Oscars Flick Picks

They Don’t Make ‘Em Like This Anymore

“Machete”, starring character actor Danny Trejo, offers some light summer entertainment with one minor word of advice: This is no slam on the film, it is just the ONLY way you can enjoy it! “Machete” is chock FULL with silly stereotypes, cartoon-ish violence and the requisite nudity, everything that a mindless summer action flick SHOULD have. And I have to be honest when I say that, for the most part, I enjoyed it!

Never even HEARD of Danny Trejo? You’re not alone, but I’m sure that you have seen his ugly mug before, most recently in the latest installment of the “Predator” franchise earlier this summer. Quoting from his bio on IMDB.com:

A child drug addict and criminal, Danny Trejo was in and out of jail for 11 years. While serving time in San Quentin, he won the lightweight and welterweight boxing titles. Imprisoned for armed robbery and drug offenses, he successfully completed a 12-step rehabilitation program that changed his life. While speaking at a Cocaine Anonymous meeting in 1985, Trejo met a young man who later called him for support. Trejo went to meet him at what turned out to be the set of Runaway Train (1985). Trejo was immediately offered a role as a convict extra, probably because of his tough tattooed appearance. Also on the set was a screenwriter who did time with Trejo in San Quentin. Remembering Trejo’s boxing skills, the screenwriter offered him $350 per day to train the actors for a boxing match. Director Andrey Konchalovskiy saw Trejo training Eric Roberts and immediately offered him a featured role as Roberts’ opponent in the film. Trejo has subsequently appeared in many other films, usually as a tough criminal or villain.

You just have to LOVE this guy! A real American success story…from convict to film actor, Trejo has fashioned a career out of his past history as an armed robber and ex-con.

But despite his street cred and his filmography, Trijo alone couldn’t lift “Machete” from the mediocre to the “campy” cult film that director Robert Rodriguez was aiming for. Rodriguez’s reputation as “Camp Film King” persuaded actors such as Robert Deniro (at left), playing an ultra right wing politician pushing for a border fence, Jeff Fahey as his campaign manager, and the always lovely Jessica Alba playing an ICE agent, to sign up for the ride. And that’s not all! We have veteran character actor Cheech Marin as a priest, Don Johnson playing a deliciously nasty vigilante leader along the lines of the mis-characterized “Minutemen” border watchers, and Steven Seagal affecting a horrible Spanish accent as a drug cartel leader.

Along with Alba (seen below) as a strong female presence, rising star Michelle Rodriguez (at right) plays a crusading immigrant advocate masquerading as a lunch truck operator in agent Alba’s investigative sights And to quote a Ronco Products infomercial “But wait! There’s MORE!“ In a cheesy bit role, Lindsay Lohan is cast as the loose and easy daughter of campaign manager Jeff Fahey.

Plot? You want a plot? All you need to know is that Caucasian is bad and brown is good. Rather than lay it out here just click on this link at IMDB.

In the tradition of the late sixties “blaxploitation” flicks, such as “Shaft” and “Foxy Brown”, “Machete” portrays the illegal immigration issue from the point of view of the “Aztlan” nativist belief that white people tricked the rightful Mexican natives out of their land and have continued to oppress them by denying them the right to free access to the land that was stolen from them. Sure, this is offensive to many but it IS, after all, a turn on the same tune that made stars out of Richard Roundtree and Pam Grier 40 years ago. So lighten up, park your brain and laugh at the outrageousness of what Robert Rodriguez has created.

FOR ENTERTAINMENT VALUE I’LL GIVE IT

I may not remember it in a couple of months, but it sure was fun!

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FROM AUSTRALIA: A WICKEDLY FUNNY MOVIE WITH A MESSAGE

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Short Film, Animated (“Harvie Krumpet,” 2003), 39 year old Adam Elliot has created another winner in his claymation feature length film, “MARY AND MAX”. Normally I don’t pay much attention to animation having been overloaded with Shrek I, II, III, and a host of Pixar projects. At one time they were rare and exciting, but now they are ubiquitous, new ones being released on a monthly basis, so when the cover of “MARY AND MAX” jumped out at me in the local DVD-mart I picked it up and read the back cover. Here’s a synopsis:

“Mary Daisy Dinkle (voiced by Oscar® nominee Toni Collette) is a lonely 8-year-old in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. Max Jerry Horowitz (Oscar® winner Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an obese 44-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome living in the chaos of New York City. Over the course of 20 years and 2 continents, their unusual journey of friendship will explore autism, taxidermy, alcoholism, where babies come from, kleptomania, sexual differences, trust, copulating dogs, religious differences, agoraphobia and more of life’s big and little surprises.”

Sounded a bit quirky so I decided to give it a try.

As the movie opens with a jaunty theme playing in the background, and camera scanning the surrounding neighborhood in muted colors, we see Mary Dinkle gazing out of her bedroom window. The Narrator intones:“Mary Dinkle’s eyes were the color of muddy puddles, her birth mark the color of poo. Mary’s mood ring, which she’d found in a cereal box, was gray, which according to the chart meant that she was either pensive, unconsciously ambitious or hungry.“ So we meet the sad little girl who has no friends yet hungers for human contact. One of the charms of this film is that we don’t have to put up with cartoon voices, except for random exclamatory vocalizations, since it is the narrator who carries the story, describing everything we see, with only brief lines spoken by the characters themselves.

