While the name “The Horrible Crowes” may sound like more appropriate nomenclature for Russell Crowe’s band, it isn’t that.  It’s instead a side project of Brian Fallon, who is the frontman of The Gaslight Anthem, a band that blends the sounds of Springsteen and Social Distortion and rapidly fading youth in equal measure.  I am, most absolutely, a fan — and this project is more of the same, really.  The Horrible Crowes is supposed to be a bit softer than The Gaslight Anthem, but it’s not what I’d call mellow.  Even when the music is more ballad-y than punk-y, it’s still got some real bite. 

To say nothing of the lyrical content.  Of all the movies I saw and books I read throughout 2011, I don’t think there was a line I immediately related to and wish I’d written quite like this one:

“I age by years at the mention of your name.”

And then there’s this one, which directly captures the wreckage that remains after emotional strife, and I maybe shouldn’t be so eager to mention I also find eminently relatable:

“I don’t recognize myself, I’m not the man you love, behold the hurricane.”

Anyway, enough talking.  Go listen up.

@jonnyabomb

Hell, it may as well be the song of the week.

@jonnyabomb

Clint Eastwood, as The Outlaw Josey Wales:

“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.”

@jonnyabomb

My personal top ten movies of 2011 is, finally, around the corner.  The Oscar nominations are getting announced soon so I better just throw down my list before then.  I was holding out because there are some key 2011 movies I wasn’t able to see in time for list-making, but enough is enough, I guess.  It’s January 22nd already.

So this is a preliminary post to let you know where I’m coming from, then we’ll do all the rest tomorrow. 

For the record: My personal top 20 of 2010, from last year.

P.S. As always, I do this under the assumption that anyone cares, which is a leap I have no choice but to take.

Movies Released In 2011 & Seen By Me

1.   13 Assassins

2.   30 Minutes Or Less

3.   The Adjustment Bureau

4.   American: The Bill Hicks Story

5.   Attack The Block

6.   Bad Teacher

7.   Barney’s Version

8.   Battle: Los Angeles

9.   Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels Of A Tribe Called Quest

