MOVIE REVIEW: "MR. MAJESTYK"

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX: MR. MAJESTYK

Your first thought, just by looking at that poster, might be “How the hell does a guy get a last name like Majestyk?”, and I have the answer for you – shut the fuck up or Charles Bronson will hide in a tree outside your house with a shotgun and kill anything that walks out your front door.

Your second question might be “What is Mr. Majestyk about?”, but you’re only asking that because you’ve never seen a Charles Bronson movie before. Let me tell you about Charles Bronson. Charles Bronson thrives on revenge. Charles Bronson’s body is an indiscriminate, death-dealing killing machine that is oiled with the blood of rapists, muggers, dirty cops, and gang members.

The biggest mistake anyone can make in a Charles Bronson movie is fucking with Charles Bronson. You rape his family? Hang his brother? Kill his daughter? Or, in the case of Mr. Majestyk, shoot his motherfucking water melons? That’s when Charles Bronson turns the knob on his brain from the default GRUMPY OLD MAN setting to REVENGE-INDUCED KILL FRENZY (there are no settings in between) and starts pumping shotgun rounds into dudes’ chests.

Mr. Majestyk, just like every Charles Bronson movie ever made, is about Charles Bronson hunting down and murdering the stupid people that piss him off. Bronson plays a guy named Vincent Majestyk, who, when he's not trying to explain a very improbable last name on what must be a daily basis, spends his time running a melon farm somewhere near the Mexican border. There’s conflict with a local thug, who’s just some asshole cowboy douchebag that wants to replace Majestyk’s loyal migrant workers with his own hobo workforce. Majestyk, because he’s Charles Bronson, responds by throwing the guy over the hood of a car and smashing him in the testicles with the butt of a shotgun.


While he’s in jail for crushing that guy’s balls, Majestyk ends up pissing off a Mexican hitman. This will come back later, because the Mexican hitman escapes from jail and teams up with the asshole cowboy douchebag to teach Vince Majestyk a lesson. Their methods of terror include a ten minute scene where they heartlessly execute Majestyk’s melon crops with machine guns, another scene where they crush a Mexican dude’s legs with a big-ass 70’s Cadillac, and lots of “Grrrrr, I’m gonna get that Majestyk!” dialogue. Bronson finally has enough, flips that switch, and starts his rampage. The trailers for the movie say some shit about Charles Bronson being “the hero inside all of us” or something, because maybe when somebody pisses you off you want to push their car off a cliff and watch it explode with cold dead eyes, but Charles Bronson is the guy who actually does crazy shit like that. I’m not even sure there’s anything technically heroic about shooting at cars from the back of a speeding pickup truck hauling ass through the desert, but it is definitely pretty damn awesome.

And, like, I don’t know exactly where Mr. Majestyk takes place, but you know it’s the South, because for one thing every other character is named Miguel or Juan, so it’s near Mexico, but also there are lots of cops running around, but as far as I can tell they don’t actually do anything at all, and seem to be perfectly happy watching Charles Bronson execute motherfuckers in their own houses and shit. Me, I live up North, and around here shit like that’s considered a crime, or even multiple crimes, but in this town it’s apparently just how you do things. At one point some cop is like, “Hey, should we do something about Mr. Majestyk's murder rampage?” and the chief detective guy on the case is like, “The fuck do I look like, the law or something?” and then in the next scene Charles Bronson hides behind a big rock and kills off like four guys sniper-style. All the cops ever do is shake their collective fingers at him, like, “Oh, you crazy Mr. Majestyk. Who will you kill next?”

The answer to that question, of course, is anybody he fucking wants to. The whole thing comes down to what I call “SHOWDOWN AT LOG CABIN”, where Majestyk sits outside the Mexican hitman’s rocking 70's log cabin, and basically kills anything that moves. The hitman tries to be all sneaky, and sends a dude out to fake a truce, but motherfucking Mr. Majestyk is hiding on the goddamn roof and shoots the guy through the top of his head.

When all the killing is finally over, the cops don’t even arrest Mr. Majestyk or anything, even though he's pretty much technically a serial killer at this point. I guess from their stance the only thing Mr. Majestyk ever did was kill a bunch of assholes who needed killing anyways, so they basically tell him to get lost so they can cover the whole thing up.

The lesson of Mr. Majestyk, and every Charles Bronson movie ever made, is that sometimes the law just doesn’t give you justice, and you have to get it yourself, usually by grabbing your shotgun and killing people until you feel better.

ROBOCOP 4, TERRORISTS 0

I've come up with a pretty good idea for a movie. It's a perfect blending of action, sci-fi, and political commentary. I'm thinking of pitching it to Hollywood, and this one will cement my place as a Hollywood power player. The best part is that this movie it can be worked in as the fourth part of an already established franchise, automatically giving it audience awareness and fan buzz.

Picture this: We open on a tight aerial shot of New York City. We start on a landmark, the Empire State Building or something, and pull out until eventually the entire skyline of the city is visible. I figure this can be accomplished with CGI, since anyone who's seen Van Helsing or Attack of the Clones can tell you CGI is the best thing ever and the more you use the better, even if it looks like crap.

So now we're looking at New York City, right? Some text comes across the bottom of the screen, with sound effects like it's being typed on a computer, because that's cool too. It says "New York City", so you know it's New York City, and then it says "The Future", so you know it takes place in the future.

Then New York City EXPLODES.

Next we go to an opening credits sequence that is twenty minutes long and costs 200 million dollars.

CUT TO: the President of the United States, played by Ben Affleck. He's wicked pissed off because New York City exploded. The Chief of Security of the United States, Morgan Freeman, tells him that the Chief of Gathering Information on Bad Guys, Dennis Quaid, told him to tell him that it was probably terrorists that made New York City explode. Affleck gets even more wicked pissed off, and tells Morgan Freeman to get the best man for the job. It's not explicitly stated in this scene, but "the job" is finding terrorists and kicking their asses.

CUT TO: An under-lit government building where everything is tinted green. Morgan Freeman is talking to a guy that looks at a computer screen all the time. Because the guy looks at a computer screen all the time, he's the guy in the movie that knows everything and answers everyone's questions. He's also very sarcastic and treats everyone like they're dumb. He's played by Joe Pantoliano.

