Good thing deer are herbivores.

Directed by Marc Rocco (Dream A Little Dream, 1989; Murder In The First, 1994)
Written by Marc Rocco, Michael Hitchcock and Kurt Voss

Starring Dermot Mulroney, Balthazar Getty, Sean Astin, Ricki Lake, Will Smith, James LeGros, and Lara Flynn Boyle as main characters; an uncredited Kyle MacLachlan and Laura San Giacomo in smaller parts; and Peter Dobson, Adam Baldwin, Nancy McKeon, Alyssa Milano, David Arquette, Rachel Ticotin, and Stephen Tobolowsky in supporting roles (even after double-checking the credits, I’m sure I’ve missed someone).

For my first review, I’d like to take a short step back in time. That’s right, BnB is going to review a dreaded “old” movie. Though it’s not quite 10 years old, I know a few people here at the asylum that may watch it, anyway. I stumbled onto this little gem while theatre-hopping on a depressing, rainy Saturday when I was a senior in high school. This film was much overlooked when it was released, I think mainly do to a very poor title and catch phrase (damn studio-marketing execs!). With a title of “Where The Day Takes You”, and a short blurb of “No parents, no rules”, it’s not really a big surprise that it gets completely passed over on the video store shelf, as well. If they would just pick it up off the shelf, all the real movie fans out there would rent it just for its very strong cast.

Shot as a pseudo-romantic view of runaway life in Hollywood, with slight documentary undertones (don’t think Blair Witch, or I’ll sick Fred on you), this movie is an absolute diamond in a world of straight-to-video crap.

“What’s life on the street like King?”

“It’s not hard. It’s not easy, either. It just is.”

The story centers around King, a runaway who acts mostly as a big brother to his family of teen friends. King (Dermot Mulroney) is a bit of an enigma, himself. He doesn’t know his own age, and just got out of lockup for defending himself while being robbed by a bum, only to find out some things have gone astray in his 3 month absence from the streets. He almost acts as the conscience of this loosely-knit group, while still doing whatever it takes to make everyone as safe and comfortable as possible. The characters represent every stereotypical runaway, which if you’ve ever been around a group of runaways, you know is damn close to the truth. There’s an element from every facet of society: The big brother; the little sister; the abused; and the middle class who had it all and squandered it. Drugs, violence, prostitution, pimps, love, angst, tattoos--it’s all here.

Heather (Lara Flynn Boyle) is introduced early and is the newest addition to the little group. As with most of the group, she came to Hollywood to be a big shot movie star. You get to see her life unfold as they teach her how to survive on the street. Panhandling for change, struggling for food, protecting each other, entertaining themselves--anything they can do for free.

“You think you’re so smart King, tell me why I’m here”

“No.”

“Why? 'Cause you don’t know, do ya?”

“'Cause it’s the same reason as everyone else . . .either your father molested you, or your step father did.”

“You’re an asshole. It wasn’t my father that fucked me. It was my brother. Shows how much you know.”

I really don’t want to give away much more, as this is such a strong screenplay; a powerful look at what life is like on the streets for teens. It did have what I felt was a somewhat manufactured “Hollywood” ending for dramatic purposes, only, but I highly recommend it to anyone. Those of you who have spent a bit a time on the streets will feel the sting more, as it all hits a bit too close to home.

I give this movie four tokes (out of five).

Now you might wonder what I would know about such a movie but I have had a varied past you see. I wasn’t always hanging out with that worthless old bag of wind, JEB. Actually, I had the great pleasure of being taken to see that movie by this exquisite young gothic girl named Morgany or something like that. She never would tell me her real name but by the gods, she put on a show during that movie that was better than the film itself.
Claimed she had seen it about forty times, strange girl, cute as a bug but seemed to run a bit off the side of the road if you know what I mean. But then, that is another story and a film review unlike any that I have seen around these parts.

So, here we were all set to go down to one of the finest fishing spots west of the ole Miss., Bean’s Bend on the Big Rio. We had been planning this trip for a long time, since the night before anyway. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the bar, seeing as how we seemed to be in some sort of disfavor with the local womenfolk for reasons unbeknownst to us.

We got up that morning, grabbed up all our gear, which was always packed up in case we needed to go on one of those quick fishing trips until things cooled off in town, and snuck past the nurse’s station and out the back door to the parking lot. JEB’s truck was nowhere to be found. We looked all over the parking lot but it was gone. Now this was very odd because we were reasonably sure we had driven it back because Fred was with us. At least that was the only logical thing that we could come up with at that hour and JEB, still being drunk, insisted that Fred would never let us walk home in his condition. I personally think JEB spends way to much time talking to that fleabit hound. We did spend a few moments mulling over whether it had got stolen but JEB did admit that even though he loved that truck more than his first two wives combined, that the odds were that a thief would more than likely break into his room and steal his stanky ole boots before they would bother with that truck.

We figured we ought to sneak back in and headed around to the front of the home, as the back door locked behind us when we left, and as we rounded the side of the building, there, much our delight, was the truck! Unfortunately, it was parked up on the porch of the home and for the life of us, we could not figure out how it had been parked where it was, as the front bumper was about 3 inches away from the wall and the back bumper was about the same from the porch rail. It looked like the porch had been built around it. Damnedest thing I had ever seen.

After wrestling around the yard for a few minutes, arguing over who had driven back the night before, we realized that not only were we wasting valuable fishing time but we probably didn’t really want to be there when the truck was discovered on the porch as we had yet to come up with a plausible explanation or alibi. So we headed for town figuring that somehow we could get in some fishing somewhere before we needed to deal with the situation back at the home.

We hadn’t walked more than a few blocks when along comes ole Rob Porter, owner of Porter Aviation.
Now, I used to do a little flying for ole Rob, dusting crops or occasionally running frozen bull semen over to Omaha. Never did ask what them city folk did with it, just kept my yap shut and flew the plane. Odd people, those city slickers.

Ole Rob stopped when he saw it was us and told us to hop in. We told him of our predicament, leaving out a few facts that may have tainted his opinion of us, and asked if he had anything we could use to get down to Bean’s Bend.

Rob asked if the Fed’s still let me fly and I assured him that they had yet to find anything they could prove that would have caused them to revoke my pilot’s license. Then, smelling the stench of booze on JEB’s breath, he asked if I was sober enough to fly. I told him I was sober as a judge, which made him immediately suspicious as he had been out drinking the night before with the local magistrate. He asked me if I could touch my nose with my eyes shut but before I could comply, that old fool JEB yelled, "I can!" and punched me in the nose as hard as he could. I didn’t take that too well to that and started whooping him upside the head. Soon we were both just a flailing away and Rob careened up to the hangar and jumped out, grabbed a rifle out from under his seat and threatened to shoot the both of us if we didn’t straighten up. Seeing as how neither of us was much for getting shot, we straightened up.

Rob figured that I was probably sober enough to fly as he noticed I had managed to get in a few well aimed shots at JEB’s punkin head so he took us in his hangar and told us we could use his personal transport, the Ebola Grape.
He came up with that name because he thought Ebola was the first name of that bomber that dropped the atom bomb on Japan and would not budge on that because he said Enola couldn't be right because he had never heard of an Enola and Grape because for one, he had painted it this gawdawful purple and two because he wasn’t about to put the word Gay on anything he owned seeing as how he made a habit out of getting drunk and standing on the bar and shouting out how he would never be a receptacle for another man's pudding. I figured this was just his way of saying he had had enough to drink about 3 or 4 drinks back. Hell, he knocked me out with a wing strut one time because I told him that them homo guys called their bunghole a cockpit and he wouldn’t get in a plane for about two weeks after that. I finally had to tell him I made that up as his wife threatened to shoot me because he was losing so much business refusing to sit in a cockpit and all. JEB told her I said that just because he knew she would light out after me with a gun. Them Porters are a violent bunch, I tell ya, and that sorry assed JEB has a sick sense of humor.

Now I would love to tell ya what kind of plane this was but I can’t. You see, ole Rob had built this thing out of parts from about forty different planes, even claiming that there were pieces of the Wright Brother’s first plane in it. Hell, the rudder pedals say John Deere on them and I don't ever recollect them being in the plane business but they worked so who am I to say anything.

We pushed the old crate out to the edge of the runway and checked the fuel tanks, amazingly enough, they were fairly full and I explained to JEB how to spin the prop to start the engine. He argued about how I ought to do it but I convinced him that operating the controls was way too technical for him and I need to be in the cockpit for that part. So Fred and I jumped in and I flipped the ignition switch and slapped the choke on and signaled JEB to spin the prop.

Now, to do this, all you do is pull down on one of the blades of the prop and get the hell out of the way when it catches. A trained monkey could do this so I felt that the old reprobate should be up to the task. I never thought to tell him that you don’t hold on to the prop and I guess I should have because he did and when the engine caught, it flung him about twenty yards off into the bushes. At first, I thought it had killed him but then I heard over the stuttering roar of the engine, "You JACKASS!!", so I figured he must have landed on his head and was alright.
I swung the plane around and headed down the runway with JEB trying to claw his way inside while Fred was licking his face to let him know that he was glad JEB was alive.

Now this plane was not the easiest thing to fly as most of the controls were not really designed to operate the parts of the aircraft that they were hooked to and the few gauges that did work, weren’t too accurate so I knew that it wasn’t going to be the smoothest flight on record and would just be tickled to death to even get in the general vicinity of where we were trying to get to.

We roared down the runway, the plane spitting and belching as it tried to pick up speed and it looked like we were going to run out of runway before we got off the ground. There wasn't much I could do but keep going as Rob had neglected to put brakes on the plane, amongst other things. Just as we got to the end of the asphalt, the wheels lifted off the ground with Fred baying and JEB screaming like that Zena woman’s war cry. Funniest thing I ever heard, in fact I damn near hit the power lines at the end of the field, I was laughing so hard. Those two should cut a record.

Most of the flight was relatively uneventful until we got within sight of Beans Bend. Ole JEB doesn’t mind the flying so much but the landings tend to make him a bit nervous as I have repeatedly pointed out to him that it is the return to Mother Earth that usually kills most everybody who flies plus he knew that landing the Ebola Grape was usually just a matter of making the best of an inevitable crash with the way she was put together and all. So JEB decided to fortify his courage and climbed back to the fishing gear to fetch a bottle of our special fishing medication. When he bent over to get it, he produced one of those classic plumber’s cracks that was just too much for Fred to resist and that dog stuck his cold wet nose right in it causing JEB to let out a whoop and launch himself right back to the tail of the plane.

Now if you don’t already know it, ole JEB is not what you would call a large person. He is huge, hell, if he was any bigger, he would have his own zip code. One of the few values he has as a fishing partner is the shade he provides. All that weight has a very undesirable effect on an aircraft when it is suddenly thrust into the tail. The tail gets real heavy and pilots, me in this case, find themselves staring into space instead of the horizon. Planes also do not fly very well when the tail is pointed to the ground and tend to do what is known in aviation as plummet. I kicked the rudders over and rolled the plane out, putting the nose down so I could at least see what we were going to crash into and here came the river, coming mighty fast too. I pulled back on the yoke seeing that I could possibly pull it out in time but I forgot that JEB and Fred were no longer at the bottom of the plane but were now overhead, which was soon remedied thanks to the fact that JEB was big enough to overcome the gee force and fall into the cockpit. Naturally, I was no longer able to pilot the plane with his big ass in my lap and we pancaked into the river with him doing that Zena thing, the Ebola bouncing off the water like a skipping stone and came to rest on the sand beach.

I calmly asked him to get him and his worthless dog off of me and proceeded to climb out of the plane with my duffle bag in hand and coolly sauntered to the shrubs up on the bank so I could change my soiled britches.
Miraculously, the Ebola Grape was still flyable so we settled down to a few days fishing and drinking. Didn’t catch a damn thing either. I had a feeling that the plane smacking into the water as it did probably scared them fish clean down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, the flight back… but that’s another story.

Starring: Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, Courteney Cox Arquette, David Arquette, Thomas Haden Church, Howie Long, Jon Lovitz, Kevin Pollak, Christian Slater, Bokeem Woodbine, Paul Anka, Craig Newell and Ice T as Hamilton.
Director: Demian Lichtenstein
Writing Credits: Demian Lichtenstein, Richard Recco
Distributor: Warner Brothers
Rated R for some sexuality, drug content, violence and language.

3000 Miles To Graceland Is about an hour behind me. I'm still singing Elvis tunes but was forced to stop saying "thank-ya, thank-ya very much sugah" by my girlfriend under threat of a "morning sex moratorium".

The movie is a standard heist flick. Well, fairly standard.

All dressed as Elvis Presley, a group of ex-cons (Costner, Russell, Slater, Arquette, Woodbine) plan to rob a Las Vegas casino during an Elvis-impersonator convention which will serve as a perfect cover, and allow them to get away quickly.

The job is done and the thieves get away with 3.2 million.

As they divide the loot miles away from danger, dissension and betrayal among the gang erupts and complications arise.

From before the opening credits this movie gets your attention, surprising you with surreal imagery and weird cuts.

The sight of Russell's candy apple red '59 Cadi land shark tooling wildly through the Nevada desert in off-time and blurred acid dream editing during the opening credits is reminiscent of a Hunter Thompson passage.

"We had two bags of Grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls... but the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge..." -## HST '71

The movie starts quickly with little introduction of the characters or their backgrounds. It honestly doesn't matter who they are. The movie's comic book feel makes their shallowness acceptable and almost necessary for us to accept the extraordinary volumes of violence and general bad assedness.

If you are sick of Costner's cornpone earnestness (i.e.: The Postman) then this movie is a tonic. I can't recall Costner playing a real villain before and he is great. Funny, savage and out of control this role demonstrates him at his sexy best. Compare this performance to the ham-handed 13 Days and you can easily see this is a direction he should explore.

Or maybe he is just having a mid-life crisis.

Russell, the anti-hero crook is passable but largely flat and uninspiring. Costner's Murphy outcharms him. This "everyman" approach to the role works up to a degree. He provides a grounding point to Costner's lunacy but I found myself rooting for the bad guy a little too much.

Interestingly, Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner each submitted their own cut of the film, which was then viewed by test audiences. Costner's won.
Courtney Cox can't act and should be banned from further movie appearances by United Nations edict. She is good eye candy but as a femme fatale she lacks any real sex appeal, danger or plausibility. The scenes between her and Russell are the only unenjoyable parts of this very enjoyable movie.

Kevin Pollack(Usual Suspects) and Thomas Hayden Church(tv's Wings) are hilarious as the US Federal Marshalls on the band's trail. They counterpoint the surreal, ultra-cool and hip villians with sardonic, understated wit. They are the only good guys you root for.

The gunfights are fun and cartoonish. 4 Elvis impersonators battling security forces at The Mirage is hysterical to watch. Look out for a funny turn by Paul Anka as Chief of Hotel security. Nicely done.

The final shoot out would make John Woo blush but by this point you are just riding the wave and if you have abandoned credulity you will be enjoying the ride.

There is an undercurrent in the movie poking our infatuation with villains and the mythology of the 'Wild West' which doesn't get preachy but has the smell of guilt in it. The film is pretty violent and the cops take the brunt of the thrown lead. But it's silly and in the name of fun. They probably should have left it at that.

All in all I had a great time at the movies. A little kitsch, a little gunplay, some dirty double-crosses, a very good soundtrack with everything from DMX to the King.

It's silly, cartoonish fun. Not terribly witty. Not great cinema. Funny, fast and weird.

I give it (out of 5.)

selah.

This is the result of exhaustive testing....Yes size really does matter.

Looks like the quarter pounder need a good wash.

The movie is a remake of the 1978 Warren Beatty movie Heaven Can Wait (itself a remake of a 1941 movie, Waiting for Mr Jordan) in which dimly amiable L.A. Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Beatty) is prematurely called to Heaven by an over-eager escort (Buck Henry, who co-directed) after a traffic accident. When archangel Mr. Jordan (James Mason) discovers the error, he offers to return Joe to his body, only to find that it has been cremated. On the verge of playing in the Super Bowl, Joe demands a fit body rather than the old about-to-be-murdered industrialist Farnsworth he has been offered, but he reconsiders when he sees environmentalist Betty Logan (Julie Christie) in Farnsworth's house. Assuming Farnsworth's body while keeping his sweet self, Joe hires his beloved coach Max Corkle (Jack Warden) to get him in shape (after convincing Max who he really is); sets Farnsworth's business on an eco-friendly path; and romances Betty. Farnsworth's homicidal wife (Dyan Cannon) and secretary (Charles Grodin), however, are still determined to succeed in their plan to kill him. When Mr. Jordan finally finds the Super Bowl body Joe wanted, Joe has to trade his old self for the new life ## but will he remember his love for Betty?

That's essentially the plot of Down to Earth, as well, with Rock as an aspiring Harlem comedian hoping to play at the "last shout at the Apollo" show.

I didn't like Heaven Can Wait very much but, compared to Down to Earth, it was a cinematic landmark.

I like Chris Rock. His HBO weekly is funny and the videos of his stand-up I've seen are good. He is, in the tradition of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, irreverant and brave. Willing to call a "spade a spade", so to speak, he has generated critisms and accolades for his act.

What, then, is the problem?

Chris Rock can't act. He was atrocious. This could be overlooked if a tight ensemble cast had been knit closely around him. Consider Jerry Seinfeld, another stand-up comedian who can't act. Yet, Seinfeld worked. The cast here seems to have thrown up their hands in dispair.

This movie was dreadful, with cliched writing and awful performances across the board. Horrid examples of sexual, racial and urban stereotyping litter this nasty film like sticky popcorn under the theater seats.

The only funny moments are stolen by Eugene Levy(American Pie) who appears in brief snippets reprising Buck Henry's role as the over-zealous angel. Chazz Palminterri(Usual Suspects) also turns in an adequate stint as the head angel, playing it like a cool night club manager.

Unfortunately, these moments are as brief as they are rare and do nothing to save this movie.

Rock's days as a romantic leading man are hopefully over. I hope from now on he sticks to playing the comic relief for actors and doing stand-up.

Do not see this movie. Don't go to another movie in the same multi-plex as this movie. Do not wait and rent this movie on video. Your VCR will smell for weeks.

At this point in the review I rate the movie in whiskey bottles. I don't know how to halve a gif image and, frankly, even half a bottle would be a gift.

selah.