Terminator 2: Judgment Day - 1991

"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" - 1991
Dir. by James Cameron - 2 hrs. 17 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

First off, the version of "Terminator 2" that I watched was the theatrical version.  When you crack two (or even three, heaven forbid) hours, I generally speaking am not at all interested in whatever deleted scenes are available - you can keep those, and I'm going to keep my fifteen minutes.

So this is the version of "The Terminator" that I was introduced to.  There are some pretty big differences between the first and second film, and I prefer this one to the first one.  But one of the main differences was that star Arnold Schwarzenegger was firmly cemented as a huge, huge deal, the kind of big deal that justified a leap in budget from $6.4 million (per Wikipedia) for the first installment to $94 million for the sequel.  This was an event film, completely inescapable, whatever the opposite of an underdog is.  Another huge difference: CGI.  One of the selling points of T2 was that the villain was made of liquid metal, which was one heck of a big deal.

Heh.

As with the first installment, two people are sent back in time, butt-ass naked.  One is a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the other is a T-1000 (Robert Patrick).  As we've moved a number of years forward, the spawn of Kyle Reese's unholy demon seed and Sarah Connor's savior ova is now a child of ten or so.  John Connor (Edward Furlong) is a real person, living in a foster home, and is now the target of a Terminator.  But which Terminator?  The T-800 has been sent back in time from John Connor himself to protect his hide from the (liquid metal) T-1000, which confuses the hell out of Sarah (Linda Hamilton) when she is reintroduced to the T-800, inside the mental institution she's been stuck in for a considerable amount of time.  And there are a lot of things that get shot.

It would be hard to argue that James Cameron didn't put his budget to good use.  There are a number of iconic scenes (although the best of which just involves a naked Arnie strolling into a biker bar and treating it like a department store), and many impressive visuals.  The T-1000 really was something new and cool, even if it doesn't come off quite as impressively twenty-some years later.  That's special effects, baby.  The chase involving John on a dirt bike, the T-800 on a Harley, and the T-1000 in a semi through Los Angeles is as good of an idea as it sounds.  And the end battle in a smelting factory is incredible, even if there's no practical reason for them to be there, other than that's where they ended up.

One of the obvious comparisons I had in mind going in was to "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome."  The influx of cashish into a franchise fundamentally changes the film, which is hazardous when you've made your name on a gritty sci-fi film that isn't necessarily going to benefit from being slicker and more explosive.  The first two Mad Max films are incredible, the third one has a children's choir singing in the fucking forest.  The changes that occur between the first two installments here are also not entirely productive.  Yes, the T-800 comes off like a bad-ass (literally exiting the biker bar to George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone"), but they also turn him into a petulant child's play-thing (not to mention creating the dynamic for "The Iron Giant").  And maybe it was on purpose, but this Los Angeles is a very slick, clean world.  It might have been created that way to juxtapose against the horrific future that's coming, but I feel like that might be overextending credit.

The big problems that I had with T2 are ones that don't really matter to the vitality of an action film.  In a big-budget shoot-em-up, what matters first are big action sequences that are impressive and that you'll tell your friends they need to see.  T2 has those in spades.  It had a hot soundtrack (getting a couple of Guns 'n' Roses songs when that was a really big deal, instead of just a dispatch from some band people used to like and who never release anything anymore), catchphrases.  Whether or not it had a hot chick depends on what you thought of Linda Hamilton (and she was absolutely shredded here, so if you're into hardcore gym bodies, two thumbs up), but she had as iconic of a look as Arnold did.

Check out those guns!

The things that bugged me are things that drag T2 down from being an all-time classic to just something I'll watch when I'm bored and want to see things blow up.  Edward Furlong's screechy voice annoyed the hell out of me, as did the story's insistence of having a Terminator try to be non-violent (although Arnold murdered the shit out of some shins and ankles), as did the story's insistence on turning the T-800 from a nearly unstoppable killing machine into John Connor's big metal puppy.  Sarah Connor is wildly inconsistent; it's as if her time in a mental institution turned her into a crazy person (witness the scene where she goes after the inventor of Skynet).  If you like gym-rat chicks who cry all the time, this one's for you.  The dialogue still isn't any better than last time around.

