Last Action Hero (1993)

Last Action Hero (PG-13)

"No One Likes a Smart Ass"

The young Danny is a lone film lover who doesn't fit in with High School or the dangerous streets of his home town of NY, NY.  He'd rather be scarfing popcorn in old decrepit movie theaters with the house speakers blaring.  When his friend and projectionist gives him a sneak preview to the latest Jack Slater movie, the magic of the movie sucks him in, literally.  Finding himself inside the movie with his hero and playing by the genre rules, Danny tries to help Jack (Arnold Schwarzenegger) avenge the death of his second cousin from nefarious gangsters and the Machiavellian assassin, Benedict (charmingly played by Charles Dance (Alien 3)).  When the action spills out into the real world, the antes are upped and the threats become more real as the nonfictional world is threatened by the fictional ones.

Arnold's first Producer credit sees him fronting a horse of a different color called Last Action Hero, a post-modern satiric romp through the tropes and cliches of Action fiction amid our violent crime filled reality. The studio went all out, advertising via NASA and selling nonviolent action figures, then allowed the film to be stomped flat by Jurassic Park's scaly second weekend. However the failure of LAH is more likely due to the bad word of mouth and obvious misinformation and expectations of audiences & critics alike, both of whom missed the point entirely.  The dreary depressing real New York, with its rotting old cinemas and bloody knuckled muggers are the sour to the sunshine bullet ridden escapist fantasy's sweet.

The balancing act is astounding, the quality of the action and the humor in the face of general opinion proves the movie was ahead of it's time.  The stupid jokes are mostly on purpose, the 90s rock n roll attitude and soundtrack are too loud by half, the flubs and continuity errors are obviously intentional.  The movie laughs and whoops it up with you; it's funny bone is firmly connected to it's trigger finger.  Perhaps over the top humor and plotting went way over the heads of its intended viewers?  The smart script had numerous rewrites (ironically by one of the 90s sharpest action scribes Shane Black of Last Boy Scout fame) but in the end attains the perfect balance of funny and dark tinged fun.  Director John McTiernan lives in this genre, and is basically spoofing his own successes (Die Hard, Predator).  He delivers some great action sequences, visuals and heart while at the same time satirizing those same style of sequences found in dumbed down man-flicks with slo-motion leaps from the edge of you seat that we all know and love.  Huge advertising, huge budgets, huge expectations on everyone's part, Last Action Hero was almost doomed to fail.  Very few "got it," and most just stayed away.  Yet over the years cult fans, both Action genre-ists and art-house purists, have spearheaded its positives and home audiences seem to finally be "getting it".

If you squint just so, a murky undercurrent of painful nostalgia for the golden age of cinema and the love of single screen movie-houses can be seen running through the film's veins, skillfully rounding out the punchy jokes and quips with an adept melancholy for things long gone (that just keep on getting truer).  Last Action Hero is, most surprisingly, the funeral for all those theaters that have been torn down to make way for the multiplexes, for all the old men in booths upstairs who lost their jobs, for all those Houdini's who don't have anywhere to perform with gold gilded balconies.  Places where you can no longer hear the soft purr of the projector, or sit in the complete dark without advertisements or cell phone screens, it was Last Action Hero that eulogized them with a nod and a wink.  It was a unlooked for Roast of "the-way-it-was" and foreshadowing of "where-it-is-going".  Unfortunately, they don't make them like this anymore, and certainly never did.

7.5 Shooting Dynamite in a moving car while changing your Sony MiniDiscs out of 10 (GOOD)

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Dazed and Confused (R) - Review

"Lots of people talkin', few of them know"

School is out in Texas and as the teens and young adults begin their revelry on the darkening streets a group of friends and acquaintances begin to coalesce and intermingle and inebriate a story emerges of coming of age and friendship in one night in 1976 Austin.

Richard Linklater (Slacker, Bernie) brings his directorial microscope to bear on his young adulthood in Weirdtown, TX USA.  Drugs, sex, Aerosmith concerts and partying all night all summer are the norms for these children of the post-love generation.  It is a fascinating for an outsider to watch, a social study on an almost unrecognizable American society where grads have sacred rituals and kids don't text their mothers when they are out past 10.  An amazingly large and talented cast of then up an comers light up the camera including Milla Jovovich, Jason London, Joey Lauren Adams, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck as a overly aggressive spankhappy zealot and Matthew Mcconaughey as the grown up slacker sex fiend everyone wishes (at the time) they could grow up to be.  A night in the life of these teens rings true to an America that once was, whether you are too old or too young to have remembered it takes away nothing from it's charm.  The lenses on these rose tinted glasses are thick as coke bottles, but they make you sound like John Lennon and look just like a young Steven Tyler.

9 Pop Tops out of 10 (GREAT)

Bad Boy Bubby (1993)

Bad Boy Bubby (NR) - Review

"If You See Kay"

A 35 year old man with mental issues, trapped his whole life in a single room by his sexually abusive mother, breaks free and enters into modern Australia with a suitcase and a knack for immitation.  He finds murder, love, jail, atheisim and rock n' roll in this exceptionally experimental film from director/screenwriter Rolf De Heer.

Bubby is brought to life by Aussie actor Nicholas Hope, and what starts off so offputting and strange miraculously becomes welcome and charming.  Bubby is basically a kid at heart (and in brain), and as he starts to adjust to his environs and finds friends we can root for him and his adventures in our adult world (stick with it cat lovers).  It's a world brought to life by over 30 individual cinematographers, who scene by scene and completely without input from each other depict Bubby's mercurial emotions (it's not as jarring as it sounds).  Speaking of sounds, those were recorded to give insight into Bubby's world view too (the mics were worn by the actor over each ear and are played back in stereo from his perspective only).  Both of these experimental (and highly professional) audio/video tricks are not glaringly obvious to viewers but lend an unique presence to the film by allowing the A/V to protray the moods and emotions of Bubby that he himself, stunted as he is, is unable to show.

Bad Boy Bubby is a fascinating character study which goes happily into the dark corners of religion, euthenasia, sub cultures and the handicapped that most films would be too scared to touch with a 100 foot Shrimp boat. An authentic and purely Australian Art film, BBB deserves more attention than it's current Weirdo Film Cult status, but due to that same status is safely off the radar from censors and when watched Bubby is a pleasant surprise-shock to the bored old system.

7.5 Rolls of Shrink Wrap out of 10 (GOOD)