March Madness

Suck my duff.

The Peanuts Movie (2015)
The Good Dinosaur (2015)

The Peanuts Movie is a greatest hits package. Something to get the new generation hooked and seek out the album songs. The Good Dinosaur - I don't know what the heck that was supposed to be - a goofier version of The Land Before Time.

The winner of 2017 March Madness is Gung Ho. SnoBorderZero is outraged.

Strange Invaders (1983)
Starman (1984)

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
The Last Dragon (1985)

Slamdance (1987)
Skin Deep (1989)

Blind Fury (1990)
The Lawnmower Man (1992)

The Firm (1993)
A Perfect World (1993)

Assassins (1995)
Money Train (1995)

Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Apt Pupil (1998)

Hardcore Henry (2015)
Assassin’s Creed (2016)

Strange Invaders (1983)
Starman (1984)

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
The Last Dragon (1985)

Both movies are godawful. One was made by a giant nerd who took too many drugs. The other by a music mogul who lacking self-awareness. I'll give Buckaroo the edge just for being creative.

Starman (1984)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

Strange Invaders (1983)
Starman (1984)

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
The Last Dragon (1985)

Starman (1984)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

Slamdance (1987)
Skin Deep (1989)

Starman (1984)
Skin Deep (1989)

Blind Fury (1990)
The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Rutger Hauer is blinded in Vietnam and then taught martial arts by the Vietnamese villagers. 20 years later he's a badass blind swordsman. It's pretty... pretty... pretty good.

Lawnmower Man is a cool concept with an amusing cast but the execution is a giant cheeseball. Here is an example of a movie that SHOULD be remade. Oh, wait. I forgot. It's 2018. Pierce Brosnan plays a scientist who uses virtual reality technology to tap into the brain and fix things. He uses a retarded guy, played by Jeff Fahey, as a test subject and not only does he become intelligent but develops superpowers and turns evil. People would lose their shit if you made this movie today. Hashtag retard shaming.

Tough call but I went with Blind Fury cause it's more competently made.

Starman (1984)
Blind Fury (1990)

The Firm (1993)
A Perfect World (1993)

The Firm, based on a John Grisham novel, stars Tom Cruise as a rookie lawyer working for a law firm with ties to the mob. He works with the feds to take them down. Movie is like 10 hours long! No wonder it's the "black sheep" of Cruise's heyday.

A Perfect World is Clint Eastwood's directorial follow-up to Best Picture Oscar-winner Unforgiven and it shows. It's a crime drama starring Kevin Costner as an escaped convict who kidnaps a child and uses him as a hostage while on the run from a Texas ranger played by Eastwood. I watched this movie when it came out and remember it more fondly than it really is. What sticks out in your mind is "the bonding" between Costner and the child, but the movie has a shit ton of fluff. The Eastwood character and his section of the story are unnecessary. You didn't need the pursuer to be a fleshed character getting in the way of the drama. There could have also be trims elsewhere, like there's a subplot about the governor running for re-election. Eastwood doesn't normally waste his time with shit like this but I guess that Oscar messed with his head. His movie after this one was The Bridges of Madison County. These were dark times, my friend. Pre-Unforgiven Eastwood would have made a really good tightly made movie. Instead we got a well-intended but ultimately flawed movie. But hey, at least it's not The Firm.

Starman (1984)
A Perfect World (1993)

Strange Invaders (1983)
Starman (1984)

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
The Last Dragon (1985)

Starman (1984)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

Slamdance (1987)
Skin Deep (1989)

Starman (1984)
Skin Deep (1989)

Blind Fury (1990)
The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Starman (1984)
Blind Fury (1990)

The Firm (1993)
A Perfect World (1993)

Starman (1984)
A Perfect World (1993)

Assassins (1995)
Money Train (1995)



One of my favorite Chris Rock jokes is, "remember when we used to argue who was better: Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won." That statement isn't about Thriller vs Purple Rain. It's examining the overall career and life of these two musical icons. The reason I bring it up is because the joke popped into my head while revisiting Assassins.

