Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)

Title: Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)

Director: John de Bello

Cast: George Clooney, John Astin

Review:

Some of you might not know it, but George Clooney took his first shots at acting by appearing in extremely low budget horror films. Yup, like many A-list actors in Hollywood (Meg Ryan and Renee Zellwegger for example) George Clooney started dabbling with the acting thing in low budget horror features like Return to Horror High (1987) and the film I will be reviewing today, Return of the Killer Tomatoes. As the title suggests, this is a sequel to an obscure low budget horror flick from the 70’s titled Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978). I saw the original one many, many years ago when I was but a kid. All I remember about that one is that the hero in the film runs around dragging an opened parachute through the floor everywhere he went. After having so much fun with this one, I think I want to revisit the original. But seriously folks, this is the kind of movie that entertains simply because it's so zany and full ideas. Its as if everyday the whole cast and crew was looking for new ways to make the movie that much crazier! Gotta hand it to them, I think it worked!

A Motley Crew if there ever was any!

Story goes something like this: a mad scientist is hell bent on world domination. His way of achieving this goal is by taking ordinary tomatoes and transforming them into muscle bound Rambo-like tough hombres with machine guns and bandanas! Sounds crazy right? Well, trust me, it gets crazier. One of the good guys falls for a girl who is half human, half tomato! She’s kind of like a were-tomato-girl? She transforms into a tomato whenever she hears a specific song. So the good guy is confused, should he love her or squash her? It’s up to the good guys to stop the mad scientist from achieving his goal and finding a way to get were-tomato-girl to stay human forever. That’s about as far as we go in terms of story.

A girl and her baby tomatoe

But essentially, what we have here is a super funny movie. I never thought I’d end up enjoying a movie about killer tomatoes. Though, to be honest, there aren’t any actual killer tomatoes perse on this movie. At least not like in the first film. What we get on this sequel are tomatoes that are transformed into these hulking tough dudes with machine guns with a striking resemblance to Rambo. So any desires you might have for seeing actual giant tomatoes trying to kill people you can squash immediately, cause that’s not what this movie was going for. The filmmakers thought it would be way cooler to have a bunch of Rambo wannabe’s doing all the damage this time. And honestly, it was funny seeing these tough oiled up dudes walking around with machine guns. And hers the punch line: the filmmakers make the Rambo clones look all red because they used to be tomatoes! As a bonus, when this movie isn’t turning tomatoes into Rambo replicas it’s turning them into hot bikini clad beach babes! So the film evens things out that way.

Clooney sarrounded by tomatoes left and right

I loved how they do a recap of the events that occurred in the first film, where we see the giant tomatoes rolling around the streets following people trying to kill them. It’s actually a pretty straight forward sequel, totally alluding and referencing the previous film. In fact, many characters from the first film actually return. I especially enjoyed seeing John Astin who played Gomez on The Addams Family TV Show playing the role of the mad scientist, Prof. Gangreen. Actually, its Asting who steals the show in this movie. He is the one responsible for the tomatoes mutating and he was perfectly cast in this role. This actor has such a zany looking face, the kind of face that  a mad scientist would have! He has that smirk on his face through out the whole movie, makes him look all nutty. As an inside joke, at one point Astin is actually wearing the suit he wore in The Addams Family! His plan is to use the mutant tomatoes to build an army to take over the world. The funniest thing is that the machine that transforms the tomatoes is activated by putting a quarter in it! And when it’s turned on, it plays this rock and roll synth tune! It was hilarious! You could tell that he was having fun with the role. Same as George Clooney, who looks half like he wants to make the movie, and half like he just doesn’t give a damn. It’s hard to think that such a respected actor like Clooney started out in such a sleazy b-movie like this one! I guess it’s true what they say, everyone has to start somewhere!

John Astin cant believe he is in an even weirder gig than The Addams Family

This movie comes to us from the Zucker/Abrahams school of filmmaking. Yes my friends the comedy in this film is a lot like the comedy we see in films like Airplane! (1980) and The Naked Gun (1988) where we simply get an avalanche of slapstick with no respect or desire to respect any conventional film rules. On this movie we see characters breaking the fourth wall; we get to see the filmmaking crew behind the cameras, hell, we even get to see the films actual director show up at one point to tell everyone that they ran out of money for making the movie. Seriously, this is that kind of movie! The cast and crew of the film actually stop the film halfway through to see what idea they can come up with to raise money for finishing the film; their solution? Product placement! So from their on in, we see a whole lot of product placement on the film. To the films credit I will say that they managed to turn the whole product placement gimmick into a pretty funny joke. Every time we see some sort of product placement in the movie, it is hilarious! In this way, the film reminded me of Wayne’s World (1992) where they have this whole sequence where they do the exact same thing. Only Return of the Killer Tomatoes did it first! Actually, there are a lot of jokes on this film that are similar to the jokes we see in Waynes World, where they play around with things they can pull off in a movie.

