If not for the presence of gubernatorial groper Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines would have gone straight to video or perhaps christened as a Sci-Fi Channel Pictures Original, as it operates on such a careless C-level that it would fit comfortably among the fluff and fromage like Jackie Chan’s Metal Mayhem, Pythons II and whatever crap Dean Cain and/or Richard Greico have been roped into this week.

Future saviour of the human race John Connor is now in his 20s, a homeless drifter, a barbituate junkie and no longer played by Edward Furlong, but Nick Stahl. Trying to stay in hiding and “off the grid,” he naturally travels to that low-key, out-of-the-way little town known as Los Angeles. Unfortunately, so has a visitor from the future—a female Terminatrix robot assassin (utterly talentless and future erotic thriller star Kristanna Loken) bent on snuffing Connor out and
bringing about the end of humanity. Fortunately, Arnold’s T-1000 cyborg-bodyguard has come back, too.

Thus begins an extended game of cat and mouse with action so mindless and uninvolving that it treats the characters as if they were Looney Tunes. Arnold and his charges (including vet assistant Claire Danes) drive, run and hide from the Terminatrix, and the Terminatrix shows up to do battle. Over and over again. Aside from an early street chase t makes a point to demolish everything, there’s no bravura set piece offered to distinguish T3 from, say, an episode of “JAG.”

Instead of sticking to the straight, serious action-oriented sci-fi of the first two films, T3 ventures into the realm of cheap comedy, with Arnold donning star-shaped, sparkle-adorned sunglasses and uttering quips like “She’ll be back” and “Talk to the hand.” Talk to the hand? That line was already tired by the time Fran Drescher put it in that Beautician and the Beast movie back in 1997. In fact, T3 plays the cheesy hand with every card dealt, to the point where it becomes a parody of itself ... and not a good one at that.

For all the suspense he put into Breakdown and the controlled pacing of U-571, director Jonathan Mostow sure blows it here. Things are competent, but since this isn’t a work of his own creation, he doesn’t seem quite sure what to do with it. James Cameron would know, but apparently he was too busy with his underwater explorations to care. (I’m not sure why Linda Hamilton didn’t even return—vacuuming doesn’t take *that* long—but her move to not get involved now seems like a wise one.) All in all, this belated entry doesn’t even feel like part of the franchise, but rather a half-baked rip-off issued by the coattail-riding likes of Roger Corman.

The DVD has a whole extra disc’s worth of featurettes, deleted scenes and other bells and whistles, but I so disliked the film I didn’t want to see another minute associated with it.

Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.

Director: Johnny Crash
Cast: Misty Mundae, Julian Wells, Darian Caine
Official Site

Not since Joe Estevez stared down Tanya Dempsey’s shirt and ogled her sumptuous cleavage in Stuart Gordon Presents: Deathbed has a b-movie so seared intself into my palpatating heart. That’s right my friends, E.I. Cinema in conjunction with Seduction Cinema has crafted a B-movie masterpiece disguised as an erotic parody. The movie is called Spiderbabe.

We are all familiar with the legend of Spider-Man. A hapless young science nerd, is the outcast of his school, picked on by bullies and laughed at by girls. Then, one day he is bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes a wall-crawling superhero. This story was recent brought to cinematic life by Sam Raimi. The movie was very good, yet it was very slick and polished. It failed to capture some of the rough street-level charm of the classic Steve Ditko illustrated comic book series.

Enter: Misty Mundae.

Misty is one of the most talented and beautiful starlets working in the b-movie scene today. However, in all honestly, her movies haven’t been much to write home about. Misty is always a beautiful diamond in the rough—a shining beacon in the middle of these crummy movies. There have been a few notable films (Playmate of the Apes, Dr. Jeckyll & Mistress Hyde), but for these movies are only worth watching for their sweet sapphic love sequences. Seduction Cinema has made a name for themselves in the b-movie arena by cranking out “erotic parodies” but now they have taken things up a notch.

In Spiderbabe, Misty plays Patricia Porker, a hot female nerd who is is bitten by her science teachers giant arachnid. At first, she just feels sick, but then a car comes along and… whooosh… she is crawling on the walls of a building. Spider-man enthusiasts will recall this scene from the classic “Amazing Fantasy” #15. Director Johnny Crash obviously knows his stuff when it comes to Marvel lore.