When The Matrix was released, the Wachowski's became overnight sensations and people researched their ascend into movie god status. Turns out, they broke into the industry by selling Joel Silver a script for a million dollars called Assassins. Silver hired Richard Donner to direct and Donner hired Brian Helgeland to rewrite the script. Foul play, people said. How can this old geezer, who started his career directing Steven McQueen in 1950's television, get in the way of the Wachowski's vision?

23 years later, the lunacy around a silly movie like Assassins may seem hilarious, but it illustrates a bigger picture for those of us who've gone through the journey of the Wachowski's career. Richard Donner's legacy is cemented. The man gave us The Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon. The Wachowski's made The Matrix and then a bunch of garbage. The fact people put them on a pedestal after only one movie is the hilarious part. Meanwhile, these same people questioned the sanity of a man who'd been in the business for 40 years at this point. It's possible he was the one making the rational decisions.

That's not to say that Assassins is some misunderstood or overlooked classic. Only three people benefited from this movie. The 1990's were a career low-point for Sylvester Stallone and this IS one of his better works from that era. If you were looking at this purely as a Stallone vehicle, it's a standout. Antonio Banderas was fresh from the success of Desperado and he's great in both movies. In fact he's TOO good. We'll get to that in a moment. And Julianne Moore was an indie actress in the process of proving that she could do mainstream work as well. So here's a case where the actors, the public face of a movie, weren't affected by the failure of a movie. It was just the reputation of the filmmakers.

Assassins is your typical story of a bad guy wanting to leave the life of crime behind. Richard Donner and Sylvester Stallone put a lot of effort into infusing new life into a tired concept. All things considered, it's actually not a bad movie from a technical standpoint. Where it falls apart is in the casting of Antonio Banderas. He's the only one who knows this is a silly action movie and is hamming it up. When the movie isn't focused on him, it gets boring. You don't care about Stallone's extensional crisis or his sort-of romance with Julianne Moore. You just wanna watch these two men go at it in a blaze of glory.

Moral of the story: when in doubt, just blame Antonio Banderas. Wachowski's, you're off the hook this time.





Speaking of has-been's, remember Wesley Snipes? "Before Black Panther there was Blade." I'm sure Dracula is sick and tired of hearing that but it's worth repeating a few more times because in this "representation matters" culture, people like to pretend that Wesley Snipes never happened. I know you guys secretly judge whenever Doomsday and I make Lady Ghostbusters jokes, but from our point-of-view, none of these movies that claim to be progressive are actually progressive. It's just a giant marketing scheme for the gullible PG Cooper generation. To prove my point, I present to you a now obscure movie known as Money Train.

Picture this.

Doomsday is fresh off the success of Geostorm. He walks into the offices at Warner Bros for a pitch meeting.

"Listen here, boss, I got your next big hit. Michael B. Jordan as a New York City transit cop. His girlfriend is a Latina. We can cast Gal Gadot. No one will tell the difference. But she ain't no second fiddle. She's an ass-kicking cop - an equal. Now are you ready for the twist? Michael B. Jordan, this proud Black man, has an adopted White brother. He's a cop too but he's a giant loser and Michael B. Jordan always has to bail him out of trouble. Who's the biggest white doofus we can find? Channing Tatum? Sign him up! Now these three multi-racial and multi-ethnic characters have a huge asshole of a boss. He's an old white man - can we find out if Bruce Willis is available - and he hates these three characters so much he kicks them out the police force. To get revenge, they steal the money train. The money train is this subway that transport large sums of money and is under the jurisdiction of Mr. Asshole Boss. He ain't gonna look so good if the money train goes missing under his watch. So it's a heist movie. It's... a ... Fast and the Furious."

When this movie flops at the box office, which it will cause only superheros movies and Jumanji remakes make money these days, you can blame it on racism.

