Highway Patrolman (El Patrullero)

It was no surprise to me when I found out that Alex Cox directed a film about a Mexican Highway Patrolman. After all, a Mexican Highway Patrolman is easily comparable to an American Repo Man. Like Repo Man before it, Alex Cox’s Highway Patrolman follows a young man as he encounters the many dangerous adventures of the open roads. Unlike Repo Man, Highway Patrolman features a man trying to uphold the law, albeit in a lawless country. Otto in Repo Man was enticed to a career as a Repo Man due to the ambiguous legality of the job. After all, Otto was a punk rocker who loved to skank and mosh to the lovely punk hardcore group The Circle Jerks. Pedro Rojas, the lead and idealistic cop of Highway Patrolman, on the other hand is a Mexican patriot that is truly looking to cleanup up crime and grime of his beloved ancestral homeland.

Pedro is a Patrolman who truly thinks Mexico is a great country. When a Gringo offers Pedro and his partner some German beers, Pedro proclaims the best beer is Mexican. Of course, when the Gringo and his Gringo comrade leave, Pedro and his Mexican comrade guzzle down the Kraut Brewski as if they were dying in their quest for aqua. After all, whether you be an Injun, Mestizo, or Negro, it is wise to hide partaking in the altruistic welfare of a Gringo. One must never let the Gringo know that your existence relies on his generosity, even if he is a “racist.” Pedro not only loves his wonderful sandbox Nation, but he also carries about the beautiful Chicas that live in it, especially female prostitutes with cocaine addictions. After marrying a Mexican broad and implanting his zesty ranch sauce in her meaty fajita, Pedro becomes a father. At this point, Pedro realizes he will now have to gets his sex elsewhere as he cannot stand his Punta wife and her firecracker-style bitching.

Not long after starting his career as a Highway Patrolman, Pedro’s fanatical idealism starts to wear thinner than a .50 cent piñata. And like a piñata, once Pedro’s idealism breaks, he explodes with an eclectic array of colorful surpises. After Pedro’s partner is killed, he goes vigilante and hunts down the drug peddling culprits. Pedro also makes sure to steal some drugs and cash from the dealers as he feels he owes it to his mistress prostitute girlfriend. Pedro may have to work a little overtime to get the job done, but I guess that is what one has to expect when bedding down two spicy ladies. Surprisingly, Pedro somehow is able to single-handedly bring down a group of drug dealers. Maybe Alex Cox was shooting for the Sci-Fi angle a little bit with Highway Patrolman just as he did with Repo Man. After all, everyone knows that there ain’t no Mexican cops stopping drugs from getting into the glorious United States of America.

Highway Patrolman is no doubt one of Alex Cox’s better films but certainly not his best. I can only assume that Highway Patrolman was made as a somewhat serious film for Mexicans, yet the film is full of hilarious scenes that probably only a Gringo could love. I also having a feeling that despite being directed by an outsider (and Brit to boot), Highway Patrolman offers a somewhat realistic look at Mexico and the typical daily hell the average Mexican faces. Shirtless grade school children skipping school to sell wild Iguanas, rabid dogs that need to be shot, a family of Mexicans gutting a recently dead pig, and a variety of other depressing/disgusting scenarios give meaning to the life of a Highway Patrolman. I certainly would rather be an American Repo Man rather than a Mexican Highway Patrolman. I can’t wait to see how great this country looks in a couple decades from now with all the Illegal (and Legal) immigrants. One can certainly expect a rise in Repo Men and Highway Patrolmen as a result.

-Ty E

Flesh & Blood

It would have probably sucked living during the Middle Ages because of the plague and all, but few things suck worse than Hollywood’s blasphemous portrayals of those ghastly times. It would be very hard for me to come up with a “Top Five” list for “Best Films set during the Middle Ages” because I doubt that I even enjoy five films set during that death-filled era. Of course, when I found out that Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven directed a blood-soaked film Flesh & Blood set during the Middle Ages, I felt compelled to see the cinematic adventure. After all, if there is a director that can take films with very stupid premises and make a masterpiece out of them (e.g. Robocop), Paul Verhoeven is the guy to get the cinematically ambitious job done right. Flesh & Blood is the film Verhoeven directed before completely surrendering himself to Hollywood with the Sci-fi classic Robocop, a film that virtually has nothing in common with his earlier Dutch Art House works, but deserves recognition in it's own right.


