Heavy Action: xXx: Return of Xander Cage

by Patrick Bromley

The things I do for my country.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage is a stupid movie. Like, it's so stupid. It's such a stupid movie that when it ended, I had to reach down under my theater seat and collect my eyeballs, which had rolled out of my head somewhere around the 20 minute mark. I mean, it is so stupid. Imagine something that's really, really stupid, and then remove any shred of intelligence that's left and you still wouldn't have something as boneheadedly stupid as Return of Xander Cage. Seriously, it's, like, so stupid.

None of this is to say that it is a bad or unenjoyable movie, of course, just that it is staggeringly stupid. The movie returns star Vin Diesel to the series he launched in the long ago time of 2002 but then left for the 2005 follow-up, xXx: State of Union, in which Ice Cube took over as a new xXx agent and helped turn this thing into a franchise. Don't worry; Return of Xander Cage marries the previous two films (and even acknowledges the embarrassing Vin Diesel-less "Death of Xander Cage" short film included as a DVD extra when the director's cut of xXx hit home video) and sets up the potential for future sequels that focus much more on the ensemble than just Vin, because some people have clearly learned the right lessons from the Fast & Furious franchise. Whether or not there is every another xXx movie, I cannot say. It doesn't seem to be setting fire to the box office in the United States. There is a reason for that. I'm anticipating it does much better in foreign markets. There is a reason for that, too.

Diesel reprises his role as Xander Cage, former EXTREME ATHLETE turned secret agent who faked his own death and has been living in hiding since the events of the first movie. We pick up with him in the Dominican Republic, where he has become some kind of folk hero: beautiful young woman throw themselves into his tank-topped sausage casing and he does some EXTREME skateboarding that there is no way 50-year old Vin Diesel can ever do in order to create an illegal cable hookup and bring FUTBOL TO THE PEOPLE. It's here that he's approached by Special Agent Marke (Toni Collette), who gets him to return to action to recover Pandora's Box, a super high tech device capable only of making satellites crash back down to Earth. Xander is tasked to take down the team who stole Pandora's Box -- including Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone, plus international martial arts superstars Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa -- so he enlists some members of his old crew. Or are they just his friends? Whatever. They include sniper Ruby Rose, stunt driver Rory McCann and a DJ played by Chinese recording artist Chris Wu. Yes, a member of this EXTREME crew is a DJ. At one point he foils an assassination attempt with the power of his DJing. Did I mention this movie is so stupid?

So you may have noticed something about that plot description and cast list: it's clear that the filmmakers involved with Return of Xander Cage both are 1) hoping to pivot away from this just being the Vin Diesel show and more towards an ensemble and 2) stacking the film with international stars in the hopes of raking in that sweet, sweet foreign box office. I'm happy with both rationales, because I think it results in a better, more interesting action movie. It's nice to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster and the lead actress is an Indian woman, plus any movie with both Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa is a movie worth seeing. This double casting is never really capitalized upon at all, though, in part because Tony Jaa is given nothing to do but sport a bleached blonde fauxhawk and in part because director D.J. Caruso is rubbish at shooting action and fails to really capitalize on what either man can do. Donnie Yen fares considerably better, and in fact comes very close to make the movie worth seeing completely on his own. He's super cool and charming and every time he's on screen I found myself wishing he was the new xXx and that this was his movie.

Actually, I could say that about a few of the supporting cast -- not just Yen (who is the best by a wide margin, making this the second big movie he's stolen in a matter of months), but also Deepika Padukone (who also has very little to do but say things like "Pandora's Box must not fall into the wrong hands!") and Ruby Rose, who has good presence and cuts a good action figure when the moment calls for it. Unfortunately, she's done in by the screenplay's need to always make her "cool" with her tattoos and her edgy attitude and her ability to kill anyone and anything from very far away. This constant emphasis on COOL is one of the great downfalls of xXxIII (still a better title), because this is a movie that insists every character be VERY COOL. Everyone postures. Everyone gets the one liner. Here's the problem with this approach: when every character is set up to "the cool one," no one is actually the cool one.

I dare you to ever stop laughing

Which brings us back to this movie being very, very stupid. The dialogue, by screenwriter F. Scott Frazier, is some of the most laughably terrible shit I have heard in any movie not directed by Michael Bay. I couldn't believe what I was hearing most of the time, and I regretted not being able to accept my friend and colleague Adam Riske's invite to see the movie with him on opening night because it meant seeing it by myself on a Saturday afternoon with no one there to bear witness or to prove that I was really hearing the dialogue I was hearing. I feel actively bad for Toni Collette, an Oscar-nominated actor who I hope was paid a huge stack of cash in exchange for the shit she is asked to say in this movie. It's embarrassing. Vin Diesel, of course, is Vin Diesel: his dialogue is growled in short, punchy bursts that exist to seem funny and cool but manage to be neither. All it manages to be is stupid. In the EXTREME.

