1godzillafan's Round 200 SpectacularZardozThis is the movie we
should have done, but didn't because
Doomsday is too much of a pussy. So this is the natural place to start.
I'll be honest, I never looked to deeply into Zardoz. I think in the back of my mind I had it confused with Krull and just thought it was a fantasy adventure on some alien planet. Really all I knew of it was that Sean Connery spent a large amount of screentime in a red diaper. I don't think I fully expected Zardoz to be much more than a dumb sci-fi thay looked silly.
How wrong I was. This movie is so much more. After dizzying opening prologue by a disembodied head with a painted moustache, we're treated to one of the greatest openings to a film where a giant stone head lands in front of Connery's red diaper tribe and declares the law to be "THE PENIS IS EVIL! THE GUN IS GOOD!" This is actual dialogue in the movie, trying to impress upon the primitives that breeding and giving life is evil and taking life away is the will of their God, Zardoz. This is also the motto of virgins who participated in Gamergate, where they compensated for their lack of sex by telling people how many guns they owned, even though they didn't own any.
It was here that I knew this movie was a masterpiece.
So, Zardoz isn't what I thought it was, so what is it about? Well, Sean Connery is one of these mentioned tribesmen who sneaks aboard the stone head of Zardoz and is taken to an advance civilization of immortals, who descended from the human race and preserved its culture, while people like Connery just stayed out in the wild, beat each other up, and fucked. It's the fucking that fascinates the immortals most, because their immortality made sex unnecessary so it isn't practiced anymore, and they keep Sean Connery in their society to study his horniness. While in this society, Connery's presence begins to topple it over, and the stiff upper class learn to fuck again.
Imagine that soft core premise, only done pretentiously, as if the director saw Planet of the Apes and decided it needed to be more like 2001. And completely botched too. It's a movie that feels like it's trying to be a commentary on life, death, social classes, sex, and violence, but fails at really saying anything about them because it's mostly just a bunch of jumbled up nonsense.
This is what I imagine
SnoBorderZero's directorial debut will end up like.
The movie is chock full of unintentionally funny imagery, with my favorite being a group study on Connery where the female lead hosts a slide show about erections. They know the
theory behind sex, but they don't understand how a limp penis turns into an erect penis (cue crude drawings of both being switched in said slide show as this discussion is happening). They then try to stimulate Connery by switching to filmed scenes of a woman washing her lathered up breasts and two women mud wrestling, neither of which are his kink. They just about give up when Connery gives a leery stare at the lady giving the presentation and everyone looks down at his crotch and all cheer.
And if you're wondering why Connery agreed to do this film, for starters apparently he needed the money. Secondly, he gets fondled a lot in this movie. And finally, there is a subplot to this movie where there is a subset of catatonic immortals called "Apathetics," who just stand in place and look as limp and wooden as a Jason Clarke performance. Connery tries to rape one of them but she doesn't respond at all, which pisses him off and he just leaves, but she wakes up after he gets off of her. She then wakes up the other Apathetics and later in the movie they all start fondling Connery, because his touch gives them life, and they then pass it off to each other by making out. This sequence concludes with them proceeding to have an orgy in the middle of the town while older immortals calling out "Share with us!" Properly interpreted, this movie is pretty much saying Sean Connery is a sex god. How could he say no to that?
Director John Boorman directed Deliverance before this movie, which I haven't seen. Apparently unlike the other Boorman movie's I've seen, it's not a total disaster, so I have no interest in it. Boorman made this film because he wanted to do an epic fantasy and his attempt to adapt Lord of the Rings fell through. I gotta be honest, given the way this film turned out, I'm way more interested in
his version of Lord of the Rings than Peter Jackson's because it's probably less boring. But one thing I will state after seeing this is that anybody who didn't picture Exorcist II being a train wreck after this movie came out had way too much faith in this guy. But this is still one of the best bad movies I've ever seen, and it's one I'm eager to revisit again.
FatmanThis is the movie we
should have done, but didn't because
PG Cooper is too much of a pussy.
