The Next Karate Kid (1994)

Starring:
Hilary Swank
Pat Morita

Plot summary: Ralph Macchio is back, and this time he's Hilary Swank!

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After Ralph Macchio turned 40 and demanded a raise to $8.50/hr, it became clear that he had to be replaced. So director Christopher Cain, of Young Guns fame, cast Hilary Swank. This was genius, for not only did Hilary open up the Karate Kid franchise to a new, younger, more female generation, she is also incredibly hot. (Note: Don't worry, she is 19 during filming)

Sure, the franchise may be a bit old at this point. Sure, only about ten people saw Karate Kid III in the theatres. But they still have Miyagi. Miyagi is the Yoda of the Karate Kid world: short, wise, powerful, green, cryptic. Shorter than Tom Cruise, stronger than Nicole Kidman, Miyagi is the hub on which the movie turns.

The film opens with Miyagi in Boston accepting a citation for his service in the 442nd during WWII. Apparently he was a sergeant, even though he was Okinawa born and would have had his ass in an internment camp in WWII. But what the hell, it's as logical a means as any to put an Asian in Boston. He goes to visit Louisa Pierce (Constance Towers), the widow of his army buddy, and meets Hilary Swank, playing sneering high schooler Julie Pierce. Miyagi senses the pain in young Hilary, orphaned, raised by her grandmother, so he tries to convince Louisa to go to California for two weeks and let him take care of Hilary. Minutes later, she's on a plane.

Now with the old woman out of the way, Christopher Cain is ready to establish the softer side of Hilary Swank. Hilary breaks into the school after hours to feed an injured hawk she stowed away on the rooftop. She has named the hawk Angel and has long conversations with it. Before we get to the part where she says, "Injured hawk, you're my only friend," Hilary is interrupted by the cops. Illustrating her catlike reflexes and steel trap mind, she eludes the cops using a modified "Superman" maneuver: throwing her flashlight in their general direction. Running home, she sneers at Miyagi a little before going to bed.

We join her at high school to learn why she acts like such a raging bitch-troll. Somehow she has become the enemy of the Alpha Elite, a tightly disciplined service club whose members all wear the same black uniforms. This fascist organization is led by Colonel Dugan, played by Michael Ironside, who parlayed this role into a spot in Starship Troopers. Dugan's blackshirt army has somehow given him enough power that he outranks the principal, and is able to use his unholy influence to put Julie on sudden death probation. One more screw up and she is suspended. To compound the situation, one of the blackshirts has a personal vendetta against Hilary. Ned (Michael Cavalieri) either wants to kill or screw Hilary. He repeatedly tells her to meet him at the docks. "You know what happens at the docks, don't you, Julie?" His eerie sexual harassment is cut short by Eric McGowen (Chris Conrad, who would go on to play Johnny Cage in the Mortal Kombat sequel). Eric is the good little Hitler youth, only in the organization to try to get in the Air Force Academy.

We learn to like Eric at an Alpha Elite after school meeting, which consists of Dugan beating the crap out of his blackshirts consecutively and concurrently. Eric refuses to fight Dugan, and alienates himself from the squad for his lack of violence and suicidal machismo. Eric is stupid, cute, and all over Hilary. He tends to play a passive-aggressive courtship strategy, letting her make all the moves. Obviously, the theme of the movie is feminist power. That and bared midriffs. And oh, what a midriff. Remember, she's 19. It's okay.

Meanwhile Miyagi attempts to develop Hilary's ass whooping ability so she can stand up to the small army of bullies devoted to making her life a living hell. The beauty of this movie is the familiarity of the plot with a few twists on the formula, namely wicked booty and a hawk. He haggles a deal with her to exchange karate lessons for her doing her homework. He starts with the famous "wax the car" routine, but we discover that Hilary is not nearly as gullible as Ralph was. So Miyagi has to become much more clever at psychologically tormenting his student, and he has her babysit the three juvenile delinquents next door. A Home Alone Nerf product placement montage follows, and Miyagi enters to give Hilary the theme of the movie. He tells her if she gets mad she should repeat, "Sun is warm, grass is green," borrowing from his successful anger management program for people with severe head injuries.

In the original Karate Kid we learned that an opponent that leads with his face can be defeated with the crane kick. In Karate Kid Part II we appreciated the power of the drum. Karate Kid Part III we learned to never sweep the leg. Next Karate Kid? Sun is warm, grass is green. Think about it, won't you?

Sun is warm, grass is green does not keep Hilary out of trouble, though, and she gets put on a two week suspension. This provides Miyagi the opportunity to get Hilary out of the city and off to a Buddhist temple for training. En route he finds a hicksville gas station where he sends Hilary inside to get a candy bar. She gets frightened by Joey the Doberman, which means at long last we get to see Miyagi do his Miyagi thing. First he hypnotizes Joey the Doberman, drawing the ire of the hick gas station attendants. He beats down two of the gas station attendants using the third attendant as a weapon. Once they get to the Buddhist temple, Miyagi rings the bell and waits outside for a few hours, kind of like Fight Club without the verbal abuse.

