usesoap Blog

Under discussion:

Double Impact  (1991)

Maximum Risk  (1996)

Double Team  (1997)

Knock Off  (1998)

Being John Malkovich  (1999)

Avenging Angelo  (2003)

The Pacifier  (2005)

Rocky Balboa  (2006)

The Wrestler  (2008)

JCVD  (2008)

Pity the poor action hero. Like supermodels, they have a relatively short shelf life and attempts at prolonging their career seldom end well (for every “Rocky Balboa,” Stallone's had a dozen “Avenging Angelos.”)

And for those who fail to break into that top tier, there is increasingly less room on the video store shelves filled with younger, hungrier (and less expensive) stars ready to roundhouse their way to a paycheck.

Or they resort to pimping out their brawn to comedy, hoping to appear 'in on the joke' of their indestructibility. Few have made it back from this tragic mistake unscathed.

Jean-Claude Van Damme has always inhabited this level of the action stratosphere, only briefly flirting with success in the early 90s.

He's now a few years shy of receiving an AARP membership, and his stuntwork may require a longer recovery time (possibly aided with prescription medications).

So mentioning the latest Van Damme release in this column may be met with indifference, 'JCVD' is aiming more for the arthouse than the grindhouse crowd.

Playing a destitute, washed-up action star named Jean Claude van Damme, the actor finds himself involved in the middle of a bank heist/hostage situation right out of one of his films. It is here he faces his nemeses both external and internal.

As “JCVD” opens, the actor is going through the action-movie motions, twirling and pummeling as he's done so many times before. But the second the director yells 'cut', his real battles begin.

He's on the losing end of an ugly custody struggle (in one of the many funny moments, the prosecuting attorney enters Van Damme's entire filmography as evidence to him being an unfit father).

Work-wise, he's just lost an action gig to rival C-lister Steven Segal, who promised to lop off his trademarked ponytail for the role. When he accidentally stumbles into a hostage scenario while trying to withdraw from his dwindling bank account, action movie laws would have it that he find creative ways to crunch skulls and save the day. But this is where “JCVD” takes a wild turn into meta comedy that does not let the actor shy away from some of the uglier sides of his quasi-fame. It plays out like some unholy union of the Muscles from Brussels and Charlie (“Being John Mallkovich”) Kauffman.

Throughout, director co-writer Mabrouk El Mechri brandishes artistic flourishes that exist almost solely to remind his viewers they are not watching a typical Van Damme opus. They can grow tiresome at times (ok, we get that you're a fan of overhead mood lighting. Must it saturate every scene?)

But Van Damme himself (never one noted for his nuance) keeps us interested. And just when the film itself starts to stretch thin, he delivers a monologue so achingly personal ( and most likely, accurate), that it's impossible to turn away. It's as though the star shows us his scabs inflicted not on camera, but off. Then proceeds to pick at them right before our eyes. It's both uncomfortable and compelling.

Mickey Rourke is currently being buzzed about for his self-referential role in “The Wrestler,” which I have yet to see, but Van Damme deserves the same adoration here (I can't believe I'm actually typing this) for his mesmerizing soliloquy on his fame and infamy.

The film itself can veer off into the mundane, but its star has allowed us further into his celebrity psyche than perhaps any other. Not bad for a man whose resume includes him playing kickboxingtwins twice as well as co-starring with Dennis Rodman and Rob Schneider.

Under discussion:

Innocent Blood  (1992)

Scarface  (1983)

Sid and Nancy  (1986)

Trainspotting  (1996)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [TV Series]  (1997)

Juno  (2007)

Twilight  (2008)

During last year’s “Juno” zeitgeist, I received a response from a reader who took umbrage with me slamming the film. “I guess you don’t remember what’s it’s like to be a 16-year-old girl who is unpopular, non-conforming and pregnant,” she sniffed.

I always thought this to be an odd line of reasoning for an argument. By that statement, does that mean I must have spent time as a gladiator to enjoy “300?” Must I have gone through heroin withdraw after cutting short my career in punk music to appreciate “Sid and Nancy?”

