The O.G. "Public Enemies" of cinema's past

It seems a bit unusual to have a depression era gangster flick like "Public Enemies" making its debut during a season usually dominated by Optimus Prime and Captain Kirk, but I'll take a huge helping of Michael Mann cops and robbers any time it's offered to me and gladly ask for seconds. As "Enemies" hits screens to mostly positive buzz, I thought I'd look back at some of Hollywood's "original gangstas" and their exploits that have influenced filmmakers for several generations of celluloid crime.

The term "Public Enemy" was coined back in 1930 by the chairman of the Chicago crime commision to publicly denounce guys like Al Capone and other infamous gangsters of the era. Later, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI used it when they named various fugitives they were tracking down. Guys like Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Bonnie & Clyde were all outlaws that made this famous list during what became known as "The Public Enemy Era." There is no doubt about it....these were THE bad guys that the law had to bring down for being a blight on society. For some strange reason, people love the stories about bad boys and eventually, Tinseltown would be all too eager to oblige.

The Public Enemy (1931)

Back in the day, this guy defined cinema bad-assery. James Cagney was his name and he was not the man with whom to fuck. Just ask his nagging girlfriend how she likes her grapefruit. Named after the era it represents "The Public Enemy" is the story of Tom Powers, as he makes his way to the top......and eventually the bottom of the bootlegging underworld. This was one of the first pictures to attempt to portray the mob world in a realistic fashion. They didn't glorify it, and they wanted audiences to know that "crime does not pay!" The main character meets his fate in what can still be considered by today's standards somewhat grisly fashion. Just thinking about the last scene gives me chills.

a fistful of fruit for the whiney woman...

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

Don't let the silly name fool you. This film is as endearing as it is tragic. Cagney takes center stage again this time as the former gangster Rocky Sullivan. Rocky has been in prison for several years and after being released, decides to finally walk the straight path. He gets a little help from his best friend and former thug turned priest Father Connolly.( played by real life pal
Pat O' Brien) Unfortunately, an old nemesis (none other than Humphrey Bogart) who owes Rocky some money turns up and makes it difficult for him to adjust to life outside of prison. Throw in the comedy stylings of the Dead End Kids, and you have yourself a stick of pure movie dynamite!

White Heat (1949)

Yes, Cagney makes the list for the third time in a row. His wallet is the one that actually says "Bad Mother Fucker" not Sam Jackson's!!!! Cagney took a break from the tough guy roles to prove he could do other things. He won an Oscar as the singing dancing playwright George M. Cohan in the 1942 musical "Yankee Doodle Dandy," but everybody really just wanted to see him come back and kick some ass again.........did he ever.

Cody Jarret is not a nice man. He steals, has no problem murdering his own crew or anybody else that pisses him off, and the only woman he loves is his mother. After Jarret goes to prison, the police send in an undercover agent posing as his cellmate to find out who on the outside launders his cash because if they get that guy....it will go a long way into shutting down the whole ring. We get jailbreaks, double crosses, and a truly explosive ending that will have you screaming....."made it ma.....top of the world!!!!!!!"

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

What can you say.......but.....Faye.....Faye....Dunaway! She was a knockout in this picture, and combined with the talents of Warren Beatty and a young Gene Hackman......you have yourself one of the very best the genre has to offer. It's a tale of young lovers who blaze a path of robbery and murder across the midwest and into the history books as they inevitably meet their bullet riddled destiny. At the time, the violence in this film was quite jarring. "The Public Enemy" tried to show mob life in a realistic way...."Bonnie & Clyde" showed what those bullets actually do when they hit their mark and critics were not initially impressed. Time has been kind to "Bonnie" and it's still a hell of a film. It marked a change in filmmaking style. No longer would a guy just get shot and fall down.......we'd get to see those exploding squibs in all their gooey glory! Contemporary Hollywood gunfights owe a huge debt to "Bonnie & Clyde." Clyde Barrow just wanted to be remembered.....well.....believe me Clyde........we remember.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Hot on the heels of his mega-hit from 2007, Michael Bay follows up Transformers with a sequel that promises bigger explosions, bigger robots, and a lot more mayhem and bang for your buck. Does it surpass or even equal his earlier work? Let's find out.



