THE LAST 'FAVORITE' MOVIE RANT, I SWEAR

Well, at least for a while. ^_^

We're down to the final category: Circus Peanuts!

Ever have a circus peanut? If not, imagine a super dense marsh-mellow, so thick it's almost the consistency of meat.

Now, make it banana flavored.

Now shape it like a peanut. Why a peanut? No one knows.

Now imagine yourself eating this 'candy', and I use the term candy very loosely here. It's bizarre, strange, and you might even feel a little sick.

Then you eat more. Whenever it's offered, you take it. Several companies actually COMPETE to be the one that provides this 'candy' to consumers.

You'll eat it, simultaneously hate and love it, and you'll always be ready for more, but for the life of me, I can't explain why.

That's the embodiment of this category, which can also be described by this rant:

"Oh my god! What the hell was that? I can't believe I actually sat through that movie...I give it an A-."

Going by genre, it's the movie you're glad you saw, would encourage others to see, but always watch with equal parts pain and joy. I'm not talking about movies 'so bad they're funny'. I'm talking about movies that almost make it on BOTH the 'best' and 'worst' list. Perhaps they're great movies with severe problems. Perhaps they're bad or mediocre movies that are so unique and revolutionary that watching them is almost life changing.

They're just circus peanuts.


ACTION/ADVENTURE CIRCUS PEANUT: PLATOON

You'll never find a more realistic, powerful and depressing Vietnam movie than Platoon. It makes 'Full Metal Jacket' look like Police Academy. Charlie Sheen actually plays it straight as the protagonist, a low level soldier in Vietnam dealing with combat, murder, fragging, suicide bombers, rape, the destruction of entire defenseless villages, stupid/homicidal teammates, and everything else that never seems to make it into mainstream war movies.

You'll never find a war movie that presents war as ugly as it truly is. The closest you probably can come is the first and last 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Imagine if the middle hour and a half of Saving Private Ryan was as dark as the beginning and end. You'd have Platoon.


SCI-FI CIRCUS PEANUT: VIDEO DROME

What the hell is with this movie? I can't shake the feeling that the writer and director like home appliances a little TOO much.

I don't even know where to begin. A TV show where people are tortured in S&M fashion. A man trying to investigate that show. A romantic encounter with a television set. I wish I was kidding!

VCR slots in humans! Assassinations! Dismemberment! Suicide! Down with Video Drome! ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH!

This movie should come with free therapy. Regardless, the last twenty minutes is unbelievable. Seriously, you won't believe they put that in a movie. I'm still not sure if that's good or bad.


SUSPENSE CIRCUS PEANUT: LOST HIGHWAY

I actually walked out of this movie in the theaters, and loudly heckled it while I was there. You wouldn't believe how slow the movie is to start. Here's my favorite scene:

COP: "Let's see the bedroom."

HERO: "Alright it's this way."

(They slowly walk into the bedroom)

COP: "So this is the bedroom."

ME IN AUDIENCE: "NO!!!"


David Lynch, of Twin Peaks fame, does not understand the concept of pacing. It's a shame I left, because I watched it again and found out that the second after I left is where the movie picks up. The pale creepy guy character is great, people transform into other people, and although it's odd and surreal, I can't say it isn't consistent. The last fight is great, although I'm not sure if it's supposed to be as funny as I thought it was. I mean, I laughed. Should I have? Who can say?


SPORTS CIRCUS PEANUT: PRE

This is a more low key sports movie, focused far more on character development than success or 'giving it all you got'. The fact it's about running, and not about teams helps this. Sure, running isn't very exciting...rather boring really, but I liked it. If only the ending wasn't so depressing.

There's no way of not picking up the box and knowing what happens, so needless to say, the movie gets to the point where our hero has overcome his failure, risen himself back into the highest heights, and just as he's ready to get back into the Olympics, he dies in a random car crash.

It's sad, thoughtful, and surprisingly existential. It's about your personal best. Of course, his journey ends with his own random death...so it might fall a little short of 'inspirational'.

