Drag Me To Hell (2009)

On a cool late May evening, Mr and Mrs Britarded, Dropkick, Mrs Coelacanth and I hit up the midnight screening of Sam Raimi's return to the rollicking low(ish) budget horror/comedy genre, after a few mega-budget lapses in the form of the Spider-Mans. Well, Drag Me to Hell isn't really the type of film to be picked apart critically, but - as it was by all in our particular group - to simply be experienced and enjoyed, with friends and a rowdy crowd, in the cinema, at midnight. This is the cinematic equivalent to a midsummer carnival haunted house. It's just that fun.

Raimi playfully tosses in several references to his much-loved, seminal Evil Dead trilogy and the balance between tension and release are note perfect here. The pacing is also excellent, and the scares are incredibly well-done, with some being brutal/gross enough to make you forget that what you're watching is rated PG. Decent enough turns by Justin Long (whom I've never liked, but was acceptable in his role) and Alison Lohman (towards whom Dropkick has recently revealed a not-so-secret lust), and especially the aptly named Lorna Raver (Jules' new GF?) who plays the hell-bent gypsy woman who lays the damning curse on Lohman.
The opening scene and the closing scene are mind-blowingly and ear-shatteringly awesome, and leave it to Raimi to have audiences laughing and clapping at what is essentially the darkest and biggest downer of an ending possible. So great. I think I would have a very different impression of this one had the viewing circumstances been different - watching this at home, alone and on DVD, I still would have liked it, but not LOVED it, as I currently do. It also looks like the general public is responding in much the same way - not only has DMTH garnered very favourable reviews from both horror geeks and mainstream film critics (unheard of), but it is also third at the box office as I type this (sandwiched neatly between Night at the Museum 2 and Terminator Salvation, and ahead of the highly touted Star Trek reboot - make of that what you will). So get out to your local sticky-floored multiplex and catch this one on the big screen - the later the hour, the better.

Babine - First impressions

Every time i see this in the store :
the absolute dread that comes over me is astounding.
i know what hell is, hell is watching Babine on loop for eternity.
Or at least forced to stare at the cover for eons.

Island/Boat Party

To celebrate whatever you want, I'm formally inviting one and all out to the Toronto Island Marina this saturday to party on the boat. The last ferry leaves centre island for downtown at 11:30 pm, so it's a glorious afternoon drunken sailor bonanza! You'll fit in at the marina if you have a tall boy in your hand.
If you'd like to come please call me at 647 296 8372 to make arrangements and answer your questions. If we decide to go out for a cruise on the lake, please bring a floatation device. I only have two life jackets and a life ring.

I don't have a job anymore so BYOB ;)

Hope you can make it! Any kind of costume is always a good idea.

-Cap

Joe - you missed all the fireworks.

Oops!.... it seems my fine thin-skinned Colombian protégé and his attack puppy Itchy got all hot and bothered about my take on their endless Fountain fascination and they've spent most of the day writing and deleting furious responses to it. As a result, ... I just deleted the whole thing because it was becoming a little embarrassing. I sometimes forget just how vulnerable all the young dudes can be.

No harm intended Kris. Scratch - I meant everything I said.

A couple of post-post-points....

Kris.... I'll read whatever I want on the Internet including your blog if I so choose. If you want to keep private thoughts to yourself, buy a fucking diary. You post – it's public.

Scratch... Porch!

Sporgey.

The Captain/Team leader floats

Zoo

In this context Zoo is short for:

zoophile
zo·o·phil·i·a (zō'ə-fĭl'ē-ə)
n.
1. Affection or affinity for animals.
2. Erotic attraction to or sexual contact with animals.
zo'o·phile' (-fīl') n., zo'o·phil'ic (zō'ə-fĭl'ĭk) adj.