10.        Beginners

11.        Black Death

12.        Blackthorn

13.        Born To Be Wild 3D

14.        Bridesmaids

15.        Burke & Hare

16.        The Caller

17.        Captain America: The First Avenger

18.        Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

19.        Cedar Rapids

20.        Colombiana

21.        Conan The Barbarian

22.        Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

23.        Cowboys & Aliens

24.        Creature

25.        A Dangerous Method

26.        The Descendants

27.        Detective Dee & The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame

28.        The Devil’s Double

29.        Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark

30.        Drive

31.        Drive Angry 3D

32.        Everything Must Go

33.        Fast Five

34.        Fright Night

35.        The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

36.        The Green Hornet

37.        The Guard

38.        Hall Pass

39.        The Hangover: Part 2

40.        Hanna

41.        Henry’s Crime

42.        Hobo With A Shotgun

43.        Horrible Bosses

44.        Hugo

45.        I Saw The Devil

46.        The Ides Of March

47.        Insidious

48.        Ironclad

49.        Kill The Irishman

50.        The King’s Speech

51.        Kung Fu Panda 2

52.        The Last Circus

53.        Last Night

54.        Limitless

55.        The Lion King 3D

56.        Little Big Soldier

57.        Margin Call

58.        Meek’s Cutoff

59.        Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

60.        Moneyball

61.        The Muppets

62.        Our Idiot Brother

63.        Page One: Inside The New York Times

64.        Passion Play

65.        Paul

66.        Peep World

67.        Rango

68.        [REC]2

69.        Red Hill

70.        Red State

71.        The Reef

72.        Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

73.        The Smurfs

74.        Soul Surfer

75.        Source Code

76.        Stake Land

77.        Sucker Punch

78.        Super

79.        Super 8

80.        Terri

81.        The Thing

82.        Thor

83.        The Tree Of Life

84.        The Trip

85.        Trollhunter

86.        Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

87.        A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

88.        Viva Riva!

89.        The Ward

90.        Warrior

91.        The Way Back

92.        Win Win

93.        X-Men: First Class

94.        Young Adult

95.        Your Highness

And, for contrast…

Movies Released In 2010 & Seen By Me

1. Daybreakers
2. Youth In Revolt
3. The Book Of Eli
4. 44 Inch Chest
5. Legion
6. Saint John Of Las Vegas
7. Frozen
8. The Wolfman
9. Shutter Island
10. Cop Out
11. The Crazies
12. A Prophet
13. Defendor
14. Alice In Wonderland
15. Brooklyn’s Finest
16. Green Zone
17. She’s Out Of My League
18. Greenberg
19. City Island
20. Hot Tub Time Machine
21. How To Train Your Dragon
22. Clash Of The Titans
23. Date Night
24. Death At A Funeral
25. Kick-Ass
26. The Losers
27. Harry Brown
28. Please Give
29. Iron Man 2
30. Casino Jack & The United States Of Money
31. Robin Hood
32. MacGruber
33. Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
34. Survival Of The Dead
35. Get Him To The Greek
36. Splice
37. The A-Team
38. Winter’s Bone
39. Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work
40. Toy Story 3
41. Cyrus
42. The Killer Inside Me
43. Knight & Day
44. Grown Ups
45. Restrepo
46. Despicable Me
47. Predators
48. The Kids Are All Right
49. Winnebago Man
50. Valhalla Rising
51. Inception
52. Salt
53. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore
54. Dinner For Schmucks
55. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist & Rebel
56. Smash His Camera
57. Get Low
58. The Other Guys
59. The Disappearance Of Alice Creed
60. Middle Men
61. The Expendables
62. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
63. Piranha 3D
64. The Switch
65. Centurion
66. The American
67. Machete
68. Easy A
69. The Town
70. Leaves Of Grass
71. Douchebag
72. Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’Hoole
73. Let Me In
74. The Social Network
75. Casino Jack
76. Jackass 3D
77. Hereafter
78. Monsters
79. Due Date
80. Megamind
81. Four Lions
82. 127 Hours
83. Unstoppable
84. Faster
85. Black Swan
86. Exit Through The Gift Shop
87. I’m Still Here
88. The Tourist
89. TRON: Legacy
90. True Grit

And here, for good measure, are the top 10 LISTS of 2010.  (Not sure I’ll be doing that this time around, but it was funny once.)

Anyway, see you in this space tomorrow!

@jonnyabomb

With the news, reported upon by the New York Times, no less, that 2012 will bring us an X-rated Bridesmaids parody, let’s just cut out the middle man and list up the other movie titles from 2011 that are ripest for the porno picking.  These titles may be blatantly obvious, a little intentional even, or else they’re easy enough for you to imagine the naughty version with just a little bit of dirty-imagination grease.

(Alphabetized and posted as pictures for your viewing pleasure. You can click through on about half of them to read my reviews, within which I probably mentioned the pornographic implications inherent in the titles.  That’s just the way this ill mind works.)

TROLLHUNTER

Sorry.

@jonnyabomb

Two things you should probably know; 1) This piece was originally featured on CHUD.com, and 2) It was written very soon after the series finale of Lost aired, which will help you better understand the first joke…

So there’s this island, right? 

Hey wait – where you going?  Come back! 

Thanks.  Anyway, Survival Of The Dead takes place mostly on an island, where the dead are coming back to life and there are a couple different factions warring over how to rule the island, and there are farm animals on the island, and a brunette who seems to have some connection with a dark horse, and a crazy-eyed old guy who knows how he wants to run the island, and shootouts keep happening, but really people, I’m still not describing Lost.

Survival Of The Dead is the most recent zombie movie from genre monolith George A. Romero.  Survival Of The Dead is somewhat hilariously-titled (spoiler warning: the dead don’t survive – kinda by definition) and the humor is mostly on purpose there and in the rest of the movie.  For a bleak zombie movie about the end of the world, it’s got a pretty great sense of humor.  I really shouldn’t be calling it a zombie movie I guess, since they’re not once called zombies here.  The word is “deadheads,” which at least has nothing to do with hippies. 

George Romero is one of those directors whose movies had some part in making me who I am, so I’ll always be rooting for his new stuff to be good.  He’s a trailblazer and an iconoclast, and I would be hard-pressed to speak too critically over anything he’s done.  I’m happy that a bunch of people seem to like this one, and I’d never begrudge anyone their enjoyment of a George Romero movie.
So can I just say that Survival Of The Dead is pretty far from my favorite George Romero movie, and leave it there?