Haha, fooled you. I didn't see that shit.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three Remake, or...God Dammit, Tony Scott. (2009)

Son of a bitch, someone needs to give Tony Scott a tri-pod. You know, that thing cameras sit on top of. To keep it still. So you your movie doesn't look like a YouTube video that's having trouble loading. Also, at one point early on in the movie, I counted the seconds between cuts. Want to guess the length of the longest one? I'll give you four seconds. Why? Because that's the answer. So what did we learn from this information? Basically, when Tony Scott is on, he's fucking ON. But when he's off, you're pretty much wasting your money and time. It's a shame, really.

The more I think about this fucking thing, the more unnecessary it becomes. Why remake this? If the filmmaker has nothing over and above to add to the experience, then he/she has no business even attempting it. It's only cheapened, and in the case of Pelham, the cheapening comes in two different flavors. The first being Scott's stubborn reliance on jump-cuts and dizzying 360-degree panning shots of someone talking. Do I really need to see all around someone when they're just standing there speaking? No, I don't and neither does anyone else. I can think of maybe a handful of times when it would be appropriate. None of those scenarios rear their heads in this movie, so it just comes off as stupid. The second being the addition of truly sappy situations that only served to make me secretly throw up behind my stadium seating, and then proceed to look at my puke dribbling down the steps. It's more entertaining than the shit that was added in the film, so in my book, that was a bonus. I'll even give you the most glaring example. It's a spoiler, but if you've seen the original, you already know how the movie turns out. ****SPOILER**** THE BAD GUYS LOSE. So with that out of the way, I can describe this lame shit for you.

Denzel is a transit guy, and you'll have to excuse me if I can't remember his job title. I don't work for public transit, so I don't really give a shit. He's the guy that talks to trains on a microphone. Or at least he is when the movie starts because he's under investigation for taking bribes. He's fallen on the totem pole, and we as an audience are made painfully aware of this. Of course, when he gets the call from the hijackers, you automatically know at some point he'll be offered a bribe. Does Denzel take it? Fuck no. You're an idiot if you thought otherwise. Or slow. Either way, he has to allow the hostage negotiator to send a team of FBI agents or whatever the fuck to his house to search it and make sure he's not in league with the criminals. Denzel then gets a call from his wife, wondering what the hell is going on. He tells her it's just part of the process, and that he's talking to the terrorists. Later on, he tells her that he has to go meet them in person, to which his wife's reply is, and I'm paraphrasing, but this shit is really in there, "you better come home, because we need milk. Don't forget the milk." The object of the conversation being Denzel making it out alive and bringing home the milk to his poor, distraught wife. BOO-FUCKING-HOO. Guess what the last scene in the god damn movie is? HE BRINGS HOME THE FUCKING MILK. That's how you chart suspense if you're a movie exec. Oh, and fuck you, movie exec.

If you've read this far, you'll have noticed I'm not going too much into the nuts and bolts of the film, save for a couple of items. That's because all you need to see is the original with Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau. Really, that's all you need. It's superior in every conceivable way. The beauty of the original is its simplicity. It's pretty much just Matthau and Shaw talking. Sure, things happen around them, but they're the crux of the story. It's sort of the same in the remake, but the extraneous bullshit really takes the shine away from the stars. Case in point - Travolta. He excels at hamming it up as a bad guy. Broken Arrow and Face/Off come to mind. In Pelham, he does ham it up quite a bit, but it's restrained when compared to the two films I just mentioned. He's a little more nuanced, and more convincing as an actual person. The hamminess is still present, but he strikes a great balance between believability and bad guy over-the-top evil.

Denzel is good, as per usual, and I did think it was a nice touch to make him more of an every-man instead of the cop or negotiator. In one scene, a cop asks him if he's ever handled a gun, to which Denzel answers "no." That doesn't happen very often in a Denzel movie. At least not in most of them. And with that, my praise ends. I guess I don't really need to rail on it any more, since my stance is pretty rock solid at this point. There's nothing else to talk about, really, except for my insistance that you do NOT go see this. Buy the original on DVD instead. It's an old version, and I doubt there will be any new ones made because of the remake, but it's still worth it. You might have to mess around with your settings to get a widescreen presentation, and then you'll notice the image being stretched a tad, but it's totally watchable. Much more so than this pile of trash.

No trailer for this one. Watch Walter and Robert. My colleague talked about it once.

