Ask 411 Movies for 08.10.09: Reading this Column is Half the Battle!

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 08.10.2009

A possible G.I. Joe sequel, The Money Pit, Puddle Cruiser, “Otherworld,” The Perfect Getaway and we go Behind the Mask


For August our YouTube clip of the week theme will be celebrities singing on Sesame Street. This week we do the alphabet song with help from Ray Charles, Susan Sarandon, Michael Jeter, Patrick Stewart, David Robinson, Ellen Degeneres, Lambchop, Awadagin Pratt, Tony Bennett, Harry Belafonte, that dude from the Spin Doctors with a haircut and some blonde chick whose name is on the tip of my tongue that I can't think of.



John Hughes, 59, passed of a heart attack last Thursday. The writer and director was behind such films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Home Alone, National Lampoon's Vacation, Uncle Buck, Planes Trains & Automobiles, Pretty in Pink, She's Having a Baby and Curly Sue.



Random movie of the week I happened to watch starring Kevin McCarthy:
Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966): I remember McCarthy saying this was one of his favorite movies ever to make, because it had a great cast and every day the director, Fiedler Cook, would break for lunch and buy everybody wine. McCarthy plays a lawyer who is part of a high stakes poker game with Jason Robards, Robert Middleton and John Qualen. Meredith (Henry Fonda) is traveling through town with his wife Mary (Joanne Woodward) and their son. Meredith is a recovering from a gambling addiction, but works his way into the game. When a pot grows to over $20,000, Meredith doesn't have enough money to cover the raise and collapses from the stress. The town doctor (Burgess Meredith) comes to care for him and Meredith gives his cards over to Mary, who knows nothing about poker. Needing cash for the raise, she goes to the local bank using her hand for collateral. It's a fun movie with a neat twist and those who like movies about poker and slick scams should enjoy this. I could see them doing a remake of this today with some sort of mix of George Clooney and his Ocean pals.

Q: Beerfest was Broken Lizard's 4th movie. Puddle Cruiser, Super Troopers,& Club Dread came before it.
-Peter

A: Thank you for the correction. Puddle Cruiser is from 1996 and played Sundance, but wasn't released on DVD until 2005. The movie was filmed almost entirely on the University of Colgate campus and used the family and friends of the Broken Lizard guys thanks to a super low budget. Paul Soter and Kevin Heffernan play two college guys on trial at the university for busting into the cafeteria. They're student lawyer, Kayren Butler, because the love interest for their buddy, Steve Lemme. He tries to impress her by playing rugby against her old boyfriend with results you would expect. The other B.L. dudes play various college friends.



Q: With regard to the last question in the column from Jake C., I believe that may be an episode of the short-lived mid-1980's show Otherworld. It was about a family exploring the pyramids in Egypt when they get sent to a parallel world. If that's what it was, the main kid was Tony O'Dell from Head of the Class. Wikipedia has the episode title as "The Zone Troopers Build Men."
-Fast Eddie

A: Jake C. confirmed to me in an e-mail that this was what he was thinking of and he gives his full gratitude to Fast Eddie. Great things happen when we all work together. "Otherworld" ran for eight episodes on CBS in 1985. The Sterling family is visiting the Pyramid at Giza when a rare alignment of the planets opens a portal to a parallel dimension. The Sterlings find themselves on a parallel Earth called Thel that is sectioned up into various, and much different, zones. The only people who can travel between the zones are the Zone Troopers. The Sterlings meet a trooper and steal his pass so they can travel. This makes him their enemy and he tracks them doggedly throughout the series. The Sterlings travel from zone to zone learning about the different habitants of each while trying to find their way home. They also discover that they are not the only earthlings to ever find their way to Thel.



Q: I've been seeing a lot of commercials for the movie Pefect Getaway lately. It seems like they make it a point to mention the shocking twist ending. This leads me to believe that the film is so bad they have to mention that there is a twist at the end just to get people to come and see it.

With that in mind, what are in your opinion some of the best twist endings to movies? This may be spoiler territory, but eh, who cares....
-Mario

A: We covered this topic just last fall, instead of reposting I'll just give you a link to the columns of Sept. 15 and Sept. 22.

As for The Perfect Getaway, my guess was that it turns into Clue and that they all killed somebody…then Michael McKean shows up and shoots Steve Zahn. Now that I would go see.

Q: I'd love to see a "Potfest" movie. I don't know if anybody has said it, but I always thought The Money Pit was underrated.
-The Great Capt. Smooth



A: From 1986, Tom Hanks and Shelly Long play a fairly typical yuppie couple who get sucked into buying a nightmare of a house that turns into a ‘money pit' as they hopelessly try to fix it up. The movie is directed by Richard Benjamin, who was a fairly popular character actor in the seventies starring in such movies as Westworld, The Sunshine Boys, Love at First Bite and the cult series "Quark." Honestly, I don't think I've seen it since on television in the late eighties, so I can't say much personally, but I remember it basically being funny on the force of Hanks dealing with all these crazy happenings.

Q: That Leslie Vernon movie is fantastic. Saw it on the recommendation of my parents and loved its dissection of the horror movie tropes.
-neverAcquiesce



A: There be spoilers below, so don't bitch if you read it.

