It
is impossible to manufacture a cult classic, or intentionally make a
movie that is “so bad it’s good”. The video market is glutted with
titles that prove this point. The John and Mark Polonia and Jon McBride
set out to make a serious science fiction/horror film and, instead,
succeeded where so many others have failed. If these guys had been
working with a budget, the results would probably have been along the
lines of a Full Moon or New Concorde production. The screenplay
genuinely achieves that level of mediocrity. The lead roles would have
been given to some mid level actors with minor name recognition, one of
them probably rewritten for a female willing to show her breasts. After
making a few bucks on the rental market and cable, ‘Feeders’ would have
been forgotten. Instead, the Pollonia’s and McBride set out to make
‘Feeders’ themselves, and the rest is bad film history.
The first half of ‘Feeders’ plays like the
beginning of a fifties sci-fi movie. The second half is basically the
household siege plot of ‘Night of the Living Dead’, only with aliens
instead of zombies. The two leads (Mark Polinia and Jon McBride) are
bland but competent in their roles, and most of the supporting cast is
capable as well. However, special mention should be made of the two
actresses who appear briefly in ‘Feeders’. I’ve seen some bad acting in
my lifetime, but their performances are something special. In keeping
with the spirit of all true camp classics, everything in the movie is
played dead serious, thus making it even funnier.
However, it’s the “special effects” that provide
most of the unintentional humor in ‘Feeders’. The ludicrous puppets
used for the alien invaders and cheesy CGI flying saucers set an all
time low. In an interview included on this disc, the Polonia’s maintain
that the CGI effects were pretty good for a low budget film at the
time. That may or may not be true, but the fact is Ed Wood got better
results with hubcaps or whatever the hell he used in ‘Plan 9’. And why
use puppets for the aliens? Countless filmmakers have given the world
more convincing monsters by putting rubber masks on their friends. This
disc also contains a Christmas themed sequel, ‘Feeders 2: Slay Bells’.
It reuses a lot of footage from ‘Feeders’ in flashbacks, and while this
one is supposed to be a comedy, it didn’t make me laugh nearly as
much as the first film. Think of it as an extra, one of the many
contained on this disc. (Bob Ignizio)
Let
me start this review by pointing out that I’m one of the very few who
thought the Coen’s ‘Hudsucker Proxy’ was a good movie. I say that because
all the reviews I had seen for ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ compared it to that
earlier Coen’s effort. So I was expecting another fast talking, surreal,
silly comedy. Despite a few over the top moments, however, this a pretty
tame, middle of the road comedy about divorce. The Coen’s had originally
written the screenplay for someone else to direct, and I think that would
have been a better choice. They just don’t seem to be a good fit for this
material.
George Clooney is Miles Massey, a top divorce lawyer
who even had a special iron clad prenuptial agreement named after him. He
is hired by Rex Rexroth (Edward Herrmann) to insure his wife Marilyn
(Catherine Zeta Jones) doesn’t get a penny from him, despite the fact that
the private investigator she hired, one Gus Petch (Cedric the Entertainer),
straight up “nailed his ass” on video with another woman. When against all
odds Massey succeeds, Marilyn plots to get revenge. Massey falls for
Marilyn, despite the fact that Clooney and Zeta Jones display no onscreen
charisma, and is shocked when she comes to him with her new fiancé, an oil
Tycoon played by Billy Bob Thornton. He’s even more shocked when she asks
him to draw up a Massey pre-nup, seemingly making it impossible for her to
get any of the tycoon’s money. Screwball antics ensue.
There are a few genuinely big laughs, but not enough of
them. Due to the aforementioned lack of chemistry, the romance portion of
the story didn’t really engage me, and the social commentary on marriage and
divorce wasn’t especially insightful. Clooney displays little of the charm
and comic talent he showed in his previous collaboration with the Coens, ‘O
Brother Where Art Thou’. And Zeta Jones is her usual pretty but
uninteresting self. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I can’t figure out why
this woman was even nominated for an Oscar, let alone why she was given
one. The best parts of the movie all involve Cedric, Herrman, Thornton, and
Jonathan Hadary as a gay hotel concierge who testifies against Zeta Jones in
her divorce hearing. ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ ultimately isn’t a bad film,
it’s just kind of mediocre. With the Coens at the helm, I expect more. (Bob
Ignizio)
The Looney Toons
franchise has been on life support for the past few decades. The
brilliantly funny antics of Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and the rest had already
started to fade somewhat by the sixties, as the budgets for Warner
Brothers’ animation department were cut. By the seventies and eighties,
the once biting humor of the Toons had been rendered toothless in
several TV specials and feature films comprised mostly of older shorts
re-edited into barely coherent new plots. A few brand new shorts were
made in the nineties in the wake of ‘Roger Rabbit’, but they failed to
recapture the magic. It didn’t help that voice actor Mel Blanc was
deceased by this time, but the last nail in the Looney Toons coffin was
undoubtedly the unwatchable mess that is ‘Space Jam’. Leave it to
Director Joe (‘Gremlins’, ‘Matinee’) Dante to do the impossible and
resurrect the Toons with dignity and wit.
