Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

(2007, 86 min) The "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" universe, like many of the shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, operates on its own surreal inner logic. Running gags such as the Mooninites' attempted takeover of Earth will be referenced, while the death of one of the main characters in that same episode will be conveniently ignored. The three super heroes (reasoned Frylock, deviously lazy Master Shake and dimbulb Meatwad) never do anything remotely resembling the heroics pictured in the opening credits. And the villains must never actually succeed at anything, despite the ineptitude of their enemies. But unlike shows such as Wonder Showzen and movies like Head, creators Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis have never developed contempt for either their audience or their characters, and they're always eager to let their fans in on the joke (including the publicity campaign that blew up in Boston).

Keep all this in mind as you watch the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, especially if you're among the uninitiated, and you should have a terrific time. Barring some sort of comedic miracle, it will finish 2007 as the funniest film of the year, an exhaustive and exhausting exercise in surreal dream-logic and gut-busting one-liners. The plot? Good luck. Something about a disco-playing exercise machine (the Insane-o-flex) that uses hirsute neighbor Carl's energy to lay eggs and take over the world, with assistance from the Plutonians and Dr. Weird, whose NJ lair has been converted into condos. Hell, I've seen the film and that sentence still doesn't make any sense. But that's part of the fun.

Blistering death metal band Mastodon provide the opening tune, an ode by concessions aimed at an inconsiderate audience: "Do not nudge, kick or jiggle the seat in front of you./I'm sitting there!/I am everywhere at once!" Can Mastodon please perform before every movie this summer? You'll easily recognize the Neil Peart (of Rush) cameo, but listen carefully for Tina Fey, Bruce Campbell and Chris Kattan as a burrito, a burning chicken, and a watermelon with manifest destiny.

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group

More movie connections

Our old friend JT at Blackmail Is My Life pointed us to this article citing another possible influence on the Virginia Tech slayings: The New York Times highlights the similarity in a publicity still (as well as the plot) of Oldboy to Cho's mailed-to-NBC photos (which I guess are publicity poses as well, in a way).

And by the way... the whole idea of videotaping yourself before the crime to leave a document explaining your motives and inspirations, in an attempt to have the last word? Totally Zero Day.

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group

Films about Gun Violence

Ed note: We at TLA are generally well-read and politically active. While the recent massacre at Virginia Tech pales in comparison to the casualties of the ongoing war in Iraq, it nonetheless hit very close to home for many of us. Naturally, talk turned to gun violence and gun control. Did the bans on assault weapons prevent this massacre from being worse? Would a total ban on guns have prevented it from happening? Or would prohibition made Cho go to the black market, where automatic weapons would have been available? We're further conflicted by our living and working in Philadelphia, an anti-gun city in a pro-gun state.

Below, we're re-running our reviews of the most notable films to tackle these issues. We've received emails asking about the availability of similar movies, so interest is running high, though we doubt (given the NRA's still-massive power) that this dialogue will lead to significant political action. As always, the views expressed are those of the respective authors and do not reflect TLA Entertainment group or its employees. All four films below are still available for rent or sale on DVD everywhere.

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group

Bowling for Columbine

(2002, 120 min) Who better than Michael Moore to handle the most serious of issues with humor and humanity, and communicate complexities with clear, concise vision? The Capraesque documentarian examines the American culture of violence through a pastiche of interviews, conversations, news footage and 911 calls; and presents a collection of statistics that everyone is familiar with, but when presented en masse is profoundly overwhelming. As Moore gets a free gun on opening a checking account and buys ammo in a barber shop, he discusses the atmosphere of violence which has permeated U.S. consciousness from the inception of the country. Wedded to this culture of violence is the culture of fear...fear and consumption, as Marilyn Manson suggests in a thoughtfully considered conversation. In comparison to Manson’s commentary is Charlton Heston’s regurgitation of the NRA party line in an interview he walks out of with relatively little provocation.