Here at the Buddhist temple, far away from Boston, Hilary can focus on her karate training, and Miyagi can enjoy not being the only Asian. While we get to know the monks such as Tall Monk (Jim Ishida), Buddhist Monk (Seth Sakai), and Monk (Rodney Kageyama), Miyagi has Hilary repeatedly jump kick from one rock to another, landing on her ass in the sand over and over. Further training for Hilary involves her standing in a barn blindfolded while monks throw sandbags at her. Eventually she wears down and sees the light. She starts waxing Miyagi's car. After a couple weeks Hilary becomes a karate master, and receives a birthday present from the monks as well. She gets to watch one of the monks (I think it was Tall Monk) shoot an arrow at Miyagi's heart, which Miyagi plucks out of the air inches before the Karate Kid franchise is permanently ended.

Leaving the Circus Monks behind, Hilary and Miyagi head back to Boston in time for prom. Miyagi buys a prom dress as a surprise for Hilary and tries not to look like a sexual deviant. This is a close call since he picks out a dress that is a lot like the Seven Year Itch dress except a miniskirt. After giving it to her he teaches her how to waltz by mixing the dance steps with karate, kind of like Tae Bo without the marketing empire. Hopefully she won't accidentally kill Eric during their first dance. Eric comes to pick Hilary up, is greeted at the door by a monk (I believe Monk this time) and finds Miyagi cutting vegetables in the kitchen. He is a little rattled from negotiating a curfew with a knife-wielding master of the deadly arts, and inadvertently says that after the prom, "I will treat her with respect for one hour," possibly the greatest curfew negotiation with a knife-wielding master of the deadly arts line in movie history. After the two crazy kids go off to the prom, Miyagi takes his monk friends out bowling. In a sequence that undoubtedly inspired Kingpin, they get embroiled in a tense bowling contest against a team that apparently bowls a 12 average.

We then cut to the prom, and after Hilary avoids severing Eric's spine with Miyagi's karate waltz, the movie threatens to slow down from its rollercoaster pace. Luckily, the Alpha Elite blackshirts break up the dance with a bungee jumping exhibition. One of the fascist bungee jumpers violates the third law of bungee jumping: never bungee jump directly above a gazebo or gazebo-like structure. He crashes right into it, breaking his arm. This puts a damper on the festivities and Eric and Hilary leave to show some respect for an hour or so.

Eric drives Hilary home, and share a tender moment before a monster jeep lurks around the corner. Alpha Elite blackshirts jump out of the jeep and bust his car windows. The gauntlet thus thrown, Eric must go to meet Ned at the docks. "You know what happens at the docks, don't you, Julie?" Well, apparently not sex. Eric meets with Ned and the rest of the blackshirts for a fight to the death, and we learn why Eric didn't want to fight earlier in the movie. He's really, really bad at it. Within seconds Ned has Eric bloodied and down on the ground, when Colonel Dugan cries "Finish him off!" Without the widespread popularity of Mortal Kombat that we now enjoy, his little fascists only stare at him in confusion, refusing to kill. Hilary enters the fight to simultaneously save and emasculate her man by beating the living crap out of Ned.

One of the most important features of the Scriptomatic supercomputer that generated all of the Karate Kid movies is the showdown of the masters. Dugan, abandoned by his blackshirts, challenges Miyagi to a fight. Giving up three feet and a hundred pounds, the wily Miyagi nonetheless is able to dispatch Dugan in a comical manner.

If you love karate, kids, or just Hilary Swank, The Next Karate Kid is for you. I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

The Octagon (1980)

Starring:
Chuck Norris
Lee Van Cleef

Plot summary: Chuck Norris beats the hell out of a lot of people in the ultimate action suspense movie.

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Most suspense movies fall apart because you are able to predict where the story is going. Being kept on edge is the appeal, hence the name. Director Eric Karson realizes that understanding is the natural enemy of suspense. If the audience has any idea what is going on in the movie, the film is no longer suspenseful. The Octagon is a 103 minute masterpiece of keeping the audience from figuring out anything about the plot, characters, motivations or dialogue.

Chuck Norris stars as a retired martial arts champion named Scott James, a departure from his usual role as a regular guy who by chance is also a martial arts expert. Throughout the film Chuck provides exposition using the time honored narrative technique of echoed whispers. Not only does it make the most basic of plot devices spooky and otherworldly, it makes half of his words unintelligible, keeping the audience gripped in suspense, trying to figure out who a new character is and why Chuck just kicked him in the head.

The movie opens with a well orchestrated crime. Big deal, right? So does any other suspense, action, action/suspense or romantic comedy. The twist is that it's a terrorist assassination. Of the Canadian ambassador to France. That has never happened before in film history. I had to do some fact checking to determine if there actually is a Canadian ambassador to France. As of the time of publication, he is Raymond Chrétien.

