Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Hated upon release, I long held a soft-spot for the gonzo B-Grade horror flick “Maximum Overdrive,” written and directed by Stephen King (his only directed film). And it’s partially inspired by “Overdrive” magazine, a truck-centered pub I worked at for five years. I first saw this film at, what, 13? Maybe. Those Green Goblin eyes sold me back then. I digress. Apologies. The story: An alien comet passes near Earth, turning machines into live creatures with a thirst for human blood. At a redneck Wilmington, N.C., truck stop, it’s the big rigs that go mad and kill. Among the heroes: Emilio Esteves as an ex-con turned grill boy, and Pat Hingle as his NRA-loving prick boss. The Green Goblin eyes belong to a tractor trailer with the face of the Spider-Man villain on its cab. None of it makes sense, the blood is comically thick, and the jokes are corny, but this is a drive-in lark fueled by King’s then cocaine appetite. Yes, diesel fuels the trucks, but coke fuels the master. And likely much of the cast. Watch it as a comedy and AC/DC jam. B+

12 Years a Slave (2013)

I don’t want to know anyone who doesn’t walk out of “12 Years a Slave” a crushed soul rebuilt from the ground up by the final and finally at-last hopeful moments of this true horror tale that is deft enough to show beautiful –- stunningly so -- landscapes amid recreations of terrifying acts of inhumanity that were the start of this great (and terrible) nation. 

These shots are clear: As they degrade the lives of those they see as less than themselves, the allegedly greatest of our kind –- rich, educated, and privileged beyond measure -– bring ruin to their own lives with the heinous need to control and take all treasure. 

Brit-born filmmaker Steve McQueen (“Shame”) has done what few American directors have dare tried: Tell the brutal story of slavery in the United States with unblinking detail and absolute you-are-there authority. 

This is the anti-“Gone with the Wind,” with its Southern celebration and happy slaves, and certainly the anti-let-us-have-fun-revenge-flick “Django Unchained,” which I like less and less the more I recall my two, one too many, viewings of it. 

Solomon Northup was a born free African-American in 1840s New York, a musician and engineer, until he was kidnapped and sold into bondage below the Northern line into death, rape, and forced labor that should shock anyone with a hair of decency. 

Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Children of Men”) plays Solomon, a man who must deny his own greatness and abilities, essentially his outright normalcy as a human, lest he be murdered or worse -- and yes there are worse fates -- by his white masters who will not see anyone of color as their equal. 

Solomon does this for 12 grueling years, his longest stretch as “property” of a sadistic drunkard (Michael Fassbender, a regular in McQueen’s films) who is abusive to all around him, including his own wife (Sarah Paulson) who can equal her husband’s acidic temper. 

This is an age when a black slave could be killed for learning to read or write, an act I cannot even muster in my head as a reality. But McQueen shows us many disturbing realities – including a brutal whipping that Solomon is forced to take part in – as every day, and as much a part of the American spirit as apple pie, George Washington and fireworks. 

To deny this, to ignore it, to wish it away as a past that should be forgotten and “get over it,” -– and I heard that a lot in Alabama and here in Virginia from racist cunts who then turn around and celebrate the rah-rah-rah spirit of the Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy, or what their university did in 1881 -- is a great as sin as those who meted out this disaster of inhumanity. 

Ejiofor truly, sorry this sounds cliché, this film has robbed me of most words, astounds in the lead role. I have been a fan of his for years, and now just stand in awe. He plays a freeman forced into not just slavery and near unspeakable cruelty an acting chore, a sick live stage act that lasts some 4,400 days, an educated, bright, angry, hopeful man who must show near none of those traits. 

That’s what sticks with me. Burying oneself as dead although you are yet alive, and long to see your wife and children, and parents, etc. 

In one bravo scene, three quarters, McQueen dishes out a scene that pulls no punches: Ejiofor as Northup looks out into the sky of his “home” and then directly into the camera at the audience, daring us to not just continue in his harrowing story but to never forget his suffering and the untold numbers of his fellow slave captives in an American that only called itself free, but in a blatant knowing lie, a wink as the rich and powerful killed hundreds of thousands, or more, of people of color, all for greed, and wealth, and land. 

