Remember the good old days, when movie heroes had names befitting their stature?  Names like Belt, Snake, Lone Wolf, and of course, Shaft.  Well, add Truck to that list.  Truck Turner, that is.  Isaac Hayes (best known for the Shaft soundtrack and as the voice of South Park‘s Chef) is the titular bounty hunter, a former football player whose badass attitude is matched only by the size of his handgun.

Assigned to track down a particularly nasty pimp named Gator, Truck and his wisecracking partner Jerry, catch the hombre after a particularly gripping chase through a water treatment plant.  And, well, they don’t so much catch him as riddle him with bullets.  Which, of course, gets them on the good side of Gator’s madam Dorinda (played by that most fiery-tongued of actresses, Nichelle Nichols).

Dorinda pulls together all of the other pimps in the area, and promises them her stable of women, if only they’ll avenge Gator’s death.  Not surprisingly, the pimps prove to be as ineffectual as their outfits are outrageous, which is to say quite a bit.  Which forces Dorinda to ally herself with the most notorious pimp of all, Blue (Yaphet Kotto).  Of course, Blue has no scruples whatsoever, and begins harassing Truck’s friends, his girl, and finally, his cat.  So you know that all hell is going to break loose.

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The American Astronaut has all of your typical sci-fi earmarks—spaceships, outposts on the rim of known space, bizarre creatures, totalitarian societies, rayguns, and, um, space barns.  Come to think of it, it’s not your typical sci-fi movie.  The spaceships look like railroad locomotives on the outside and prospector cabins on the inside.  The distant outposts are more like honky-tonk saloons.  And the barns are, well, floating through space.

But the raygun still vaporizes people, so there’s that.

And then there’s the whopper of a plot.  Samuel Curtis, the titular American astronaut (he’s from Nevada, to be specific), has just completed his latest job—retrieving a cat for a third party that he’s meeting at the Ceres Crossroads, a gin joint located on a asteroid near Jupiter.  After delivering the feline, he receives a new job from his friend, The Blueberry Pirate (so named because he’s made a career of hitting fruit shipments—quite the lucrative trade in this vision of the future).

The planet Venus has been colonized by beautiful women, and only one man lives there—Johnny R., whose one function in life is to be the sexual consort for every Venusian woman.  Unfortunately, Johnny R. recently died, and his family on Earth wants his remains, and they’re willing to pay plenty.  Unfortunately, the women of Venus are unwilling to part with the remains unless a new consort can be found for them.

So before he can get Johnny R.‘s remains, Curtis must go to Jupiter and retrieve “The Boy Who Actually Saw A Woman’s Breast”, a strapping young lad whose one claim to fame is that he did, indeed, see a boob.  But Jupiter is a mining colony populated only by men, and Lee Vilensky, the controller of Jupiter, uses the The Boy and the tale of his legendary encounter to keep the workers under control.  And so Curtis leaves on his madcap journey, with nothing but a suitcase containing a real, live girl in trade.

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I once read a review of The Straight Story, describing it as David Lynch’s most Lynch-esque film simply because it was so atypical of the director’s typical work (not to mention the fact that it came out on Disney).  I suppose the same could be said of The Bird People In China.  Directed by Takashi Miike, who is notorious for the his films’ ultra-violence and copious bodily fluids, The Bird People is completely unlike his other work—an atmospheric, wistful modern-day fantasy tale.

Wada is a harried Japanese businessman sent to a remote Chinese village to investigate a jade mine.  Tagging along is a surly yakuza named Ujiie (this is a Miike film, after all) and their slightly addled guide, Shen.  As they make their way to the village, leaving the modern world behind, they find themselves drawn to the simpler, quieter life and into a mystery surrounding a young girl who is teaching the village’s children how to fly.

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Perhaps one of the greatest travesties of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival was that Shaun Of The Dead didn’t play during the Midnight Madness program.  Apparently, everyone except the distributor wanted it to happen, which meant it didn’t.  But if it had, I swear it would’ve owned every single person in the room.  I finally got a chance to see Shaun, and it’s simply terrific.  And I can only imagine how insane it would’ve been to see it in the Ryerson along with 1300 other cult film fans in the wee hours of the night.