Money Train itself flopped but that's because the studio was stupid enough to release it on the same weekend that Toy Story premiered. thebtskink will get a kick out of this, but I still have vivid memory of ALMOST watching Money Train in theaters because Toy Story was selling out. I could tell my parents didn't actually wanna watch Toy Story and were pushing to watch Money Train instead on the argument that we could get better seats. I got pissed off and turned into a giant asshole in the middle of this long line. It's embarrassing in retrospect and the people around us must have hated us.

Anyway... Money Train wasn't sold on the premise that it starred Wesley Snipes and Jennifer Lopez with Woody Harrelson as the third wheel. When it flopped, it wasn't blamed on the actor's race or ethnicity. It was just a buddy cop movie coming at the end of that genre's life. Wesley Snipes broke ground without making a fuss about it. And you know why? Because he understood that you need to walk up the stairs, not leap over them. A decade earlier you had Eddie Murphy and Danny Glover as second billing and then they got Beverly Hills Cop and Predator 2. Shit, even Carl Weathers who's like fifth billing in Rocky, got Action Jackson. Now you have Wesley Snipes as first billing in a buddy cop movie in which the other half is a white dude. This isn't Bad Boys where you have TWO black guys. Here, the message is clear. The black guy is the star. You make progress step-by-step.

So Black Panther, congrats on being the first major blockbuster with a mostly black cast but you're only at the top of the staircase because Wesley Snipes did the walking. So yes, before Black Panther, there was fucking Blade.


Starman (1984)
Money Train (1995)

Bad Boys definitely benefited from having the two biggest black stars on television at the time, but Rush Hour was promoted as a joke. "The loudest mouth in the west meets the fastest hands in the east." And it further proves my point. We were already "woke" in 1998. Our biggest movie star was Will Smith. Eddie Murphy, for the second time, race-swapped in Doctor Dolittle and it WAS a success. Antonio Banderas was Zorro. Morgan Freeman was President. Mulan was a hit. Blade was a hit. And Rush Hour was sold on the personalities of its stars and not on their race/ethnicity. So when you have the director of Wrinkle in Time telling the world the movie is SUPER progressive you feel like telling her, "bitch - were you not alive 20 years ago?" Putting Oprah in your movie isn't groundbreaking. Steven Spielberg did that in 1985.

Now, what IS progressive is the gay movement in mainstream movies. That Love, Simon movie coming out next week is kind of a big deal. Gay men aren't widely represented in pop culture and making a mainstream teen comedy about gay men is definitely noteworthy. But it's not getting the same attention as Black Panther.

Real progressive, at this point, would be greater representation for gays, Latinos and Asians. We've been "woke" in terms of women and black people for like 40 years now. Let's be real.

True story, growing up an old man lived down the street. He had a thick European accent and loved to drive down the street and talk to anybody who was outside. Over the years I had several very nice conversations with him. He always asked me about school, what I was studying, what I wanted to do when I was older, all that stuff. He died a couple years back and at his funeral we discovered from his relatives that he was in WWII.

He was an SS officer.

Hardcore Henry (2016)
Assassin's Creed (2016)

This decision was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. Assassin's Creed isn't as terrible as Dracula or PG Cooper would have you believe. I might have to watch it again to finalize my opinion on it.

Hardcore Henry is exactly what you expect. A silly Russian-made action movie with an interesting gimmick.

I guess I'll go with Henry cause it is different at least. You could have called Assassin's Creed the Prince of Persia and people wouldn't have noticed the difference.

Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Hardcore Henry (2015)

This is the second time Kathy Bates wins this fucking tournament.

The Getaway (1972)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Missing in Action (1984)
Missing in Action 2 (1985)

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

The Iron Giant (1999)
Big Hero 6 (2014)

Elle (2016)
Personal Shopper (2016)

The Getaway (1972)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Side by side you have an example of Peckinpah the salesman and Peckinpah the artist. Cool vs Grit. I’ll go with Warren Oates over Steve McQueen cause I find him (and the story/film) more interesting and compelling. But I’ll admit that under a different mood I might vote differently. Qualitywise both movies aren’t too far off. Garcia has an edge cause it feels like everyone is emotionally invested while Gataway comes across as too Hollywood.