Back in the summer of 2005 I was living in Salford, 'the armpit of the north west'. I had just completed the second year of my three year degree and was totally broke. I really had no links or connections in any good places, so I answered a job ad posted on a university notice board. For 3 months that summer I worked in this warehouse, simple work just 'picking and packing' of clothes in a distribution warehouse. It was mind numbing stuff but what made it an experience were the people. There was a mix of two types of people. The Eastern European crowd, mostly highly educated with masters degrees and doctorates but found that they could earn more money in a warehouse in Salford than they could as a surgeon in Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania or wherever. Such injustice. The rest of the crowd were local and quite frankly what I would call 'rough as fuck'. Vile, violent, simple creatures all with some sort of criminal record. I kept tight lipped and to myself, I listened to Doolittle on repeat for weeks on end and broke up the days by reading the disgusting personal attacks scribbled on the toilet walls. They were painted over every three days and reappeared as quickly as they were covered. The paint must've been half an inch thick in that place. One day one guy got the sack for 'Chasing the dragon' casually during a shift. Occasionally others would get collected by the police and never seen again. They called me 'college boy' because I had read a book once. It felt like a prison. The reason I am mentioning this is this. Pretty much everyday these warehouse monkeys would have something new on their mobile phones. It was a morning ritual that a phone would be passed around with something for everyone to see, it was fascinating. Britneys minge. Paris Hilton at work. A video of a high speed collision, friendly fire incidents at war, suicide bombings, even those terrible clips of beheadings of US prisoners in Iraq. There was no shame, no sensitivity, all treated as entertainment. One particular day I remember being shown this clip. It was dark but clearly of a horse mounting a man and 'having his way'. This clip was always shown with the comment "that guy died from that". I could believe it, it looked brutal and gave me the shivers but the fact I had never heard about such an incident made me doubt it and I wrote it off as a hoax or an urban myth. And that is the story of how I came to watch Zoo.



Zoo is the true story of Kenneth Pinyon, the Seattle man in question who in 2005 "died of acute peritonitis due to perforation of the colon" after a not so romantic tumble in the hay. This documentary is certainly on shaky ground and it's superbly handled.
Initially, it's a pure fascination piece but what we actually have here is quite an achievement. It dodges any exploitative pitfalls and instead is presented so well that it's mood lingers long in the memory. The story is told as a series of dark and disturbing scene reconstructions cloaked with actual audio interviews of the other people involved in this 'Zoo ring'. The resultant film is both controversial and provocative aswell as experimental within it's genre. It is inciteful and spooky and just a thoroughly surprising find. It won awards at Sundance in 2007 and subsequently went to Cannes. If all this isn't enough to pique your interest then Paul Blart: Mall cop is out now. Bye.

Dropkick gets chickened and broccolied by Crank 2

Crank 2 is not only harder, better and faster than its predecessor but its also one of the funnest cinematic experiences I've yet to have in a theater.
If you're unfamiliar with the first Crank then beware, this films opening sequence is the ending of the previous film. There's no back story given, or is the viewer given time to be placed into some kind of context. The film is just extending the experience of its previous incarnation.
When we last saw Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) he had fallen out of a helicopter while fighting the villain Verona. After disposing of Verona (while still falling i might add) what happens next is the apparent death of our hero, who lands on a car and then finally the final shot of him dead in the street.
This films opening shot is what happens right after that.. as if anything could happen after that.
The first Crank was steeped in some kind of realism. In some weird way it's somewhat believable, but with this one they do away with trying to maintain any sort of realism and give us the most implausible sequel of all time.
Within that freedom writers/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor give themselves room to explore how far and out of control today's action film can go.
This is A.D.D. film making pushed to its maximum, you're constantly thrown into new scenarios and fight outs without catching your breath from the last 10 minutes or so.
The first half of the film actually had my heart racing from just watching the pure spectacle of it all.
Definitely not for everyone, were talking high body counts with shoot outs that are edited with shots of T & A to match for the gore and violence. Giving you a sense of perversion in the enjoyment of the whole thing.
It's a self aware, silly, loud as heck film that knows how to pull its punches (or in this case when to not) if need be.
Some of my favourite little touches included a theme song that played whenever our hero (Chev Chelios) was on screen, and during one particular shoot out we find him shooting baddies with his shotgun while whistling the very same theme.
Also, a fist to fist fight that promises to be so epic in anticipation that when we finally get there the players turn into oversized marionettes of themselves fighting over a cardboard city a la Godzilla style.
Just too much fun, and most definitely worth the rental when it hits the shelves within the month.
Goodnight my little princes of Persia, my Kings of Leon

-Droptown

Synecdoche, New york (again)

(Okay, so this is the 3rd mention of Synecdoche on here so I won't waste much time. I only just watched it because people finally stopped telling me to watch it).

Synecdoche tackles common Kaufman themes of death, gender, age, identity, family, suicide, relationships, ego and prejudice. When you look at it like that, what else is there to write about us humans?

At one minute feeling starkly uncomfortable, the next leaves you feeling cuddled by the world and at one with anyone, anywhere. This movie is a trip.