Right after that, Chuck meets a hot ballet dancer when he notices her using martial arts techniques in her show. It turns out that she learned them from her ninja assassin brother. Incidentally, I am a firm believer that a ninja assassin/ballet dancer brother/sister crime fighting team would make the greatest movie of all time, and I always have been. At any rate, Chuck gets drawn in because of possible ties from her brother to Seikura, Chuck's brother and fellow student of the deadly arts. Plus she's really hot. Anyways, she dies before you can get a handle on her name, so you have to refer to her as the hot ballet dancer, which is actually how they list her in the credits.

Then we meet Lee Van Cleef, playing McCarn, an anti-terrorist mercenary that has a bumper sticker that says "Have You Hugged Your Rifle Today?" He is possibly the cheeriest assassin I've ever seen in a movie, and never fails to smile when vaguely threatening someone, warning someone of impending doom, or shooting someone in the head. Sort of a guardian angel in the film, he appears randomly to advise Chuck on dealing with Seikura's army, save his friends, or shoot a half dozen ninja assassins.

Chuck then meets Justine, a young woman wearing a fur coat on a sunny day who is having car problems. Specifically her car is on the dirt shoulder. Chuck helps her back onto the road and then she drives off with his keys as part of an elaborate pick up scheme. He goes to her house to get them back later, where she is still wearing a fur coat in order to signify her role as the capitalist oppressor. The daughter of an assassinated European publisher, she has hired out Lee Van Cleef as protection. She hopes Chuck will kill Seikura and stop his deadly band of ninja assassins. She tries to seduce him with offers of sex, money, and incomprehensible dialogue like "I have the most confident looking cheekbones," said in an ironic and self-effacing manner, I think.

His worst fears confirmed, that his childhood buddy has indeed opened a ninja assassin school, Chuck must do what all action heroes do in this situation. Join the organization in the hopes of killing everyone from the inside. He answers their classified ad, where we find that the front end of the ninja assassin school is run by the tux-wearing Mr. Beady and his assistant, a cowboy. They share the office space with a square dancing class, which would only be a marginally less weird front end. Mr. Cowboy doesn't like Chuck from the start, repeatedly saying about Chuck, "He looks like the constipated type." I believe this is an early 80's vague threat. That or a come on.

Now technically what Chuck joins is Doggo's mercenary terrorist outfit, sort of a temp agency of death to whom Seikura has outsourced his personnel decisions. But they seem to be all part of the rich tapestry in any case. Chuck is apparently a fairly well known, seeing as how everyone in the Doggo's clan already knows him. Three or four of Doggo's men recognize him as a martial arts master, and so challenge him in hand to hand combat. Chuck beats them down easily, thus elevating his position in the herd and increasing his mating chances.

And thus he meets Laura, a sweet brunette with a widow's peak as vicious as her jump kick to the crotch. We find she was looking for meaning in a meaningless world, so made the the all-too-common transition from hog farmer to highly trained killer. She holds out for almost five minutes before throwing herself repeatedly at a disinterested Chuck.

Chuck shows us the delicate line between world-wise cynicism and just not giving a shit about any living thing. This strength and indifference draws in the psychologically disadvantaged women of the film, driving them to throw themselves into his arms and randomly exclaim meaningless interjections.

Chuck interrupts the plot for a flashback and in echoed whispers tells us how Seikura fell out of favor with Chuck and the rest of the martial arts community at such a young age. Seikura challenged Chuck to a fight after losing a classic martial arts obstacle course that apparently inspired the final round of American Gladiators. This apparently offended the master who drove him out of house and home and on the long lonely path of ninja assassin professorship.

And speaking of hair, The Octagon clearly illustrates the power of big hair. Chuck Norris's hair (left) is almost 35% bigger than his better known works Delta Force and Delta Force 2. Justine decides to seduce Chuck's friend AJ (middle) into trying to kill Seikura when she finds out he is (a) stupider and (b) of bigger hair than even Chuck. And then there's Seikura himself (right), who proves that the Asian fro was never a good idea.


Meanwhile, Laura finally gets Chuck into the sack, which of course is the action movie signal for the beginning of the apocalyptic confrontation between evil martial arts master and morally ambiguous martial arts master. AJ decides to attack the ninja headquarters on his own, so blinded by booty he forgets the usual fate of the hero's best friend. He lasts almost four seconds before being captured by ninjas disguised as shrubbery. Laura infiltrates the camp armed with a large stick and an automatic rifle. Chuck rushes in and is able to kill, maim, and embarrass about 40 or 50 ninja trainees before falling prey to the advanced tactic of rushing a man in large groups.

Seikura watches on as Chuck is forced to travel an obstacle course of death while killing the ninjas hiding behind every corner. His assistant, who could win a casting call for Mr. Miyagi's evil twin, holds AJ at knifepoint. Then Chuck must leap from floating platform of death to floating platform of death in a loving tribute to Frogger. At long last Chuck gets to the last level of the death game, forced to match steel with a ninja swordsman wearing a Mexican wrestler style mask who threateningly hisses at him. Chuck kills him a couple times, but the hissing swordsman is unfazed. After Chuck kills him a third time and sets him on fire, it sticks.

