So I've taken a brief hiatus, but I'm back baby. I've actually still continued to watch a new movie everyday since my last post, unfortunately two of them I fell asleep during and one of them was a chore to watch and writing a discussion on it felt like a chore as well. I still might try to post it later, but for now I'm moving on to a different movie. Earth Girls Are Easy is that movie. While I was listening to a podcast, they briefly discussed this movie and it seemed like a good movie to watch next for the blog.
Earth Girls Are Easy is about three furry aliens (Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, and Damon Wayans) whose spacecraft lands/plops in Geena Davis' swimming pool. They are now stuck on Earth until they can fix their ship. Davis helps the aliens blend in while they are on Earth and eventually finds Mr. Right along the way.
One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Davis is explaining to co-worker at the salon, that she has aliens with her and she needs her help to disguise them. While she is explaining this an old lady passes by and says, "What did you Say?" Davis responds, "Oh, nothing. I'm on drugs."
Michael Mckean's character was definitely something I've never seen from him before. He played a surfer/stoner type, who despite all he's seen he still believes the aliens are from Finland. In fact as they are flying away in there spaceship he yells, "Give my love to Finland." Another great line happens when Davis was consulting him on what to do about the alien situation in her pool, he said, "Waste you brain, wax your board, and pray for waves."
Apparently the plot of this movie is based off of a song. This isn't a huge surprise as the plot isn't the most compelling thing about this movie. The jokes are really where this movie shines. Also the cast is really amazing. It's always really cool to see a cast like this all young and fresh-faced, before they were the big names they are today.
It's embarrassing to admit this but, I've only seen two Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in my life, Universal Soldier and Time Cop. So one of my top priorities going into this blog is to raise that number little by little to a more respectable one. There are many reasons I picked Hard Target to watch first. One, A buddy recommended it to me. Two, It's directed the legendary action icon John Woo. Three, JCVD's greasy mullet, featured above. Let's dive in.
"Tell that girlfriend of yours to point her tits North and step on the gas." After hearing this line, I was completely on board with this movie. That might be the funniest line I've ever heard. And the guy whose says it to JCVD, sounds so theatrical when he's saying it. I imagine he spent a lot of time looking into his bathroom mirror as he practiced that one line over and over again. Changing the inflections randomly. Hopefully they include footage of this as one of many special features in the inevitable 25th anniversary edition of this movie. One can dream.
As good as the line discussed above was, it still doesn't hold a candle to the best scene in the movie, the snake punch! JCVD grabs a snake leaping in the air towards his love interest. With the snake in his grasp, he punches it in the face. He then makes it clear that he just knocked out the snake and that he didn't kill it. He proceeds to bite off the rattler of the snake so it wouldn't make as much noise when the bad guys run into him. I feel like the snake might be too distract to attack on account of the bottom 1/6 of his body is missing after waking up from getting punched in the face by JCVD. Not the most sound plan, but it did work out for him.
It's always a treat to watch someone who really knows how to punch and kick, punch and kick. And JCVD knows a thing or two about punching and he was a professional kick boxer, so I'm sure he wrote the book on kicking. His martial arts prowess is put on display very well in this movie. Unfortunately his acting skill just isn't anywhere near his kicking and punching level. I know that most people watching Hard Target aren't expecting an oscar worthy performance, but I can't help wish he wasn't so stiff in this movie. This wasn't the best cheesy action ever but it was still pretty damn good.
I was browsing the Horror section of my local video store (The Video Fan) the other day and I spotted a VHS that stuck out in the wall of other colorful rectangles. For non-Richmonders, I didn't take a time machine to 1995. I'm one of the lucky people who lives close to a classic video store. And one of my favorite things to do there is walk though the store and make the decision of what I'm going to rent based solely on the cover art. Horror, Sci-Fi, and Kung-Fu movies always win based on this criteria. Anyway I saw this really gnarly looking VHS with a 3-D, pop-out cover. It was Black Roses and it won the prize. Let's talk about it.
First off, this movie is very bad. Sometimes it's bad in a good way. But mostly it's just a bad movie. Looking back there was actually a lot of cool cheesy deaths and bad-ass 80s metal. Unfortunately all of this was ruined by all of the slow and repetitive shit that was in between it.
The movie begins immediately with a Black Roses concert. At this point in the movie the band looks like it's somewhere between Gwar and The Chuck E Cheese Band. They're playing the best song in the movie, "Me Against The World." Then everyone in the audience basically turns into zombies. It is a very attention grabbing cold open.
