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: ‘Predators’

In 1987, in the midst of his heyday, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in Predator, an action sci-fi mixed genre film that won over both critics and movie-goers. But just like everything successful in Hollywood, the studio system attempted to build it into a franchise. The first sequel, Predator 2, was made in 1990 and both Alien vs. Predator and AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem arrived in the last six years. A mixed bag commercially, the films received a common line from the critics: a big thumbs down. While containing the same alien species, there was no linear connection between the sequels and the original film (the final two films merely an excuse to get two of cinema’s classic creatures to do battle). With Nimrod Antal’s Predators, the fifth film in the line, that pattern comes to an abrupt and blissful end. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Predators’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘El Mariachi’

To make a feature-length movie for $7,000—pocket change by Hollywood’s inflated standards—is a real achievement. But to make a good movie, one that favorably compares to the slick, big-budget studio blockbusters, for such a pittance is close to a miracle. In 1993 (or 1992, as reports vary), then novice director Robert Rodriguez wowed the Sundance Film Festival crowd with his ultra low-budget shoot’em-up El Mariachi, a fast and funny pastiche of spaghetti-western and lurid crime-drama conventions. A one-man production crew who wrote, directed, produced, edited, and shot El Mariachi, Rodriguez was warmly embraced by aspiring filmmakers for his cheerful, pragmatic approach to what he called guerrilla film making: make it dirt cheap and have fun. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘El Mariachi’