Jason goes to Bad Movie Night and watches FOXY BROWN

Blaxploitation month continues. Pam Grier takes down an evil, passionless white bitch (to be fair, maybe the character wasn't passionless, maybe the actress was just terrible) who killed her boyfriend. And she gets her tits out a few time, which is nice.

The biggest problem is that the plot hinges on her junkie brother recognizing her "new" boyfriend is really her old boyfriend--a government agent who faked his own death. Now maybe I'm not the target audience, but to my eye the only two characters who don't look alike are...

Ah, fuck it, I can't finish that joke.

Oh yeah, and spoiler alert: it's got a penis-severing scene. Not graphic, but I still love a good ol' cinematic de-phallusing.

This might just be the best bad movie ever!

Running Time: 94 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,533

Jason goes to the Niles Film Museum and sees SONS OF THE DESERT

SONS OF THE DESERT isn't just the name of a hilarious Laurel and Hardy film, it's also the name of the official Laurel and Hardy film appreciation society (not a fan club, by the express wishes of Stan Laurel they don't have a fan club, but a film appreciation society), and once a month the local "tent" (the MIDNIGHT PATROL tent) meets at the Niles Film Museum and hosts an afternoon of Laurel and Hardy/Our Gang talkies. And yesterday they played SONS OF THE DESERT.

But first, a couple of shorts:

ARBOR DAY (1936): Our Gang celebrates Arbor Day with a pageant and tree-planting ceremony. Of course wacky hijinx ensue. And a couple of midgets escaped from the circus get in on the act. Plus it has future Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel in a brief (but speaking) role as Buckwheat's mother.

BUSY BODIES (1933): One of the most plotless but funniest Laurel and Hardy shorts--they go to their job in a lumber mill and totally wreck the place. Awesome!

And finally the feature, SONS OF THE DESERT (1933): Laurel and Hardy are in a fraternal organization and take an oath to join the national convention in Chicago. Now they just need their wive's permission. Or failing that, they need to get there without their wives knowing. Hilarious, and a great supporting role by under-appreciated comic Charley Chase.

Total Running Time: 107 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,439

Jason watches HANNA

And the punchline is that Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), the titular bad-ass child raised in the Arctic by rogue spy Erik (Eric Bana) is supposed to be "abnormal." But really, no one in this movie is normal. Beyond the spy intrigue among Hanna, Erik, and spymaster Marissa (Cate Blanchett), she meets an absurdly non-traditional hippie family, a kindly Moroccan innkeeper, and a bizarre magician living in an abandoned Grimm-themed amusement park. Plus the background is littered with people--cripples, homeless, etc.--living on the fringes of society.

The movie tries to have it both ways--being a thoughtful character drama and a stylish spy action thriller. Inevitably, there will have to be scenes where it fails--the action is often too cartoonish (particularly her first escape) to sustain believability. But the action is totally cool. Once I got into the mindset that this movie will occasionally flip a switch and turn instantly from 'character drama' to 'cool action flick' and back, I enjoyed the ride, as bumpy as it was.

Running Time: 111 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,332

Jason goes to Bad Movie Night and watches SHAFT

Kicking off blaxploitation month at BMN. Now I know this is a delicate subject, I have been known in the past to make some insensitive racial remarks in my attempts at humor (perhaps not so much in the pages of this blog, but certainly at Bad Movie Night). My claim is that these comic attempts are actually parodies and deconstructions of racism and racist humor, but I know that's a fine line to walk and not everyone will be on board. So I could attempt to walk this fine line while poking fun at the movie's turtleneck wearing titular bad mother-[watch your mouth!] But I also want to make it very clear that I like blackies! Blacky blacky blacky! Blacky! Blackyblacky blackyblackyblacky! Blacky blackyblacky blackyblacky! Blacky blacky blacky blacky blackyblackyblacky! Blackyblacky blackyblacky blackyblacky blackyblackyblacky! Blacky blackyblacky blackyblacky blacky blacky blacky! Blacky blacky blackyblacky blackyblacky blacky, blacky blacky! Blackyblacky, blacky--blackyblacky! Blacky, blacky blacky; blackyblacky blacky!