No?  Well before I get into it, can I at least conjure good memories by naming the contenders?  My favorite would be somewhere between Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead (choosing between them would be like choosing between A Fistful Of Dollars and The Good The Bad & The Ugly – one started the whole thing, the other escalates it to perfection), and I also have a major soft spot for Knightriders, which is one of Romero’s most personal movies and has probably his best ensemble cast of his whole filmography.

Survival Of The Dead is not as good, or as personal, of any of those three movies.  This is a bit of an understatement.

The story concerns a band of corrupt National Guardsmen who grab an armored car full of money and head to a coastal island where a pair of Irish immigrants are locked in a lifelong mortal struggle.  The island is called Plum, but it would be fair to call it the Island Of Bad Accents.  Really, the Leprechaun movies have better accent work.  The movie’s main conflict is between the O’Flynns and the Muldoons, who always hated each other but now are at war over the problem of zombies.  I mean deadheads.  The O’Flynns want to take the typical approach, a bullet to the head, while the Muldoons want to keep them chained up until some kind of cure is discovered.  It’s an interesting idea, and like the best Romero, it has not-so-vague socio-political implications, but it never really pans out.

One problem is that Romero’s movies are starting to suffer from casting unknowns.  That’s a dangerous business – sometimes you end up with a Ken Foree and it’s great, but other times you end up with people who aren’t up to the task of carrying a movie.  Of the three principals in Survival Of The Dead, Romero neo-regular Alan Van Sprang is likable if not thoroughly believably badass as “Nicotine” Crockett, whereas the film’s ingénue, Kathleen Munroe, is not nearly memorable enough (and a little too reminiscent of the young Mick Jagger), and the film’s true protagonist, Kenneth Welsh as the Irish John Locke, Patrick O’Flynn, brings the whole enterprise too close to Darby O’Gill territory to be effective in the way Romero needs him to be. 

The other problem is the movie’s stilted and cramped cinematography.  Romero’s movies are about human nature and end-of-the-world philosophy – they yearn to be impressively widescreen, or at least to feel more epic and affecting.  Survival Of The Dead is very poorly-shot – the action choreography and character placement are slapdash, often missing several moments that would make it feel more fluid and comprehensible.  It’s not worthy of the work of the low-budget innovator who made Dawn Of The Dead, and it’s not at all a good showcase for cinematographer Adam Swica.  This movie looks like a million bucks, and speaking literally, that’s not a good thing to say about a movie.

All right, I’m done bagging on Survival Of The Dead now.  As I said, I’d rather think nice thoughts about everything Romero.  So let me say that there are a couple unique and genuinely haunting images spread sparingly throughout, and if you’re an aficionado of this sort of thing, you’ll at least appreciate the several innovative zombie-killing gags.  (Romero literally invented that particular pleasure of films, and he’s still the best at it.)  And I’m a fan of anything I’ve never seen before in movies, so here’s a short list to end the article of all the things Survival Of The Dead has which no other movie anywhere else has to offer:

• An Asian gentleman sitting on a rooftop and fishing for zombies.
• A zombie lady riding a horse.
• A zombie lady biting a horse.
• A bunch of zombies pulling a cowboy’s butt off.
• A zombie pulling someone’s scalp off.
• A zombie taking a bullet to the head so that their head explodes and then the scalp lands on the now-empty neck.
• A lesbian soldier introduced as she publicly whacks off in a jeep.  Don’t ask don’t tell!

I feel confident that this list will let you make the final decision as to whether you want to see this movie or not.

@jonnyabomb

P.S.  Here is the German poster for the movie, which is very German and thus extremely scary:

@jonnyabomb

Cold, cold, cold.  That’s all I hear about, the second the thermometer drops below 40.  But at the moment, all the complaints are pretty valid.  It actually is very cold in New York, 16 degrees worth, as evidenced by the fact that my scrotum is tucking itself up in my grundle.  That’s gross, so it’s a good time to change the subject and look at the greatest Winter Movies ever made.  There aren’t as many of them as you’d think — probably because the majority of folks who make the movies live in Los Angeles and they don’t have the same meteorogical issues to ponder.

So what makes a great Winter Movie? 

First of all, forget the holidays – we’re well beyond all that happy-joy-joy nonsense.  A Winter movie isn’t about celebrating, quite the opposite in fact, and it probably doesn’t end happily.  A great Winter Movie may or may not have snow in it, although all ten of my choices do, so maybe that is a criteria after all. 

OK, a great Winter Movie convincingly depicts snow.  That’s number one.  But it goes much deeper than that. 