PhantomKnight would have preferred I'd watch this first, but Sean Connery's wife beating trumps Mel Gibson's anti-Semitism.
This film features Santa Claus, played by Mel Gibson, who has fallen on hard times and is forced to take a government contract of weapons manufacturing or see his workshop get shut down. Meanwhile, a little psychopath gets a lump of coal for Christmas and hires Walton Goggins to kill Jolly Ol' St. Nick. This leads to a confrontation between Goggins and Santa Mel where Santa is all...
Fatman reminds me a little bit of The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. They have somewhat similar setups and antagonists, which both see Santa Claus in financial trouble in a Capitalist generation while being antagonized by a jerk who resents him for not giving him the present he wanted. Of course, that's where the similarities end, because Fatman is more of a vengeance drama parody with the holiday fantasy slant.
It comes close to working. The movie is very much in on its own joke. It realizes it's an absurd premise for an action movie, and it feels like the melodramatic approach to it is intentionally tongue-in-cheek. But it feels a bit frustrating as in places it feels like it's inches away from an idea clicking into place and becoming inspired, while in others it feels full meters away while it squanders it. The movie never really fulfills itself, though it feels like there is something to be made out of it.
To be fair, I also get the sense that the movie might have been scaled back. This feels like there might have been a more elaborate first draft that had to be tossed due to budgetary concerns. The film is surprisingly light on the action, with its only real sequence springing to life in the last fifteen minutes. Though Gibson is well cast here, he doesn't really get enough time to shine as an ass-kicking Kris Kringle (though he has a pretty great intimidation scene to close it out). The rest of the movie is devoted to world building, trying to make this version of Santa Claus and his environment make sense, while also devoting time to Walton Goggins on a road trip.
It's entertaining to a point, but it could be more so if more was do e with it. Fatman is competent enough as a creative genre twist, but it neither falls into the category of good or bad.
AvengementTell
thebtskink that I finally did it and I'm now the only person on this board aside from
donny to have watched this movie. How does our little meme live up to the hype?
Scott Adkins aka Weapon XI from X-Men Origins: Wolverine plays a prisoner who breaks out of custody and takes a bunch of lackeys from his brother's criminal organization hostage in a pub. As he threatens them with a shotgun he relates how he landed in prison, what he experienced there, and how he now wants his brother to answer for what happened to him.
Avengement had me a little hesitant at first because it begins with a weird synth score that feels like something you'd play while you're completely baked and trying to "see the music, MAN!" As the story gets started, nothing about the movie seemed to be too engaging, at least not for a half hour. The deeper I got into it, the more intrigued I became in the little rabbit hole of what happened to this dude and where it was going to end up. Avengement owes a lot to its presentation, in which it feels almost like it could be a stage play. It's like 12 Angry Men routinely interrupted by flashbacks that usually set up action sequences. Avengement never convinced me it was the best possible movie that could be made with such a presentation, but once it hooked my interest, I never looked away from the screen.
All told, the script could use some polish, but there are some solid action scenes and good performances. Avengement is surprisingly better than one would think based on our mockery of it. But that's not enough to make me stop mocking it.
Two for the RoadThis one's for me. I said before I was saving this movie for a rainy day and "Oh hey, there's an Audrey Hepburn movie I've never seen!" When my father died, I felt like that rainy day had finally come, so here we are. Incidentally, The Gunfighter is more likely a movie my dad would have preferred watching, though I imagine he already had seen it and probably loved it. He was a huge western/frontier buff, whereas I've always leaned more into comedies, romances, and dramas for my classic film viewing (when I'm not watching horror flicks, that is). My preferred era is normally earlier than Two for the Road, but my continued love for Audrey Hepburn made the movie an eventual must see. Pulling a movie of hers I haven't seen before has been something of a reliable tool in digging myself out of a funk throughout the years. So with a western viewed this week, and a classic relationship comedy starring Audrey, I feel like I touched some sort of base of comfort with my grieving.
