Kick Ass (2010)

"Kick Ass" is a superhero flick like no other: Horrifically violent, vulgar, and a self-aware smart ass romp that rips a hole into the underside of whiner Spider-Man’s long johns.

This is no kiddie flick, not by a long shot because the youngsters on screen are beaten, stabbed, shot and pulverized in a dizzying spell of nastiness. Any moral person should flee from this film. I dug it.

Aaron Johnson plays Dave Lizewski, a comic book-collecting high school loser who fancies himself a wall-crawling, bullet stopping hero of the night. But here’s the crazy catch -- Dave is dumb enough to actually go out into the night and play superhero. Five seconds into his first criminal bust, Dave is beaten, stabbed and run over.

The Kick Ass of the title is Dave’s moniker, but as one man quips, it out to be Ass Kick. That man is an ex-cop (a grounded Nicolas Cage in a rare great performance) who’s way unstable, haunts the NYC night as a murderous Batman-knockoff and is schooling his young grade-school daughter (Chloe Moretz) to be his Robin. A way-scary Robin with a Marine's mouth.

This is a zany fantasy that regularly dives into high comedy before jumping feet first into hardcore Tarantino-inspired action. It takes the whole comic book genre down a few notches, but loves the film type all the same. B+

Wild at Heart (1990)

David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” is another slice of a dream-state American pie. Burned to a crisp. Nobody sets a mood quicker or with romantic/doomed/thrilling atmosphere than Lynch, and this film is loaded with scenes beautiful (a couple in love dancing wildly on a desert side road) and hellish (Grace Zabriskie as a wordless demonic killer) and downright weird (Crispin Glover, going 111 on the nut-bucket scale).

The dancing lovers are Nicolas Cage’s Sailor, a newly paroled convict, and Laura Dern’s Lula, an innocent with a her bat-poop crazy momma (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real mother). The couple head West, fleeing mom, who sends a private eye (Harry Dean Stanton) and then a troupe of killers. I won’t dish on the rest of the pretzel-twisty plot, but say only that Lynch riffs off “The Wizard of Oz,” but with hard-core graphic sexual and violent content. There literally is a magic globe, a Wicked Witch and a Good Witch.

There’s so much to love here. A roadside car accident in particular is a dip into tragic/magic life and death as a Sherilyn Fenn plays a young girl whose head literally splits open. (Half the cast came from “Twin Peaks.”) Yet, this whacked trip Cannes Film Festival winner has its faults: Sheryl Lee, the dead Laura Palmer, plays a great corpse. Playing the Good Witch, not so much. She sucks, actually. And Willem Dafoe plays a disgusting, ill-conceived, seedy reincarnation of Frank Booth from “Blue Velvet,” but with a dash of “Deliverance” teeth and the strut of a 13-year-old boy. Dennis Hopper’s Booth came from Hell and remains the absolute movie psychopath. Dafoe’s bonehead is an unfunny joke. And, sure enough, someone’s head is blown off into tiny chunks. Is this Lynch on autopilot?

Side note: I still don’t get Lynch’s apparent fear of North Carolina. (Is it the barbecue?) “Heart” opens in Cape Fear, N.C., not too far off the map from Lumberton, where “Blue Velvet” was set. Or is he just paying homage to the original “Cape Fear” from decades back, as the 1992 remake was not yet released? Not sure...

Oh, this is where Cage’s Elvis homage began, and several years before the former’s career crashed deader than the latter's fat butt. Cage is throbbing with energy here, frightening one moment (the opening scene) and insanely funny the next (“What do you f-----s want?”). He is on 100 percent, though, in a daring, damn the rules role. He needs good directors. Alas, Dern plays another pure girl who bemoans if love is enough to conquer evil and death. Lynch loves a blonde like Hitchcock.

Not Lynch’s best by a long shot, but still a shocking, mind-blowing Avant-Garde treat with scenes that dead end but nevertheless fascinate. “Velvet” from start to finish stays on the soul, and is part of me, whereas “Heart” comes and goes in spurts. Still, less than perfect Lynch is one amazing ride. B+

The Rock (1996)

I have the same reaction to "The Rock" now that I did the first time I saw it in 1996. It's a fun, eye-popping action movie, with great turns by Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. But it's an overblown mess.

The plot: A group of disgruntled U.S. Marines take over the Alcatrez prison tourist attraction, with 80-odd hostages. They seek money for perceived injustices, or they'll fly chemically-armed missiles into San Francisco, killing thousands. Enter Cage (as an FBI chemical weapons specialist), Connery (a former inmate of the prison and a military whiz from Scotland) and a platoon of Navy SEALS to the rescue.

That portion of this Michal Bay film is outlandish fun. But, this being Michael Bay, the outlandish fun must be taken to 42 on 10-scale. This guy doesn't know subtle. Hence, we get an unneeded, overlong, loud and explosion-filled car chase about a half-hour into the film with Connery in a Hummer being chased by Cage in a Ferrari on S.F.'s famous streets. The scene takes forever and kills the plot's momentum.

The whole film, which includes Bay's trademark slow-mo, American flag waving shots of hard-on patriotism -- might be a headache if it were not for the villains. Without giving anything away, Harris, along with costars Bookine Woodbine, David Morse and others, act out (wonderfully) varying shades of violence and evil. It's a nice surprise in a formulaic action film. Also welcome: the great chemistry between Connery and Cage, who at this point in his career had not yet sailed too far over the top. B-

Next (2007)

Indeed. Let's move on. D-