Behind the Scenes Awesomeness: The Back to the Future Trilogy!

This pic is from an early version of Back to the Future, they actually shot the whole film with Eric Stoltz! But they didn't like his rendition of Marty McFly so they filmed the whole thing again, but with Michael J. Fox. 

Director Robert Zemeckis on location for Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Powers Booth, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Jaime King, Lady Gaga

Sin City (2005) is to me, one of Robert Rodriguez finest days behind the camera, it was sheer cinematic perfection, the mood, the images, the words, everything flowed with amazing finesse and clarity. So of course when I heard that Rodriguez and Miller were teaming up again for a sequel, I was more than excited. True, Robert Rodriguez can be a hit or miss type of director, but you have to admit, when he’s running on all cylinders, the guy can make some damn entertaining movies. El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995) From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Planet Terror (2007) and Sin City (2005) are all high watermarks in his career. And let’s not forget his more “for the hell of it” films, like Machete (2010) and Machete Kills (2013), two great examples of the fun b-movies that Rodriguez is so good at making. Here’s a guy who understands Pulp Fiction, not the Tarantino movie, but the concept. He knows how entertaining over the top violence can be. To top things off, he’s got a kinetic style of storytelling, with a high emphasis on never letting the audience get bored. He wants to give you that shock, that cheap thrill, he wants you to chuckle and stare in awe at the screen. And on this aspect, Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For delivers the goods.

This time around we go back to the seedy underbelly of Basin City via four short stories all written by comic book mastermind Frank Miller. The stories are: A Dame to Kill For, Just Another Saturday Night, The Long Bad Night and Nancy’s Last Dance, which by the way was a story written specifically for the film. On this sequel we get to see many of the characters presented to us in the first film, like Marv, Nancy Callahan, Dwight, Gail, Hartigan and the evil Senator Roark. We are also presented to a whole bag of new ones like the wonderfully conniving Eva, played by Eva Green. She’s the ultimate seductress, using her sensual powers to get what she wants, seducing her way to anything. Welcome to Sin City, a place where nobody is squeaky clean. 

Going back to Sin City feels like I never left, the characters, the images, everything holds a certain familiarity to it. The film still has that distinctive black and white look and the characters talk in that special unmistakable Frank Miller talk. It’s cool to see the same characters again, the only thing you have to be ready for is that certain characters are now played by different actors, for example, the character of Dwight, who was played by Clive Owen in the first film, is now being played by Josh Brolin.  The character of  ‘Manute’, who in the first film was played by Michael Clarke Duncan is now played by Dennis Haysbert. Devon Aoki, who played deadly little Miho in the first film, has been replaced by Jamie Chung, and so forth. They are still the same characters, it’s just different actors playing then. Good news is that since they are all Frank Miller comic book characters, they still look and sound the same, you might not even notice the changes so much.

So this film is interesting because its half prequel, half sequel. Some of the stories take place before the first film, some after the first film. This is the reason why we see some characters who died in the first film back again, the most notable example would be Marv, who dies electrocuted in the ending of the first film. Marv is featured prominently in this film, which is a good move in my book since he was everyone’s favorite character from the first film. He looks just a bit different, but he’s still good old pill poppin’, head chopping Marv. The last story in the film, called Nancy’s Last Stand is a good old revenge tale with Nancy looking to avenge the death of Hartigan, the detective that saved her from being raped, and “the only man she ever loved”. So yeah, you’ll feel like your revisiting your favorite, most fucked up friends. This is the nature of Sin City, it’s not a pretty place; these aren't wholesome characters. The stories that Frank Miller cooks up for these Sin City graphic novels are about greedy, selfish characters, hatred and revenge pour out of their every pore.