To the movie's credit, at least it doesn't take itself very seriously. The original xXx, a kind-of modernized James Bond for the Mountain Dew set, was lacking in self-awareness because director Rob Cohen was busy buying into the myth of emerging superstar Vin Diesel and made deifying him as the new great action star his top priority. DJ Caruso isn't beholden to making Return of Xander Cage into purely a straight-faced star vehicle, so Diesel seems to be having a good time and Caruso allows for a much greater sense of playfulness throughout the film. But then he also does those freeze-frame character stat screens every time a new person is introduced into the movie like it's fucking 1996, because it turns out DJ Caruso is not that great of a director. He's competent and xXxIII is competent. It's also really, really stupid. Maybe I should have led with that.

In some ways, xXx: Return of Xander Cage is the best movie in the series. In other ways, I don't care. I mean, this is now the third film in a franchise that probably didn't deserve a second; I've seen them all and feel no compulsion to revisit any of them (except maybe the first, but only because Asia Argento). This is a series that's being willed into being by some producers hungry for a franchise or by Vin Diesel, who twice walked away from the series that made him a star so as to not get locked into doing just one thing and twice returned because he realized that the one thing is how audiences want to see him. This isn't like the Riddick franchise, though, which is a clear labor of love for which Diesel exhibits a real passion (and which endears him to me with his nerdiness totally lacking in irony). This seems purely driven by a desire to package something profitable. If they do end up making another one, I really hope they go the ensemble route -- the casual representation and diversity here is just as heartening as it was in Rogue One even if it's getting none of the same credit (which may be because Rogue One starred a woman as its main hero and this one stars a pan-racial Golem in a fur coat). Maybe next time they can also make it a little less stupid.

Reserved Seating: Live by Night

by Rob DiCristino and Adam Riske

The review duo that sleeps by day and CrossFits by night!

Adam: Welcome to "Reserved Seating." I’m Adam Riske.

Rob: And I’m Rob DiCristino.

Adam: Live by Night is the fourth directorial effort from the multi-talented Ben Affleck and his second adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel.

Rob: It tells the story of Joe Coughlin (Affleck), a Prohibition-era (era) stick-up man caught between warring mafia families in Boston. After running afoul of Irish boss Albert White (Robert Glenister), Coughlin renounces his vow of neutrality and joins up with rival Italian boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone), who sends him and his partner Dion (Chris Messina) to supervise their rum smuggling operations in Florida. Coughlin then faces-off with corrupt cops, the KKK, and an assortment of other threats vying to bring him down.

Adam: In this clip (), Affleck and Messina discuss partnership terms with a Cuban faction in Tampa, which includes Zoe Saldana, who later develops to be a new love interest for our lead. Live by Night has a lot of scenes like this one of people talking while Ben Affleck seems like he is either just waking up or falling asleep.



Rob: I like this scene. It makes it seem as though Live by Night has real interpersonal conflicts and dramatic stakes. It’s one of two or three in the whole film.

Adam: For a movie with so many characters, there is very little development to any of them. The movie starts out somewhat disappointingly based on Affleck’s previous directorial efforts (Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo), but at a certain point Live By Night became clearer to me and I found myself enjoying it for what it is - a trashy gangster movie like Mobsters or Hoodlum. The trouble is that my expectations were initially set higher because of Affleck’s previous directing pedigree. I had a lot of fun watching Live by Night, maybe even more the nuttier it got. It feels almost like an entirely different film in each and every scene. By the time Chris Cooper is shooting two guns and screaming “Repent! Repent!” like a 10th billed actor in a Wild West show, I was laughing out loud and having a pretty great time. I can’t say Live by Night is a success, but I may have enjoyed this movie more than anyone else on Earth.

Rob: Well, here it is. Our first fight. You absolutely enjoyed Live by Night more than I did. It’s a tonal disaster, like you said. A big, sprawling gangster epic has to have a strong handle on who these characters are, what they’re doing, and why we should care. This film was frankly just grating and boring, and I say that as a lifelong Affleck apologist. I really think he missed the mark on this one.

Adam: I don’t know if we’re going to have as big of a fight as you think because I don’t disagree with any of what you said, except for maybe that it’s boring. I did have a beer and some boneless buffalo wings before the movie, so maybe that factored into my enjoyment of Live by Night. Did you find it distracting that Ben Affleck was so damn wide that he looked like he barely fit on-screen? Talk about period-inappropriate. He looked like CrossFit Corleone.