A film need not have leads with character traits that duplicate my own in order for me to appreciate it (“Trainspotting” immediately comes to mind). It does not even have to have leads that I respect, for that matter (say hello to my little friend “Scarface”). 

What it does have to contain is an involving story and, in lieu of, or addition to that, characters which captivate my attention long enough for me to want to spend two hours with them in a darkened theater.

The novel “Twilight,” written by Stephanie Meyers, is not meant for me. Nor, I gather, is the film. It was meant for the two texting tweeners sitting next to me in the theater – the ones who giggled at the first sight of Edward, the ones who cheered on Bella, but also the ones who spent the majority of film bathed in the blue light of their flipped-open cell phones, apparently interested in anything else but what was on the screen. (Maybe we could find common ground.)

But there were certainly enough fans to give this film a record-breaking weekend at the box office last weekend. Fandango, the online pre-sale ticket hub, reported that tickets for “Twilight” were being sold at a rate of five per second prior to the first screenings.

And they are not going away any time soon; after a phenomenal Friday box office, Summit, the tiny studio that produced the film, announced plans for a sequel and perhaps a third to be filmed back to back. And for that audience, I certainly understand (and even, at times, appreciate) the appeal. For beneath “Twilight’s” façade of forbidden love, mortal danger and blood-sucking vampires lies a very chaste, safe escapist fantasy for young girls who want their films with more danger than awaiting what college Zac Efron will select upon graduating high school. And when it comes to sexuality, a subject typically intertwined with the vampire mythology, these beasties don’t even grow those phallic fangs when they get excited, but rather just chomp away with normal incisors and bicuspids.

These young girls can sit in the theater and completely ignore the sociological underpinnings of “Twilight,” and instead choose to retreat into the more fairy tale aspects of the story. There are certainly worse role models for young girls than that of young Bella (played by Kristen Stewart). She’s apparently smart, plainly pretty, a little tomboyish, and the new kid at school. She’s also immediately the center of attention of fellow classmates, the object of desire from the hunky, mysterious, aloof Edward (played by Robert Pattinson) and apparently responsible enough to be given carte blanche by her separated parents.

There is a kernel of an interesting tragic story in the forbidden love of its leads (too bad neither actor seems interested in really emoting it, though). The fact that she’s human and Edward’s like, totally undead and could at any moment get all bitey on Bella makes this aspect compelling, especially for a youngster.

Yet for anyone old enough to drive, though, is where “Twilight” begins to wither and shrivel under scrutiny.

For vampire enthusiasts, this is perhaps one of the worst treatments of the mythology since Don Rickles turned into a vampire in the woefully bad John Landis mobster-vampire hybrid “Innocent Blood.” In fact, it tosses so many of the elements that make up the creatures’ mythology (the most long-standing in film history, by the way), one wonders why Meyers did not create a mythological beast all her own. For example, when these vampires are exposed to sunlight, their skin does not singe, it twinkles. Also, Edward and his surrogate “family” are “vegetarian vampires,” meaning they feast not on humans, but tear into woodland creatures like Sarah Palin on a weekend hunting expedition.

But the lack of doom and gloom with its vampires are not the stake through “Twilight’s” heart. Between their sporting more pancake makeup than a crown at a Cure concert, Edward’s family’s passion for playing a good ol-fashioned game of baseball, or even their superhuman abilities, (which are amusingly in need of a larger budget), they are extremely difficult to take as seriously as director Catherine Hardwicke wants us to.

The other splash of holy water is Stewart as Bella. Edward, who is revealed to be about 90 (that’s a lot of high school biology classes to slog through!), claims he’s waited his life for someone like her. Really? Why? Do you want to borrow her lipstick? Honestly, Stewart plays her as such a serious, mopey bore, it’s really hard to see just what it is about her that is so striking to anyone, particularly someone who has spent the last nine decades chasing high school chicks.

Look, I am happy to see film aimed at an oft-neglected segment of film-goers, giving them a fantasy world that does not involve crass commercialism or power through sexualization (and I hope after this initial encounter Bella goes home and has some serious “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” marathons for tips on being more strong willed).

But the fact that this was apparently based on a wildly popular young adult novel makes me sad to realize just how few options there must be out there for our daughters to read.

