Green Hornet

The Green Hornet has about as much intellectual stimulation as the popcorn I ate while watching it, but like the popcorn, it is buttery, delicious, and fun.

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, your average playboy millionaire who decides to start fighting crime after his father accuses him of being a failure and dies. Seth Rogen approaches the part with his normal stoner/slacker style, and for the most part, it works out well for him. Together with Kato, his right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime, he takes to the streets in a pimped-out Chrysler (yo dawg, I heard you like machine guns, so we put machine guns in your cars so you can kill while you drive), posing as a theatrical criminal in order to trick the underworld.

As funny as Seth Rogen is as the lazy and underachieving Britt Reid, that one trick pony only has so many performances left before audiences are going to get tired of rooting for the pudgy, Jewish, stoned underdog, but Green Hornet was a great first step away from the bong-boy and into a real action hero role. The few fight scenes he has, he literally kicks ass.

What was really surprising about Rogen in this picture was not his performance but just the fact that he was such a goddamn fucking workhorse. In addition to starring in it he co-wrote, co-produced, and even did some of the casting.

Jay Chou, who is apparently a huge pop star over in Taiwan, plays Kato, Britt Reid's right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime. As Kato (the part formerly played by Bruce Lee), Jay takes the term "action star" and punches it straight in the balls and makes it his bitch. I hope to see more of him. He made a great straight man for Rogen's goofball antics.

The movie has lots of laughs, goes for gizzard when it comes to fight sequences, and the black Chrysler they drive around in, dubbed Black Beauty, just about made me jizz all over the already-sticky theater floor.

While it may not be the kind of flick that makes you think, it did prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I need a tiny Asian sidekick.

3.5 Stars.

Bitch Slap: B-Movie

Grindhouse cinema
Exploitation films
B-movies

All of the above is what Bitch Slap is: a throwback to the delightfully lurid and vulgar films of yesteryear when a good rack and a bunch of bullets was all you needed on screen.

Three delicious dames are digging in the desert looking for danger. Hel, Camero and Trixie are three boobtastic babes with a plan to rip off the buried treasure of a mob boss, but the more time they spend digging, the more complicated things get.

Writer and director Rick Jacobson (most notably known for his time on The Legends of Hercules) knew what he wanted from this movie and knew how to get it. He wanted to spend a dime but make it look like a million bucks and did so nearly flawlessly.
HOW TO MAKE A MOVIE ON A BUDGET AS I HAVE LEARNED FROM BITCH SLAP

ACTORS
1. Hire whichever professionals you have befriended during your time in the biz (most of the bit parts are played by people who were on the set of Hercules and Xena)
2. When you have to hire someone other than friends, make sure they are unknown. Any past part bigger than a Teen Camper #3 and they may actually know what their time is worth. (Added bonus: being able to claim you "discovered" so and so.)
3. Make sure you cast a bevy of bombshells.


DIRECTOR
1. Do it yourself

WRITER
1. Do it yourself

SETS
1. Greenscreen is your friend but only to a certain extent so make sure you have ...
2. A set in the desert. Why spend money on fake cacti when the earth grows that shit for free?

PRODUCTION
1. Take all that money you saved by hiring no-names, friends, yourself, and by using the scenery God gave you and dump the rest into production values.

I'm serious, aside from the lack of celebrity, there is no real way to tell it apart from a major studio film like Planet Terror or Crank 2, because they have good lighting and REAL cameras. (I swear, the digital camera has been the death of good indie films -- any schmuck with a Best Buy giftcard can get one.) This is the beauty of the modern day B-movie: if something looks tacky, cheap, or fake, it just adds to the overall aesthetic of the feature. In Bitch Slap, you can tell which scenes have scenery done by computer, but you don't much care because it makes the film more fun.

The script is something between Sin City and an episode of the old '60s Batman TV show. It's got the kind of grit you can feel on your teeth but still manages to be silly. The dialogue can get pretty bad, but again, it is supposed to be bad, so why not run with it?

The acting suffers from the same blessing as the writing and cinematography. It's bad, but you knew going in that it wouldn't be good. Still, it is one thing to be a bad actor and another to be a good actor that has convinced you they are a bad actor. It makes their talent hard to gauge but I am willing to give these girls the benefit of the doubt, especially Erin Cummings, who played the red-headed Hel.

If you like big guns, bigger explosions and the biggest breasts, I recommend you watch Bitch Slap.

4 Stars

Also, there is totally a bunch of lesbian scenes

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

The first Boondock Saints was a glorious symphony of blood and bullets, a dance of gun smoke and glory.

Boondock Saints II is a mediocre pop ballad made by a band you once liked.

The Saints have been hiding out in Ireland, forgetting their past, when someone calls them back to Boston by pumping their favorite priest full of lead. From there it is pretty much the same old song and dance.

The Saints get a decidedly non-Irish sidekick to help them out and be the comic relief while they aren't fighting, the same doofy cops bungle the case (albeit intentionally this time), and charismatic FBI special agent Eunice (think William DaFoe but hotter and with more boobs) is sent in and ends up helping out. The Saints once again take down the mafia even though all their TV and rope-based plans fall to bits, and the gun fights are done in slow-motion while Eunice walks around explaining what happened.

Can't decide if the movie was halfhearted or trying too hard, but either way it falls short. It's the same shtick but with cheaper parts.

To its credit, though, the gun fights are still entertaining, the dialogue is still filled with incredible accents and amusing cursing, and the icing on the cake is that the entire cast is back (even the cat that Rocco shot makes a cameo).

It should also be noted that Clifton Collins, Jr. does a good job of being the crazy-eyed, Mexican-and-proud sidekick to the Saints, and like I said, when the brothers aren't making you chuckle with "fuck"-filled arguments, he has the funny base covered.

It was entertaining, and if it didn't have to stand in the shadow of the first movie, it might have been good. I give it a 2.5 stars or maybe 3 if I am in the right mood.

Here's hoping the third one doesn't also lose the faith.