Bowling... (reportedly, the shooters went bowling the morning of the massacre) shows Littleton as on the surface the embodiment of the American Dream, where “two young men made very bad, very wrong decisions”; yet, under the docile morning-in-America façade, is subject to the same pervasive undercurrents affecting the country as a whole. Moore recounts myriad instances of intrusive force to implement U.S. foreign policy, and asks why Canada -- where our movies are watched and with similar issues of poverty and unemployment and a whole lot of gun owners –- has so few murders by gunshot. The film is brilliant and incendiary, sure to outrage and to incite as much considered discussion as hostile reaction. Academy Award winner for Best Documentary.

– Ann Yarabinee

© TLA Entertainment Group

Dear Wendy

(2005, 100 min) To begin, the Wendy referred to in the title is a gun. Tackling the same subject as Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) and Lars von Trier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark) reflect upon America’s dark obsession with firearms. Where Moore gave us a skewered documentary-style take on the subject, Vinterberg and von Trier look through a lens with semi-naturalism and sarcastic sentimentality. Dick Dandelion (Jamie Bell) is a self- proclaimed loser in a small fictional mining town somewhere in America. His friend Stevie (Mark Webber) informs him that the small 6.65 revolver in his possession is real, not a toy. Thus begins an odyssey only the von Trier penned script could imagine.

Dick decides to start a club based on the love for and a fetishistic obsession with “partners” (guns). The world is confined to a place in town known as Electric Park, similar to the stylized diagram of “Our Town” envisioned in Dogville. The club, known as the Dandies, engages in ritualized behavior in an abandoned underground mine shaft known as the Temple. They have target practice, dress up in antique clothes, and listen to nothing but the Zombies. One day, their insular world changes forever. The town is policed by Sheriff Krugsby (Bill Pullman), another man who loves his gun.

Commenting in a writer’s interview, von Trier insists he writes this tale without a moral in mind and we believe him. Vinterberg adds that he wanted to bring realism to the project, which he does in a detached, European style. Constructed as a sound stage in Denmark, Electric Park is the center of a perverse universe in which its inhabitants find sensual pleasure in shooting a gun. These professed losers called themselves “pacifists with guns,” a not too subtle reflection of the young adults in America. Dear Wendy comments on the gun culture here, the post-adolescent search for identity, racism, and the politics of various codes of conduct instituted by society. This is a powerful, relevant cinematic event.

– Max Brinck

© TLA Entertainment Group

Elephant

(2003, 80 min) Continuing to film with the minimalistic style of Gerry, writer-director Gus Van Sant hauntingly distills the events surrounding a Columbine-like high school shooting to its most basic elements. In taking the time to get to know several sets of interlinked students, the tragedy becomes more profound yet even more senseless. Perhaps echoing the frustration of endless news coverage that demands explanations, however superficial, Van Sant introduces many possible causes and debunks them: deficient parents, peer pressure, drug use, insecurity, sexual issues (gay and straight) — in short, life in a typical high school. The easy availability of guns and violent entertainment may be contributors, but are they triggers, facilitators, or mere conveniences? Much of Elephant is shot from a first-person-shooter video game perspective, but it's hard to imagine a movie so grueling being an inspiration to violence. The identity of the shooters isn't even revealed until halfway through, forcing the audience into a fruitless guessing game, a search for nonexistent answers. These are misunderstood kids, and there's no way an 80-minute movie is going to understand them either. Instead, Van Sant lets us watch, intimately, and maybe experience just a little bit of what it was like for an entire generation to lose its innocence. And that's more than enough.

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group

Zero Day

(2003, 92 min) Somewhat lost amid the hype surrounding Gus Van Sant's Elephant (which was released about a month later), Zero Day is an equally accomplished look at school shootings and troubled youth that takes a completely different formal tack.

The first hour or so is simulated home video footage of two high school students who are planning a school massacre. Andre and Cal, the "Army of Two," have calculatedly set a countdown to the "Zero Day." Yet even while stockpiling weapons and planning the most efficient routes through the school halls, director Ben Coccio never lets you forget that these are just kids... whether they're getting their braces removed or using toys and dolls for target practice. Even tortured minds need a reprieve from time to time, and Andre and Cal get their release from spectacularly dark humor. They're smart enough to destroy their video games, movies and books so that their pop culture won't be blamed for the massacre, but not reasoned enough to figure out a better way to deal with their angst. Their considerable charisma makes them even scarier.

