Review: Machete Kills

                                                       Machete Kills (2013)

Since this movie is still in theaters I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible, but its going to be difficult. Machete kills is an extra-large everything burrito of awesomeness: full of shark-jumping action, hot babes, bloody violence, one-liners and general absurdity that will leave you with heartburn and bloated...
but in a good way.

Me and this movie

The movie opens up with a grindhouse style trailer, just like this franchise started with. The movie is Machete Kills Again... IN SPACE. Danny Trejo running around a space station, lasers, lightsaber machetes, its a blur of absurdity and it turns into a carrot in the stick that carries us through the rest of the film. Not that we need any motivation, the action picks up immediately and it does not let up. I had some reservations coming in, I had a fear from the trailers that this would be a series of goofy cameos of shock-value celebrities with terrible sight gags and little action, like some sort of  "____ Movie". All my fears were unfounded, this movie is busting at the seems with action and inventive violence. Lets be clear, you're not here for plot or clever dialogue, you are here to see people get merc'd, stuff blown up, and bad asses crack-wise. I will say that we have strayed pretty far from the lo-fi, punk rock, dyi grit of the grindhouse however, not that Rodriguez has ever really been known for that style. I don't think he is capable of thinking on that scale anymore, not since Desperado. We are firmly planted in broad-scale, cornball action of the 80's and 90's pushed to the extreme. If you mixed The Running Man with the Brosnan Bond movies you would have a starting point for what this movie feels like before it starts snorting cocaine off hookers while riding a motorcycle up a ramp of dead ninjas into the air with sparklers in each hand (this doesn't actually happen, but its about the only thing that doesn't). If you ever thought that the first Machete was lacking violence or focus on Danny Trejo, these qualms are fixed in new movie. Every scene is focused on Machete and the blood just keeps flowing. The computer visual effects are actually kind of bad, but I feel like it was intentional and actually adds to the movie. The celebrity cameos are brief and work fine, although I really missed seeing Cheech Marin who is conspicuously absent except for a flicker of a flashback to the first movie. Without going into the details the end does indeed imply the next movie is going to be exactly what we saw in the trailer. I'm going to go see this movie probably two more times this week. It's really stupid, but it knows that, it's played for comedy and at no point does it even entertain the thought of playing anything straight. It's almost Rodriguez making fun of himself. To use the phrase that I have said quite often: its not good, but sure as fuck is awesome. 

Review: The Marsupials (The Howling III)

The Howling III: The Marsupials (1987)

An Anthropologist tries to track down werewolves in Australia, which are really Tasmanian wolves (also sometimes called Tasmanian tigers, a real species now extinct of predatory marsupial). It might be surprising to you that a movie about Australian were-supials is really weird and goofy; its also really Australian but that only accounts for part of the weirdness. Easily the most (only) terrifying thing in this movie is bizarre baby were-supial thing and the scenes involving it crawling around in it's mother's pouch, they made me a little... uncomfortable. There is a suspicious lack of gore and violence, which I'm guessing has something to do with Australian censorship. The movie is weirdly edited and paced, with uncertain jumps in time and a confusing and abrupt change in the direction of the movie in the last act. The first act is pretty awesome, full of the kind of silly 80's monster movie stuff you would expect moving at lightning pace. Lead actress Imogen Annesley also makes the movie worth watching because she's really hot, in a Natalie Dormer kind of way... at least when the movie isn't focusing on her hairy marsupial pouch. The main problem I have with the movie is instead of leading up to an intense last-stand between the fugitive lycanthorpes and the police/army like you would think, we get a rather self-indulgent set of scenes of werewolf children growing up and mostly being accepted into society. I was kind of hoping for Ozploitation version of Dog Soldiers, not really sure what I got but I think I liked it.