The spoof (aka broad parody) sub-genre is a schizophrenic beast. At its best, the spoof can treat you to something as sublime as Airplane!, as mindlessly amusing as the Scary Movie series, or as stunningly worthless as Epic Movie. It takes skill to make a movie bad on purpose, but movies that are bad by accident can be a lot more fun. But the spoof remains the comedy sub-genre for filmmakers who are also movie geeks. Basically, you need to have seen a lot of Airport movies to write Airplane!, and you need to have some solid experience with blaxploitation movies to produce something like Hollywood Shuffle, I’m Gonna Get You Sucka, or the newest arrival: the worthy Black Dynamite, which aims to do to Shaft and Superfly what The Naked Gun did to police procedurals.
Tag: cinema
MasterChugs Theater: ‘American Ninja 2’
The original American Ninja introduced us to Michael Dudikoff as a blond-haired, blue-eyed U.S. soldier skilled in the arts of ninjitsu. In all ways it was an action movie that represented the decade of its birth: excessive, somewhat shallow and pure VHS filler.
American Ninja 2: The Confrontation, on the other hand, isn’t just a movie, it is truth in advertisement to the letter. Not only does it feature an American ninja but it also has a confrontation. So right there we must give credit where credit is due, because damn it, some movies don’t even get this right so at least the movie candidly delivers what it said it would. Some would mock the title, claiming such viscous things as “Have you seen a ninja movie without a confrontation?” But DAMN IT, this is no call for criticism, it’s for PRAISE. And strangely enough, that’s the only negative thing he says about American Ninja 2, but can you blame him? I sure wouldn’t want to irritate the American Ninja, especially after seeing his invincible standards here. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘American Ninja 2’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Annie Hall’
Alvy Singer stands in front of an orangey sort of backdrop and tells us, the movie audience, the joke about two women at a Catskill resort. “The food,” says the first woman, “is terrible.” “Yes,” the second woman agrees, “and the portions are so small.”
This, says Alvy Singer, is just about the way he feels about life. It’s not great—in fact, it’s pretty evenly divided between the horrible and the miserable—but as long as it’s there, he wants more.
In this fashion, Woody Allen introduces us to the particular concerns Annie Hall, a comedy about urban love and incompatibility that finally establishes Woody as one of our most audacious filmmakers, as well as the only American filmmaker who is able to work seriously in the comic mode without being the least bit ponderous. And you know what? It’s a story full of love, and surprisingly enough, pure romance. Hit the jump to see more about it. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Annie Hall’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Funny People’
Comedy is always serious business, whether the joke is on the funnyman with the pie in the kisser or the woman trying, really trying, to fall for the schnook who didn’t use the condom. Funny People, the latest from Judd Apatow, the director of the hit comedies Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin and a prolific producer, is being pitched as a bid at gravity, earnestness, adulthood, whatever. It’s an angle that sounds as if it had been cooked up by a studio flack to explain how words like divorce and death got tangled in with all the penis (and thereabouts) jokes. But the only difference is that now, Judd Apatow also seems almost lethally serious about being Judd Apatow.
Which is kind of ironic, considering the Judd Apatow name has essentially become synonymous with a new style of comedy. While Apatow has only directed 3 films including Funny People, he has written and produced countless films such as Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express-each movie carrying a distinct comedic style known as Apatow comedy. The stories all have similar themes, man children trying to grow up, hot chicks liking geeky guys, hard-core bromance; essentially coming of age stories for adults.
So the question is does Funny People live up to the Apatow legacy? Honestly, like this movie, the answer is a conundrum. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Funny People’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Transformers’
Hey there readers. Chugs has had a ridiculously heavy week at work, and frankly, is frazzled at a creative standpoint. Truth told, that sentence may not have actually made any sense, or at least, the last part of it didn’t seem to. It doesn’t help that he’s still got stuff on his plate for the rest of the week. In the meantime, why don’t you enjoy a classic review of his? At least you can see what a good Transformers movie directed by Michael Bay is-as opposed to a more recent one.
Let the review for Transformers, the 2007 Bay-centric version, begin! By the way, there will probably be a few spoilers here and there, so heed that as the warning.
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Born on the Fourth of July’
Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July is not an adaptation of the memoir by Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, though that’s what the credits indicate. It’s most certainly based on it, but it’s not necessarily an adaptation of the memoir. It’s an indulgent style showcase for Stone, who, with his longtime cinematographer Robert Richardson, employs every act of film trickery imaginable that doesn’t involve CGI effects. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Born on the Fourth of July’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’
So, I’ve got good news and bad news.
The good news is that the latest Hugh Jackman vehicle, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is light-years better than the last X-men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand.
The bad news? That’s akin to saying the flu is better than lung cancer.
Delve inside to find out what the jury wants to say about the movie. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘I Know Who Killed Me’
I Know Who Killed Me feels like a deliberate exercise in cinematic ineptitude. When movies are released theatrically, they carry with them an obligation to at least appear professional and possess some kind of virtue to entice the audience. With its amateur presentation, “I Know” is better suited as a direct-to-DVD release, or perhaps as a midnight movie on the USA Network back in the early 90’s. It shouldn’t have been made this way at all. Many times, it’s been said about some movies by other people that “pornos have better plots.” I don’t know about better plots, but in regards to this movie, perhaps higher standards.
Given Lindsay Lohan’s colorful public behavior and continuing legal difficulties, playing a stripper with a crackhead mom might not have been the best way to distract from her tabloid image. Fortunately, in the attempted psychological thriller I Know Who Killed Me, Lohan also plays a wealthy college student who writes fiction, excels at the piano and refuses to sleep with her boyfriend. That’s all right, then. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘I Know Who Killed Me’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooged’
Ebenezer Scrooge saw no profit in Christmas. How quaint. Scrooge would have a field day today, taking advantage of the many ways to make a buck off the holiday and taking sentimental suckers for everything they’ve got. If Dickens were alive today, he’d probably write an even more potent Christmas Carol in which Scrooge doesn’t ignore Christmas but actively works to subvert it.
Would he have written Scrooge? No. Would he have written The Muppet Christmas Carol? Good lord no, and stab your eyes for even suggesting as such. Truth told, he probably would have written something like Scrooged, an 80s, greed-isn’t-good update of the Dickens classic. The wittiest satire of television since Network, Scrooged gives us Frank Cross, the “youngest president in the history of television,” a man who also happens to be the completely maniacal — and megalomaniacal — head of the IBC TV network. IBC’s holiday programming runs toward action flicks like The Night the Reindeer Died and cheesy variety shows like Bob Goulet’s Old-Fashioned Cajun Christmas. But Frank’s pièce de résistance is Scrooge, a live-from-around-the-world Christmas Eve special, featuring Buddy Hackett as the old skinflint, Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim, and a bevy of scantily clad, oh-so 80s Solid Gold Dancers.
“We’ll own Christmas,” Frank announces gleefully.
But will it own your heart? Hit the cut, true believers, to find out the answer to that question. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooged’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Kung Fu Hustle’
Stephen Chow might just be the saviour of action cinema. Anyone who caught his previous film, the deliriously wonderful Shaolin Soccer, will know what to expect: martial arts mayhem meets the vicious comic brilliance of vintage Tex Avery cartoons. No gag is too cheesy, no special effect too extreme. That is the wonder and awe of Kung Fu Hustle. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Kung Fu Hustle’