Blacky blacky blacky blacky blackyblackyblacky! Blackyblacky blackyblacky blackyblacky blackyblackyblacky! Blacky blackyblacky blackyblacky jungle bunny blacky blacky! Blacky blacky (blackyblacky) blackyblacky blacky, blacky blacky! Blackyblacky, blacky--blackyblacky! Blacky, blacky blacky blackyblacky blacky!

Running Time: 100 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,321

Jason watches HOP

I like bunnies! Bunny bunny bunny! BUNNY! Bunnybunny bunnybunnybunny! Bunny bunnybunny bunnybunny! Bunny bunny bunny bunny bunnybunnybunny! Bunnybunny bunnybunny bunnybunny bunnybunnybunny! Bunny bunnybunny bunnybunny bunny bunny bunny! Bunny bunny bunnybunny bunnybunny bunny, bunny bunny! Bunnybunny, bunny--bunnybunny! Bunny, bunny bunny; bunnybunny bunny!

Bunny bunny bunny bunny bunnybunnybunny! Bunnybunny bunnybunny bunnybunny bunnybunnybunny! Bunny bunnybunny bunnybunny bunny bunny bunny! Bunny bunny (bunnybunny) bunnybunny bunny, bunny bunny! Bunnybunny, bunny--bunnybunny! Bunny, bunny bunny bunnybunny bunny!

Bunning Time: 95 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,221

Bunny!

Jason watches SOURCE CODE

I'll say it, Duncan Jones may just be the smartest man working in sci-fi films today. MOON blew me away a couple of years ago, and he has definitely avoided the sophomore curse.

I've ranted before about how most time travel movies are not really about time travel because you can't draw a self-contained Feynman diagram with time-like loops in it. True time travel movies include 12 MONKEYS and TIMECRIMES (go ahead, diagram them). Most time travel movies are really about travel to an alternate world that happens to have the same timeline with our world up until some divergence point. BACK TO THE FUTURE is a prime example, as are the TERMINATOR movies. Well, SOURCE CODE is explicitly a movie about travelling to alternate worlds that share a timeline with ours, or as one character calls it, not time travel but "time reassignment." It's like Duncan Jones (and writer Ben Ripley) get this distinction that bothers me in so many "time travel" movie and explicitly made a great "alternate worlds with the same past timelines" movie.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a pilot fighting in Afghanistan who wakes up a train in Chicago. 8 minutes later, while he's still trying to figure out where he is, the train explodes. And then he wakes up in a pod, where military officers talk to him, and explain the source code. It's a device (based on quantum mechanics and parabolic algebra) that allows him to occupy someone else's body in the last 8 minutes of his life. He can't change what happened in the real timeline, but he can figure out who planted the bomb so they can catch him before he sets off his much bigger dirty bomb. Of course, that doesn't explain how Stevens got there...

Okay, so it's extremely high concept, but the concept is well executed (just don't think too hard about the physics or philosophy behind it) and anchored by an excellent performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. In fact, despite opening up the action to numerous characters, at it's best moments SOURCE CODE is as much the one man Jake Gyllenhaal show as MOON was the Sam Rockwell show. And like MOON, we play around with issues of personal identity and the powers that be sabotaging our view of reality. Apparently these are things Duncan Jones likes exploring. And in his hands, I say continue to explore away.

Running Time: 93 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,126

Jason slips into a Vortex for a little spy action

Back at my favorite underground movie club for the last night of the month long "Agent from V.O.R.T.E.X." series of cult spy movies.

First up SOME GIRLS DO. Sexy lady spies, an experimental aircraft, and some corporate sabotage by some guy who stands to make a ton of money if the aircraft isn't ready on time. Lots of scientists are assassinated, and I think at least some of the girls were robots. I don't know, I kinda dozed off. Too many Manhattans...

But I was back awake in time for THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST. James Coburn is a psychoanalyst in the swinging 60's. One of his patients is a CEA agent (definitely not the CIA, the CEA) and reveals that he was actually doing a background check to see if he was qualified. See, the President needs someone he can talk to. Someone who can be on call and sworn to secrecy. He takes the job, but it soon becomes too much, and he has a little nervous breakdown and runs away, only to be chased by intelligence agencies from around the world (as well as the FBR...which is totally not the FBI). But he uses his super analyst powers to save not just himself, he saves the world from the worst evil ever...TPC (watch the movie to learn what that means).

Total Running Time: 191 minutes

My Total Minutes: 231,033