So that evens out to a pretty good action film.  This is the best of the Terminator films I've seen, even if it's not perfect.  I was going to say that it was the last James Cameron film I've seen, but a quick look at his resume says that I definitely saw "True Lies," and that definitely came out after this.  I'm still not a Cameron fan, but I can deal with his work when he's blowing things up.  And he definitely blows things up in T2.

3.5 / 5 - Blu-Ray (Theatrical Version)

Hot Shots! - 1991

"Hot Shots!" - 1991
Dir. by Jim Abrahams - 1 hr. 24 min.

Original Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I probably haven't watched "Hot Shots!" in something like twenty years, but this is exactly the kind of film that teenager me was excited about.  Sure, "Batman" was a big deal, and I'd devour anything with Bill Murray or Chevy Chase in, but this movie right here?  This is the pure, uncut dope I craved.  "Hot Shots!" is in the line of films that started with "Kentucky Fried Movie," ran through "Airplane!," and the "Naked Gun" films.   They're heavy on sight gags and movie parodies, don't require much thought (beyond just getting into the spirit of things), and if you can get in the right frame of mind, these films are a lot of fun.

Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) is an Air Force washout, living on an Indian Reservation.  But his country needs him, and he's convinced to return to service as a pilot, provided he can pass a psychiatric exam.  Topper falls for his psychiatrist, Ramada Thompson (Valeria Golino), which dumps fuel on a long-running family grudge with Lt. Kent Gregory (Cary Elwes).  Eventually, they must get along to complete a mission.

But that's not important right now.  What is important is "Hot Shots!" is packed with jokes, delivered at a rapid-fire pace.  You have to pay attention to what's going on, as the sight gags hits nearly as frequently.  Some are large gags, like someone getting electrocuted behind a door.

Others are less so, like when Lloyd Bridges pulls out a cigarette case, pulls out a carrot stick, tamps it like a cigarette, and snaps off a healthy bite.  No mention is made of it, at all.  It just exists, and you either notice it or you don't (which means you're missing like half the movie).  If it feels like I'm harping on this, it's because this is an integral part of this style of humor.  It's fine if this material is too broad and too silly (which I consider it's chief assets) for someone, but if you've half-watched one of these films while futzing around on your computer, you haven't actually seen enough of that film to have an opinion on it.  In some regards, this is an extreme example of pre-second screen life.  Nobody would make a film like this now, because no one could have the confidence that an audience would pay attention to it without deliberately distracting themselves away from it.

Beyond that, this might be the end of prime Charlie Sheen, before his behavior turned him into a caricature of himself.  You've got this and "Major League," and the stuff before that like "Platoon" and his great small role in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."  Afterwards, well, the '90s were pretty much an unmitigated string of suck for Mr. Sheen.  But here, he's getting softballs thrown at him, and he's knocking them out of the park.  The humor here piles up on you, and once one joke hits squarely, you'll spend the rest of the movie giggling from the barrage of jokes.

"Hot Shots!" is something that holds up reasonably well, even removed from the context of the then-contemporary films that it was parodying.  You don't need to have seen "Top Gun" or "Cool as Ice" to laugh at the motley crew that flies with Topper, or Topper's attempt to seduce Ramada on his bike.  It's almost hard to evaluate whether or not movies like this are successful until they're removed from their time; you can't always tell if the humor holds up or is relying too heavily on references until everyone's forgotten the references.  For me, it's still really watchable.  Part of that might be nostalgia, but I'll also never get tired of jokes like, "If I was joking, I'd say, 'What do you do with an elephant with three balls?  Walk him and pitch to the rhino."

3 / 5 - TV

Slacker - 1991

"Slacker" - 1991
Dir. by Richard Linklater - 1 hr. 37 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Richard Linklater's "Slacker" is a fascinating movie.  It may not have been the first ultra-low budget film (made for only $23k), but it directly lead to more films made in that vein.  It might not have been the first super-talky film, but more super-talky films sprang directly from it.  Is it the first move without a concrete plot?  There's no way, but it's not an aimless art film, either.  "Slacker" is a distinct film that has a very firm sense of time and place, and it feels like an entirely alien world.  But what's it about?

