TANK GIRL

dMYD DVD

Starring Failure

Trailer

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A little d? Why? Even the automatic capitalization editor disagrees. Listen up, Microsoft Word flunky, I know you love a bad bullet point. Here’s everything that’s wrong with the motion picture adaptation of Tank Girl:

. The cover of Devo’s Girl You Want that starts the film.

.The opening sequence re-appropriates Jamie Hewlett’s original comic book art and spins it around a bit.

.‘Ice-T’ appears in the opening credits.

. There is a clear misunderstanding of almost every aspect of the source material.

. Lori Petty’s voice and accent in the role of Tank Girl.

. The concept.

. The setting. (A post-apocalyptic Australia)

. The back-story.

. The script.

. The costumes.

. In the opening visuals, Tank Girl is riding through the desert on a cow.

. The budget.

. The direction.

. The concept of the ‘Rippers’ (They’re genetically engineered Kangaroo soldiers, 38 times less impressive than this sounds.)

. The chiming rock guitars when Tank Girl removes her helmet for the first time.

. Jamie Hewlett’s sterile drawings of various scenes from the film.

. The prop design.

. The other actors.

. The early attempt at feminism through getting a man to take his clothes off.

. The fact that all this has happened in the first two minutes of the film.

. Tank Girl has an adorable family with small children.

. Her adopted daughter, whilst carving, says the wood ‘talks to her’.

. Tank Girl has been given a real name. It’s ‘Rebecca Buck’.

. Malcolm McDowell.

. Malcolm McDowell’s character trait consists of a love of hoarding water.

. The plot revolves around water. The film is essentially about water.

. Malcolm McDowell kills a subordinate in his first scene to show how evil he is.

. Malcolm McDowell extracts water from people’s bodies with a plastic bottle.

. The expression on another subordinate’s face when this happens. (‘Sergeant Small’)

. Sergeant Small.

. Malcolm McDowell walks on glass.

. Tank Girl lives in a big, normal looking house in the desert.

. Tank Girl’s mannerisms, words and general demeanor are extremely annoying.

. There are attempts to add emotional resonance.

. Tank Girl teaches children to swear.

. There is a scissor-centric, grunge-sound tracked attempt at a sex scene.

. The design of the soldiers.

. Tank Girl doesn’t seem to be perturbed by her house and family being attacked by a large group of soldiers.

. There are tit jokes whilst her family is massacred.

. A soldier says ‘Ah, shit.’ Before exploding.

. There is still a problem of tone.

. Tank Girl is useless and ineffectual.

. Tank Girl has a boyfriend.

. Tank Girl’s boyfriend is murdered and she says ‘No’.

. There is a slow motion sequence.

. The evil ‘Water and Power’ company attack the house in the desert with a jet.

. Tank Girl gets beaten up by some soldiers.

. Tank Girl exhibits more emotion when her cow gets shot than when her entire family is killed in front of her.

. The words ‘This is me unconscious’ appear on the screen.

. Tank Girl says ‘I like pain’.

. All the lines in the film.

. A soldier says ‘If I feel teeth, you feel lead’ when pressuring Tank Girl for a blow-job.

. The design of Malcolm McDowell’s room.

. Malcolm McDowell recites a poem about the number eight.

. Malcolm McDowell says ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

. Tank Girl doesn’t seem to care that all her friends and family are dead.

. The soundtrack.

. The boredom of watching the film.

. There are pop-culture references to Baywatch.

. The line ‘How’s the Jet, Jet?’

. Naomi Watts takes the film seriously and attempts to act well despite everything else about the film.

. The shower scene.

. One pen has run out in taking the notes up to this point.

. Gratuitous, but tame, lesbian titillation.

. Naomi Watt’s general awkwardness as she notices the rest of the film’s awfulness around her.

. ‘Shaft’ style music plays when Tank Girl sees the Tank for the first time.

. The Tank can talk.

. The Tank is a product of ‘Water and Power’.

. There are attempts at a plot.

. The plot is nonsensical, but not in an entertaining way.

. Naomi Watts begins to look genuinely upset and annoyed at having to act with Lori Petty.

. The cheap-looking Tank interior set.

. The film is slow and boring.

. The characters.

. Naomi Watt’s forced laughter at Tank Girl’s jokes.

. The humour.

. Naomi Watts tells Tank Girl how ‘edgy’ she is.

. THE PIPE – Malcolm McDowell’s main method of torture in the film is to place Tank Girl into a long pipe that gets smaller the longer it goes. It’s a long pipe. This is the most utterly implausible, ridiculous method of torture ever commited to film. The exact same sense of dread and discomfort could be produced by simply placing someone in small space, a box or a coffin. The idea of it being a long pipe is completely pointless.

. It is unclear why Malcolm McDowell wants Tank Girl kept prisoner.