I'll Stay Awake, Thanks - Long Dream (2000)

You know, there are some directors out there who I think would greatly benefit from sitting down and watching this movie. I check the budgets on a lot of movies, and most of the time I wonder to myself how the fuck $100 million can be blown through so easily. Higuchinsky, the director of Long Dream, would laugh at the people responsible for spending that much money. All of his movies were really low budget, but guess what? They don't need the money (granted, I haven't seen his last film, but I seriously doubt anything has changed in that regard). The sad thing, however, isn't how much money he has or doesn't have for his films. Believe it or not, he's only made 3 films.....ever. I'm pretty sure this qualifies as a national emergency, but I haven't seen any reports about it on the news yet.

Long Dream is about just that: a long dream. It takes place in a very dark and claustrophobic mental hospital, where two doctors are studying a curious patient. He came to them with a pretty fucked up problem. Every time he sleeps, his dreams seem to last longer and longer. In the span of, say, eight hours, he experiences days in his mind. At first. What starts out as a few days of experiences increases exponentially every time he sleeps. You'd be forgiven if you didn't realize the ramifications of this. He explains it best himself when he tells the doctors that one of his dreams was about him frantically searching for a bathroom for eight years. That's fucked. What if it's a horrible nightmare? It might end up being twenty years of swimming away from a gigantic shark, or god knows what. If that's not a scary premise for a horror/sci-fi flick, then I don't know what is. One thing I guess I should mention is the length of the film. It's only an hour long, so if you're looking for any kind of character development or complex plot, you'll have to look elsewhere. It's as straightforward as can be, and it doesn't bother with anything except being really weird. And I mean that in an exceptionally good way.

Higuchinsky is a very visual director, despite the low budgets he works with. Everything about his films, from the sets to the lighting and camera angles, is bizarre and other-worldly. Long Dream is no exception, and the green-tinted, narrow hallways of the mental hospital are foreboding enough, never mind what's happening in that dude's head every night. Also, Higuchinsky doesn't usually work with a lot of CGI. In Long Dream, it's practical all the way. I won't go into what kind of effects are used, but I'll let you imagine what might happen to a mind and body that experiences hundreds of years of existence. It's a crazy-ass concept, and it takes a crazy-ass director to pull it off with this kind of twisted confidence. To me, it's a must-see for any horror or sci-fi fan, regardless if you watch foreign films or not. It's just so fucking weird and creepy. I love it for the same reasons I love his other film, Uzumaki, but I'll save my comments on that one for another day. Instead, I'll leave you with this thought: a 100 year dream consisting solely of having sex with Naomi Watts. Or whoever, it's your call. Your wife, even.

This scene isn't very exciting, but it's the only one I could find that didn't show too much. When he wakes up, the doctor basically asks him if he was dreaming. He says yes, and the doctor asks how long it lasted. He says a year and a half.

Taking of Pelham One Two Three

I was aware that the June 12th release of Denzel Washington and John Travolta action-fest "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" was in fact a remake. I had never seen the 1974 original until by chance it was on one of my cable channels and it hooked me in big time! Walter Matthau plays a transit cop in charge of taking down the men responsible for hijacking a subway car and demanding a one million dollar ransom for the passengers on board. The main baddie is played by the late great Robert Shaw and it goes without saying......he's awesome in the flick. I'm not going into a full throttle review of this one, but I will say to check it out if you can.



The first thing you'll notice if you are a Tarantino fan is that the bad guys refer to themselves as Mr. Green, Mr. Blue, and so on....hmmmmmmmm....does that sound familiar? No disrespect to Quentin, I just thought it was neat to be able to connect the dots to his tribute in "Dogs." It was also interesting seeing Matthau playing the action guy role, and his portrayal of Lieutenant Garber sits right next to Coach Buttermaker as my favorite Walter performance.



I am curious to see if the Tony Scott remake will keep the playful tone of the first one. Judging by the trailers it seems to be going for a more serious balls to the wall action approach. I do think that sometimes film stories need to be re-told for new audiences to appreciate. There's no doubt that the old "Pelham" still packs quite a cinematic punch....it's just that it may be hard to convince a younger generation of movie goers to check out a movie with two dead lead actors they have never heard of. Sad but true. I am anxious to see what Scott can do so he will definately be holding my ten bucks for ransom this summer.

I Come in Peace- The checklist for 80's & 90's action!

