After watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico, I am more convinced than ever that Desperado is a ***censored*** near perfect action movie. The story is simple. The action sequences are incredible. The main character wreaks major havoc. The girl is super-hot. The plot of the movie is so simple that a viewer can start watching at any time and get totally immersed in the film.

In stark contrast to this simplicity, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is large, sprawling and messy. This is the third film in Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi trilogy. However, the focus is no longer solely on the gun-slinging guitar player and his quest for revenge. In fact, it’s hardly even about El Mariachi at all… And that may be the movies problem. 

Once Upon a Time in Mexico tells the story of a whole bunch of people plotting to overthrow the president of Mexico. The players include Johnny Depp as a CIA agent, Willem Dafoe as the leader of a drug cartel, Ruben Blades as a former FBI agent out for revenge, Eva Mendes as some kind of law enforcement agent and Mickey Rourke as a henchman who carries a chihuahua around with him all the time. To be fair, Rodriguez has created a very interesting cast of characters here. There are just too many of them. It’s an overload reminiscent of the SPY KIDS movies, except with people instead of gadgets.

The fact that all these characters are double-crossing each other makes it even harder to become emotionally involved in the movie. It almost seems like Rodriguez has been taking screenwriting lessons from George Lucas. Just as we don’t care about the political crap in the Star Wars movies, we don’t care about a bunch of people staging a coup in an El Mariachi movie. We want to see El Mariachi shooting people, playing guitar, banging Salma Hayek and jumping out of big fiery explosions.

At the center of all the political maneuverings is El Mariachi himself. Apparently a lot of time has passed since Desperado and we get filled in through flashbacks. I won’t go into details, but El Mariachi has had a pretty rough go of it between films and his revenge now has a new target. Mexico is most interesting when focused on El Mariachi. Antonio Banderas doesn’t get too many lines, but he doesn’t need them. His body language and facial expressions tell us everything we need to know about the character.

Johnny Depp’s corrupt CIA agent is a great character and immensely fun to watch. Rodriguez obviously realizes this, because Depp is probably on-screen for as much time as El Mariachi himself. He’s not a hero or a villain, but he’s a fascinating character and Depp seems to have a great time playing him. However, I’m still not sure what the hell he was up to.

When Mexico does flare up with action sequences, they are as visually exciting as ever. There are a few great set-pieces here, including a scene with a bus that echoes the bus sequence in the first El Mariachi.  I was a little fearful that his time spent making kiddie movies, would soften his action movie chops. I shouldn’t have worried. Mexico seems almost gleefully gory. Bodies fly all over the screen. Eyeballs get drilled out. Kneecaps get shot off. Plastic surgeries go awry. It’s grotesque comic-book style mayhem.

Rodriguez is trying to do something bigger and better than he has done in the past. While I don’t think most of it succeeds, at least he still delivers the goods: lots of action, interesting characters and exciting filmmaking. You may be confused, but you won’t be bored. In fact, you may find yourself considering a second viewing of this film, just to get it all straightened out.

Rodriguez has created an interesting world filled with colorful characters in this series. While I’m sure he is eager to move on to different things, I hope we haven’t seen the last of El Mariachi and Rodriguez’s Mexico.

The Creeper, everyone’s favorite old-record listenin’, knittin’ lovin’, jitney drivin’ scarecrow impersonator is back, and this time his face looks more like a vagina than ever. (If you really want to get technical about it, he looks like a cross between a vagina and the Wishmaster. Or maybe he looks like the Wishmaster’s vagina?)

But vaginas aside, this movie is ridiculous.  The script, apparently written by Tom of Finland and directed by Robert Mapplethorpe, does nothing but put teenage boys into one scenario after another that enables them to take their shirt off. One scene has about ten guys sunning themselves half-naked on top of a bus. You almost expect one of them to say “Hey fellas, my pants are so tight, I think I’m gonna take them off.” But then, five minutes later, in the crucial urination scene, one guy pulls his pants down all the way to his ankles to ***censored***. Who does that in front of other guys? Well, my guess is director Victor Salva, forever known as not the director of Powder, but as the child-molesting director of Powder. I guess this film was part of his court-ordered sentence of telling everyone in America he enjoys the smooth hairlessness of a pre-teen’s nutsack. Thank you, Meagan’s law!