. Tank Girl is ‘sassy’.

. Tank Girl’s insults towards Malcolm McDowell.

. Tank Girl’s insults towards Malcolm McDowell eventually degenerate into giving him the middle finger.

. Tank Girl says ‘I win’ after torture.

. ‘Water and Power’ have a lot of tanks, devaluing ‘the’ Tank.

. The design of the Rippers.

. Didgeridoo music.

. The Rippers fail to be frightening.

. Malcolm McDowell’s character is called ‘Kesslee’.

. The sequence where Tank Girl finally drives the Tank.

. There is an animated sequence presaged by Naomi Watts receiving a bump to the head.

. The animated sequence.

. Malcolm McDowell asks a doctor for a prognosis after just being given a prognosis.

. Malcolm McDowell’s ‘cybernetics expert’ says ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men wish they had the technology I have’.

. The time it takes to write this out.

. The doctor is killed for no reason.

. Naomi Watts is forced to find Tank Girl playing with a fish endearing and amusing.

. More characters.

. The acting.

. The montage.

. Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin’s complicity in the film being made and the making of the film.

. The Tank.

. The costume department’s attempts at replicating Tank Girl’s comic-book clothes.

. The Jet looks better than the Tank.

. The film’s running time.

. The design, concept and execution of the ‘Liquid Silver’ nightclub.

. The child prostitution.

. The CGI effects.

. The club’s dressing room design and dresses for its dancers make it look like the ‘Cyberdog’ clothes shop in Camden.

. The dressing up sequence.

. Tank Girl has safety pins on her dress.

.SOLE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE: Iggy Pop plays a pedophile who gets his hand impaled on a spiked ball. Tank Girl’s daughter then says ‘That’s what you get for being a perv.’

. ‘The Madam’, another inconsequential character, is introduced with a cartoon.

. Naomi Watts is forced to wear a colander on her head.

. The singing.

. The musical number.

. The dancing.

. The dance choreography.

. Tank Girl’s larking about results in her adopted daughter being kidnapped again.

. Naomi Watts is forced to recite expositional dialogue that the audience won’t care about because of the failings of the rest of the film.

. The Rippers live underground.

. Tank Girl is incarcerated in a room full of balls.

. The Rippers.

. One of the Rippers wears glasses.

. The Rippers are all thinly disguised African-Americans for some reason, perhaps a cynical attempt to appeal to a more ‘urban’ market.

. Ice-T takes the film and his performance seriously.

. The broad characterization.

. Stereotyping.

. The clichés.

. Booga says ‘totally negatory’.

. The slang.

. Booga calls DNA ‘NDA’. This is a joke.

. The non-talking Rippers have markedly poorer quality costumes than the talking ones.

. More attempts to form a plot.

. When Tank Girl attempts to infiltrate the enemy compound, Naomi Watts says

‘What are you doing? Those guys’ll mangle you!’

Tank Girl then replies ‘Jet, they’re men.’

. The infiltration sequence.

. The ‘male calendar’ sequence.

. The vehicle sequences.

. The comparison between the action in the comics and the action in the film.

. Tank Girl says ‘I’m too young for this shit.’

. Managing to make a girl jumping for a speeding truck look unexciting.

. THE PIPE AGAIN – The pipe returns. This time, water is slowly poured down it, thus steadily rising around Tank Girl’s adopted daughter in an attempt to drown her. Again, this is completely and utterly pointless. Anything else could have the same effect; a box with a leaky water pipe, a coffin and a kettle, a puddle. The scene defies all rational human thought, and is wonderful in the sense that it was ever even filmed.

. The adopted daughter shouts ‘REBECCCAAAAAA’

. When the Rippers jump.

. The Rippers love vegetables.

. The Rippers don’t use guns.

. The Beatnik Ripper.

. The Beatnik Ripper’s poem.

. The other Rippers.

. The name ‘Ripper’.

. The ‘praying’ sequence.

. Naomi Watts getting dry-humped by a man in a kangaroo costume.

. Tank Girl seems to have forgotten about her kidnapped adopted daughter.

. The attempt at ‘Missile Boobs’.

. The attempt at spirituality and mysticism.

. Booga.

. Everything Booga says.

. Ice-T says ‘Motherfucking Kesslee killed Prophet.’

. When the Rippers howl.

. Things happening for absolutely no reason other than the director mistakenly thinking that they look cool.

. Ice-T rapping about the plot.

. The parachute sequence.

. The budget running out.

. Ice-T finally respecting Naomi Watts because she calls him deformed.

. The plan to get into the enemy base.

. The enemy base.

. Malcolm McDowell says ‘ Shoving a small innocent girl down the pipe and then letting her drown… is that wrong?’

. The Rippers have body armour.