There is always a point during a Charlie Kaufman scripted film at which I want to turn off and walk away. I can only compare it to a lyric or a piece of abstract art that makes no sense at first. If you don't walk away from the exhibit, you may realise it is not so alien. It is not trying to transport you into another world but it is your world. It can be what you make of it. It's a lot to take in and who can blame anyone for feeling isolated and frustrated at some point.

In the end I cannot understand it all but I can still enjoy interpreting the unknown/s. Do you bloody follow me?! Just like life, it leaves you feeling pretty much unfulfilled and with so far to go. But who is to say this isn't the way cinema was meant to be? Unfortunately it was this kind of thinking that made me watch The Fountain, twice. Thankfuly Synecdoche is much more rewarding and armchair time well spent.

Mein Baader Experience

Middle age struck at about 2:25pm Tuesday afternoon. I had an epiphany heading east on Dupont just past Bathurst, stuck physically (and metaphorically) in the slow lane. Well, it wasn't exactly an epiphany - I think those happen in an instant whereas mine has been brewing for a while now. It used to annoy me that people the age I am now rarely raged against the machine. I scoffed at their passivity and saw it as a sign of weakness. Nobody protested (or for that matter complained all that much) even though the world was so obviously and wretchedly dicked. I was a child of the sixties and grew up at a time of perpetual civil unrest and it seemed everyone packed up their protest kits and tripped out on KC and the Sunshine Band just when I was ready to march in the streets.

Which brings me to Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, a recent PAL arrival that had some buzz on the festival circuit last year and interested me. The film is an apparently accurate account of a famously nasty left-wing terrorist organization centred in West German in the late '60s and early '70s. They were hardcore anarchists that saw American Imperialism as a variant on Fascism and executed countless bank robberies, kidnappings, bombings of U.S. army bases, right-wing press industries and pretty much anyone else that they saw as part of the corrupt “system”. The film is well-made and follows the story through to its inevitable and sad conclusion.

What, you might ask, is the connection between these two seemingly unrelated experiences? Wisdom is the short answer. You see, yesterday I was on my way to sign an update to the police search waiver for the City of Toronto Restaurant License renewal for the FBE (don't ask) when my epiphany happened. I'd already signed one 4 years ago (a perpetual waiver, I hasten to add) that apparently needs to be updated every 3 years. I stood in line in East York for an hour and a half to be told that, because my home address had changed since perpetuity started, that I needed my SIN number for them to process the updated waiver and restart the perpetuity clock. The letter requesting that I indemnify the City and allow them access to my personal information was actually addressed to a mysterious “Mr. Duggal”. I drew a blank stare when I asked if the clerk saw the irony in that. I drove back across the city to get my beaten-up SIN card and was half-way back to the east end when I realized that I wasn't outraged at by the bureaucratic buffoonery of the City of Toronto. It was at that point that I realized that I'd officially hit middle age and it came as a bit of a shock to me that it wasn't passivity or weakness that gave cause for me to accept the situation for what it was, but wisdom. The Little Lord Fauntleroys that gravitate to the civil service from their hall monitor positions in high school just weren't worth the effort. Yes, I may have been temporarily trapped in a Kafka novel edited by Orwell, but I wasn't enraged about it.

During Comrade Miller and his bumboy-henchmen's current reign of terror, the City of Toronto has morphed rather quickly into a left-totalitarian nightmare.....and I'm OK with that. The Baader-Meinhof crowd probably wouldn't have been because they were fundamentally at odds with the kind of top-down zealotry that pervades regimes that govern from either extreme. The kind of people that are attracted to these oppressive, we-know-better groups need simply to be avoided. They are a combination of the bullies and victims that we all saw growing up. The bullies are still on their power trips because they have no penises and the scrawny victims of school yard whoopings discovered theirs in their twenties and are looking for revenge. I had been confusing passivity with common sense – and that was what I became aware of on the way over, for a second time, to the City of Toronto Municipal Licensing and Standards Department at 2:25 Tuesday afternoon ...on Dupont just past Bathurst.

After waiting in line for a second 90 minutes, a very nice man updated my address, I signed and skipped out happy-as-Larry. On my way home I realized that he didn't even ask me for my SIN card. No biggie. If you let this stuff get to you, you'll end up bitter, whithered and disillusioned. Nothing short of mass executions would solve the banality of the City of Toronto's council and civil bureaucracy, so it's just easier to avoid them, keep your head down and pick your fights.