On Zero Day itself, Coccio makes a startling transition in perspective, utilizing security cameras to provide a different verité perspective to the proceedings. If the choice was made to present an omniscient, unbiased eye on the shootings, it only serves to demonstrate that there's no possible way to empathize with Andre and Cal's decision to carry out the massacre. As much as you can identify with their emotions, their actions are unconscionable.

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group

Zardoz

Ed note: Please welcome Rachel J. Cox to the blog. We're resurrecting the old "TLA Rewind" brandname for her regular insights into classics that are languishing on the dustier shelves of our video stores.

(1974, 105 min) Last week I watched Zardoz, the latest in a long series of post-apocalyptic movies from the '70s that I have enjoyed. Why are they so great? More specifically, why are they so much greater than the post-apocalyptic movies from oh, say… every other decade? Were those ten years really so bleak and full of despair? Disco was dying, and perhaps in the hearts and minds of an entire generation the earth was, too.

Let me start by saying that I will watch or read anything that is set in the future…anything. I openly admit that there is little uncharted territory left when it comes to the "speculative fiction" genre (the hot, smarter cousin of the science fiction genre). Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men was the most unique vision of the future to come out in years, but of course it was based on a novel from 1992 and greatly diverged from the original storyline. (We can immediately dismiss A.I. as having any original content; it might as well have been titled Pinocchio 2001.) Nevertheless, I personally find any creative work of speculative/post-apocalyptic/dystopian/science fiction worth watching.

Although today it has achieved a cult status, Zardoz was hailed as both a failure and a joke when first released in 1974. It was written and directed by John Boorman, a notoriously uneven director, right after his critical and commercial success with Deliverance. The two endeavors at first glance seem disparate, but both films utilize the ideas of societal breakdown and emotional detachment as central themes.

Zardoz is most often criticized for its low production values. The larger sets are comprised of minimally altered pastoral farmland and country estates, while the interior scenes are typical campy sci-fi fare: rooms draped in fabric, a maze of mirrors, props constructed of papier mache. The colorful and somewhat comical costumes could have come from a child's collection of play clothes. These meager surroundings completely escaped my notice, perhaps because I look at all special effects before Terminator 2 as pathetic but well-meaning. Nice try, I think, but that is clearly rubber. Although the visual techniques of Star Wars were groundbreaking at the time, today they have been far surpassed and the film barely stands apart from its peers Flash Gordon and Tron. To me, Zardoz seems appropriately dated and its simplicity intentional, as it fits in with the desolate scenario.

In the year 2293 the world is populated by pockets of Eternals, highly evolved humans who have achieved immortality and shed themselves of the more animalistic qualities of their ancestors. They have little to no interaction with Brutals, the unevolved humans that live like scavengers in the wasteland outside the Eternals’ protected enclaves. The main character, Zed, is played by Sean Connery and wears a red loincloth throughout most of the picture. (He also has a long braid, and both are mildly distracting at first. This is post-James Bond, people. He wasn't a spring chicken then, either.) Zed belongs to a warrior class that exterminates Brutals at random and has recently forced them to begin farming, at the behest of a giant, flying stone head known as the idol Zardoz. The film opens with Zed meeting his god and actually manages to get more interesting.

This is all I will give away of the plot, since most of the pleasure of watching Zardoz comes from the deliberately paced developments regarding Zed’s background and intentions. Like many science fiction films of its generation, Zardoz attempts to tackle some important questions about the nature of religion and the extent of its power. In Beneath the Planet of the Apes the apes worship a nuclear bomb and in Logan's Run the religious ceremony known as Carousel falsely promises resurrection.

I won't say that Zardoz blew my mind, that it made complete sense from start to finish, or that the denouement takes place in a timely fashion. I will say that it is inventive, unique and thought-provoking. Certain people will enjoy the random female toplessness, while almost no one will enjoy the loincloth.

