Junta Juleil's Culture Shock: Asia Argento

Showing posts with label Asia Argento. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Film Review: XXX (2002, Rob Cohen)

Stars: XXX of 5.
Running Time: 124 minutes.

Tag-line: "A New Breed of Secret Agent."

Notable Cast or Crew: Starring Vin Diesel (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, PITCH BLACK), Asia Argento (LAND OF THE DEAD, TRAUMA), Marton Csokas (THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS), Samuel L. Jackson (PULP FICTION, UNBREAKABLE), Danny Trejo (DESPERADO, MACHETE), Thomas Ian Griffith (VAMPIRES, BEHIND ENEMY LINES), Eve (BARBERSHOP, THE WOODSMAN), and Tony Hawk. Music by Randy Edelman (KINDERGARTEN COP, GHOSTBUSTERS II). A soundtrack featuring Rammstein, Drowning Pool, Hatebreed, Joi, Flaw, Orbital, Mushroomhead, N.E.R.D., and other 90s bands you may have forgotten.

Best One-liner: "Welcome to the Xander Zone."

The bastard child of James Bond and the X-treme sports fad, I had long avoided XXX, largely because it was not made during the 1980s, the golden period of cheesy action. How foolish I was! For a movie named after Vin Diesel's (fictional) tattoo and featuring a gang of villains named Anarchy 99, it is surprisingly palatable.

I have no idea if I would have liked this as much if I'd seen it when it came out in 2002, but XXX has aged like a fine wine. Or at least like a wine in comic strip that's served in a bottle marked "XXX."

From the director of THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, DRAGONHEART, and DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (Rob Cohen, the man who directs movies with the word 'Dragon' in the title more often than any comparable director), XXX is a spectacular undercover glimpse into the exclusive world of Eurotrash rave culture and high-level secret government operations. Here are eight things I liked about it:

#1. Asia Argento.

Cult, horror, and Italo-trash legend, she's essentially why I decided to watch this in the first place. And yet this was her first foray into a major Hollywood film. Why 2002? Why XXX? I figured it out: it's not that Asia had to wait around for Hollywood to find a trashy role; Hollywood had to wait until Asia decided they'd come up with a movie trashy enough to meet her rigorous trash standards.

Here she is, pretending to dance, on all the drugs.

Throughout, she maintains a consistency of performance, even (especially?) when her scene partner is the impressively wooden and hilariously flat Vin Diesel.

Don't scowl, Asia––he's still better than most of the cast of DRACULA 3D.

She's technically the "Bond girl," but in a movie this trashy, I say she's the star.

#2. I mean, the opening scene is a Rammstein concert in a Euro-cathedral, where a man is assassinated and then crowd-surfed amid gouts of flame and other pyrotechnics.

They shot James Bond?

Later, there are more raves and tesla coils and techno music.

This picture could not exist without the subtitle "Techno Music Playing."

And cranberry club sodas.

Er, what––

#3. Let's take a moment to talk about Vin Diesel and that wondrous jacket, shall we?

Yes, that furry-collared jacket (complete with a stylishly gaudy medallion) appears in roughly an entire third of the film, which leads me to believe they thought it was quite the trendy fashion statement. It's nearly as great as Kramer's in that one SEINFELD episode where he's mistaken for a pimp.

Highest marks. But who is Vin Diesel's Xander "xXx" Cage?" Who is he really? What makes him tick, besides cranberry sodas and furry collars and stilted line readings?

#4. xXx is a crusading everyman. He talks straight into little video cameras (addressing the nation?) and makes confessional rants about "The Man" and video games and explicit song lyrics. He is an iconoclast, a man of letters, a philosopher.

But when it comes to solving problems, where Plato used the Socratic method, xXx uses... X-treme sports. In fact, you could say that is the main thrust of the film is the use of X-treme sports to solve matters of international diplomacy and intrigue.

Whether it's X-treme Dirtbiking:

Thank God there happened to be an offroad crotchrocket lying around.

X-treme Rockclimbing:

"Get a grip!"

X-treme Para-snowboarding:

X-treme Regular Snowboarding:

"Nothing like fresh powder!" –an actual line in this sequence

X-treme Para-sailing:

And, my personal favorite, X-Treme Silver Platter:

which leads to X-Treme Silver Platter-Skateboarding:

Pictured: a typical European street scene.

And yet all of these personality traits make the following even more satisfying (albeit briefly):

#4. Danny Trejo, with a machete, torturing Vin Diesel.

This is the sort of thing that's worth the price of admission, even if it only lasts for two minutes. And look at Danny Trejo, boldly transitioning from "Prisoner" to "Guy with Machete." But, oh, he does it well.

#5. Potato Explosion! This is the best potato-related car chase sequence explosion since the one in PET SEMATARY TWO.

"Now that's what I call a 'tater crater.'" –not my proudest moment

#6. Facial-scarred Sam Jackson phoning in––nay, mailing in––a performance as the 'M' of this universe, comparing Mr. Diesel to a snake

Technically, in this context, said 'snake' would be on a plane––and four years before they made the movie!

and delivering a hearty (and self-referential?) slow clap when Vin Diesel does what he didn't in PULP FICTION––kick the asses of some stick-up artists in a retro diner:

Not quite as good as the slow clap in ROCKY IV.

#7. And continuing with the James Bond analogy, there's also a 'Q' scene, with all the requisite gadgets. Though, when Vin Diesel tries out the X-ray binoculars,

it bears mentioning that he briefly becomes XXX: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES.