Ah.....the crap-tacular action films of the 80's and 90's ruled the school! But, to truly qualify as a fine slice of upper echelon era gorgonzola, certain criteria must be met without fail. Let's go over the list shall we?

1) Everybody knows that a big action story must take place around Christmas. Spoiling holiday cheer is a bonus for bad guys, and it gives some random character a chance to say "one hell of a way to spend Christmas!"

2) The villains must be either drug dealers or terrorists.

3) The main hero is usually a cop that plays by his own rules and his partner must be killed early on so that he can take revenge.

4) The captain has just about had it with his loose cannon shenanigans and requests that the hero take some vacation.

5) He must have a new partner that he initially hates, but comes to appreciate as they combine their talents to vanquish evil.

6) At some point, there must be a clever catch phrase worked in by the hero in a situation where it makes the most sense. For example, if it is an older cop, he might be running while a building explodes behind him and he would shout something like "I'm getting too old for this shit." Or even better, when the hero inevitibly defeats his nemesis he might say "yippie-kai-yay-motherfucker!" It is important that whenever the master villain's plan is foiled, the last thing he hears is a smart-ass remark by the protagonist before meeting his grisly fate.

7) Stuntman Al Leong must cameo and die as a henchman. Most notable blow the shit out of the world flicks had Al henching for the bad guys at some point. (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Big Trouble in Little China)

8) This is probably the most important. A major character, whether it be the good guy or one of the bad guys, must have a mullet. This shows that on top they are all nut stomping business, but in back they know how to be bad and party. Whew......now that we have that out of the way I can present to you 1990's "I Come in Peace." An action era gem with a sci-fi twist that includes everything on my commandmant list.

Al Leong in Die Hard and Lethal Weapon

What makes this movie stick out in my memory is the villain. He's a drug dealer, but from outer space! On his planet, endorphins are the addicting drug of choice and he can only get his supply on Earth from human brains. So basically he goes to L.A. and kills a bunch of drug dealers to get their heroin. He then catches a person, injects them with an overdose of heroin to stimulate endorphin production, and sucks it out with a spike to the head. Whenever he approaches a victim he tells them "I come in peace" hence the title.

B-level action meister Dolph Lundgren plays cop on the edge Jack Caine. (as in he raises cain throughout) He gets involved because he was working a case against a yuppie group of drug dealers called "The White Boyz." The White Boyz killed his partner during an undercover sting (big mistake) and he wants them to pay. But many of the White Boyz were slaughtered along with his partner by an unknown third party. Now he must break in a new partner and trust an alien cop who has come to bring the endorphin dealer to justice on his home planet. Failure to do so will have the population on another world become addicts while Earth becomes a target for other would be galactic drug runners.

even alien drug dealers had mullets in the 80's

The alien drug dealer is just plain bad-ass! He's 8ft tall and has a platinum blonde mullet. He also has all kinds of nifty gadgets to help him do his dirty work. There's a remote controlled hose that he shoots into the victim's heart and fills with heroin. He's got this razor sharp CD that ricochets all over the place and is only vulnerable to stereo speakers. The dealer is also equipped with an enormous hand cannon that gives Dolph a headache and Dirty Harry a hard-on.

the whirling disc of death metal....

I've never much cared for Dolph except for when he played Drago in Rocky. In that movie he only had to say a couple of lines though. He's basically a big wooden turd with no personality or acting skills to carry a lead role. At least guys like Van Damme and the Schwartz had charisma to help them with their dramatic shortcomings, but Dolph doesn't. Despite the absence of a likeable hero, "I Come in Peace" is a worthy walk down the ole action memory lane. Check it out!

Dolph about to deliver a catchphrase....



 

Around and Around We Go - Izo (2004)

Izo is a strange one. Then again, Takashi Mike is infinitely strange, so I’m not sure what I was expecting. If you’ve read about this film before, you know what you’re getting into. If you haven’t, then my advice would be to not expect a traditional vengeance/sword fighting film. Izo has both vengeance and sword fighting in spades, but goddamn, it’s bizarre. I think that’s what I like about Mike – he turns otherwise straightforward stories into something twisted and unique. There are plenty of films about violence and swords and all that, but when films like Izo come along, they make you go “what the hell?” Then you end up watching it two or three more times before you’re finally satisfied with the experience.