Joey Pants tells Azeem that the guy he's looking for is retired, and working as a government test pilot at a secret airbase somewhere in Nevada. Morgan Freeman looks into the camera and says "Looks like I'm going to Nevada."

CUT TO: Nevada. We know it's Nevada because some text comes up on the screen that says "Secret military air base - Nevada". Morgan Freeman is at the airfield, watching a top secret super-sonic stealth fighter jet fly so fast that it needs to be made out of CGI. There's lots of crazy shots of the CGI plane flying around real fast while the camera spins around it at weird angles for no other reason that CGI lets you do crazy shit like that even if it doesn't look good. While all this is going on, there's a sarcastic woman telling Morgan Freeman that the pilot is crazy and has no fear and loves to look death in the face and is sexy. The woman is played by Leah Remini from King of Queens, because she does that "sarcastic bitch" thing pretty well, she's kind of hot but not main love interest hot, will do a shitty bit part for dirt cheap, and will probably wear a tight shirt with no bra so we can see her nipples poking through.

When the top secret CGI super-sonic stealth fighter jet lands, there's all this smoke and dramatic music, because the pilot (who's the hero of the movie) is about to appear for the first time. There's lots of slow motion close-ups as Morgan Freeman walks out to see the pilot. In slow motion, the pilot walks out from all this smoke and stuff and we finally see him for the first time.

The pilot? None other than...






FUCKING ROBOCOP.

Robocop tells Morgan Freeman that he's retired and out of the game, he's done killing bad guys. As Robocop lights up a cigar, Morgan Freeman tells him that the fate of the world is at stake. Robocop takes a slow drag on the cigar, lets it out, and says, "Isn't it always?" This establishes that Robocop and Morgan Freeman are old friends, and that Robocop has saved the world a lot of times.

Suddenly, someone blows off Leah Remini's head and all the buildings at the base start blowing up. Terrorists have come to steal the top secret CGI super-sonic stealth fighter jet! Robocop kills a bunch of the terrorists in creative ways, like shoving a grenade through a guy's stomach and throwing him at other terrorists, and they all blow up.

Morgan Freeman gets shot, and Robocop yells "NOOOOO!", and while Robocop is tenderly cradling Morgan Freeman in his arms, the terrorists take off with the top secret CGI super-sonic stealth fighter jet. Even though there's like four hundred bullets in his chest, Morgan Freeman is still alive long enough to tell Robocop that he's always been his best friend, and says "If you won't do it for your country... do it for me..." and then he dies. Robocop yells "NOOOOOO!" again, and we fade to black.

From there things get kind of hazy, but the way I see it now, the terrorists turn out to be cyborgs who deal drugs and were really built by OUR OWN GOVERNMENT in a Tom Clancy-ish twist. When the CIA couldn't control their drug dealing cyborgs they shipped them all over to the Middle East, where they secretly plotted their revenge against America and its Christian god.

So Robocop starts a one-man war on the terrorists, and for the next 45 minutes he proceeds to kill at least 800 terrorist cyborgs in the most graphic and imaginative ways possible, spouting one-liners the whole time. Along the way he meets a hot super-smart female nuclear scientist, played by Halle Berry, who somehow is the only person in the world that has information the terrorists desperately need, but of course she has no way of protecting herself. Robocop decides that even though it's probably a really shitty idea and she'll get in his way all the time and will constantly need rescuing, it would be best if Halle Berry and him became partners. There's this really graphic sex scene where Robocop does Halle Berry from behind on a beach, and that will probably be cut from the theatrical version, but we can put it on the unrated director's cut DVD.

Again, things are a little hazy, but the whole thing ends with Robocop in a one-on-one battle with the cyborg terrorist leader (Ben Kingsley) in the middle of a burning oil field, and then Robocop gets the top secret CGI super-sonic stealth fighter jet back and uses it to blow up the entire Middle East. The end credits will feature an original song by Aerosmith or Metallica, or Aerosmith featuring Metallica, or Metallica featuring Steven Tyler.

The budget will probably be somewhere around $900 million, and it will be opening in the summer of 2010.

Since it's the fourth Robocop movie, I think it should be called Robocop 4, Terrorists 0.


WATCH FOR IT IN A THEATER NEAR YOU!

ACTION JACKSON SHOULD HAVE WON AN OSCAR

Action Jackson is a great movie. Here are some reasons you should watch Action Jackson.

- In one scene, Action Jackson throws Billy from Predator out a window. He goes flying across a street and into another window. Read that again. Action Jackson throws a guy out of a building and the guy lands IN ANOTHER BUILDING. It's in slow motion, of course, which makes it even more fucking awesome.

- At the end Craig T. Nelson fights Carl Weathers with kung fu. That really happens in a movie. If I were making that up I'd be a jackass, but it's totally there. It's insane.

- That psychologist chick from the Lethal Weapon movies gets punched in the face and flies through a plate glass window that happens to be standing up in the middle of the room (?) and dies. Then this guy gets shot by a rocket launcher or something, catches on fire, falls out a window while on fire, crashes through a glass skylight and lands in a restaurant. And all that's just in the opening scene.

- Action Jackson dares a guy in a taxi to run him over. The guy was going to just shoot him, but Action Jackson starts calling him a pussy and stuff. So the guy guns it and it looks like he's totally going to mow down Action Jackson, except Action Jackson jumps and flips over the taxi cab and the car crashes into like four other cars and goes through a window. It's like The Matrix or some shit, except it's Carl Weathers in a polo shirt and it's a hundred times more nuts.

- Craig T. Nelson has sex with Sharon Stone and Vanity, because Craig T. Nelson is a fucking pimp.

- That guy in Die Hard who looks like Huey Lewis is in it too, and Action Jackson asks him "How do you like your ribs?" and then he blows him up. He also tells a guy to "Chill out" and then he shoots that guy with a flame thrower, which doesn't make any sense, which of course means it's totally awesome.

- This big black guy comes to Action Jackson's rescue at one point. He jumps down from the roof like a bald overweight African-American Errol Flynn or something, but instead of saying something really cool or badass when he does it, he yells "HELLO I'M MR. ED" It's really fucked up because his name isn't even Mr. Ed or anything.

