YOU CAN USE PEACE DOGG BUT I USE VIOLENCE

I apologize for the lack of updates, but it's been a rough week for ya boy. On Monday my weirdo parents were in a pretty bad motorcycle accident when a deer straight up just jumped right into them. My mom is remarkably UNSCARRED (queue the mental image of Phil Anselmo's stomach tat with that imaginative experiment in spelling), but my dad is fairly thrashed. He's doing alright considering that it was a motorcycle accident and dude is in his 60's, but he'll probably be posted up in ICU for at least another week while his NINE BROKEN RIBS (queue the mental image of Phil Anselmo's anguished facial expressions during any given Pantera video) and the bruise on his brain heal. So I've been spending a lot of time at Roanoke Memorial Hospital this week, hanging out with my family and reminding my drugged-up father that he's in a hospital, not a prison. Other than that I've been sweating buckets over VCU's nonsensical graduation application process, smoking too much weed and watching shitloads of films that I haven't gotten around to writing about. So in the grand spirit of remembrance that surely permeated every red-blooded American's thoughts throughout all of yesterday, here is a short review (imma be late for work) of the most enjoyable and shamelessly violent movie I checked out this week.

Machete (2010)
dir: Robert Rodriguez

Famously based on its own fake trailer, Robert Rodriquez finally got around to fleshing out this pulpy homage to "classic" grindhouse cinema by giving Danny Trejo all of maybe 13 lines, throwing together an admittedly fantastic and perfectly cheesy story about the intertwining worlds of Mexican druglords who inexplicably carry around Samurai swords and are Steven Seagal, racist U.S. politicians and the current hot-button issue of illegal immigration, somewhere along the line also convincing Lindsay Lohan to kind of show her boobs. The result is actually a lot better than I expected, injecting the genre with a much-needed dose of self-aware parody and casual humor that doesn't ever go too far or distract too much from the seemingly nonstop array of decapitations, naked breasts and shocking visual moments where you realize that Trejo is like four fucking feet tall! Extra points for Jessica Alba kind of being naked and also being surprisingly good at this kind of thing. Between this and The Killer Inside Me, she might be growing on me as opposed to simply making my pants grow (sorry).

I also checked out:

Crank: High Voltage - very effective in terms of what it promised and what I rightfully expected. Don't cheat yourself by pretending you're a high-brow pussy; this movie is absolutely worth a rental. Fun and vulgar with a genuinely good sense of humor about both itself and all of the racial/sexual/etc. stereotypes that make life worth living.

The Marriage of Maria Braun - sneakily subversive period drama from Fassbinder. I'd go into boring academic detail but that's what school is for. If you're a fan of Fassbinder then you've already seen it, and if you've always been curious about him but kind of terrified by his coke-fueled madness and brain-rapes like The Third Generation, then this is a great place to start. Accessible but intelligent, like the world's finest women (huh?).

Frantic - just after doing some pretty weird things and getting into trouble over it, Roman Polanski took off on a self-imposed (and self-preserving) exile from the U.S. This was, I believe, the first film he made during this period, but it's very possible that I don't know what I'm talking about. Oddly enough I don't really know what this movie is talking about either because I fell asleep twice while trying to watch it. It's not bad or even all that slow, I just smoke too much weed and get off of work way too fucking late. Harrison Ford was pretty cool in the 80's but I saw an interview with him recently where he seemed like kind of a prick and had a pretty shitty earring. Oh well, I guess we can't all age as well as "Siamese Dream."

There were some more, but I'm having a hard time remembering what they were. Fuck you guys anyway, go do something cool outside.