 Product placement is no joke. It can happen to all of us!

Example: the film starts off with another film. Actually, the film starts off with the producers talking to us telling us how shitty this sequel is going to be which lets us know that these guys knew they were making a bad film from the get go. They knew they were making a b-movie and they had fun with it. They exploited that angle as much as they could, and I have to say it worked because I couldn’t stop watching this movie. Actually, I was laughing out loud so many times, it surprised me! One scene that had me rolling was when they explained that the mere mention of the word ‘tomatoes’ caused chaos, and they show this guy in a library, with a bunch of people sitting around him calmly reading their books and suddenly with a grin on his face the guy says the word “tomatoes” and everyone in the library goes bats shit insane screaming and hollering! I was laughing so hard I had to pause the film. Honestly, this movie needs more recognition. If you are in the mood for some laugh out loud, silly, slapstick fun, of the kind that doesn’t give a damn, then Return of the Killer Tomatoes is the movie for you! During the film credits, the film promises us that the killer tomatoes will return in The Killer Tomatoes Eat France!. Now, here I thought this was just another one of those movies that promises a sequel but never delivers (like Masters of the Universe!) but to my surprise, while researching this movie I discovered that it has not one but two more sequels! Killer Tomatoes Strike Back! (1991) and Killer Tomatoes Eat France! (1992) And they were both made by the same director who made the first two. You can bet your collective asses I will be seeing and reviewing them soon! Especially when this film ends with the uprising of The Mutant Carrots Army!

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Title: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Title: Wes Anderson

Writers: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach based on the childrens book by Roald Dahl

Starring (voices): George Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe

Review:

Stop motion animation films are a special delight for me as a film fan. They have been with me since my early years, going as far back as my childhood when I would watch those holiday themed stop motion animation films like Mad Monster Party (1967) or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964). Not that I’m that old, but these little stop motion animation movies get replayed a lot on television for years and years. I think they still get some air time during the holidays. But one way or another, stop motion has always been there. Even in those films that mixed both live action and animation. Films like Ray Harryhausen’s famous sword and sandal flicks like Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981). Even well into the 80’s this technique was still being used in live action films to animate monsters and creatures like in Howard the Duck (1986) and Willow (1988). Robocop (1987) and its sequels did it a bit too.

Roald Dahls Book

But special mention has to go to those completely stop motion animated films. One of the earliest American stop motion animation feature length films goes as far back as 1954 with the film Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy. These films kept being produced, but not in large numbers. A lot of work had to go into making these animated wonders. And they were never released theatrically, most of the time, stop motion animated films were made as something to show on tv during the holidays. That all changed with A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). This film was the mother of the big budget theatrical live action animation film. Tim Burton conceived and produced it and Henry Selick directed it. After that film came out, it opened the doors to getting these big budget stop motion projects off the ground and getting theatrical releases. Across the years, they have been released to mostly successful box office results in films like Chicken Run (2000) Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the WereRabbit (2005) The Corpse Bride (2005) and most recently the unforgettable and visually dazzling Coraline (2009).

So here comes Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s take on the stop motion animation world. Anderson isn’t a rookie when it comes to using stop motion animation in his films. He used it to animate the strange underwater creatures seen in The Life Aquatic (2005). But Fantastic Mr. Fox is his first fully stop motion animated film. How was it?

The story follows the Mr. Fox and his family and friends as they try to survive in the harsh world. Mr. Fox brings food to the table by stealing from nearby farms. But soon the human farmers realize that it’s the foxes who are stealing from them, so, they device a plan to dig the Fox out of its hole. Can Mr. Fox continue evading the tractors and excavators, or will he eventually get caught by the farmers? Will his family and friends be able to survive?

I liked what Anderson did with this movie. Essentially, he took the story from Roald Dahl children’s book and adapted it to our times, twitched it a bit here and there to make it a bit more contemporary. He fleshed out characters a bit more and gave the film new opening and closing scenes. Its interesting how in this story, a children’s story, the foxes have to steal in order to survive. Things are so harsh, prices are so high that the main characters are forced to survive by taking from the big companies that are bleeding them dry. There’s a song that gets played a few times during the film and it goes like this:

Boggis and Bunce and Bean

One fat, one short, one lean

These horrible crooks, so different in looks

Were nonetheless equally mean

Boggis and Bunce and Bean are the big farmers, producing food for the nation, and bleeding the dry with the prices. It’s why they are called ‘crooks’ in the song. So in a way, having Mr. Fox stealing from them is justified in a strange Robin Hood sort of way. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor. And it is made clear early on in the film that the family is in deed a poor one. A poor but happy one. Still, Mr. Fox wants more for his family, and I can’t say I blame him. He wants more then just living in a hole; he wants to have a place of his own. But will the world allow him that? This is partially what this film is about. The film also comments on the food we eat. Is it good for us? Is that shinny apple in the supermarket really as good as it looks?

