Retreat of the Jedi

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 ~ Chris ~ 7 Comments

When I was 9, “Stars Wars” was the shit. That movie and “Jaws,” two years earlier, jounced my cinematic world off its axis and into, well, outer space. (This of course happened to 95.9 percent of every kid of a certain age, so I’m sort of stating the obvious.)

I devoured “Star Wars” action figures, posters, a cool TIE fighter model, even bed sheets that were blue like the cosmos. “Jaws” — same. I was shark-crazed for about five years. I owned a real shark jaw from Tijuana, a “Jaws” t-shirt (see my About page), many shark books, and a dorky “Jaws” game, where you tried to fish junk out of a plastic shark’s mouth without his toothy smile chomping down on your pole. I sucked at it.

My grade-school teachers grew concerned about my constant drawings of sharks munching the limbs off hapless swimmers in blood-filled waters. Thing is, I’m still a bit batty about the misunderstood ocean predators, which are perfectly evolved, hyper-efficient killing machines, much like the creature in “Alien.”

But my starry-eyed view of “Star Wars” dimmed at a dramatic clip — almost light speed, let’s say. I only half-heartedly went to see 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back,” a movie that inspired no more expenditures on franchise merch. (By then it was a cultural arm wrestle between “Star Wars” and KISS — George Lucas vs. Gene Simmons. The latter spit blood. He won.)

Jedi jaded as I quickly became — the Force was now farce — I never did get around to 1983’s “Return of the Jedi.” I wasn’t interested. I didn’t care. Hard rock and girls had hijacked any alliance to “Star Wars,” and, besides, I was obsessing over more interesting movies like “An American Werewolf in London,” “The Elephant Man,” “Alien,” “The Dead Zone,” “The Fly” and, dare I say it, Woody Allen’s entire oeuvre.

But a third “Star Wars” installment, no matter how disappointing its description, was still news — if not a cultural earthquake, then a rippling aftershock. Crowds flocked and you couldn’t help being exposed to trailers, photos and fan regurgitations of the episode in which Darth Vader famously croaks.

Furry bundle of unrelenting embarrassment

And what I saw was repellent: frenzied Muppet creatures; the unforgivable Ewoks (tiny, fuzzy Jar Jar Binkses); the grinning ghosts of Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker (together at last!); and the coda’s mortifying Ewok celebration, featuring gibberish music and creature dancing (Chewbacca boogies!). And I vowed I would never watch “Jedi.” Ever.

Until I did.

This is where I admit that I watched “Return of the Jedi,” a full 27 years after it was released. It was an impulse rental, done under a cynical cloud of camp: “This is going to be so gorgeously godawful,” I thought, “that it will furnish a galaxy of perverse pleasures. I will howl with laughter at the Razzie-worthy writing and titter at the labored excesses of puppet pandemonium, including the hopelessly lame Jabba the Hutt, who reminds me of a big burp.”

My plan, alas, backfired.

The movie completely surpassed its build up of rank horrendousness. But the experience wasn’t fun or funny. In fact, the sheer naked badness of “Jedi” served as a bludgeon that beat me into one of my darkest post-movie depressions ever. I actually felt physically ill watching it, and by that satanic climax of dancing Ewoks and high-fiving heroes I had died a few deaths. To this day, I consider “Return of the Jedi” one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. (Yes, worse than “Jaws 4: The Revenge.”)

At least critic Chuck Klosterman puts a humorous spin on it: “‘Return of the Jedi’ is quite possibly the least-watchable major film of the last 25 years. I knew a girl who claimed to have a recurring dream about a polar bear that mauled Ewoks; it made me love her.”

And yet at the ever-vexing Rotten Tomatoes, the movie boasts an astonishing 82% approval rating. Opines the Denver Post: “It’s everything it ought to be — glorious, exhilarating, exciting, absorbing, technically wondrous.”

No, no, no, no and no. The movie is absolutely none of those things. Just watch this scene and try not to vomit.

Jabba the Hutt, looking like an unspeakable bodily excretion.

It’s true that I’ve way outgrown the whole “Star Wars” dweeb-o-sphere, much as the Marvel universe is to me so much sophomoric hubbub. I’m not watching the latest “Star Wars” spinoff, “The Mandalorian,” and I have a terrible urge to squish baby Yoda’s head.

That pretty much disqualifies me from the Way-Out World George Lucas Built, and that’s fine. Who needs Ewoks and Wookiees, Jabbas and Jedis, CGI and C-3PO, third-rate mysticism and fourth-grade mythology?

