Machete originally started as a one-off joke trailer for Grindhouse. That trailer was ridiculous. And awesome. And now, it’s been made into a fully fledged movie. Which is ridiculous. And awesome. Nearly every conceivable facet of this movie put a massive grin on my face as I chuckled and chortled and outright laughed at it, enjoying the whole ride.
First and foremost, it should be noted that this movie is intentionally “bad.” The acting is WAY over the top, the action is WAY over the top, and the story is just about as loose as the women in it. But all of this rolls together into something so incredibly kick-ass that any “flaws” in the movie aren’t flaws at all. It’s all an intentional homage of the old grindhouse movie style in which ultra-violence was status quo, women barely wore clothes, and exploitation was awesome.
Danny Trejo stars as the titular Machete, an ex-Mexican Federale. He’s after a drug kingpin in Mexico when the film starts, and within five minutes there’s over a dozen bodies (though not whole bodies) lying around. Machete storms a bar in an attempt to rescue some damsel in distress (who happens to be a very naked damsel) and we find out where he got his namesake. Instead of using a gun, he just goes room to room lopping off bad guys’ heads, arms, legs, ears, noses, everything and anything he can. Eventually he’s helpless in the hands of bad guy numero uno Torrez, played by none other than Steven Seagal. Anyone (and I mean literally ANYONE) could do a better fake-Mexican-accent than Steven did, but they couldn’t do it as convincingly bad as he did. And his entire performance during the course of the movie is pure gold-plated gold.
Torrez gives Machete the ultimate cause for revenge and then leaves him in a dire situation we never see the resolution of due to the sudden title sequence, complete with massive amounts of film scratches. Honestly, it’s probably fair to assume Machete just got out of it by sheer bad-assery alone. Either way, the title sequence ends and we find ourselves three years later, introduced to two more of our man villains. Von Johnson (Don Johnson), the leader of a local vigilante militia dead set on keeping illegal Mexicans out of the country, and Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a politician who is ardently campaigning for harsher immigration policies, including a massive, electrified, border fence. We learn that these two men are very evil when they catch a Mexican couple crossing the border and they execute both the pregnant woman, and the young man she was with. There’s no deep political ideology or philosophical debate on what’s right and what’s wrong here, it’s just straightforward “They just shot a pregnant lady in the baby!” evil here.
This takes us to Machete’s current state in a day labor camp with a bunch of illegal aliens, run by Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who resides in a taco truck and is constantly harassed by immigration agent Sartana (Jessica Alba). Through a fight Machete gets noticed as the one-bad-mother that he is and is hired by a mysterious suit, Booth (Jeff Fahey), to assassinate Senator McLaughlin. Of course this all goes wrong and the movie kicks it into a second overdrive. Machete is now hunted by just about everyone in the film and is on the run while he goes after those who betrayed him (D. All of the above). What follows is more violent than a lot of horror films, and oh my God is it great.
Not to ruin any of the surprises Machete has in store, but Machete himself has a tendency to use the body parts of other people for other uses than they were originally planned for. He also has a penchant for using blades of all sorts up close and personal, although he does make hilarious use of some other implements, notably a weed whacker. The poor goons he chops to bits the whole movie through aren’t standard faceless thoroughfare either. There are a handful of reoccurring grunts that provide constant laughs.
Eventually minor characters are introduced later, such as Machete’s brother, a priest with shotguns played by Cheech Marin, or Booth’s sluttier than slutty daughter (Lindsay Lohan) and although they’re incredibly short parts, they play them perfectly. There’s even a hitman hired to take out Machete and the advertisement for him lists “1-800-hitman” as the number to call. The absurdity of Marin’s priest-who-was-a-killer-but-now-reluctantly-kills-again or Lohan’s delinquent daughter who orchestrates a threesome with her mother and the gardener to further her porn site are really what sells them. The fact that all the characters in the film are ridiculously exaggerated is the icing to the bad acting cake.
Equally as awesomely overdone is the rampant nudity and sex. Within minutes of opening Machete slings a nude woman over his shoulder. He’s rescued at one point by Luz, who, in effort to see if the man lives up to the legend, hops on Machete. He has that aforementioned threesome with Lohan and her mother. And, in the wake of a drunken Jessica Alba, proceeds to decline her bed, only to be swayed by her begging and begrudgingly lies with her.