But, like any Wes Anderson film (and this is very much a Wes Anderson film) there are some family dynamics involved. It’s the one thing that has always united Wes Anderson’s films; they’re all about family in one way or another. On Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s tension between Mr. Fox’s son and his nephew, who has had to move in with them because his father can’t take care of him. So there’s some sibling rivalry going on between the two children in the film. Will they ever learn to play along? Mr. Fox is the father, the group leader, the leader of his community, always looking for a way to lead his people to a better situation, but not always finding the best ways to go about it. What I liked about his character is that he was always coming up with some sort of a plan, always looking out for everyone.

The look of the film is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s previous efforts. That’s the thing about this movie, even though its stop motion animated, it still retains that distinctive visual signature that accompanies an Anderson film. This is probably due to the fact that all of Anderson’s films are visually designed by his own brother, Eric Anderson. So they all have that unifying look to them. Anderson directs this film as if he was directing one of his live action films. His characters are always very articulate, very intelligent, even the children. Like the genius children from The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) or Max Fisher, the talented underachiever in Rushmore (1998) the children in Fantastic Mr. Fox are talented individuals; one of them is almost too talented, overshadowing in some ways the other, creating some tension between the two.

This was a very beautiful film to look at. Stop motion animation allows directors to manipulate ever single frame on screen more easily, so everything we see on screen is exactly what the director had in mind. These are puppets moving to Wes Anderson’s and Roald Dahl whims and ideas. And like any good stop motion animation film, this one is inhabited by many different little creatures that you can feast your eyes upon.

Is it too complicated for children? Is it too intelligent? Is the dialog too complex? You know what? I for once applaud that this film does not talk down to children. Honestly, I’m sick of children movies like Barnyard, where children are treated like retards, and everything is spelled out. Where the film is kept deliberately dumb, and we get the same old “believe in yourself” storyline. There are better things to teach our children then the dumb down crap shown in cineplexes. Same goes for regular films as well. You know what? Let the kids figure it out, let them use their brains more then they are used to. In the long run, they’ll thank you for showing them a film like this one. Never underestimate the young mind of a child!

Rating: 5 out of 5

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Title: The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Director: Grant Heslov

Cast: George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges

Writer: Peter Straughan based on the book by Jon Ronson

Sometimes, things that happen in the real world are a million times stranger then fiction. Take for example “The First Earth Batallion”. The First Earth Batallion was a secret U.S. Military group that was being trained to use psychic powers against the enemy! This group of soldiers was lead by a hippy/new wave activist/environmentalist Jim Channon. Basically, the U.S. Military gave Channon the okay to experiment with the idea of creating an army that could use mental powers in battle. Supposedly, these “warrior monks” were being trained to do all sorts of new agey bullshit like:

- moving things with the power of their minds

- phasing through walls

- seeing into the past or into the future

- talking to spirits

- having out of body experiences

- telepathy

- stopping the heart of an enemy with the powers of the mind

Of course, these soldiers never really developed any of these special powers (big surprise there!) and the project was shelved. I’m actually extremely surprised that the military actually went as far as they did with this whole stupid idea. They actually went ahead and bought hundreds of goats so that the “warrior monks” or Jedi’s (yeah they actually called themselves Jedi Warriors) could try and stop their hearts with the powers of their minds! There were manuals written, there were designs for special warrior monk uniforms, I mean, this thing got out of hand! Strangely enough, some of the psychological warfare tactics did crossover into real life practical use. The U.S. Army has been known to use psychological torture techniques that stem from Channon’s techniques and research. Like for example, the U.S. Army has been known to play the theme song to the Barney children’s television show for hours on end to Iraqi prisoners of war. But most of the other ideas Channon had to offer (like talking to spirits) were completely eliminated. A couple of years down the line, Jon Ronson -an English journalist- wrote a book on the whole thing which ended up being the movie I will be reviewing today. The Men Who Stare at Goats.