After this exciting sequence, Spiderbabe continues as a pitch-perfect parody of the Spidey origin story… Except there are a few important differences. Most importantly, as with the other films in the Seduction “multiverse” the chicks get into the lesbionic action at the drop of a hat. Also, all the major Spidey characters are re-imagined as females. This comes in handy when Patricia tries to convince her boss at the newspaper not to run negative Spiderbabe stories. Also, instead of shooting webs from her wrists, Spiderbabe shoots webs from her… nether-regions. Her web-squirting genitals come as quite a surprise to everyone in the movie, including Spiderbabe herself.

Director Johnny Crash does a great job of keeping the action moving at comic book speed. You know it’s a good sign when you are eager for the lesbian sequences to reach their climax to the real action can resume. The special effects are good in a low-budget, “Look, Ma! I know how to use After Effects” style. There are a few embarrassing sequences such as the final shot when Spiderbabe jumps onto the Statue of Liberty’s shoulder. Also, the wall-crawling action just felt a little bit fake. But overall, the movie looks amazing. This was shot with the same camera George Lucas used for Star Wars and it does not disappoint. You could have fooled me into believing it was 35mm film.

If there is anything lacking about Spiderbabe, in my opinion, it is the villain. Fem-tillian, just seems stupid to me. More importantly, it’s not a direct parody of any of the real Spider-Man’s rogues gallery. Just imagine the erotic possibilities of Doctor Octopus or the Rhino.

Nevertheless, Spiderbabe is a real treat for fans of Spidey, b-movies and lesbians. And that is something I think we can all agree on.

Ed Donovan lives in Burbank, CA where he is a mild-mannered copy shop employee by day. By night he is drummer for the art rock band Sodom and the Zsa Zsa Gaborrahs. He is also working on what promises to be the best b-movie zine ever.

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One of the great things about the popularity of DVD as a collector’s format is that we’re starting to see a lot of projects that would never have been released on VHS. One of the projects that I’m extremely glad to see is the Directors Label series. The Directors Label highlights the work of filmmakers who have pushed the boundaries of music videos and filmmaking. The first three editions of the series focuses on music video pioneers Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry.

Each volume is jam-packed with music videos, short films, documentaries and other peripheral work. The packaging is outstanding, right up there with the Criterion Collection. Each disk is packaged in a thick case made of clear plastic. The cases are thick enough to indicate there are at least two discs inside. Instead of an extra disc, however, the label has made the wise (and very cool) decision of including a thick 52 page book. The books features interviews, sketches and storyboards from the directors.

The Work of Director: Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is easily the most well-known of this initial bunch of directors. Looking at this work as a whole, it’s interesting to see how conceptual it is. It’s also surprising how much of it is shot on video rather than film. Spike stays true to his skateboarding roots and isn’t afraid to keep things lo-fi.

The music video highlights of Spikes disc include the selections from Fatboy Slim, the Beastie Boys “Sabotage” and the Pharcyde video “Drop.” Rounding out the videos are a slew of short films, rarities and documentaries. There are two great documentaries on this disc, Sunrise in Amarilla, about teenage bullriders and a mockumentary about the Torrance Community Dance troupe preparing for their performance on the MTV music video awards.

The Work of Director: Chris Cunningham
Chris Cunningham may not be a household name, but he is legendary among fans of weird and disturbing ***censored***. Cunningham began his career as a special effects artist before he got the itch to direct. He transferred is obsessive attention to detail and skill for bizarre imagery to the music video genre.

Of the three directors mentioned here, Cunningham has the smallest body of work. But it is totally understandable given the amazing level of quality and difficulty on display here. Cunninghan’s most famous video is probably the incredibly disturbing video for “Come to Daddy” by Aphex Twin. Most of his videos are dark and filled with subtle special effects and optical illusions. The production value and high quality imagery blows away big-budget Hollywood films. My particular favorite on this disc is the video for Bjork’s “All is Full of Love” which depicts a surprisingly erotic love scene between two robots.

The Work of Director: Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry has been at this a lot longer than Jonze or Cunningham and this results in the most jam-packed disc of the bunch. Gondry’s disc features 27 music videos, 13 short films, commercials and oddities and a brand new 75-minute documentary. The Gondry collection is all over the map, but he’s clearly some kind of genius.