- There's a scene where Action Jackson drives a car through Craig T. Nelson's house, and he crushes that fat bald guy from Darkman up against the wall, and then he drives the car up like three flights of stairs and through the wall of Craig T. Nelson's bedroom. Then he gets out of the car and that's when the whole kung fu fight happens. It's like the movie is saying "You think Apollo Creed driving a Ferrari up a bunch of stairs inside a house is crazy? Check this out" and then Craig T. Nelson starts doing spin kicks and shit.

There's a bunch of crazy stuff I didn't even talk about, like Action Jackson pretending to be a crazy preacher guy and then beating the shit out of five guys while a church chorus sings on the soundtrack, more people getting blown up and/or thrown through windows, Bill Duke, and even some nudity.

REVIEW: BLACK CAESAR

(I guess I should post a SPOILER WARNING here, since some of you probably have not seen this movie.)

Black Caesar is the story of the rise and fall of Tommy Gibbs. It's a story about the hard lessons you learn in the hard streets, and it's a tale that resonates even to this day.

Fuck, who am I kidding? Black Caesar is a crazy blaxploitation movie with lots of people getting shot four times in the chest and Fred Williamson fucking up literally every person he meets. The only person in this movie he doesn't violently manhandle at one point or another is his own mother, but then she dies anyways because she's heartbroken he's such a bad son.

The movie opens with young Tommy, a shoeshine boy in Harlem, assisting in a mob hit. The guy he's shining is a target, so Tommy holds his leg while an assassin walks up and puts a bunch of bullets in him. The hit goes so well that the gangster assassin hires him to deliver an envelope to McKinley, the most evil Irish cop Harlem has ever seen. McKinley accuses Tommy of stealing bribe money, knocks the kid down a flight of stairs, and actually beats him with a nightclub while he's falling. That's hardcore. At the bottom of the stairs McKinley continues the beating, and Tommy is sent to jail with a busted leg.

Maybe being savagely beaten by a racist cop was a crime in the seventies, because I don't see how a cop could send someone to jail for stealing his bribe money. Or I don't know, maybe he could, since every single white person in the movie is a racist and has an uncontrollable need to throw as many different racial slurs into a sentence as possible. In one conversation alone, this Italian guy calls Tommy a nigger, a spade, a jungle bunny, and a spook. Of course, Tommy gets back at this guy later when he basically murders every person he knows. That's justice, Harlem style.

Anyway, after he goes to jail, the next time we see Tommy he's gone from skinny little kid to full-on Fred Williamson mode, strutting down the street in a new suit while James Brown music plays. He's officially turned badass. Then he walks into a barbershop and shoots a guy in the face, in case you had any doubt.

Tommy and his friends decide to take over Harlem, and apparently this is best accomplished by shooting every white person they can find. It's kind of like that song Garrett Morris did on Saturday Night Live ("I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill every whitey I seeeeee") except they really do it. I should go back and count exactly how many white people die in this movie, because it's a lot.

At one point, in the scene a friend appropriately labeled "Operation: Gorilla-Raid the Fucking Crackers", Tommy's men show up at some mobster cookout. They jump off the roof and just let loose. There's like five solid minutes where all you hear is machine guns and screaming. Just to show you these people mean business, the director cuts away to the buffet table, where a Thanksgiving-size turkey explodes. Nothing is safe.

Then the guys throw all the bodies in the pool, because that'll just look fucked up to whoever finds it. One of the best parts of the scene, though, is when all the black guys dramatically jump off the roof, one of them just kind of slips and falls sideways into the bushes. I had to watch it three times to make sure it was really there. It's totally awesome because you know that guy was totally like "What'd I miss?" when he got up, and his buddies where like "The fuckin' pool is fulla dead bleedin' honkies. The fuck you think you missed?"

"Well can I have some turkey then?"

"Fool, we shot the turkey."

As cool as Fred Williamson is though, eventually he lets all the power of being Black Caesar go to his head, and his friends don't like him anymore and he has to rape his girl when he wants sex. If the movie were divided into three chapters, the third and final chapter would definitely be called "The White People Strike Back", because after a while McKinley gets really fed up with this black guy who thinks he's hot shit and just decides to have all his buddies shot. He sends out this hitman that looks like Donald Trump to kill Tommy's men. He shoots one of Tommy's friends and makes his getaway in a horse-drawn carriage. This is New York City, and you're telling me nobody can catch a murderer in a carriage? All you have to do is just shoot the horse, or maybe just walk up to the carriage and pull the guy out or something, since it's not like those things go very fast.

If you want to know just how tough Tommy Gibbs is, though, Donald Trump shoots him in the stomach and he wanders around the city for an entire day with no medical help at all and is still in good enough shape that he beats the shit out of McKinley in one of the best scenes of the movie.

McKinley thinks he's got Tommy dead to rights. He's all like "Shine my shoes, nigger". So Tommy starts shining his shoes, and you're thinking what the fuck, right? This guy is too badass to just be this cop's bitch all of a sudden, even if he is shot in the stomach. But then he takes down McKinley and starts violently spreading black shoe polish on his face, because nothing Fred Williamson ever does can be described as delicate in anyway. Then he gets McKinley to sing "Mammy" while he beats him up.

"SING MAMMY FOR ME! COME ON!"
"MAMMY! AAAAHH! MAMMY! MAMMY!"

It's one of those really satisfying scenes where you're really glad the hero of the movie is sadistic and mean enough to give the bad guy what he really deserves. Then Tommy beats McKinley's face in with the box of shoe shining equipment and everything in the world is okay.

Well, maybe not, because the movie doesn't really have what I would call a happy ending. Tommy Gibbs eventually dies from his gunshot wound after being accosted by a bunch of children in the ghetto he grew up in.

NEXT ON THE LIST:

HELL UP IN HARLEM

Tommy Gibbs is back, mother fuckers! And this time HE MEANS BUSINESS! Fred Williamson returns in the sequel to Black Caesar, somehow still alive and kicking ass. I've never seen this one before, but from the poster it looks like Black Caesar meets James Bond or some shit, which means it will be completely awesome. Stay tuned.