However, Chuck is still held captive. There are plenty of ninjas around, even though Chuck has singlehandedly ended at least a hundred by now. You have to hand it to Doggo's temp agency of death. Seikura finally does the gene pool the favor of killing AJ, and Chuck is pretty much toast on a stick. But then Doggo's mercenary group attacks the ninja camp, underscoring the infamous schism between ninja assassins and mercenary terrorists. We find that, in this movie at least, automatic weapons are surprisingly useful against the ninja. Doggo is of course attacking out of resentment for his subordinate role to Seikura. Or it might have been a power play to take over the organization. Or he might just have been psychotic. Chuck probably whispered why, but I lost it in the echoes.

The important thing is that this allows Seikura to flee into the woods and Chuck to follow. They play hide and seek just like the old days, with deadly intent. Chuck comes to grips with the demons of his past, calling out, "You don't torment me anymore, Seikura. This time I'm gonna kill you." In keeping with the themes of the movie, Seikura rushes Chuck from behind and dies on Chuck's sword. But then you realize that Chuck is the one who suffered the deadly blow. For a short while you suspect that maybe both of them die. Then Seikura falls and Chuck starts whispering as the movie fades to black.

Keeping you guessing until the final moments, and then for several minutes afterwards, I would have to say that The Octagon is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)

Starring:
Tom Hanks
Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan
Lloyd Bridges
Robert Stack
Abe Vigoda

Plot summary: Tom Hanks tries to save Abe Vigoda's tropical island by jumping in a volcano.

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People always talk about how great an actor Tom Hanks is, and with good reason. Ever devoted to his roles, he lost 200 pounds for his role in Castaway, became an alcoholic for A League of Their Own, and underwent a slight lobotomy to play Forrest Gump. But this overlooks his earlier works, such as Joe Versus the Volcano, the greatest movie he ever made.

This movie also stars Meg Ryan, Meg Ryan, and Meg Ryan in a rare triple role, reminiscent of Alec Guiness, Peter Sellers, or Eddie Murphy. We see her as a brunette, redhead, and blonde, covering all the Meg Ryan fantasy bases. We start with Meg Ryan the dull, a mousy brunette named DeDe working in Tom Hanks' office.

A shaggy mulleted Tom Hanks plays Joe Banks, who works for a rectal probe factory where he keeps track of the catalogues. I guess it could be worse. In this nightmare of equal parts 1984, Brazil and The Desk Set, modern office workers get a glimpse of how bad things would be without cubicles, having to stare at your fellow doomed keyboard jockeys. It employs the seven shades of ugly lit by fluorescent lighting set to four or five cycles per second. The coat rack is broken, the non dairy creamer resembles chalk, and his boss, played by consummate loud bastard Dan Hedaya, does nothing but scream. Tom deals with this madness by doing nothing, save wallowing in a severe hypochondria. A distant cousin of mine that no longer gets invited to the family reunions (or so I hear) once said, "Apathy is next to godliness." Tom lives this life to Platonic perfection, not even bothering to half ass his job between his constant medical appointments.

Tom goes to see Dr. Ellison, played by Robert Stack. Another big time Hollywood actor, Robert has worked for 60 years in over 80 films, and is best known today as that guy who wore two pairs of sunglasses in Airplane. Robert tells Tom that due to a "brain cloud" Tom has but six months to live. Hitting Tom like a bolt of lightning, the realization sets him free: now he doesn't have to give a shit for the rest of his life.

He starts by going back to the office of doom. He busts some shit up and grabs a mannequin arm off of his boss's desk. He proceeds to smack his boss around in a manner almost like the Three Stooges except funny, acting out the all-American fantasy of beating the crap out of Dan Hedaya with a mannequin arm. Tom then asks Meg out. His newfound free spiritedness intoxicates her, and he has everything going for him back at his place until he makes the all too common mistake of telling her he has six months to live. Not willing to sleep with him after hearing the news, she leaves our hero with his thoughts.

Like all good slackers, Tom sits around and waits for something to happen. Lloyd Bridges happens. Lloyd Bridges, well known from Airplane as well as Hot Shots Part Deux, has been Hollywood's best senile method actor since 1987. Here he plays Samuel Graynamore, capitalist oppressor. He offers Tom a chance to jump into a volcano (the "Woo") in order to appease the angry gods so he can buy superconductor raw materials off of the orange soda loving inhabitants of the seismically threatened South Pacific island of Waponi-Woo. Tom contemplates, and says, "Alright, I'll do it," with a heroic shrug.

In exchange for this Tom gets to run up Graynamore's gold card in New York, cavort for a day in LA, and then take his yacht to Waponi-Woo. When Tom realizes he lacks the will to decide on a new look, Marshall the limo driver helps him on with some Banana Republic clothes and off with the shaggy mullet in sort of a Pretty Woman thing without the oral sex. Tom also discovers the perfect luggage, an important message of the film. He finds a hand crafted steamer trunk, water tight, indestructible- the luggage of the gods.