Rob: Now that you mention it, my experience may have been ruined by the couple in my theater who were talking literally at full volume the entire film. It made it really hard to focus on whatever the hell Brendan Gleeson was saying half the time. As for Affleck, I honestly think he miscast himself in this role. He’s a forty-year-old man built to smash people with toilet seats and yet I’m supposed to relate to him as the scrappy upstart? It would have been nice to have seen his character built up through some backstory involving the war or a few more bits with the Brendan Gleeson character. There’s this thematic interest in “changing who you are” that might have been nicely served there.

Adam: Every interaction Gleeson has with Affleck in the movie is basically “You’re a garbage person but I’m not going to do anything about it. See you Sunday!”

Rob: How about that dinner scene where he tells Sienna Miller, “If my son likes you, you must be horrible!” Thanks, Dad!

Adam: I want to get back to what you said about Affleck being miscast. Absolutely! We are led to assume he’s deceitful and cunning, but every scene is him playing it in the same flat note. It’s like he succeeded in Tampa because he was too dull to notice. Maybe Affleck bit off more than he could chew by producing-writing-directing and starring in Live by Night. I’ll say this, though: I’d take all of this, whatever this is, over his other garbage picture The Accountant from last year.

Rob: You know that isn’t fair. The Accountant has Anna Kendrick, so I’m beholden to it. Anyway, yeah, Affleck definitely seems overwhelmed here. Again, the classic gangster formula: You’ve got all these moving parts and fun characters, but they never intersect or affect each other to create meaningful change in the people involved. Without getting into spoilers, this film could have used fewer female characters whose mandates were “stand around,” and more with something to actually do. I liked Chris Cooper and Elle Fanning a lot, but they barely had any scenes together. And we never get to see what actually changes Affleck’s character because all we know about him is that he’s built like a brick shithouse, he’s very sleepy, and he loves him some Zoe Saldana. I couldn’t understand him, so I couldn’t understand the film. Anyway, what did you think of the whole KKK subplot? That scene in the cigar factory with the Grand Wizard guy was my one moment of joy in the whole picture. We should have had a lot more fun with that thread.

Adam: I didn’t have a problem with it. They’re portrayed as detestable and a lot of them get killed. I was satisfied.

Rob: “A lot of people got killed...I was satisfied.” -- Adam Riske, F This Movie!

Adam: You bet I was. Also, don’t misquote me…some of the words were wrong. Slap your hand with the ruler I gave you.

Rob: Speaking of slapping, the whole Elle Fanning subplot with the religion stuff is a perfect example of how Affleck’s development of his own character really fails. Like at the coffee shop: she’s sharing all these deep existential feelings that are supposed to pivot his character or introduce something new, but it’s hard to tell at any given time what particular conflict he’s feeling pressure from because he refuses to emote or, you know, say and do things. I had no idea where his head was at or what I was supposed to feel.

Adam: He’s sleepy from CrossFit.

Rob: Those giant tires on chains aren’t going to pull themselves.

Adam: So you’re voting Mark Off?

Rob: My love for Ben Affleck is secondary to my responsibility to the public, Adam. Mark Off.

Adam: Every part of me says “vote Mark Off.” To hell with it. “Mark Ahn” for Live by Night. It’s not one of my favorite Ben Affleck roles or movies, but I admire the guy and I’m more with this one than not.

Rob: That’s the spirit. Live free or die hard, dammit.

Adam: I loved that in the last 10 minutes of Live by Night it could have ended on any scene and it would have made just as much thematic sense as any other.

Rob: But we needed to pay off that subplot with his brother that was apparently happening in the movie! And the chess board because symbolism! Maybe he was just so sleepy he didn’t realize he left all that in. Because of all the CrossFit. Alright, I’ll stop.

Adam: Join us next week as I try to get my critical bearings back and we review Split, the latest thriller from M. Night Shyamalan starring James McAvoy.

Rob: I’m still never sure if it’s cool to like M. Night Shyamalan again or not.

Adam: He’s made some bad movies but also some great ones. We should give him the benefit of the doubt. Until next time…

Rob: These seats are reserved.

Weekend Open Thread

Hundreds of thousands of women are marching today, every one of them a badass.

If, like me, you're unable to attend one of the marches happening all over the country this weekend, let someone know that you're there in spirit. Celebrate badass women everywhere by watching His Girl Friday or Gun Crazy or Erin Brockovich or Switchblade Sisters or any number of movies I could mention. And come back here to talk about the things you're watching, the things you're thinking about, the things you love, because that's what we need more of right now.