. The Ripper’s body armour.

. The ‘courageous Beatnik’ sequence.

. The Beatnik’s death.

. The sax solo that plays at the Beatnik’s death.

. The fight sequence.

. By this point Hewlett’s pictures don’t match up with the events in the film.

. Malcolm McDowell’s plan and motivations make no sense.

. Malcolm McDowell’s CGI head.

. The concept of Malcolm McDowell having a CGI head.

. The science behind Malcolm McDowell’s CGI head.

. The design of Malcolm McDowell’s CGI head.

. The design of Malcolm McDowell’s robotic arm.

.The fight scene between Tank Girl and Malcolm McDowell.

. Tank Girl is willing to sacrifice her adopted daughter rather than admit defeat.

. Tank Girl says ‘I’d rather her die than live as your slave.’

. The film’s dubious moral message.

. The Tank is full of cans of beer in a world devoid of water.

. Malcolm McDowell says ‘COME ON!’ to the Tank.

. Naomi Watt’s final exchange with her captor.

. The ending animation.

. The ending.

. Wasting thirteen pages of notebook paper.

.The fact that there are 191 things that are wrong with this film and in all likelihood more that are missed on a first viewing and/or are a matter of opinion. In addition to this these are only surface details and any more looking into the movie with a background in film theory or basic human storytelling ability would inevitably lead to more problems. It’s in all likelihood the worst film that anyone has ever seen.

Go on, don’t watch it.

TRON LEGACY

dMYD

Starring Jeff Bridges

Trailer

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Gus Van Sant directed a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho where he copied every frame of the original film to the letter, shooting a completely faithful shot-for-shot simulacrum because he’s a fat, demented voyeur with a penchant for filming incestuous Frenchwoman ripping their clitorises off with household appliances. So how faithful should you be to the work of an auteur? Tron Legacy isn’t a remake, but it may as well be; only John Lassister and two dogs who walked in by mistake watched the original in 1985 and the film’s subsequently sunk to a level of public recognition somewhere between Peter Sutcliffe and The The. Tron’s also not strictly the work of an auteur, but since no one can remember the director’s name and he didn’t do anything else of note, it almost fits the bill. A stark but striking experiment of emptiness, the 1982 model is near impossible to watch today, being devoid of emotion, narrative interest and slower than Peter Andre. It sits as a relic of technological progress, the first feeble jump to the CGI domination that invigorates/degrades every high-price lump of drama you’ve seen over the past ten years. No Tron, no Toy Story 3, no Tron, no Clash of the Titans. A mixed Legacy, rather like its sequel. HAHAHAHAHAHAA.

If the second Tron’s aim was to emulate the original in every conceivable way it’s succeeded admirably, producing a technologically updated 2.0 that improves visually and orally on its predecessor in every neon-coated, 3D-gouging manner, but then 28 years of dicking about with a mouse mat will do that. Where the sequel is most faithful is in its unflinching depiction of utterly unreal, implausible human relationships and dialogue, with even the ever-excellent Jeff Bridges failing to instill feeling into a script beeped out by a processor. Three decades have done wonders for the design, graphics and spectacle, but nothing for the words written on the script; it’s the same empty, un-relatable cack-talk that was peddled out in 1982 underneath a veneer of progress, even though this time it’s meant to revolve around a troubled father-son tete a tete and the emergence of a digital utopia. Eye twisting to look at and beautifully realized, it’s a worthwhile addition to a film with diminished horizons in terms of basic human emotions, and as such Tron Legacy is truly the child of its 80s forebear; an impressive, humourless spectacle, one point removed from all the other soulless money-vacuums playing the in the multiplex. Sweet light cycles though, wicked.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

dMYD DVD

Starring Timothy Bottoms

Trailer

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Looking back, you can sugarcoat or flambé, make up your own story or burn off the memories to present that gosh-darned past in all its life-wrenching detail. Peter Bogdanovich takes the second path, revising teenage years and fifties cinema to reveal the reality that was missing from them first time around, a world of feelings, failures and fear. Ingeniously framed and shot as a picture of the time, the film contrasts the harsh teenage years of its leads with the sweet-natured nostalgia of the John Wayne distractions they worship, the deserted pool-halls and general stores of Anarene acting as a wasteland as barren and unfriendly as the Duke’s beloved cattle trails. Constantly surprising, full of small-scale twists and throbs, the simplistic nature of the narrative shields a subtle empathy with the teenage foibles that ensue, from the sweet-natured innocence of Sonny Crawford to the sociopathic longing of town-nympho Jacy Farrow. Often compared to the early work of big fat fatty Orson Welles, Bogdanovich’s mentor/waste-disposal unit, because of its use of unknown actors and uh… black and white, it nonetheless never attempts to hit those giddy genius-heights that served Welles so well to his pauper’s grave. But then again, neither has anything else in the last 69 years, except Avatar, obviously. (89^th Special Edition Out Now, Blu-Ray, 3D, Something) It’s a very different last picture, more subtle and maybe more affecting; like many of its kind it’s a film about life repeatedly kicking childhood in the hope, but the understated nature of its performances and direction go some way to building a truthful picture-postcard of a time that all too often fades into the fuzzy comfort of nostalgia as the years go by. Watch it and remind yourself; times have always been hard. It’s why the good bits are so good.

