All posts by Rod Lott

Thriller

Pathology (2008)

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There’s not a single likable character in Marc Schölermann’s Pathology. Not a one! Ostensibly, the lead character of med student Ted Grey should be, but they cast Milo Ventimiglia. Oops! His brand of acting — squinting, really — only worked for him in TV’s Heroes, and nowhere else.

Ted’s new to the bestest pathology tract in the country, where his fellow students are all like, “to hell with the Hippocratic Oath — let’s fuck around and play some reindeer games with these here corpses, aight?” Their unofficial leader, Jake (Michael Weston), introduces Ted to the game they play after hours: autopsy! See, they kill random people and bring them in to see who can guess how they offed them. When did Quarters go out of style?

But, wait, there’s more! They also engage in group activities like smoking crack and having sex on the slabs. Why? The only good reason I can think of is because this was written by the reigning kings of over-the-top cinema, Neveldine/Taylor, who wrote and directed the Crank films and Gamer; it’s too bad they didn’t direct this one, too, because it could stand to be more outlandish. Redeeming quality: Ol’ Dr. Giggles himself, Larry Drake, pops up as a fat bastard credited as Fat Bastard.

It’s a mess — and not just because of all the bodies being cut open — but I get what Ventimiglia saw in the project: free feels. In the first scene, his hand slips underneath fiancée Alyssa Milano’s shirt and works itself all over her left boob; later, he’s all over the bared breasts of Lauren Lee Smith. It’s a living. —Rod Lott

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Action

The Medallion (2003)

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Hollywood has little clue what to do with Jackie Chan. Their ideas boil down to: a) pair him with a wacky black guy, and b) surround him with special effects. The first one works; the second one never will. There’s no point in hiring the world’s most renowned kung-fu acrobatic clown and dressing him up with lots of wires and CGI; if you’re going to do that, you might as well get, say, Tim Kazurinsky.

In the FX-laden crapfest The Medallion, Chan is a Hong Kong security specialist named Eddie, working with American Interpol agents to track down Julian Sands, obsessed with getting this medallion from a mystical Asian boy. It ends up in Chan’s nimble hands, but he gets killed in the process, but yet is revived by its supernatural powers. So now he can jump real high and fly like Superman. It’s lazy and uninspired, not to mention inane and embarrassing, like the montage of him dancing to “Twist and Shout.”

Normally, bad Chan scripts can be made bearable by the ad-libbing of a crazy partner. But Lee Evans is no Chris Tucker or Owen Wilson. As a most unlikely love interest is Claire Forlani, so bad you’ll be praying for the relative grace and panache of The Tuxedo’s Jennifer Love Hewitt. Not even the outtakes that play during the end credits are any good, although it is worth noting that it contains the third instance of Chan being interrupted by a cell phone (first spotted in the bloopers for Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights).

But that’s about all worth noting for this film, Chan’s absolute worst since breaking through on these shores in ’96. Even as a big Chan fan, I can safely say to avoid The Medallion at all costs. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Screwed (2000)

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Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are best known for their trifecta of oddball biopic scripts: Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon. Occasionally they stray from true stories into straight comedies, like Screwed. Despite being one of the lowest-grossing studio films of the decade, it’s not half-bad.

Easily improving upon his starring vehicle, Dirty Work, Norm Macdonald stars as a chauffeur and indentured servant for a rich old hag (Elaine Stritch) who’s made her millions in baked goods. Tired of being unappreciated, he kidnaps her beloved dog in hopes of making off with a seven-digit ransom.

But she mistakenly believes that he has been kidnapped, and refuses to pay. The plot gets more convoluted with twists and turns that eventually involve Sherman Helmsley and Danny DeVito as a morgue attendant with a hard-on for saving things removed from people’s rectums and Hawaii Five-O star Jack Lord.

Screwed’s mean streak suggests that earlier Alexander/Karaszewski mainstram fare like Problem Child and That Darn Cat may have been watered down — okay, hosed down — by studio interference. But the less credible it gets, the less funny it gets. If you like Macdonald, you’ll probably enjoy this, even if you won’t remember much of it. —Rod Lott

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Action

Swordfish (2001)

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“You know what the problem with Hollywood is?” asks John Travolta at the beginning of Swordfish. “They make shit. Unremarkable, unbelievable shit.” The same could apply to this slick, brainless action-porn from Joel Silver and Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds) that manages to be merely mildly entertaining.

X-Men’s Hugh Jackman is the true star, playing a world-renowned hacker fresh off serving an 18-month prison term for his electronic crimes. Despite orders never to touch a computer again, he is drafted by slimy rich guy Travolta into cracking a few codes in exchange for money he can use to reunited with his estranged daughter. It’s a move he’ll soon regret, as the FBI is soon on his ass, while Travolta reveals himself to be a deluded terrorist wishing to embezzle $9 billion from secret DEA accounts with Jackman’s expertise.

For every good scene in Swordfish, there’s a terrible one. The opening city-block explosion shown in some sort of 360˚ bullet-time is a stunner; paradoxically, having Jackman forced to infiltrate a Department of Defense at gunpoint in 60 seconds while he’s receiving a blowjob is a howler.

Halle Berry’s bared breasts are nice; the montage of Jackman unconvincingly hacking away is not. Don Cheadle livens up every scene he’s in; Travolta — in another laughably miscast role — kills every one he’s in. It’s almost like the film is its own love/hate relationship. Seeing a school bus airlifted by a helicopter in the finale is absurd, but hey, ‘splosions a-plenty, amIright? —Rod Lott

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Horror

Scared to Death (1947)

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Scared to Death was Bela Lugosi’s only color film and it’s a crazy-ass mixture of slapstick and horror, especially for a film with a concentration-camp subplot! It opens at the city morgue, where doctors prepare to perform an autopsy on a “beautiful girl,” who then narrates her own story as it clumsily unfolds in flashback.

She’s the daughter of a physician, in whose house she lives with her husband and a maid. She’s not right in the head, which is no surprise, given the home’s open-door policy to any guest that stumbles by, including magician Lugosi and his deaf dwarf assistant, Indigo, as well as the nosy reporter, his plucky girlfriend and a brick-dumb cop. The woman lives in fear of being killed by a stranger. Every so often, a green, featureless mask floats by the window outside.

I know that filmmaking was still pretty antiquated back in 1947, but you’d think the filmmakers would have been smart enough not to begin with an autopsy if they wanted audiences to be surprised when the lead female dies at the end. You’d also think they’d have the foresight not to end with the line “She was … scared to death!” but they didn’t, and God bless them for it. —Rod Lott

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