Also, I did not make the above collage. I would not include Lara Croft (not because she's not strong or something, but because I don't dig those movies) or Milla Jovovich as Joan of Arc because I've never seen The Messenger. Naturally, I would include Milla Jovovich from Kuffs.

I Stream, You Stream Vol. 17

by Patrick Bromley

Here's a bunch of stuff to watch this weekend. It's not like there's anything more important going on.

Teenage Cocktail (2016, dir. John Carchietta) The solo directing debut of John Carchietta (a producer on movies like The Hills Run Red and Wicked Lake) casts the great Fabianne Therese and Nichole Bloom as teenage girls who fall in love, start messing around with a webcam and eventually attract the attention of family man Pat Healy. Things don't go well. Shot in bright colors and scored to dreamy pop, Teenage Cocktail is like a modern-day version of Smooth Talk. It takes some sudden shifts that aren't always earned, but it's beautifully put together and says some interesting things about personal responsibility and naiveté in the digital age. (Watch on Netflix)

The Wraith (1986, dir. Mike Marvin) The second half of the '80s saw a lot of teenage monster movies: teen vampires in The Lost Boys, teen witches in Teen Witch, teen wolves in Teen Wolf Too. We didn't get too many teen ghost movies, which is where The Wraith comes in. Charlie Sheen plays a motorcycle riding spirit who appears in a small town to exact revenge against an overacting Nick Cassavettes and his gang and get naked with Sherilyn Fenn, which is worth coming back from the dead for. This unofficial remake of High Plains Drifter is really fun and entertaining but doesn't get mentioned enough in conversations about '80s genre films. After you watch it, you should check out my guest appearance on The Projection Booth's episode on the movie. (Watch on Netflix)

Extreme Justice (1993, dir. Mark L. Lester) This super underrated '90s actioner stars a murderers' row of action character actors -- Scott Glenn, Lou Diamond Phillips, Chelsea Field, Yaphet Kotto, Andrew Divoff, William Lucking, Paul Ben-Victor, Stephen Root and Ed Lauter -- in a story about corrupt LA cops. It either went pretty much straight to DVD or premiered on HBO (which is where I saw it) and it's the kind of movie that had to cut down the crazy violence to avoid an NC-17. So many people get shot. I love it. I just watched Truck Stop Women for the first time and was reminded of what an amazing genre filmmaker Mark L. Lester is: besides that movie and this one, he made Commando and Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw and Firestarter and Showdown in Little Tokyo and Class of 1984 and a whole bunch of others. He's due for career retrospective. Maybe I'm the guy to do it (Watch on Amazon Prime Video)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, dir. Anthony Minghella) On the podcast this week, we talked about Matt Damon getting his big break in Good Will Hunting and becoming a huge movie star in the span of one movie. His partner Ben Affleck went a much more commercial route and went to work for Michael Bay while Damon continued to choose interesting projects like this psychological thriller based on Patricia Highsmith's novel. It's brilliantly acted from the likes of Damon, Jude Law (never better), Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett, it's insanely gorgeous to look at and is always tense and interesting. 1999 was an insanely good year for movies and this one stands out as one of the very best. (Watch on Hulu)

Angel of Death (2009, dir. Paul Etheredge) My Girlfriend Zoë Bell made this movie years ago based on a character and a screenplay by Ed Brubaker. She gets stabbed in the head and survives to come back for revenge. There is nothing else you need to know because you really should have been heading over to Crackle (where this originally debuted) and pressing play as soon you read the words My Girlfriend Zoë Bell. (Watch on Crackle)

Off the Shelf: Driller Killer (Blu-ray)

by Patrick Bromley

Abel Ferrara isn't just a madman. He also plays one in movies.

There are very few "name" filmmakers more punk rock than Abel Ferrara, a guy who doesn't give a shit about any of the politics of Hollywood and makes movies that only he can make. He's unconcerned with having big box office success (beyond what will allow him to make another movie) and makes real art, albeit most times within a framework of genre and exploitation cinema. With a handful of great films to his credit (Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant, King of New York) and a couple others that are quite good -- or, at the very least, interesting -- Ferrara is a filmmaker whose work is always worth seeing even when it doesn't completely work. He's a true original.

1979's Driller Killer is only his second feature, having previously directed a couple of shorts and one hardcore porn, 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy, before being inspired by the success of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to make a low-budget horror movie. He casts himself (under the name Jimmy Laine) as Reno Miller, a New York artist who's broke and frustrated and being driven crazy by the New Wave band practicing in the apartment upstairs. One day, Reno finally snaps and begins murdering people with a power drill. That's the movie.