Tom lands in LA, and meeting him at the airport is the second coming of Meg: Meg Ryan the space cadet. Here we encounter the universal dream of a second chance, as well as the universal dream of finding a cute girl who is not so uptight about the brain cloud thing. Graynamore's daughter, artist, and imagist poet, Meg Ryan the space cadet has it all, plus she's a redhead. We learn that in addition to that sweet Southern accent we saw in Top Gun, she is also capable of some form of accent that may be Southern Californian. At the end of the evening she drives him back to his hotel and offers to come up, but Tom turns down her offer of hot monkey lovin, proving that sometimes the girl is just too damned stupid.

The next morning Meg Ryan the space cadet delivers Tom to the docks, where she turns him over to Meg Ryan the feisty and self confident but somehow sensitive and alluring. This illustrates the universal dream of a third chance as well as the universal dream of that cute girl not being such a mental freak job. On the yacht, they fish, bicker, and fall in love during one particularly eventful day. Sadly, a typhoon ruins their fifteen day tour, their fifteen day tour, and Tom jumps overboard to save Meg after she gets washed over the side. Holding her unconscious body, he watches the boat snap in half like the model it really is.

The luggage survives the sinking and Tom lashes them together to make a nice, roomy raft. Tom uses the only water he packed to keep Meg the feisty alive, while he is driven mad by dehydration and executive stress toys. Meg finally awakens, and they float straight to Waponi-Woo. Sometimes life is just funny that way.

Here on Waponi-Woo, we meet the chief. Through the genius that only the insane can wield effectively, Abe Vigoda is cast in the role. Everything that has transpired thus far is prelude to this man. I mean, Tom and Meg are lovely, no doubt, but let's face it, Mr. Vigoda is delightful in everything he does. From Tessio in The Godfather to Otis in Good Burger, Mr. Vigoda is cinema gold. They have a grand feast rivaled only by the Ewok celebration in Jedi, at the end of which Tom declares, "Take me to the volcano!"

Meg is rather annoyed by her newfound love's desire for suicide, so she chases after the procession to force him to see reason. At the mouth of the Woo, she tells him she loves him. He tells her he loves her, but her timing is lousy. As he gets ready to jump, she proposes. Mr. Vigoda is called forward to conduct the ceremony. "You want to marry her? You want to marry him? You're married." After stealing yet another scene, Mr. Vigoda retreats to the background, a consummate professional.

Tom decides he is going to jump since he came out this way and might as well, and Meg decides to join him. Tom brings apathy into everything he does. He transcends acting as though his character doesn't care to the point that you can believe that he himself truly doesn't care. They jump. A blast from the volcano shoots them high into the sky and towards the open ocean. Luckily, gravity forgets to accelerate them to the speeds where hitting the water is equivalent to hitting concrete. The flaming hot jet also forgets to scorch their flesh. With even the basic laws of physics and reason feeling indifferent, our couple splashes down gently into the South Pacific.

In the movie's tragic climax, the two turn around and watch the Woo erupt and sink the island, striking down Mr. Vigoda in his prime. Several hundred villagers are also presumed dead. Apparently, the luggage was also fired into the air moments before Tom and Meg were, since the four pieces of luggage pop to the surface about fifteen feet away from them. Again, life is just funny sometimes.

A few pieces of bungee later, the two are floating again. Tom explains to Meg that their marriage is doomed because of his brain cloud, and Meg explains to Tom that he is a flaming moron for believing that there is such a medical condition as a brain cloud. Meg has spoken, Tom will live. We close the movie on the universal dream of a second chance at life. As well as the universal dream of being stranded without food or water, floating on luggage in the South Pacific with a feisty blonde Meg Ryan.

We learn that the most powerful force in the world is not hope, love, nor money. It is apathy and possibly good luggage. A useful moral and Mr. Vigoda? I would have to say that Joe Versus the Volcano is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Cry-Baby (1990)

Starring:
Johnny Depp
Traci Lords
Ricki Lake
Iggy Pop

Plot summary: John Waters directs the best 1950s Baltimore musical ever.

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In 1990 John Waters did what other directors have only dreamt of: assembling a cast of Johnny Depp post-21 Jump Street, Traci Lords post-porn movies, Ricki Lake pre-trash TV, and Iggy Pop post-his career. He even got the guy who played Ed on Northern Exposure. Now, with the best ensemble cast since The Godfather, it's obvious that this is going to be a classic.

This satire of musical romantic comedies is set in Baltimore, Maryland. Following John Water's attention to detail and devotion to authenticity, this film is entirely shot on location in the greater Baltimore region, and to hell with the costs. Johnny Depp shines as the rockabilly singer Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker, so named because he has the ability to let a single drop of glycerine trickle down his cheek when he wants a chick to dig his groove thing.

Cry-Baby is the leader of the "drapes," which is apparently Baltimore slang for "greasy punks." Ricki plays his sister Pepper, a trailer park underage unwed teen mom who is currently pregnant to boot, foreshadowing her future career doing shows like, "Your Momma is a Ho-Bag." Traci Lords plays Wanda, a tight sweatered slut. Insert your own joke here: _______. The dude who played Ed on Northern Exposure plays a greasy punk. Despite the urgings of his friends to fall for a nice leather jacketed tramp, Cry-Baby falls for a "square," apparently Baltimore slang for "square," named Allison. So you see it has a very Romeo and Juliet quality to it, except it really doesn't.

