Reaction Shots

After Ed Wood, it’s unlikely I’d find a more extreme polar opposite. Guy Ritchie is possessed of one of the most frenetic, technique-laden approaches to visual story-telling of any director around. Additionally, he commands casts that can breathe life into dialog that may be among some of the most florid in contemporary cinema. That said, Wood and Ritchie do have a couple of things in common. Hear me out! Please, before you look into having me committed, consider the following. Just because a camera is kinetic (or hyper-so), doesn’t mean that there is a compelling story being told. Just because the scripted language is colourful doesn’t mean that what’s being said is cogent or not nonsensical. And just because a film is shot in the twenty-first century, doesn’t mean that said film is free of casual racism or a tortured, convoluted plot. That said, I enjoyed “The Gentlemen”; the performances carry this debacle through relatively briskly. The “relatively” comes from the...

"They" have nothing to do with it! It's the goddamn gun, Donny! ‘k. I love – unabashedly and unrepentantly – “Plan Nine from Outer Space” and “Glen or Glenda”. I have not seen Ed Wood's later, more tawdry films, though my morbid curiosity leads me to believe I should check them out. “Jail Bait” has lingered in my mind as the middle of the three films, rounding out a pretty craptastic trilogy and I have to admit, it shows a surprising amount of competence while still remaining fairly nuts. I don’t think I completely avoided the film until now; I just never carved out time for it. I’m glad I did. Really. In all, it’s a stretched out “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode minus good writing. However, that might even be a little unfair; the dialog isn’t nearly as idiotic as much of what comprised the screenplays of the other two movies mentioned here. It helps that there are real actors mouthing the words and there’s an almost Lynchian quality to some of t...

Slumming It’s all well and good to watch and enjoy “quality” film; but since I was a child, I’ve never differentiated between shlock and more respectable expressions in media. “Plan Nine from Outer Space” ran on Channel 13’s “Jungle Theater” from when I was a tyke to well into my teens. And yes, I’ve seen it multiple times. Even on the big screen (in a double feature with “The Creeping Terror”; look it up, it’s bad). I have a queue of several dozen B as in Bad Movies to watch and I want to write about them badly because…well, I want to. While I wouldn’t go so far to say that there is no such thing as bad movies, just movies that do bad things, I have to own up and say that I can find something good in the worst, schlockiest, half-assed or quarter-assed celluloid skid mark on the underwear of cinema. I’ve found elements of genius in porn, in Ed Wood, in everything but Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions which I find offensive because they’re fucking lazy. That’s my main ...