Next, as the tableau unfolds, we meet Mary’s mom, whom she describes as “a little bit wobbly”,  perpetually dressed in a robe and slippers, hair in unraveling curlers, and sipping sherry from a tea cup. Mary’s father is seldom seen, spending all of his time in his work room practicing his solitary hobby of taxidermy on road kill. So with no real sense of a familial bond Mary’s sense of isolation drives her to try to make some kind of intimate contact with someone, ANYONE, who might also long for her company. So, in an impulsive move Mary rips out a page from an New York City phone book and randomly picks a name as her choice for a pen pal…Max Jerry Horowitz.

Max is a forty-ish, single, overweight and emotionally fragile man, living in a cramped apartment. His only forays into the world at large are for his therapy appointments and his Overeaters Anonymous meetings. You see, Max suffers from a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome, which means that he cannot relate to normal people’s emotions. As the narrator reports:“Max had trouble understanding non verbal signals, and flirting was as foreign to him as jogging.” So when he receives Mary’s unsolicited letter he is confused, befuddled and petrified. Not knowing how to respond Max suffers from a bout with severe anxiety which immobilizes him for hours. Soon after, though, he begins to respond in the only way he know how, by composing a rambling and self revealing letter on his typewriter and sending it off to a mysterious  little girl in the far off Australia.

Here’s a couple of the things that I liked about this animated film:

This past year saw two “stop action” animated features, “Fantastic Mister Fox” and “Mary and Max”. Mister Fox was more of a children’s film with a wider adult appeal and plenty of colorful action, as opposed to “Mary And Max” which was filmed in muted colors and dealt with several adult type themes and an audience appeal for older kids/pre-teens and adults. Where Mister Fox used the standard “stop action” figures Mary And Max featured the seldom used “claymation” technique.

It seemed as if Adam Elliot’s philosophy n writing this film was to throw as much offbeat jokes, sight gags, and humorous situations as possible at the viewers in hopes that some of it would strike home. Well, in MY estimation it WORKED! From the copulating dogs in the opening scene, through Mary’s pickled mother, and the sight of a terrified Max trying to withstand the amorous advances of a female neighbor, it ALL left me laughing and wanting to see more. Even the bits of pathos in the story had their own quirky kind of humor in them. All in all there were many more laughs than there were groans.

Long after the movie was over, even a few days after, I found myself going over in my mind a few of the scenes in “Mary And Max”. Even while writing this review, a full week after I returned the film I still harbor warm feelings for the message of the film, that is, that friendships are hard to come by, can take many different forms, and should never be taken for granted.

“Mary And Max” is a film that is both entertaining and thought inducing, well worth your time to view it.

MARY AND MAX, AN ANIMATED GIFT! I RATE IT WITH

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THIS ISN’T “CINEMA” BUT IT IS ENTERTAINING

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwitel Ejiofor, August Diehl

Director: Phillip Noyce

Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes

Industry rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.

With her almond shaped eyes and ample lips Angelina Jolie is always pleasant to look at, and in certain instances she has even shown that she can act, but an “action hero”? Well…not so much! Admittedly, she DID do a nice turn as a professional hit-person in “WANTED”, but that was in a limited scope where the bulk of the action did not depend on HER! In “SALT” she has the burden of carrying the action in a believable manner, but at 5’7″ tall and 120 pounds she just can’t cut it. Also, the plot itself suffers from some logical leaps, but they are covered well by the action sequences: Jolie jumping from a bridge, Jolie taking down a motorcyclist and high-jacking the bike, Jolie taking out a derelict ship full of Russian spies, and Jolie impersonating a young, male Russian officer while penetrating the high security presidential bunker in the White House.

There is really nothing new in this latest spy thriller that we haven’t already seen in any of the “Bourne” movies but, please excuse my chauvinism, Angelina is much nicer to watch for an old lech like me. Sure she’s fairly unbelievable in the “mano y mano” fight scenes, but the direction and execution is just good enough to keep it enjoyable by using the standard cut editing so that we only see snippets of the action. Normally I’d place my cash on the 6 foot 3 inch, 185 pound trained agent when confronting the slight framed Jolie, no matter how well trained she may be, but to see her thrash three guys simultaneously only elicits a comment of “Oh, come ON!” from anyone expecting more. So for this one it is best to just sit back, chomp on your popcorn, and enjoy the show for what it is: just entertainment!

But most improbably of all, the ending of the movie pre-supposes that prospective fans might want to see more of Evelyn Salt when it leaves us with just one more ridiculous scene as Jolie jumps out of a helicopter, escaping the clutches of the CIA and the FBI, at least a thousand feet over the Potomac River and swimming to safety. Will she return to mete justice to her Soviet handlers? Will anybody really care? My guess is NO! Although good for a summer diversion the promotion going into “SALT” far outstripped the movie’s ability to deliver a star vehicle for Angelina, but WILL ensure a brisk DVD rental in a few months.

For strictly entertainment value I’ll give “SALT”

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