With Flesh & Blood Paul Verhoeven makes no pathetic attempts to romanticize the Middle Ages. The film features brutal rapes, castrated corpses hanging from trees, stillborn babies being born by virtual sex-slave mothers, and a very murderous form of Christianity. Even noblemen are at the constant threat of being murdered by ambitious barbarians looking to become Noblemen as well. Flesh & Blood follows a group of Mercenaries led by a devilishly Heroic man named Martin (played brilliantly by Rutger Hauer) and his rape victim/lover Agnes, a young Heiress who knows what she wants and how to get it. A young Italian ruler Steven Arnolfini , who is more interested in Science and inventions than his fiancé Agnes, realizes he must rescue her after the two would-be lovers share a mandrake. The driving plot of Flesh & Blood is finding out who will end up with Agnes: The middle-aged Barbarian Mercenary Martin who wishes he was a Nobleman or a Twenty-something year old Nobleman inventor Steven. Agnes may look like a pasty preteen while in the nude, but in her own Middle Age world she acts as a goddess.


Flesh & Blood brings up some interesting ideas about class differences even if the film was set during the Middle Ages. The mercenaries want nothing more but to live the good life and become Noblemen. After all, gang raping children and castrating enemies can get quite banal after sometime and being the master of a castle has a certain classiness to it. After capturing a castle from some unfortunate Nobles with the plague, the Mercenaries start living the good life. They have plenty of food to eat and servants to serve them, but they look quite comic in their attempts at enjoying the Noble life. Heiress Agnes tries to show her Rapist Lover Martin how to eat with a fork which has comic results. Agnes seems to very much enjoy her lower-classed lover’s pathetic attempts at becoming something he’s not. Maybe Karl Marx wasn’t the only effeminate mind conspiring for class warfare.


Flesh & Blood may be no Turkish Delight, but it will certainly fulfill ones appetite for Middle Age raping, pillaging, murdering, and everything else historically that is so bloody nice. The film does not solely glamorize or romanticize the Middle Ages as a time when people spoke more eloquently and dressed nicer than they do nowadays like most Hollywood films set during that era. Instead, Flesh & Blood presents a world where death is around every corner, whether or not one is rich or poor. Interestingly enough, Flesh & Blood also presents a world where there was more passion and incentive for one to live life to their fullest. Yeah, maybe people believed that wooden statues of St. Martin of Tours were guiding them on a spiritual tour, but that is much more admirable than hoping a criminal Mulatto Messiah will deliver the world from Evil and bring about universal world peace. How weak.

-Ty E

Death Ship

Anyone that has watched the History Channel has heard about the horrible automobile-Auschwitzs, vans that apparently drove around gassing Jews around the clock while strolling the block. These portable Death-Camps are just one of the many tales told after the second World War that make young children cry and the dreaded perpetrators want to die. But what if there was a Death-Camp sailing the mysterious seas today? What about an Evil Nazi ship that makes the Titanic look like the lush luxury ship that it was? In the 1980 movie Death Ship the horrors of the Hollywood concocted Evil-Supernatural-Nazi-Mythos enters the uncharted territories of a truly dead sea. Maybe Herr Goebbels should have taken some propaganda lessons from the masters of Hollywood for The Eternal Jew and Jew Süss are far too tame in comparison to the dreaded Death Ship!

Actor George Kennedy has come a long way since his performance as the goofy and loveable redneck Dragline in Cool Hand Luke. In Death Ship, an older Kennedy plays a deranged ship Captain named Ashland (a possible allusion to Auschwitz!?!) who becomes possessed by the ghostly SS (both kinds) spirit of a German Kriegsmarine ship. While making the killings happen as the captain, the refugee passengers of the Toten-Ship attempt to escape with their lives intact. Little do these passengers realize the powerful spirit of National Socialism has consumed Ashland’s ogre size body. While on the ship, the passengers are shocked with horror to see aesthetically pleasing red rooms with Swastikas and a micro-movie theater projecting unstoppable Nazi archive footage. SSpooky SStuff!

One of the “best” and most standout scenes in Death Ship is when the Holocaust victims are found on the ship. The skeletons of victims are scattered around and there is even a box found with the gold teeth of rich Jews!!!! The filmmakers must have taken a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., because their commitment to historical accuracy is impeccable. I couldn’t forget a scene involving a woman with a fat ass (check screenshot) taking a warm and bloody shower. The allusions to the Holocaust were with me throughout the scene. Without a doubt, Death Ship is pure Hollywood-GOLD in its unintentional commitment to being mildly humorous!

