Mean Creek (2004)

This is one of those movies that we are going to look back on as a jumping point for the careers of the actors involved.  I can see it joining the ranks of movies like Dazed And Confused, The River's Edge, and Boogie Nights as having one of those ensemble casts that works perfectly where all of the actors were in tune with the script, the director, and most importantly each other.  Rory Culkin open the film as Sam, a kid who gets beat up by a bigger kid named George (Josh Peck).  Sam takes the beating but talks about it with his brother Rocky and with the help of some of their friends, they develop a plan for a prank that will teach George a lesson about being a jerk to everyone around him.  The plan entails going on a boat trip down the river and humiliating George but after something goes wrong the kids must all face up to an event that will change their lives forever.  I don't know how I can do this film justice without blabbering on too much about the plot.  I never read the synopsis on the box simply because I enjoy being surprised and when a movie is this good, I am glad that I didn't ruin anything for myself.  Do yourself a movie and rent this movie, it is one of the better movies in a long time and will restore your faith in a good story and amazing performances by young actors who aspire to doing more with their career than doing inane comedy or cliched girl-gets-her-dream stories that nobody is going to remember next week.  These kids are actors who have their whole lives ahead of them and that can give us all a lot to look forward to.  Special mention should be given to Carly Schroeder whose performance as Millie is one of the best performances I have seen from a child actor ever.  We can also look forward to a hopefully long career from writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes who reminds me that there are still people out there who understand film and use the medium to it's full advantage and he gives these characters a level of depth and intelligence that is rarely seen in today's movies.  I haven't been this excited about a new director since Paul Thomas Anderson.

Prey For Rock And Roll (2003)

There are not enough good rock and roll movies out there.  While we keep getting inundated with trashy movies about struggling dancers and singers a la Honey and Glitter, there are just not enough movies about musicians trying to slog their way through clubs and touring with the love of music keeping them going.  Prey For Rock And Roll is one such movie which I found captured the passion and attitude of a struggling rock band without getting too cheesy.  Gina Gershon stars as Jacki, a 40-year old singer/guitarist who is still rocking out in L.A. clubs for a few dollars and still holding onto the hopes of a record deal and becoming a rock star of sorts.  Her band consists of Lori Petty (Tank Girl) as Faith the friendly guitarist, Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos) as Tracy the strung out bass player, and Shelly Cole as Sally the cute drummer.  In addition to rehearsing, the girls deal with issues ranging from drug abuse to rape to growing old and quickly establish themselves as characters you can identify with and care about.  I was a little concerned during the first twenty minutes as some of the music sequences seemed like they may drag a bit but after the movie got going, the music fit right in and helped to drive the story along.  I was also quite impressed to learn that Gershon sang all of the original songs in the film which reminded me of early Joan Jett or The Runaways.  Gershon is one of the few of today's actors that I really like as she is always able to maintain an air of integrity even though she has not been given the best roles over her career.  Her drive reminds me of a rock and roller whose fame is eluding them even though you know they have what it takes to get to the next level.  This is one of those movies that was sadly overlooked when it came out but will hopefully enjoy some success in the future as people discover it.  There is not a lot new going on here but there are simply not enough movies like this that play it straight and are more than simply an vehicle for the latest hot band to make a quick buck.  The semi-autobiographical story was written by L.A. musician Cheri Lovedog. 

Future Hunters (1986)

I sure wish that I had the freedom that Cirio H. Santiago had.  It is always an adventure watching a film that this guy has his mark on and he delivers again on this one.  Linda Carol (Reform School Girls) stars as Michelle, an anthropologist/diner owner who has a run in with a group of bikers and is saved by a time traveling post-apocalyptic survivor named Matthew (Richard Norton) who is critically wounded in the rescue.  Before he dies, Matthew passes on a mystical spear called the spear of Longinus which has the power to save mankind as it was used to spear Christ on the cross.  Along with her boyfriend Slade (Robert Patrick), Michelle travels to Japan and the Philippines in an effort to unite the spear with it's staff to save the human race from the great holocaust.  The movie plays out with one great scene after another including explosions, helicopters, a clan of midget warriors, a rope bridge battle, Mongols, neo-Nazis, Amazons, an all night car chase, and a henchman who looks like a cross between Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine and J.T. Walsh.  We also have the presence of Bruce Lee clone Bruce Le (as Bruce Li) making an appearance as Slade's friend seemingly only showing up in the movie to provide a ten minute kung fu fight with a baddie known as Silverfox (with Wang Chang Lee reprising a role he has played a number of times over the years).  On top of all this fun, Carol has a topless scene, there is a battle between Carol and an Amazon over a pit of alligators, and more foam rocks during an earthquake than you would ever see on the Universal studios tram tour.  This flick was a hell of a lot of fun and like many of Santiago flicks (and other flicks like this in the 70's and 80's), you never knew what was going to happen next.  This also may mark the only time female fans will get to see Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) in one of his first roles walking around in tighty whities if you are into that kind of thing.  I don't think he will be as menacing the next time I see him fighting Arnie.  The screenplay was co-written by J. Lee Thompson who directed The Guns of Navarone, the original Cape Fear, and the last two Planet of the Apes movies.

