Expelled Grey Matter

Some movies just have cult film status imprinted on them from the beginning.  Tank Girl was definitely one, and I think early on the executive at MGM that gave it the go-ahead understood what this was going to be.  Director Rachel Talalay and Tank Girl creators Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin probably hoped that it would be one of those strange exceptions where a strange non-commercial film suddenly becomes a big hit, but I'm sure when this was put in production that MGM knew that the profits would most likely come from video and cable rather than the theatrical release.  Sure, I was there to see it, and the audience I remember seeing it with loved it, but it reached those of us who wanted to see it at the time and that was about it.  Unfortunately, as happens quite often in Hollywood, the person that was enthusiastic about the project left and the guy to step in had no idea what to do with Tank Girl .  Suddenly the appearance of female sex toys in an R-rated film made him nervous, a

I have to start off by saying I never saw the original Justice League.   I saw Man of Steel , which completely rebooted the Superman franchise after the failure of Superman Returns , and thought it was pretty to look at in the beginning but became tedious during the the final fight.  I was happy with Zod and his crew from the original Superman II , so I didn't think that there was any real need to improve on it.  Henry Cavill was decent in the role of Kal-El, but beyond that there wasn't a whole lot that was memorable.  I remember getting some snide derision for being a "hipster" when, upon seeing the trailers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , I said immediately that if the advertisement looked liked crap the film was going to be.  Obviously the majority of people who saw the film, including critics, agreed.  Zack Snyder directed both of those films, and it largely set the tone for the DC cinematic universe: lots of brooding, lots of noise and everything just t

It is ironic that a popular use of a term can form someone's opinion of a piece of art before they get a chance to view it.  The term "gone girl," typically used as a verb meaning to make one's female romantic partner vanish off the face of the Earth, came about due to the name of this movie.  So, of course, I expected the movie to follow a pattern I have seen in real life with people like Scott Peterson, only that the main character was probably going to get away with it, despite everyone's suspicions, and the audience would be left knowing that fact, perhaps with a bit of a coda showing him moving on to his next victim.  Basically a big-budget Lifetime movie.  I was about as wrong as I could be on that point, as Gone Girl , with a script by Gillian Flynn (who wrote the source novel) and direction by David Fincher, may hint that it will go in that direction.  It then decides to head off into another entirely and spends a lot of time trying to make that direction

I have been a huge fan of Stephen King ever since I was a kid.  I can't remember what I read by him first; it might have been Pet Sematary or Skeleton Crew .  Whichever it was it had me hooked.  I remember staying up to the wee hours of the morning reading It , taking Misery with me when visiting the Soviet Union and even signing up for the Stephen King Library and sticking with them, despite their reluctance to join the 21st century, until they finally stopped sending out his new books. While he has written what I would argue, from an academic rather than an emotional standpoint, a number of books the justify him being included in the pantheon of the greatest American writers, he has also written a lot of books that were released just because he is Stephen King.  At some point publishers and editors seemed to have forgotten that they can actually say "no" to him and the world will not come to a screeching halt.  One of those books that I thought should not have seen the

Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby is one of the best horror novels I have read.  The reason is because, though the whole plot seems simple, there are many layers to the story.  It goes beyond a woman who finds herself as a target of a nefarious conspiracy to actually explore the way that women were regarded at treated at the time the novel was written.  It also explores how a maternal instinct can overcome an initial reluctance when it comes to rearing a child.  In the end it leaves open the question about whether it is nurture, rather than nature, that may determine how a child will turn out.  This was Roman Polanski's first time adapting someone else's work, as prior to this he had largely written scripts from original ideas as well as directing.  Unlike most directors, Polanski pretty much kept everything he could from the novel, even though he was eventually forced to cut it down to a regular theatrical length movie.  The best thing about this is that Levin's underlyi

There are certain movies where one should know what to expect.  For instance, if a movie stars Chuck Norris, it is probably a given that he was not asked to be in the movie to show off his acting skills.  Chuck punches things.  Chuck shoots things.  If he's not punching and shooting things, but is instead pontificating on the futility of existence, then one should understand that there is something wrong before even going into the theater.  To Norris's credit he is quite self-aware of where his skills lie and, unlike Keanu Reeves trying to do Shakespeare, it's not something audiences have been forced to endure.  That doesn't mean that a Chuck Norris film necessarily has to be routine.  When combined with a director that knows how to use his strengths a little bit more can come out of the proceedings than would normally be expected.  In this case circumstances took what was originally supposed to be an entry in the Dirty Harry series and handed to a largely unknown direc

