Classic Movie Review Amazon Women on the Moon

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) 

Directed by Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss 

Written by Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland 

Starring Arsenio Hall, Michelle Pfeiffer, Joe Pantoliano, David Allan Grier, Rosanna Arquette 

Release Date September 18th, 1987 

Published September 18tth, 2017 

One of the first movies I ever reviewed on my podcast, when it was still called I Hate Critics, now Everyone’s a Critic, was a disconcerting sketch comedy movie called Movie 43. The film was a series of appalling short films strung together with no narrative under a title that one could imagine it having been randomly assigned by a movie studio for storage purposes, not intended for theatrical release. That this series of short films starred such actors as Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Liev Schreiber, and Naomi Watts are the only reason Movie 43 ever saw the light of day.

When I saw Movie 43 I had never even heard of the obscure 1987 comedy Amazon Women on the Moon. I take that back, I did hear of it but I assumed it was some sort of softcore pornographic comedy. I think I may have also confused it with the movie Cannibal Women in the Amazon Jungle of Death, an epically unfunny spoof movie starring Bill Maher, before Politically Incorrect, oddly enough, and Shannon Tweed.

It turns out, Amazon Women on the Moon is everything that Movie 43 wished it could have been, trenchant, hilarious, weird, and just plain fun. Twenty-six years before Movie 43 strung together a random assemblage of movie stars in unfunny short films, writers and directors John Landis, Carl Gottlieb, Robert K. Weiss, and Carl Dante, all born from the Roger Corman school of filmmaking, pulled off the trick Movie 43 so desperately failed at, a ragingly funny sketch comedy movie.

Amazon Women on the Moon consists of 19 short films, some related, some not. The sketches do vary in quality, with Joe Dante really stealing the show in his portions, while Robert K. Weiss struggles a little with the film’s title sketch. Landis and Gottlieb go a far less traditional route with mostly good results, especially Gottlieb’s use of nudity which is wonderfully absurd and genuinely inspired.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Birth of the Dragon

Birth of the Dragon (2017) 

Directed by George Nolfi 

Written by Christopher Wilkinson, Stephen J. Rivele 

Starring Phillip Wan-tung Ng, Xia Yu, Jin Xing, Billy Magnusson 

Release Date August 25th, 2017 

Published August 24th, 2017

Birth of the Dragon has been marketed as the story of Bruce Lee learning to grow and become more disciplined, humble, and dedicated to his craft after being confronted by a famed Shaolin Master named Wong Jack Man. Instead, Birth of the Dragon is a ludicrously misguided combination of faux-history and one of the worst conceived Bruce Lee movies in history. It's as bad as the films that inserted old Bruce Lee footage after his death into different movies that were then marketed as Bruce Lee movies.

Birth of the Dragon was directed by George Nolfi who acquits himself well as a visual stylist but as a writer he fails to understand why this movie should not have been made in the first place. The story is based off an ungodly awful, mostly apocryphal story in a 1980 Kung Fu magazine. The writer of that story brings together three separate accounts of a fight between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man and it is written in a style that is reminiscent of the worst of modern internet writing. Supposed professional writers dedicate themselves to writing about information in other people’s articles, stealing without stealing what others wrote as if by stealing from multiple other sources you’ve somehow written your own article.

That is not exactly the best place to begin an artistic endeavor but then things get so much worse from there. The idea is supposed to be about this legendary 1964 fight between two Kung Fu masters that forever changed how Bruce Lee used Kung Fu, creating his legendary Jeet Kune Do style. However, because the writers, director, producers, and distributors apparently felt that mass audiences wouldn’t take to a story about Asian Americans, even if one of them is portraying BRUCE LEE(!!!!!!) we get an entirely invented character named Steve McKee who is so terribly portrayed by Billy Magnusson that I genuinely felt sorry for the young man that this performance is preserved on screen.

Magnusson is awful because his role is so incredibly stock and was built solely for the purpose of creating a character that dumb white audiences could relate to. This is the kind of quietly insidious racial politicking that we as critics and audiences have been allowing Hollywood to get away with for far too long and frankly, I am done. I recently wrote about a wonderful film called Wind River which shone a different kind of light on this type of casting. That film cast white movie stars because it had an urgent cry of a story to tell and needed to use white movie stars as a megaphone for an important purpose. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review England is Mine

England is Mine (2017) 

Directed by Mark Gill 

Written by Mark Gill 

Starring Jack Lowden, Jessica Brown Findlay, Laurie Kynaston 

Release Date August 4th, 2017 

Published August 3rd, 2017

I have to believe that writer and singer Morrissey is more interesting than the version of him brought to light in the movie England is Mine. I cannot sit here and tell you I know much more about Morrissey than what I read on his Wikipedia page. I can’t name a single Smiths song or Morrissey solo single. That said, I still know who he is. Somehow through some kind of pop cultural osmosis I know who Morrissey is and that is enough to tell me he must be interesting, he has to be more interesting than this mopey, dopey boring version of Morrissey in England is Mine.

England is Mine, which I am told is a lyric from a Smiths song, picks up the story of Steven Patrick Morrissey in his teenage years. Steven is not your standard English teenager. He likes to write lengthy letters to the music magazine NME criticizing the music scene in his corner of England and secretly hoping that someone at NME might read him and give him a job. His other hope is to become part of a band but he seems so crippled by social anxiety that even when an opportunity presents itself he’s too frightened to pursue it.

Morrissey’s life, according to England is Mine, hinges on his chance friendship with artist and singer Linder Sterling (Jessica Brown Sterling). Sterling entered Morrissey’s life after criticizing one of his letters to NME and then arranging to meet him. Linder is everything that Steven is not, outgoing, aspiring, happy. She takes to Steven in the fashion of a muse but not exactly an inspiration. Linder is the gentle prod that finally gets Steven to take himself seriously and become a singer. Linder herself could be the subject of a film as her influence as both an artist and a singer was a significant part of English punk and new wave music and yet you would not know that from England is Mine which doesn't even mention that she had her own band.

One might think that Morrissey taking the stage for the very first time with the band The Nosebleeds in 1978 might be some incredible moment. I would imagine that there are Smiths fans who wish they could have been at that club that night. And yet, England is Mine barely gives the moment any weight. Here is a true pop cultural artifact for the very people England is Mine is attempting to appeal to and the film gives it less weight than scenes where Morrissey is angrily scribbling in a notebook while suffering the mediocrity of a day job in the tax office.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media