Predator (1987)

This Stuff Will Make You a God Damned Sexual Tyrannosaurus.

In my mind, my review of the Alien series would not be complete if I didn’t first review Alien vs. Predator.  Unlike even the worst Alien movies, AvP will probably give me a lot more to make fun of, being much lower in quality.  But I couldn’t just jump right into that movie either, because there’s another name in that title that I haven’t reviewed yet.  The first movie in this series is a classic sci-fi action movie but, as with many movies, I didn’t see it when it came out and I was a kid.  Without the nostalgia making it seem better than it actually is, was this movie able to hold up in the present?  We’ll find out in my review of Predator, written by Jim and John Thomas, directed by John McTiernan, and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Peter Hall, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Sonny Landham, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke, Richard Chaves, Shane Black, and R.G. Armstrong.

A group of mercenaries lead by Major Alan “Doesn’t my accent sound ‘Dutch’” Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is hired by his old military buddy, George Dillon (Carl Weathers), to rescue a captured presidential cabinet member from guerrilla forces in Val Verde.  When they get there, they find a downed helicopter and the skinned bodies of an Army Special Forces unit.  They take out a nearby rebel encampment, but soon start to realize that there’s something else in the jungle, hunting them with thermal vision, a laser gun, cloaking device, and dreadlocks.

This is a very cool sci-fi action flick.  It borders on cheesy in more than one occasion, but overall it still holds up as entirely kick ass.  One thing I got to thinking about is how much more interesting I probably would’ve found this movie on my first viewing, at least if I had no prior knowledge of what I was watching.  If you think about it, not knowing anything about the movie you would be caught completely off guard by the fact that it starts off as a pretty typical army type of movie that strangely keeps cutting back to something that’s watching them in infrared.  Not until almost the midway point do you actually find out that an alien is in the mix.  I like the way the movie unfolds, and I like how it concludes.  All of that Arnold stuff, caked in mud and fighting the alien with whatever he could assemble from the jungle.  Yeah, I know the Mythbusters proved that the mud wouldn’t actually mask his heat signature, but I’m still perfectly comfortable suspending my disbelief to enjoy it.  I laughed at the part where the black dude was unloading into the forest because he saw the Predator and the other guys on the team ran up and just started shooting at random, knowing nothing more than they were clearing out some foliage.  I did take a pretty big issue with one big logic loophole in the movie.  Arnold figures out pretty early on that the Predator wants a challenge, and even kicks the gun out of the girl’s hand because he won’t attack her if she’s unarmed and not a challenge.  Why the hell didn’t everyone just throw their guns down?  They would’ve all survived apparently!  There were some parts to the dialogue that I could take issue with because of their corniness, but it’s an Arnold movie from the 80s!  If I didn’t go in expecting some bad dialogue, then I was fooling myself.  When Arnold stuck a guy to a pole with his knife and he said, “Stick around,” I couldn’t help but think he was getting started really early for his pun-tacular role as Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin.  I also laughed when one of the soldiers was going off because of Harper’s death, saying, “You don’t understand how bad this thing is.  Whatever it is out there, it killed Harper!” because I thought to myself, “Yeah, and nothing’s killed Harper before!”  On a more positive note, I had completely forgotten where the quote that almost everyone includes in their Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions – “Get to tha choppa!” – came from, and it’s this movie.  I usually go with, “Get to the choppa, Danny!” which I believe is a mash up of this movie and Last Action Hero, but I’m okay with it.

The look of the movie is also pretty well done and mostly holds up.  I respect a time when explosions were actually happening on the set.  Also, the fake dead bodies were pretty well done.  They made a couple of odd choices with the look though.  Like right in the beginning, when Arnold and Carl Weathers shook hands and the camera focused a little too long on their rippling buffness.  On the other hand, if you’re a gay guy, they probably focus on it just long enough for you to tug one out.  And that’s not the only moment that a gay dude could spank to, so it’s got that goin’ for it.  Also, the part where the Predator was performing surgery on his wound, it was less than convincing and seemed more like he was just poking his wound with random items.