From 2006, Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) is setting himself up to be the next great psycho slasher and invites a documentary crew to follow him around with Taylor (Angela Goethals) as the interviewer. They get to see how he stalks his victims and sets up the scene of the big night. Taylor finally decides they must intervene, but maybe it's what Leslie really wanted. Horror stalwarts Zelda Rubinstein and Robert Englund, playing a Dr. Loomis type character, have small parts and even Kane Hodder gets a cameo.

I found the first two thirds to be darkly comic in its sending up of documentary and slasher film conventions. Baesel gives a great performance that helps to progress the film, because at first you don't know if Leslie is serious or not. He just comes off as kooky and somewhat charming. The final third switches into standard slasher mode that is a bit of a letdown, but it is interesting to see how everything set up pays off. The twist of having Taylor being the survivor girl isn't evident until we find Kelly having sex, because there is no reference to Taylor being a virgin before this or how Leslie contacted her, so that's a bit of a cheat in the narrative. Also she kind of falls into Leslie's plan when right before they left for the big evening, Eugene and his wife told her that two things to do is just run as far away as you can without looking back, or if you're the virgin to get laid. When Taylor realizes she's the survivor girl in the hayloft she's got two guys and time to get going. They should have just started having group sex. That would have been a funny ending. Having sex saves you in a horror film. I was also a bit jarred by the sequence in the library when we shift from documentary cameras to standard Hollywood film. When it happens in the final third after Taylor says "the documentary is over," it works. It also works for the flash forwards when Leslie is describing how the night will go. However, at the library there is no reason for the shift and it breaks the narrative flow and visual style before there is a reason too. I would recommend the movie to any slasher film lovers.

Q: I thought Gotham Knight was fine. Nothing cutting edge, but passable.

The first story was a rip-off from Legends of The Dark Knight, granted.
-The Hitcher

A: The first segment, "Have I Got a Story for You," actually has a long history in the Batman mythos. Writer Josh Olsen admits that the tale is based on "The Batman Nobody Knows" from Batman #250 in 1973. It was later adapted for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight and "Batman: The Animated Series." In a quote I pulled from Wikipedia, Olsen said "The first time it's stealing, the second time it's borrowing, the third time you're creating a genre."

Q: If I haven't watched Futurama since around the first, maybe second season because I never really got into it, though I am a fan of Simpsons, American Dad, and South Park, should I bother watching the movies? Are they way better than the show like the South Park movie was?
-Gener

A: I think South Park: The Movie is probably on par with the best episodes of the series and I would probably say the same for the Futurama movies. Much like with South Park: The Movie they use the longer running time and freedom of a feature to tackle some different plotlines, but still stay true to the original spirit of the series and character. If you didn't like "Futurama" the series originally I doubt you would enjoy the movies much more as the humor, characterizations and narrative format is pretty much the same.

Q: I know a GI Joe sequel has already been greenlit. Any idea what it will be? What would you do with it?
-Gary

A: While the sequel has already been announced, exact details have not been made known to my knowledge. I did see the new movie and hopefully my review will be up on my blog by the time you read this so you can check that out.

WARNING!!! WARNING!!! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!! THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW!!!

For the sequel, I would start with a huge jailbreak scene of Cobra Commander and Destro. Security videos reveal the break to be led by General Hawk. This leads to the President of the United States (now Zartan) to strip Hawk of leadership of G.I. Joe and having him arrested. The president appoints Hawk's longtime rival, Major Blood (Malcolm McDowell would be bad ass with a mustache and eye patch) taking over. The Joes track Cobra Commander and Destro to a hideout in the Alps and raid it. However, they get their asses handed to them. I think a major Joe has to die here, probably Heavy Duty, allowing Duke to take over leadership of Alpha Team. Obviously there is a mole in GI Joe and the president fires all current Joes and orders Blood to form a new team of his own handpicked men.

Meanwhile, Hawk needs a lawyer and requests retired Joe, Flint (Jeffrey Donovan) who is now a JAG. In reviewing tapes of the incident, Flint recognizes Zartan as the Hawk imposter. Flint has a beef with Zartan for killing Lady Jaye and that's why he quit G.I. Joe. Flint busts Hawk out of jail and they reform Alpha Team. They raid the White House during a press conference announcing Blood's new team and throw down with them. Breaker uses sonics to disrupt what the Doctor did to Zartan and he reverts to his natural form. He and Flint throw down with Zartan having an ambiguous death. Hawk throws down with Blood and kills him. Duke and Ripcord save the president from the bunker where Zartan had him captured. He reinstates GI Joe. Flint rejoins. They raid the mountain hideout again, but Cobra has cleared out. They tried to destroy everything, but Breaker finds some evidence that Cobra was working on a new super soldier project that involved DNA combinations and manipulations. Recognizable DNA in the project includes that of Duke and Storm Shadow. (This leads to Serpentor in part three)

Don't die and go joe!

"Hear about that guy up in the Bronx? Just went crazy; thought he was a pigeon. They've found him in the park, throwing breadcrumbs at himself."