“Those who survive the ghost ship are better off dead!” is the zany and wonderfully wild tagline to the movie poster of Death Ship. I just wonder if the producers of Death Ship feel the same way about the survivors of the real Holocaust. Like the 1977 film Shock Waves before it, Death Ship is a film where the SS Ship of the Sea meets the SS of Heinrich Himmler’s genocidal glee. Unfortunately, aside from Captain Ashland, no awesome Nazi uniforms are present in Death Ship which is a must in any film dealing with the SS. All in All, Death Ship is another passable pile of cinema feces, but still preferable to Swindler’s List.

-Ty E

Karate Warriors

Japan's lethal "fists for hire" Sonny Chiba wasn't decorated with such a label with no just cause. Within the first ten minutes of Karate Warriors, the volatile scoundrel (Chiba) finds him self in one of the most astoundingly shot fight sequences I've seen come out of a oriental classic. While taking the scarce technique of slow-motion (as time would have) and combining it with a quick speed-up upon point of impact, the result is electrifying and an experience that traversed the very nerves on my spine rendering me hapless as this Yojimbo-inspired clone of several clones assaulted its way into my very neural databanks. It isn't even up to the sting of high-velocity Chiba impact to woo me over with this tragically named unheard of classic, Karate Warriors blends a spice of charitable virility crossed with Lone Wolf and Cub and with this the result is a film that you can find yourself playing over and over again, have you the capacity for Chiba's fecund charisma and wrathful throat noises.

In Karate Warriors, (roughly translated into Killing Fist with Child) Sonny Chiba plays knight-errant to a young boy whose father is Chiba's rival. As I already mentioned, Karate Warriors is a loose remake of Yojimbo borrowing the rival gangs device and recycling the deceitfulness of our story's hero as he plays both sides in an effort to get rich quick. The motivation of brotherly love turned sour? Heroin. In this film which is often labeled a prequel of sorts to The Street Fighter, Sonny Chiba displays his convictions with incredible fortitude. Sure, he's a ragtag karate warrior who steals rice cakes from little Asian boys but that didn't stop him from murdering some 20-30 people with only his fists and a samurai sword in a beach bloodbath that will forever resound as one of the most engaging no-rules brawls this side of Chinatown. That, and he did it for a hollow love that is unknown to our hero. Karate Warriors excels in all categories because it is heartfelt and ruthless in one sitting; a breezy sexploitation with much violence and enlightenment - equally.



As of recent I've been on a huge Sonny Chiba kick, indulging in such classics as The Bodyguard, Virus, Golgo 13 (again), G.I. Samurai, and the currently presented Karate Warriors. The problem with most of these films are the American releases are littered with terrible English dubs over the original, authentic Japanese audio track. These leaves terrible room for humiliating interpretation as Sonny Chiba's American counterparts always sound ridiculous and gaudy. The majesty of Chiba is his incredible dexterity and flexibility. His roundhouse kicks bring about this illicit form of fluid contact that is just something you can't explain with the limitations of language. If there ever was a martial arts physical performer, Sonny Chiba would be the headliner; top billing and all.


When you level the field of Chiba within eye sight it's hard to sift the classics through the heap of supporting roles he portrayed. While I enjoy any helping of Chiba and I'm hardly picky, I demand a certain amount of screen time to be interested. Karate Warriors is one of his best films never seen by the commercial viewers eye, which is a shame. I've rarely seen a martial arts classic like this that braves the profitable sex nature of Japan while appealing to the Chiba enthusiast. Knowing Japan and it's sexual proclivities, I'd be hard pressed to deny that Karate Warriors is one of the most true-to-form and gutsiest martial arts films without treading into Shaw Brothers territory. If you enjoy Sonny Chiba as much as the next bargain-bin dweller then Karate Warriors is an absolute necessity. It's only fair to me that my two favorite action stars, Bruce Willis and Sonny Chiba, act in both the same film. Viva Chiba!