WALK THE LINE CAN EAT SHIT AND DIE

So I saw Walk The Line. It was really fucking crappy. Joaquin Phoenix did not look or sound anything like Johnny Cash at all and sucked so bad that sometimes I forgot the movie was supposed to be about Johnny Cash until someone called him "Mr. Cash" or "Johnny". The story was your standard rags-to-riches-to-addict story you've seen in every movie about a real person ever. DOES JOHNNY CASH BEAT HIS ADDICTION AND FIND HAPPINESS? YOU'LL HAVE TO FIND OUT! Spoiler: Yes. Yes, he does.

The movie is pretty depressing, because it's all about drugs and crying and cheating on your wife and shit, and you really get the impression that whoever this guy is that is loosely based on Johnny Cash was a real pussy douchebag, so really the movie is incredibly inaccurate right there because Johnny Cash was neither a pussy nor a douchebag. He cries a lot and he takes a lot of pills and his career starts when apparently he just randomly decides to play the guitar and start singing, even though at no point in the movie do they ever show him learning how to do either of those things.

There's a scene in a recording studio where Joaquin Phoenix absolutely destroys "Folsom Prison Blues" so bad it's like the people who made the movie hated the real Johnny Cash so much they wanted people who watched the movie to think he was possibly the worst singer ever. I mean it's bad. Like so bad it's how did this stay in the movie bad.

Not once in this movie did I think "Oh my God, Phoenix has totally become Johnny Cash!" at all. Mostly I was thinking "Why the fuck is that guy from Signs pretending he's Johnny Cash?" and hating him. Hating him so bad that I was staring at my TV intently, wishing I could kill Joaquin Phoenix with my eyes.

I know Ray Charles worked a lot with Jamie Foxx for Ray when they made that, and Johnny Cash was dead when they made Walk The Line, so Wa-Keen probably didn't get to spend any time with him, because if his performance is any indication he didn't have a fucking clue who the hell Johnny Cash was before he read the script. If I was Johnny Cash I would rise from my grave and smash as many liquor bottles over Joaquin Phoenix's head as I could before my undead arms got tired and then I would bust him in the nuts with a pool cue and finally choke him to death with a guitar string. Then I would feast on his brains, because I'd be Zombie Johnny Cash and I'd still be ten times cooler than Joaquin Phoenix, no matter how many black suits he wears.

This guy is so not Johnny Cash that in a couple of the singing parts it sounds like they had to electronically lower Phoenix's voice to try and get him to sound even a little bit like the real Cash. My girlfriend picked up on that too, and even she was laughing about it. You hear that, Joaquin Phoenix? Girls laugh at you. You're not a man.

Robert Patrick plays Johnny Cash's asshole father, and I was really hoping his arm would morph into a big spike Terminator 2: Judgement Day-style and impale Joaquin Phoenix during one of the like three hundred scenes where "Johnny Cash" gets drunk and embarasses his family. Either that, or maybe a scene where the real Johnny Cash shows up and fights the T-1000 with a guitar. Throw in a car chase and some singing, a scene where the real Johnny Cash throws Reese Witherspoon through a window and she lands headfirst in the windshield of a pickup truck the real Johnny Cash then douses in gasoline, lights on fire, and kicks off a cliff with his cowboy boots, and Walk The Line would have been so much better. Actually it might've been my favorite movie ever. Probably would have won that Best Picture Oscar, at least.

THE STREET FIGHTER: A SYNOPSIS

You know, life is full of little lessons. You burn your hand and you learn not to touch the oven. You get shocked and you learn not to stick your finger in the socket. You get punched in the face and have your balls ripped off, and you learn you don't fuck with Sonny Chiba.



Sonny Chiba's most popular movie was The Street Fighter. You can usually find it in the martial arts section wherever you buy movies, but really they should make a new section called "hardcore beatdown movies" and put thirty copies of The Street Fighter there. If you walk past the hardcore beatdown section and don't buy anything, someone will slap you right in your fucking face.

The Street Fighter was the first movie in the history of the world to get an X rating for violence. Think about that. Someone sat down and watched a Sonny Chiba movie and decided an hour and a half of Sonny Chiba kicking the shit out of people was just as intense as watching a chick take two dicks in the ass for an hour and a half. Maybe that's not a great comparison, but maybe I'm not a very good writer.

What's awesome about the movie is that if it were any other film, Sonny Chiba would have been the bad guy. He fights dirty, he forces himself on women, he assaults women, he sells women into prostitution... really, he does a lot of mean things to women. He also whips a lot of ass and probably kills like a hundred dudes over the course of the movie. He gouges guys in the eyeballs and chops them in the dick. He doesn't really have to fight dirty, since he's obviously the most badass dude in the movie, but he does it anyways because he's just a mean motherfucker.



The Street Fighter opens with Sonny Chiba breaking this guy Junjo out of prison. Disguised as priest. And just so Junjo knows rule number one (do not fuck with Sonny Chiba), the break-out plan involves Sonny Chiba punching the guy in the goddamn spine and putting him in a coma. Never ask Sonny Chiba to do anything for you, because he will find a way to punch something in the spine.

YOU: "Hey, Sonny Chiba, I'm going to Florida for a week! Can you watch my pet kitten please? I don't want to worry about him."

SONNY CHIBA: (picks up kitten and punches it in the spine) "NOW YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR KITTEN. THAT WILL BE TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS."

Junjo was minutes away from being executed, but of course now they can't execute the dude because he's comatose, right? Just say right, and we'll move on. The cops try to transport him to the hospital, but along the way they're cut off by Sonny Chiba and his comical sidekick Rat Nose (more on that later), who kidnap Junjo and send him off to China to live the free life (the coma was temporary, because Sonny Chiba can do shit like put a dude in a temporary coma and nobody asks any questions).

Sonny Chiba was paid for the break-out by Junjo's brother and sister. Turns out they can't pay Chiba's fee for the little dirty deed and want to back out of the deal. In most courts that's considered attempting to fuck with Sonny Chiba, and that shit does not fly. You can watch the scene here, courtesy of YouTube.

The brother ends up getting kicked around and thrown headfirst out a window. He lands skull-first on the pavement below and his head splits open like an egg, spilling bright red 70's Technicolor blood all over the place. Then Sonny Chiba slaps the sister around a little bit and decides he can sell her to the Yakuza as a whore and get the money she owes him that way.