At heart, a great Winter Movie must make you feel COLD.  Just watching it, regardless of season, will make you feel cold in your bones (and aforementioned other parts.)  A great Winter Movie leaves you lost and snowblind and deeply suspect at the very concept that springtime will ever come.

The following ten (give or take) are the movies that I chose.  If you have your own suggestions, I’d love to hear ‘em…

P.S.  Having seen Joe Carnahan’s bruising, brutal new film The Grey, be forewarned that this list will very soon be either amended, addended, or extended.

_______________________________________________________________________________

10. Encounters At The End Of The World (2008)

In keeping with his absolute lack of fear at jumping right into foreign situations, the iconoclastic director Werner Herzog made this documentary about daily life at McMurdo Base in Antarctica.  As with every one of Herzog’s documentaries I’ve seen, there are moments of bizarre eccentricity and moments of extreme sadness and sometimes both at the same time.  Herzog makes profound observations about an isolated culture made up of people who have abandoned the rest of the world, and captures otherworldly images that will blow your mind.  (The underwater footage literally looks like life in another galaxy.)  The must-see moment in this movie happens when a penguin goes insane and heads off alone to certain death.   When Herzog warns you at the beginning that this ain’t no March Of The Penguins, he isn’t kidding.

9. Never Cry Wolf (1983)

This movie is based on a book by Farley Mowat, a famous naturalist, and it’s about a scientist who is sent to the Arctic to study wolves who have been [wrongly] blamed for a drop in caribou numbers.  It stars Charles Martin Smith (American Graffiti, The Untouchables, Starman), Brian Dennehy, and a bunch of wolves.  I haven’t seen this movie in more than twenty years (holy crap!) and still it makes my list.  That’s some memorable cold.

8. Orca (1977)

I’ve written about Orca before, in the context of its intentions as a post-Jaws horror movie, but Orca’s major cinematic contribution is less its ability to scare you, and more its ability to make you shiver in the literal sense.  The movie is set on the wintery coasts of the Canadian North, and killer whale or no, these people are getting in the water.  Crazy!  The feeling gets more frigid as the movie’s action moves away from civilization.  As star Richard Harris pursues the vengeance-crazed killer whale further and further north, the scenery goes white and looming ice floes are as dangerous as the primary threat. Things don’t end well for the human half of the cast, so be forewarned:  this list gets ever bleaker from here on out.

7. Fargo (1996)

One of the touchstone movies of the 1990s, this movie probably needs little introduction.  If you love movies, you’re probably a Coen Brothers fan, and if you’re a Coen Brothers fan, you’ve seen this one.  It’s set in Minnesota in the dead of winter, and while serious critics can go on and on about the originality of the screenplay and of the choice of a pregnant police chief as protagonist, all I think of when I think back to this movie is “BRRRR.”  That refers to the cold existential state of criminality displayed in the movie, sure, but mostly to the physical reality that a state of constant snow and ice presents.  Essential Winter Movie scene: Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), frustrated and furious, venting his blind rage on his iced-over windshield with an ice scraper.

6. Let The Right One In (2008)

Another film set in the dead of winter, only this one takes place in Sweden, where I’m not sure if they even get any other season.  Have you heard about this movie?  It made just about everyone’s year-end best list back in 2008.  It really is that good – atmospheric and affecting.  It’s a story about a young boy, tormented at school, who meets an unusual little girl who moves into his apartment complex with her much-older companion.  Safe to say, she isn’t what she seems.  (I won’t reveal it here, but what she is becomes clear fairly quickly, although you’ll never guess how the story develops.)  I feel like a movie that’s this good about showing the breath escape from a just-killed person on a freezing night is guaranteed a place on this list.

Honorable Mention: The American remake, Let Me In, from 2010.  Nearly as chilly as its inspiration.

5. Groundhog Day (1993)

Yeah, it’s a comedy.  There’s a happy ending.  Am I breaking my own rules here?  Maybe – but remember how dark this particular comedy gets in the middle, even if it never relinquishes its hold on hilarious.  Quick synopsis, as if anyone needs it:  Bill Murray, the most profound of comedians, plays a nasty, self-obsessed weatherman who finds himself reliving the most boring day of his life over and over in a quaint town in Pennsylvania.  At one point, the monotony gets to him so much that he decides to take his own life.  Which doesn’t work, don’t worry, but let’s see something that dark make its way into a Sandra Bullock comedy.  Won’t happen.  No one else has the guts.  Bill Murray’s never been afraid of the big questions in his comedy, which is why he’s been so successful in recent years in more dramatic roles.   Additionally, Groundhog Day is linked to an earlier wintry Bill Murray movie, Scrooged, in a fairly depressing way – both movies feature Bill Murray encountering a homeless person who has died from ailments related to prolonged exposure to cold.  In Scrooged, the homeless guy is literally frozen, but in Groundhog Day, it’s arguably more upsetting since it plays out in a more realistic way.  For a while there, Bill Murray was uniquely concerned about not letting the homeless freeze to death.  It’s not a very humorous concern, but it sure the hell is something we could all stand to think about in this weather.

4. A Simple Plan (1998)

When people think of Sam Raimi, they are either thinking of the Evil Dead movies or the Spider-Man movies.  It takes a moment to recall that he had an intriguing transitional period between those two “trilogies,” where he started to merge his incredible horror-cinema skills with a more mainstream sensibility.  A Simple Plan is the best film from that period, adapted from a novel by Scott Smith and starring Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda, and a hardly-recognizable Billy Bob Thornton.  A trio of small-town guys find an abandoned airplane full of cash in the middle of the woods, and decide to keep the money.  Things go bad.  It’s better the less you know going in, so I’ll ruin no plot details – just please note that we’re now in the top five bleakest Winter Movies ever, so you know I mean seriously bad.

3. The Shining (1980)

A Winter Movie rises in greatness proportionally to the level of movie star who is frozen solid at the end, and in The Shining, one of the hugest movie stars of all time is frozen solid.  This movie needs no introduction and it’s best remembered,  fairly, for its terrifying horror imagery.  (The moment with the highest pants-pooping potential, in my opinion, is this one.)  But beyond its status as one of the most memorable horror movies ever made, let’s not forget its Winter status. Jack and his family are cooped up in that spooky hotel all winter – it’s the season, even before the ghosts, that turns him into an unfriendly lumberjack.

2. The Great Silence (1968)

If you’ve seen Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, congratulations!  You’ve seen the greatest movie ever.  But even if you’ve seen every Western that Leone made (which you ought to), you’ve only scratched the surface of the vast reserve of wonderfulness that is Italian Westerns.  Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence is among the best-regarded of those movies – it’s about a mute gunslinger that tries to help a small community who have been besieged by vicious criminals led by the ever-disturbing Klaus Kinski.  And it all takes place on a wooded frontier blanketed with snow – even the horses have a hell of a time getting anywhere.  The Great Silence has probably THE down ending of all time, and the score by Ennio Morricone (already on this list for his contributions to Orca) is one of the most haunting I’ve ever heard.  If you think you can handle it, then I couldn’t recommend this movie any more highly.

1. The Thing (1982)

Skip the shite remake, with all its CGI and sound stages.  This right here is the G.O.A.T.  Accept no substitutes, or more specifically, beware all imitations. 

What can be said, at this point? John Carpenter remade a sci-fi classic by his hero, Howard Hawks, and arguably, he beat it. It’s still a brilliant set-up – a malicious shape-shifting alien being plagues twelve guys manning a research station in Antarctica – and the follow-through is equally brilliant, between the direction by Carpenter, the imagery by cinematographer Dean Cundey, the effects by Rob Bottin, the score by Ennio Morricone (him again!), and the eclectic ensemble cast of character actors (some you’ve seen before; some who were never seen again), led by Kurt Russell and the legendary Keith David.  The end result is the greatest movie T.K. Carter was ever affiliated with NOT named Doctor Detroit.  It’s arguably Carpenter’s masterpiece.  It’s a classic in science fiction, a classic in horror, a classic study in isolation and paranoia, and it’d be all of those things even without that remarkable ending, which is legendarily, chillingly, ambiguous. Carpenter has said that he has the answer to the famous question in that ending, and naturally I have my own take on it – what’s yours? See the movie (again) and let’s hear your opinions!

@jonnyabomb

Today we celebrate a great American.  Oh totally, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but also: John Carpenter, one of my very favorite filmmakers of all time.  Here’s something I wrote on February 11th, 2009: 

I recently received in the mail the limited edition 2-disc score album for John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China.  It’s a limited pressing:  There are only 3000 of them.  That means that, if you want one of your own, you had better get on it, and come back to read the rest of this essay afterwards.

Now to the remaining readers:  What does my revelation that I now own this artifact mean? 

Well, it means that I am a person who cares to own the soundtrack to Big Trouble In Little China, which will tell you either of two things:  that I am a super-hip underground electronic music artist (to whom Carpenter’s scores are hugely, weirdly influential), or that I am just a person who loves the movie Big Trouble In Little China THAT much. 

I won’t leave you hanging.  It’s because I love the movie a lot.  I get the sense that I’m not alone in the realm of the internet.  I could qualify that love; I could add a postscript that I like to write to movie scores and instrumental music, or go on and on about the importance of John Carpenter’s work on the landscape of popular culture, but look, none of that is going to get me laid in time for Valentine’s Day Weekend.  It’s what it is, and so shall it ever be. 

John Carpenter’s most acknowledged classics are Halloween and The Thing, and possibly Escape From New York.  Beyond that, the idea of where the rest of Carpenter’s movies fit within the realm of canon seems to be debated.  Not by me, mind you – I firmly believe that the man’s filmmaking mojo was untouchable from at least the release of Assault On Precinct 13 (1976) to that of They Live (1988).  That’s one hell of a run!

It hardly seems arguable to me that, as long as there is an auteur theory, John Carpenter should get his rightful due from the highbrow film establishment as one of the luminaries of the last thirty years.  The reasons why he doesn’t get revered in the way that contemporaries like Spielberg and Scorsese do is because, like Michael Mann, Carpenter’s best-known work came a little later than theirs, and, unlike all of them, all of Carpenter’s work is in the less reputable genres of horror, action, and science fiction.  Of course, the auteur theory is generally a flawed one:  Carpenter’s films wouldn’t be what they are without the contributions of many writers, co-writers, actors, cinematographers, even other composers.  All the same, here’s the test:  Pick up on any sequence – even a single shot – from a John Carpenter film at random, and odds are it wouldn’t take long to identify it as a John Carpenter film.  His films are united by a look, a sound, a vibe, that other movies could never have.

Of course, this perspective didn’t spring on me immediately.  I was to formulate that grandiose opinion much later on in my movie-watching development.  To follow a director that closely, you have to start with one movie, and for me, at first, there was Big Trouble In Little China.  It started out as a “big brother” movie – you know, the ones you’re not supposed to watch as a kid, but finally get to anyway, when the right influence relents.  My friend Jay Roberts and I slipped into the basement den where his older brother and his buddies were watching it, and we hid behind his chair, until he noticed us there, and actually let us watch the rest.  I was ten.  That was huge. 

Carpenter has called the movie “an action-adventure-comedy Kung Fu ghost story monster movie,” which is not only accurate, but everything a ten-year-old boy with a big imagination wants from a movie.  Also, its main character is a trucker, which is what I wanted to grow up to be.  (Weird, true fact.)  It’s the definition of a cult film – no one will ever classify or study Big Trouble In Little China as an important or classic movie (yours truly excepted), but when pressed, many would admit that this is the kind of joint they’d much rather be watching on a Friday night.

Okay, so real quick for the few who haven’t yet had the pleasure: 

Jack Burton (played by Kurt Russell, the DeNiro to Carpenter’s Scorsese, this time out doing a hit-and-miss John Wayne impersonation) is a trucker who is owed some gambling money by his old friend, San Francisco Chinatown restaurateur Wang Chi (played by Dennis Dun, very likable).  Before paying up, Wang asks Jack if he will accompany him to the airport, where he is picking up his fiancée.  At the airport, the girl is kidnapped by street thugs, since she is the rare Chinese girl who has green eyes.  To rescue the girl, Jack and Wang have to venture into the Chinatownunderworld, and to face its overlord, David Lo Pan, played by the busy character actor James Hong in a seriously immortal performance.  I’m not kidding, it’s unforgettable.  If for no other reason, watch the movie for this guy.