The final moments, and this is no spoiler that Solomon lives, where he apologies –- apologies –- to his family for missing out on their lives, just laid waste to me. Can you imagine? I simply cannot, and have no words. McQueen and company have left me near silent. 

(Note: As with “The Butler,” a host of big names pop by for cameos, Brad Pitt among them, but these roles are mostly commoners, owners, bigots, and others, and the cameos do not stick in the crawl as, say, John Cusack does as Richard damn Nixon. OK, stop, hold on, Pitt almost grinds and pops too much a saint-like liberal progressive.)

Lest we need proof this story must be told, loud and in every corner, lest it ever be forgotten, a darling of the right-wing conservative movement has written a review of “12” –- without seeing the film, and stating he has no intention to -– saying McQueen and the film are too “harsh” on slavery, which has economic merit and can actually be healthy…. That such thought still carries cultural weight today is truly paralyzing. 

And makes “12” all the more vital. (If you can, read the book source. STAT.) A

Mud (2013)

Matthew McConaughey is on a helluva roll recently, leaving behind awful rom-cons with killer takes in “Bernie,” “Lincoln Lawyer,” and now “Mud.” Mud is the name of his character, a man hiding from police and bounty hunters on an ugly speck of an island on the Mississippi River. This is not his story, though. It belongs to Ellis (Tye Sheridan, from “Tree of Life”), a young teen in turmoil as his parents split and he dabbles in the maddening world of young romance. Ellis, with a pal named Neckbone (!), stumble upon Mud, and a testy friendship/mentorship is born as Ellis becomes Mud’s connection to the outside world. I’ll stop there. Watching the plot unfold and big-name actors pop up in small roles is part of the thrill of this drama from writer/director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”). Nichols is on his own roll, making smart films about small-town Americans without making them seem like yocals born to be mocked. Alas, his long climax jumps into the Hollywood rut of a big shootout that plays too loud and ludicrous. Tea Partiers will dig the anti-fed messages. Keep your eyes open for a bank sign at the end. B

Django Unchained (2012)

In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/ripoff “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and does not blink -– a black man is ripped apart by dogs as whites standby cackling, and the “N” word is used as verb, noun, adjective, and an exclamation. I winched, blanched, and shut my eyes at the violence, and the images of African-Americans forced into chains and depraved medieval torture equipment. 

Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting? Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination -- even fictional and heightened -- of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. But, hell, I say “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe America as some kind of utopian Candy Land. It was all good. The South was happy. I hate that film. Tarantino must as well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong. Conservatives hate this film because it dares show America -– of 150 years ago -- as a moral cesspool no better than Nazi Germany. Leftists such as Spike Lee hate it because they didn't think of this film, cathartic in twisted ways, first. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, and go see “Lincoln.” These films would make a wild double bill. 

Speaking of Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz) seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, a long overdue F.U. to Southern Whites, and their modern GOP apologists who use patriotism as a weapon of hate. 

There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2 hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot cowards they were and are, but the scene is overlong and kills an otherwise tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.

Further, his main characters are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his ass around as a slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic. 

In “Basterds,” Tarantino staged a key scene around a dinner and ratcheted the tension so tight, just as my heart was about to explode, his mayhem onscreen exploded. Here, during the big dinner scene, the air lets out, the talk drags on for 20 minutes, then the carnage hits. Then more talk. Then more carnage. Then more talk. Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page. 

So many grand ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s leadership as the Cinema God. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn good as a hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. But that death is cheap, quick, and with no deep wit.

But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do but react -- scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a bad ass woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and damn hardy, I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.

I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie. It screams genius, daring, red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard), and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -– but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.

Tarantino spends so much time making homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a bent-back man who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty hunter. I would have watched another our of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe. Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure.