-mAQ

Walker

If I had to make a list of movie genres I hated most, the Western genre would certainly make the top of the list. Second to the Kennedy family, the Irish second class white men of America have never plagued the country with a worse legacy than that of the Hollywood Western. Never has a genre convinced wannabe tough guys that they were tough than the Western. John Wayne may have been a cowardly draft dodger, but he certainly did his part in making American males think going to war was the most courageous thing a Yank could do. Of course, there are some cool new Westerns subgenres out there like the Surrealist Western (El Topo) and the Acid Western (Dead Man), but there are also some new pathetic Cultural Marxist Western subgenres like the Hollywood-approved anti-European-American Revisionist Genre (Dances With Wolves, Little Big Man), degenerate cinema where the viewer is supposed to feel sorry for the poor noble savage. Brit Indie director Alex Cox certainly made the right kind of Western with his satiric Acid Western Walker, a film that shits on the "heroic" legacy of the American John Ford Western.

Walker is loosely based on the real-life American filibuster William Walker, an educated Renaissance man from Tennessee who had the luxury of being the president of the Republic of Nicaragua (1956-1957). Unfortunately for William Walker, his fellow white men from the British Empire felt him to be a menace and handed him over to some Injuns from Honduras who executed him. Alex Cox’s Walker follows the political rise and fall of Walker, a man who has no problem getting tons of men killed for his idealism, an idealism that is never completely apparent. Knowing auteur Alex Cox was the man that brought us the American Masterpiece Repo Man, one can expect Walker to be one of the funniest (in bad taste, of course) character-driven Westerns ever made.

Walker is played by a young(er) Ed Harris, who was the perfect actor to play the lead. Ed Harris is generally known for playing very serious and stoic characters, but I have always felt Harris was a little overacting in his seriousness. Of course, in a Western satire Harris’s sometimes silly stoicism works out to the film's comedic advantage. Whether leading his men to the slaughter via Sam Peckinpah-esque style battle brutality or attempting to sexually satisfy the hot Tamale of a spicy Señorita, Ed Harris delivers with silly stoic absurdity, a tough acting accomplishment indeed. I have not enjoyed Ed Harris in a role this much since his role as a mangle-eyed Mafia man in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. It just goes to show, if you have the right director, an actor can be led into the path of his full potential.

The Clash lead front man Joe Strummer not only makes an appearance in Walker, but he also provided the wonderful atmospheric soundtrack to the film. If there is one thing that made Spaghetti Westerns better than their earlier Hollywood counterparts, it was their intense reverb-fueled melodic soundtracks. Walker follows in the tradition of a Neo-Western with a more than suitable soundtrack. Walker is also further evidence that Alex Cox is probably the greatest “Punk Rock filmmaker” to ever live. Of course, Penelope Spheeris made a couple Punk Rock SINematic masterpieces (The Decline of Western Civilization, Suburbia) before spewing out Hollywood garbage, but Alex Cox’s has never compromised his position as an Anarchist auteur.

By the end of Walker, it is more than apparent that Alex Cox has unloaded the message that the Good ol’ United States of Gringos will never stay out of South America.Contemporary stock documentary footage of real-life dead South American bodies are displayed as evidence of William Walker’s continuous killing legacy. Of course, a lot has changed since Walker was first released in 1987. America is now flooded with tons of illegal (and a handful of legal) "Hispanics" from South of the Border. Not only have they brought their bastardized form of the Spanish "no habla ingles" language, but they have also brought murdering gangs with them to boot. Maybe Alex Cox should think about doing a new acid Western set in present day America with a race war between shaved headed/tattooed covered Hispanics versus shaved headed/tattooed covered American Neo-Nazi skinheads. John Wayne could magically make an appearance (like he does in contemporary TV commercials) in the film in a dress.

-Ty E

Wittgenstein

Out of all the Derek Jarman films I have viewed, none of them have been particularly memorable aside from his first feature Sebastiane, a film so full of blatant heroic homo-eroticism and gay martyrdom, that it is hard to forget, whether one likes it or not. It was not until I saw Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, one of his last features, did I feel that the director deserves to be remembered as one of England’s few notable auteurs. Wittgenstein is a film that gives a short but sweet life summary of Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, a man that was born with a kosher silver spoon in his mouth, one he would often times try to regurgitate out, even once comically attempting to become a Soviet proletarian worker.

Wittgenstein does not have a typical film structure nor was the film directed in a typically cinematic way. Director Derek Jarman decided to direct Wittgenstein on a theater stage, in a theatrical manner. What compelled Jarman to direct the film this way, especially a bio-pic, seems rather dubious yet it is surprisingly executed in a successful manner, surely more successful than Jarman’s adaption of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Unfortunately, Wittgenstein is mainly narrated by a child actor that is supposed to be a young Ludwig Wittgenstein, a child that even makes Harry Potter less turdish by comparison. Of course, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a child prodigy so using a child Ludwig Wittgenstein does make sense, after all Wittgenstein’s life seemed to go more downhill (for him, at least) the older he got.

