Movie Review Redux

This is my new best friend. His name is Charlie Bukowski. A month or so back, I got him as a means of torturing the cats and receiving unconditional love. Since then we've done everything together: eaten salmon in front of the cats, gone to parties and on bike rides leaving the cats at home, made friends with dogs, et cetera, but the thing we like to do most is sit on the couch and watch movies.

One day he asked me if there was any way he could help me with my writing, and I suggested a collaboration. It was his idea to do a movie review column. With that in mind, here's our top six thrift store finds, Odd Obsession rentals, and Five Dollar Tuesday picks fromlast month.

1. Bamboozled

Eric: When I was seeing Nikole, she was still engaged, so I could never come over to her house. Unfortunately, this meant that I never got to meet her snake. Fortunately, it also meant that she left a lot of shit over at my place. The stuff she never got back was Frankenhooker, Bamboozled, and a Disrobe cd. Nikole recommended Bamboozled as an outrageous comedy and I really can't tell why. Maybe she had a different experience than I did because she's black and maybe because she'd never seen the ending sober. Once again, Spike Lee wants nothing more than to stir the pot of collective guilt and bum everyone out. This movie put some serious rain clouds over my head on a day when I really didn't need em.

Bukowski: First off, I'd like to say that the casting for this movie was superb. Mos Def as a the head of militant rap group called the Mau-Maus. The roots as a glitzy/dirty funk band called The Alabama Porch Monkeys! Not only did this movie revive Damon Wayans' sagging post-In Living Color carreer, but it was an excellent chance to show off Savion Glover's expert choreography in breathtaking tap routines. I also think that Spike Lee's ultimate joke and greatest justice is in leading people to believe that they are about to experience a mad cap comedy about race, only to bring them down. I loved it.

2. Eating Raoul

Eric: When I was ten, I suffered from insomnia. Maybe suffer is a bad term. I rather enjoyed insomnia. The movies and cartoons I watched in the middle of the night laid the foundation for a lot of the weirdness to follow, and this was one of em. When I remarked to my father, some thirteen years ago, that I saw Eating Raoul the night before, he was shocked. After seeing it now, so am I. How were they ever able to censor this enough for TV? The whole thing is sex, murder and eventually, canibalism. In1982, California was overrun by swingers, who are pretty much drug addled rape zombies. After a series of mishaps that lead to a murder,a prudish couple from Redondo Beach puts out an ad as dominatrices to raise enough money to start a restaurant. Their plan is to murderthe swingers who answer their ad- and who will miss them?- without ever getting kinky.

Bukowski: I got a real Frank Zappa feeling from this movie. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the Hollywood school of comedy since Paul Reubens and the Groundlings and the early 80s. Still, the film had a little too much of a Three's Company feel to me.

3. Fire and Ice

Eric: Ralph Bakshi makes a movie for the Heavy Metal Magazine/Dungeons andDragons set. It's actually a lot like one of the shorts from the Heavy Metalmovie: "Den" starring John Candy, only there's less sex and it's about forty times longer. I liked it.

Bukowski: I refused to watch this movie. I can't stand the tongue-in-cheek hip, Liberal racism and sexism that runs rampant in other Bakshi films like Cool World, Fritz the Cat, and Coon Skin, not to mention that this hack has been mining R. Crumb's style for years! Feh.

4. Forbidden Zone

Eric: This is the best movie ever. Everything is animated or made of cardboard and it stars The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and Tattoo, the midget from Fantasy Island. Everybody humps in this movie, and nearly everyone is Jewish. The devil sings Cab Calloway, the princess never puts a top on, men of sixty play twelve-year olds and less than half of the cast are actual actors.

Bukowski: Weird for the sake of weird is not dada and isn't good!!! Plus, there was a character in blackface. How could Eric even sit through that less than a week after seeing Bamboozled?

5. Foxfire

Eric: When Jenny Lewis came out with Rabbit Fur Coat, I couldn't escape her at the indie radio station where I worked. There she was, on the cover, with the Watson Twins, all of them beautiful. I demanded to see her tits. In Foxfire, she's the only one that keeps her top on. Apparently, because she's suppsed to be the "fat" one. If she continues to be a public figure/indie darling I'm going to get totally creepy about her. Meg White creepy. I saw this one when I was fourteen, and all the best films were about teenage lesbians or white gangbangers. Angelina Jolie as James Dean, heroin, homemade tattoos, and a soundtrack by Babes in Toyland and Kristine Hersch make me feel 1995 wonderful.

Bukowski: I liked how the movie added a riot grrl aesthetic to the slobs vs. snobs motif, but didn't think that Joyce Carol Oates' novel about women finding strength through one another in the repressive era of 1950s small-town America needed to be updated to uber-hip mid-90's Seattle. I also think that Jenny Lewis is better suited as Rilo Kiley's guitarist than as a solo songwriter.

and finally
6. The Young Ones

Eric: This BBC sitcom has magic powers. When I watch it alone, it feels like brilliant, subversive, sillytelevision, but when I try to show it to people it turns into a cheesy, dated sitcom filled with broad archetypes where everybody's always yelling. Then they lose respect for me. I need someone who likes this show already to watch it with me, so I stop looking foolish.

Bukowski: I can't believe Eric likes this show! The "punk" characters were carefully crafted to appeal to early Mtv mallpunks, and that anarchopunk in particular is a mockery of most of the causes Eric espouses to believe in, plain and simple. After watching three episodes I threw a coffee mug at him, called him a Phillistine, and carefully explained what plebian tastes he has and that's where it stands right now. Magic Powers! Hmmmph.

Thank you and tune in next time for another exciting episode of Lab Rat and Real Rat at the Movies!

[currently listening to "The Singles Collection" by the Specials]