This is the part where Nietzsche weeps. Spoiler alert.

Let me set the scene. The year is 2006. Mega-producer and Millennium Films founder Avi Lerner is sitting on a chair made of bags of money, the result of the overseas gross of his latest van Damme opus, Until Death. As Lerner leans in to light a cigar with a Romanian 500 lei note, his assistant barges in.

‘Mr. Lerner, sir, we have a problem. We’re concerned with the image of Millennium Films. The Internet is abuzz with people making fun of The Wicker Man.’

‘Nonsense! That was a wonderful picture!’ screams Lerner.

‘I agree, sir. However, public consensus seems to be that Millennium is a shlock factory.’

Lerner becomes apoplectic.

‘Shlock?! SHLOCK?! YOU WANT ART? I’LL GIVE YOU ART!’

Lerner rummages through his script drawer and finally settles on the perfect script.

‘When Nietzsche Wept. THAT is art. There’s philosophy, there’s weeping. Never let them say that Millennium does not make art.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Wait, wait, don't tell me! I've heard this joke before!

When I first started this blog, I laid out a bunch of boring rules that limited what movies I would cover. One genre that I didn’t mention but always kept in the back of my mind was the ever-popular Christian genre. I don’t have any particular views about religion besides ‘no, thanks’ but the Christian film genre in itself is a beacon of ridiculousness that transcends all dogma. Movies like Fireproof and the Left Behind saga are hilarious and campy and, most importantly, already frequent fodder for the type of shit that goes down here at Why Does It HQ. Therefore, I decided that that I wouldn’t touch Christian films with a ten foot pole. Besides, the question is a no brainer. Why does it exist? Because Christians. Read the rest of this entry »

Renée takes her ball and goes home.

If you asked most foreign filmmakers how they want to spend their career, I think few would say ‘go to America and squander my considerable talent on something that’s below me’. Fewer still would say ‘pour my heart out into a labour of love that’s actually a giant mess of Americana clichés and see it die miserably’. Somehow, this second option is more widespread than you would think. Just a couple of years ago, seasoned vet Bertrand Tavernier made his American debut with the dull New Orleans-set detective thriller In the Electric Mist. It was so poorly handled that it received a straight-to-DVD release before coming out in theaters. While not incompetent by any stretch of the imagination, In the Electric Mist was characterized by a blatant outsider’s point-of-view on America that made it curiously antiseptic (but on the other hand, without this we wouldn’t have the handful of scenes where Tommy Lee Jones gets advice from the ghost of a Confederate soldier played by The Band’s Levon Helm). The French are apparently repulsed and enamoured in equal measures with American culture, making their forays into American filmmaking scattershot at best. Read the rest of this entry »

This happens. In a Rob Schneider movie. Nobody tapdances or anything immediately following this.

I like Rob Schneider, I truly do. He seems like a nice guy. When I see interviews with Rob Schneider, I want to see him succeed. When I see him stand up to his detractors in the press, I think ‘You show them, Rob!’ Unfortunately, liking Rob Schneider and liking Rob Schneider’s movies is not mutually exclusive. We all have a friend who pursues something that they constantly fall short at but their boundless enthusiasm prevents us from telling them that they sort of suck; in showbiz terms, that friend is Rob Schneider. Of course, his career stays afloat based on goodwill from his buddy Adam Sandler (another gregarious sort who I want to like way more than I like his movies) and the DTV market, a scene where Schneider appears not only as a lead but also in supporting parts and… behind the camera.

The Chosen One is Schneider’s second directorial effort after 2007’s prison comedy Big Stan, a predictably juvenile collection of rape jokes with a surprisingly good cast. Schneider’s second effort, however, is not something anyone could have predicted. The Chosen One isn’t exactly a heavy, Oscar-bait drama but it certainly has a weight and gravitas absent from The Animal and the Deuce Bigelow saga. In Sandlerian terms, it’s been compared to Punch Drunk Love; while I certainly wouldn’t go that far, it’s certainly up there with Spanglish. Read the rest of this entry »

Almost exactly like The Honeymooners, as it turns out.

Harvey Keitel’s up-and-down career has taken him all kinds of places. The guy’s worked with some of the greatest (Scorsese, Altman, Ridley Scott) and done movies like Space Knight. He’s been in huge hits and obscure garbage but what’s most surprising is that he’s kept almost exactly the same level of fame and recognition for close to 40 years. Most actors who end up in straight-to-DVD crap will rarely if ever make it out of there; in that same vein, most American actors who went to Europe in the 70’s and 80’s were hardly leading men out here. Keitel’s career never followed an arc of any kind, which makes him one of the most fascinating actors out there. Italy’s long been the place where actors go to finish their career; for Keitel, it’s the place where he goes on vacation every year. He just happens to make a movie too. Read the rest of this entry »

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here's a picture of Harvey Keitel in his underwear AND a thousand words, just in case.

1992 was probably the single-most important year in the history of independent film. It’s when everything came together just right. All the talents formed a perfect symbiosis and tantalized the public with what looked like a film revolution that would rival that of the early 70’s. Sundance was still the breeding ground for young upstart directors and interesting low-budget films rather than the Cannes Jr. it slowly became. In competition that year were Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Gregg Araki’s The Living End, Allison Anders’ Gas Food Lodging and Tom DiCillo’s Johnny Suede, amongst others. Richard Linklater’s Slacker had shook the independent world to its core the previous year and a young filmmaker named Robert Rodriguez was about to shatter people’s perceptions of independent filmmaking with a film called El Mariachi. It was an exciting time to be a filmmaker and an even more exciting time to be a film buff (or so I assume, since I was running around picking my nose and drinking juice from a box at the time). Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, shit. SPOILER ALERT. SPOILER ALERT. Sorry!

There are enough goddamn Brodown Showdown™ comedies being made out there that one can assume a sizeable audience exists and finds its way to these films. For every Hangover, there seems to be five obscure comedies about guys getting into all kinds of hijinx that involving puking and getting their dicks caught in things. It is, after all, one of the cheapest genres to work in since men are prone to doing stupid shit whether there is a camera around or not. Cinema has a long and storied tradition of films featuring dudes getting their dicks caught in things, going all the way back to 1970’s MASH. One of the more nondescript entries in the genre is 1984’s Bachelor Party, a merely OK film that has stood the test of time based mostly on the fact that it starred a young actor named Tom Hanks who went on to greater fame in classic films like Bonfire of the Vanities and The Terminal. Read the rest of this entry »

'Say hi to your mother for me.'

On a purely financial level, I get this whole straight-to-DVD sequel thing, I really do. It makes sense to hitch a low budget movie to a past success, even if it means the only carryover is a supporting actor in a two-minute sequence (see Eugene Levy in the countless American Pie sequels that starred distant relatives of Steve Stifler). These movies come with a built-in audience of sorts (people who go ‘Hey, I remember that’ count as an audience, I think) and are typically a lot cheaper to make. If you have a title that draws on an easily recognizable past success, half the marketing job is done for you. Note the words easily recognizable.The American Pie sequels make sense to me. Road House 2 makes sense to me (its existence, at the very least; not the actual physical manifestation of Road House 2). Street Kings 2 does not. Read the rest of this entry »