And that's all that anybody can really want from a movie.

– Rachel J. Cox

© TLA Entertainment Group

Grindhouse

(2007, 191 min) An unambitious epic, a carefully orchestrated piece of trash, an auteurist brain dump... whatever you want to call it, this unapologetic pulp is nonetheless the most entertaining three hours you're likely to spend at the cinema this year. If you're going to watch two brilliant directors squander their talent, this is probably the way to go.

In watching Tarantino and Rodriguez recreate the seedy Times Square style of late-night filmgoing, it's important to remember that there were no rules in these movies. It was a genre created out of economics, not form, with budgets so threadbare that only two results were reliable: There would be exploitation, and there would be peculiar auterist visions that creep out, with producers interested more in churning the fare out than reshooting and making the films perfect. On those counts, Grindhouse succeeds beautifully.

In a way, Robert Rodriguez has been making grindhouse films for most of his career. From the fake trailer for Danny Trejo in Machete (please turn this into a feature!) to the obsession with balls and pus in Planet Terror, he obviously would have been right at home in the '70s. Yet he uses digital photography and special effects to great effect, and has a blast turning as many actors as possible into bubbling pools of blood. Rose McGowan stays in wry, campy "Charmed" mode as a peglegged stripper (strike that... go-go dancer) with unlikely superpowers. And how wonderful is it to see Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn and Josh Brolin taking on iconic roles so late in their careers.

The trailers that follow are pure brilliance. Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS has an air of familiarity about it... hard to believe no one thought of it sooner. Edgar Wright's Don't would make William Castle proud. And Eli Roth's deeply sick Thanksgiving makes Texas Chainsaw look like a Beach Party movie. Ironic that critics are eating up this trailer, whereas if it were actually a feature they would tear it to pieces.

Quentin Tarantino took a different tack, making a self-indulgent car-chase movie in the Monte Hellman realm. And if Two Lane Blacktop was self-indulgent, at least it was never boring. Unfortunately, Quentin decided to make about 70 minutes of his 80-minute movie filled with realistically mundane dialogue, mostly surrounding young women with little to say (Godard he ain't). Thank goodness when his girls get on the road, chased by a merciless Kurt Russell, he delivers the most exciting car chase since Ronin. Yet he's so enamored with his own images, he neglects to scratch up the print in the same way as Rodriguez. Good thing there are no rules, eh?

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group

The Good Shepherd

(2006, 167 min) Robert De Niro directs Matt Damon playing a top spy named Edward Wilson in The Good Shepherd, loosely based on the character of real life James Angleton, one of the founding officers of American counterintelligence that would become the CIA. Stretching to almost three hours, the film attempts to depict the shaping of the shadowy world of political intrigue and military secrets in epic proportions. It mostly succeeds, thanks to the subtly complex screenplay by Eric Roth (The Insider, Munich). This is about the consequences of covert activities, though no actual spying is revealed, except for one particular bugging operation that also contains crucial, emotional elements of the main characters. Wilson is a most introverted man, showing barely a glimmer of human warmth throughout the picture, having surrendered his life to his country. And yet, and this is to Damon’s credit, reveals the effects of actions in his environment to his inner self in the most restrained way imaginable on-screen.

We follow young Wilson in his Yale years when he forges lifelong ties to other operatives when he becomes a member of the ultra secret Skull and Bones society. One romantic involvement is studied with a young, deaf girl until Wilson is introduced to Margaret (Angelina Jolie) who he will be forced to marry. Jolie, acting in a marginally supporting role, at least is able to provide a realistic portrait of an abandoned wife, left to her own devices with her son in tow. As he rises to the inner sanctum of the intelligence community, the film flashes backward, showing his progress through the years, and forward, to the culminating Bay of Pigs event.

Other acting credits should also go to William Hurt, John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, and a brief glimpse of Joe Pesci. They all add textured performances to this disquieting and thought-provoking tale. Slightly awkward at times, when balancing broad commentary with minute details of covert life, the film is still able to strike a serious and sustained tone that stays with the viewer.

– Max Brinck

© TLA Entertainment Group