And he does.

You have to hand it to any movie where the main character, your hero, settles bets by pimping women against their will to organized crime syndicates and somehow still keeps that character likable. There's even a scene that shows a bunch of thugs drugging and raping the girl. I guess she just learned a lesson the hard way - you don't fuck with Sonny Chiba.

As badass as Sonny Chiba is, for some reason The Street Fighter gives him a comic relief sidekick. He's about as useful as most other sidekicks, meaning he's only really around to get captured and beat on. Even Sonny Chiba slaps the poor guy around a little bit, but then again, if you were Sonny Chiba, wouldn't you? And just because Sonny Chiba beats on his sidekick a little doesn't mean he doesn't like him, because I seriously don't think there's a character in this movie Sonny Chiba doesn't punch in the face at one point.



Rat Nose's primary duty is apparently cooking Sonny Chiba dinner. My guess is Rat Nose's ability to cook a mean fried chicken is the only thing that keeps him alive. Thankfully later on in the movie Rat Nose dies trying to run over a blind samurai with a motorcycle.

Yes I just said that.

There's this whole band of assassins that have colorful gimmicks. One of them is a blind samurai kinda dude who looks all creepy. He carries around a walking stick that has a sword inside it. That's pretty cool. Of course Sonny Chiba breaks off a piece of his sword and feeds it through the guy's back for killing Rat Nose, but he's cool while he lasts.



There's also this big bald dude that shows up in a hallway for some reason. He's like an old 8-bit Nintendo boss or something, because Sonny Chiba's just walking down this hall and all of a sudden this big fat guy who's like seven feet tall shows up. He literally jumps from behind a corner or something. I honestly expected him to start throwing barrels. Instead he just starts throwing Sonny Chiba around, which is really stupid because you don't fuck with Sonny Chiba.

Since he's the gigantic bald guy, kicking him in the stomach doesn't work, because you can never hurt the big bald guy by hitting him in the stomach, so Sonny Chiba does this totally awesome sliding jumpkick thing right to the guy's ankle and topples him over like fucking King Hippo, and then just because he's pissed off, Chiba gouges the bald guy's eyes. And this isn't any kind of Three Stooges eyepoke thing either, he just stabs his fingers into the dude's fucking sockets and there's blood everywhere and shit. Fucking fat guy, that's what you get.

The best kill in the movie though, by far, is when Sonny Chiba kills the Black Guy. I capitalize Black Guy only because he's the only person of African American descent in the whole movie, and I kinda feel bad for him, especially because not only is he the only black person in the movie, he's also a rapist. Blame Japanese people for racial stereotyping, or blame black people for being rapists. Either way, every scene the Black Guy is in it's like his rape-o-meter goes to ten and he becomes an unstoppable raping machine. Until he tries to mess with Sonny Chiba's girl, of course.

So Black Guy is all in rape mode and he's throwing this chick around, yelling rapist stuff like "Come on!" and "Yeah!" and he totally doesn't even see Sonny Chiba climb in the window behind him. Now, Sonny Chiba has just scaled a fucking rope like five stories to rescue this chick, and he finds some black dude trying to get his rape on with his girl. Needless to say, things do not go well for Black Guy.

It's quick, but it's painful - Sonny Chiba knocks Black Guy loopy with a couple punches and kicks, and then to teach the guy a lesson (which is don't fuck with Sonny Chiba), he grabs Black Guy's crotch and pulls his fucking balls off.



I'm fucking serious, he literally tears this guy's testicles off with his bare hands, and then he holds them up triumphantly, like they're a trophy or he just got the flag in Double Dare or something. I swear to God, nothing in a kung fu movie is more painful to watch if you're a guy, except maybe when the dude gets jabbed in the nuts with a spear in Chinese Super Ninja.

There's only one time in the whole movie that Sonny Chiba is actually in a little bit of trouble, and that's when he's fighting some short chubby guy at a karate school. Somehow this chubby guy is some kind of invincible karate master, even though he looks like the kind of guy that gets off smelling soiled panties. I guess he can be both. Anyways, he kind of knocks around Sonny Chiba a little bit, and just when you think maybe Sonny Chiba is beaten, the most incredible thing happens - THE WORLD'S GREATEST FLASHBACK.

It literally comes out of nowhere. It's black and white footage of a young Sonny Chiba watching his father get executed for some crime or something. A soldier tells him "Your father is a traitor, and your mother is a whore!" and it all takes place with lots of rain and mud. It kind of reminds me of Schindler's List, if Schindler's List had Japanese people and horrible dubbing. Either way, this flashback occurs and Sonny Chiba hears his father's voice telling him to be strong and shit. It ends with the greatest motivational quote I've ever heard - "YOU MUST BE... A NUMBA ONE MAN!"

And just like that, the wakka-wakka guitar theme music starts playing and Sonny Chiba starts running around, literally bouncing off the walls. He flies off the wall and jumpkicks the chubby karate guy right in his big belly, and the dude is such a pussy he gives up right there. He says something crazy like "Okay, I see your point," even though nobody was really saying anything, but I think Sonny Chiba's point was I will jumpkick you to death and the chubby guy didn't want any of that. They basically decide to be friends after that, but probably only because the chubby guy doesn't want to die.

The movie's big climax comes when it turns out the Yakuza is working for the Mafia or something crazy, and they kidnap this oil heiress chick Sonny Chiba's kind of sweet on. He never really shows her any affection, and in fact the first time they meet he punches through a door and forces himself on her, and then throws her head-first into a wall when chubby karate guy demands he release her, but she's in love with him anyways.

So the Yakuza/Mafia guys (Mafiuza?) take her to this big boat full of henchmen who know karate and figure they'll be safe. But Sonny Chiba has a tiny motorboat and a big heart, and catches up to them, climbs on to the boat, and literally spends ten minutes of the movie killing every person he sees. He's cracking skulls, breaking arms, tossing guys over guardrails to their death... don't take my word for it, watch it for yourself.