I think the opening lines from The B-52's "Deadbeat Club" sum up "Slacker" pretty well:

"Get a job!"
"Why?"
"I'm trying to think."

Athens, GA must not have been all that different than Austin, TX.  The film is pretty much laid out explicitly during the first sequence.  None of the characters really have names, but instead are referred to as things like Should Have Stayed at Bus Station, who is played by Linklater himself.  He arrives in Austin on a bus, and takes a taxi into town.  During the entire ride, SHSBS offers a theory to the mute cabbie that every choice considered and not taken splinters off into it's own alternate reality.  When you sleep and dream, you get a glimpse into the worlds created by the roads not taken.  In "Slacker," the camera (or really, you, the viewer) are the main character, and you're constantly making choices (well, having the choice made for you) as to which person is more interesting, and then following them for a while until you stumble upon something else that seems more interesting.  So you're led through a series of mostly unrelated vignettes (the only way they're really connected is by physical space, usually), each of which lasts only as long as it stays interesting.

To my tastes, "Slacker" is a film in the same way that Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" is art: it is a film because Richard Linklater says it is a film.  In 1991, the top two grossing films were a Disney film ("Beauty and the Beast") and a high-budget effects movie ("Terminator 2"), so putting together 100 minutes of grungy, oddball Austinites on film and letting them each babble until they run out of steam, and then asking people to pay money at a theatre to watch it was a pretty ballsy move.  There wasn't a direct lineage of low-budget movies in theatres at that point (or even movies in this vein); "Slacker" is the equivalent of low-fi bedroom recordings by Sebadoh.  But the act of getting "Slacker" into theatres and projected onto movie screens is what makes it a movie.  It is a movie because it is a movie.  It's aggressively low-key, people talk themselves into circles constantly, and aside from a woman getting hit in the street by a car, "Slacker" is all about inaction.

Most importantly, "Slacker" is an entertaining film.  No one would have ever even heard of it if there wasn't some entertainment value in watching a bunch of wackos interacting awkwardly with one another.  The cast is made up of largely non-actors, and so a couple of people stand out above the rest.  With no plot to speak of, the most memorable bit involved a woman trying to sell Madonna's pap smear, which she's carrying around in a glass jar in her pocket.  There are other memorable bits (like the guy who wanders into a diner which is entirely packed out by what appear to be asylum inmates out of a bit of coffee), but even the low-key, odd stuff commands attention (like the scene where a roommate disappears, so his roomies go into his room to find a handful of postcards on the floor, each containing part of a short story).

But describing these scenes misses the point; "Slacker" is all about the flavor of the situation, not the parts that make up the situation.  It's like the bizarro companion piece to "Wall Street," made up of people who aren't necessarily smart (a lot of the characters seem sedated, even while they talk ceaselessly), who are definitely not driven, but can't quite figure out anything at all.  In fact, the people who are focused and driven are portrayed as being crazy.  One man lives in a room stacked with TVs and video tapes (even having a TV strapped to his back as he walks around), another is obsessed with the JFK assassination, and keeps trying to push books on the subject onto some girl he had a college class with a few years back.  Being adrift and trying to figure things out isn't weird, ambition is weird.

I've written before about films that are more about the experience than about plugging along a series of plot points, and how difficult those films are to write about.  Most of the times that I've encountered those kinds of films, they're highly visual and kind of arty in presentation.  "Slacker" manages to achieve surrealism without approaching the task through visual means.  Mostly it's due to the odd nature of the characters and the conversations they end up having with one another, but it's also because the visual aspect is completely de-emphasized.  There's no effort at costuming; you may never see a larger collection of cut-off denim shorts and unmarked t-shirts and tank tops.  Virtually every indoor setting is blank: there's no attempt at decoration beyond the occasional accumulation of trash, like empty beer bottles or old newspapers.  I'm not even sure there's any signage captured, either.  The physical world in "Slacker" is solely utilitarian, and the sheer lack of visual input leads to a kind of delirium.  Things become surreal not because of a visual overload, but because of a lack of visual stimuli.  Perhaps that's why all the characters are so unmotivated; they're all looking for something to chew on, but the fields are all empty.