These days any movie made by a female director that has a woman protagonist dealing with men who have wronged her gets hailed as a feminist masterpiece.  Part of the problem is a growing fear that, because of the good old boy mentality not just in Hollywood but in international film making as well, saying anything negative about a movie made by a woman means one just isn't up with the times.  I'm not going to go screaming about misandry because it really doesn't matter what gender the critic is; it's either nod in unison with the group or be considered behind the times and ostracized. Thus, in the case of Revenge , we get heaps of praise for a movie that, if made by a man, would be dismissed as trash.  That's because, as beautifully filmed as it is, the movie is trash.  It's a typical exploitation film in the same vein as I Spit on Your Grave , only a bit less lurid.  While I am sure Coralie Fargeat has kept quiet and accepted her accolades for this I personally

I have brought up the Kill Bill movies in a number of recent reviews, and not always in the best light.  When I originally saw Vol. 1 when it premiered I thought it was an amazingly fun bit of cinema, combining Quentin Tarantino's knack for visuals and music with his love of old exploitation and martial arts movies.  It was an obvious homage, but a good one, in large part because Tarantino is one of the few American directors that knows how to film martial arts fight scenes correctly. Over the years, however, I have had a chance to see many of the films that influenced it.  And, by influenced, I mean at times it felt like the movie was assembled from various parts of other movies.  I have either accidentally run into them, like Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell and Lady Snowblood , or I have actively sought out movies (or plan to) like the Shaw Brothers martial arts features.  Even the "I'm Buck" line was taken from a Tobe Hooper movie called Eaten Alive .  The question

Not everything that comes out first is the best.  Take Hydrox cookies, for instance.  They were the first to take two chocolate-ish disks and put some sugary corn starch between them.  As a kid, though, did anyone really get excited when they saw a package of Hydrox cookies?  Just the name sounds like something you would give someone for an old-time disease.  Oreos, which were a Johnny-come-lately and a copy of Hydrox, were where it was at.  Ghost in the Machine does the good old Hollywood job of taking a popular movie and saying, "What if we combine it with something else?"  In this case, it was The Lawnmower Man , which had come out the year before.  Although based on a short story by Stephen King about a Greek god that offers lawn service (with the usual downer ending), director and writer Brett Leonard figured that the only thing really needed was the name and made a popular thriller based on virtual reality - the thing that was supposed to be a big thing 30 years ago and

A given, at least until we hit Star Trek: Nemesis , is that for the run of both the original and Next Generation movies the odd Star Trek films were the bad ones and the even ones were the good ones.  It certainly wasn't planned, but the pattern lasted for nearly two decades, starting with the first two movies.   Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a solid science fiction film, but not good Star Trek , and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is an example of how good movie adaptations of the show could get.  Given that logic, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock should be one of the worst.  While it doesn't quite fit that pattern, it is more of a bridge film, connecting parts two and and four, as the The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home pretty much form a trilogy.  While it doesn't reach the depths of The Final Frontier , The Search for Spock would have a hard time standing as its own movie if it weren't for the two that surround it.  After the emotiona

While I don't actively avoid Angelina Jolie's movies she is not an actor that I have ever been particularly fond of.  I think a lot of it has to do with the fact she falls more into the "celebrity" category than the performer one.  There are a lot of actors who do both - her former spouse, Brad Pitt, for instance, has taken on a lot of challenging roles despite the fact that I dismissed him as just a hollow pretty boy when he first came on the scene.  When I see a celebrity constantly making the news for something other than their acting it tips me off that there is a need for attention to distract from a lack of any real talent.  In most movies I have seen Jolie in my feelings have been justified. I would say they pretty much are with Salt  as well, even if the movie itself isn't half bad.  This was never something I was too interested in seeing when it came out as it seemed to be like any number of rote Hollywood action films being pushed out at the time with a

One thing I have hard time believing is that, at the first moment things go wrong, humans will start consuming each other.  Many apocalyptic and wasteland stories have this, from The Walking Dead to Fallout to Delicatessen.   As soon as things fall apart it seems that everyone can't wait to turn their neighbor into sausage.   Movies where more thought goes into it, like Mad Max: Fury Road , treat it as the abomination it is.  It has a character called the People Eater, which means that, whether he actually has eaten anybody, some rumor at least was started and he got that name.  It's not a name that a society routinely practicing cannibalism would bother calling someone.  There are plenty of examples down through the years of cannibalism only happening in cases of extreme survival, and most of the time the people they ate had already died of starvation.  It's not the go-to plan for the majority of humans despite some old racist caricatures.   I bring all this up because The