Ludwig Wittgenstein happened to attend the same grade school as Adolf Hitler and the rumor is that a certain repellent Jewish child Hitler mentions in his autobiography Mein Kampf was actually Wittgenstein. Of course, the validity of this claim is questionable to say the least, but if one thing is true, it is that Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most famous self-loathing Jews in all of history. Wittgenstein was highly influenced by the brilliant Jewish psychologist/philosopher Otto Weininger, who killed himself shortly after writing his masterwork “Sex and Character” in 1903 at the ripe age of 23, a man that claimed Jewish traits and female traits were one in the same. Weininger also proclaimed that the feminizing of Western civilization was largely responsible for the degeneracy of society as well as the decline of the West. Mommy lover and cokehead Sigmund Freud was not too fond of fellow Viennese Jew Weininger, although he recognized his genius. Wittgenstein however was a fan of both Weininger and Freud, but his interest in Freud largely came from his interesting writings, not his scientific methods, which Wittgenstein felt were scientifically laughable and quackish. In Wittgenstein, proclaims of Freud, “It’s dangerous stuff, it takes a Viennese to know another.” Ludwig Wittgenstein was surely hard on his fellow Jewish intellectuals, even stating in his brilliant book Culture and Value: “Amongst Jews “genius” is found only in the holy man. Even the greatest of Jewish thinkers in no more than talented. (Myself for instance.) I think there is some truth in my idea that I really only think reproductively.”

Not only did Ludwig Wittgenstein attack his own race (or at least ¾ of his blood, being only a full-Jew by National Socialist standards), but he also had a lot of negative things to say about his profession as a philosopher. In Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein proclaims “Philosophy is a sickness of the mind.” In Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most well known work (and probably most important) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein states, “Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical……….Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.” In a sense, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be looked at as the most honest work on philosophy ever written (of course, not that I have read all works of philosophy). Whereas Friedrich Nietzsche is often praised for his skill and talent in regards to aesthetics (although having many times contradicted himself philosophically), Ludwig Wittgenstein’s form of philosophy seems to have been strictly utilitarian. In Jarman’s Wittgenstein, the character of Ludwig Wittgenstein goes into exaggerated self-parody-like rants against both philosophy and language, making the film most interesting as an introduction to the work and life of Wittgenstein.

After seeing the historical-fiction film When Nietzsche Wept on Friedrich Nietzsche not too long ago, an embarrassing flick-able flick indeed, I can easily say that Jarman’s Wittgenstein may possibly be the best film ever made about a philosopher, not that that says much. Certainly, Derek Jarman has an immense care for his subject in Wittgenstein, even if he did not attempt to portray the man any where near to his full complexity. As for how the film was constructed, Wittgenstein is surely its own cinematic league, just like the philosopher himself. Just don’t expect an in depth analysis of the Wittgenstein’s work and theories, but instead an artistic tribute to a man that surely deserves it.

-Ty E

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Flaming Southerner Tennessee Williams sure had a knack for writing drama, especially America’s greatest form of drama, the Southern Gothic. Despite the different director, every film I have had the pleasure of viewing with a story written by Tennessee Williams always turns out to be a work of dramatic cinema brilliance. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), starring a very young Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, is another brilliant work based on a play by Tennessee Williams. Watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof makes one realize that there was actually a time when Hollywood (somewhat) justly portrayed the American South as a place that has more than superstitious religious hicks trying to give their sisters a lick. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof takes a look at a rich Southern family amidst a family tragedy involving the dying of Big Daddy, a family man and personal empire builder.

Big Daddy is big and fat, but his own self-made empire is even bigger. Unfortunately for Big Daddy, as he states himself, a man can’t buy life. Big Daddy has no interest in screwing his nagging wife, but he’s proud that he’s willing to buy her anything she may fancy. Big Daddy also has two sons that disappoint him, one being a greedy lawyer named Gooper and the other being a 30 year old kid named Brick (Paul Newman). Big Daddy wants to hookup his lazy alcoholic son Brick with his empire, but Brick won’t agree to get his hot wife Maggie the Cat pregnant because he rather screw his dead friend Skipper (when he was alive, of course). Maggie the Cat, played by a very young Elizabeth Taylor, is a woman who has curves that are practically busting out of the seams of her clothes. What a shame her homosexual husband is unwilling to tame her.