The book on which the film is based on

Basically, the movie follows Bob Wilton, an English journalist who decides to go and cover the Iraq war. While there, he encounters Special Forces operator Lyn Cassidy, who lets Bob in on his secret mission involving meeting up with the creator of the “New Earth Battalion” Bill Django. Will they ever meet up with Bill? Is this whole “New Earth Battalion” thing real? Do these guys really have any psychic abilities or super powers? Bob Wilton decides to follow Lyn Cassidy in order to get to the truth.

I found this movie really interesting for various reasons. Number one, I think it’s absolutely bonkers that the U.S. Military was involved in something like this. I mean, come on, talking to spirits? Phasing through walls? To me, this whole thing just proves one thing: the world is under the control of mad men! They actually spent time and money on this thing! In real life! But whatever, that point aside, the movie decides to take a very interesting route as well.

The religious leader of the "New Earth Battalion"

In the film Jeff Bridges plays the role of Bill Django, the man in charge of creating this new kind of warrior for the United States government. And in the film, he functions very much like a religious leader to this military unit. The soldiers have to repeat a prayer; they give themselves entirely to the guidance of Django, they have to congregate. For all intents and purposes Bill Django is their spiritual guide. So right there and then I said, the film is commenting on religion. On cults. Jamestown and Waco Texas instantly popped into mind. And its true, this is precisely what the film comments on. These men all put their trust in Mr. Django’s new agey philosophy and way of life. He tells them that they will all develop these special powers, that they will all be able to achieve these incredible feats, which by the way seem to come straight out of a comic book. But the unit goes with it, because they trust Django. They trust that he knows what he is talking about because he just seems so enlightened. Or maybe he knows how to talk a lot of bull crap really well?

George Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, the follower; the guy who’s put his complete trust in Django’s teachings. The guy who will do whatever Django tells him to. In many ways, Clooney’s Lyn represents the people who will follow a religious leader to the ends of the earth (something Lyn does in the movie by the way) and live and breathe by their leader’s teachings. One could say that Clooney is blindly following Bill, same way many people will blindly follow a religious leader. Cassidy reads fervently from a manual written by Django for his New Earth Battalion, kind of like the same way religious individuals can read from a holy book, like the bible, the Koran or the Book of Mormon. It is aluded in the film that Lyn was looking for something to believe in, and Django, through his New Earth Battalion, gave him exactly what he was looking for. Which is really what happens to a lot of people looking for spiritual guidance through a religion, they are looking for something to believe in, something to guide them and give them peace in this crazy world. Give things a purpose, an answer.

On the film, Django wants to promote peace and love in the world. In Django’s book, the planet and nature are number one. Peace is the real objective of the New Earth Battalion; their main objective is finding resolution to conflict through the use of non lethal methods. All of Django’s teachings are based on these ideals. In my book, these ideals that Django teaches in the film are good and could actually help make the world a better place. I’m all for peace in the world, the unification of the countries, the end of war. But why did Django feel he needed to link fantasy elements (or the "hippy bullshit" as they are referred to in the film) along with these ideals? Phasing through walls and moving things with the power of the mind are a complete fantasy and go in contrast with the other very real teachings he promoted. Teachings about attainable things like peace, love and unification of the world. This is the same thing that happens in some religions, like Scientology for example, where they offer you this whole way of life that can supposedly help you achieve all your goals and dreams.Unfortunately, if you read the fine print you'll find out that you have to also believe alien warlords named Xenu, and in ghost aliens. Oh and add time traveling to that list. Some religions offer people a new positive way of life. Many of them have teachings based on love and compassion, which are all great things in my book. But why do they feel the need to lace that with a bunch of fantasies that don’t have an iota of truth to them? This is something the film addresses as well, I won’t comment any further so you’ll come to your own conclusions after you see the film.

Free the Goats from their mental slavery!

George Clooney shines as the Lieutenant Lyn Cassidy. He plays his character in a very goofy absent minded manner; a guy who has gone a bit coo-coo with Django’s teachings. He believes it all to be true, and in some ways this helps him get through life, and in others, it doesn’t. He often times gets into a lot of trouble because he thinks he has these special abilities. But also, by just thinking he has them helps him as well. In this way the film comments on how religion can become sort of a psychological comfort cushion. You think you got somebody watching over you, you feel more confident, you dare to achieve more. That’s fine and dandy, but me, I rather rely on my own inner strength and confidence to achieve things then in some mystical invisible being that’s supposed there yet we never see or hear. I guess some people need that additional psychological back up, and all those perfect pre-packaged shinny answers to everything, so as they say, more power to them. I like to live with my feet firmly placed on reaffirming reality. You want to tell me that love, peace and companion are things we have to live by? Sure, Ill buy that for a dollar. Just leave all the new agey hippy bullshit out of it!

Rating: 4 out of 5