MasterChugs Theater: ‘Machete’

While political movies projecting a serious tone around themes like war tend to drive audiences away from US theaters faster than rumors of a bedbug invasion, when heavy subject matter is laced with light laughs it’s an entirely different story. So even though Machete is just about incendiary enough to incite an all out border war around the current hot topic of immigration, spicing up the proceedings with devilish humor keeps the feverish temperature moderated more at playful than provocative levels.

Troublemaker Studio’s bay boy director Robert Rodriguez, who last shook up movie screens with Grindhouse and Sin City, returns with a vengeance with the bullet riddled, stylishly defiant slice ’em up action satire, Machete. Get even bilingual guerrilla warfare meets guerrilla filmmaking, as wickedly dark screen insanity fuels US north of the border revolutionary beatdown. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Machete’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Shaft’

Blaxploitation is an interesting thing. To me, it’s one of the only two film genres that most embodies the American spirit. That is not hyperbole-I truly and honestly believe so. Blaxploitation is a concept that arose from a period of both social and civil unrest and change into product with its own unique culture and identity. In doing so, it created a precedent for all future items similar to itself in idea. Sound anything like the origin of a country that you or I may know?

Shaft (the original 1971 version, not that Samuel L. Jackson remake dreck) is, was, and will forever remain the definitive blaxploitation film, utterly and without question. Not only that, but it’s also considered by many to be the very first blaxploitation movie. Shaft and other blaxploitation films represented black action heroes fighting white crime in a cynical urban environment. The films symbolized black-power politics in an era when portrayals of blacks regularly consisted of servants and sidekicks. Shaft broke the mold, laying the groundwork for modern actors and filmmakers like Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee. But is it any good? Not everything ages well, after all. Pop on in and find out.

Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Shaft’