#8. The Xander Zone.

I think this is a good note to end on. Amen.

–Sean Gill

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Film Review: DRACULA 3D (2012, Dario Argento)

Stars: 1 of 5.

Running Time: 110 minutes.

Tag-line: "ARGENTO'S 3-D"

Notable Cast or Crew: Asia Argento (TRAUMA, SCARLET DIVA, THE LAST MISTRESS), Rutger Hauer (THE HITCHER, BLADE RUNNER), Thomas Kretschmann (DOWNFALL, KING KONG '05), Unax Ugalde (GOYA'S GHOSTS). Written by Argento, Enrique Cerezo (PHANTOMS, WITCHING AND BITCHING), Stefano Piani, and Antonio Tentori (Fulci's A CAT IN THE BRAIN). Music by Claudio Simonetti (of Goblin fame).

Best One-liner: "RAHHHHHHH!"

What to say? What can one say? I love you, Dario. You used to be an artist, man. An artist, for Chrissakes! I love you, but you made a bad movie. Worse-than-THE CARD PLAYER bad. Worse-than-GIALLO bad. Worse than bottommost barrel of bottom-of-the-barrel Fulci. It can't even hold a candle to VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS. I hesitate to even call this thing a movie. It's more like an inferior Ren Faire filmed for the Hallmark Channel, but with a few reels switched out from a softcore sex movie, and a few others replaced by the gory bits from early first-person-shooters like DOOM or WOLFENSTEIN 3D. Don't believe me? See for yourself. SEE FOR YOURSELF!!!

The corridors of Wolfenstein 3D...

...give way to Hallmark softcore?!

...And in some cases every terrible aspect converges, as seen in this freeze frame where a primitive CGI depiction of a nude woman is flung across the room by the invisible, Force-like rage of Dracula.

Good Lord, how did it come to this? The lighting in SUSPIRIA is a work of art unto to itself; conversely, not only is this lit like a cheap TV movie, it's absolutely the brightest horror film I've ever seen. Even the nighttime scenes are harshly illumed by crude floodlights.

I scoured the entire, nearly two-hour runtime of this film, and this is the most artistic screen capture I could find. Whereas, if you freeze any random frame of DEEP RED or SUSPIRIA, you'll find a work of art worthy of hanging in a gallery.

If the internet is to be believed, this had a budget of nearly $8 million U.S.– how is that possible? Was it a tax cheat of some kind? A scenario like THE PRODUCERS? SPRINGTIME FOR DRACULA?

Poor Asia Argento shows up out of a sense of family obligation in the way that some folks are guilted home for the holidays.

(And if that dress didn't come from a Ren Faire, I'll eat my goddamn shoe!)

Except at your last family get-together, your Dad probably didn't write a gratuitous nude bathing scene for you:

It's kind of troubling that, just off the top of my head, I can think of three gratuitous nude bathing scenes in which Asia has appeared in her father's films (MOTHER OF TEARS, TRAUMA, and DRACULA 3D). Yikes!

Regardless, like at any awkward family function, Asia puts on a brave face:

Whew. She is a real trouper and she deserves better. That is all.

Dracula himself (Thomas Kretschmann) is awfully disappointing.

If the pun hadn't already been beaten into the dust, I would daresay that their Dracula "sucks." I could say, he "makes my blood boil." I might even say he "pounds the last nail into the coffin" that is this movie. But I won't.
Instead, I'll say he sorta looks like a low-rent Daniel Craig and says things like "RAHHH" all the time.

Sometimes he says "AAAAAAAAH!"

With production value that reminds me of THE ROOM, I have to say this was a major missed opportunity: I think that Tommy Wiseau, with his ambiguous Euro accent and long dark tresses, would have made for a much better Dracula.

And their Harker (Unax Ugalde), don't get me started on their Harker– he makes Keanu Reeves in Coppola's DRACULA '92 look like a pro. I repeat, their Harker makes Keanu look like a pro.

Rutger Hauer, as Van Helsing, limps in well past the hour-long mark to slay a few vamps.

He knows the score. He probably didn't, back when he signed the contracts, but by the time he arrived on set and beheld its full indignity, he knew what to do. "What to do" in this instance being to shamefully phone in his performance. I don't, I won't, and I can't begrudge him that.

Eventually, he must contemplate the resilience of his 401K while observing Asia Argento wrapped in blobs of CGI fire.

Sure, we can pretend that it didn't happen, but we'd still know in our hearts that it did.

Hell, by the end it looks like this thing gave him PTSD, and this is a guy who survived the Hallmark version of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.

There, there. It'll be okay, Rutger.

But forget Rutger and Asia– it's the CGI that's the true star of this movie. The true art of this movie, I should say. Look at this incredible werewolf transformation. I'd venture to say you've seen nothing quite like it this side of a Nintendo 64 cutscene:

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection." –Michelangelo

"This world is but a canvas to our imagination." –Henry David Thoreau

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." –George Bernard Shaw

"Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men." –Frederick Schiller

"Rules and models destroy genius and art." –William Hazlitt

And what's this? That ain't NOSFERATU's shadow creeping up the stairs:

What form of Dracula could that be...? It couldn't possibly be a praying mantis, could it? Because that would be ridiculous.

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." –Aristotle

Immediately after that bit with the mantis there, Dracula absconds with Mina, who has just witnessed the madness. She wonders aloud, "What did I see?"