Chappie

I'm glad my parents aren't hyper-criminals
who are also Die Antwoord.

"I am discovery. I am wonder. I am Chappie."

I feel like this tagline is a bit misleading in terms of the movie's tone, but then again I've never especially gotten the impression that tagline writers have any idea what movies are about. Welcome back to THE Tagline, where robots get set on fire just to watch them burn. Over the weekend I got out to the movies, because there was something that I actually wanted to see, and that was Chappie, the latest from South African-Canadian pain artist Neill Blomkamp, a man romantically involved with cinematic misery, and also science fiction I suppose. His last fictional foray was the aggressively unpleasant and almost completely unnecessary Elysium, a film where Matt Damon portrays a low-life who enlists the help of bigger low-lifes, to bring down the biggest, meanest, low-lifes of all, who live on a magical paradise in outer space. What you may be detecting is I didn't think much of Elysium. While still kind of a bummer, I found District 9, his first major theatrical release, to be substantially less shitty, and so with these two experiences from the director behind me, I figured that I had a 50/50 shot of either liking or hating Chappie, a movie about a police robot that gains sentience, in the caldera of violence and shittiness that is Johannesburg. How did I end up liking it? Well things went about 50/50. Let's start off with the basics.

House of 1000 Corpses

This zombie not featured prominently.

"Life and Death are Meaningless...And Pain Is God."

Always one for subtlety that Rob Zombie. Anyway welcome to the spooky conclusion of my October reviews! Today I will round out this celebration of spook by talking about one of my favorite terrible horror movies that's great because of how completely ridiculous it is. Obviously this is going to be a Rob Zombie movie I'm talking about (see also here and here) in this case his directorial debut, House of 1000 Corpses. Though it may be his first, This movie bears all the great hallmarks of Zombie's films, including lots of gore, intense and overbearing background music and soundtrack, Syd Haig doing random shit, and Sheri Moon Zombie being naked on camera, and dressed in a bunch of kinky outfits. Sound familiar? Well YEAH IT IS, but there's so much more to enjoy! You ain't seen nothin' yet. House of 1000 Corpses starts with an almost completely irrelevant scene where two assholes try to rob Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen. It doesn't work out so great and they both end up getting shot. Later two dumbasses named Jerry and Bill stop in with their girlfriends Mary and Denise because they're trying to write a guide of off-beat tourist attractions, because they're douchebags. On Spaulding's tour they learn about Dr. Satan, a crazy guy who used crude brain surgery to try and make an army of super-soldier zombies, which sounds a lot like the plot of Frankenstein's army actually, a really gross C-budget movie you can see on Netflix ANYWAY. The two assholes decide they just have to find the tree where this guy was hung, so they go driving out into the middle of nowhere in a thunderstorm, and nothing bad happens and they all make it home.

Maximum Overdrive

What a fantastic poster.

"The day horror went into overdrive."

Hi folks, welcome back to the Tagline, where its Spooktober all month, or at least until I get bored and decide to review something completely unrelated because I tend to do that. Today I am talking about a really scary movie, scary because it was DIRECTED BY STEphEN KIIINGGG WOOOOooOOOo. Sounds pretty chilling right? Well sort of. Have you ever heard of Trucks? It was a short story that Stephen King wrote in the early 70s that is about trucks (and other machines and electronics) coming to life to terrorize and murder people. If that sounds like a serviceable short story idea and not a great movie idea, I'd generally agree with you. Movie producers however did NOT agree, and they made not one but TWO movies based on this kind of absurd premise, the first one being written and directed by King himself, and that's this weird ass movie MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. What could make a movie like this better than being about killer trucks? I'll fucking tell you what, if it was starring Emilio Estevez, and lo' and behold it does, as a parolee who works at a truck stop that becomes besieged by trucks. There's also some other losers at the truck stop, a kid riding his bike tirelessly for at least a whole day, a really annoying newlywed couple, and some drifter girl who was hitchhiking with a molester who sells bibles. King admitted later to being "coked out of his mind" for essentially the entire production of this film, which actually explains a lot of what happens during the film (this movie was released in 1986 and that was about the height of King's substance abuse problems). Keep that in mind while I talk about the rest of the movie.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Wow.