"Slacker" is the kind of movie that's going to provoke a love or hate response.  I'm not sure there's anything possibly in between.  You're either going to be bored silly by a bunch of people talking at people, or you're going to get drawn in immediately.  The good news is that you should probably know which camp you fall into within five or ten minutes, so act accordingly.

5 / 5 - Streaming

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze - 1991

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" - 1991
Dir. by Michael Pressman - 1 hr. 28 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Every time you want to complain about an adaptation of your favorite comic book into film, remember that there was a point in time where "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" was about par for what you could reasonably expect out of that translation process.  And then know, unless you're a huge "Jonah Hex" fan, I haven't seen anything in the last ten years that even approached this kind of awfulness, and you're being a big fat baby about it, and everyone is rolling their eyes behind your back.

The first couples of minutes of this film are devoted to a sort of montage of the people of New York City eating pizza.  Literally everyone is cramming slices in their pie-holes.  Delivering pies for pie-holes is Keno's (Ernie Reyes, Jr.) job, and one of his deliveries takes him to a toy store, where a bunch of perverts have pantyhose on their heads for no apparent (non-sexual) reason.  I say that because even though there are dozens of these perverts they get their asses handed to them by Keno, with some assistance from the Turtles, who show up pretty quickly.  Also, I have no idea why these perverts are there in the first place, since providing dozens of men to steal two pizzas seems like overkill, and they also don't seem very interested in stealing any of the merchandise, and they have no demonstrable martial arts skills.  They're just perving out in a toy store after-hours, socially luxuriating in what one hopes is the scent of unused women's undergarments (although I don't have any means to confirm whether they were previously used or not).

On the home front, the Turtles (Raphael, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo, if you didn't already know) and their sensei, Splinter (a giant, man-sized rat) are crashing at news reporter April O'Neil's (Paige Turco) apartment.  They believe that they've managed to kill Splinter's nemesis, Shredder (Francois Chau), who is a flabby dude in a shogun helmet that appears to have been decorated with Post-It Notes that have been spray-painted in a metallic tone.

Shredder (r), with Prof. Jordon Perry (David Warner)

But since they didn't kill him, and Shredder's got a bad attitude about it, Shredder tracks down some of the "ooze" that created the Turtles and Splinter, kidnaps the scientist responsible, and creates a new pair of Jim Henson monsters to exact revenge with.  And then they fight, first in a junkyard, then in an construction site, which is conveniently located on the other side of a wall from a Vanilla Ice club gig.  ARE YOU HALLUCINATING YET?!?

There's really no way around the fact that this is a terrible film.  This is the sort of film that a kid demands to watch when they want to torture their parents because children are cruel, remorseless monsters.  Every dynamic in the film is either inexplicable, or the film refuses to explain it.  I don't know why April O'Neil likes having a bunch of Turtles that act like fifteen-year-olds hanging around her apartment, but I suspect the answer is unsavory.  I don't know why Shredder and Splinter can't just arm-wrestle or something to quash their beef, instead creating their own armies to face off.  But I suspect someone's nursing some unrequited feelings.  I don't know how you can create a movie that actually gets better when Vanilla Ice shows up on-screen and starts rapping.

Instead of explaining any of those things, the turtles talk like mentally-damaged surfers and Jersey d-bags to each other (and I know it's picking on a technological limitation, but the dialogue rarely matches up with the animatronic mouths' movements), scarf pizza, and just generally be annoying.  It's easy to see why Shredder wants to end the Turtles (aside from them trying to kill him before, presumably in the first film).  Thankfully, the film is relatively short, and it's not hard to get through it once, since I was constantly wondering when the awfulness was going to bottom out.  On the upside, at least a couple of cartoonists got paid for this (actually, far more than a couple, if you consider that Kevin Eastman has been publishing "Heavy Metal" magazine for years, and his co-creator Peter Laird is responsible for the Xeric Grant), and it didn't kill the franchise.  I'm willing to trade a really bad movie (or two, or three) to fund the good that the TMNT creators have done for other cartoonists over the years.

