Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

We now return to our regularly scheduled program:

And now that I’m back, I have to be the first to write, and therefore contribute to the internet, that Lone Wolf McQuade is the Chuck Norris’ magnum opus. This is his Fistful of Dollars. This is where he is Connery’s Bond. He makes the Chuck Norris here that all other variations will deviate from. With that said, the guy has a serious hard-on for playing a Texas Ranger on film. Regardless, if ever a man earned the right to be described as “grizzled,” it is certainly the man with a fist behind his beard.

Well the music of the film was as inspired-by-Ennio-Morricone-but-ended-up-mocking-it-through-a-horribly-failed-imitation as the filmmaker was inspired-by-Sergio-Leone-but-ended-up-mocking-it-through-a-horribly-failed-imitation. So, they were well-paired. But no amount of horribly cheesy imitation music can save this plot from writing itself. Seriously, if you put a bunch of monkeys in a room after you’ve force-fed them chocolate-covered clichés all morning, evening, and night for six months, the first draft of what they write would be the script for Lone Wolf McQuade. Hell, they’d probably even spit out a cast list that has Chuck Norris’ name at the top.

Side Note: There is a seriously obscene amount of shirtless-Chuck in this film. Shirtless-Chuck shoots guns while he’s shirtless. Why? Because one thing that shirtless-Chuck does is whatever the hell shirtless-Chuck wants.

Anyway, Ranger Chuck is your Dirty Harry of Texas Rangers. He has a daughter and some bad peeps just go on ahead and almost kill her into a ditch in her car after killing her boyfriend all uzi-like. Those bad peeps are led by karate champ David Carradine at his smarmy best (until he, sadly, fights Chuck while wearing a freakin cardigan in the final battle).

Eventually, Ranger Chuck’s dog-wolf gets killed, Ranger Chuck gets almost-killed, and there’s some serious last-15-minutes-revenge-action. This film is not about the plot though. It’s about watching shirtless-Chuck shoot guns, Ranger Chuck kick some ass, Emotional (?) Chuck make-out in the mud and punch the ground when his wolf gets shot all uzi-like, and then Ranger Chuck get some kick ass revenge. It’s good stuff.

Seriously, Ranger Chuck wears a bullet belt. And he comes back from the brink of death to ask for a beer. umfuckyes.

Anyhow, Chuck is an exceedingly more badass Texas Ranger in this film than he is in that whole millennia-long Walker Texas Ranger series (and seriously, who was keeping the ratings of that show so far above the water-line!?!!). That means there’s punching and anger…Chuck-style (invincible, angry, and with gravy-thick layer of imitation Ennio Morricone music draped over Chuck putting a cowboy hat on or putting his gun in the gun-belt). As a warning, he does quite a bit of glistening as a result of his deluge of Chuck Norris punching/anger/headband/sweetness in the latter half of the film, so be sure to put on your protective gear.

Colors (1988) - a guest review

This review brought to you by A. Lee and most likely a substance that starts with the letter W:

Even the worst movies to come onto THIS are great in their ability to depict the world as it was 22 years ago. Supposedly. Actually, only the aerial and drive-by shots in the opening credits--with their frighteningly realistic video of scary looking poor people in dangerous neighborhood--can pass for a semi-truthful depiction of the world in 1988.

The actual plots of these movies tend to focus on white working-men's power struggles in some inner city police force. Often the white man who manages to catch the most non-white men is the one to quickly rise in the ranks.

While the plot focuses on the competing white cops, brief scenes of competing black gangs scream and lunge at each other while climbing the bars of opposing prison cages like wild animals.

All this while Robert Duvall is out saving the neighborhood and maintaining his virility in the face of that overly confident rookie, Sean Penn.

Keep your People's History of the United States next to you when you watch this one. And a healthy admiration for the acting skills of Duvall, Penn, and...is that Don Cheadle?? Holy shit!

Grab some psilocybin before you Return to Oz

In honor of an older Alice returning to Wonderland (or Underland, as the case may be) in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, I've tasked the Netflix delivery dog with fetching me Return to Oz. In this "children's" film, Dorothy has developed a psychosis from her verbal diarrhea about her visit to Oz and must undergo shock therapy in order to become a regular little girl without an imagination. Thankfully, she drowns instead. Upon her drowning, she returns to Oz and meets some new friends in order to destroy the Emerald City.

The decision to incorporate (and thus possibly introduce to a young audience) a technique that still haunts the psychiatric community because of its barbarity seems like an odd one, to say the least. What results is a film that should be a bigger hit to the drug crowd than the original coupled with Dark Side of the Moon. It's a little like Labyrinth if it had been cross-pollenated with Dark Crystal in The Neverending Story's poppy fields and snorted with a healthy dash of Willy Wonka's river tunnel.

Thankfully, viewing this film raises some pertinent questions: Was there an R2D2 clone in the Oz books? Did George Lucas sign off on that? What are the ethical implications of bringing a mishmash of inanimate objects to life (with a jar full of the Powder of Life) and then watching as they fall apart due to your negligence when assembling them?

Listen, I hate movies that are so safe that they hit every trope in Hollywood's playbook and close with the flowery description of how everything worked out fine for everyone (in case there isn't a sequel). At the same time, there are certain expectations you bring to genre's of film that simply cannot be tossed willy-nilly in favor of "experimentation." I don't want every movie be Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi, but there is a certain truth that is only accentuated by provocatively subverting it. What I'm talking about is the amalgamation of a number of disparate elements that probably should come together in a specific fashion. Music, success, failure, main character traits - these things all interconnect in a specific way when we see certain types of films. The "children's" genre is no different. It must (as one line of thinking goes) avoid certain elements of life that parents of its time would find especially objectionable and incorporate elements which parents would like their children to hold in esteem and aspire to. If those elements shift as time passes, the films must reflect that, right?

Maybe this film (and by extension Where the Wild Things Are) just means that we are a bit further down Wonka's river tunnel than our parents were - that we've opened our minds to the real weirdness that being a child involves and we wish we could be a part of that again.

Sounds about right to me.