And yet “Jaws,” my other grade-school movie crush, remains one of my favorite pictures ever. Its arresting grainy realism is still fully convincing. Its adult’s-eye view of human frailty and interpersonal politics makes no concessions to the popcorn crowd. So finely orchestrated are its grisly thrills, you can allow yourself to be terrorized by a 25-foot plastic mechanical shark that’s as supple as a redwood.

It helps that Spielberg is 5,000 times the filmmaker Lucas is (OK, “American Graffiti” is pretty great). But it also helps that “Jaws” is Muppet-free and doesn’t traffic in cockamamie mythos. It helps that its only creature is sincerely menacing with very high stakes, and that all of “Jedi’s” itty Ewoks would make so much tasty shark chum.

Tale (tail?) of a hirsute hound

March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 ~ Chris ~ 1 Comment

Cubby the wonder dog has gone a very long time without a good, healthy grooming. His face is downright Ewokian, that wet button nose struggling to peek out from the furry foliage. His brows are thick, heavy, senatorial. His body would make Bigfoot blush. Such inordinate overgrowth is witnessed in only the most luxuriant jungle weaves and tangles, invoking machetes, flamethrowers and scythes fit for Death himself.

Cubby, we submit, needs a haircut.

He knows it, we know it. Supercuts knows it. As does the kid down the block who mows the neighbor’s lawn for five bucks.

Seriously, clippers and razors should be at the ready. Cubby fears and loathes the grooming ordeal — sedatives required — and we sympathize. And so we let him go, and grow. But it’s in his best interest to be shorn, for comfort, hygiene, and to not look like David Letterman.

Right now, three months after the photo below was taken, Cubby’s corkscrewy fur looks like swirling oceans of gray Reddi-wip, curling waves lurking with mythical sea monsters. If you think he looks lush here, you should see him now. To namecheck another “Star Wars” critter, he’s wildly Chewbaccian. I live with a barking, carpet-staining Wookiee.

Then again, here’s what he looks like after a spanking professional shearing. Such grooming makes him appear bald and sprightly, thinner, a bit rat-like, though retaining that preposterous Spaghetti-O tail (which I adore). Gone are the Austro-Hungarian mustache and frowzy Haight-Ashbury beard. (Gone too is that panting smile, curiously.)

All of which is to say: 1. A barbershop chair awaits Cubby’s fuzzy tush. 2. Call it a springtime trim, ripe for warmer days. 3. Wanted: Dog groomer who can handle a hirsute hound that’s neurotic, nervous and Xanax-popping, and may require a John Deere to cut mighty scrubland. We exaggerate, a little.

Quick culture picks (and nitpicks)

August 14, 2019August 15, 2019 ~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’m having a tricky time containing how much I dislike “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino’s almost laughably feckless evocation of L.A. showbiz in the 1960s that’s by turns sledgehammer subtle, cringingly unfunny, self-enamored and offensively and childishly sadistic.

onceuponatimeinhollywood_onesheet_1400x2100_v2 — **Tripe.**

It’s a moronic movie, a blinding misfire, that its critical supporters should be ashamed of liking. Tarantino is 56. He’s still making movies for snickering 15-year-old boys. He’s like Benjamin Button, aging backwards. It’d be cute if it wasn’t so appalling. He’s declared he will make only 10 films. This is his ninth. We grin.

That said, this inveterate malcontent has a crush on a pair of brand-new documentaries — rock docs, if you will:

What do Metallica and Linda Ronstadt have in common? Both made their names in the California rock scene, albeit in different decades and genres, and both are part of two divine new music docs that couldn’t be more tonally dissimilar: “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” and “Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story.” (They’re in theaters this fall.)

The former reveals the beauty and beautiful artistry — that voice could do anything: pop, ballads, rock, operetta, country, mariachi, jazz standards — of Linda Ronstadt with groove and feeling. It captures the ‘70s American rock scene with such texture, heart and authenticity, it’s a woozy time-capsule, transporting and wondrous. The gamut of denim on display is worth it alone. Trailer HERE.

