The Three Stooges, 5 x Paizs, Cannon-era Bronson, pre-BATMAN Michael Keaton, post-Keaton BATMAN BEGINS, two childhood favorites, and a novel...

GRIPS, GRUNTS AND GROANS (Jack White, 1937) USA
**
[19 minutes] The Three Stooges are coaxed and cobbled into delivering an alcoholic Russian boxer to the arena the very same evening of his title bout, sans soused. Their constant attempts to keep the vodka from flowing are, as always, merely a perfunctory way to allow for sheer physical abuse to occur, with verbal exhilerations providing the emphasis to their primitive actions.

We all see where the plot is going: just pin a phony beard on Curly, and send him in the ring!

CRIME WAVE (John Paizs, 1985) CANADA
THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE (John Paizs, 1983) CANADA
OAK, IVY AND OTHER DEAD ELMS (John Paizs, 1982) CANADA
SPRINGTIME IN GREENLAND (John Paizs, 1981) CANADA
THE OBSESSION OF BILLY BOTSKI (John Paizs, 1980) CANADA
****
The preeminent Winnipeg filmmaker, a tireless chronicler of the plague and plight of self-confidence issues and heightened weekend afternoon backyard competitions, all illustrated with a seamless integration of old-fashioned cinematic tropes (the stentorian narration, the use of scratchy, barking-loud newsreels). Paizs trots this bag of tricks out in a feverish, impish fashion, providing the voice and the slapstick frame in BOTSKI (his study of adolescence-carried-over-into-adulthood, articulated via the lead character's fixation on “Playboy” bunnies, set to a kicking Dean Martin score, with Paizs doing his best Matt Helm – THE SILENCERS is glimpsed), while the rest of the films are stripped bare of his voice with the idea being that his highly-felt physical presence will remain utterly ambiguous, enticingly ethereal and achingly universal.

Stylistically, THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE reproduces the lurid Technicolor of 50s films quite extraordinarily for its incredibly low-budget.

MURPHY’S LAW (J. Lee Thompson, 1986) USA
**
Thompson’s (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, the original CAPE FEAR) a much better filmmaker than Michael Winner, who’s all empty visual rhetoric and bombast (see: THE MECHANIC, with its hyper-kinetic, abrupt camera movements that match the self-conscious decorum of Bronson's pad, a film that's really only more fun in theory).

Here, Kathleen Wilhoite’s the much needed punk-rock pulse in what otherwise would be a clichéd Cannon/dinosaur Bronson vehicle. Angel Tompkins, Richard Romanus, and even Lawrence Tierney (who gets needlessly executed in his opening scene) turn up as support.




TOUCH AND GO (Robert Mandel, 1986) USA
**
Of marginal interest only to Michael Keaton completists. I’m pretty certain that Roger Ebert gave this such high marks because of its choice Chicago location footage, and its attention to detail in regards to the poverty stricken areas. Otherwise, timid stuff involving a nouveau riche hockey player getting mixed up with a struggling Hispanic single mother and her aspiring gang member son (Ajay Naidu, of OFFICE SPACE). Co-written by Alan Ormsby (CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS).

NEVER ON TUESDAY (Adam Rifkin, 1988) USA
***
A low-budget comedic gem that takes the then-so-popular clichés of teenage sex comedies and turns them on their ears in a canny Roger Corman cheapjack fashion – instead of the two lads (Andrew Lauer and Peter Berg) making it to California and beach babe-dom, they’re instead in an accident and forced to reckon roadside with a lesbian photographer (Claudia Christian).

AN AMERICAN SUMMER (James Slocum, 1991) USA
**
A childhood favourite and, incidentally, the first film to be produced by future tell-all NATURAL BORN KILLERS production history author Jane Hamsher. Child actor Michael Landes is equal parts manically sullen and indecisive, as he leaves his Chicago dwellings to spend a summer with his aunt, played by Joanna Kerns. Brian Austin Green is saddled with the streetwise Huck part in this awkward re-telling of “Tom Sawyer” (Mark Twain can rest assured knowing that he’s thanked for inspiration in the final scrawl of the closing credits).

BATMAN BEGINS (Christopher Nolan, 2005) USA
**
An overlong, overly dramatic bore – no wit, no ostensible aesthetic or chosen style on parade (especially in the lackluster, indecipherable action sequences); incidentally, an all-British cast, with an eternally underused Gary Oldman as Detective (later Commissioner) Gordon. Hype be damned, I could care less about its sequel, THE DARK KNIGHT – it’s just not where my head’s at.

“Snuff”, Chuck Palahniuk [Doubleday; 2008]
**
Palahniuk’s choice in sickly seedy and unrepentant, twisted subject matter is a given at this point, but at least “Fight Club” wasn’t a one hit wonder (even if his other books are played out in the same nihilistic shock-value tone). “Snuff” details the exploits of a failed television actor, an aging, can’t-cut-the-mustard male porn actor, and a fresh-faced youngster convinced that one Cassie Wright, pornstar extraordinaire, is his real mother – all the while waiting in the wings for the chances to be part of her record-breaking on-camera gang-bang. A tense, brief read (it took me five hours, tops).