Monday, September 06, 2010

Piranha and Machete: A Weekend at the Grindhouse

Hey,

Happy Labor Day weekend everybody! I'm sure you're having a much better weekend then I am, having my laptop break on me and then getting into an car accident that did nothing but confine me to my new living arrangements for the forseeable future. It would also help if I had a job right now that didn't involve computers so I could actually accomplish something. But enough of my whining, my pain is the internet's pleasure as this lull gives me plenty of time to type on the Droid and write about the movies I saw before my weekend went to shit.

I had recently purchased a very cheap Fandango movie ticket and was planning on using it for the Machete midnight showings seeing as the ticket wasn't counted as a pass (I checked!) Alas, there were no good theaters that combined Fandango ticketing with Machete midnight madness, so I was stuck with a ticket that was set to expire. These circumstances led to my arrival at an afternoon showing of Piranha 3-D where I was joined by an old black couple and a small group of teenages hanging around in the back. Weird crowd for this flick.

The movie is helmed by a couple of familiar names, including Jerry "Sliders is my curse" O'Connel playing a pornographer, Rob "Why did I leave the Daily Show" Cordrey as his assistant and Christopher "Doc Brown" Lloyd as, what else, a crazy fish scientist. There are also quite a few of the unknown horrible actors you get with this type of film, including a little girl who says boobs about 25 times (IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE SHE IS LITTLE) and a heavy set black man whose character was litterally a hard nosed cop who is too old for this shit. Like he actually says that. In a movie released in 2010. Without a hint of irony. Amazing.

I knew going into this movie that it was going to be rediculous. Several people had described it to me as borderline porn, and for squemish people or perhaps people that don't view porn on a regular basis, this might have held true. There were plenty of naughty bits to behold, as well as plenty of those bits being ripped apart by hungry fish. I didn't really mind, it felt right in a killer fish movie helmed by Roger Corman. These movies aren't for everyone, but for an MST3K junkie like myself it was quite a ride. If you too can find pleasure in fish tearing apart characters that you actually want to die after spending five minutes of screen time with them, this might be a good film to go see, especially since half the cheesy effects will only be good if seen in 3D on the big screen. Unless you happen to be an idiot who decides to spend his life savings on a 3D television in order to see a 3D rendition of Jerry O'Connel's dick in the comfort of your own home. Yea, that's worth the money for sure.

Anyway, my midnight trip cancelled, I rebounded quite nicely the next night with a 12:35 Friday night showing of Machete. And I didn't even have to get out of my car, because I saw this in a DRIVE IN.

Yup, I saw an old school explotation flick in a drive in. Something I never thought I would get to do, and one more reason why Tampa is just so kickass. I later heard that it is regularly filled with gangs and shit, but the ticket price there is only 6 bucks, so that might be an even tradeoff. I definately plan on going here more often after The Great Laptop/Car Crash 010 is all taken care of.

Onto the film, I have to say that this movie was amazing. I can't bring myself to hate any part of it, and I really hope it does good in the long haul after opening in 3rd over the weekend. I really wanna see sequels to it. Danny Trejo, fresh off his near cameo in Predators, plays Machete, the wrong mexican to fuck with. This movie is as old school as action movies get. Machete gets double crossed by bad guys, and then systematically dispatches every last one of them in glorious over the top fashion. His enemies include Robert De Niro as a redneck politician, Jeff Fahey as his assistant, and the big baddie at the end is Steven Seagal playing a mexican drug lord. Which means the entire movie is filled with him trying so hard to pull off an accent that it hurts. It's quite wonderful to behold. Me being a Seagal fanboy, it was just nice to see him back on the screen again, considering it's almost been 10 full years since he's been in a big screen film. He obviously even had some creative control with the way his final scene is handeled, which made me laugh quite a bit. Lindsay Lohan also shows up in a role that has her naked more then not, which is nice for those few who still care about that sort of thing and bought last month's Maxim.

I can't impart on you how amazing the experience was, sitting back and watching all the rediculous beheadings and stabbings, cracking up with LunaTik over a parade of Low Riders bouncing down the street led by Machete holding his giant knife up. It's a film I would reccomend to anyone I know with a sense of humor.

The big question however, is which huge rediculous action movie from the last 30 days was a better time at the movies? Does Stallone and crew do better then a lone man with a machete? In the end, even being able to pose this question is a great thing. I have a good feeling about this decade in movies if these are the kind of action movies we can expect in the future. They are both magnificant at what they do, but I'd have to give the slight edge to Stallone. Only because that movie was such a monumentous occasion and a dream film, while Machete was a great throwback movie but nothing as epic as having Stallone and Arnold on screen chatting with each other. Still though, I hope both movies become franchises, and I also hope that the success of both allows Seagal and Trejo to show up in a future Expendables film, along with Van Damne perhaps. A boy can dream can't he?

Final Virdict: Go see both of these movies if you are a fan of insanity.

 

Machete don't text

-Pudge

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