From what I could gather in a single viewing, Izo is about a man who is killed and becomes doomed to wander the space-time continuum; he’s a vengeful spirit out for the blood of anyone he comes across. At seemingly random intervals, he instantly transports between eras and locations, and everywhere he goes he leaves a bloody mess behind him. All the while, there is a group of men, who I think are some kind of keepers of the afterlife, and who Izo is ultimately seeking. They act more like a board of directors, which is why I wasn’t sure who the hell they were for about half the film. But once I figured that out, I thought it was an interesting depiction of the way things work out there in the infinite space and time beyond death. Izo, however, doesn’t think it’s so interesting. All he really wants is to kill everyone and be spared his fate of aimlessly wandering around. What makes Izo different from other vengeance films is the way he fights. He’s not a martial arts master, and neither are most of the people he fights with. Instead of gracefully slicing through foes, it sometimes takes him a long time to get the job done. His style communicates anger and frustration, and a lot of the time it entails just flailing and hacking at someone until they drop. He’s not very efficient, and since he’s an immortal spirit, he can’t be killed. That means he takes a lot of punishment over and over again, and he simply outlasts everyone else. I’m not even sure who “everyone else” really is. They might only exist in Izo’s demented hell of an afterlife as punishment for whatever he did while he was alive. But I don’t really know, and I think the film works better that way. Not knowing makes it that much more strange to behold, and I think a definite narrative structure would have ultimately lessened the impact. It’s a little like a David Lynch film, in that you sort of know what’s going on, but at the same time, you have no fucking idea what the hell is happening. It just so happens I like Lynch, and Izo strokes the same muscles in my head that long for this kind of mental exercise.


Make no mistake, this is a fairly bloody film, but I was actually expecting a bit more. That said, there are some rather gory bits, but I actually liked the more normal sword-stabbing and fighting better than the times when something totally over the top happened. For instance, he slices someone in half, and the guy freezes for a few seconds while his upper torso slowly slides down to the floor. I’ve seen that exact thing at least three times before, so it wasn’t too interesting to me. But the fighting itself is really cool, mainly because of what I mentioned before – Izo isn’t interested in looking good while he’s running people through. He’s pissed off and full of futile rage, and no matter what ere he’s in, the outcome is always the same. He gets stabbed and shot about a thousand times before the film is over, but still he struggles on, repeating his actions, I guess, forever. There are also frequent acoustic guitar solos by this weird musician who pops up every now and then, and his songs always have something prescient to say about Izo’s situation. His songs are pretty fucking bad ass, though, because he doesn’t really sing them. He just kind of yells and chokes a lot and gets really emotional. You’ll have to watch it to understand what I mean, but trust me, he’s great. I think I’ll get a better understanding of this film with every viewing, and once really isn’t enough. I’d guess a deeper view of what’s going on only comes from understanding small things here and there, and honestly, I can’t wait to piece this crazy ass puzzle together.

And, no, I don't know why there is a S.W.A.T. team.

The NeverEnding Story Remake, and My Newfound Hatred of Life.

It’s no secret: I complain a lot about remakes, and rightly so, I think. But a lot of the time, I’m more opposed to the general principle of remaking a film instead of the quality of the original film itself. However, the news of The NeverEnding Story possibly being remade has re-ignited my inner nerd rage to previously unseen heights. Let me make this as crystal-clear as I possibly can: YOU DON’T FUCKING REMAKE THE NEVERENDING STORY, YOU FUCKING EVIL ASSHOLES. I mean, what improvements could conceivably be made? It sure as shit doesn’t have to do with the dark material (I haven’t read the book, and I never plan on doing so), and the animatronics are, to this day, fucking awesome.

I'm not sure how you can get any more amazing-looking than this.

The story is just beginning.

