Tag: classic movie of the week

I hate the fact that I have to say this: The Rocky Horror Picture Show no longer counts as a cult film. Once Glee had an episode dedicated to it, RHPS became as mainstream as it could get. With throngs of teenagers now going crazy for the Glee cast recording of the Time Warp, it is time to find the spiritual successor to the world-changing 1975 film. That film is Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Hedwig was born as a young boy named Hansel in East Berlin just after the construction of the Berlin Wall, and is now the singer and frontwoman for rock band the Angry Inch. They are on tour following another artist, Tommy Gnosis, whom Hedwig rightfully claims has stolen all of her songs.

Hedwig’s songs are in fact the story of her life, from her early days as a boy in love with rock music to her botched gender reassignment surgery (which left her with a one inch mound of flesh where her penis was and vagina was supposed to be) and her quest to confront Gnosis.

Just like many films before it, including Rent and Mamma Mia!, Hedwig and the Angry Inch started off as a stage show in New York City. This allows the film to have a very live production-like feel to it at all times, especially as the character of Hedwig is played by the original cast member, John Cameron Mitchell. His movements are not what is usually seen in a movie. They are far more fluid and dance-like, which combined with the costumes creates a swirl of colours that just draws you further into the story.

The music really is something else. During the first run of the stage show, the songs were simply covers with new lyrics, but as time progressed, they were changed to original songs, written by Stephen Trask (who scored Dreamgirls) which remained for the film. The songs are mostly rock-based, but many have country, blues and folk influences.

To put it simply, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is awesome. The songs are everything one comes to expect from what can be referred to as a rock opera, the costumes are a wonder to look at and the acting in general could not be better.

Hedwig is a must see, for everyone (over the age of 13).

Directed by: John Cameron Mitchell, 2001

Starring: John Cameron Mitchell, Stephen Trask and Andrea Martin

When people think of George Lucas, they immediately think of the Star Wars franchise he created in the late ‘70s. What most people forget is that most directors do not start their careers off with a blockbuster. This was the case for Lucas and his first film, THX 1138.

THX 1138 is a factory worker in an underground city of the future. His job is highly dangerous: he spends his days assembling android police officers. The world in which he lives is governed by the mandatory intake of mind-altering drugs which turn the population into virtually mindless automatons.

THX’s roommate, LUH 3417, works in surveillance and voluntarily decides to stop taking her drugs after realizing what they are doing to the citizens. Since she is the one who prepares THX’s drugs, she does the same for him. With the drugs no longer controlling their thoughts, THX and LUH quickly fall in love and develop a sexual relationship.

The two are arrested for their crimes and soon after, THX is convinced by another prisoner to find an exit from their underground lives.

THX 1138 was a commercial failure and it is easy to see why. This film is a borefest, but it should not be ignored. While the script could almost be considered pointless to the progression of the film, this movie is all about the visuals. THX 1138 was filmed in 1969, long before anything fancy came up in the world of visual effects, yet it still draws you in with the virtually blank canvas that is the underground city. Almost everything in their world is white and it truly helps the viewer understand the emptiness of their lives.

This film makes me wish that Lucasfilm never developed advanced CGI techniques. Everything in this movie was really happening in front of the lens (except for a few scenes where Lucas decided to add some CGI. Avoid the 2004 director’s cut if possible) and it makes for a much better viewing experience than what most films offered in the last decade.

No matter how many things I did not like about this film, I strongly recommend it to anyone who has any interest at all in film history. It is always fun to see how a writer/director started, especially when their followup movies changed the world of cinema.

Directed by George Lucas, 1971
Starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence and Maggie McOmie

The American movie machine has had far too much control over this column. How ‘bout some Canadiana, eh?

Bob and Doug McKenzie are losers. There is no doubt about that. Their idea of a good day is to sit around and drink beer, cook back bacon and smoke, on top of perpetually calling each other names.

Having spent their dad’s beer money (not on beer, of course) the brothers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They just drank the last three beers in the house (they gave the third to their dog Hosehead) and are charged by their dad to get him a fresh case of Elsinore beer. They come up with the plan of stuffing a mouse into a beer bottle in order to get a free case from the beer store.

Their plan begins to fall apart the second they reach the counter at the beer store. The clerk refuses to give them free beer and insists that they take up their complaint with the brewery. When they arrive at the brewery, they manage to save the daughter of the recently deceased owner, Pam Elsinore, from injury when her car becomes stuck in the electrified front gate. Once inside the brewery, they find out that since the owner’s death, the brewmaster, known as Brewmaster Smith, and Pam’s uncle, Claude Elsinore, have fired virtually all the employees in an effort to automate the entire brewery. Irritated by this fact (and by the mouse in the bottle) Pam hires Bob and Doug to work in quality control on the bottling line.

While at work, the brothers encounter Jean “Rosie” LeRose, a former hockey player who had a career-ending nervous breakdown and ended up working at the brewery. He, like many others, has fallen under the control of Brewmaster Smith, who in reality is a doctor at the Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane. Using his knowledge of drugs, Smith concocts a beer with a mind control serum that makes people react to certain sounds. His plan is to release the beer to the unsuspecting public at the annual Oktoberfest celebrations in Kitchener, Ont. It’s a first step towards eventual world domination.

This movie is, without a doubt, as Canadian as Canadian can be. It takes place in Ontario, the main characters always have toques on, beer is a major plot device and every sentence ends with “eh?” or “hoser.”

Is there a problem with that? I don’t think so, eh!

Strange Brew

Directed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, 1983

Starring Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas and Max von Sydow

Everyone I know has a guilty pleasure of some kind. For some, it’s a certain kind of book and to others, it’s a certain kind of food. For most of my friends, it’s a movie or actor. No matter how bad the actor is or how many times they have seen the movie, they will never turn away from them. In my case, that actor is Pauly Shore and the movie is Encino Man.

A young Sean Astin stars as Dave Morgan, a high school “loser” in Encino, Calif. His one goal in life is to finish digging a hole in his backyard to make a pool for an epic post-prom party that will theoretically make him the most popular kid in school. While he is digging with his friend Stanley “Stoney” Brown (Pauly Shore) in his backyard pool-hole, he finds a prehistoric bowl, which leads to a large chunk of ice. They start to excavate the ice, and within it they see a man, who they decide to thaw out.

When the boys return from school, they check the garage, but find that the caveman is missing. They begin to think that they have lost all chance of becoming popular at school until they discover handprints on the windows of the house. As it turns out, the caveman has defrosted and is very much alive. They clean him up and give him the name Link, short for Linkavich Chomofsky, and the backstory of being a foreign exchange student from Estonia, so that they can enrol him in school and use him in their plan to become cool.

They bring him to school and Link becomes the talk of the town. Dave and Stoney still think that he is their ticket to fame and popularity, yet after only one day at school, Link has received multiple offers for dates, become a member of the computer club and befriended virtually everyone in the school. At the same time, Dave and Stoney are still referred to as the dork squad and people wonder why in the world Link would hang out with two losers like them.

This movie is the perfect example of early ‘90s teen comedy that was, of course, universally panned by almost every adult who saw it. Regardless of that fact, I think that everyone should watch this movie once, at least to have an awesome ‘90s flashback.

Encino Man
Directed by Les Mayfield, 1992
Starring Pauly Shore, Sean Astin and Brendan Fraser