Comedy

Uncle Jasper reviews: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Starring Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham, Allyson Sereboff, Robin Watkins, Joshua Olatunde, Rose Ghavami, Caleb Emerson, Lloyd Kaufman, Khalid Rivera

Directed By Lloyd Kaufman

Believe me, I tried. I tried really hard to mentally prepare myself to brave another Troma film. I am in love with the gaudy trash that Lloyd Kaufman spews out there to his deranged audience. But god damn, every film manages to outdo the others before it in terms of bedrock tastelessness and unadulterated offensiveness. I thought I could hang with the big guns this time around, but within the first five minutes a drooling axe murderer is caught slapping his cock around while a zombie hand shoots out of the ground and straight up his ass… That just told me instantly that I was doomed.

When a fried chicken franchise restaurant is built on top of Tromaville’s Indian burial ground, the product begins coming to life. A gang of lesbian protesters demonstrate in front of the franchise, carrying signs with sayings like “Fuck Tibet, free the chickens!” When they are tricked into eating the tainted poultry, well, I bet you can figure out what happens next…

Critters (1986)

Starring Scott Grimes, Dee Wallace-Stone, M. Emmet Walsh, Don Keith Opper, Billy Green Bush, Terrence Mann, Ethan Phillips, Billy Zane

Directed by Stephen Herek

Expectations: Fairly high. I’d wanted to see this since I was a little kid.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

I’ve seen parts of this over the years but had never seen it all the way through. I gave it a go, but this is definitely one that would be better with a bunch of friends. It’s a horror comedy and my sights were set a bit more towards gore-fest. The key flaw to my logic though is that I never bothered to notice that this was PG-13. That would have tempered my expectations quite a bit, instead of building them up over the last couple of decades.

Basically, the Critters (or Crites, if you want to get technical) make a daring escape from a prison asteroid, stealing a spaceship. A couple of shapeshifting bounty hunters head off in pursuit. The Crites land on Earth, rural Kansas to be exact. It’s been a long flight and their little Critter bellies are rumbling. From here it devolves into a slight clone of Hitchcock’s The Birds, if the birds were prison-breaking, meat-chomping little furballs from space. I loved the opening of the movie, even if it does focus on the family a little too much. As the film dragged on, my bloodlust raged. “When will the Crites start chomping the innocents?” I thought.

Uncle Jasper reviews: My Young Auntie (1981)

600full-my-young-auntie-poster My Young Auntie [長輩] (1981)
AKA Fangs of the Tigress, The Senior, Lady Kung Fu

Starring Lau Kar-Leung, Kara Hui, Wang Lung-Wei, Hsiao Ho, Gordon Liu Chia-Hui

Directed By Lau Kar-Leung

Criticizing a film like My Young Auntie is, I’m afraid, beyond my ability. The film is so unabashedly all over the place that any attempt to lasso it all together and rationalize it is something akin to stacking grains of sand on top of each other in an attempt to reach the moon. It is one of those train wrecks so beyond the scope of rational thought, that the only way to experience it is by surrendering yourself to the notion that for the next two hours this film will have its way with you and you will take it like the fresh young piece of meat you are. With all that said, if you have ever thought that square dancing by grown men in pink wigs and guys dressed up like Robin Hood was criminally underrepresented in Shaw Bros. kung fu films, then this may be the movie for you.

Kara Hui plays Cheng Tai-Nun, a young girl of about twenty who marries a wealthy old man in an attempt to keep his estate from falling into the greedy hands of his third brother. She is instructed to hand the deed over to the man’s younger nephew, who is coincidentally about 30 years her senior. She also has to deal with his completely batshit son, Charlie, who has been studying in Hong Kong and is now westernized beyond any hope of redemption. Charlie and his buddies speak an unholy union of profane Chinese and sloppy English, that is actually extremely amusing. (This may be the only time you will hear the English word “fuck” uttered in a subtitled Shaw Bros. film.) Anyway Charlie harasses the shit out of his new, young great-auntie (?) and belittles her with his newfound knowledge of things like basketball, Shakespeare, folk music, boxing, and Christianity. (I’m not making this up.)

Idiocracy (2006)

Idiocracy (2006)
AKA Planet Stupid

Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews, Anthony Campos, David Herman, Sara Rue, Kevin McAfee, Robert Musgrave, Michael McCafferty, Justin Long, Andrew Wilson, Kevin Klee

Directed by Mike Judge

Expectations: Moderate. I knew close to nothing going in except it was about stupid Americans and Mike Judge made it. What else do you need to know?