In its way, Driller Killer is a perfect encapsulation of its period, as it's a movie that really couldn't exist at another time or place. It combines the New York art scene, the early days of the post-punk New Wave scene and a specific kind of 42nd Street sleaze to create what is at once a semi-pretentious experimental film and a cheap, gory slasher. It's the kind of movie at home in both the arthouse and the grindhouse. Therein lies its charm. Adding to the fun is the fact that it's Ferrara playing the titular Driller Killer; he's a guy who always seems just one bad day away from becoming completely unhinged -- his movies reflect that -- and so watching him run around and take out all of his frustrations on humanity with a power drill is perversely thrilling. I like, too, that most of Reno's victims are male, as it eliminates the kind of ugly misogyny that once finds in the gritty New York-based slashers released in Driller Killer's wake (and adds an interesting psychosexual component; while there's nothing explicitly homoerotic about the character of Reno, it's impossible to watch him plunge his phallic weapon into a bunch of men and not read something into it). Don't get me wrong; there is still some gross and sleazy misogyny -- the shots of two women showering together don't exactly advance the story -- but at least it's not always directly tied into the violence. When it comes to exploitation movies, you have to take your wins where you can find them.

Driller Killer arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video, who have given the cheap 16mm film an impressive 4K restoration and included two cuts -- the 96-minute theatrical version and a 100-minute "pre-release" version -- in two possible aspect ratios: a 1.85:1 widescreen and a 1.37:1 full frame option that adds a little information to the top and bottom of the frame. Perhaps even more entertaining than the movie itself are Arrow's bonus features, starting with a new commentary by Ferrara and moderator Brad Stevens. On both the commentary and the 20-minute video interview, Ferrara is totally outspoken and uncensored in everything he says, lending the conversations about the film and his career a refreshing honesty. I could listen to him talk all day. Also included is a visual essay about Driller Killer, the original theatrical trailer and, best of all, appearing on home video for the first time is the feature-length documentary Mulberry St. that Ferrara directed in 2010 covering the New York locations where he made his movies. A standard definition DVD of the movie is also included.

Best recommended for fans of either Abel Ferrara or New York-based exploitation from the Golden Age of that sort of thing, Driller Killer is an interesting look at the early work of a director who would refine his voice to better effect just one movie later with Ms. 45. Arrow's Blu-ray restores the film to better effect than anyone could possibly hope, offering multiple ways to view the movie and a collection of extras that celebrate Ferrara as a filmmaker in a really cool way. Plus a lot of people get killed by a drill. Gotta love that kind of truth in advertising.

Blu-ray release date: December 13, 2016
96 minutes/1979/NR
1.37:1/1.85:1 (1080p)
DTS HD 1.0 Mono (English)

Blu-ray bonus features:
Commentary
Interview
Video Essay
Mulberry St. documentary
Trailer

24 Hours of Movies: It's the End of the World As We Know It

by Patrick Bromley

This is a big week because it's the start of the fucking apocalypse, so let's watch some movies to get us ready for the End of Days.

10 a.m. - Mad Max (1979, dir. George Miller)

I like all four of George Miller's Mad Max movies -- three of which I think are legitimately great and one of which is good -- but the reason I want to start with the original (versus, say, The Road Warrior) is because it's one of the few apocalyptic movies that's set at the brink of the apocalypse. We can tell things are breaking down but we're not murdering each other for gasoline quite yet. You know, like now. While not as imaginative or flashy as later installments, I love the lean toughness of the original, still one of the best examples of low-budget action filmmaking ever made. If this doesn't kick things off the right way, I don't know what would.

11:30 a.m. - Night of the Comet (1984, dir. Thom Eberhardt)

One of the challenges of programming a marathon like this with a super specific theme is that it's easy to wind up with too many of the same movie, which will make sitting through 24 hours incredibly repetitive and tiresome. The trick is to find films that fit the theme but do so with a different tone or approach, which is why Night of the Comet goes second. It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads the site that I'm including this one because I love it, but it's also a good way to mix things up early on and include a teen comedy that's also a horror movie and a really cool apocalyptic movie. When most of the world is gone in a couple of weeks, I can think of far worse things than to be trapped in a mall with Kelli Maroney and Catherine Mary Stewart.

1:15 p.m. - A Boy and His Dog (1975, dir. L.Q. Jones)

To my great shame, I still haven't seen this movie. It's good to sneak some of these first-time viewings into a marathon like this because it keeps me on my game; rather than settling in to 24 hours of familiarity, I get to have a couple of brand new experiences, too. I know very little about the film except that it stars Don Johnson (one, please) and takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. It's one of those titles I've known my entire life but have never managed to check out, so it's nice that I can get it in just under the wire before the planet explodes.