Gondry has directed videos for everyone from Cibo Matto to the White Stripes to the Rolling Stones, but he is probably most famous for his collaborations with Bjork. Gondry’s videos are so complicated and elaborately choreographed that they would be headache-inducing if they weren’t so much fun to watch. The highlights of this disc are “Sugar Water” by Cibo Matto and “Bachelorette” by Bjork. The extra features range the gamut from Levis’ commercials with multi-million dollar budgets to improvised short films including one starring David Cross as a walking piece of poo.

In closing, I could go on and on about how glad I am to see these collections released on DVD. The fact that the price is so reasonable and the production values are so high is just an added bonus. Each one of these directors have done substantial and important work that truly has pushed the boundaries of music videos and motion pictures. Each of these discs (as with any anthology) have their highs and lows. But the highpoints are very high and even the worst selections are still interesting. If you are a film student, avid cinephile or serious music fan, each one of these is a must-own.

Buy the whole set!

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You know, the original Matrix could have gone down in film history as one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. If the Wachowski brothers could have just left it at that first one, they would have been revered more than George Lucas and it would of been on par with Star Wars and Close Encounters. But no-they just had to make a sequel and it just happened to be one of the worst sequels of all time, Matrix Reloaded. It was meandering, overlong and above, just ***censored*** silly. All the things that made the original a classic were as limp as Larry Wachowski’s penis-turned-vagina.

Now, six months later comes the supposed final chapter in the trilogy, Revolutions. And while it’s a marked improvement over the sequel (a half hour of Neo taking a dump would have been better than Reloaded), it’s still one of the worst movies of the year. There is absolutely NO reason for this movie to exist other than to bilk a quick $100 million from stupid Americans who just don’t know better. On top of that, the movie is two-hours and thirty minutes long, yet I have no recollection of any single thing that happened. I mean, there’s a couple of massive fight scenes, but other than that absolutely nothing happens. This movie doesn’t even have an ending.

Revolutions opens up right where Reloaded ended, complete with the taste of urine in my mouth. Neo’s trapped in the Matrix and the Sentinels are about to break through to Zion. Neo is told by the new Oracle (the Matrix goes through more Oracles than the Tardis goes through Dr. Who’s… oh my god, that is the nerdiest thing I have ever said in my life-shoot me now, please!) once again some non-sense like a third-rate Yoda. Meanwhile, Morpheus continues his transformation into the Hellraiser cenobite Butterball.

As the Matrix attacks Zion (for what seems like close to an hour and a half), Neo and Trinity travel to the Machine World to meet the machine leader. Trinity dies along the way, (making her character more useless than ever) and Neo jacks into the machine leader to fight Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving, the film’s only bright spot). They fight in the rain. They punch each other. A lot.

And that’s it. That’s all. Fade to black.

And that is the thing that made me angry more than anything else: you have had millions of people worldwide invest time and money into these films, and you don’t even give them an ending-you Wachowski ***censored*** are truly bastards. As a matter of fact, here’s the ending: the robots and the humans call a truce. Neo lies still in the machine world and the Oracle basically says “Get ready for the further adventures of Neo and the gang if this makes money.”

Are you mad at me for that spoiler? Well, I’d rather have you mad at me for a week than to have you walk out, depressed you spent $8 on the cinematic equivalent to watching your mom give a rim-job to a homeless amputee. You’ll thank me later.

The acting is atrocious, but thankfully, the worst character in film history, that weird French guy, is back. I still have no idea what his purpose is, but he still talks in that ***censored*** ridiculous Jerry Lewis-caricature accent that is the funniest performance of the year. And this time he runs a hard-core S&M club, thus allowing the Wachowski’s requisite techno-rave / bondage scene to spill it’s seed all across the screen. Mon dieu! His performance alone is almost worth the price of admission….almost.

Meanwhile, Keanu’s “Whoa!” delivery will keep him typecast forever, Carrie Anne-Moss emotes death as through it were a paper-cut and Jada Pinkett-Smith is oh-so-sassy!  A cute kid is thrown in and that annoying teenager is back, acting like a 1930’s orphans trying to hawk papers. Somewhere, Anthony Zerbe (sans KISS) and Monica Bellucci (sans bra) are thrown in.