It all comes down to a battle between Sonny Chiba and Junjo, the prisoner from the beginning of the movie. I guess he doesn't appreciate his sister being forced to perform sexual services (go figure!) and has joined the Mafiuza to get revenge. There's a big showdown with rain and lightning and the whole thing is very dramatic and then Sonny Chiba rips out Junjo's throat. The End.

The movie ends that abruptly. And so does this post.

HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN

Last week I bought two of those 50 movie DVD packs you always see for really cheap. I got "50 Sci-Fi Classics" and "50 Drive-In Classics". Now, I'm not going to accuse anyone of false advertising, but I really doubt anyone would call shit like Attack of the Monsters or Werewolf vs the Vampire Women a classic. Of course, that doesn't mean they're not a whole hell of a lot of fun to watch.

So I ended up with 100 crappy movies for around $30. The bad news is I'm out $30, but the good news is I have 100 crappy movies to review at my leisure, so let's get this party started. I'm even taking my own screen grabs this time! These movies ain't gonna make fun of themselves! CRAPSTRAVAGANZA begins here!



If a title like Hercules Against the Moon Men doesn't make you want to watch a movie, I don't know what will. It's an Italian movie from the 60's starring a big burly dude called ALAN STEEL. I use all caps there because you can't type a name like ALAN STEEL with lower case letters. I tried, and my keyboard physically is not capable.

For some reason, I was really jazzed to see this movie. Probably because you're usually in for a good time if you're watching an Italian movie from the 60's or 70's. They pretty much owned the market on Westerns, cheap zombie movies, and, apparently, adventure movies based on Greek mythology. Hercules Against the Moon Men is crazy for a lot of reasons, though, probably because it was made by a bunch of Italians who I guess never read a thing about ancient Greece in their life.

First of all, in case you can't guess by the title, it has Moon Men. Maybe I'm behind on my Greek myths, but I don't remember anything about people from the moon living inside a mountain, taking virgin sacrifices to revive their hibernating queen. Unless I just forgot about that part of The Odyssey, the Italians basically pulled it out of their ass so they had an excuse for Hercules to fight rock monsters. That's fine by me, though, because if "Hercules fighting rock monsters" doesn't sound awesome to you, you have no soul.

Now, I like Hercules, but he hasn't been treated so well in the last decade or two. First poor Hercules, once the standard for all that was big and manly and strong, got turned into a Disney cartoon. Then there was that lame-ass Kevin Sorbo show that just would not go away. I think they even had some Young Hercules shit on too, which turned Hercules into some Gap model with styled hair.

Back in the day, man, Hercules was not a dude to mess with.



That is a picture of ALAN STEEL as Hercules. Notice he does not have long, flowing Fabio hair. He has a manly beard, and manly muscles, and a manly loincloth. This is not your nansy-pansy syndicated cable TV Hercules, this is old school bodybuilder Hercules. He's kicking ass and taking names, and the first name on the list? Moon Men.

Actually, as the movie opens, Hercules doesn't even know about the Moon Men. I guess that's because they're hiding inside a mountain, like a bunch of pussies, because they know Hercules can kick their ass. Anyways, some evil queen is sacrificing her villagers to some "Mountain of Death" (which is where the Moon Men are hiding, by the way). The villagers aren't really too happy about that, but I can't blame them, because if someone came knocking on my door in the middle of the night to drag me up to some mountain and throw me into a weird glowing death hole, I'd be pissed off too.

So finally, after what is apparently years of sacrificing (one wonders how the queen hasn't run out of villagers yet), some underground movement decides they should stand up and fight for their lives. Actually, they decide to call Hercules and have him fight for their lives, because they're all a bunch of cowards.

What is with this movie? We have Moon Men hiding inside a mountain and a bunch of villagers too scared to do their own fighting? Is Hercules the only person in Greece with a spine?

The evil queen is pissed off that Hercules is coming to beat up the Mountain of Death or something, so she dispatches a bunch of soldiers to ambush him on the road. They trip up Hercules' horse, which looks really painful for the horse, as it lands headfirst in the dirt, and then like twenty guys with weapons all jump out and start attacking Hercules. The result?


HERCULES TRIUMPHANT

Hercules stomps their asses in with all the subtlety of a nuclear bomb. The beat down is so severe that the Moon Men are shakin' in their boots, so they show up in the queen's bedroom to tell her she's really gotta do something about this Hercules guy.



The title of the movie is kind of misleading, because as far as I can tell there aren't really any Moon Men so much as there is a single Moon Man. The only other bad guys are the queen's disposable soldiers and some cool as hell rock men, but we'll get to the rock men later.

Honestly, when the Moon Man first appeared, I thought it was that fucking mechanical owl thing from Clash of the Titans, but upon closer inspection the Moon Man was much less freaky. He kind of has this Darth Vader voice going, though, so I guess that's cool. Plus he can appear and disappear whenever he wants, which is probably why he shows up in the queen's bedroom. He probably didn't even go there to tell her anything, he was probably just trying to catch a glimpse of her undressing or going to the bathroom or whatever Moon Men are into. Then she sees him, so he's all like "UH, I HAVE COME HERE BECAUSE YOU MUST DESTROY HERCULES", and leaves really quick because he's got a moon boner and he hopes she doesn't notice.

Anyways... The leader of the villagers' anti-sacrifice movement is some feeble old man who looks like he's seconds away from a stroke. The old man and his daughter, who is hot and in love with Hercules of course, decide to take Hercules through some caves as a short cut for some reason I can't remember.

The old man seems to know exactly where he's going, and doesn't really give any reason to be careful, but then the evil queen starts talking about how "nobody has ever left the catacombs alive" and I start wondering if this old guy is all there in the head. I'm thinking maybe the old dude got the wrong cave, like instead of going inside the short cut cave he took the death trap cave instead.

Then all of a sudden BAM, the old man gets impaled by spikes in what is honestly the most brutal death in the whole movie. It doesn't cut away or anything, these spikes just fly out of the wall and kill him. It's totally awesome because the stupid old guy didn't even see it coming, and really didn't deserve anything that nasty, but now he's dead and the movie is better off for it. I still don't know how he could have gone through those caves so many times and never stumbled across those spikes before, though.