This movie also proves my theory wrong about there being only two sports movies: the one where they win and the one where they lose. There's also the one where they die before the big competition. It's a powerful movie, but horribly anti-climactic.


HORROR CIRCUS PEANUT: WILD ZERO

I have to admit, this movie is definitely TRYING to be the strangest horror movie ever made, and it indeed succeeds. It starts with a standard Japanese zombie movie plot, with the guy, girl, evil criminals, secret government agents and such, but then Guitar Wolf shows up.

Guitar Wolf is the self proclaimed 'loudest rock band in the world', and dress like greasers. They immediately show up, casually grab guns, and start effortlessly killing their way through the zombie hordes, not only with guns, but with glowing thrown guitar picks and the power of rock and roll. There's even a scene where the main singer fights a giant flying saucer with a katana...and cuts it in half.

Zombies, explosions and rock and roll. If Elvis were alive, this would've been one of his favorite movies...had there not been the romantic sub plot.

The main girl turns out to be a guy. Really. They're not kidding, the character is played by a guy, the main hero understandably freaks out, but in the end realized he loves him/her/it, so a little thing like gender shouldn't matter, even though he's straight. The movie ends with them kissing, for real, right on camera, and then driving off into the sunset.

What the fuck is with this movie?


COWBOY/SAMURAI CIRCUS PEANUT: RAN


Another great movie hampered by it's own mind blowing level of depression. Being based on King Lear, a Shakespeare play, this is probably to be expected, but the movie includes more tragedy and depression than Shakespeare ever dared to achieve.

It's still a Kurisawa movie (7 Samurai, Yojimbo), so everything is top notch, but you'll be horribly depressed, and the 'funny' and 'inspirational' moments will just leave you confused. What's with the random shot of Buddha at the end? Once again, who can say?


ROMANCE CIRCUS PEANUT: THE PROFESSIONAL


Yes, this movie already received and honorable mention in one of the 'best' categories, but it also deserves an honorable mention as one of the most dysfunctional romance movies ever made. It isn't even intended to be romantic, and that's the heart of it.

The movie revolves around an assassin with a mild mental disability (they never go completely into it) who adopts a preteen girl after her drug dealing family is killed by a crooked cop, including her innocent little brother. She wants revenge and the assassin is helping her learn how to be an assassin, because it's the only thing he knows how to teach.

It's a touching, father-daughter relationship, right? Well, he certainly thinks so, but she falls madly in love with him. The movie includes him giving one of the world's greatest spit takes, after she tells him how she feels. He obviously never intended it, but he does love her as the daughter/sister he never had, and that's what's so disturbing about the movie. It revolves around two people, both deeply in love with each other, but each with a COMPLETELY different view of their relationship. She even goes as far to claim to a stranger that he's her lover, getting them kicked out of a hotel.

The movie ends with tragedy, of course, but before getting her to safety, they kiss (it's European so he did it in a 'family' way), but you can tell she meant it romantically. To make it worse, the actress playing her makes it believable enough...that you wonder if their own true feelings are a mirror of their character's. The older man as the fatherly protector, and the young girl as the romantic lover.

It's disturbingly sad, but it isn't too bad, considering nothing sexual ever happens. In fact, by the end, both characters truly prove their love for each other, showing that although their relationship is dysfunctional, it's no less powerful than the love shared by characters in any other romantic movie. What's that tell us about love? What does that mean for you and me?

It's a great movie about love, but you'll have to live with how screwed up our emotions can be.


COMEDY CIRCUS PEANUT: S.O.B.

Richard Mulligan plays a great sleazy down and out director, trying to make a kid's movie, with his ex-wife as the star. It never works, until he decides to turn it into a soft core porno at the last minute, just by throwing in a half hour of footage, including a topless scene of his wife, who is famous only for family movies.

The clincher: the actress playing his ex-wife is Julie Andrews. Yes, the Julie Andrews from Mary Poppins and Sound of Music, and yes, she has a topless scene in this movie...

AND IT IS AWESOME. The pictures don't really do the scene (or her) justice. I'd check out a video of this one.