Under discussion:

Clerks  (1994)

Chasing Amy  (1997)

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back  (2001)

Jersey Girl  (2004)

The Amateurs  (2007)

Clerks II  (2006)

The 40-Year-Old Virgin  (2005)

Knocked Up  (2007)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall  (2008)

Kevin Smith has a right to be pretty bitter right now.

For years, he's been blending raunch and romance with equal measure, to middling box office results. From his grungy little breakthrough, “Clerks,” in 1994, to the polished “Chasing Amy” to the not-as-bad-as-it's-rumored-to-be “Jersey Girl,” Smith has never shied from the messy sexual side of relationships in dialogue that some of the closest couples dare not discuss.

Meanwhile, writer/director Judd Apatow snuck into the kingdom and stole the crown, basically covering the very same turf in films such as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

Yet again, sex and sentimentality collide with generally hilarious, heartfelt results in his latest “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” which takes the standard romantic comedy and tarts it up with g-strings, thigh highs and body glitter.

Apatow mainstay Seth Rogan plays Zack and “W.'s” Elizabeth Banks is his platonic roommate Miri, two 20-something slackers who are reminded at their 10-year high school reunion just how little they have to offer the world a decade after their departure.

And if the hysterical humiliations they suffer during the reunion don't drive the point home to them, then the return to their dingy Monroeville, Pennsylvania apartment – where the heat, electricity and water have just been shut off – should do the trick.

In an act of desperation they embark on the eponymous mission (in a plot very similar to last year's Jeff Bridges film, “The Amateurs”) in order to cough up the cash needed to keep them off the streets.

As typical of a Kevin Smith comedy, the film comes from a very personal place and it's not long before the smut is swept up in sentimentality. Just as “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” was really a travelogue of his brush with mainstream Hollywood, “Zack and Miri” (as it's been advertised for our prurient television audiences) is Smith's love letter to making movies. It just happens that the movies in this feature typically end with a money shot.

But just as Smith assembled the cast of “Clerks” with his pals from his Jersey neighborhood, Zack and Miri enlist a number of participants from their inner circle to help bring their bump-and-grind opus to life.

Included in the cast are Smith standbys Jason Mewes (who boldly pulls a full monty and who always brings the funny) and original “Clerk” Jeff Anderson. Smith also has the smarts to include scene-stealing “Office” mate Craig Robinson, rehabbed porn princess Traci Lords and Katie Morgan, who you may remember from such memorable turns in “Big Bottom Sadie,” “Whore of the Rings” and “Busty Beauties 20” (and about 200 other similarly titled films...if you care to “research” them).

Smith also nabbed Justin Long, another go-to laugh-getter, whose cameo in the film will forever erase any annoying Mac ad image you may have of him.

It will come as little surprise that our two leads become romantically involved when called upon to perform their climactic scene (meant in every sense of the word). And the final act of the film deals with the awkwardness that can follow that moment where friends decide to take their relationship one step further (normally, though, it's not done in front of a handful of onlookers and a rolling video camera... unless you're a Hilton).

And this is where Smith – and Apatow, and John Hughes, for that matter – typically falter. For the male leads, there are plenty of bulls-eye masculine observations, while leaving the women with very little room to move outside their scripted confines. It's not that Banks does not try, she radiates much the same way Rosario Dawson did in “Clerks II.” But Smith's more comfortable giving his gals equally foul-mouthed dialogue that makes them “just one of the guys,” and then turning them into jealous emotional Jello when more complex matters arise.

The entire plot itself is based nowhere close to reality, even given the current Warhol-intuited “15 minutes of fame” culture in which we live, and Miri just seems way too together to fall for such a slovenly mess such as Zack, much less agree to let herself be filmed having sex with him to be mass marketed.

And honestly, with porn so easily accessible online, do they really think their little homegrown DVD is going to be their financial salvation?

But those minor grievances aside, “Zack and Miri” has just enough cheer to overcome its more flaccid moments. And if he can enlist a female writer for his next feature that could solidify his lady characters of his next film, Smith may be able to not only satisfy his audience throughout, but also provide them with, appropriately, a happy ending.