Baader and Meinhof learned this too late and had to off themselves as a result.

Sporgey Duggal.

The Inbetweeners

If I can recommend one show to bring back to you all, it's this one. It's like... Superbad meets Peepshow... or something. I'm tired and can't write a proper review. I dunno if this is available in NA yet, but when it is, we should get it... and until then, you should download it.

The Road (trailer)

I've been pretty excited about this new Cormac McCarthy adaptation for awhile now, and the trailer has just been released:Thoughts?

Hitler Lives!

Valkyrie (2008)

For all the star power and film making pedigree at work here, director Brian Singer's film about a plot to kill Hitler in 1944 should have been a rip-snorting thriller. As it turns out, it's merely a competent one. Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus Von Stuaffenberg, a career officer who hatches a plot to assassinate Hitler, use the reserve army in Berlin to overthrow the other “bad” Nazis, and seize power.

First off, the film looks great. The set designs and sense of place feels authentic and, once you forgive the age-old American film making conceit that all Nazis were just British stage actors in snappy uniforms, the cast is effective too. With all these things going for it, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what didn't gel. Cruise, for all his off-screen lunacy, is certainly not the problem here. He makes for a reasonably believable Stauffenberg. There are a couple of standouts amongst the high-power supporting cast and several effective plot moments where you get the sense the plan could have gone either way.

I think it boils down to the script. It simply doesn't hold together all that well and the pacing is all over the place. That being said, it's got to be tough to write a compelling story around an event where the audience already knows the outcome. We all...., ah, Most people know...mmmm, Some of us...no, Few aren't aware... ah jesus, It's possible that Hitler wasn't assassinated in June 1944 and there was no coup. I was reminded of sitting in the pre-Chapters Runnymede Theatre watching Titanic and overhearing a couple of women chatting during the film behind us. One said.... “you know it sinks, huh?”... The other ….”Oh great, now you've ruined the movie!”. True story.

Maybe what's missing in Valkyrie is a beautiful ship to look at while we wait for it to sink. The first half of Titanic was spent wandering around a spectacular and very famous cruise ship. It ended with the ship full of holes, missing bits and sinking in the North Atlantic. In Valkyrie, the Cruise ship is busted up in the opening scene but doesn't sink until the final one and perhaps that's why it didn't work. Warning! This review may contain spoilers.

A Globiquitous 2.5 stars for Valkyrie.

Memory Lane

The Globe ran a piece this weekend about the last of the Jewish shops on Spadina that got me thinking about how much the Roncey area has changed in a few short years. We moved to Parkdale sixteen years ago this past January. It wasn't called Roncesvalles Village back then, - that's a real estate agent's creation from sometime during the last decade - it was officially and locally known as simply “Parkdale”. It wrapped around the corner at Queen Street and wandered up Roncey as far as Fermanagh. North of there (and on the west side of Roncey) it didn't really have a name, acting as just the acreage you had to go through on a trip between Bloor West Village and Parkdale. It was a neat place back then, a wacky collection of dykes, dealers, dropouts and drunks and something about this weird amalgam of fuck-ups drew us to the area. The further north you went, the less quirky it was and by the time you got to Howard Park, it was all straight, white and fancy-panted, but the south end was pure Parkdale, brimming over with mental cases, earth mothers, Edgewater whores and zig-zagging Poles. You'd have a hard time believing that these days looking up and down Roncey on a weekend afternoon. The chatty class started arriving and gentrifying the hood in the late '90s and Roncesvalles began to feel a little like I imagine Berlin did to the locals, circa 1946.

This cancerous gentrification has not been without its upsides. A loaf of bread isn't weighed in kilos anymore and there are fewer Tourette's sufferers wandering about but other, authentically urban things have disappeared as well. The tapestry of loons that peppered the 'hood have been replaced with a uniformly duller sliver of a demographic that may not take a shit in the middle of the street like the old days, but one wonders if even they poop at all. Roncesvalles has morphed into a giant on-leash zone with a serious case of buttoned-down political correctness that precludes spontaneity and or much of the exuberant energy that makes living in the city worth it. Now it's all play dates, supervision and Autoshare.