So there’s this movie about ridiculous, satirical, future extremes of American consumerism? And I haven’t seen it yet? What? Somehow this slipped under my radar but that has now been rectified. This kind of thing could go so wrong though. It could end up being so ridiculous that it misses the point. It could be great for the first twenty minutes and then devolve into fart jokes. Thankfully, it mostly steers clear of convention and I found myself thoroughly entertained.

An Army librarian (Luke Wilson) is chosen to test a new human freezing procedure. Along for the ride is a prostitute played by Maya Rudolph from SNL. Anyway, the cryo tubes get lost and the test subjects aren’t awakened at the prescribed time. Instead they wake up in the year 2505, where, after 500 years of the stupid people having babies, the American public has degenerated into infantile, entertainment-consuming idiots. Shows such as Ow, My Balls! on the Violence Network top the charts. People can’t even speak correct English anymore.

Zombieland (2009)

Starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Amber Heard, Mike White, Bill Murray

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

Expectations: Lowest possible. Modern zombie movies generally rub me the wrong way, but I’m stupid and I keep watching them.

This is not a zombie movie. I repeat, this is not a zombie movie. If you love traditional zombie films such as the George Romero classics, you are better off just re-watching one of those. From what the film shows us, hardly any zombies inhabit Zombieland. Most of the “excitement” coming from the fights and betrayals that play out between the male and female survivors. Even the apocalypse cannot settle the battle of the sexes. All kidding aside, this is absolutely the antithesis of what a good zombie movie should be. It is a stupid attempt at making a zombie comedy, but instead of being clever (like Shaun of the Dead) this just disappoints repeatedly.

Rarely is the survival of the characters an issue and therein lies the problem. Survival should be the main theme of any zombie tale because the zombie horde is ever-growing and as one of the last remaining humans you must constantly tap into the primal instincts of fight or flight. Your nerves fray as you know that sooner or later, you will become one of them. None of that comes into play in Zombieland. Sure, the main character has these survival rules he’s constantly telling the viewer about, but the rules are nothing more than fluff to draw your attention away from the almost complete lack of honest zombie danger.

A Serious Man (2009)

Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Alan Mandell, Adam Arkin, George Wyner, Amy Landecker

Written and Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

Expectations: Moderately high. I love the Coen Bros, but they’ve burned me before.

Wow. I don’t know what to say. I honestly don’t feel qualified enough to form a complete response to this movie. I loved it. Absolutely one of the best films of 2009, but this is so not a film for everyone. The Coen Brothers generally make polarizing movies, but this is even in its own league within their filmography. It is probably their darkest and most personal comedy, and it instantly ranks with their best work for me. This also makes it a tough nut to crack. Immediately after watching I felt that I needed to see it again, and I would say that most would need a couple of viewings to really get their heads around it. If the ending to No Country for Old Men left you scratching your head, then you will want to assume that position once again. If you enjoy that sort of ambiguity as much as me though, then you are in for a treat.

A Serious Man tells the story of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who just can’t seem to get anything going in his direction. His wife is leaving him for a widowed family friend. His kids have zero respect for him. He’s almost tenured in his teaching job, but now that is up in the air as well. Don’t worry, this is all towards the beginning, but viewing this film isn’t so much about the plot as it is about the atmosphere and connecting to the sad helplessness of Larry. The film takes place in the late 1960s and it feels like it. Period details and music abound and delight.

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Chloë Moretz, Geoffrey Arend, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Maile Flanagan, Patricia Belcher, Richard McGonagle

Directed by Marc Webb

Expectations: Extremely low.

This movie was better than I expected. It wasn’t great, but it had its moments. It’s one of those movies that people like to call “a cute little movie.” It tells the story of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a greeting card writer, who believes that one day he will meet his soul mate. Enter Summer (Zooey Deschanel). But as the opening narration states, this isn’t a love story. It’s also not really a comedy. It’s more of a drama than the ad campaigns would have you believe.

The films unravels in a non-linear way, which I almost always feel is a clever device used to make a boring story more palatable. In this case it mostly works, but at only 97 minutes, it still feels really long. That is not to say that it’s uninteresting, just that some of the scenes could have been more engaging. The film is also an incredibly mainstream looking movie for an independent film. Tons of over-the-shoulder dialogue shots and close-ups. It’s not without innovation though. There are a few great ideas in the movie that are executed with perfection. Spoiling them would be just rotten of me, so I’ll just say that one of them involves the main character looking into a mirrored surface and seeing a very clever reflection. There’s also a fantastic split-screen scene involving expectations. I’ll leave it at that.