Frank Miller gets lots of heat because his stories have been deemed ‘misogynistic’ by some…in the parlance of our times, misogynistic means that his stories display a certain amount of hatred towards women? Um, I’ve read most of the Sin City graphic novels and I don’t really see that at all. Actually, I honestly think that’s just a bunch of horse shit. Let me see, if I remember correctly, Hartigan saves a little girl from being raped…how is that misogynistic? That very same girl grows up, and Hartigan once again protects her from ‘that Yellow Bastard’ who wants to rape her and kill her? This very same girl that Hartigan saves, later becomes a strong female character by going out to avenge the death of the man who saved her. Not misogynistic. Some of his stories actually empower the female, by making them strong protagonists, like in Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For, where Nancy becomes a kick ass revenge hungry female lead.  Sure these are stories about prostitutes, so what, there are prostitutes in the real world so how is that displaying hatred towards women? Prostitutes are a real thing in the real world, especially in the world of Sin City. In the first film, Marv falls head over heels for “Goldie”, a woman he worships with every word that comes out of his mouth. Another character called Dwight protects a waitress named Shellie from a violent, psychotic ex-lover. In any case, if violence is inflicted upon women, it comes from villains, not from the heroes who always protect the women, or love them with tremendous amounts of love and admiration. And it’s not like women are always depicted as being helpless victims, just ask the girls of old town, who can more than take care of themselves. If you ask me, Miller actually displays respect and admiration towards women, not hatred. Miller actually addresses some very real issues about women, issues that need to be addressed and talked about. So get outta here with your self righteous sanctimonious bull crap. These are stories about a town called Sin City, if you can’t take the heat, get out of hell’s kitchen. 

Truth be told, being accused of being misogynistic is the smallest of Miller’s problems; what Miller really received a lot of heat for was for a story he drew and wrote called ‘Holy Terror’; a story that at one point was going to be one of the most controversial Batman stories ever told. At one point it was going to be called ‘Holy Terror, Batman!’ But through the course of creating this tale, Miller decided this was no longer a Batman story, so he changed the main character from Batman into a new character of his own creation called ‘The Fixer’ and printed the graphic novel through Legendary instead of DC.  But originally, Holy Terror was going to be all about Batman kicking Al Qaedas ass and killing a whole bunch of terrorists. The thing with Holy Terror is that Miller lived in New York during 9/11, and it affected him in a big way, Holy Terror was made as a direct response to that. Miller has gone down as saying “I can tell you squat about Islam, I don’t know anything about it. But I know a goddamn lot about Al Qaeda and I want them all to burn in hell”. So yeah, his public hatred towards Al Qaeda garnered hatred from many. Miller knew this was going to happen. He labels the book as “Propaganda” that is “bound to offend just about everybody” But then again, if we look back in time, Captain America and Batman both kicked Hitler’s ass in their own time, so to Miller, having Batman kick Al Qaeda’s ass was just a way to pay homage to those classic politically charged comics and a way to comment on the 9/11 attacks. Does it show hatred towards Muslims? Or just towards a small terrorist group? Is it racist? I don’t know because I have yet to read it, but you can’t expect a review of it here soon. Whatever the case maybe, Miller doesn't back down from his work, he makes no apologies for it, and maybe this is why as a form of retaliation, Sin City 2 has sadly tanked at the box office. I doubt that many people have read Holy Terror, but god knows there’s a couple of sites, and a couple of blogs and articles out there spewing nothing but hatred for it. It could be that this all backfired on Miller and now Sin City 2 is suffering at the box office for it.  