The performances were … a bunch of muscle bound dudes and at least one who spoke English as a second language.  What do you expect?  Arnold was indeed an action star and he does nothing to tarnish that in this movie.  As muscle bound as ever and he doesn’t try to act so there’s really not much to hold against him.  I preferred Jesse Ventura’s character though, just because of the ridiculous things he’d say, like when he called everyone a bunch of slack-jawed faggots because they wouldn’t try the chewing tobacco that studies have shown will make one a goddamned sexual tyrannosaur.  He also found himself far too strapped for time to have any left over to bleed, so that’s also a plus.  They also had a comic relief guy that I didn’t find that annoying, even though every single one of his jokes was about how big his girlfriend’s vagina was.

Predator definitely holds up.  It’s not the smartest movie ever, but it’s also not entirely dumb.  The story leads you in one direction before dropping an alien on you to make it science fiction, the action is still great fun to watch, and you just can’t expect much from the performances, and you’d be right.  But the movie is still great and still entirely watchable, even by today’s standards.  Predator gets “So you cooked up a story and dropped the six of us into a meat grinder?” out of “I ain’t got time to bleed.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Demolition Man (1993)

We’re Police Officers!  We’re Not Trained to Handle This Kind of Violence!

When the request for today’s movie came from my friend Loni, I says “Fuck yes.”  I not only know this movie, but I dig on this movie hardcore to the max.  Is this a smart movie?  Hell no!  Is it comprised solely of the greatest actors of our time?  Not by a long shot!  Does it have a good message?  No, not really.  But is it fun?  Shit yes.  A big dumb action movie if there ever was one, I give you my review of Demolition Man, written by Peter M. Lenkov, Robert Scott Reneau, and Daniel Waters, directed by Marco Brambilla, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Bob Gunton, Denis Leary, Glenn Shadix, Benjamin Bratt, Bill Cobbs, Rob Schneider, Jesse Ventura, and Grand L. Bush.

LA is a pretty shitty place in 1996.  I don’t say “This movie’s version of LA” ’cause LA is still a pretty shitty place.  Either way, violent criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) is holding a bunch of people hostage and only one person is willing to do anything about it.  That man is Detective John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone).  This badass mamma jamma busts in on Phoenix and starts whooping that ass, getting the building completely destroyed in the fray.  Turns out that Phoenix’s hostages were not as dead as he led Spartan to believe, and Spartan is now responsible for their deaths.  Both men get put into cryogenic prison, Spartan for 70 years, Phoenix for life.  Somehow, in 2032, Phoenix comes up for parole first, and uses that (plus some new skills of mysterious origin) to escape.  The world has become such a peaceful place and none of them know how to deal with Phoenix’s level of violence.  Policeman Zachary Lamb (Bill Cobbs) suggests that Spartan be thawed out, being the best person at dealing with Phoenix.  Obsessed with the old days, Lieutenant Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) is totally on board.  Chief George Earle (Bob Gunton) is less enthused.  But the man that saved the world and made it so safe for everyone, Doctor Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), told the Chief he could do anything within his power to stop Phoenix, and so Spartan is revived.  Spartan needs to figure out this new time, while simultaneously trying to stop Phoenix from killing Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary), who he feels strangely compelled to kill for some odd reason.