Just as a warning, I'm going to tell you this movie is death trap crazy. Like, really, there's a whole lotta death traps. Hercules is dropped into a pit that starts filling up with water, I guess to drown him. That might work if Hercules can't swim, but really, if he can swim can't he just tread water or float until the water gets high enough for him to climb out of the top? Well Hercules isn't waiting that long, and he punches a hole straight through the pit instead. On the other side is a big furry monster with big sharp teeth, which would scare the shit out of most people, but Hercules just starts punching it in the face until it dies.

Like, I'm all jazzed because here's a fuckin' monster for Hercules to fight with, right? It's all hairy and ugly and it's got sharp fangs and it's growling, and you'd think this would be some long-ass battle to the death. Well, our hero just punched a hole through solid rock with his fists, so a monster's face isn't going to do too well against strength like that. The monster gets the element of surprise on his side, but guess what, monster, Hercules has the element of punching you to death in the face on his side, and guess which one ends up winning?

With the monster disposed of, we get to the final death trap in our Death Trap Trifecta. What can top a water pit and a monster?



Steel bars? Are you shitting me? How are steel bars going to stop fucking Hercules? The guy practically grew up bending steel bars. Hercules probably ties steel bars into animal shapes like clowns do with balloons. And if he's any kind of hero, he probably ties clowns into animal shapes too, because there's no way a manly guy like Hercules likes clowns.

So anyways there's some stupid shit with the queen's sister, who's getting married to some douchebag that Hercules has to save by beating up ten more guys, and then the queen gives her sister to the Moon Men because the sister looks just like their comatose Moon Queen, and they need the queen's sister's blood, plus all the blood from the people that were sacrificed to revive her and conquer the world.

Got all that? Well, it doesn't matter, because all this movie is good for is watching Hercules beat people up. And don't think the people who made it, smart Italians that they are, aren't aware of that. There's all sorts of Hercules beat-down action going on. He's picking guys up and throwing them at other guys, he's punching five guys at the same time, and he's not even breaking a sweat. His body might be glistening, but he's just well oiled.

Eventually Hercules lets the evil queen capture him, because he thinks that's the only way to figure out her plan. I didn't really know there was that much to figure out - she's feeding people to a mountain. Not really a mystery. But whatever, Hercules is a fighter, not a thinker. The queen, now that she has Hercules at her mercy, decides she's gonna get one of these death traps to work if it's the last thing she does, and tries to crush Hercules in... more spikes. She probably spends a lot of money building these death traps, which is why she's so determined to use them.



This one turns in to a real test of strength for Hercules, and it takes him like ten minutes to get out. And the movie shows you the whole ten minutes. It's basically that picture above, but with lots of grunting and awkwardly framed close-ups of ALAN STEEL'S well oiled arms and chest. Or maybe it is sweat this time, I don't know. The end result is the same as always, and once again Hercules defeats the stupid queen's death trap. This time, though, she gets to witness it herself, and I guess she gets pretty turned on by the whole thing, because the next thing you know she's inviting Hercules to her bedroom and striking seductive poses.



Hercules is all into it too, and tricks the queen into thinking he's on her side. On the surface, this is because he still wants to figure out her plan, but really it's because he just wants to have sex with her. And he does. Because he's Hercules, and no woman can resist him. Even if they tried.

Eventually, Hercules figures out the whole deal. Good job, Hercules! It only took you the majority of the movie's running time to work out what the audience has known since the first five minutes! As soon as the queen tells him the whole "sister's blood for the Moon Queen" plot, Hercules laughs in her face and starts punching her soldiers. This part is awesome, because at one point like five guys all rush Hercules at the same time, and he just pushes them all down, like they were a bunch of uppity kindergartners.

The Moon Man is pissed off at the queen now, because Hercules is coming to get him. Also, I'm sure there's some jealousy involved too, because Hercules succeeded where the Moon Man failed - he banged her royal highness right in her own bed. How you like them apples, Moon Man? He doesn't like them apples at all, and in his rage he unleashes the dreaded and awesome fucking ROCK MEN!



Okay, so maybe they don't look very threatening, but man, these guys are really... Well, I guess they're not really fast, because they just kind of blindly stumble around... and they're not all that strong, because they can't kill Hercules... but they look awesome.

What do rock men do to a woman that has betrayed their Moon Man master? Rip her limb from limb? Pummel her into paste? Uh, no, not really any of those things. They just kind of walk towards her very slowly while she runs in circles screaming. I don't know, maybe I'd go insane from fear at the sight of a group of rock men stumbling at me like a bunch of granite drunks, but it seems like the queen has plenty of chances to escape while the rock men slowly and awkwardly descend upon her.

Eventually, though, they all group together and crush the queen to death between their bodies. She gets jostled and bumped around like a human pinball while the rock men rub up against her and squish against her body. It kind of resembles some kind of fucked up gang bang, actually.



Eventually, mercifully, Hercules makes it to the Mountain of Doom, where there is nary a death trap to be found (huzzah!). Now Hercules has to defeat the rock men, which is going to be a lot more difficult than bending some bars or killing a monster. Hercules usually employs two strategies when taking on his foes - punching and throwing. He tries punching the rock men, but doesn't really get anywhere, so that leaves plan B.



He picks up rock men and starts throwing them at other rock men. Now that's ingenuity.

So that just leaves the Moon Man between Hercules and saving the world. You might think this all leads to a dramatic one-on-one showdown between Hercules and the Moon Man, but you'd be wrong again. The Moon Man is standing on this really high staircase, and as Hercules runs at him he yells "STOP!" and then Hercules pushes the Moon Man out of the way. That's it. That's Hercules Against the Moon Men. The whole movie builds up to Hercules pushing some bobble-headed alien down a flight of stairs.

Somehow, though, it's totally worth it.

Observations and Things Learned in Spider-Man 3:

- Killing people and robbing banks is okay, as long as you cry about your sick daughter any time someone calls you on it.

- Convenient amnesia is a great way to sideline one of your major plot threads so you can throw in some other shit a bunch of nerds on the internet wanted you to put in your movie.

- Topher Grace is actually a clone of Tobey Maguire. Seriously, they're like brothers from different mothers or something.

- Mary Jane is a dirty whore.