"Why did the eagles and vultures attack?"

That's right fuckers, welcome back to the Tagytagtags, it's time for SHOCK AND TERROR on a Thursday morning (or Wednesday night if you stay glued to your feed I don't know). Over the weekend I had the unique experience that is viewing Birdemic, a movie so impossibly bad that I at first was convinced that its shittiness was deliberate. Alas, my sense of shock and terror grew as I came to realize that this movie was a sincere effort, that just also happened to be one of the worst things a human being has ever done on camera under the guise of cinema. Directed, written, and produced by James Nguyen, a person I can only assume is criminally insane, Birdemic chronicles the life, love, and attack by killer birds, of Rod and Nathalie, two young successful young people living in I don't remember or care, California. Rod is a multi-millionaire, after he closes some great sales, his company sells for A BILLION DOLLARS, and he launches his own start up that sells solar panels or something. He drives a Mustang, or at least I assume he is driving it, but it's possible that he cut a hole in the floor and is powering it with his feet like the Flinstones, because I've seriously never seen a Mustang move so slow in my entire life. I honestly didn't think they could be running and move that slow, but now I know better I guess! Anyway, Rod meets an old classmate one day, who is a fashion model, which I guess is different than some other kind of model, and they're really careful to make sure you know how much she is a fashion model. She's really on the rise too, given that she has become "the cover model for Victoria's Secret". Is that a thing? I don't know, but gosh they sure are nonchalant about how she is now a super famous model suddenly. Anyway, despite these two collectively commanding the wealth of a medium sized third world country, they go on dates at town fairs and low-class looking vietnamese restaurants. Also they enjoy live musical performances by some weird guy singing a song about hanging out and having a party with your family.

Starship Troopers

DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

"A new kind of enemy. A new kind of war."

Hello everyone, it's another fine day! Today I'm going to talk about the film adaptation of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, a very peculiar film directed by the smarmy Paul Verhoeven, a Dutch director who is known among other things, for being the first person to ever accept a Razzy in person. He is best known for being the director of Total Recall, and also Robocop. I'm not here to talk about those movies though. Instead let's talk about Starship Troopers, a movie about Jonny Rico, a young man from Buenos Aires who is inexplicably white, just like all of his friends and classmates. He lives in a future society where citizenship is earned only through civil service to the federation. Because Rico is as dumb as a sack of hammers, he decides to join the mobile infantry, which is presently not a super awesome prospect, because the federation is embroiled in a battle with the insectoid arachnid race (I'm not dumb, they're really bug-like but for some reason they call them Arachnids). These things are... really big, and like to tear people into bloody pieces, so you could imagine how being the guys landing on foot to face them down might not be the best career choice. Rico finds himself in the mobile infantry, even as he is estranged from his high school sweetheart, who is Denise Richards, a math genius who is in training for flight school (to pilot spaceships, because she's so smart OBVIOUSLY). In the process, lots of people get brutally killed and their guts explode all of the place.

Night of The Living Dead Live Rifftrax Special

A million Taglines!

"They keep coming back in a bloodthirsty lust for HUMAN FLESH!..."

Good morning to everyone, it's the week of Halloween so I thought I would report back about my trip to the live Rifftrax show I went to see on Thursday, where the MST3K gang (That is, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett) were picking apart George Romero's original ‘zombie’ film, Night of the Living Dead. This was the cult hit that spawned what we now consider to be the modern zombie film. Featuring an ensemble cast of unlikeable jagoffs who stupidly board themselves into a rickety old house, Night of the Living Dead is as much as social commentary as it is a horror movie. Really the movie has a lot to say about the era in which it was made (at which time it was a seriously controversial film, I’ll talk a bit more about that later). It’s always interesting to watch a movie from so long ago, and read people’s reactions to it, then weighed against my own reactions, watching it long after its creation. Consider for a minute that when this movie came out, it was considered gruesomely gory and violent. It was considered to be so graphic that it was described by many censors as being 'the pornography of violence'. To a modern audience this is hilarious, the movie is black and white for starters, and the low budget (around 111,000 dollars) meant that even in black and white the effects seem silly to someone in 2013. At the time however, the depictions of people being murdered and of ghoulish, reanimated corpses devouring the remains of their victims was terrifying. Also without a standard rating system, even small children got into the theater to see this movie, and you can imagine about how well that probably went over.