Unfortunately, they decided to throw a little too much seriousness and tragedy into this movie, making you wonder what they were really trying to do. This movie seems like a compromise, with a few aspects thrown in that don't make sense. In fact, it's a perfect mirror of the movie they're making in the movie. It's a movie about itself.

It's a great concept, but it's too downbeat to really work well. It really seems like they were trying to please too many people...but dude, Julie Andrews is topless. How can you pass that up?


FANTASY CIRCUS PEANUT: WIZARDS


A movie can't only be about its ending. The ending is legendary, but the movie leading up to it is confusing, and keeps vaulting you back and forth between dark and 'kiddie'. Standard kids cartoon characters are shot dead by machine gun fire. Preachy 'hippie' values are mixed in with martyrdom, with a wacky wizard thrown in the mix.

It's a great movie, but the values are really confusing, and by the end I'm not even sure what their point is supposed to be. I think I need to be stoned to really appreciate this one.


DRAMA CIRCUS PEANUT: I AM THE CHEESE


It's almost a 'difficult to define' movie, but it's mainly just a really weird drama. What really makes it stand out, besides the honestly surprising ending, and convoluted plot twists, is how perfectly the movie portrays teenage alienation. Is the main character alone by choice, or is he trapped? The movie could mean many things, but the main theme revolves around cycles. The main character is stuck in a cycle he can't break, because facing the truth and growing up is too hard...so he keeps going around in circles, trapped in his own mind.

Unfortunately, this is all hampered by a silly plot twists that belong in a pre-teen spy movie, not a thoughtful drama. Still, the ending is nice, but I wish they kept the movie realistic.


FAMILY CIRCUS PEANUT: PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH


This movie is loooooooong and sloooooooooooooooow. Yes, there's parts you like. There are parts we all love, and some great characters...along with never ending, pointless scenes and songs you keep praying will end. Remember the spelling bee? Me neither.

Just watch how long this dang movie takes to even get started! A whiny pre-teen phone conversation, another eternity to open the box, and how many times does he go back and forth, to check out the difference between his normal and cartoon self?

WAY TOO DAMN MANY!

One of the great ironies of this movie is the most entertaining parts are the villains, and 'wrong thinking people'. By comparison, the 'good' people, who follow rhyme and reason, are all incredibly boring. That's the punchline, during the big transformation sequence at the end, we watch everything interesting about the cartoon world disappear, replaced by pointless and featureless 'good guys'. When the characters lost their flaws, they lost everything that really defined them. Hell, the night sky wasn't worth watching until the kid started to mess with it.

Following rhyme and reason just makes you boring. The best part of being a kid is being a kid. There's a simple rule for watching this movie: every time one of the 'good' characters starts talking with each other, go do something else. When a 'bad' person shows up, start watching again.

Space Balls was wrong, good is not dumb. Phantom Tollbooth proves it's just dull.


HARD TO DEFINE CIRCUS PEANUT: OLD BOY


What is it with Asian movies? This movie makes Wild Zero look normal. In one scene, the actor bites into a live octopus...FOR REAL! The actor actually began munching on a live small octopus with his hands and teeth!

The movie doesn't get any more normal after that. A man is kept prisoner for something like 15 years, constantly drugged, fed only fried dumplings, and urged to keep punching the wall.

His journey to discover 'why' is painful to watch, but filled with action and a dysfunctional romance that would have been more disturbing if it were more believable. The rest of the movie is disturbingly realistic, including a fight scene between the main character and dozen people, that plays out rather well, in realistic fashion, rather than action movie fashion.

The ending involves more dismemberment, incest and murder/suicide than I like to see in movies, and my friend Brian put it best after we all watched it 'I really didn't want to see that...but I'm glad I saw it'. Old Boy represents the Circus Peanut genre better than any other movie ever could.

You'll feel worse after seeing it, but you'll be glad you saw it.


Well, that's about it, so we finally have time to talk about my Shelley Duvall crush.

What?

She is HOT!

Go check her out in the Shining again. Check out her corset in Mother Goose's Rockin Rhyme. Check out her see through t-shirt in Annie Hall. Don't watch Popeye (it's not worth it).

Look at this picture: HOT

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go propose.