After taking on fantasy Jewish revenge on Hitler, and now putting an African-American in a saddle with guns blasting racist Southerners, one has to wonder where QT will go next: A grindhouse take on Jesus? Or back to gangster-types? Tarantino still remains the most-surprising American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open. B

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

Abe Lincoln is hot in Hollywood. The 16^th prez stars in two big films this year. Suck it, Spider-Man. Don’t cheer yet, historians. “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” is a mash-up of history (as in U.S.) and Stoker (as in Bram) with an ax-wielding, head-chomping hero in a stove-pipe hat killin’ vamps. Written by the book’s author, Seth Grahame-Smith, and directed by Timor Bekmanbetov (“Wanted”) with master of ironic goth horror Tim Burton as producer, “AL:VH” ought to be the funniest, bloodiest blast of 2012, especially with our over-the-top election year, but it’s a dud. I dig the joke of ol’ honest Abe (Broadway vet Benjamin Walker) as a badass out for blood, but the film suggests with grim faux seriousness the South used slavery as a guise, with Africans as food a’plenty for Dixie vamps. Stick that joke on the Holocaust and try and laugh. But that’s a side issue. This is an ugly, cheap-looking film with CGI effects barely out of test stage, including a foot chase through a horse stampede and a train ride from hell so ineptly staged I thought this flick an episode of “Punk’d.” On the viewer. Talk about a head shot. C-

Lawless (2012)

If you watch the 1930s-set backwoods gangster flick “Lawless” and don’t know better, and you’d be a major idiot not to know better, you might think tiny, mountainous Franklin County, Va., is over the hill and through the woods and one covered bridge over from big bad Windy City Chicago. Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter (and rock god) Nick Cave, who previously collaborated on the excellent “The Proposition” and the very good “The Road,” likely believe so.

But I digress, as I always do with the details. 

The duo has taken the wonderfully titled non-fiction family-history novel “The Wettest County in the World” by (my proximity) local author Matt Bondurant and drably re-titled it as “Lawless.” It follows a backwoods trio of Bondurant brothers (Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, and Jason Clarke) who moonlight as moonshiners, selling the vile-looking homemade hooch during the days of Prohibition. Sure enough, things go wrong. In the span of just a few weeks, a (1) former go-go dancer, (2) infamous mob boss, and (3) corrupt federal agent -– all from Chicago, all on separate missions in life -– end up in wee Rocky Mount, and onto the brothers, they respectively, 1) Land a job at the family diner/gas station, 2) Sniff out killer booze to sell back home, and 3) Terrorize the siblings with endlessly wicked means of unlawful law enforcement. The newcomers are played by 1) Jessica Chastain, 2) Gary Oldman, and 3) Guy Pearce. 

The Rocky Mount and Chicago depicted here each must have one only dirt road going out, and it meets in the middle, and provide light-speed travel a la “Star Trek.” Hell, today in real life, it takes roughly 12 hours to get from Rocky Mount to Chicago. Here, pre-Interstate, pre-cruise control, it is magically faster. How fast is to get to Philadelphia? Does the title refer to liquor running, or the rules of physics, time, and distance?

But no matter these logic lapses, nor the cliché dialogue, “Lawless” floats and sinks on the acting. I’ll focus on the guys as the women (Mia Wasikowska also co-stars as a love interest) are only allowed to look “purty” and be supportive to their menfolk. Tom “Bane” Hardy grunts most of his scenes to ill-advised comic effect, while Clarke howls madly with his slimly written character. LeBeouf, former son of Indiana Jones, gives his best as a wimpy runt who must become a hardened man, but his character arc is foolish in the end. Oldman’s nasty scenes are a mere but oh-so-welcome series of cameos.

It’s –- shocker -- Pearce that near kills this film. “Proposition,” “Memento” and “L.A. Confidential” are each new classics, and he excels in all. Here, he overacts himself right out of the movie as a sissy snot named Rakes, channeling Dennis Hopper playing Dame Edna playing an endlessly psychotic version of super-agent-man Elliot Ness with a subscription to GQ for Sadists. Sporting ridiculously greased and parted hair, and shaved eyebrows, Rakes fears blood, and yet –- it is inferred -– gets his thrills raping crippled boys after he murders them in the woods. In a gangster flick in the New York of Mars by David Lynch on full-tilt “Wild at Heart” craziness, his character would stick out as a ridiculous clown. Here? Please.