The Bling Ring

Excellent choice of font.

"Living the Dream, One Heist at a Time."

Proving again that dreams can be at LEAST as boring and stupid as real life! Welcome to a new week at The Tagline, as we are rounding out the spookiest month of the year with a movie that was certainly a horrifying experience after a fashion. That is to say, I was horrified that I was watching it, and that a 90 minute run time could feel like and unending prison sentence, which is funny considering the subject matter. Today I'm going to talk about director Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, what is described as a "satirical black comedy crime film" based on true events revolving around a group of teens who burglarized the homes of a number of celebrities including Paris Hilton (They actually robbed her half a dozen times if accounts are to be believed). The movie stars mostly unknown young actors as the members of the eponymous Bling Ring, with the exception of Emma Watson, who trades being brainy Hermione for being maybe the dumbest human being alive, Nicki (Also if you watch American Horror Story Taissa Farmiga, who was the daughter Violet in season 1, is in this movie). The cast is rounded out with cameos of people who were robbed, Leslie Mann who plays Nicki's mother, and Gavin Rossdale (the frontman for Bush) who portrays a scumbag who helps teenage robbers fence Rolex watches. The movie is shot jumping between scenes of the actual crimes and of the burgling teens being interviewed after the fact. Either way.... I wasn't especially impressed.

The Lords of Salem

Featuring All Tomorrow's Parties

"The Lords Are Coming."

Good Morning everyone, it's a new week and a new month, and that means it's time for more movies at The Tagline! I figured since it's now October, I should start the month off right with a movie about witches, the occult, and worshiping Satan, and maybe the birth of the Antichrist. If you're looking for one stop shopping in the satanic bloodbath department, I feel like you can't find a much surer thing than Rob Zombie, so I decided to take a peek at The Lords of Salem, his most recent film, released only in a limited circuit this past April. Starring Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob Zombie's wife, see more of her bare-caboose here in Zombie's remake of Halloween) as Heidi, a recovering smack-head radio DJ who gets a weird wooden box with a record inside it. This insidious sounding music disk is addressed specifically to her, left at her office by a group calling themselves the "Lords of Salem", and starting a chain of events that leads Heidi down a dark, dark path from which she may not return. Also featured prominently in this film is Bruce Davison (who you may remember was the lead in The Lathe of Heaven) who portrays Francis Matthias, a writer and historian who is disturbed and intrigued by the music and the name Lords of Salem, and attempts to unravel the mystery behind the record. Also Sid Haig appears briefly, because I mean really how could he not this movie is directed by Rob Zombie get real. This movie was met with a mixed reaction by critics as well as by fans of Rob Zombie, and why that was became immediately apparent to me after watching this movie for about ten minutes.

Whisper of the Heart

FIRST TIME ON DVD OH WOW.

"Suki na hito ga dekimashita."