So anyway, the Creeper is back, offing kids one by one on a bus. That’s it until the last twenty minutes when the ever-so-welcomed presence of Ray Wise shows up to somewhat take-out the Creeper with some giant spear throwing action. But it’s much too short and then the ending leaves you to believe it was all for nothing. Which it was.

But really, the worst thing is the epilogue, where we are flashed-forward 23 years into the future and Wise and son have the Creeper on display for the public a five bucks a pop. I don’t know what this is to imply? If there’s a Jeepers Creepers 3, will it take place in the year 2026? And if so, why are the kids driving a 1960’s truck? Why not a flying hovercar that runs on garbage? Also, why is the guy armed with only a shot-gun and that giant-spear thing to defend himself if it wakes up? If this is the future, should they have some sort of photon-disintegrator that would do a better job? I simply refuse to believe that 23 years from now, that’s the best you can do on the weapons front.

Wait a second-I just though of something. Those weapons didn’t work so well the first time he used them. If he had such a hell of a time dispatching the Creeper in the first place, why keep him in one piece, tied up with only some ropes and chains? You ***censored*** need to cut that guy up into 100 different pieces and bury him in 100 different places all over the world. It just seems like the smartest thing to do. But then again, I’m smart enough to not get mixed up with ancient Vagina-face monsters.

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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.

I was originally going to write this review on a Tuesday night, exactly one day after I went to a screening of it with four other people. But I knew I would see it again on Friday because my girlfriend Emily wanted to see it with me. She was actually a little upset that I went to see it without her, mostly because I have been talking about it all summer, calling it “the best movie ever.” Of course I was being facetious, but a part of me-the uber-horror nerd in me-was hoping that I could actually be right about that.

After the Monday screening, I will admit I was kind of left with a sense of disappointment. Maybe it was all the nay-saying that was going on around me (the majority opinion in my party was that it sucked), but I felt let-down. I felt like a kid who wanted a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas but instead got socks. It just really wasn’t what I expected. It seemed like a mean, spiteful trick, played on us by mean, spiteful filmmakers. Horrible script, horrible acting, horrible direction…but then something happened.

On the ride back to Rod’s, I came to this realization: this is a ***censored*** Freddy/Jason movie. This isn’t Shakespeare. This isn’t Citizen Kane. This is a movie about a dream-stalking, bad-pun spewing, child-molesting demon with knives on his right hand fighting an undead machete-wielding retarded mama’s boy in a goalie mask. It’s not supposed to be good. It’s not supposed to be high art. It’s supposed to be Freddy vs. Jason.

And then I felt good.

So after seeing F vs. J two more times (once with the aforementioned Emily and then last night with another friend), I can roundly say I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. Yes the set-up is stupid, but how else are you going to get them together? Box social? No, you need a plot contrivance and here, it works.

My only actual complaint about it is that it takes thirty minutes to really get started-movies like this should be rearing to go. Anytime the story leave Freddy or Jason and focuses on the teens, it becomes tedious-just ***censored*** kill them already.

Yes the dialogue is horrible and the acting even more so, but hell, it’s such a fun ride you don’t care. The humor that started with Jason X is here (albeit mostly of the stoner variety, which reminds me: there’s a guy in here who does a constant impersonation of Jason Mewes through out the whole thing, right down to costumes and vernacular; why not just hire Jay-it’s not like he’s that expensive, and with this crowd, he’d probably actually be a big draw).

The film is loaded with plenty o’tits and the gore is plentiful. When Jason and Freddy do meet (at Camp Crystal Lake, which is luckily being renovated with steel poles and fresh propane tanks), the film reaches an apex that most other summer offering wished (Matrix, I’m looking in you’re direction!). The ending (a cheap shot if I ever saw one) leaves plenty of room for a sequel, which, knowing me, I’ll call the “best movie ever” when I see the trailer.

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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.

I finally caught Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle this weekend at the dollar movie. Bottom line: It was worth a dollar. At $1.50, however, I would’ve felt cheated.

The first Charlie’s Angels was decent over-the-top cartoon action porn. Full Throttle is even more outrageous and amped-up, yet markedly inferior. Much of it is so dumb, it makes the first film look smart. Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu return as the trio of (supposedly) sexy secret agents, doing the bidding of their mysterious speakerbox-boss Charlie. When the movie begins, they’re rescuing a U.S. marshal from Mongolia, and this soon gives way to the first ridiculous stunt. With the theft of two stolen rings containing federal witness protection info, the seeds of a story are planted and then proceeded to be fertilized with ***censored***. The girls crack the case with illogical ease, flung from one situation to another seemingly to allow for director McG’s endless streams of celebrity cameos, irrational musical numbers and leering ***censored*** shots.