I just got in my Spaced Definitive Collector’s Edition, which I’ve already begun showing off to people.  Seeing as how Spaced and Shaun Of The Dead were made by the same people, it’s only natural to make some comparisons.  However, as the movie progressed, I found it more difficult to do so.  Sure, you see Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Jessica Stevenson (to name but a few) running through the streets of London taking the heads off of zombies.  But whereas Spaced had this endearing, very juvenile sense of glee about it, Shaun Of The Dead feels remarkably mature and adult.  At least, for a zombie movie.

Shaun (Pegg) looks and acts like Spaced‘s Tim… only all grown up and completely disillusioned.  He’s a good bloke, but he’s stuck in a dead-end job, lives with a friend who is sucking him dry, stuck in a relationship that he just can’t seem to be responsible enough for, and unable to communicate with the rest of his family.  And yet when the chance arises to become a hero, a chance that could only come in one of those comic books that Tim illustrated, he’s finally given a chance to really live.

Although Spaced had plenty of solid character moments, I was completely unprepared for the depth of character on display throughout Shaun Of The Dead.  Sure, there’s plenty of buffoonery, thanks to the relationship between Shaun and Ed (his irresponsible roommate, played wonderfully by Frost), but there are some genuinely heartfelt moments that blew me away, moments when Shaun is desperately trying to save his loved ones, is desperately trying to be a hero.

Even secondary characters feel fleshed out.  In one scene, Shaun meets up with Yvonne, an old friend (played by his Spaced co-star Stevenson).  Just the way they interact, their nervous glances and embraces, implies a shared history, even a hint of regret.  The same goes for Shaun’s relationship with his step-dad, which starts out as the inspiration for some of the movie’s funniest scenes, but ends up with some real emotional clout.

However, this is not what you expect from a zombie movie.  You typically expect the characters in these sorts of movies to be mere fodder, tools to help further the movie along to the next munching scene.  However, Shaun Of The Dead brilliantly slips one past you by making these characters you actually care about and root for.  When something bad happens to one of them, it actually hits you and means something, and when the slapstick comes, the laughs are that much more enjoyable.  As such, the movie quickly rises above being a mere excuse to splash some gore across the scene.

Of course, there is plenty of gore, including decapitations, torn flesh, nasty zombie bites, and oodles of entrails strewn about.  It’s definitely not for the squeamish.  Pegg and writer/director Edgar Wright have their zombie lore down pat, and the movie works quite well as a fanboy’s homage to all things undead (just as Spaced did for comic books and sci-fi geekery).  And there’s even some social commentary thrown in there as well, about how modern life with all of its mass media and drudgery turns us all into zombies.  Of course, it’s all done tongue-in-cheek, and never gets in the way of the movie’s sense of fun and heart.

I was also impressed at just how professional and confident this film felt.  Mixing romance, comedy, and zombies could easily have made for a very chaotic and uneven flick, but Wright handles it all with considerable skill.  There’s one sequence in particular, as Shaun, completely oblivious to the walking dead, takes a morning stroll that’s choreographed so brilliantly and executed so naturally that it’s truly jawdropping.  Throw in some of Pegg’s pratfalls and the best use of Queen in a zombie movie ever, and you’ve got quite a lot of icing on the cake.

Truth be told, I’m pretty surprised that this movie is playing in Lincoln, and in the mainstream theatres to boot.  Part of me wishes this wasn’t the case, although I’d love to see Pegg, Wright, and Co. get all the acclaim they deserve, and then some.  But part of me wants to keep this to myself, and give it all of the love any true cult film deserves.  I’m curious to see how this plays, because it’s so much more than we deserve from your typical zombie movie.  And yet, it’s almost subversive at the same time, the way it blends such solid characters with plenty of gore and some wicked humor.

Whatever the case, I can’t wait to see it again.  Only this time, with a bunch of mates as we all get treated to a full dose of RomZomCom.