1 / 5 - TV

Point Break - 1991

"Point Break" - 1991
Dir. by Kathryn Bigelow - 2 hrs.

Theatrical Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I guess Rob Cohen and Vin Diesel really liked this movie.  Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why "xXx" uses elements of this film and especially "The Fast and the Furious" use the exact same plot.  I'm not saying that "Point Break" is the first film to explore the idea of someone going undercover, but the similarities are striking.  But this film might be more recently familiar because of it's mention in the excellent "Hot Fuzz."  So what I'm saying is that people have seen "Point Break."

"Point Break" is an early starring role for Keanu Reeves, who plays Johnny Utah, a former college football star whose career was derailed by injuries.  He is now an FBI agent, paired with Pappas (Gary Busey), working bank robberies.  There is one crew, called the Ex-Presidents, that have been very successful in this endeavor.  Pappas' pet theory is that the unusually disciplined bank robbers are surfers, who use the loot to spend the rest of the year chasing waves.  As to whether or not that theory holds up, I'll refer you to the film's poster for a clue:

Utah has to go undercover (since he's twenty-five, and Busey is in his fifties, possibly in dog years), and a chance encounter with a woman named Tyler (Lori Petty) provides him an in.  At this point, there have been a few films that use this plot, so I don't think that I'm spoiling anything when I saw that Johnny falls for Tyler, gets too close to Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), who is leading the crew he's after, and that he jumps out of a plane without a parachute and survives.  Wait, what?

Yeah, he really does that.  There are a number of pretty spectacular action sequences and natural vistas (since the surfers are adrenaline junkies, they surf and sky-dive almost constantly, which provides ample opportunity to wallow in natural beauty).  There are car chases, bank robberies, house parties, beach football games...  The one thing that the characters have in common is that they're kind of restless, and incapable of sitting still.  And all of that works pretty well for the basis of an action film.

For a lot of the film, the real story is Johnny Utah's search for his own identity.  He's a young man, fresh out of Quantico (which in itself was a back-up plan when his athletic career went up in smoke), and it makes sense that he'd be susceptible to the charms of Tyler, Bodhi, and the ocean.  And as long as the Ex-Presidents stay disciplined, it's all kind of harmless fun.  No one gets hurt, the banks are insured, and the surfers get to live out their Endless Summer.  But when the pressure starts bearing down on Bodhi, he cracks, and things aren't harmless anymore.  It is at this point when the real tension begins to mount for Johnny Utah; he understands the lifestyle and the appeal of it, but when things turn deadly, the Ex-Presidents cannot be allowed to continue on.

A lot of jokes are made about Keanu Reeves' acting chops, but at this point in his career, the role of Johnny Utah was a nice transitional role between his "Bill & Ted's" character and an attempt to do more dramatic work.  All of the quirks of his style are perfectly suited to a movie about surfing (despite him not knowing how to surf before this film was made), and aren't a distraction at all.  Gary Busey is a good supporting actor, and Patrick Swayze knocked his role out of the park.  It's not hard at all to see why other people would want to be around him and follow his lead, which is a prerequisite for this kind of character.  And when his dark side starts to emerge, it's plausible.  I even liked Lori Petty (and yes, I loved "Tank Girl"); she's not a conventional lead actress, but she's easy to warm up to.

Is "Point Break" a good movie?  Well, it's pretty good.  There are things to recommend it (the action, the surfing scenes, a reasonably good plot), and things that work against it (how you feel about Reeves and Lori Petty as actors, the languid pacing at points in the first half of the film), but it's pretty watchable.  I've seen it a few times now, and I'm still not sick of it.  That's probably the best thing that I could say about it.  And plus, Busey's character drifts a 80's sedan around a turn at one point during the big car chase.  What's not to love about that?