Allison is warned that "evil is in his blood," but she can't help wanting Cry-Baby. Beyond the fact that he is Johnny Depp, this preference is made clear when we meet her ex, Baldwin. He looks like a Baldwin. In the scene where his doo-wop group lip synchs to the Crew Cuts' cover of "Sh-Boom," they are actually whiter than the Crew Cuts, which is impressive since the Crew Cuts were professional white people. She escapes the cult of conformity and decides to conform to the drapes' standards instead, telling Ricki "I want a bad girl makeover," foreshadowing Ricki's future career doing shows like, "I want a bad girl makeover."

In contrast, Cry-Baby lip synchs to rockabilly, all dressed up in a shiny gold lamé oversized tux jacket a la pre-drug bloated Elvis. Ricki pretends to play the drums, the guy who was Ed pretends to play the bass, and Traci Lords actually fakes the triangle. They play for a huge dance at Turkey Point with a small army of pompadoured dancers- I swear Brian Setzer is in there as an extra. It all turns into a riot when the squares, led by revenge-minded khaki-wearing Baldwin, roll a flaming motorcycle down a hill into the dance and attack the drapes like Gap Visigoths.

Cry-Baby does time for the fight, singled out for no reason other than him being a no good punk. He ends up in the Maryland Training School for Boys, a juvenile facility filled with inmates who are very old and surprisingly good backup singers. Very well choreographed too, especially when you consider how tight their jeans are.

It wouldn't be a 50s teenager movie without a game of chicken. Since Baltimore is low on cliffs, Cry-Baby decides to have the duel by driving the two cars head on at each other. Cry-Baby rides on top, heroically lip-synching his heart out. Cry-Baby's driver is the last one to turn away, to the delight of all the pomp-sporting drape punks. And in a heart warming conclusion, Ricki Lake, riding in the back seat, delivers her bastard child, foreshadowing her future career doing shows like "White Trash on Parade."

In conclusion, I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Omega Man (1971)

Starring Charlton Heston

Plot Summary: Charlton Heston may be the last man on earth, but at least he still has a lot of mutants around to kill.

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Omega Man features Charlton Heston in the midst of his "post apocalyptic nightmare world" period, bookended by Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green. This time the apocalypse is brought about by biological warfare. Chuck Heston plays an army officer. Okay. More specifically, he was an experimental doctor researching vaccines against the man made plague unleashed upon the earth by full scale biological Armageddon. That's a bit of a stretch, although in the flashback scenes he makes one of the most intense medical researchers since Christopher Walken's stunning role as Louis Pasteur.

So let's look at the first plot point, told in flashback about three years prior, when the world is destroyed and Chuck is spared. The plague is winning, and people standing outside die about ten seconds after first contact. Chuck is researching intensely, and decides to personally escort the delivery of an experimental vaccine by helicopter. The pilot once airborne breathes, chokes for ten seconds, and promptly dies. The helicopter, sans pilot, crashes in a ball of flame. Chuck intensely crawls away, suffering minor cuts and bruises but otherwise unharmed by the fiery helicopter crash. Perhaps he was thrown clear, but mainly he survives by virtue of being Charlton Heston. He jabs the vaccine in his thigh and lo! is rendered immune to the plague.

A film, however, starring Charlton Heston as the only man on earth would be kinda boring, so the plot twist is that the plague doesn't necessarily kill after ten seconds. For a few select individuals, the plague turns them into psychotic albino creatures of the night. They band together to form The Family, led by Matthias (Anthony Zerbe). Their purpose is to cleanse the earth of science and technology by killing all who oppose them and burning everything ever written, much like the Christian Coalition.

But back to Chuck. In response to claims that he can only play biblical figures and assholes, he displays the third role he is well suited for: 100% Pure Lunatic. In the opening scenes as he scavenges through the empty city, he passes the time carrying on witty and urbane conversations with corpses, statues, and a host of inanimate objects. In time we learn that most of the daylight hours are spent hunting down The Family's daytime home so he can slaughter them all in their sleep. He does this in part to try and salvage some meaning to his life in a meaningless world, part to defend humanity or at least the memory of humanity, and part because he is completely insane. This leads to conflict between Chuck and the unholy army of the night. All hours after sunset are spent defending his Victorian apartment building home from their relentless attacks. You may start to wonder what damage is done when a man doesn't sleep for two years. The answer to that is the same reason that the biggest TV screen on his panel of security cameras is focused on… himself: He is completely insane.