- Just like Peter Parker's spider-sense, Aunt May apparently has wisdom-sense, which alerts her when a character is in crisis and sage advice is needed. I'm assuming she can show up wherever she wants without having a car due to New York City's mass transit system, and not because her wisdom-sense instantly teleports her to whoever she needs to lecture.

- One of Spider-Man's little known powers? The ability to cause any background extra to burst into spontaneous convulsions of joy every time he swings by.

- Judging by the way Peter Parker changes his hair and clothes when he wears his black costume, it's safe to say that every member of Fall Out Boy has bonded with a symbiote from outer space.

- "You broke into my house, beat the crap out of me, and horribly disfigured my face. But since you didn't kill my dad, I'll gladly sacrifice my life for you! By the way, my creepy senile butler says hi."

- Your average movie-going audience is so stupid that they need a flashback from earlier in the same movie to remind them that alien symbiotes are allergic to loud noises. You know, just in case you took a bathroom break or had a mild stroke during the five minute scene with the symbiote writhing in pain next to the huge bell.

- "Hi, my name is James Cromwell, and I'll do anything for a paycheck."

- Bruce Campbell does a better Inspector Clouseau than Steve Martin.

- Did I mention Mary Jane is a dirty whore? Because she totally is.

- At some point, after a week consisting of constantly fighting super villains, foiling robberies, nearly dying on a handful of occasions, and generally saving the city of New York from its own idiocy on a daily basis, a guy has to turn to his needy girlfriend and say "You know what? Some fucking sympathy would be really nice."

- Everybody knows Peter Parker is a really nice guy, but they treat him like crap anyways. See above.

- Tobey Maguire has lost his Spider-Man bulk. Watch the movie again. He's got a flabby little double chin and there aren't any of those random "Peter Takes His Shirt Off" scenes that were sprinkled into the last two movies.

- New York City is full of random holes that destabilize your molecules.

- If a snarling creature with huge white eyes and nasty sharp teeth randomly jumps you on a dark street corner, he's of no real concern because he's not Spider-Man. Just turn around and walk away.

- Even if a crazy alien monster throws a flying snowboard through your chest, you still have enough life (and blood) left to wait around while Spider-Man finishes his big climactic fight before you forgive him with your dying breath.

- Mary Jane, seriously? Your boyfriend is off saving hundreds of people from certain death, and you get lonely and go make out with his best friend? What are you even mad at him for anyways? Did you forget that maybe he's not consoling you after you've been fired from your shitty Broadway play because you never fucking told him you got fired from your shitty Broadway play. You whore.

Seriously though, the movie was not that good.

HOLY FUCK RAMBO

Have you seen Rambo yet?

Ho.

Lee.

Shit.

I walked into the theater thinking I was a man. An hour and twenty minutes later I left knowing that before I was not a man, but Rambo had just made me one. Rambo is an action movie that lines up every action movie made in the last decade or two and fucking shoots those pansy-ass movies in the head execution style. Then Rambo takes their heads off with a machete and puts them on spikes as a warning to other movies that want to call themselves action movies. Rambo takes the bar and sets it so high it automatically becomes the best action movie released this year, and it fucking dares any other movie to try and top it.

Here's what you are going to do this week: First, rent First Blood, because you probably haven't seen it and if you have it was too long ago. If you own First Blood on DVD, then you and I are probably friends and I bet you want to see Rambo already if you haven't yet. Second, after watching First Blood, you're going to your local movie theater, buy a ticket to Rambo (and then you might buy some popcorn or some M&M's and maybe a Coke), then you're gonna sit down and watch Sylvester Stallone fucking own the action genre for the next decade.

Why? Because you owe it to yourself. When was the last time you sat in a theater and watched an R-rated movie that really seemed like it was for fucking grown-ups and not some sissy shit that's just a PG-13 movie with a few drops of extra blood and one or two F-bombs? Rambo takes the fucking R rating to the limit. It's so R-rated that if you took out all the R-rated parts you'd have a fifteen minute movie of Sylvester Stallone driving a boat up a river. Everything else is just gore and carnage.

Like, seriously, I walked out of Rambo and I was almost speechless. I felt like someone had been slapping me in the face for an hour. If this is the last action movie Sylvester Stallone ever makes, he leaves the genre having crowned himself the modern king.


Pictured: John Rambo and an Asian guy, seconds before John Rambo decapitates the Asian guy with a homemade machete and murders 250 people in 15 minutes

I could give you a plot synopsis, but really here's all you need to know - Rambo goes to Burma and cuts their country's population in half. Maybe that's inaccurate, because I don't know how many people live in Burma, but after John fucking Rambo shows up there's a whole lot less of them. You can't even tell how much less, because they're not even whole people anymore. They've been cut in half by machine gun fire, decapitated and/or disemboweled by machetes, impaled by arrows, blown in to wet chunks by landmines, impaled by arrows and then blown in to wet chunks by landmines, or just had their fucking throats torn out by John Rambo's bare hands.

People don't just get shot in Rambo, they get shredded by bullets. The last 20 minutes of the goddamn movie is almost nothing but soldiers getting torn to bloody shreds by John Rambo. Heads pop open, chests explode, limbs fly off. I'm not even doing it justice by telling you what happens, because it's so visceral and constant and amazingly graphic that if someone told me this was a documentary about Sylvester Stallone murdering the entire army of Burma with a Jeep-mounted .60 caliber machine gun, at that point I would probably believe them. It's the kind of shit that makes your jaw hit the floor. It's like all the violence from every awesome action movie Stallone hasn't made since 1988 has just been building up inside the man for the last twenty years and Rambo is his catharsis. Rambo probably has enough insane violence in the last scene alone to spread across three or four other, more shitty movies.

When Rambo ends, you'll want to cry. First of all because the ending is fucking cool as hell and is a perfect way for Stallone to retire the John Rambo character, but you'll also want to cry because Rambo just made you its fucking bitch and you liked it. It's something close to a perfect movie, because it does not try to be anything it isn't, only revel in what it is. There is no forced romantic interest, no clunky comic relief, no attempts to sensitize or soften up the character.

Also I saw Cloverfield this weekend and even though it had a giant monster it didn't have Stallone turning an entire truck full of soldiers into goo with a giant machine gun so I don't feel like talking about it right now.