3 / 5 - Blu-Ray

Cool as Ice - 1991

"Cool as Ice"-  1991
Dir. by David Kellogg - 1 hr. 31 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

When you've got an ultra-hot pop star, it makes sense to throw him or her into a low-budget, quickie movie, so as to extract more cash from their fans before their star fades.  I don't fault any of the people involved for making that decision; it's a basic career move for anyone in that position.  If you luck out and unexpectedly make something not terrible, you've got new avenues open.  If it goes the other way, it probably didn't cost much to make in the first place, and hopefully people will just forget about whatever cinematic abortion you've just created.  To give you an indication of which way "Cool as Ice" headed, understand that the film was never released on DVD.  There is a nearly endless list of truly awful movies that did get released on DVD, but "Cool as Ice" never made the cut.

What you need to know about Vanilla Ice, according to this film:  he's a martial-arts expert (there are two fight scenes, including one where he finishes off a guy with a palm-thrust to the chest!), his every-day wear includes a leather jacket that has "sex me up" written on it in large letters, he's largely incapable of delivering more than one line of dialogue at a time, he rides neon-painted motorcycles with the least intimidating hip-hop biker gang ever, he holds an unnatural sway over little boys (I think that the love interest's little brother loves Ice more than she does), and seduces women via public pelvic thrusts and dance floor dry-humping.  Got it?  Yep yep.

I'm not going to bother with much of a plot description, but here goes.  Ice rolls into a small town, but one of his buddies' motorcyles breaks down.  Ice sees girl, chases girl.  There's also a b-story about the girl's parents being chased down by some thugs, which is mainly an excuse for the parents to scowl at Ice, but ultimately get proven to be a good guy.  So there you go!  There are also three musical segments within the film (the first six minutes are basically a Vanilla Ice music video, and the last few minutes are basically the same, with a different song), only one of them plays into the plot at all.  In the middle of the film, Ice and crew eject the house band, and deliver the bar patrons into their own special version of hell.  Ice starts performing (it's unclear what he does other than ride motorcycles, in the context of the film), spots his love interest, Kathy (Kristin Minter), and then decides to do a song for her.  Before he even gets to the first lyric, the first thing he does is go "uh!" and deliver a pelvic thrust all up in her business.  Did I mention this was also in front of Kathy's boyfriend?  And the entire bar?  There are more pelvic thrusts to be had, as well as Ice laying her down in the middle of the dance floor and air-humping the shit out of her, before returning to the task at hand, rocking the mike.

It's hard to get mad about things like that, though.  If you're hitting "play" on "Cool as Ice," odds are you're not expecting a quality film.  There is, without question, wall-to-wall unintentional absurdity on display, and literally everything present is standard issue.  And even the music is second-rate; there's an undeniable catchiness to "Ice Ice Baby" or "Play That Funky Music," even if it's largely due to the source material being sampled.  And none of that catchiness is evident in any of the songs here.  That should be the one given if you're making a movie about a musician, and even that falters.

So, if this movie is really as awful as I say it is, why not give it a goose-egg on my rating?  A couple of reasons.  First, there is a lot of unintentional comedy here, from Ice's monosyllabic lines to Ice absolutely wearing out his "Blue Steel" face.  And a laugh still counts as a laugh.  But probably more importantly, though Vanilla Ice's credibility was shaky even at his peak, this has to count as an early hip-hop movie.  Ice's taste is questionable, but he's committed to what he's doing, and this is an attempt to bring hip-hop culture to a wider audience.  Believe me, I wish that Public Enemy or Run-DMC or even Digital Underground had been given $6 million to make a movie during this time period.  But they weren't.  Kid 'n Play did "House Party" the year before, so if you want to see what the early days of rap's chart success looked like, these two films are your then-contemporary options.  So even as a spectacular failure, it succeeds on the basis of documenting a particular time and place.  That might sound like faint praise, but at the time, everyone wasn't toting a video camera around in their pocket in those days.  It may have been a gaudy, neon-encrusted, ridiculous point in fashion history, but at least it's on film.  Sure, a painfully bad film, but it's there.

1.5 / 5 - Streaming