So Chuck, always armed with a really big semiautomatic pistol or IR-scoped snipers rifle, spends his days hunting mutants and his nights being attacked by them. This film has actually been re-released by the NRA under a new title: "Guns: Our Only Defense Against Mutants in a Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare World." More proof that Chuck Heston may have played Moses, but is clearly God, or at least a god: The mutants have known for years exactly where he lives, and yet Chuck holds off their nightly attacks with a gun in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. Why the mutants can't successfully destroy a 4-story Victorian apartment building is unclear. Although they are opposed to technology as symbolized by the wheel, they seem perfectly okay with using a catapult to hurl flaming stones at the wooden apartment building. Chuck again holds them off with a fire extinguisher. Sadly, eventually the generator that powers the floodlights that keep the photophobic mutants at bay fails, and when Chuck goes to the basement to investigate, a mutant pushes a bookshelf down onto him, knocking the poor guy unconscious. He awakens, shirtless, tied to a stone slab in the middle of his trial. The courtroom drama is pretty short...

Okay, I need to deal with this one. Charlton Heston is damn near 50 in this film, but as you can sort of see in this scene - and much more clearly later during the shirtless running scenes - he clearly has a six pack. This in the pre-computer generated graphics era.

So back to the trial. Matthias finishes his speech by saying, "Take him to the little room." The little room is never good. It's never, "Take him to the little room, give him some cookies and punch, and then set him free." I mean, you know they're going to do evil mutant-ass things to Chuck. So eventually he finds himself tied to a stake. Being very pro-fire, the mutants decide to go the Joan of Arc route. At the very last moment, Chuck is freed by the Deus Ex Machina gang of normal humans. So apparently there are a few more normals in the world, and thus it is revealed that the plague actually can have a long dormant stage before leading to the psychotic albino stage. Genetic engineering at its best. Now this band trying to fight off the plague's tendency to turn people evil rescues/kidnaps Chuck. They consist of irrelevant characters and Lisa. Lisa (Rosalind Cash) is a young woman whose beauty is only surpassed by the size of her afro. I mean, this is one fine lookin woman, who has even graduated from the Pam Grier School of Blaxploitation with a major in ass-kicking and a minor in booty. While hopping on a motorcycle behind the equally sexy Charlton Heston, she puts a gun to his back and warns him, "If you just have to play James Bond, I'll bust your ass." Thus begins a love story that would eventually be retold by Spike Lee in Jungle Fever.

So if you want to see Charlton Heston hauling around more guns in an even crazier manner than he does now with his NRA buddies, if you think that "honky" should return as the epithet of choice for white people, if you want to see the eternal struggle of normals versus albinos, Omega Man is the film for you. I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964)

Starring:
Frank Sinatra
Dean Martin
Sammy Davis Jr.
Bing Crosby

Plot Summary: The Rat Pack screws around for 123 minutes.

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The Rat Pack. Gangland Chicago, circa 1920s. All this means one thing to me: Great hats. I mean, these guys have fedoras coming out the freakin yin yang.

In this musical gangster comedy adapting the Robin Hood legend to Prohibition-era Chicago, the Rat Pack appears in slightly slimmed down form. Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford are dropped from the bill as punishment for stepping out of line, baby. The Chairman of the Board did not tolerate disloyalty in his kingdom of hip. So to replace these fellows we have Bing Crosby and Peter Falk. Now Falk I can deal with, but Bing Crosby? White Christmas Bing? The guy is like the anti-hipster, as close as I figure he is in the cast to make Frankie and the boys look even cooler. His character is the uptight secretary Allen A. Dale, because the director probably objected to the original name Super Weenie Boy.

Edward G. Robinson also has a cameo in the opening as the mob boss of Chicago, until he is knocked off by Peter Falk and the combined casts of all three Godfather movies. It is the best thirty seconds an actor has ever had. He looks a little not well, actually he looks like he's been dead a few months, which he may have been in retrospect. If you don't believe me, take a look at the man in Soylent Green. The animatronics were incredible in any case.

Peter Falk is perfect in the role of villain Guy Gisborne. Colombo never fails to delight in all his menacing cross-eyed magnificence. You may ask, "Why have I never seen Peter Falk sing in any of his numerous film and television appearances?" Well, watch Robin and the Seven Hoods and you will finally find out.

But the movie is really not about them, or even about us. It's about Frankie, Dino and Sammy. In this film they play Frankie, Dino and Sammy. Technically, Sinatra plays Robbo, the mob crime boss with a heart of gold. This illustrates once again the secret to being hip is often just adding an -o to words. Frank takes on the role to prove he is the only man who can make Robbo sound like a cool name. Dean Martin staggers in as Little John, a hard drinking, womanizing pool shark from Indiana. This has always been cited as a major stretch for the actor since the guy was actually from Ohio. Sammy Davis Jr. plays the role of Will, a gun toting, tap dancing psychopath. His big scene is when he shoots up a casino all the while tapping an outrageous rhythm on the bar and singing "Bang-Bang." He is the NRA. You may notice that this makes a grand total of three hoods. For all intents and purposes, this may be true, but "Three Hoods" didn't have a good ring and "The Rat Pack Screws Around in Prohibition-Era Chicago" was struck down by the studio. So, in order to round out the cast, Frankie, Sammy and Dino are joined by Non-Descript Mob Guys 1 through 4. Some of the names of the Miscellaneous Thugs in either Frank or Colombo's mobs include Twitch, Soupmeat, Hatrack and Charlie Bananas, going to show that Frank just didn't care. And why should he? The Chairman of the Board does not tolerate sub-plots, baby. Sub-plots defined as scenes in which the Rat Pack is not prominently featured.