Yes, Timothy Bottoms is the lead actor’s real name. It’s probably why you’ve never heard of him.

MACHETE

dMYD

Starring Danny Trejo

Trailer

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Progress is an ebbing, churning cycle of death and rebirth, tossing aside established concepts and lumps of history in its wake and laughing, always laughing long and hard into the eternal dusk. Machete’s a B-Movie, and back in the days before you were thinking and crying and stuff that meant that it would be a back-up feature for an A-movie, aka the thing people came to see starring Cary Grant. A filler, a distraction, an extra bang for a buck, it was never expected to match the quality of the a-list and very momentarily-distracting it was too. We don’t have them anymore, progress having warped cinema to the point where people don’t get any extra entertainment for their huge wads of cash, unless you count the same Simon Pegg trailer played TWICE IN THE SPACE OF EIGHT MINUTES. So Machete’s not a B-movie, it can’t be, ‘B-Movie’ isn’t a genre. Except it is now, and it’s also run back as a concept because people don’t pay to watch movies anymore. The internet superpowers of whistle blowing and freedom have led to entertainment having the cash value ripped out of it by force, a dizzying prospect for the way we rate things that won’t be fully rationalized until someone figures out a way to entirely monetize the internet in 2013 and it’s back to torment as usual. You didn’t put anything into watching Machete save time, but karma will forgive you because Robert Rodriguez forgot to try as well, and he was making the damn thing. Piss-dribbling scripting, grunty acting and a rambling nonsensical narrative are all fun parts of the B-movie tradition: Robert De Niro and a bizarre fascination with Mexican border politics aren’t. The boredom-sponsored border patrol segments make up the good eighty percent of movie that isn’t a Danny Trejo’s stab-party, whilst De Niro makes his 85^th shambling, dead-eyed cash-grab run-through of the century, further dashing his credentials against some jagged rocks until he comes to resemble Ben Kingsley, the walking phone. These bits are terrible, and not in an enjoyable way. The parts where Jessica Alba showers and Danny Trejo eliminates every sentient creature living in the year 2010 are terribly incredible; exactly what you didn’t pay any money to see. It’s just a shame that Robert Rodriguez seems to have corkscrewed this knowledge out of his talent.

YO YO GIRL COP

dMYD DVD

Starring J-Pop Sensation Aya Matsuura

Trailer

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DUE DATE

dMYD

Starring Robert Downey Jr.

Trailer

M… Or D if there’s some sort of brown bag full of green money available.

Blame Simon Cowell. One man’s insane, successful crusade to place his own wealth above the cultural interests of an entire country has led to an interesting/terrifying national craze: steadily redefining the boundary of what ‘great’ means! It’s a good thing – by lying every Saturday night in front of an audience of millions, one man has managed to pick up the goalposts of cultural achievement and throw them eighty-six thousand miles out of the stadium and into outer space, creating a newer, better world. Things that were once ‘good’ are now ‘great’. Things that were ‘great’ are ‘genius’. ‘The Hangover’ was ‘the funniest film of the year’. ‘Due Date’ is ‘the funniest film since The Hangover’. And so it continues; money has finally triumphed over reality itself and it’s laughing all the way to the bank. Due Date is alright. It’s funny, in bits. People laughed. People were silent a lot as well. People checked their phones, and kissed, and wandered off to the toilet. During the funniest film of the year. It’s not of course; it’s a carefully constructed piece of play-safe cinema cash-grab with likeable actors and overblown set-pieces. But money says its ‘great’ and damn-hell-ass do we love money; money says don’t care that the characters aren’t well drawn enough for us to care about them, money tells us that it doesn’t matter that the film’s not funny enough to make it work as pure comedy. It’s fine. It’s alright. Which, in this brave new world, means it’s the BEST. FIVE GOLD STARS I LOVED IT FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY THE PERFECT WEEKEND TREAT YOU’LL LAUGH UNTIL TEARS RUN AWAY FROM YOUR FACE AND TAKE YOUR LOVED ONES HOSTAGE IN A GIANT TANK DESIGNED TO HOUSE TEARS AND DROWN FAMILILES BUT THEY WON’T CARE BECAUSE THEY’LL BE LAUGHING SO HARD EIGHT THUMBS UP