It's fascinating to me that the new arrivals don't have a clue that the natives would prefer they went back to the Annex. It would probably stun them to hear that some of us miss all those weaving piss-tanks and skanky prostitutes. A crazy-ass white Rastafarian family lived across the road from us back in the Ridley Garden days and they played reggae at distort volumes about 14 hours a day all summer. Most days the Wailer's were drowned out at some point by Marie, the lunatic wino who lived a couple of doors down. When she wasn't yelling at the world, she was pumping out the Donna Summer tracks and draining her third bottle of Andres' Domaine D'Or down her fat gullet by 2:00 in the afternoon. Ahh, the good old days. The kids ran wild and stole things and nobody gave a shit. The only cherry bombs that got lit back in those days were the real kind. The houses were crooked and so were the landlords. A suburban co-worker of mine once remarked that we lived in the “inner city” and I imagine he pictured it looking like downtown Detroit. I took great pride in that and didn't correct him. He never came to visit.

The other milestone that occurred around this time of year was the opening of the Film Buff ten years ago. I don't remember the actual date, but it was around mid-May 1999. We've since had a decade of interaction with a neighbourhood in transformation, rented just over a million movies, employed a little under a 100 people and served well over 100,000 litres of ice cream. While the old 'hood is gone, a new one exists in its place. The newbies outnumber the old guard these days and that changes who's in the shop, but interesting (and with some pride), we're still selling Yorkdale products at Parkdale prices.

Just like we did when we started.

Sporgey.

Everybody wants to be a hero.

To quote one of the East ends finest customers

"Manz! someones gots to watch it don'ts theys?".

Darkon (2006) is a documentary about L.A.R.P.ing. That's Live Action Role Playing or for the layman, it's pretending to be elves, orks or knights and smacking each other with foam swords and maces on football fields. Clearly I am curious. I digress. I was also interested to see what this film was about.
It's pretty much as you imagine an objective documentary about LARPing would be and it's fun enough to watch if you like to see what lengths and depths we will go to as humans to escape our own existence. And without being a snob about it, it all has it's charm and why the hell not? It is a slight shame to see that even the purely escapist kingdom they have created is all still ruled by egomaniacal control freaks and fat office twats. We can't seem to escape ourselves can we? The film closes with a great quote though and one that kept me thinking long after the credits rolled.


"Everyone faces failure and defeat and struggles with the human condition and to survive. It's so strange, the fact that my heart has only so many beats. It's not a very comforting feeling. There is a certain desperation to life, it's all terminal, we're going to die and maybe fantasy and religion and all of those things are… if not crutches then vehicles that get you from birth to death. I think that people that get the most out of life are those that have a rich fantasy world. It is part of what allows people to hope, part of what gives people their drive to accomplish things. Once people stop fantasizing, whether it be about that girl, that job or that pair of sneakers, if there was no dream for us to try to bring into a reality then we would stagnate."

END.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

This doc outlines the current situation regarding the use of steroids as performance enhancers, bodybuilding drugs and in conventional medicine. The film does a pretty good job of outlining the facts and the pseudo-science behind some claims as well as letting us hear peoples views on steroids, where they are actually being used and to what effect.

Where this film becomes unique and interesting is in the story of our narrator and filmmaker Mike Bell. Mike is one of 3 brothers who all grew up watching pro wrestling and 80's action movies. Into their teens they became football players, then wrestlers and eventually competitive power lifters. Today, his 2 brothers use steroids to enhance their performance whereas Mike is totally anti steroids.

The agenda of the film is clearly setup as a predictable anti steroids expo but as the debate opens up the film progresses into something different and much more interesting. At times evidence is in defense of steroids and though I wouldn't go as far as to say it is a pro steroids film, it's certainly open-ended.
The film itself is presented and produced really quite well. We even touch on some wider issues of genetic modification in livestock, which somehow comes out in defense of steroids as they are quite simply not to blame for these monstrous beef hulks.

Steroids are however responsible for these monstrous beef hulks:


Without conclusion, the film gives us a well-rounded outline of the debate as well as introducing us to some tragic and not so tragic characters along the way.

This film succeeds in entertaining and provoking debate and is really well paced. The mix of factual investigation and personal stories and interviews strikes a balance rare in documentary and quite satisfying to watch. Worth a look.

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

A quiet and resonant film. A film that is not recommended viewing for those in states of extreme emotional vulnerability. A film that makes your body tremble as you marvel at the human capacity for giving and selflessness, especially in hard times. A film that shares the same feel as director Kelly Reichardt's previous film, the soulful Old Joy, to which Wendy and Lucy is very much a companion piece. A film that offers a deceptively simple portrait of America that is both timeless and timely. A film that is at once austere, beautiful, and meaningful. A film that features Larry Fessenden. A film that is absolutely recommended.