And does it get any better than Frank walking out of the courthouse singing "My Kind of Town"? I have to agree with Frank. He captures the very essence of what is great about Chicago. I have never seen Chicago. The man is good.

Let's move on to some of the more subtle themes in the film. For instance, women are evil. There really is only one woman in the film that's not a flapper showgirl getting hit on by Dino. That would be Barbara Rush as Marian Stevens, daughter of Big Jim and a no-good scheming broad. The shocking conclusion to the film, which as always I will now reveal, is that she teams up with Bing and takes all of Robbo's money. As far as I can tell, this is a commentary that even the un-hip can triumph over the hip when they combine forces with the no good scheming broad. It is truly a sobering moral that rivals that of Dr. Strangelove or Billy Madison. But don't cry for the Rat Pack, friends, Frankie and the boys still have their style, and their close harmony singing. I would have to say this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

Starring Chuck Norris

Plot summary: Chuck Norris is a Zen trucker who must save his brother from a speed trap.

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Breaker! Breaker! comes right out of the 1970s, embracing the era in all its decadent glory. And the glory of the 1970s was, of course, CB radio. Yes, cross country truckers were all the rage, their language capturing the American imagination even though it was clear from the start that they were making up every word of it as they went along. This movie brought that particular piece of Americana and mixed it in with the Zen martial arts of the great Chuck Norris in a rare beardless appearance. His first solo work after many years of being Bruce Lee's little cabana boy, this East meets West jewel starts out perfectly and never ceases to satisfy.

Chuck Norris, Zen trucker John Dawes, sends his little brother Billy (played by a delightfully scampish Michael Augenstein) out on a short dry run. Billy is by the way a dirt bike enthusiast to make the period piece complete. Sadly, though, the youth falls into a speed trap, or a 10-73 if you speak trucker. This appears to be the main plot point, which is an odd status to award a speeding ticket. I'm pretty sure it symbolizes something.

The little podunk town of twenty called Texas City, California, is actually a vast corrupt crime syndicate run by the mayor, Judge Trimmings. George Murdock plays this character with the subtle mixture of one part Enrst Blofeld from James Bond villain fame and one part Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard series. After arguing with the judge, assaulting several police officers and jumping through a plate glass window to escape the trial, Billy is captured by the evil townies. He gets locked away somewhere, or so you have to assume since you don't actually get to see him until the last few minutes of the film, but don't think that this will get on your nerves or anything. Chuck Norris rolls into town in search of his brother, driving a big ass van with a golden eagle painted on the side of it. I mean, a giant golden eagle! Nothing screams don't fuck with me like a giant golden eagle. Incidentally, the van looks remarkably similar to the Mystery Machine of Scooby Doo fame. Chuck proceeds to investigate, and by investigating I mean kicking the crap out of everyone in the town consecutively and concurrently. Somehow interspersed in all of the asswhooping, the director finds time to add about twenty or so subplots to the film. This is possibly to distract from the fact that he all but ignores the little brother that Chuck is whooping all the ass over in the first place.

These subplots include the single mom waitress with a heart of gold that is wooed (nudge nudge) by Chuck and won over to his cause, her son who runs off into the Central Valley wilderness to escape the evil police force, a mildly retarded hick that is discernible from the merely brutally stupid hicks by virtue of a stutter, his caring brother who is the ruffian with a heart of gold, and a guy who randomly flies around in a helicopter a la Mad Max whose sole purpose in life is to justify a bunch of aerial shots of Chuck running around beating ass. You may want to take notes.

After Chuck works his way through beating down everyone a couple times, one of the resident hicks realizes that repeatedly rushing a master of the deadly arts is not quite as effective as pointing a rifle at him. Outsmarted at last, Chuck Norris winds up in jail. Now with the hero immobilized, you'd think the plot would slow down. Actually it kinda disappears for about fifteen minutes - don't worry. The subplots more than take up for the slack, and soon you've forgotten all about poor Chuck and his brother, and for that matter, why you're watching the flick in the first place. Then when you finally give up all hope of understanding what the hell is going on, the cavalry is called in. Yes, the CB lingo talking cross country truckers themselves. Their plan to save Chuck from jail is apparently a scorched earth policy consisting of driving their big rigs through every building in town, eventually freeing or flattening him, either way really. As the cross country trucker cavalry is ripping shit up, all of the subplots converge. Not only that, but Chuck's kid brother Billy (Remember him? That's why Chuck is kicking the crap out of the town in the first place!) is found concealed in a barn and is reunited with his golden-haired ass-beating brother. Granted all of these subplots converge in the same minute and a half, so you may need to refer back to the copious notes you have taken throughout the film to have the slightest clue who the hell anyone is. The primary theme you will want to explore is economic freedom for the common man from corrupt government intervention, as symbolized by Chuck Norris delivering countless roundhouse kicks to the face of the local cops. I would have to say that Breaker! Breaker! is the greatest movie I have ever seen.