Oh, one piece of divine greatness: Legendary bluegrass singer and Southwestern Virginia native Ralph Stanley covers the Velvet Underground’s “White Light /White Heat” at film’s end, and it’s an absolutely riveting, soul crushing performance that deserves a far better movie to precede it. For that matter, the entire music score, led by the genius Cave, elevates the movie, especially a breath-taking church singing which hits the soul dead center with pure joy-of-God beauty that can uplift an agnostic. The film misses. C

Bernie (2012)

The greatest indicator the rhythm is off in “Bernie,” a dark comedy about a real-life murder that rocked a Texas town 15 years ago, comes when a playground set is seized during a criminal investigation. The audience, in unison, let out a heartfelt, “awww” as two young girls watched their backyard kingdom be torn down by police. Outside of laughter at the people and hijinks on screen, it was the only other sign of human emotion I heard or felt. 

That’s how thin “Bernie” is. The film. Not the man. Bernie Tiede, is quite thick in the belly, as played by Jack Black, and as seen in real-life photos and video during the closing credits. 

Tiede was an assistant funeral home director during the 1990s in tiny Carthage, Texas, (even the name is ironic). Clearly gay in his every manner, Tiede became a local celebrity, a mascot if you will, to the good ol’ GOP-voting Christian folk there. Not just for his artistry of making the dead look good, but in his endless dedication to church, the local theater, baseball clubs, and his undying loyalty to the town’s widows. He even came to befriend the town’s one Ms. Scrooge (Shirley MacLaine), a vile control freak badger, set off her leash after the death of her wealthy husband. This is where the thrust of the film kicks in. She became Tiede’s Sugar Momma, he her Errand Boy. Things got ugly, and Tiede shot her. Four times. The town stood strong: Behind Bernie. Old lady? Fuggedaboudit.

Shocking? Yes. But Richard Linklater, directing and co-writing, would rather laugh at the wild audacity of it all, and edits in interviews with real-life locals to the mix, showing the town as mentally lost as Tiede is in the “movie” portion. The tone is so broadly farcical nothing sticks. With Black’s eternal wink-wink personality and mincing gay lisp, I never grasped whether or not trapped-in the-closet Tiede was sincere and full of love, or playing people, full of rage, or some place between. Wearing a mask if you will, to go all Batman here. 

Person after person in those interviews dismiss Tiede as “queer,” or insists “he can’t be gay,” he’s too nice and decent. Surely he heard that awful talk, surely it hurt, and made him mad. Or did it? Did he bury his pain. We don’t know. As portrayed, Tiede has all the depth of Ziggy, to bring up another roundish guy. 

More so, there’s a strong, unpleasant whiff that Linklater, a Texan himself, is pulling a nasty fast-one on those interviewees, inviting them friendly-like to talk on camera and then editing their words to appear as rubes and hicks, or borderline senile. Were these people misled? I'd sure as hell would think, “Yes.”

“Fargo,” a far more dark comic tale of murder, had infinitely more emotion, and it’s fictional. The comparison is silly, that film is so sickly brilliant, and brilliant, but I shall not digress. In this tale, an old lady died, for real, and we get nothing. There’s no sense of loss here, mixed in with the comedy. Any sense of irony is lost. MacLaine, dropping a racist tirade as the old lady, makes it all too easy. Too neat. Ehhh.

Matthew McConaughey -- God bless him, is he becoming a character actor now, no more rom-coms? -- lifts the film as high as he can as a self-righteous, but right nonetheless, ADA who is dismayed at the turn of events. Yes, he’s also spinning comedy gold, but he’s also the only one asking, how would you react? Bernie, or the lady? C+

The Help (2011)

“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary.

Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all.

