Romper Stomper

I first came across this movie while at Blockbuster like 10 years ago and decided to rent it based off of how interesting the cover was. I had previously done this with the movie Salton Sea, which turned out to be really good, so I thought I might get lucky again. I took it home knowing nothing about it, I hadn't even noticed that Russell Crowe was in it, and the movie blew me away.

The plot focuses on a group of skinheads down under as they get into trouble. The movie was obviously made on a small budget, but it only adds the down and dirty feel of the movie. It starts with the skinheads beating up a small group of Vietnamese teenagers, which leads to a showdown between the skinheads and a mob of other Vietnamese, which ultimately leads to more trouble. Along the way we learn more about the group of Neo-Nazis as they get in even worst trouble and start getting killed off. The most interesting thing about the movie is that the Neo-Nazis are more or less the good guys. Not in the sense that they are actually good, but by the end you may start to feel bad for them, despite the fact that everything bad that has happened to them is their own fault. The movie never outright tells you what to think, it simply shows you what happens and lets you draw the conclusions yourself. Parts of the movie remind me of A Clockwork Orange, and it deals with the same subject matter as American History X, but it reminds me most of the movie Trainspotting, in the way that Trainspotting shows the lives of drug addicts without outright telling you that drugs are bad. Its not like the movie needs to feed the audience any message when the movie itself is so gritty and hardcore. In fact, the movie is so hardcore that the actor that played the protagonist, who was a heroin addict, actually feel in love with his character's love interest and when she dumped him, he threw himself under a train before the film even came out. Russel Crowe wrote a song about it. That's pretty hardcore.

 Fashionably Hardcore

This movie is without a doubt at the top of my list of "great movies no one has heard of" and as it was a movie I randomly picked up to take a chance on, I hold it quite high, as not only do I like it, but I discovered it and consider it a classic from my early days of seeking out the unheard off gems that other people pass over without a second thought. All in all the movie has grit, an awesome soundtrack, fighting, sex, more fighting, racism, Australian beaches covered in blood, mall vandalism, even more fighting and senseless violence, death by cop, and seriously, a lot of racism. I watched it all the time back in high-school and college. It's just fucking great.

9 out of 10- Edited from an old review I threw up on Netflix from 5/25/06

Godzilla: Final Wars

This movie can be summed up by the word AWESOME. It has little pieces from other movies, like invading aliens, super human mutants, a futuristic monster hunting world agency, and of course, monsters. What this adds up to is some badass action. While most Godzilla movies come with a few scenes of a monster destroying a city and 1 or 2 scenes of Godzilla and monster fighting in between long scenes of little Japanese boys in short shorts, this movie has all that plus three on one monster battles, transforming monster battles, Human vs. Human battles, including two people fighting on moving motorcycles, and the best of all: Super Humans vs. Giant Monster battles. All of this brought to you by Kitamura Ryuhei, the guy behind the cult action movie Versus. Throw in Don "The Predator" Frye as a steel-balled drillspaceship captain guy and I dare you to name something more awesome.

Godzilla is awesome

Though some of the old school fans dislike the movie because it isn't very serious, I don't know how you can say no to scenes like Godzilla killing the Godzilla from the 98 American remake, billed here as Zilla, or a scene where a squad of people run down the sides of buildings and jump around like power rangers while fighting a Giant Lobster. Its not the greatest movie ever made, but if you can't have fun while watching a movie like this then you need to loosen up a bit. It's a perfect date movie!

7 out of 10 -Edited from an old Netflix review on 9/24/08

Machete

So Machete is a movie about a guy that kills people with machetes, something I can differently get behind, but while the cool idea might seem simple, there are a few complexities involved that makes it a little less so.. The main example being the whole cult status film fandom pandering bullshit angle that the movie came out of.

