All posts by Phil Bacharach

Comedy

The Longest Yard (2005)

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The original The Longest Yard was a landmark of ’70s-era, anti-establishment sentiment. It was violent, savagely funny, mean and an unapologetic spit in the face of authority. As directed by the gifted Robert Aldrich, The Longest Yard of 1974 was about as cutting-edge as mainstream comedy got at the time.

Fade in to 2005 and an ill-conceived remake, with Adam Sandler in the Burt Reynolds role of Paul Crewe, a fallen NFL quarterback rotting in a Texas prison when he is tapped to organize a football team of convicts to play the guards. What is deemed cutting-edge a generation later? Hollywood doesn’t have the cojones to focus too much on the sociopathic tendencies of convicts. 

Nope, nowadays cutting-edge means anti-gay. And The Longest Yard of 2005 is chock full o’ backwards, redneck, stereotype-embracing, queer-is-ha-ha-funny gay-bashing:
• We’ve got a prissy fella who develops an instant crush on Sandler because our hero is boorish and has crashed his girlfriend’s Bentley after going on a drunken joyride. (Gay people love brutes, don’cha know).
• We have a gaggle of flamer convicts who make up cheers like, “Gimme a D! Gimme an I! Gimme a C! Gimme …” (Get it? They want, well, you know …)
• We have two inmates caught making out over a surveillance camera.
• We have Rob Schneider in a cameo (reason enough to avoid the picture) as an overzealous convict all aflutter over the possibility of a group hug in the showers.
 
It appears that gay-bashing is the one remaining widely accepted form of bigotry left in America. —Phil Bacharach

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Comedy

Valley Girl (1983)

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For that segment of the population that doesn’t remember a time before e-mail and smartphones, the 1980s have taken on the faint haze of nostalgia, a romanticism borne from such snappy oddities as skinny ties, checkered sneakers and Andrew McCarthy. Don’t believe it, youngsters. It wasn’t all lollipops and John Hughes.

Not even the syrupy gaze of nostalgia can help Valley Girl, among the surfeit of teen comedies that passed like gallstones through movie theaters in the Eighties. Dull, uneven and flat as a (insert teen flick joke here), the picture is a particular letdown coming from well-heeled director Martha Coolidge, whose credits include 1985’s infinitely more entertaining Real Genius. It also marks the gangly film debut of Nicolas Cage, whose hipster loner shtick is a pale version of what he would later bring.

Deborah Foreman stars as Julie, a good-looking, popular, high-school hottie in San Fernando Valley who’s tired of her good-looking, popular, high-school hottie boyfriend, Tommy (Michael Bowen). In true Capulet fashion, she is drawn to Randy (Cage), an L.A. County punker whose haircut and clothes suggest a certain mousse-addled worldliness … if The Fixx embodied worldiness.

All the language curiosities of the Valley ring especially hollow coming a year after Moon Unit Zappa and daddy Frank had skewered the pampered class in the song “Valley Girl.” By contrast, the comedy and satire (?) of the picture feels like an afterthought. In the final outrage, Valley Girl has the audacity to skimp on the nudity, opting instead to simply peter out in a wheezy climax at the prom — a scene only marginally less competent than 96 percent of soft-core porn viewed by lonely salesmen in discount airport hotels.

At least it boasts a bitchin’ soundtrack populated by the likes of The Psychedelic Furs, Modern English, Sparks and The Plimsouls. Good for iTunes. —Phil Bacharach

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Thriller

Jackie Brown (1997)

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First impressions can be deceiving. I first saw Jackie Brown during its theatrical release and, coming three years after Quentin Tarantino’s revelatory Pulp Fiction, this two-and-a-half-hour follow-up seemed indulgent and sluggish. Even Tarantino’s agent at the time reportedly griped to Miramax execs after the premiere, “There’s the ultimate case for not giving the director final cut.”

But, like the two protagonists at the film’s crux, Jackie Brown improves greatly with age. Viewed far from the imposing shadow of Pulp Fiction, it stands as perhaps Tarantino’s most emotionally meaty work, as soulful as The Delfonics and Bobby Womack songs that punctuate its soundtrack.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t also a hell of a lot of fun, brimming with dark humor, film-geek references, show-off set pieces and Tarantino’s patently quirky dialogue. Most notable, however, is that the writer/director snags outstanding performances from two beloved icons of 1970s B movies: Pam Grier and Robert Forster.

Based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, the crime thriller takes off when L.A. baddie Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson in full-on badass mode) whacks an underling (a mercifully quick appearance by Chris Tucker) before the guy can turn informant. A series of circumstances leads to Jackie Brown (Grier), a down-on-her-luck flight attendant who is one of Ordell’s smugglers. All this and Robert De Niro taking bong hits with Bridget Fonda’s leggy surfer girl.

Grier is smart, sexy and dangerous in the title role, but for my money, it’s Forster who damn near steals the picture as Max Cherry, a world-weary bail bondsman whose fate bumps into Ordell and Jackie. Forster makes plain, no-frills decency seem downright cool, and his performance — even-keeled, relaxed, laconic — is pitch perfect. —Phil Bacharach

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Action

Machete (2010)

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Talk about putting the cart before the horse — and getting away with it. Robert Rodriguez’s Machete has the rare distinction of being a movie that stemmed from a fake trailer, the latter being something Rodriguez devised for Grindhouse, the terrific 2007 schlock homage he did with Quentin Tarantino. Thankfully, Machete proves its drive-in bona fides.

Featuring more dicing and slicing than Benihana, the movie isn’t so much a send-up of 1970s-era exploitation cinema than it is a star-studded (if kitschy) revival of it. The pitch-perfect cast includes Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Don Johnson, Jeff Fahey and Steven Seagal, whom we discover, if you put sunglasses on him, is a dead ringer for Jim Belushi. Oh, and Michelle Rodriguez’s bare midriff deserves a special credit of its own (and maybe even an Oscar).

The titular character, though (what, you didn’t know Machete’s a name?) is played by familiar character actor Danny Trejo, a big, thick slab of a human whose real-life travails (ex-con, ex-boxer), are etched on a face seemingly swiped from Monument Valley.

Machete is a former Mexican federale whose life has fallen apart after a drug kingpin brutally murdered Machete’s family. When an oily goon hires Machete to assassinate an illegal immigrant-bashing Texas state senator (De Niro, wandering in and out of accent), the scheme sets off a flurry of crosses, double crosses, bare boobs, slashing, gunfire and as much political subtext that Rodriguez can shoehorn in without incurring the wrath of Arizonans.

Machete maybe goes on a bit too long for its own good, but you have to respect its trashy heart. —Phil Bacharach

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