3:00 p.m. - Children of Men (2006, dir. Alfonso Cuarón)

I had originally planned to program this one a little later in the lineup -- probably during the 7 p.m. primetime slot -- but in wanting to keep mixing up the tones of what we're watching it's best to watch this one next. Alfonso Cuarón dystopian sci-fi drama is a bona fide new classic and a movie that is as showy in its form as it is daring. When the world starts to end, I suspect this is what it's going to actually feel like. Sure, it's a little heavy this early in the lineup, but I'd rather space the really depressing ones out. Besides, the filmmaking on display is invigorating enough to compensate for the darkness in tone.

5 p.m. - Idiocracy (2006, dir. Mike Judge)

After Children of Men we're going to need to lighten the mood some before this whole thing starts to feel as oppressive as the next four years are going to be. So it was going to be either This is the End or this movie programmed in this spot, but I have to go with Idiocracy because it has become a documentary. My wife and I were among the very, very few people who actually got to see this when Fox shamefully dumped it into a handful of theaters back in 2006, and even then we knew we had just seen something truly special. It has been rewarding to see the movie get discovered over the last decade and become such a cult classic. Because of its production/post-production problems, I will concede that its construction is a disaster, but the jokes and (especially) the ideas contained within the movie make it the most prescient and important comedy of the last 20 years. If we're hungry during this one, we could order up some Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr: Fuck you, I'm eating.

6:30 p.m. - Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973, dir. J. Lee Thompson)

I know the obvious pick for an apocalypse marathon would be the original 1968 classic, but I don't want every pick to be completely predictable and a lot of them have been so far (especially if you know me). The final entry in the original series of Apes movies is probably the least good, but goddamn if I don't still love it. Apes with guns? Yes. J. Lee Thompson? Yes. I'll be sure to watch the 96-minute "unrated" version, which is insanely violent and bloody for a movie that went out with a "G" rating in its theatrically released form.

8:15 p.m. - The Divide (2011, dir. Xavier Gens)

I mean, if we're gonna get dark let's get really fucking dark. Xavier Gens' movie about a group of strangers (among them Milo Ventimiglia, Courtney B. Vance, Rosanna Arquette and Michael Biehn) who are locked together in a bomb shelter when the nuclear apocalypse hits is maybe the harshest indictment of humans turning against their fellow humans -- a common theme in these movies -- ever put to screen. It's tough going. It's also really well acted, beautifully shot (for all its insane ugliness) and can never be accused of not committing to the bit. For all its nihilism and insanity, The Divide is probably the movie in this lineup that most closely captures the actual mood of the country right now.

10:15 p.m. - Death Race 2000 (1975, dir. Paul Bartel)

Now that The Divide has us wanting to kill ourselves, let's lighten the mood considerably with this masterful black comedy courtesy of Paul Bartel and the great Roger Corman. Often imitated, never duplicated, the original Death Race 2000 is a perfect movie and one of my all-time favorites. It executes its concept so completely and is so funny and offbeat and entertaining that it cheers me up every time I watch it. Stallone is hilarious, David Carradine is cool, Mary Woronov is super foxy and Martin Kove...well, Martin Kove's performance is just a touch out of date. I love this movie so much.

11:45 p.m. - She (1982, dir. Avi Nesher)

Here's a movie that's been recommended to me frequently and passionately by people whose opinions I trust (Hi, Chaybee and E.S.A.A.D.!), so here's the perfect opportunity to finally check it out. A post-apocalyptic movie starring Sandahl Bergman as a warrior woman of the wasteland is a super easy sell for me, and I suspect this one's just weird enough to make a perfect transition into the overnight section of our marathon.

1:30 a.m. - Rats: Night of Terror (1984, dir. Bruno Mattei)

Here we go. The Italians get their rightful 2 a.m. slot and I get to watch this entertaining piece of shit that combines the killer animal movie with apocalyptic horror. Legendary hack Bruno Mattei directs the way he always does -- badly -- with an uncredited assist from Troll 2 auteur Claudio Fragasso. You know what you're in for. I'm not exaggerating when I say this movie has one of the most fucking insane final shots of any movie in history. I saw it coming just a few seconds before the reveal and I still couldn't have been happier that the film actually went there. Let's watch it just for that reason.

3:30 a.m. - The New Barbarians (1983, dir. Enzo Castellari)

Let's follow up one Italian exploitation movie that's not very good with one that is completely awesome. The New Barbarians -- aka Warriors of the Wasteland, yet another variation on The Road Warrior -- is super colorful and showcases amazing stunts that feel genuinely dangerous, probably because they were. Fred Williamson is on hand wearing crazy armor and shooting exploding arrows at people, which means we are treated to SO MANY shots of expendable bad guys blowing up and showering down limbs all over the desert. It never stops being the best thing ever. If that's not enough (that is enough), Giovanni Frezza is on hand to play a child mechanic who carries around a human ear. Sometimes these middle-of-the-night movies challenge our stamina, but there's no fucking way anyone is falling asleep during The New Barbarians. Just writing about it makes me want to rewatch it right now.

5:15 a.m. - Radioactive Dreams (1985, dir. Albert Pyun)

No way I'm programming an end-of-the-world marathon and not including something from my boy Albert Pyun, who uses the apocalypse the way Scorsese uses New York. Here's an entry made during his creative peak, starring Michael Dudikoff and John Stockwell as two young men raised in a bomb shelter with only hard boiled detective noir to keep them company who venture out into the wasteland for the first time and wind up in the middle of a chase for the keys to the last nuclear missile in existence. Only in the '80s. I'm a big fan of this movie, which is still hard to come by and has never even received a DVD release. Someone needs to get this thing out on Blu-ray.

7 a.m. - Turbo Kid (2015, dir. François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell)

Like the carrot at the end of the stick, 2015's Turbo Kid can be our reward for having survived 21 hours of apocalyptic science fiction. Sure, it's even more apocalyptic science fiction, but it's a movie that's been informed by pretty much every other movie in this lineup -- not a parody, but an homage that goes well beyond "affectionate." There are few films released in recent years that make me happier than this one, and knowing that it's waiting for us here in the penultimate slot should hopefully get us through even the roughest of patches. Like that middle hour of Rats: Night of Terror.

8:45 a.m. - Southland Tales (2007, dir. Richard Kelly)

And so we end not with a whimper, but with a bang. I know there's not a lot of love for this movie. It's a mess and it's about three times more ambitious than its execution, but I can't help but be intoxicated by writer/director Richard Kelly's delirious attempt at making something truly epic. Between a screenplay that's completely unwieldy (you're supposed to have read an entire graphic novel before you can make sense of the plot), a cast that combines professional wrestlers, SNL alumni, Kevin Smith in heavy prosthetics and Wallace Shawn, plus a post-Cannes gutting of the original cut, Southland Tales is the movie that inspired the phrase "ambitious failure." Except I don't think it's a failure. The mix of tones and performance styles don't always work, but there are so many ideas here and so many genuinely terrific moments of filmmaking -- you may not dig the whole, but have to at least concede that there are some incredible parts -- that I will never not love the movie.

With that, we can begin the actual apocalypse. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

My Body is Disgusting: Swiss Army Man

by Cait Cannon and Rob DiCristino

The kids discuss their love of that farting corpse movie.

Rob: Hey, Cait! How’s it hanging? You and I were both big fans of Swiss Army Man, so I thought it would be fun to revisit it and talk a bit about how it stacks up to our other favorites of the year.

Cait: Huge! I get why people don’t dig it. They are wrong — but I get it. In talking with peers, the biggest problem they saw was how the ending shakes out. I didn’t go into the movie totally blind; I looked through the Daniels’ (ugh, name) portfolio and looked at work they had done pre-SAM, and it all sort of deals with the same stuff: they take movie tropes and end up totally inverting them through surrealism.

I’d like to hear what you thought about the ending: do you think it even matters? It is sort of like The Witch where (in my opinion) the last 20 minutes could have been cut?

Rob: So I just watched it again last night, and I actually think the ending is completely necessary. On a surface level, Swiss Army Man is about a guy coming to terms with his worst insecurities by processing them through someone else, which I think is sort of universal. The best way to understand something is to teach it. I heard one of the Daniels (ugh, name) explain it as “a suicidal man trying to convince a corpse that life is worth living,” and that really tracks for me. This broken and hopeless man (literally at the end of his rope) dives into his own private fantasy world, gradually building himself back up into a human being. The more Hank opens up, the more lively Manny becomes.

At first, I saw the whole last section as a sloppy and hurried way to slap an ending on a movie without a real narrative, but this time I saw it as Hank crossing that final threshold out of his fantasy land and back into real life. I love the absurdity of the final scene on the beach, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead giving that final “What the fuck?” That, plus the fart (“I did it!”) is the payoff of the entire journey.

Cait: I’m in the same boat. My boyfriend said he would have liked the movie better had they locked up Paul Dano’s character at the end or chosen something more decisive...but I don’t know if that would have done the movie justice. I also think it would have made people focus too much on the “did it actually happen?” line of thinking, ultimately unraveling the balance of sadness/delight the movie struck. I’m also not someone that needs to piece together the threads of realism in the movie, or wonder how it all came to being. There was a lot of chat online speculating whether or not the movie was a pre-death hallucination or what, but I don’t think that the story needs to be based in real life at all.

