Post-Apocalypse

Turbo Kid

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One star

There’s nothing surprising in Turbo Kid, you’ll know going in whether it’s your bag or not.  It’s ambitions are meager and it executes them with aplomb.  A penchant for gore & commercial 80’s youth nostalgia above all will get you into this robot girlfriend movie.  It is tired and thoughtless and niche but it has heart.  It’s somehow both sweet and mean.  It’s unfunny and boring.  Shares DNA with the inferior Hobo with a Shotgun and the superior (slightly) Beyond the Black Rainbow.  I watched it with people who loved it and you might too, I dunno man.  Pffffttt.

D & W by: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, & Yoann-Karl Whissell, M & P by: Jean-Phillipe Bernier, More M: Jean-Nicolas Leupi Le Matos, E by: Luke Haigh, FX by: Eric Thivierge, Olivier Xavier, Jean-Mathieu ‘Jib’ Bérubé, etc… S by: Marcello Bezina, Alex Stines, Jean-Francois Robitaile, etc..w/Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, Aaron Jeffery, Anouk Whissell, Edwin Wright, Romano Ozari, Orphée Ladouceur etc..93 min, Canada, 2015

Akira

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Three starsTwo stars

Roadside Billy pulled up to the grocery store.  “Hell yes, Syphillis!” he thought.  He was there to buy parsley & half & half.  This is a good anime.  Really good animation.  Nice gross stuff.  Real fluid motorcycle chases and ballooning flesh monsters.  A++

D,W & A by: Katsuhiro Ôtomo, More W: Izô Hashimoto, More A: Toshiharu Mizutani, Toyoaki Emura, Atsuko Fukushima, Yasihiro Seo, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, etc…, P by: Katsuji Misawa, M by: Shôji Yamashiro, E by: Takeshi Seyama, w/Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Tesshô Genda, Hiroshi Ôtake, Masaaki Ôkura, Kôichi Kitamura, Michihiro Ikemizu, etc…124 min, Japan, 1988

Parallels

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Three stars

God-the-father, a top floor junkie in a derelict building downtown.  He awaits true love’s kiss.  In his beard are spiders and pizza bits.  Every 36 hours the building hops to an alternate dimension. 

In one of the dimensions they dropped the bomb.  God’s children stowaway and hop with him.  They’re incestuous cage fighters who just wanna get home. 

In one of the dimensions technology is really really advanced.  God’s friends stowaway and hop with him.  They’re tommy-gun toting baddies who look like Woody Harrelson.

In one of the dimensions everything’s underwater.  Nobody can find God even though he’s just above them.  The stairwell is sealed and the elevator busted. 

Did you think, like me, that the Zero Day Fox logo was a parallel universe joke?  A russian nesting doll?  The movie-in-itself hailing from an alternate reality, one where 20th Century Fox doesn’t exist but is Zero Day Fox instead?  Yeah, turns out it’s just a subsidiary.

D & W by: Cristopher Leone, More W: Laura Harkcom, P by: Bryce Fortner, E by: Ian Duncan & Thomas Verrette, M by: Corey Allen Jackson, w/Mark Hapka, Constance Wu, Jessica Rothe, Eric Jungmann, Davi Jay, Ian Casselberry, Yorgo Constantine, Michael Monks, etc…, 83 min, USA, 2015

Escape From New York

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Three stars

New York’s skyscrapers like silent sentinels, it’s dark and cold in the valleys of abandoned progress.  You walk amongst this history and your footsteps echo off canyons of cement and you truly feel what it’s like to be Godforsaken.  I know this isn’t really the place to say it, but I’m deeply terrified of a Trump presidency.

D, W, & M by: John Carpenter, More W: Nick Castle, More M: Alan Howarth, P by: Dean Cundey, E by: Todd Ramsay, FX: Roy Arbogast, James Cameron, Brian Chin, Jenna Holman, etc…, S by: Buff Brady, Tony Brubaker, Glory Fioramanti, etc…, w/Kurt Russell, Isaac Hayes, Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef, Tom Atkins, Frank Doubleday, etc…, 99 min, USA, 1981

RoboCop

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Four stars

RoboJesus shoots rapists in the dick, battles irradiated mutant gangsters and giant robots in post apocalyptic Detroit.  There’s some pretty prescient satire of media and capitalism in here.  It kind of feels like the smartest Troma movie ever made.  I miss practical FX.

D by: Paul Verhoeven, W by: Edward Neumeier & Michael Miner, P by: Jost Vacano & Sol Negrin, FX: Craig Davies, Phil Tippett, Lawrence A. Aeschlimann, Dennis Pawlik, Bill Purcell, Don Baker, Randy Dutra, Rob Bottin, Erica Edell Phillips, etc…, S by: Jamie Bunch, Vickie Creach, Randy Fife, etc…, E by: Jim Rodnunsky, Danny Retz, etc…, M by: Basil Poledouris, w/Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Robert DoQui, Paul McCrane, Ray Wise, etc…, 102 min, USA, 1987