The acting chemistry between Maggie the Cat and Brick is intense to say the least. The casting director of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof certainly made the right decision when pairing Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor as the two leads. A wretched cunt by the name of Sister-woman was also brilliantly played in a repulsive manner by Madeleine Sherwood, a character known for shooting out many children out of her cooch. I don’t think I have ever been more disgusted by an antagonist in my life and the only thing this bitch by the atrocious nickname of Sister-woman wanted was money via her father in-law Big Daddy. Big Daddy, being the swaggering pimp that he is, knows how much of a moneygrubber Sister-woman is and thankfully treats her rude behavior accordingly. Big Daddy may not want to screw his aged wife Big Mamma, but he sure picked the right woman to keep his sons/daughter-in-laws in check. What a drama-rama in one big house in the Deep South.

With Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it is once again proven that if you have a brilliantly written story and charismatic cast, a film can work without an auteur. Apparently mother-lover Elvis Presley turned down the role of Brick and I am certainly glad. The Aryan-looking half-Jew Paul Newman is certainly an actor that followed not too far behind in Marlon Brando’s footsteps, also showing he had what it takes to play in a lead in a story written by Tennessee Williams. Although I had yet to see Elizabeth Taylor’s acting skills before Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I assumed she would be an annoying prude to see on screen due to her overblown celebrity status. I must admit that her performance in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was one of a seductive and smooth walking/talking hot kitty.

-Ty E

The Descent: Part 2

The Descent was the first of its kind; a near perfect feminist horror film that didn't come off as hokey or burdening to the male race. In a property spoiling turn, director Neil Marshall thought he'd earn a slimy wad of cash by overseeing and allowing the production of a direct sequel aptly titled "Part 2." The continuation finds Sarah returning to the surface covered in blood and negating all layers of interpretation left open by the original's incredible ending. If there is one thing The Descent is known for, it's "women spelunking." The Descent: Part 2 brings nothing but tired tricks and storybook devices to this morbidly banal sequel which features a cast of both genders, diluted Negro-centric crawlers, and an ending that will have you ripping your hair out in tufts and cursing the day that "inbred redneck" films were ever created.


As mentioned previously, Sarah is out of the caverns that were to be named after her by the affair-having whore Asiatic friend, Juno, and is recovering peacefully and ignorantly in a hospital bed. The doctors claim she has no recollection of the past 2 days and this pampers the plot and character enough to allow her stupid ass to descend into hell yet again to find out the truth of what happened in the first subterranean blood bath. Much like the fetid S. Darko, The Descent: Part 2 takes much, if not everything, that made the film and reincorporates the same angles, techniques, and scenes. The Descent: Part 2 still uses collapsing crawlspaces, night vision bogeymen, and women going berserk to ill effect and demonstrates the law of every terrible sequel e.g. rotating lead character kills as seen in effect in most of the Nightmare on Elm Street follow ups.


Neil Marshall's involvement in the film was purely to oversee the production to ensure a claustrophobic experience in grueling terror. I'm sure his intention was solely for the benefit of growth but this film only demonstrates one thing about caverns and that is that most are created with prop boulders and it doesn't exactly benefit that Jon Harris' entire career is that of editing quality films and not direct them. To fit the pieces together in a visually digestive way might be a form of art but Mr. Harris has yet to learn how to create the pieces for completion. My strong opinion can be argued with but I feel, as I'm sure most do, that this sequel is entirely unnecessary and only taints the unknown terror of the original. The introduction of a hybrid human-like beast that hunts with a skillful variety of tactics including scouting and pack assault was a much needed fixture on the tag of horror that has been largely dominated with names, faces, and motives. These creatures started out with a glossy blood/mud luster in the original film then switched to grotesque make-up reconditioning and an entirely different makeover treatment in the second. Without the returning characters or use of archive footage this film would be utterly nameless and just as equally disappointing.


After the males had been twiddled away to recreate the original's feminist spirit, the select group of females featured in The Descent: Part 2 begin to die in terrible, horrible fashions. Even with all the tomato soup butcherings, these girls shouldn't be frightened of these beastly crawlers. No, they should have turned hide and retreated from the real villain at large - creative control. It's high time for an uprising against the tyranny of continuation. As Lizzy Caplan said in the incredible comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, "embrace the chaos," we should never more accept the standard retail price for something so less than chaotic. The Descent: Part 2 isn't the affable sequel to a classic of raw horror that you were expecting. I shouldn't even be writing about this film as near everyone's opinion should strongly lean towards mine. It's a given that this film is nothing to be respectful of. I don't even respect myself anymore having since watched it.