D.J. (Brendan Fraser) is a security gurad and
aspiring stunt man at Warners. He also happens to be the son of one of
their biggest stars, Damian Drake (Timothy Dalton), who specializes in
playing a superspy. Turns out he really is a superspy. When Drake is
captured by the CEO of Acme (Steve Martin, funny again for the first
time in a while) it’s up to D.J. to come to his rescue, along with the
help of Daffy, Bugs, and Warner Brothers executive Kate (Jenna Elfman).
But the plot is hardly the point. It’s just something to hang the gangs
on, and in that respect this movie delivers. While there’s plenty of
trademark Toon slapstick and silliness, like the best of Bugs and
Daffy’s shorts of old there are also a lot of subtle, clever, go right
over the kid’s heads jokes. Some of the best are when Porky Pig and
Speedy Gonzalez bemoan their difficulties getting work in an
increasingly PC world, and when Yosemite Sam’s henchman refuse to toss a
stick of lit dynamite out of a car because it would set a bad example
for the kids. Dante’s film completely won me over when the characters
stumble onto Area 52 (area 51 being a diversionary hoax) and encounter
an assortment of aliens right out of the best (and worst) of fifties and
sixties science fiction films, not to mention the Toons own interstellar
nemesis Marvin Martian. And as always, Dante manages to find small
roles for cult character actor Dick Miller, cult actress Mary Woronov,
and ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ star Kevin McCarthy.
Overall, ‘LT:BIA’ shows a real love and respect for the Looney Toons
universe. Not only are all the best known characters present and
accounted for, but there are also some who will be familiar only to true
Toon Heads. The way the characters are written feels very true to what
we’ve come to know and expect. On top of that, the voice work is much
better than many recent Toon revivals. No one will ever replace Mel
Blanc, the genius who gave voice to almost all the Loony Toons
characters originally. That said, many of the voices (most importantly
stars Bugs and Daffy) sound dead on, and the rest are close enough not
to be too distracting. Kudos to Joe Alaskey, Jeff Bennet, Billy West,
and the other voice actors (including Brenden Fraser as The Tasmanian
Devil!) for their excellent work. As for the human performers, they all
do a fine job. I especially enjoyed seeing Dalton, who I feel was a
much better Bond than he’s usually given credit for, get a chance to
play a suave super spy once again. And although there are one or two
instances of bad modern pop music being used on the soundtrack, most of
the score is comprised of cues that will be familiar to anyone who’s
seen the classic Warner toons. And the whole thing is shot nicely by
one of my favorite underrated cinematographers, Dean Cundey
(‘Halloween’, ‘Rock and Roll High School’). By the way, is it possible
for anything other than an animated Disney feature to get a ‘G’ rating
these days? I neither saw nor heard anything that warrants this movie
getting a PG. (Bob Ignizio)
In some ways, this
Spanish film makes me think of the way movies likes ‘I Am Curious
(Yellow)’ and Bergman’s ‘Monika’ were, at one time, sold as racy
exploitation flicks. Based on the title, the fact that this film is
unrated, and the critical blurb on the box proclaiming ‘Sex and Lucia’
to be, “one of the most erotic movies ever made,” you might well expect
something along the lines of 9 ½ Weeks’. If that’s the case, you’ll
likely be just as disappointed as those members of the raincoat crowd
who sat squirming through European art films just to catch the few brief
scenes of sex and nudity. Certainly Lucia does have sex, and looks
quite nice while doing so, but that’s not really the focus of the film.
It’s mainly about how one casual, seemingly unimportant act can
completely alter the course of a person’s life, and how, as bad and dark
as things get, there’s always a chance to turn your life around and
start over with love and forgiveness. In addition, it’s also about how
writers tend to use their own lives, and the lives of those around them,
as fodder for their work, sometimes taking painful and private moments
and using them in their art in an almost vampiric manner.
The writer, in this case, is not Lucia. It’s a guy
named Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa), who on his birthday, under a full moon (a
major symbol throughout the film) on the Spanish island paradise of
Formentera where he grew up, has sex with Elena (Najwa Nimri). The two
do not exchange names, only a few vague snippets of personal
information. We then flash forward to Lucia (Paz Vega), who has
returned home to find that her live in lover, the same Lorenzo from the
previous scene, has left her, giving her everything. The phone rings,
and it’s the police calling to tell her that Lorenzo has been hit by a
car. Lucia hangs up before finding out anything more, assuming Lorenzo
is dead. Devastated, she goes to the island where Lorenzo grew up to
try and get her life together. From this point on, the movie moves back
and forth through time between the present and the past, where we see
the events that led to Lorenzo leaving Lucia.
There are a lot of plot elements in this film that
could come across as phony melodrama in the hands of a lesser director,
but Medem isn’t going for realism. In many ways, this reminds me of
Francois Ozon’s ‘Swimming Pool’, a film which explored similar themes.
‘Sex and Lucia’ stays more firmly rooted in reality than Ozon’s film,
but still has something of a dreamlike quality about it as in the scenes
that take place on the island after Lucia flees there. The
cinematography gives this sunny paradise a bleached out look, perhaps
symbolizing the joy that has been sucked out of Lucia’s life. But while
there is plenty of darkness in this film, it’s ultimately not
depressing. In fact, the ending seems quite hopeful, if also a bit
ambiguous. This is also the sort of film where you must pay
attention if you want to have any hope of following the story. Many
important plot points happen quickly and subtly, and if you miss them
you’ll be wondering what the hell is going on. I haven’t seen the ‘R’
rated version of this film, but my guess is not much is missing;
probably just a couple of brief shots of male genitalia standing at
attention. Still, why support needless puritanical censorship? And
unless the VHS is letterboxed (possible, but unlikely), make sure you
get the widescreen DVD. The cinematography is too good to watch a pan
and scanned version. (Bob Ignizio)
It
is impossible to manufacture a cult classic, or intentionally make a
movie that is “so bad it’s good”. The video market is glutted with
titles that prove this point. The John and Mark Polonia and Jon McBride
set out to make a serious science fiction/horror film and, instead,
succeeded where so many others have failed. If these guys had been
working with a budget, the results would probably have been along the
lines of a Full Moon or New Concorde production. The screenplay
genuinely achieves that level of mediocrity. The lead roles would have
been given to some mid level actors with minor name recognition, one of
them probably rewritten for a female willing to show her breasts. After
making a few bucks on the rental market and cable, ‘Feeders’ would have
been forgotten. Instead, the Pollonia’s and McBride set out to make
‘Feeders’ themselves, and the rest is bad film history. 
Let
me start this review by pointing out that I’m one of the very few who
thought the Coen’s ‘Hudsucker Proxy’ was a good movie. I say that because
all the reviews I had seen for ‘Intolerable Cruelty’ compared it to that
earlier Coen’s effort. So I was expecting another fast talking, surreal,
silly comedy. Despite a few over the top moments, however, this a pretty
tame, middle of the road comedy about divorce. The Coen’s had originally
written the screenplay for someone else to direct, and I think that would
have been a better choice. They just don’t seem to be a good fit for this
material. 
The Looney Toons
franchise has been on life support for the past few decades. The
brilliantly funny antics of Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and the rest had already
started to fade somewhat by the sixties, as the budgets for Warner
Brothers’ animation department were cut. By the seventies and eighties,
the once biting humor of the Toons had been rendered toothless in
several TV specials and feature films comprised mostly of older shorts
re-edited into barely coherent new plots. A few brand new shorts were
made in the nineties in the wake of ‘Roger Rabbit’, but they failed to
recapture the magic. It didn’t help that voice actor Mel Blanc was
deceased by this time, but the last nail in the Looney Toons coffin was
undoubtedly the unwatchable mess that is ‘Space Jam’. Leave it to
Director Joe (‘Gremlins’, ‘Matinee’) Dante to do the impossible and
resurrect the Toons with dignity and wit. 
In some ways, this
Spanish film makes me think of the way movies likes ‘I Am Curious
(Yellow)’ and Bergman’s ‘Monika’ were, at one time, sold as racy
exploitation flicks. Based on the title, the fact that this film is
unrated, and the critical blurb on the box proclaiming ‘Sex and Lucia’
to be, “one of the most erotic movies ever made,” you might well expect
something along the lines of 9 ½ Weeks’. If that’s the case, you’ll
likely be just as disappointed as those members of the raincoat crowd
who sat squirming through European art films just to catch the few brief
scenes of sex and nudity. Certainly Lucia does have sex, and looks
quite nice while doing so, but that’s not really the focus of the film.
It’s mainly about how one casual, seemingly unimportant act can
completely alter the course of a person’s life, and how, as bad and dark
as things get, there’s always a chance to turn your life around and
start over with love and forgiveness. In addition, it’s also about how
writers tend to use their own lives, and the lives of those around them,
as fodder for their work, sometimes taking painful and private moments
and using them in their art in an almost vampiric manner. 