The latter, the one with lashing hair, banging heads and volcanic vitriol and virtuosity, stage-dives into the 1980s heavy metal scene in the Bay Area, surveying the bands, from Exodus and Slayer to Possessed and Metallica, that influenced global hard rock. The film limns a subculture with a streak of apt aggression and a snarl. It has crunch. It has sweat. It has bite. Trailer HERE.The current cover story at Slate will make you want to jab your eyes out. It’s titled “The 25 Most Important Characters of the Past 25 Years” and is one of those blinkered, tone-deaf, willfully confounding listicles peppered with numbskull picks. Among them: The Babadook (No. 24), Jay-Z (No. 4), Sarah Koenig (No. 21), Bridget Jones (No. 17), Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impersonation (No. 8) and Carmela Soprano (No. 1!). It gets worse. Way.

Rankings like these generally give me a brain tumor, and this one is so off, so strenuously eclectic, you know the authors are just trying to get a rise out of you with their labored cleverness rather than commit serious cultural commentary. They’re about as incisive and hilarious as reviled “Star Wars” court jester Jar Jar Binks (No. 6).

Shot through with the bloody brutality of a Peckinpah or Scorsese, “The Nightingale” is a pretty decent revenge thriller from Australia by Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook” — see above) that’s as unflinching as it is richly affecting.

Set in 1825 in a British penal colony in what’s now Tasmania, the drama ignites when a young female convict is repeatedly raped as her baby and husband are slaughtered by a British officer and his mossy-toothed minions. Dazed and enraged, the woman, Clare (a fierce Aisling Franciosi), hops a horse, hires an Aboriginal tracker and sets her sights on sweet, savage revenge.

It’s a complex tale of frontier justice, love, death, friendship, betrayal, with an emotional and cathartic core that almost buffers the rattling volume of violence. Perhaps a mite too long at 136 minutes, “The Nightingale” remains sturdy Gothic arthouse fare. Trailer HERE.

Looking back at Chewbacca

May 3, 2019May 4, 2019 ~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

This is the very first image I ever saw of Chewbacca:

It was spring 1977 and I was young. I had hair like a mid-career Beatle. Movie-wise, I was obsessed with “Jaws” from two years prior. And, even at that early grade-school age, I thought “Dog Day Afternoon,” watched repeatedly on cable, was the dope. (Later movie manias would include “Close Encounters,” “Alien” and “The Elephant Man.”)

My dad came home with a thick press kit for the summer movie roster from 20th Century-Fox. (A journalist, he often arrived from the office with public relations goodies from movie studios and, maybe coolest, the Mattel toy company. We were the first kids in town to have Slime and Shogun Warriors.)

I don’t recall any of the movies in the 20th Century-Fox press kit but one, a mysterious little picture called “Star Wars” that was slated to hit theaters May 25. My immediate fascination with the movie, well before I saw it, is so clichéd that I will keep the recollection trimmed and distilled.

Amid a sheaf of black and white stills of characters from the film, bound in a colorful folder emblazoned with the now-iconic “Star Wars” logo, my attention zeroed in on one particular photo. The caption read: “Chewbacca, the hundred year old Wookiee, co-pilots the Millennium Falcon, a Carnelian pirate starship.”

Chewbacca? Wookiee? Yes! This was the baddest movie character I’d ever seen, a hair-covered giant holding an automatic weapon in what appeared to be the desert with a Clint Eastwood, “Go ahead, make my day” expression on his Sasquatchian puss. The pure, scorching exoticism of it blew my little mind. I immediately stuck on my wall the 8-x-10 with four silver tacks. Anticipating the day I could see this creature move and (not quite) speak on the big screen became a pastime of electric excitement.

The man I would soon learn filled the Chewbacca fur-fest was Peter Mayhew, a 7-foot-3 Briton who died of a heart attack at 74 yesterday at his North Texas home. (Check out his personal site Chewbacca.com.) The galaxy weeps.

**Mayhew and Chewbacca. Similarities abound.**

As Chewie, Mayhew growled and laser-gunned his way through five “Star Wars” features as sidekick and co-pilot to Harrison Ford’s swashbuckling Han Solo. They were a dynamic duo, BFFs who fought together, cried together, drank together and probably had a secret handshake. That’s all the speculation I will pursue.

Chewbacca wasn’t the most complex character. He had moist, soulful animal eyes and teeth like a German shepherd’s. The mournful, bestial yowls he had to rely on for vocal communication without the gift of speech could shred your ears, and rend your heart. (His voice was created with recorded animal sounds.)

“He put his heart and soul into the role of Chewbacca and it showed in every frame of the films, from his knock-kneed running, firing his bowcaster from the hip, his bright blue eyes, down to each subtle movement of his head and mouth,” Mayhew’s family said in a statement.