Machete is a great, stupid movie. To sum it up in a single shot from the movie itself, Machete jumps a chopper motorcycle over a massive explosion while blasting two dozen bad guys with the CHAINGUN MOUNTED ON HIS MOTORCYCLE. There’s rampant nudity, most shots have copious amounts of dismemberment and blood, and its execution is impeccable. Machete is probably the most bad-ass summer action movie so far this summer, a strong claim concerning its competition. Run, don’t walk, to go see, MACHETE!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Last Exorcism is GOD DAMN (ha! pun!) awful
WARNING: This review contains graphic clichés like:
“The worst part about that movie was that I paid money for it” and
“Thank God this was the LAST exorcism!”
Allow me to wedge a personal complaint in this space before we truly begin. I am not a fan of scary movies. It’s not that they frighten me so bad that I become paranoid of miscarried evil twins or girls thrown down wells or door-to-door Jehovah’s Witnesses (scary enough as is) or any such number of things. It’s that I sit through them and in the end I feel cheated out of my time and potential entertainment value. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy some of them, but nine times out of ten I leave the theater rather annoyed that I didn’t take the option of “paint drying.” Chief among these hatreds are exorcism movies. They generally consist of a young girl around high school age making weird voices, doing odd movements, and pretending to be sweet and innocent one second and possessed another. They’re not nearly as scary as they are ridiculously hilarious and stupid. The Last Exorcism, however, lacks this unintended redeeming quality.
It opens up surprisingly strongly for an exorcism movie. It’s set up as a documentary to follow this lost-faith preacher who used to perform exorcisms but is now intent on showing them for the hoaxes they are. It’s yet another in a now too-long list of shaky-cam movies but for ninety-eight percent of the movie it’s nowhere near Cloverfield. It does a good job of establishing its documentary credit and it does a real good job of establishing the protagonist. However that’s where the good stops. After the initial exposition the plot becomes, “Here’s this letter asking for an exorcism I got, let’s go film it!” It uses a lot of historical references (to which I have no idea how much truth there is in them) to establish reasons for the belief of possession. It then follows the preacher through his exorcism ritual using mild science as the man behind the curtain. And, predictably, it fails.
Essentially, in this movie, the protagonist is basically against all the sorts of exorcists as you see in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. A lot of people subject to exorcisms are often killed as a result, and he’s out to show that they’re nothing more than scams and to save lives. To this end, he’s constantly trying to save the possessed girl from potential abuse or other maladies. His stalwart gooditude prevails throughout the film, as, as suspected, when facing true supernatural occurrences with good ol’ science and rational, he’s quick to get himself well in over his head in trouble he has no way of fighting. As I said, this is actually well done. He only once gives in to superstitious hooey, and is always approaching the situations in the film using his head. But even then, when there’s obvious bad going on, he still charges in blindly in an attempt to rescue the evil damsel in distress.
When I say “charges,” it should be noted that he could easily have been outmaneuvered, outflanked, and routed by an army of snails. The pacing of the movie is so incredibly dull and dreary that I almost fell asleep within the first forty-five minutes. It takes its sweet time to do anything. Excessive drawn out long cuts reminiscent of a high school video editing class are what this movie is really about. While this movie is trying to ground itself in reality with its documentary-style camera work and editing, even a real documentary is more exciting to watch than this. And as far as grounding itself in reality goes, it breaks the fourth wall by adding in music during “scary” parts that would not be in a documentary (forgivable considering the nature of the film), and by having titles and text placed over the film as though they were edited in during the “post” process, which is impossible granted the stereotypical “we are never ever getting this camera back” ending employed.
To be fair, the acting isn’t bad. It conveys realistic “why no, this is not a movie” well and there isn’t much apart from the ending where I wasn’t able to buy into the characters. Aside from that whole “possessed” thing. Concerning the characters themselves (and foregoing the “possessed” thing, as you know how I feel on that subject), they’re presented well. Everyone plays their part as they’re supposed to, although with any scary movies, there’s unintentional funny to be found everywhere. In one scene which was a “first-person possession” scene, I was laughing hysterically at the actions taking place.
Boiling it down to simpler points, this movie is so bad that to write more expanded paragraphs on it would simply reiterate the same points needlessly. It’s so bad that when I got home, I ripped up my ticket stub and defiantly threw it into the trashcan. Or at least I tried. The shards of pain missed the trashcan so I had to pick them up piece by piece. Even when I get refuge from this movie it still torments me. Had there been someone at the customer service desk of the theater I would have asked for a refund. It’s a two hour (feels like four) slog through an incredibly boring fake documentary setting about a ridiculous concept with the most utterly insane, random, and ridiculously stupid ending I can recall in recent memory. Hands down, this movie makes Jonah Hexx look like a prime candidate for sweeping the Oscars.