Two for the Road finds Audrey Hepburn reunited with her director from Charade, Stanley Donen, and this time has a much more age appropriate romantic lead than Cary Grant in Albert Finney (who Hepburn was actually older than, in this case). This was one of her last roles in 1967 before her semi-retirement from acting, coming out just before Terrence Young's wonderful thriller Wait Until Dark, which saw a blind Hepburn being terrorized by Alan Arkin. Two for the Road is more of a traditional Hepburn-in-a-romantic-lead-role than that film, though it's less lovey dovey "Guy wins girl in the end after fawning her the entire movie" and more of a realistic portrayal of love, marriage, sex, and even relationship burn out. The story features Hepburn and Finney as a married couple on a road trip through France while their relationship is on the rocks, all the while flashing back to various road trips and periods during their courtship from first meeting to their affairs.
The weight of the film balances heavily on Hepburn and Finney's chemistry, of which is excellent. They spend the entire film switching back and forth between getting frisky and arguing heatedly with each other. They pull off the various stages of the relationship exquisitely and are totally committed to the themes of the film. The editing can be a little jarring at times, as the film jumps through different years without warning, with little context of where we are now except what clothes they are wearing and Audrey's hair. But those who don't play with their phone while watching the movie won't get too lost.
Two for the Road is an excellent example of a classic romantic comedy done well, and probably an instant favorite with me up there with my personal treasures of It Happened One Night, The Cameraman, and City Lights. I even feel it's a much more thorough examination of marriage trial than last year's Marriage Story, which mostly concentrated on the ass end of a divorce (albeit well) while Two For the Road examines the meat and potatoes of what really is going down.
The only problem I have is picking what my next rainy day Hepburn movie is. I haven't seen Roman Holiday despite being her big break, so perhaps that will be the frontrunner for next time. Time will tell.
Dune 2021
It sucks, but
IanTheCool will love it.
Forrest HumpI legitimately tried to track a copy of this movie down but all roads came up to a dead end. Tell
PhantomKnight and
PG Cooper I failed them.
MankI refuse to see this movie on the basis that
Dracula can't tell me what to do. I will however see the XXX parody Jank though.
TremorsMichael Gross outacts everyone in Mank.
The GunfighterIt's fine but Tremors is better.
This movie is the story of Ringo long before he became one of the Beatles. Turns out he was a gunslinger in the west, challenged by any asshole who wants to prove he's better. This is just like when
Neverending pops up in my topics and tries to out-troll me by posting Red Letter Media videos that I don't watch. Anyway, he shoots a kid who tries to shoot him first, which puts the kid's brothers on his tail. Ringo Starr ducks into a town where he reconnects with an old-partner-current-lawman and an old flame.
This movie reminded me, of all movies, Avengement. It's a film that primarily stays in one location and we learn his story as he relates it to others. Avengement did it with flashbacks, while The Gunfighter did it through dialogue. Probably because Scott Adkins is a badass, like me, and Gregory Peck is a pussy, like
Doomsday and
PG Cooper. It also has a hint of Unforgiven, as it's a story of an aging gunslinger full of remorse. I also am pretty sure I saw a similar episode of Gunsmoke once, where an outlaw comes to town and demands to see his estranged wife and child, who want nothing to do with him.
The Gunfighter is a pretty interesting stage drama that could fall fully on Peck's shoulders, though his supporting cast handles some of that weight quite well. Even still, Peck is in top form even if he isn't in a movie called Tremors. I thought the ending to the film was fairly obvious from the beginning, but the film did keep me guessing as to who the man who would be the one to do the deed. The film is constantly introducing characters who want Ringo dead, and the film becomes something of a reverse game of Clue, where you try to pin the culprit before the act is done. I have doubts as to whether this was intentional, though it does help keep the movie's suspense up.
It's a pretty solid picture, and probably one of the better westerns I've seen. I probably need to watch more, but when there are movies like Zardoz grabbing my attention, who has the time?