**Chewie and Solo — one of the great action duos in movie history**

Valiant, righteous, a fighter, friend and even funny, Chewbacca as portrayed by Mayhew was more than a guy pantomiming in a gorilla suit. He lent the Wookiee spirit, spunk and purpose. I absorbed all of this when I finally, in a one-screen art-deco movie theater in the summer of ’77, saw my hero in action, this towering benevolent beast, who fleetly dispensed with Imperial baddies and didn’t complain when saucy Princess Leia dismissed him as a “walking carpet.”

It’s why as a kid I was so crestfallen when, at the end of the film, everybody got a Medal of Bravery for saving the galaxy and blowing up the Death Star except Chewie, who just stands there during the ceremony, tall and noble, nothing dangling around his neck. Only his mighty ammo-filled bandolier, worn like a sash on his left shoulder, bedecks him.

But that’s Chewbacca — humble, honorable, tough and self-effacing. He deserves a medal. If not for assisting in nearly killing Darth Vader, then for being both a literal and figurative colossus.

Samuel L. Jackson, film’s charismatic Old Yeller

July 22, 2017July 22, 2017 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Samuel L. Jackson is a yeller. A growler. Part human, part pouncing jungle cat.

He scares the shit out of everyone.

When I interviewed him way back when for “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” I noted: “Samuel L. Jackson enters a room the way you’d think Samuel L. Jackson would enter a room — with velocity, fury … ,” and there memory fails me. But fear not, because you can fill in the blanks, envisaging the long coat fluttering in a gust, his hello more of a guttural emission than a salutation.

I had to laugh.

But do we still laugh? The actor, bad, bald and raging, has a persona to maintain, and, yes, its tongue remains deeply in cheek. His is a cultivated act, swathed in black leather, engined by a scolding severity, and leavened by a scratched baritone laugh that could go either way: sinister or Santa Claus. (It’s almost always the former.)

Jackson, with a strenuous wink, even tries to intimidate us, if just a little, in his “What’s in your wallet?” Capital One commercials, some of which are humorously doctored by those who want their hero reliably profane. He prowls the screen with proprietary confidence, his spokedude’s blandishments quite uncompromising. (Use this card. Or else.)

He’s got it down: the self-parodic scowl and growl, eyes popping, mouth a lion’s maw, the apoplectic human megaphone. We’d have it no other way. He’s modern movies’ go-to badass, the man you call when, in the face of ineptitude and criminal folly, glowering gravitas and debonair menace are demanded.

That voice. The earth rumbles.

In this former film critic’s review of the 2008 thriller “Lakeview Terrace,” in which Jackson plays a toxic cop, I wrote that Jackson’s “roiling, rhythmic voice is an instrument of interrogation and intimidation. It barks, recoils, then rears up and roars. He has a rapper’s control of tone and timbre, turning passion and ire into a kind of sociopathic backbeat.”

In my take on his 2000 “Shaft” reboot, I went on:

“Samuel L. Jackson speaks like a building storm; his words have lightning jags in them.

“When he taunts his quarry, which he does with great frequency, his throat tightens, throttling syllables. His voice kicks up a few octaves until words sing with angry strain. Expletives fly in shrapnel sprays.

“‘What’s my name? What’s . . . my . . . name?’ shouts Jackson at a preening dope dealer as his pistol forges an elaborate imprint on the pusher’s cheek.

“In his crime-dude roles, in films like ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘The Negotiator,’ Jackson is pure gale-force attitude and wrath-of-God fury.”

Jackson’s breakthrough role, and arguably his most popular, is Jules Winnfield in “Pulp Fiction.” Slick in a bespoke black suit, head crowned with a Medusa nest of glistening Jheri curls, and with scary Bible verses at the ready, he’s all grooving fire and brimstone, an apocalyptic preacher-man with a very large gun and a very short fuse.

Jules showcased Jackson’s range, which is more faceted than the picture painted here of an implacable, one-note Angry Man. Jackson is a genius at outrage, explosive outbursts of verbiage and violence. But his Jules also revealed he’s an expert comedian, with a gift for brilliant badinage, not to mention a penchant for brooding, sometimes profound introspection. He’s proud but protean.

Jackson doesn’t need to yell to get our attention. His seething charisma is all it takes. It’s the aura of a star, some kind of supernova, that snags us in his thrall. He’s the real deal. Just don’t piss him off.

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