Legion Of The Dead (2005)

Those of you who enjoyed the lovely Mathilda May prancing around in the buff in Lifeforce may be reminded of that scene when they see ex-mummy Claudia Lynx doing a similar strut in this film.  Rather than being a space vampire, Lynx is instead a resurrected Egyptian goddess who is discovered in a tomb in California.  I think they tried to explain the logic of this somewhere in the film but it was lost on me.  Regardless, all I cared about was the naked babe and the possibility of some cool make-up effects.  Courtney Clonch stars as a repressed librarian, er, overworked student named Molly who arrives at an archeological dig in a California forest where the aforementioned ancient tomb was discovered.  It appears that a pair of poorly edited dirt bikers happened to stumble across it before being killed by the booby traps it contained.  Somehow this led to the arrival of one Dr. Ari Ben-David, a smarmy chap who seems to have more on his mind than deciphering hieroglyphics.  Along for the ride are another doctor played by Zach Galligan from Gremlins, the token mummy-fodder students, Molly's 'wild' sister Kevyn, and the requisite local sheriff (played by Tron himself Bruce Boxleitner).  Things move quite slowly until the naked mummy is resurrected after which she begins sucking the blood out of some victims and turning other victims into hamburger.  The gore effects were decent enough but could have been way cool without the lame-ass CGI.  A little later we are treated to some monster make-up effects when the extremely small 'legion' of six mummies show up to wreak havoc for their occasionally-clothed leader.  Overall, this was a decent direct-to-video effort in an era of crappy direct-to-video flicks.  The fact that Ms. Lynx decided to spend so much of the movie in the buff made for a much more entertaining experience and may have skewed my judgment a bit.  This is not to be confused with the other Legion Of The Dead from 2001 that will make you feel like a mummy that has not been resurrected.

But I'm A Cheerleader (1999)

When I was watching this all I kept thinking was "this is what a John Hughes movie would look like if John Waters directed it".  The inclusion of Mink Stole in the cast confirmed my suspicions that director Jamie Babbit much have had a huge Waters influence or else the casting of Stole was a huge fluke.  The ever-cool Natasha Lyonne stars as Megan, a cheerleader who is more turned on by girls than her football player boyfriend.  This behavior is noticed by Megan's friends and parents and an intervention is planned with the help of an ex-gay named Mike (RuPaul looking like a man).  Megan's parents decide that she should be sent to a rehab camp called True Directions so that she can get straight (I thought this was funny but apparently these types of camps really exist).  Upon arrival she meets her fellow sexually confused students including a goth (Katharine Towne from Sol Goode), a tough girl (Clea DuVall), a British girl (Melanie Lynskey from Heavenly Creatures), a jew, a wrestler, and a few more.  They all begin in a five step program that will apparently make them straight again but a few of them have more struggles than others especially after a late night visit to a local gay bar named Cocksucker.  If you have not already gathered, this is campy all the way with stereotypes being overplayed and with ironically silly things happening throughout.  At the heart of it all, though, is a love story which Babbit handles in a way that does not take away from the satire but also satisfies the heartstrings in all of us.  There is a slew of supporting actors in this film that make it extra fun to watch including Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) as Megan's father, Robert Pine (CHiPs) as another concerned parent, Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull) as the camp leader, Eddie Cibrian (TV's Third Watch) as her son, Julie Delpy (Killing Zoe) as a seductress, and Michelle Williams (Dawson's Creek) as Megan's intervening friend.  This film was short but sweet and recommended and will probably enjoy cult status ten years from now.  Star Lyonne has currently been having a lot of trouble with substance abuse and is currently struggling for her life in a New York hospital.  This is a depressing fact but I hope that she can eventually get past it and look at the legacy of great work that she has left behind. 