Not a smart movie, but definitely a fun movie.  Many critics would hate on this movie for somewhat predictable story, some pretty awful dialogue, and mediocre performances, but that’s not what I offer you.  I speak for the Every Man, for the working class.  I dig this movie for it’s action and it’s fun.  No one goes into this movie expecting to be blown away, but instead to see lots of people get blown away.  There’s a lot of stuff you expect from this movie, and they don’t shy away from giving it to you.  The characters all have one personality trait because that’s all they need.  They love to throw out one-liners, which are hit and miss, and Bullock is going to throw them out, but get them very wrong.  When Sly says “You’re on TV” before hitting Snipes with a TV set, that’s not a great line.  When Simon says “You’re dead” and Sly says “You forgot to say ‘Simon says'” before electrocuting him, that works.  When Bullock says “Let’s go down there and blow this guy”, apparently having forgotten “away” at the end, I couldn’t help but think the movie would have been more interesting if Bullock and Sly went down their and blew Snipes, Brown Bunny style!  I don’t want to see it, but you couldn’t say the movie didn’t surprise you.  I think Sly may have also responded to “See you in Hell” with a super-stinging “Not” retort.  This was part of the dialogue during the last battle between Phoenix and Spartan, where the dialogue just seemed to have been taken out of a “What you’d expect to hear in an action movie” book and randomly thrown together, with no regard to if they made sense.  I really liked when Sly says “You’re gonna regret this the rest of your life.  Both seconds of it”.  I also thought it was really funny that they were talking about Schwarzenegger having been president, which was such a ridiculous concept in 1993.  Not as ridiculous to us in 2012, especially the ones of us from California.  The story of the movie will not surprise you, but you’ll probably enjoy it.  It’s just a fun movie.  It’s like a classic action movie that was going on in the background of Back to the Future Part 2.  They try to throw a little ill-conceived message in the end about not wanting the world to be so overly safe that you can’t be who you want to be, but there should be SOME control.  It’s a bit “Duh”, but they don’t waste too much of your time beating you over the head with it.  It actually looks pretty good too.  It does look fairly futuristic, and throws a couple of cool ideas in there.  They got a good deal of mileage out of the swear machine, cool stun batons, and self driving cars.  Pretty interesting and good looking.

This movie does not raise many deep, philosophical questions, but one certainly has stuck with me since I first saw the movie: How do the three seashells work?  I have a couple theories.  The first, and most obvious, is that the shells are for scooping.  Scoop once for each cheek, and one right down the middle.  This would seem rather unsanitary, so I would assume they’re replaced into some kind of cleaning apparatus that completely disinfects them.  This doesn’t seem like the best butt-cleaning solution because it’s really not much better than what we do now with toilet paper.  Perhaps better for the environment that we’re not wasting paper, but I assume much worse because they’re reused.  Another solution could be that these seashells weren’t actually seashells.  Spartan could have seen something that resembled seashells and his neanderthal brain turned it into seashells.  Perhaps a series of sponges or (and more hygienically) three seashell-shaped squeeze bottles filled with cleaning and disinfecting solution.  Some theories on the interwebs assume that these seashells could, perhaps, actually be buttons that activate various stages of an elaborate bidet system.  This would be very hygienic, but would probably be something Spartan could have discovered.  There are some questions the world may never know the answer to, but we do have 20 years to figure that out.

Back to the review!  The performances were what you expect out of this movie.  Not great, but entertaining.  Sly is in great shape in the movie, and lays a nice whoopin when it’s called for.  He also pulls off being very puzzled by 2032.  I could’ve done without having to see his ass and nuts when he was getting frozen, though.  Snipes does a good deal of crazy in the movie as well.  Sandra Bullock was the standout performance in the movie for me.  She had a pretty adorable childlike innocence to her that I really liked.  It also helps that she’s pretty.  But she’s also kind of a whore.  I mean, the chick mentally fucks Sly on the first date!  I need a woman that respects herself, not some mind-slut!

Demolition Man definitely holds up for me.  It’s the kind of big stupid fun you need sometimes.  Fine story, hit and miss dialogue, cool action, and exactly the performances the movie calls for.  It doesn’t aim to change the world, and barely tries to mean something.  It just wants to entertain you, and I’m happy to say it does every time.  I haven’t looked into how YOU can watch this movie, because it wasn’t necessary.  It was already in my collection.  Demolition Man gets “Looks like there’s a new shepherd in town” out of “Take this job and shovel it.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!