This is all too bad, because to me Sin City 2 is fun times, as fun and mean spirited as the first film was. Many have labeled it as “more of the same” and I have to say that I agree. To me this sequel being more of the same doesn’t bother me one bit because I love the film noir world of Sin City, if it’s more of what I loved from the first film then so be it, I welcome it. I got no problems with these stories being about prostitutes and psychotic characters, this is Sin City, keyword ‘Sin’. If I had to say something negative about the film is that the stories from the first film where slightly more shocking and darker…by comparison these stories feel somewhat less important. It’s not that they don’t chop off enough heads or that there isn’t enough white blood, there’s tons of violence and nudity to garner the film it’s ‘R’ rating, but by comparison, the stories from the first film felt like they had more of a punch to them. But whatever, Sin City light is still Sin City and the film still has enough grittiness, nudity and comic book violence to please fans of the ‘R’ rating. I’m saddened that Sin City 2 has tanked the way it has, there’s no real reason for it to be flopping as hard as it has, it’s an entertaining film. Is it that audiences nowadays have become complete softies that can’t take blood and violence in their entertainment? Has society grown only to accept PG-13 films? Whatever, it’s their loss. I hope they enjoy their umpteenth Step Up film.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

   

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Title: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension (1984)

Director: W.D. Richter

Cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, Lewis Smith, Robert Ito, Clancy Brown, Vincent Schiavelli

Review:

Sometimes, a films premise can be so outlandish and weird, so unpredictable, that movie studios just don’t know how to sell it to the masses. As a result, these “weird films” usually die a quick death at the box office. An example is John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China (1986) which 20^th Century Fox simply didn’t know what to do with. How the hell do you sell a movie about a truck driver who ends up fighting Chinese ghosts in an underground Chinese temple? Exactly! So Big Trouble in Little China went the way of the dinosaur and disappeared from theaters. These films aren’t necessarily bad films, sometimes they are just not what audiences are accustomed to, they can’t be explained in a simple way to the masses. And trust me, this is what studios prefer: films that can be explained in a sentence, a caption, a tagline. For Hollywood, when it comes to selling a film, simplicity is of the essence. If your movie is too complicated a sell, it will either get a limited release, or go straight to dvd, either way, your film isn’t going to get much exposure. Often time, the films tagline will let you know that you’re in for a weird movie, for example the tagline for Big Trouble in Little China was “A Mystical, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Kung Fu, Monster, Ghost Story!” The tagline for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension was “Expect the Unexpected. He does.” which I have to admit is pretty accurate description of the film, and it’s exactly what makes it so damn watchable. It is extremely unpredictable.

Buckaroo Banzai is a fascinating character in my book. He is that kind of character that is a genius and therefore knows how to do practically everything, which became a funny gag to me. Let’s see Buckaroo Banzai is an excellent brain surgeon, lead singer and lead guitar player of a rock and roll band called ‘Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers', in which he also plays the trumpet! Buckaroo is also a scientist who experiments with interdimensional travel, and ends up being the first human being to travel  through solid matter! If you can believe it, he is also a Samurai. He part times as a super hero, and is also one of the founding fathers of the ‘Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information’ amongst other things that I’m sure are not mentioned in the film. With the help of one Dr. Hikita, Buckaroo invents the ‘Oscillation Overthruster’ a device that allows humans to travel through solid matter and into other dimensions! Unfortunately, it also opens a door for aliens from Planet 10 (called ‘Red Lectroids’) to escape from the 8^th Dimension! Now, these Red Lectroids want to go back to their home planet so they can rule it with an iron fist and they want to use Buckaroo’s Oscillation Overthruster to do it! Will Buckaroo and his Hong Kong Cavaliers find a way to stop them before it’s too late?

So yeah, this movie is fascinating to me in many ways. I like it because you feel like your falling right smack in the middle of a movie already in progress; this my friends, is not a film that will stop and explain every single little thing for you. This movie might have an outlandish plotline and a comic book premise, but it’s a film that expects you to be quick, to pay attention, this is not the kind of film where your brain can just wonder off, you have to pay attention to every single bit of dialog, or you’ll be lost on your way. Which is what I like about it, it’s a strange thing: a silly movie written by intelligent people. Yeah, it’s complicated in some ways, but not impossible to decipher as some might have you believe. Actually, if you stick with it, the inside jokes can be very rewarding!