The NeverEnding Story is one of my all-time favorite fantasy movies, and I watched it a shit-ton as a kid. It excited me, it scared the holy hell out of me, and it was breathtaking in every possible way. The story has a really, really dark element to it, and every time I would watch it, I was totally creeped the fuck out by the Nothing. G’mork, on the other hand, wasn’t just creepy – he genuinely scared me. But it wasn’t all horror, all the time. Quite the opposite, actually. There are a lot of wondrous elements to the film, including the snail racing, the rock biter, and, of fucking course, Falkor the luck dragon. Let’s stop here for a moment, and ponder how these characters would most likely be treated in a remake. My best guess puts animatronics out of the question, and with it one of the most striking aspects of the film. The visuals have stayed with me since the first time I saw it in the late 80s, and just from taking these screen caps, it’s obvious it wasn’t my retarded child-mind turning shitty special effects into something more awesome. Every fantastical creature in this film still looks goddamn impressive, and using CGI for the new versions will instantly deflate any lasting impression they might have had otherwise. I mean, seriously - a CGI Falkor? Kindly get the fuck out of my face with that horeshit nonsense. And I bet Atreyu will look like Prince Caspian, Bastian will be obnoxious as hell, and I’ll end up wanting to punch him in his face. Dammit, I’m getting pissed just thinking about this.

This is what animatronics you don't fuck with look like. You know...good.

If you saw the film as a kid, these glowing eyes should be enough to make you check your pants.

Have you ever wondered why there haven’t been too many quality family films recently? It’s because they’ve taken out everything that made those movies great for the whole family, and now simply cater to the 10-and-under crowd. I did enjoy Matthew Vaughn’s last film, Stardust, but that’s about it. Golden Compass was alright, but holy shit – neither of these films are a hair on The NeverEnding Story’s humongous nutsack. Since when do family films have to just be for children? Look at this list and weep: The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, Legend, Dragonslayer, The Dark Crystal, Return to Oz (yes), and The Princess Bride. All from the 80s, and all fan-fucking-tastic. So my question to Hollywood is this: what have you done for me lately? Remaking one of the greatest fantasy films ever isn’t going to qualify, so fuck you. On a side note, the production company in talks to do The NeverEnding Story is also apparently planning to rape Akira by doing a live-action remake. Puke.

If you’ve never seen The NeverEnding Story, I envy you. You still get to experience it for the first time, and I couldn’t be more adamant that you should do it as soon as possible. Just looking at the DVD cover makes me want to call in to work tomorrow and have an all-80s fantasy day. I would dress up and shit, too – a robe and a wand should be enough, I think. Even if you suck and wouldn’t do the same, you still need to buy this movie and watch the shit out of it. It’ll amaze you every time.



There are so many great moments in The NeverEnding Story, and I thought it worth including a screen-dump of some of my favorite parts:

The duel Sphinxes, and a place I don't want to have to pass through.

That shit all over the screen? It's called atmosphere. Look it up.

A really creepy, yet cool scene where two destinies meet.

Another one of the many memorable characters. He'll probably be totally fucked up and retarded if this remake gets green-lit. Enter ANGRY NERD RAGE.

/end rage.

Wanna Share the Rent? No Thanks, You Crazy Bitch - 2LDK (2003)

2LDK is short for an apartment with 2 bedrooms, a living room, dining room and kitchen, and that’s exactly where the entirety of this film takes place. But before I get to the film itself, I think the reason it came to be is almost as interesting, and bears mentioning. The director, Yukihiko Tsutsumi, along with fellow Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura decided to make dueling films that adhered to a single rule: they must only involve two characters fighting in a single space for the duration of each film. Kitamura’s film was Aragami, and 2LDK was Tsutsumi’s contribution. This kind of competition is something I’ve never heard of before, and I think it’s a fun exercise that more filmmakers should take and run with. With 2LDK, Tsutsumi created a brisk (at 70 minutes) depiction of obsession and delusion, and a damn entertaining one at that.

The setup is extremely simple: Rana and Nozomi are both actresses who share an apartment together, and they happen to also both be up for the same leading role in an upcoming movie. From the beginning, it’s obvious the two girls are polar opposites – Rana is a neat-freak who comes from a well-educated background, while Nozomi is a former model-turned-actress who wears designer clothing and is generally pretty vain. I have no idea why they share an apartment together, other than the possibility that the production company they’re working for put them up for a discounted price. It’s irrelevant, really, because the film isn’t about how or why they got to where they are. Instead, it’s all about their personalities clashing to the point of total chaos. It starts out innocently enough, with Rana getting upset at Nozomi for using her shampoo and leaving hair in the bathtub. But if that was all that happened, this would be a pretty sucky movie, so that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Rana: anal-retentive cleanliness freak and rule-abiding whore.


Nozomi: big-mouthed, annoying bitch. Incidentally, they're both incredibly hot.