-mAQ

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl is without a doubt the greatest female filmmaker to ever live. However, to look at her as merely a woman filmmaker would be a mistake as the majority of female filmmakers are mediocre to say the least. When a film like Cheryl Dunye’s degenerate interracial dyke-fest The Watermelon Woman is regarded as an independent film masterpiece by film critics, it is obvious that people have to go out of their way to give female filmmakers the recognition they generally do not deserve. Leni Riefenstahl’s 1934 film Triumph of the Will, despite being a ¾ of a century old, is a film of an incomparable aesthetic magnitude, set at a time and place that could never be duplicated. I can only assume that it has always been a little more than irritating for feminists and female filmmakers to realize that the greatest film directed by a woman is a National Socialist (Nazi) “propaganda” documentary. In the documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl the viewer receives an incredible portrait of an 89 year old Leni Riefenstahl and her amazing career as the world’s greatest female filmmaker.

Beautiful

Athletic and Courageous

Despite being 89 years old, Leni Riefenstahl is fairly spunky and energetic in The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. When annoyed by the inquiries and comments of the documentary director Ray Müller, Leni has no problem telling off a man that looks to be about half her age. In fact, Ms. Riefenstahl starts shaking Mr. Müller after she becomes annoyed by his questions in regards to the first Nazi documentary she worked on, a film that was never finished. Thankfully, Leni also has no problem discussing her acquaintances with the top National Socialists. Beyond elderly Leni becomes enraged when director Ray Müller mentions that in Nazi minister of propaganda’s Joseph Goebbels 1933 diary, Goebbels wrote about how Leni Riefenstahl would frequently visit the little doctor. Leni responds she never “put out” for poor Joey Goebbels, although Goebbels attempted many times to have her as his mistress. Leni Riefenstahl was a woman that could have any man she wanted and for some reason I doubt Mr. Goebbels would have been able to please Leni. After all, Leni’s later lifelong partner Horst Kettner was 40 years her junior. Leni Riefenstahl should also be recognized as being the queens of the cougars.

One of the biggest complaints thrown against Leni Riefenstahl is that she has a “fascist aesthetic.” Yep, you got it, some ugly weakling considers showing muscular, powerful, and beautiful bodies as evidence of visual fascism. To prove one truly has a cultural Marxist “equality aesthetic” they have to make films featuring the most hideous and deformed people in the world as everyone knows that should show a filmmakers commitment to the most important cultural achievement: DIVERSITY! Not only do critics claim that her National Socialist documentaries are “aesthetic fascism”, but they also claim her photos of the African Nubian people of central Sudan are further evidence of her criminal “aesthetic fascism.” I guess it just goes to show how ugly resentful NYC and LA film critics will make any type of pathetic attempt at discrediting the organic beauty right in front of their undeserving squinted eyes.

African Aesthetic Fascism

Throughout The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl I was very impressed with Leni’s uncompromising pride and attitude toward her long eclectic career. The only thing that annoyed me was her statement that she is unhappy that she ever made Triumph of the Will. Sure, the film may have blacklisted Leni Riefenstahl as a filmmaker for the rest of her life, but Triumph of the Will also happens to be one of the greatest achievements of cinema history. If your typical filmmaker were to even make one film anywhere near the quality of Triumph of the Will, they deserve lifelong recognition of as a cinematic master of aesthetics. It would have also been a nice “FUCK YOU” to her critics had Leni showed no regret in directing Triumph of the Will. Of course, I am sure Riefenstahl’s early German Mountain film career of Aryan volk mysticism is enough to repel the typical anti-European critic, a part of Leni’s career that she seems to have no regrets about.

Leni directing director Ray Müller

At around three hours in length, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a long but certainly not banal documentary. The documentary is a portrait of a woman who became the greatest female filmmaker within a supposedly “misogynistic regime.” Despite the claimed sexism against women in National Socialist Germany, Leni Riefenstahl was a woman who excelled within those “misogynistic” social constraints. I can also certainly say that I have never heard of a feminist with even a drop of the talent and strength Leni Riefenstahl radiated. Of course, feminists are typically degenerate women and Leni Riefenstahl was an Aryan Superfrau.

-Ty E