Let us get my major grind out of the way. “Help” is geared toward the widest American audience possible, so it will not cut bone. It will not show the true Jim Crow South, made horrifically real and alive in the book “Carry Me Home.” (Read that book. Do it. Now.) It will not dare go the route of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” with a rightfully angry black man -- that is a fine, true Civil Rights film -- ready to tear down the institution that has torn him down his entire life. It mostly avoids blood and death, and follows a liberal, white, pretty girl, because that’s what Hollywood thinks we want. Looking at box office receipts, they nailed an “Easy A,” to bring up Emma Stone. (“Easy A” is Stone’s biggest hit film.)

Stone plays the hero: Eugenia, a … wait for it … newspaper reporter (liberal!) who starts out writing a housecleaning advice column but soon dives incognito into telling the stories of black maids/ nannies – The Help -- hired by wealthy families. Including her own. In a Hollywood story, a young black woman or man could never dream up this idea. No. Help, so to speak, has to come from outside. Just like the heroic FBI (!!!) had to help in a certain Gene Hackman film I mentioned above. (Talk about a crock of history.) And, I know, it’s all based on a book. A best-seller. Whoopdeefriggin’ do, my point still stands.

But I digress. Stone’s newly minted University of Mississippi grad Eugenia returns home to the town of Jackson as an aspiring writer, her eyes now open to the horror that she was raised in and never thought of for a second. Eugenia’s first choice for the book is Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), the caretaker of her best pal’s daughter. Aibileen is, of course, scared of revenge from her white employers and local Klan, the latter of whom never actually appears. That would scare test screening audiences after all.

Eugenia asks upfront dumb questions: Do you regret raising the babies of others, whilst missing out on the lives of your own children? And do you have dreams other than being a maid? Well, no, shit, girl. Really? But here’s the beauty of this film: Davis rips the film from Stone with a fierce, devastating performance. She makes that awkward scene work. When Aibileen talks of her life, her body language vibrates with heartbreak, sadness, regret and, yes, anger, directed at herself and the world that belittles her based on skin color. (I can’t image being so treated, I’d rage forever. I would burn buildings down, no lie? Would you not?)

We also follow another white family, headed by a Stepford Wife-type monster, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is the villain, a young lady who speaks of Christian charity and yet proclaims Separate but Equal must always stand. The character veers close to caricature, but Howard – pouring out judgmental evil from her eyes – makes it work. Hilly, that’s her Southern Belle name, takes great pleasure in ridiculing her own maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer). And Hillies still exist today, no lie, and I have met them.

It is Minny who serves a dish of revenge, the comedic comeuppance, and brings about the film’s most controversial moment. It’s funny. I admit I laughed. I did. I also wondered if any such thing could have ever truly happened, in a state where murder upon African-Americans for the lightest infraction was the norm. The whole gag seems a modern, not historical, touch. I suppose from the book. I skipped reading it. Thankfully, the final scenes have Aibileen taking on her oppressors. No Eugenia about. It ends seriously, with quite a heart-breaker, and with an uplift.

So, see the film. Watch it for the scene toward the end where Eugenia walks into Aibileen’s home and sees a roomful of African American women. It is the first time I have ever seen a summer Hollywood flick that featured a roomful of African American woman, and that in itself says the struggles depicted here are not ancient history. They still exist. And be warned, when we have presidential candidates saying our Founding Fathers worked to end slavery and congressmen who shrug off the Civil Rights Act as passé federal oversight, and make a half-hearted apology that they were taken out of context. Jim Crow, institutionalized racism with state’s rights ... it could happen again. (That “Take our country back” mantra is a threat, do not doubt it. We have a black man in the Oval Office.)

But also know this: When you are watching and laughing along at the funny bits (and I am guilty) in a movie about this era, remember not many people were laughing during the real 1963. Not in the South. The emotions, I gather from stories told to me and read by that occurred before my birth, were far more grim. On both sides of the divide. Give me “Malcolm X.” It is far closer to the ugly truth. This could play on TV, Sunday night movie, uncensored, and not raise a pulse. B-