Hailing to the king is hard on the knees - My Name is Bruce (2007)

Bruce Campbell was, for a long time, an icon of mine growing up. I was absolutely obsessed with Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films for awhile. There was a point where i would watch every one in order over and over for weeks. I would fall asleep to the films and resume them from where i had fallen asleep in the morning with a bowl of cheerios... apple cinnamon.

Once when i was a wee lad i was spending a summer weekend at my Godmothers. She's a bit of a horror buff and weekends spent with her and my Godbrother, Eleu, always meant i would encounter a new film or a new album or book that would give me the willies. On this particular visit i got brave and asked if i could watch Evil Dead. I was taken aback with the cover portraying a woman trying to escape a grave while some faceless zombie hand was pulling her towards the earth.


Not that i was a sick kid or anything, in fact i get scared quite easily. It just looked really cool and the name, i mean come on, The Evil Dead? That name was just staring at me as kid and how fucking cool does that sound? As a child it sounds like the most terrifying idea you've ever heard. The dead... yet they're EVIL! WHHHHAAAT! too scary.
Anyways, my Godmum told me i was too young for Evil Dead one or two but that i could watch Bruce Campbell Vs The Army of Darkness.
I was confused... who the hell was Bruce Campbell?
As an actor why was his name in the title of the film?
And if he got his own movie fighting an entire army, of darkness no less, then how come i've never heard of him before?

That weekend i'd like to think i became a man. Lying under the covers just me and my Godbrother while Bruce Campbell captivated our young hearts. After that i was completely crazy about the man (Bruce that is.. not my Godbro).

I waited with bated breath upon reading that Bruce's latest project would be a meta/horror/comedy wherein a small American town being terrorized by demons seeks out the actor Bruce Campbell believing that he could save the town due to his run ins with demons in his past films.

What i got was My Name is Bruce a comedy directed by Bruce almighty himself! The plot was pretty much what i read it would be. Here a small town is being terrorized by an ancient Chinese demon, they in turn decide to call upon the washed up Bruce Campbell for their salvation.
What started as a really smart idea for a comedy horror turned out to be, to the dismay of me and the young buck inside me, a very mediocre unfunny film border lining on unwatchable.


Now, to some people this won't seem so bad. Looking over the net it seems many people really get a kick out of this flick and i'm sure there's much to get at a screening of this in some dank rep cinema with like minded horror buffs however; in the comfort of my room (which i have lovingly labeled The Pegasus) the film plays to a much weaker effect. The gore is good but there's not enough of it or at least not enough imagination put into it. You can't just get away with only decapitations for 90 minutes.
The comedy also really misses its mark. What i envisioned was a much more subtle take on the horror film hero, which since the early 90's horror films have lacked, and what it took to be a lovable jerk who could take on any deadite. Instead Bruce turns up the jack ass factor and never actually becomes the heroes he has portrayed on film. And if Bruce playing Bruce never lives up to Bruce from Evil Dead than really what is the point?

There isn't any point.. that's the whole point of My Name is Bruce.


The films' harmartia can be traced back to one weak link who, funny enough, is Bruce Campbell. Even though the film itself was written by someone else (a head BSG writter no less, what happened?) Campbell took the directors chair. This was a big mistake, the film pokes fun at Bruce while he lets himself play the clown. It's as if he wants people to know that he's just putting it on. "This isn't really me, it's just a big laugh!" One also gets the impression that everyone on screen is just having too much of a good time. Campbell lets his actors get away with barely existing most likely due to the hope that it would feel more authentic to the whole "B" movie facade. All the players look like they're enjoying themselves but they forgot to include us, the viewers, so we're completely left out of the fun. The whole ordeal is just too exaggerated to swallow, which is too bad because it's a missed opportunity.


Unlike the fantastic JCVD where the themes of celebrity and the consequences thereof are explored while still remaining incredibly engaging and entertaining, MNIB barely explores the themes of comedy. And this is just another example of what people are missing when they can't be bothered by films with subtitles. This is the American version of JCVD and it's a completely lifeless hallow experience. Watch JCVD instead, also watch Rec instead of Quarantine, and Let The Right One In instead of Twilight.

My Name is Bruce is a slow, horrendously written, badly acted, forced attempt to appease the Bruce Campbell cult. It's failures are supposed to be the films success (constant decapitations, bad acting) but they play out as genuine misses instead.

Groovy? Far from it.

-Dropkick aka "The Beast from the East"