As I said, it’s a brisk look into the main characters’ lives, and at just over an hour, the film doesn’t waste any time getting to the meat of the story: the fighting between Rana and Nozomi. They do some really fucked up shit to each other, and it’s at once hilarious and brutal. There’s a chainsaw, samurai swords, electrical appliances in water, a toilet tank, and many more instruments of death and destruction used to great effect by both girls. Honestly, there’s nothing more to say about 2LDK, so you'll have to excuse the shortness of this review. If you like seeing two people beat the living shit out of each other for about an hour, this is the film for you. Due to the nature of the film’s creation, that premise is the sole reason for its existence, and as such, delivers everything you could want from something like this, without all the distractions more complicated stories come with. Simply put, 2LDK is an awesome, bloody good time for the short while it lasts, and believe me, you could do way worse with 70 minutes of your time.



I saved most of the good bits for your own discovery, so don't worry, I'm not giving away a whole lot here:

Face Soup and Other Discomforts - The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)

The House Where Evil Dwells was a disappointment, in that it wasn’t a laugh riot from start to finish. I already knew going in that it wasn’t very good, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. Now I know. It’s about a couple who move into a house in Japan where a double murder-suicide occurred, and them dealing with the ghosts left over from the crime. It’s kind of the same premise as Ju-on, but where that movie is definitely horror, The House Where Evil Dwells is sometimes funny, but mostly drama, I guess. It’s weirdly boring yet still watchable, and it’s not scary – even in the most liberal sense of the word. I think it was supposed to be, which, if that’s the case, well…good job all around. NOT.

The makers of Onibaba would be pissed.

There weren’t too many flat out horrible parts to the movie – I actually thought the acting was quite good – but nothing really happened to anyone besides the occasional weird possession, and for some reason, the filmmakers decided to show the ghosts as transparent-looking people with goofy makeup on. There’s no atmosphere to speak of, and only one scene could possibly be construed as “horror.” It involves giant crabs on wires and a girl being put in the hospital from a fall from a tree about 8 feet in the air. Brittle bones, I guess. Oh, I almost forgot about the ghostly face in the girl’s soup, which elicited the Spock-like logical reaction, “There’s a horrible face in my soup,” followed by her father’s plead to “eat your soup for daddy.” What the fuck? Either daddy put the face in the soup, or he has quite the high tolerance for bizarre phrases.

Alright, since there’s no atmospheric horror going on, how about gore? Eh…there are two beheadings and a limb cut off, but they’re really nothing to write home about. Well, on second thought, one beheading featured an amazing prop head with a giraffe neck that seemed to be spring-loaded to fly off at the exact opposite angle it was cut from. Being able to frame advance the whole thing didn’t do the scene any favors, really, but I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when it happened.

The evolution of a poorly (or awesomely) simulated murder.

One thing that struck me really odd was the lack of communication between, well, anyone. Both the husband and wife see the ghosts, but they never talk about it with each other. It’s like every encounter was their own special little moment, and sense be damned if they weren’t going to share them. Although, I wouldn’t be running to my spouse to tell them that a weirdo in a kimono was standing there pointing at me repeatedly, either. If they were dripping blood or something, maybe. But besides that, the ghosts also made a mask fall on the coffee table, tipped over a bowl of soup, and slammed a sword in a table. 

One thing The House Where Evil Dwells has going for it is Susan George. More specifically, her boobies. Actually, that’s not very fair. She’s a good actress, and did an admirable job with the material she had to work with. If anything, I think she did too good a job in the scenes that were supposed to be emotional. Case in point: a scene where she gets into an argument with her husband and they yell a few things at each other. She then starts crying and says they always argue, and she just wants to stop. I’d normally agree, but that was the only instance of the two arguing in the whole movie. There’s not any kind of build up or release of emotion…that is, if that’s what they were going for. Who knows, maybe I’m just expecting too much from a movie that included a plot-forwarding (riiiiight) sex scene with the exquisite George.

Dirty Mary in the flesh.

Lastly, I’d like to mention the awful but great kung-fu fight at the end. If pictures are worth a thousand words, then I’d submit this clip as an equivalent to about ten million pictures, or 10,000,000,000 words, respectively.

Here's the trailer, even though I didn't bother watching it. I caught about 2 seconds of some awful "trailer guy" voice, but that's as far as I got.