostly buffoons, are also three-dimensional. They believe with all their hearts in their cause, and are willing to die for it. The leader has a wife and son, both of whom are aware of his plans and supportive. This devotion, combined with their ineptitude, make them simultaneously comical and also quite scary.

Where does it all go, you ask? I don't want to say too specifically, because the payoff is both funny and poignant. This is a very good film, the kind that stays with you after it ends. A-