Part of what makes this one so enjoyable is the amazing ensemble cast! We get Peter Weller playing Buckaroo, the main character in the film. He comes off as totally likable, like he’s this guy who knows everything about everything, the kind of guy you wish you could be, if you had the brain of a genius. I wish we could have seen more of his Samurai side. Then we have his gang of sidekicks, The Hong Kong Cavaliers, all geniuses themselves. One of them is played by Jeff Goldblum, who for some reason dresses up as a cowboy for the whole freaking film! Then we get the beautiful Ellen Arkin playing the role of Penny Priddy, boy does she look hot on this one! She pops up in the film as this depressed girl who wants to commit suicide, but is saved by Buckaroo, who detects her sadness in the middle of one of his rock and roll shows. Then we get a trio of Red Lectroids played by Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya and Vincent Schiavelli. I mean, what’s not to like about this awesome cast? Everybody seems to be having a blast here; everybody got the spirit and tone of the film just right.

There are political symbolisms to be found in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and I think that in order to completely understand it, we have to be conscious of the political climate of the 80’s, the fear of nuclear meltdown and the cold war.  This is yet another film that reflects society’s fears and concerns of the time. Like many of the films of the 80’s (War Games (1983) and The Manhattan Project (1985) for example) the fear of nuclear meltdown at the hands of the Russians is felt. The “Red Lectroids from Planet 10” are a clear allusion to the Russians, who were enemies to the Americans at the time. Russians have always been described as “Reds” by the Americans, same as the villains in the film are the “Red Lectroids”. The fear of nuclear meltdown is felt in one scene in which an alien race threatens to destroy Russia, and Perfect Tommy, one of Buckaroo’s right hand men says “The Russians might misinterpret the attack as an American strike; they’re already a little trigger happy!” and yet another allusion to how conscious people where of this nuclear tension can be seen in a moment in which an alien being tells Buckaroo and his team:  “If you fail, we will be forced to help you destroy yourselves” In this way, the filmmakers point at humanities tendency to threaten our own existence with nuclear weapons.

The villain of the film is played by the great John Lithgow, who is running on all cylinders on this one, playing the over the top villain ‘Lord John Whorfin’ a.k.a. Dr. Lizardo. He is the leader of the Red Lectroids that are scattered on earth. Lord John Whorfin is portrayed as a crazy fascist dictator “not unlike your Hitler”. He runs a company called ‘Yoyodine Propulsion Systems’; which is really a front for the Red Lectroids headquarters. The Red Lectroid’s headquarters has speakers blaring systematic brain washing messages like “The only joy is the joy of duty! Work, work, work!”  So this is a film that though funny and totally zany, is also heavy on political themes.  The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai might seem like a crazy movie to some, but at heart, it plays with a lot of important issues; the filmmakers where just having fun (and lots of it) as they said their piece with this film.

But I don’t want to make it sound like this is a film with a boring political agenda or what have you, nope; this movie is tons of zany fun. It is a completely offbeat film, right down to it's closing credits. It has so many ideas going for it that you feel like it is a set up for future films, as if a whole universe had been created and we were just seeing the tip of the iceberg. In actuality, more Buckaroo Banzai films were planned, proof of this is the promised sequel mentioned during the closing credits: Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League. They even hint at this planned  sequel when they talk about a villain called ‘Hanoi Xan’, the leader of the World Crime League. Sadly, this sequel never came to be because the first and only film failed horribly at the box office. Its failure can be attributed to its convoluted nature, but it also faced tough completion at the box office! Buckaroo Banzai went up against such smash hits as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Ghostbusters (1984), so it didn’t exactly get it easy at the box office; plus it was released in only a limited amount of theaters. But as it often happens with good films, Buckaroo Banzai has found its audience in home video, and its cult following grows. There’s been various Buckaroo Banzai novels and comic books released throughout the years, so you might want to look into those of if you can’t get enough of Buckaroo Banzai. Here’s hoping some day it gets the reboot treatment, because if you ask me, this things got potential!

Rating:  4 out of 5