In a shocking dual role, Lo Pan is a wizened old husk of a man, but also a hundreds-year-old ghost warlord demon who is cursed and who can only become flesh-and-blood again by marrying the girl with green eyes.  In addition to a small army of fake cops, cheesy gang members, and kung fu warriors, Lo Pan has three supernatural enforcers, The Three Storms (Thunder, Rain, and Lightning), who will look familiar to anyone lucky enough to have seen Shogun Assassin.  And he has a couple monsters too – The Guardian, which is a floating blob covered with eyeballs, and The Wild Man, which is basically a werewolf, only Asian (and therefore probably my favorite character in the entire movie).  Wang brings in some allies too, best of all being the excellently named local wizard Egg Shen — played by Victor Wong, in the film’s other legendary performance.  A post-Porky’s, pre-Sex In The City Kim Cattrall is in the movie too, but mostly just to run rapid neo-Hawks dialogue with Kurt Russell in a gratifyingly anti-romantic subplot.  No kid wants to see Jack Burton ride off at the end with some lady riding shotgun in the Porkchop Express.

It’s a kitchen sink kind of a movie, obviously – or more accurately, a Chinese buffet of a movie.  Which is some of the most fun you can have.  Twenty-some years later, I can surely see where the corniness lives, most obviously in the unfortunate sculpting of most of the haircuts present.  But overall, it still works for me, almost as much as it did when I was ten.  I’m still struck by the energy of the thing.  If I wanted to be halfway pretentious about it, I might make the assertion that Big Trouble In Little China was the first action movie of the video-game era (either that or its studiomate from 1986, the much better-received Aliens).  It’s even structured like a video game, with the way the characters descend through several levels to meet their objective, squaring off with increasingly more dangerous enemies as they go.  And there’s even a “reset” or a “do-over” – when they don’t rescue the girl on the initial try, they go back with more allies and bigger guns.

This is also an example of what could be called the cinema of escalation:  A fantastical story that leads an audience towards buying into its most fantastical elements by starting out in the “real world”, and methodically ramping up the crazy situations and characters while never losing track, always healthily maintaining the suspension of disbelief.  In that way, the closest cousin to Big Trouble In Little China that I can think of at the moment is probably Ghostbusters, which is never a bad comparison to be drawn.  Hey, after all, Big Trouble In Little China has ghosts too.  (Also it shares a visual effects supervisor, Richard Edlund.)

Now about that soundtrack, composed by John Carpenter “in association with” Alan Howarth.  

The score is of a piece with the movie, which is to say that it’s incredibly entertaining, sometimes corny, extremely insane, and most importantly – propulsive.  The score matches the editing, and it MOVES.  It’s functional, which is frankly an unsung virtue of a good score.  It also smartly delineates character, with its darkly regal Lo Pan orchestrations, its varying strains recurring during the appearances of the Storms, its eerie themes suggesting the ancient pseudo-mythology of the movie and even the driving rhythms under several of the action scenes which resemble nothing so much as an 18-wheeler idling, apropos for Jack Burton’s profession.

Like most of the scores from Carpenter’s movies, the music is almost entirely done on synthesizers.  In the liner notes, Carpenter and Howarth discuss how much fidelity they paid to authentic Chinese music, which is to say, none.  They went after sounds and themes that sounded Chinese to them, rather than working arduously to replicate realism.  I actually respect this approach.  I’m not sure it would’ve helped the movie to have that much attention to detail.  Big Trouble In Little China is a tribute to the kung fu B-epics of the 1970s – it’s very Shaw Brothers.  Reality is not this film’s ultimate aim.  Some might say that such musical guesswork is the methodology of the Ugly American, but personally I’m more irritated by cultural imitations.  Carpenter and Howarth are owning up to their lack of authoritative expertise in all things Chinese, and giving it a shot anyway, and in its own way, that’s charming.  Besides, Dennis Dun’s character is more the traditional hero of Big Trouble In Little China.  He’s the young, clean-cut lead out to rescue his lady love.  Conversely, Kurt Russell’s character is the ultimate Ugly American (John Wayne bluster and all) – therefore, these cultural concerns are actually structured into the film.  It’s all just a little bit subversive, though of course, not at all Important with the capital vowel bolded.  It’s difficult to call racism or even exploitation (though some apparently tried, during the initial theatrical run) when the film in question is so silly, or more to the point, when the two most charismatic performances in the entire movie are from two elderly Chinese men.  What other big-studio American action picture has given us that?

That’s the basic conclusion I’m drawing here, by talking about the score in specific and the movie overall – Big Trouble In Little China is an anomaly, a curiosity, and a legitimate original.  This is why a cult has grown around this movie, and the cult is not giving signs of going away.  Almost makes me wonder what else I was right about at ten years old.  Cheers!

@jonnyabomb

Morgan Freeman is modeling the new summer line of Matt Damon sport coats…