Black Roses is starting their tour in the small town of Mill Basin (even though we just saw them play a show in another town.) The adults of Mill Basin are uneasy about Black Roses preforming in their small little town and corrupting their youth. Their concerns are more than validated throughout this movie as the kids turn into demons/monsters and kill the adults. All of these deaths are pretty great. One in particular involved a creature that looked like an alligator/scorpion/crab coming out of a speaker and slowly attacking this guy and then sucking him into the speaker. Also this creature's tail was obviously a vacuum cleaner tube.
Despite some of the awesomeness and Troll 2 quality special effects, this movie just wasn't very entertaining overall. It had a very lazy screenplay that just seemed to be repeating the same pattern over and over with a few cool cheesy over the top scenes sprinkled on top.
I like watching dumb B-movies and this movie certainly wasn't a waste of time. But at the same time I could probably list about 50 dumb B-movies I would rather watch than this one.
I wanted to start off with a movie that's on Netflix so it would be easy for everyone to watch along with the blog. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of Albert Brooks' movies are currently on Netflix, so I will have to do a blog post on Real Life and Looking for Comedy in the Modern World later this month, because those are the only one I haven't seen before besides this one.
One of my favorite things about an Albert Brooks movie is he doesn't beat around the bush to send his characters on the journey you paid to see. This one is no different. About 5 minutes or so into the movie our protagonist, played by Brooks, breaks up with his girlfriend and begins his new life as a single man.
There is a scene shortly after the break-up where Brooks takes quaaludes and walks around his house calling his friend and telling him that he loves him, calling a random girl in his rolodex that he doesn't know and asking her out on a date, putting on an album and immediately taking it off because it's too sad, then finally sleeping in his car while Queen plays on the radio. This scene lasts about 10 minutes, yet somehow it doesn't go on too long. This is also one of the most genuine portrayals of having a bad time on drugs I've ever seen in a movie, which just makes the scene hit that much harder. This movie is filled with these long comedic set pieces that are so well written and so well preformed they never overstay their welcome.
A couple of these long scenes take place in the editing bay, where Brooks works on editing a sci-fi B-movie. One in particular they are doing sound mixing for the film. Brooks is the only one in the room that actually cares and he has to work with and against his apathetic coworkers to foley the scene. I have a link to the scene below, because describing it just wouldn't do it justice.
Despite the rolodex I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, this movie is not dated one bit. It actually holds up really well today. It's probably the most ahead of it's time of all of Brooks' movies I've seen. The movie depicts love in a very honest and bleak way. Brooks struggles with jealousy throughout this film and it is very apparent that it's something he's probably not going to overcome anytime soon. His jealousy is what keeps him coming back to her and it's ultimately what breaks them up over and over again. In, Defending Your Life, (another Brooks movie) Brooks has a monologue about how his wife was too pretty for him, he went on to say that he has a theory that any excess prettiness comes with too many problems. I think "too many problems" is code for jealousy. Apparently Kubrick called Brooks after Modern Romance came out and asked him how he made a movie about jealousy, and that he's always wanted to make a movie about jealousy. There really isn't much higher praise than that.
I can't recommend this movie enough. It's definitely the funniest movie I've seen by Brooks. I'm not sure where it ranks overall though. I probably need to watch it a few more times to make that decision. Hopefully Brooks' work being on Netflix will bring him a little more recognition because he really does deserve it. Let me know what you think of the movie. I'd love to get a discussion going here.
Basically I was inspired by Brian Collins' Horror Movie A Day Blog, so I decided to blatantly rip off his idea, but with less direction.
I'm going to watch a movie that I haven't seen before everyday. It can be from any genre, time period, country, or whatever. Anything goes. I'm going to try to find more obscure movies, but of course this is still an excuse to watch some of the classics that I've never seen before.
Also don't be "that guy" who freaks out because someone hasn't seen one of the classics. "Really? You've never seen [insert classic movie]? How have you never seen that movie?" This isn't and has never been a productive conversation.
I don't think I'm going to do a rating scale, because I'm definitely going to watch some B-movies and those are really hard to rate, especially against a classic film.
Generally, I'm not going to be reviewing new releases. I feel like there is already too many places for you to get a review of the 2016 Ghostbusters movie.
Also if you have any suggestions of some movies, directors, writers that you want me to check out let me know.