Hello all, welcome to Thursday's edition of THE TAGLINE!!! (look how excited I am!) Today as promised, I will be talking about an animated movie that is in content the exact opposite of Tuesday's Perfect Blue, a movie about fantasy, madness, and violence. Today I will be talking about Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart (originally Mimi wo Sumaseba in Japanese) a movie that is also about finding oneself, but with markedly less nude corpses and blood in low-rise apartments. Whisper of the Heart is, I think I've mentioned in previous posts (maybe when I reviewed Arrietty?) my favorite Studio Ghibli movie, which may make me some kind of iconoclast because it was not directed by Hayao Miyazaki (though he did write the screenplay). Instead, Whisper of the Heart was directed by Yoshifumi Kondo, an animator at Studio Ghibli who at the time was expected to eventually succeed Miyazaki and Takahata as Ghibli's pre-eminent animator. This was not meant to be however, as Kondo died of an Aortic dissection (or possibly an aneurysm) as a result of overwork (this is cited perhaps as one of the reasons why Miyazaki began to work at a more relaxed pace afterwards). Kondo was only 47, and Whisper of the Heart would unfortunately be the only movie he directed before his death. Given how good Whisper of the Heart was, I can say honestly the world was robbed of a great animator much too soon (the same could be said of Satoshi Kon, and I AM saying it now, gosh I didn't mean to review two animated movies by directors who died young. Sorry guys). Anyway, that's enough of the macabre, let's instead focus on Kondo's charming movie, which I absolutely loved.

Halloween (2007)

I can tell from the grainy filter shit just
got REAL BITCHES.

"Evil Unmasked."

Welcome back to The Tagline! I DID see Kick-Ass 2, and you'll hear about it soon, but while I compose my thoughts about it, I'll talk about a Rob Zombie movie instead. No it is not House of 1000 Corpses. I'm talking about the 2007 re-boot of the Halloween franchise, attempting to recover from the Busta Rhymes fueled crapstorm that was the 2002 Halloween: Resurrection (which I heartily recommend you see if only to watch Busta do Karate at Michael Myers). With Rob Zombie at the helm, we could all rest assured that it would be filled with blood, boobs, and people's butt cracks. Lady butts more specifically. His wife's butt most MOST specifically. Because he's just a classy dude like that, and his wife portrays Michael Myers mom who is a pole dancer also. So there's something right off the bat to look forward to! I guess! As mentioned, this film re-imagines the origin story of Michael Myers, starting with a flashback to his childhood, where we first see how shitty his life is, and then get to watch him massacre most of his family in a variety of seriously grisly ways. This sequence makes a good argument for never getting so drunk that you don't notice someone duct taping you in place to your recliner so he can slit your throat. After this charming sequence and a fair amount of boobs and butts, we spend some time observing the troubled young lad's therapy sessions in an asylum, with Dr. Loomis (Malcom McDowell, who I have a tough time not finding creepy no matter what). Then he kills some more people, but there are no butts in this part, so generally that was kind of a let down. We do get to see that the kid is a real aficionado of mask making. Paper mache in particular. He is a really talented fellow in that regard, if you want a horrible nightmare mask to wear around. Which naturally everyone does right?

Garbage Truck Hat Trick: M Night Shyamalan

Why can't they just SEE how great I am?

Hi everyone! I thought I'd do something a little different today, and talk about a specific block of movies, rather than cherry-picking the worst. Now I admit, the director in question pretty much did my job for me in that regard, by going 0-3 in a row with the last 3 movies he directed (arguably the last four movies he directed, but I'm giving some leniency here). I'm talking of course of the illustrious M. Night Shyamalan, a living example of the consequences of tremendous hubris, as if he were trying to make ancient Greek myths come alive before our very eyes. After his career making film The Sixth Sense (spawning bad spoofs and "I see ___ people" jokes for the rest of eternity) Shyamalan had a run of two more movies that I thought were good, those being Unbreakable (which I think is largely forgotten by most people, but not me because come on Bruce Willis) and Signs (definitely NOT forgotten by anyone). Those were pretty damned good movies, and things were looking bright for the future of a new director. Alas, like the child actors of the 80s and 90s, perhaps M. Night got a little bit too big for his britches, and that began to manifest in his demands for 'artistic leeway' in the production of his later movies, and his absolute rejection of any criticism of himself or his movies, ever ever ever. Before that point, he made The Village which... okay. So I didn't like The Village. I thought the whole premise, and again its "twist" ending, were not very interesting, but I'll allow that it wasn't a simply horrendous movie. It was terribly marketed, as a scary movie that was really just a sort of unusual drama movie with some occasional jump out at you moments. So I can at the very least, forgive The Village. What followed... not so much.

Now we get into it for real: