All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Jeepers Creepers II (2003)

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Jeepers Creepers II is a hair better than its predecessor, but a hair better than shit is still shit.

As the film’s opening crawl informs us, the flying, winged Creeper feasts for 23 days every 23rd spring. We begin on day 22 of such a season, when the youngest son of farmer Ray Wise (TV’s Twin Peaks) is snatched up out of the cornfield and carried away. On the next day, a school bus toting a high school state champion basketball team and assorted cheerleaders blows a tire on the near-deserted highway, thanks to the Creeper’s well-aimed special brand of homemade ninja stars.

With nowhere to go, the bus serves as a Hometown Buffet for the hungry Creeper, at first picking off (or up) all the adults, until Wise shows up for some heavy-duty harpoonin’ with his truck-mounted, jerry-rigged Post Puncher 500.

JCII has its moments, but only a precious few, and fleeting at that. This installment gives the monster far more screen time, but it’s simply the same thing over and over: Creeper attacks; Creeper flies away; Creeper attacks again. If we were supposed to empathize with the characters, writer/director/convicted pedophile Victor Salva could’ve picked another group besides cocky athletes. For my money, the Creeper can’t kill them fast enough.

But then, Salva’s camera wouldn’t be able to linger on their shirtless, hairless upper bodies. It’s hard to believe the film’s overt homoeroticism isn’t at least semi-intentional, what with all the bare chests, the multiple scenes of guys peeing together and dialogue like “You want to poke it with sticks?” and “Can’t they just whip out the jack and pump this mutha up?”

I liked Wise, but then again, I like him in just about anything. I also liked Nicki Aycox (Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead) as the Girl Who Somehow Has It All Explained to Her in Dreams, but then again, that’s probably because she’s the only hot one. But any horror film that delivers such an illogical ending (so chop it up already, whydon’tcha!) and christens its characters with names like “Double D” and “Big K” deserves a flat-out F. —Rod Lott

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Action

The Hire (2003)

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Technically, the eight films collected as The Hire are BMW commercials, but really, they’re rather exemplary models of short-form filmmaking. For the project, David Fincher and BMW rounded up A-list directors, with each assigned to bring their vision of The Driver (Clive Owen, Children of Men), a suave BMW wheelman-for-hire, to cinematic life. It’s like the Jason Statham franchise The Transporter reconfigured into an unofficial anthology film.

Unsurprisingly, the Asians fare very well, with John Woo’s “Hostage” being among the best of the lot. It has more thrills and twists in its 10 minutes than most feature-length action films (his especially). On the opposite end of the pulse meter — but every bit its equal in quality — is “The Follow,” from Chungking Express director Wong Kar Wai, about The Driver being hired to follow a wife suspected of infidelity. Ang Lee contributes a chase-as-operatic-ballet in “Chosen,” and manages to reference his much-hated Hulk in a clever ending.

Smokin’ Aces‘ Joe Carnahan delivers “Ticker,” a gritty tale with The Driver transporting Don Cheadle and his mysterious briefcase while they’re tailed by helicopters and machine-gun fire. “Ambush” was helmed by the late John Frankenheimer, who clearly knew a thing or two about car chases. The story from Amores Perros helmer Alejandro González Iñárritu — about getting a wounded combat photographer out of Central America — is a bit of a downer, but true to the filmmaker’s style.

Guy Ritchie’s “Star” lets then-wife Madonna poke fun at her image as a bitchy singer who gets roughed up by The Driver’s insane street driving. It attempts comedy with success, which cannot be said about Tony Scott’s entry, so embarrassingly over-the-top in its own pretentiousness that you can understand why critics hounded him his entire career. But one stinker out of eight cannot spoil the overall package. Even with so many unique touches at work, The Hire works as an overall whole, thanks to Owen’s cucumber-cool persona and pinwheel-precision skills behind the wheel. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Drive-In (1976)

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Like a redneck version of American Graffiti, the relatively obscure comedy Drive-In chronicles one crazy day and night in the humdrum life of several residents, mostly high schoolers, of an unnamed rural Texas town. Beyond a ramshackle skating rink, the main source of entertainment appears to be the local Alamo Drive-In, where the movie takes place after roughly half an hour of setting up its characters.

Usually terrible director Rod Amateau (The Garbage Pail Kids Movie) constantly jumps between their stories. They include two lunkhead car-strippers (one of whom is Trey Wilson, Raising Arizona‘s unpainted furniture king) plotting to rob the drive-in manager, a senior planning to propose to his girlfriend, and a rivalry between the town’s “gangs.” The focus, however, is on cute Glowie (Lisa Lemole), who’s so tired of being treated like dirt that she dumps her abusive boyfriend to make moves on nice boy Orville (Glenn Morshower, TV’s 24), who thought she didn’t even know he existed.

If there’s a real star to Drive-In, it’s the nostalgic experience of going to the drive-in, most of which is captured in the opening montage, then lovingly spoofed for the remainder. Debuting on the Alamo’s single screen is Disaster ’76, an Irwin Allen-esque epic that allows Amateau to directly parody Airport, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure and Jaws in one fell swoop.

Quite the time capsule, Drive-In isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but loaded with such goodhearted charm that I didn’t want it to end after 96 minutes. I suspect what kept it from clicking with the public at large is its flyover setting. So wall-to-wall are the country radio tunes and thick hick dialects, it may strike coastal viewers as intruding on an alien land where everyone speaks in similes, from “trickier’n diaperin’ Siamese twins” to “busier’n a belly dancer with a case of the crabs.”

Trust me: No matter where you live on the map, it’s a movie for people who love the movies. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Botched (2007)

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Having Botched a French diamond heist through no fault of his own, professional thief Ritchie (Blade’s Stephen Dorff) is given one more chance by his crime boss to square his debt. That chance is stealing a priceless artifact that once belonged to Russian czar Ivan IV, located in the penthouse suite of a high-rise building in Moscow.

That act goes off fine until the hotheaded thug Peter (Jamie Foreman, Layer Cake), one of Ritchie’s Tweedledum/Tweedledee Russian sibling accomplices, needlessly shoots a maid. Worse, the crowded elevator they attempt to make their escape in gets stuck on the 13th floor, unfinished and seemingly abandoned.

That number is not coincidental when one takes in the challenges that await the felons and their hostages. While I leave it to you to discover just what they’re up against, it spoils little to say that the floor is equipped with booby traps that quickly turn a lighthearted crime thriller into a lighthearted gore comedy.

If you can stomach the sight of blood, especially in the name of laughs, Botched offers gruesome and gruesomely funny rewards that verge on outright slapstick. One on hand, you have a urinating rat; on the other hand, you have … well, a chopped-off hand. Everyone — but especially Dorff, who’s a better actor than he gets credit for — plays these modestly budgeted proceedings with an arrow-straight face, which is what makes them work as well as they do. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Killer Joe (2011)

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When cast in the right role, which is rarely, Matthew McConaughey can be an electrifying onscreen presence. His breakthrough bit in 1993’s Dazed and Confused is one of those times; Killer Joe is another. He stars as the titular Texas full-time cop and freelance hit man in The Exorcist director William Friedkin’s second unconventional collaboration with screenwriter Tracy Letts (Bug), both adapted from Letts’ own stage plays.

Joe Cooper’s latest assignment comes from a low-life piece of trailer trash named Chris Smith (Speed Racer‘s Emile Hirsch), who hires Joe to kill his mother so he can pay off his debts with the “huge” $50,000 life insurance payout. The problem is Joe requires his $25K fee in advance, which Chris obviously doesn’t have. However, Joe is willing to waive his “no exceptions” rule in exchange for a retainer: specifically, Chris’ little sister, Dottie (Juno Temple, The Dark Knight Rises), a virgin who thinks killing their mom is “a good idea.”

Things don’t go as planned. Hell, things don’t go in any direction viewers would anticipate, giving the hick flick a coat of disturbia as thick as the Texas heat. Unease and discomfort saturate this twisted tale, and McConaughey is the unlikely vessel for its evil, as “menacing” is not one of the adjectives I’d readily affix to his name.

Likely to offend more people than it will seduce, Killer Joe at least makes its sick, inbred nature clear from scene one, as it hits you right in the face, somewhat literally, with the pubic thatch of Showgirls vet Gina Gershon. That’s kids’ stuff compared to the elongated final scene, in which McConaughey makes novel use of a food item that may have you swear off KFC for life. (Not for nothing is the redneck thriller rated NC-17.) Those still around will be thrown a polarizing, over-the-top ending that’ll have you hooting or cursing. I did the former. —Rod Lott

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