“The worst part about that movie was that I paid money for it” and
“Thank God this was the LAST exorcism!”
Allow me to wedge a personal complaint in this space before we truly begin. I am not a fan of scary movies. It’s not that they frighten me so bad that I become paranoid of miscarried evil twins or girls thrown down wells or door-to-door Jehovah’s Witnesses (scary enough as is) or any such number of things. It’s that I sit through them and in the end I feel cheated out of my time and potential entertainment value. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy some of them, but nine times out of ten I leave the theater rather annoyed that I didn’t take the option of “paint drying.” Chief among these hatreds are exorcism movies. They generally consist of a young girl around high school age making weird voices, doing odd movements, and pretending to be sweet and innocent one second and possessed another. They’re not nearly as scary as they are ridiculously hilarious and stupid. The Last Exorcism, however, lacks this unintended redeeming quality.
It opens up surprisingly strongly for an exorcism movie. It’s set up as a documentary to follow this lost-faith preacher who used to perform exorcisms but is now intent on showing them for the hoaxes they are. It’s yet another in a now too-long list of shaky-cam movies but for ninety-eight percent of the movie it’s nowhere near Cloverfield. It does a good job of establishing its documentary credit and it does a real good job of establishing the protagonist. However that’s where the good stops. After the initial exposition the plot becomes, “Here’s this letter asking for an exorcism I got, let’s go film it!” It uses a lot of historical references (to which I have no idea how much truth there is in them) to establish reasons for the belief of possession. It then follows the preacher through his exorcism ritual using mild science as the man behind the curtain. And, predictably, it fails.
Essentially, in this movie, the protagonist is basically against all the sorts of exorcists as you see in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. A lot of people subject to exorcisms are often killed as a result, and he’s out to show that they’re nothing more than scams and to save lives. To this end, he’s constantly trying to save the possessed girl from potential abuse or other maladies. His stalwart gooditude prevails throughout the film, as, as suspected, when facing true supernatural occurrences with good ol’ science and rational, he’s quick to get himself well in over his head in trouble he has no way of fighting. As I said, this is actually well done. He only once gives in to superstitious hooey, and is always approaching the situations in the film using his head. But even then, when there’s obvious bad going on, he still charges in blindly in an attempt to rescue the evil damsel in distress.
When I say “charges,” it should be noted that he could easily have been outmaneuvered, outflanked, and routed by an army of snails. The pacing of the movie is so incredibly dull and dreary that I almost fell asleep within the first forty-five minutes. It takes its sweet time to do anything. Excessive drawn out long cuts reminiscent of a high school video editing class are what this movie is really about. While this movie is trying to ground itself in reality with its documentary-style camera work and editing, even a real documentary is more exciting to watch than this. And as far as grounding itself in reality goes, it breaks the fourth wall by adding in music during “scary” parts that would not be in a documentary (forgivable considering the nature of the film), and by having titles and text placed over the film as though they were edited in during the “post” process, which is impossible granted the stereotypical “we are never ever getting this camera back” ending employed.
To be fair, the acting isn’t bad. It conveys realistic “why no, this is not a movie” well and there isn’t much apart from the ending where I wasn’t able to buy into the characters. Aside from that whole “possessed” thing. Concerning the characters themselves (and foregoing the “possessed” thing, as you know how I feel on that subject), they’re presented well. Everyone plays their part as they’re supposed to, although with any scary movies, there’s unintentional funny to be found everywhere. In one scene which was a “first-person possession” scene, I was laughing hysterically at the actions taking place.
Boiling it down to simpler points, this movie is so bad that to write more expanded paragraphs on it would simply reiterate the same points needlessly. It’s so bad that when I got home, I ripped up my ticket stub and defiantly threw it into the trashcan. Or at least I tried. The shards of pain missed the trashcan so I had to pick them up piece by piece. Even when I get refuge from this movie it still torments me. Had there been someone at the customer service desk of the theater I would have asked for a refund. It’s a two hour (feels like four) slog through an incredibly boring fake documentary setting about a ridiculous concept with the most utterly insane, random, and ridiculously stupid ending I can recall in recent memory. Hands down, this movie makes Jonah Hexx look like a prime candidate for sweeping the Oscars.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)