For anyone not in the know, the movie Machete is based off of a fake trailer that played alongside other fake trailers at the halfway point of Grindhouse, after Planet Terror, and before Death Proof. Though there have been a number of movies that try to relay on the pre-made cult hit gimmick, like Shoot Em Up, which is fucking garbage, Grindhouse was the granddaddy of them all, taking the style that both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino  had been sprinkling into their films since they both started and concentrating it. It was kinda like taking the tasty nature of salt or sugar and then making a full course meal out of it. So while a good amount of people liked Grindhouse, despite it not doing too well at the box office, it pretty much amounts to the cinema equivalent of junk food sold to us by Hollywood to be ultra cool. Like Extreme Doritos. And Machete is the same fucking thing.

So the tricky part of deciding how you feel about the movie Machete comes from whether you believe the hype or even see it to begin with. Because without that hype, there's not really a lot to talk about or review.

Because of the Doritos joke I made...

If you decide to go along with it, then you get a movie filled with tits and some dudes that get murdered. If that's what you want, that's what you get, but if you are expecting something other than that then I'm not sure whats wrong with you. Because the movie is based off a fucking trailer. The story is that its not important, because the movie is based off a trailer. And the movie stars all the people that were in the trailer. Plus Lindsey Lohan and Bobby DeNiro. All the scenes from the trailer make it into the movie, plus all the new ones because it's an actual movie this time.

So after failing to get Jessaca Alba naked in Sin City, when she was a stripper, the best he can give us here is fake CG sideboob

If you however see though the gimmick and decide that you might not go along with it, because fuck that, then the truth that the movie is based on a trailer from Grindhouse still holds and you find yourself in the same awkward position as me as you wonder if it's even worth bitching about the fact that an intentionally made shitty movie actually turned to be just that. I mean, what was I expecting? I guess I'm the asshole, huh..

One of the main problems is that while the movie isn't horrible, it isn't really that good when compared to some of the other things Rodriguez has done, like Desperado. In fact I feel like everything he's done can be comparably measured by how close it comes to being as cool as Desperado. Desperado was cool, for real, and a huge step up from his first movie, El Mariachi. Then he got into Hollywood and made a bunch of generic type movies like the Faculty, which wasn't bad, and those Spy Kids movies, which are made for kids so whatever, but would always find himself coming back to the action type movies that made him a name. And while they were generally good, each one seemed to move farther away from the awesomeness of Desperado and more towards being mediocre Hollywood crap. From Dusk til Dawn was a pretty fun movie, and a nice change of pace, and even Once Upon a Time in Mexico was pretty enjoyable if still flawed. In fact, I think he was doing pretty good until Sin City came out and you could feel him moving away from his roots and closer to appealing to the lowest common denominator. I'm sure many people will disagree, but a lot of Sin City felt uninspired to me, probably because the whole fucking thing was shot in front of a green screen, but it wasn't a bad movie, just a good indication that something like Machete and Grindhouse was only a matter of time.

 And it's not like this movie isn't already just a overlong "remake" of Danny's cool knife throwing character from Desperado

Ultimately the movie has no real heart to it, and I don't care how much fun people pretend they are having at movies like this or Grindhouse, because nostalgia isn't a substitute for content. Exploitation movies were shitty because they were made on tiny budgets by half competent filmmakers, but despite their flaws and short comings they expressed an attitude of innovation and overcame their limitations to be entertaining in unique and inspiring ways. So it's totally cool if you look up to them. But trying to simply copy them, like this movie, comes across to me as almost insulting.

Up until now many directors have paid respect to these movies, including Rodriguez and Tarantino, and it usually works amazingly, so hats off to them, but Machete is more or less a thoughtless attempt to push past paying respect and comes across as a gimmick. It's an "Old School" action film with an intentional aged look over shitty CGI blood. It's nostalgia for a generation that isn't even old enough to remember these movies. It's that guy that buys thrift store t-shirts and ripped-up jeans for 300 bucks. It's packaging "Cool" and selling it. It's shit is bananas. And it, ultimately, just isn't a good movie.

4 out of 10