Demi Moore is one of several villains, here a fallen Angel whose intent to kill the girls is never explained. Better – but still poorly – explained is the replacement of Bill Murray as Angels liaison Bosley, a role now filled by Steppin Fetchit, er, Bernie Mac. Instead of capitalizing on Mac’s “Ocean’s Eleven” cool, the movie makes him the butt of all jokes. Look, he’s never seen a big-screen TV before! He doesn’t know what an electric taser is! Aren’t black men stupid? Full Throttle seems to think so. And why add Disney Channel heartthrob Shia LaBeouf (or however you spell it) as a potential new Bosley when the film is already overflowing with cardboard characters?

Liu isn’t half-bad, but Diaz’s “Lookitme! I’m pretty and goofy!” shtick is so old and tired, particularly because Diaz herself is so skeletal, she’s ceased being pretty. Still, she’s not nearly as nauseating as Barrymore being passed off as sexy. Every time she looked in the camera acting all tough and wearing metal-band T-shirts, I wanted to kick her in the teeth.

Like its predecessor, Full Throttle simultaneously seduces and repulses. Here, however, the repulsion wins out.

Every once in a awhile a movie sneaks up on you and makes you remember why you fell in love with movies in the first place. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of seeing the right movie at the exact moment you need to see it. Sometimes, the sheer artistry of the movie speaks to you in a way only movies can.

All The Real Girls snuck up on me. I’ve been watching a ton of movies in the theater and on DVD, mainly so that I can write reviews and make it look like my puny little site has lots of content. Once you get into the groove, it’s not too hard to hard to crank them out. After all, most movies aren’t hard to process. This one caught me off guard and I’m still not sure I can really articulate my feelings about it.

This is the second film from director David Gordon Green, who made quite a splash with his first project George Washington. I haven’t seen George Washington, but it’s already available as part of the Criterion Collection. That in itself speaks quite a bit to its quality.

On the surface, All The Real Girls is about young love and the excitement and heart break that comes with it. But the movie is about so many other things.

The central character is Paul, a likeable guy who still lives with his mom and works as a mechanic for his uncle. He has lived in this small town all his life, and doesn’t seem to give too much thought to ever leaving it. Paul has been through pretty much every girl in town and has developed a reputation as the worst ex-boyfriend in town. This complicates things when he falls in love with his best-friends younger sister Noel.

He falls for her in a way he hasn’t experienced with any of his past conquests and this freaks him out. They fumble through the first stages of love and a lot of things work out very well. However, falling in love can get complicated and sometimes timing is a real ***censored***. As the film progresses, Green uses the love story as a means of telling a much bigger story:  a vivid and impressionistic story about growing up in a small town and the complicated bonds between family and friends.

There is a very strange quality to the film. The pacing is very strange, especially the dialogue. The awkward pauses, faint whispers and indiscernible lines are as important as the lines that are delivered loud and clear. Much of this strangeness is probably due to the fact that improvisation played a heavy part in the creation of the film. Green carries this seemingly awkward pacing over into the way the movie is cut together. The end result is a very poetic and lyrical film.

The style of the film will probably be off-putting to a lot of people. You will probably know in the first 10 minutes whether you are going to love or hate his movie.  I chose to go along for the ride, and as the movie progressed, I was riveted. It’s very rare when I actually forget that I am watching a movie, but this time I did.

Green is a unique and original director and I hope he is able to keep to the aesthetic path he is chosen. His style recalls 70’s cinema—evoking the very best elements of Terence Malick, Robert Altman and early Martin Scorsese. But the end result is something very unique. Green refers to his work as “redneck surrealism” and that’s pretty dead-on. With All The Real Girls he takes the tiny ordinary moments that most filmmakers avoid and makes something beautiful out of them.

In Quentin Tarantino’s introduction to Chungking Express, he remarked that he had cried while watching that film. Tarantino cried, not because Chungking Express made him sad, but because he was just so happy to love a movie so much.

That pretty much sums up my feelings for All The Real Girls .

Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Paul Schneider

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