Zachariah

 

All I should need to say about Zachariah is that it is A) set in the Old West and B) it features Rock bands with electrified instruments.

Seriously. The James Gang. Country Joe and the Fish. The New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. And Jazz great Elvin Jones as a drummer who is the baddest gunslinger in the West.

Other interesting facts: It's loosely based on Hesse's Siddhartha. Apparently the Firesign Theatre adapted it for the screen. It features a young Don Johnson.

Zachariah, Job Cain and Matthew, the best gunshooters to ever shoot.

Some ladies wash and oil up Zachariah for the sex.

Zachariah is a nice guy. He has a friend named Matthew who is also a nice guy. Of course, they get hold of a gun and join up with some bank robbers, who are also Rock musicians. The robbers are better at rocking than they are at robbing, so Zachariah comes up with the idea to use a music concert to distract the townspeople, while he and Matthew rob the actual bank. It works! They get pretty rich together. But they both want more. And so they meet up with a super bad-ass gunslinger who kills any and all who challenge him.

Religious symbolism abounds.

Zachariah and Matthew swear they will always be together. It's almost homoerotic for a minute. In the very next scene they part ways. Zachariah has to go out on his own, fuck a really high class whore, farm with a blind man in the desert and "find himself." Derrrr.

Matt becomes a super badass gunfighter and eventually comes for Zach, who has since laid down his gun. Then something happens and there's a huge confrontation, denouement and end to the film. 

It's one of the few true examples of the Acid Western genre, alongside Greaser's Palace, El Topo, Four of the Apocalypse and Dirty Little Billy. It's got totally surreal moments alongside bizarrely stylized musical elements. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

RATING:

Kamikaze Girls

Kamikaze Girls is a Japanese movie starring two J-Pop stars. If you are into J-Pop you probably recognize them. If you aren't into J-Pop, it doesn't matter, so let's move on.

Kamikaze Girls is a Japanese movie about two cute girls. One is a rococo-obsessed Lolita who can embroider the hell out of shit. The other is a biker gang chick who seems like she would have made a good pair with Fonzie, except her bike is more of a Jetsons Bigwheel. She needs some really good embroidery done on her jacket. Somehow, the two become friends in spite of themselves.

Cute.

Cuter.

The quirkiness of the movie comes across in the way it is told. It's narrated by the rococo Lolita girl and she's clearly deranged, at least by non-Japanese standards. There's also an anime backstory segment, which is entertaining even if you aren't into anime and don't listen to J-Pop.There's some story of betrayal in there, too, but that's not really what I remember about Kamikaze Girls.

This happens.

And this happens.

And this guy is in it.

If you like quirky, highly stylized Japanese movies, there's no reason to not watch this ASAP. If you like cute Japanese girls, there's no reason not watch this ASAP. It's good, it's fun, it's heart warming and it's ridiculous.

RATING:

Moving Target

Moving Target has just about everything you could want in a movie: Chynna Phillips, Jason Bateman, Tom Skerritt, John Glover, Jack Wagner, Robert Downey Sr., a teenage band that sounds like seven session musicians improvising a song for a cheesy movie soundtrack with no singer. A hit man that dresses like a character in a Miami Vice/Saved by the Bell crossover and who decides to gun down a family from a suburban rooftop with an uzi.

This is the perfect example of Made-for-TV 80s. Nothing about it bears any resemblence to reality, and yet you know all these characters as soon as you see them. Cliches cultivated by pop culture, that never actually existed. But you know them and you love them. Admit it.

 

You get great dialog like: "Hey, open up, you little pencil head!" and "I wanna be here with these zoids only marginally more than I want to die of malaria." In other words, it's just like kids really talked in 1988.

On top of Tom Skerritt, all covered with talent.

Jason Bateman is a heroic teenage musician who, after finding a hot young Chynna Phillips to temporarily replace him in his "next big thing" teen band, gets sent to summer music camp while he family is swept up in mob related intrigue. Bateman runs away from camp, only to find his family has suddenly moved in his absence. Suddenly people are trying to capture and/or kill. But he sticks it to the man AND he plays fruity Baroque piano.

His best friend at music camp is a black nerd, of course, who says cool stuff like, "Man, you got trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for big problems"

All in all, this film isn't going to blow you away, but is full of goofy 80s music, goofy 80s hair, goofy 80s clothes. Watch it while drunk with a bunch of friends who really love the 80s.

RATING:

Johnny Suede

Johnny Suede is a movie you've probably never heard of. Considering it stars Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener, Nick Cave, Tina Louise and Samuel L. Jackson that is really hard to believe. But it's true: I watched the movie and they are all in it.

So first things first: What do Brad Pitt and Nick Cave have in common, other than how many letters are in their names?  In this movie HUGE POMPADOURS.

Pitt is the titular Johnny Suede, a young man who is hopelessly lost in the Golden Age of Rock n Roll. He idolizes Ricky Nelson, and everything in his apartment and wardrobe looks straight out of 1957, yet the movie is set in the early 90s, which is, coincidentally, also when it was made.  He wants to form a band that plays music that he "do[esn't] really have a name for" but sounds suspiciously like Ricky Nelson ballads because those are all he ever listens to. He owns two 45s: "Travelin' Man" and "Teenage Idol" by Ricky Nelson. They are both ballads. See? That's all he ever listens to.

Pitt, Jackson and Keener all went on to become pretty famous.
Johnny Suede went on to be totally forgotten.

This is the kind of movie where I can't say too much, because there really isn't much to say. It's something you have to experience. If the idea of Brad Pitt with an immense pompadour walking around a rundown apartment in tighty-whities with his hand down the front doesn't sell you on it, then this probably isn't the movie for you.

This happens more than once in this film.

The plot isn't going to convince you that this movie is cool. The plot is hard to convey. For instance, he and his best friend (who happens to be black, of course) decide it would be great to rob a barber shop, because they probably have like $300 bucks in the register. They don't have a gun, though. So they forget about that idea for a while and go live their lives. Then later, the friend shows Johnny that he got a revolver somehow. But, THEY DON'T HAVE ANY BULLETS!  So they forget about that idea for a while and go live their lives. Then, JOHNNY FINDS A BULLET in a dude's closet while he's painting the guy's house. THEY PUT IT IN THE REVOLVER! Then they never ever again mention robbing the barber shop or anyone else. In fact, no one uses this gun for any ill purpose ever in this movie.

But I swear, the sum is greater than the parts with this one. Something about Pitt's awkward portrayal of this delusional rock n roller is just too loveable not to love.Catherine Keener is also good, as the respectively down-to-earth girlfriend who tries to tame Johnny Suede down. (Spoiler: She kind of does tame him down, but he also punches her. Admittedly, though, she did throw shoes at him a couple of times.)

This happens more than once in this film.

RATING: