Documentary December – The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

It’s the Appalachian equivalent of Jersey Shore.  The opening minutes of Julien Nitzberg’s documentary, “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia“, give a rapid fire family history of the film’s subject, the White family of Boone County, West Virginia.  A gun shot sound effect punctuates.  The patriarch, D. Ray White, was a clog/tap dancer, growing famous both for his unique performances as well as his outlaw lifestyle that ultimately resulted in him getting shot and killed.  His sons attempted to follow in his footsteps, perhaps finding more success in terms of achieving the outlaw lifestyle than anything else. One died a violent death at a young age, one fled the area to keep out of trouble, and the most famous, Jesco White, has brain damage from “ten long years of huffing gasoline.”  He isn’t sure if the damage is on the left or right side of his brain, but does recall the doctor saying that in essence he has a hole in his brain where the remaining tissue is like cigarette ash.  (Jesco is the subject of a 1991 PBS documentary called “Dancing Outlaw” which we plan to review later in the month.)

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 84 minutes

Directed by: Julien Nitzberg

Starring: Jesco White, Hank Williams III

Theatrical Release: 05/05/2010

DVD Release: 10/26/2010

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%

In many ways, this super quick opening summary is the most compelling part of the film.  The outlaw life and death is dramatic and intriguing from a distance.  It all gets uglier upon closer examination.

After the shock of the family’s violent history, Nitzberg moves into the day to day life of the Whites, which is an all you can eat, smoke and snort buffet of prescription drugs, whiskey and weed. We watch a new mother chop and snort oxycontin off the hospital room end table a few hours after giving birth.  We see two 50-60 year olds blow smoke in their 85 year old mother’s face during her birthday party.  We meet a lot of family members that talk way slower than Tommy Chong.

The Whites have a histrionic streak about as wide as the New River Valley Gorge.  Family members trade off bragging about using and selling drugs or committing acts of violence.  They take an enormous amount of pride in their fame and the attention they get for being so dysfunctional.  The infamy and death are glorified as much as possible.

But generations of this lifestyle lead to a value system that a normal person can’t really comprehend until they watch this.  Drugs and violence have been such a part of the Whites lives now for so long that they have no real sense of the negative effects they can have, even in the case of guarding their kids from them.  There are scenes of one of the 5 or 6 year old kids drinking 6 or 7 cans of Pepsi and bouncing off the walls.  How many years until it’s something more serious? In later scenes, the same child threatens to murder his estranged father. His aunt’s response is something along the lines of, “You wanna go to jail? Don’t say that kinda stuff on camera.”

In the end, there isn’t really a single clear cut good guy among The White clan.  Jesco may be the most articulate and charming, which is insane considering his aforementioned brain issues.  The family is fascinating on a certain level, but there is ultimately no real substance to their story.  The violence of a train wreck is visceral and thrilling, but the aftermath, the reality, is no fun.

The Acolytes: Underground Horror from Down Under

Part serial killer thriller, part good teens gone bad, Australian indie “Acolytes” is the kind of horror movie they should be making more of. I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to this genre, and I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Mark (Seb Gregory) wanders into the woods one day and spies a man burying something. He and his friends James (Josh Payne) and Chasely (Hannah Morgan Lawrence) decide to unearth the buried treasure, but instead of money, they discover the body of a young woman.

Here’s where the movie takes a turn for the “Kids do the darndest things when they find a body”, and I start wondering if I ever really want to procreate. Instead of reporting the body to the police, Mark and James cook up a scheme to find the murderer and blackmail him into killing an evil scumbag kiddie rapist (Michael Dorman) who has recently been released from prison. Schemes like this in thrillers never play out as planned, so things go from bad to worse pretty quickly for Mark, James, and Hannah.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 91 minutes

Directed by: Jon Hewitt

Written by: Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause

Starring: Sebastian Gregory, Joshua Payne, Hannah Mangan Lawrence

Theatrical Release: 05/15/08

DVD Release: 07/28/09

Production Budget: $4 million

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%

With a small budget of only four million dollars, “Acolytes” has a great visual style and excellent performances by the cast, especially considering their age. Unlike most teen horror flicks, the characters in “Acolytes” are handled as real people instead of hash marks on a killer’s bed post.

You’ve probably seen movies that have one twist too many. The theatrical release of this movie has four or five too many- so many twists piled on top of one another is overkill and takes away from the overall impact. The ending is a bit of a cliché for a thriller, which is the biggest let down of all. (The DVD features two alternate endings.)

Overall, “Acolytes” is a movie I would certainly recommend to fans of the horror/thriller genre. It’s dark and disturbing and has just the right kind of jump-out-of-your-seat tension. The DVD became available in the U.S. today.

Horsemen: Ponyloaf.

Here’s a recipe for braised bullshit movie: one 12 oz. can of David Fincher’s “Se7en” (Up), one leg of “Silence of the Lambs“, and two squirts of pure Quaid sweat. (This recipe calls for Dennis. Randy is an acquired taste. Little gamey.)

Yep. “Horsemen” is a blatant “Se7en“/”The Silence of the Lambs” copycat. Their strategy was to not merely recycle that material… but to kick it up a notch by totally sucking. Quaid (Dennis. Randy wouldn’t touch this script with Gary Sinise’s sac.) stars as Aidan Breslin, a work-obsessed homicide detective slash crappy dad. We know he’s a crappy dad because his eldest son, Alex (Lou Taylor Pucci), harps on the subject every time he’s on screen. A 16 year old boy that insists on giving his dad lectures on parenting? Science fucking fiction. It’s so heavy handed it makes Queen Latifah’s meathooks look downright dainty.

In one scene, young Alex suggests the family go to a hockey game. Daddy Breslin responds as if he’s either never heard of the sport or the notion of spending time with his offspring has never occurred to him before. Immediately cut to the family decked out in matching Red Wings gear. Huh?

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 110 minutes

Directed by: Jonas Åkerlund

Written by: Dave Callaham

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Lou Taylor Pucci, Ziyi Zhang

Theatrical Release: 03/06/09

DVD Release: 07/14/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

Similar crappisms abound in “Horsemen“. I sense severe editing going on here. Several transitions left me feeling as if a whole chunk of movie had gone missing, which is often the case with straight to DVD turds.

Even Ziyi Zhang, who I’m a fan of, struggles. She is not nearly sinister enough to pull off the gloating female temptress the movie wants her to be. Her performance comes off as silly and a little embarrassing.

Plotwise, the movie is just as blah. Detective Breslin hunts a gruesome murderer. Eventually he realizes that this is not the work of one killer, but a kill group! Four, to be exact, each one representing a horseman of the apocalypse (rather than each murder representing one of the 7 deadly sins). Spooky, no? The actual murders lack believability and the quick discovery scenes don’t seem to give them the reverence such brutality would require – even the filmmakers aren’t buying it. We’ve seen it all before in “Se7en” and the dozens of movies that have already ripped it off. The biblical details are meaningless – a catchy name and an excuse for cryptic bible passages are all it really adds up to. Which is kind of how the whole movie feels. No substance and not even much style.

“Horsemen” fails on the very basic level of establishing a connection between the audience and the characters, rendering itself suspenseless. The movie could have almost saved itself (by a pussy hair) by following through with the final twist. Instead, it limps off with the cheesy, stupidly optimistic ending. Why? Movies like “The Descent” and “Se7en” resonate because they don’t go for the “things are finally starting to look up!” Hollywood ending. In the end, “Horsemen” failed to even successfully rip off its predecessors.

Kitchen Nightmares: Gordon Ramsay Takes a Bite Out of Culinary Crime

“We’ve got fucking fur on fucking potatoes.”

This is one of Gordon Ramsay’s many gripes about the first restaurant he visits in the original UK “Kitchen Nightmares“, which is finally available on DVD.

Had I been left to my own devices, I probably never would have watched this show. I made it through the first episode of “Hell’s Kitchen” a few years ago, but Ramsay was such an unbearable prick I couldn’t stand to watch another. “Kitchen Nightmares” came highly recommended by a friend with good taste in television (Hi Justin!), so I decided, begrudgingly, to watch.

The general idea of the show is simple: Ramsay spends one week with a failing restaurant and tries to turn it around. The problems for most of the restaurants stem from the same basic ingredients – naive owners that don’t have the balls to confront their lazy, arrogant chef(s) whom are often attempting to serve “fine dining” cuisine without the skills to back it up.

The producers of “Hell’s Kitchen“  seem to have based their entire show around the first episode of “Nightmares“, culling Gordon’s signature “moves” directly from it – mainly berating the contestants and either spitting our their food or dumping it on them.  (Episode 1 has an F-word count of 75, in case you were curious.) However, unlike “Hell’s Kitchen“, in which Ramsay comes off as fake, melodramatic, and a bully, “Nightmares” shows Ramsay as someone who is passionate about food and the restaurant business. His anger is warranted. The chefs and owners in “Nightmares” are essentially throwing money away. After a few minutes of watching the chefs in action, I generally feel like they have it coming, and some of them are producing such disgusting food that I’ve questioned ever eating in a restaurant again. While he may engage in a bit of theatrics (like when he dumps an unsatisfactory dish into a potted plant), he genuinely cares about saving these struggling restaurants.

Overall, “Nightmares” is really entertaining, especially for a food show. It focuses more on the practical side of the restaurant business, and though it has a documentary style format, it still has the life-and-death feel of an elimination show without the phony judges and politics. The actual public ultimately decides whether these businesses succeed or fail. Ramsay is brutally honest, but the asshole knows what he’s talking about.

DVD Trailers, 6/16/09

Here’s a look at the best of this week’s DVD releases:

Burn Notice: Season Two

This is one show I really need to get caught up on. I’m glad to see that it’s currently ranked the 7th best selling among DVDs right now on Amazon, with Season One not far behind at #46. You can also get $12 off if you buy the Season One and Two bundle.

Family Guy, Vol. 7

The new “Family Guy” DVD set covers the last four episodes of Season Six and the first nine of Season Seven. It’s loaded with extras like commentaries on every episode, deleted scenes and featurettes, including one with footage of Comic Con 2008.

The Seventh Seal (Criterion Collection)

One of the best movies of all time finally gets the Criterion treatment plus a Blu-ray release.

Friday the 13th (Extended Killer Cut)

The remake hits the shelves with an extended cut.

Terror at Blood Fart Lake

The title caught my eye. You be the judge.