Hide And Seek (2000)

With the generic title that bestows this flick, I was expecting a big pile of mainstream ca-ca but ended up with a tight, intense thriller about a pregnant woman held captive in the basement of a couple of loons so that they can steal her child when it is born.  Daryl Hannah stars as Anne, the woman who is abducted in the middle of the night by crazy yet subdued doctor Frank (Vincent Gallo).  She awakens to find herself shackled and on a bed in the dirty basement of Frank and his far from subdued psycho-bitch wife Anne (Jennifer Tilly).  What follows is a series of frustrating escape attempts and nutty moments courtesy of Tilly that never goes into cheeseball territory (aside from coming close in only one instance).  Director Sidney Furie (The Entity) keeps things moving at a pace that in consistently stressful and also manages to keep things unpredictable enough to separate this flick from the majority of 'thrillers' that have been made in the new millennium.  The work of production designer Rejean Labrie also creates a dirty and sleazy environment in the house which nicely contrasts with the hoity-toity surroundings that Anne was used to with her husband Jack (Bruce Greenwood) before she was a prisoner.  Although all of these elements helped to set this apart from the pack, the real star here is Tilly who gives such an over-the-top performance of an insecure woman who has completely lost her marbles that she makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look like Gidgit.  The image of Tilly killing someone and the disposing of the body in a way the Mrs. Cleaver would make dinner is something I will not soon forget.  This flick is also known as Cord.

Never Too Young To Die (1986)

The fun thing about a lot of the movies that came out in the 80's was that a lot of them were just plain weird.  When I look back on many of these films today, I wonder what the hell they were thinking and what the hell the thought process was in coming up with some of this stuff.  Were the filmmakers just trying to be stranger than the next movie or was everyone just completely twisted due to all the coke that was going around at the time?  This film is a good example of this bizarreness because somebody came up with the idea of having a hermaphrodite cross-dressing Cher-impersonator villain.  To make things even stranger, they decided that Gene Simmons from Kiss would be perfect for the role and you know what, they were right.  I could not imagine a better choice for a male to be dressed in full Vegas showgirl attire in a nightclub act who needs to also be a menacing villain than 'The Demon' himself.  The same producers also decided that the lead action star should be John Stamos as a gymnast who wears white pants.  This was a little hard to stomach and I guess the public agreed because Stamos' action career never did take off even though the box cover said "Stamos: The New Breed of Hero".  Also along for the ride is ex-Prince protege turned evangelist Vanity as the love interest, a nerdy Asian sidekick (Peter Kwong), and the man who played Bond once and quit, George Lazenby, in a brief role where he is riffing on the Bond mystique.  There are some notable smaller roles as well including Robert Englund as Simmons' science adviser and Tara Buckman (the hot blonde who rode with Adrienne Barbeau in The Cannonball Run) as the punk chick who is sacrificed by Gene's finger.  Simmons and his low rent punk army look like extras from a post-apocalypse movie who ended up on the wrong set.  Vanity and Stamos also give us a disjointed love scene after Vanity gets naked and hoses herself down while Stamos looks on while eating a variety of fruit.  There wasn't a hell of a lot of great filmmaking going on here but Simmons plays his role with gusto and delivers one of the weirdest villains in the history of action movies (and you see his/her boobs in by far the most disturbing second of this film).  This one is recommended if you want to get really drunk and laugh at the screen or if you have ever wondered what went on behind closed doors when Gene Simmons and Cher were living together.

Dahmer (2002)

In a rarity among the recent resurgence of the true crime flick, we are given a slow character study rather that a nasty, gory, wannabe exploitation movie.  This was an interesting change for a genre that has recently brought us the ghoulish deeds of Bundy, Gein, and Gacy among others.  One would think that a Jeffrey Dahmer biopic would be the most gruesome of them all but director David Jacobson has opted for a much more restrained approach and I thought it worked extremely well.  We are introduced the the young boy lovin' cannibal at his chocolate factory workplace and as soon as he is off work, he is prowling the streets looking for young victims.  After a gruesome beginning complete with an electric drill lobotomy, the film takes a turn and begins to fill in some of the back story so that we can see what Jeffrey was like as a younger man and as a teenager.  Although obviously disturbed, there are times when you begin to relate to the guy and sometimes even feel kind of bad for him partly because he was an incredibly lonely soul and partly because we all know what a train wreck he became.  This sensitivity to the character and his treatment as a human being rather than a monster keeps things creepy but also maintains a sad undertone throughout the film.  Add to that Jeremy Renner's performance and you begin to want to actually help the guy.  I found it interesting that Jacobson decided not to show any of the gory details and did not even touch on the cannibalism aspect of Dahmer's deeds.  Although I liked the fact that Jacobson chose to veer away from the easy way out of lingering on the gore, I still think the inclusion of these facts was necessary to avoid a bias.  I am not sure what the intent was and while he did not candy coat the content, the omitted material would most certainly have painted a different picture in the audience's mind.  Nevertheless, I found this to be an interesting entry into the true crime biopic subgenre and one of the more engaging of the bunch.

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