The special effects are okay and thankfully the bullet-time effect is used only two or three times. The fight scenes are repetitive, warmed-over Yuen Woo-Ping that quickly gets boring after two punches-a death-blow to an action film itself.

But the worst thing about both this and Reloaded is the fact they just had to turn this into a trilogy. Why? You could have edited at least one hour out of the last one (the entire Zion speech and rave scenes alone would be 30 minutes alone) and an hour out of this one (particularly the Zion fight scene), you could have made one better three hour movie. But even then, it still would of sucked Sentinel wang.

So do yourself a favor-ignore the hype and tell the Matrix to ***censored*** off. Go see the better (the best!) movie opening this weekend, Elf. See Elf twice! Go for a third, if time permits.

Louis Fowler is a frequent contributor to Cinema Eye and Hitch Magazine. He is also the publisher of Damaged Magazine, a new issue of which is coming soon.

I am 100% in the Christmas frame of mind. I wasn’t two hours ago, but I just went out and bought my tree. Sure, it’s still about a month or two away, but just I can’t wait any longer. I can’t wait to decorate, I can’t wait to give presents and I sure can’t wait to see Elf again. While it may be your first inclination to throw Elf off as another treacley, Santa Clause-type Christmas movie, well my friend, a lump of coal for you. Elf is the best present a holiday movie-goer could ask for.

Destined to rank up there with A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation as a true, modern-day Christmas classic, Elf is no Jingle All the Way. But it easily could have been. This could have been horrible. This could have been a God-awful, flat, tepid, manufactured whimsy, assembly-line Christmas pic. It could have starred Jimmy Fallon, Eddie Murphy or even worse, Rob Schnieder. It could have been a script by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch. But no! Instead, it stars perhaps the greatest mainstream comedic actor since Jim Carrey-former SNL alum and current comedy genius Will Ferrell.

Let’s face it: Ferrell could read Things Fall Apart out loud and make it hilarious. Between his incredibly dead-on delivery and the fact he relishes looking like a fool to get a laugh, it all adds up to an hour and ninety-minutes of non-stop laughs. Not to mention his ability to play pure, childlike innocence but his ability to actually make you believe it, is some of the best acting all year. I’d even say Oscar nomination worthy.

Ferrell is Buddy, who, as a baby, snuck into Santa’s bag and was subsequently adopted by elves. Eventually, he learns that, in addition to being six foot five in a three foot world, he’s not an elf, but a human. With the blessing of his adopted father (Bob Newhart), he sets off to New York City to find his dad, an ***censored*** children’s book publisher (James Caan) who, much to Buddy’s terror, has made the naughty list.

Yes, this is basically the story, and yes is does seem rather routine. But you have to picture Farrell reacting (and over-reacting) to everything he comes in contact with. He answers the phone by asking “what’s your favorite color” and puts syrup on everything. He yells, he screams, he runs around like a madman, and yes, it should be annoying, but good-God it’s not. It’s infectious, it’s riotous and it’s truly, truly funny. Every moment Buddy is on screen, it’s a guaranteed laugh. As a matter of fact, the only time the film falters is when Ferrell is off-screen, which luckily, happens barely. Even an over-used, angry dwarf joke, that in any other movie would be incredibly lame, works here in spades.

Directed with minor flair by former Swinger Jon Favreau, the movie is kept at a tight pace, never limps and never slows.  It knows when to go overboard and more importantly, it knows when to stop. Zooey Dechanel is Buddy’s love interest, and while their romance is never really fully explored (or for that matter, even explained), it really doesn’t matter. Their date scene is worth the price of admission alone.

And while the rest of the supporting characters are all stock players (Caan, Newhart, Ed Asner), you didn’t come to see them. You came to see Will Ferrell get hit by a car or run around an escalator screaming.  There is just nothing bad I can say about this movie. Every facet of it is wholly entertaining, charming, and (yes heartwarming) and even has an appearance by Rankin-Bass characters. This movie should easily outshine the Matrix Revolutions and go on to be one of this winter’s biggest hits. If it’s not, I have truly lost all faith in the movie-goers of America.

Perfect for you, perfect for your kids, perfect for Jewish people. Give yourself a present and put Elf at the top of your nice list.

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Louis Fowler is a frequent contributor to Cinema Eye and Hitch Magazine. He is also the publisher of Damaged Magazine, a new issue of which is coming soon. 

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