Rob: I know a lot of people were put off by the very idea of “the farting corpse movie.” What are your thoughts on how that kind of “lowbrow” comedy is used throughout the film?

Cait: I think lowbrow comedy is just using our physical existence as a punchline. We’re so uncomfortable about the internal goings-on of our bodies, especially if they don’t have a secondary purpose (the scene where Manny has an erection—the erection makes us laugh/feel weird because it’s out of the context of getting laid). Lowbrow comedy, I think in this instance, is mostly used to call out our separation from our bodies...kinda like that feeling of discomfort when you see your relaxed faced through the front-facing camera of your iPhone...if that makes sense to you? It’s sort of out of place, but at the end of the day it’s still us. So in the tradition of form fitting function, the lowbrow-ness of the movie is used in a really smart way—not as a comedic relief, but as a tool to talk about the reality of living, the animal-ness of it all.

Rob: Agreed. A fart might not be a good joke in and of itself, but it’s just like any other element in a story — the important part is how you use it and the feeling you’re trying to provoke from the audience. I think of something like Dumb and Dumber (which I love) where the joke is “He has diarrhea!” and compare it with this film where the joke is “Everyone farts, and that’s ok!” and I see an essential difference in pathos. I heard one of the filmmakers say that they chose farting because it was “the most honest sound a human can make,” which makes total thematic sense for Hank’s story. He’s afraid of himself and what people will think of him if he’s honest about who he is. What’s more dishonest than holding in a fart?

Take the “when I masturbate, I’ll think about your mom” conversation. I totally get why it’s off-putting for people, but there’s something about its presentation that immediately endears us (or at least me) to both guys. Hank is sort of explaining to Manny how his emotional trauma has led to social exclusion and suicidal feelings (and maybe coming to terms with it himself), and Manny is showing empathy for his friend in the most honest and childlike way possible. It’s like the “bag of sand” joke in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: it’s using something crude to evoke innocence.

Cait: Honesty is an interesting idea. I think it has a few ways “honesty” can be interpreted: sure, farting is one way to be an honest person in terms of your body and being vulnerable with people you love, but it also can represent our darker, more unsavory parts. It’s like holding back your ‘secrets’ or past when you’re just getting to know someone. I also think the movie tackles honesty within a male identity? Like, Manny’s and Hank’s relationship is romantic, deep, and intimate. Hank goes so far to start living as the woman he’s obsessed with to further the intimacy between Manny and himself. I don’t know if this necessarily goes so far as suggesting Hank is a trans-woman—which is another interpretation I’ve seen—but I’m wondering if this movie is challenging the distance that male friendship typically has in film (ie. the ‘no homo’-ness that exists in most buddy comedies, or male relationships existing as a punchline [see Judd Apatow movies…]). It’s especially interesting considering the directors are two men who advertise themselves as one unit. How do you feel about the gender roles they’ve got going on in this movie? Is it something that you put stock in?

Rob: That “two directors advertising as one unit” point is awesome; I’d never thought of that! It’s indicative of, like you said, how unironically comfortable this film is with male friendship. Since I read Manny as an extension of Hank’s consciousness (a kind of blank slate for him to project on) their increased intimacy reflects Hank’s increased sense of self-worth and agency. There’s that great bit on the river when Manny says, “I’m afraid that if I die, I might really miss you!” which leads to the underwater kiss of life. It’s such a romantic moment that plays totally sincere without any gender signifiers at all.

I was just thinking about some of Daniel Radcliffe’s line deliveries in this film. What did you think of his performance?

Cait: I don’t know if it was something that I paid too much attention to at first. It’s very deadpan but also very earnest and sweet. He sounds a lot like an internal monologue, but one that is without emotion or emphasis for much of the movie. I wonder if this straight read of his lines is meant to not have a bias? So we as viewers are left to interpret and soak up the information by osmosis, almost without thinking. I don’t know—what are you thinking about it?

Rob: I love Radcliffe in Swiss Army Man. I think it’s such an easy role to go big on (especially given the tone of the film), but he went for sincere, which works so much better. “My body is disgusting!” and “That’s so sad!” (in regards to the societal norm of holding in farts) are my favorite line deliveries ever. Learning that he refused a stunt double and manipulated a lot of the dummies himself gave me even more respect for the performance. I think it’s one of the very best of the year.

This has been awesome! Thanks for talking Swiss Army Man with me!

Cait: Hi bye! This has been a more fun version of AOL instant messaging, but smarter and with fewer sad away messages! So many exclamation points!