Not having been familiar with Guy Maddin’s previous work in a career that spans the last 15 years or so, I had no point of reference as the first black-and-white flickers of the reels began, and a vaseline-smeared camera crawled its way into a scene of a couple visiting a quite arresting figure, a fortune-teller in theatrical finery reading futures in a block of clear ice.

The couple turns out to be Chester Kent (Mark McKinney of Kids In The Hall fame) and his lover, the singly-named temptress Narcissa, ably played by Maria de Medeiros.  We find the two in Winnipeg, Canada, when they hear over the radio in a local pub the announcement of a contest sponsored by the Port-Huntley Brewery through the auspices of its owner, Lady Port-Huntley, a thrillingly bitter woman who is missing both legs.

The film’s visible plot, this contest to find “the saddest music in the world”, is little more than a farce and quickly becomes recognizable as the standard sports team plot, the home team winning its way through the crucial tournament.  However, the story is a clever one, commenting with admissibly sophomoric jabs on the commercial possibilities of emotion.

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If you watch any of the “Making Of” featurettes on the Samurai Fiction DVD, you’ll probably hear the words “cool”, “funky”, and/or “peaceful” mentioned more than once by the narrator as he describes the film.  Naturally, most people probably don’t associate those words with samurai movies.  But then again, Samurai Fiction is not your typical samurai movie.

While it certainly has one eye focused squarely on the conventions of samurai (chambara) cinema, it also has one eye focused on modern audiences.  As such, the movie is an exciting and eminently enjoyable postmodern pastiche of classic Japanese film archetypes and MTV-generation style and wit.  And what’s perhaps most amazing is that it’s done so in a way that’s both very respectful of the former and highly accessible for the latter.

The plot is simple enough.  A ronin (masterless samurai) named Kazamatsuri has stolen the ceremonial sword of the Inukai clan.  Without that sword, a gift from the Shogun, the clan stands to lose quite a bit of honor, and might even be dissolved (or worse).  Frantic, the clan orders a replica to be made, in hopes of fooling the Shogun.  However, the son of a clan official, Heishiro, is appalled by the clan’s course of action, and vows to kill Kazamatsuri and retrieve the sword.  With his two childhood friends in tow, the brash young samurai heads off in pursuit of the ronin.

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When you see a movie titled Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, how can you not have insane expectations?!?  I mean, it’s an “all-out attack”, for crying out loud.  And the set-up of this film, being a direct sequel to the original Godzilla movie (more on that in a bit) certainly promises for some serious kaiju smackdown; Godzilla faces three of his most famous opponents for the fate of all of Japan.  Unfortunately, I think the filmmakers’ concept was slightly bigger than what their budget allowed for.

The first thing to realize about Giant Monsters is that it effectively takes the Godzilla franchise and wipes the slate clean.  Within the first 15 minutes or so, it sidesteps everything that’s happened within the Godzilla franchise since the first movie—as far as this movie is concerned, all of the bajillion other Godzilla movies never happened.  In and of itself, that doesn’t matter too much—most Godzilla movies were pretty self-contained and contradictory with eachother to begin with—and it does allow the filmmakers to bring some interesting elements into the story.

It’s been nearly 50 years since Godzilla demolished Japan, and as far as most people are concerned, the big green guy is just an urban legend.  New York thought they were attacked by Godzilla a few years back, but it turns out the Americans were mistaken (in a nice little dig at Roland Emmerich’s 1998 version).  Still, some in the military are concerned about a future attack, and when an American nuclear submarine is attacked and left with what looks like giant claw marks, it looks like their concern might be warranted.

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Another Midnight Madness screening, Save The Green Planet was my third film of the day and I was worried that I may have trouble making it through.  No such problem.  With Save The Green Planet, first-time director Jun-Hwan Jeong has attempted one of those cross-genre films—in this case, there are ample elements of science fiction, comedy, and horror with traces of kung fu and serious psychological drama—that have eaten up many a more accomplished filmmaker.  Hudson Hawk, anyone?  And while Jeong’s opus tanked at the Korean box office, due to a misguided attempt to bill it as a romantic comedy, the film itself is an awful lot of fun.

Ha-Kyun Shin stars as Byeong-Gu, a troubled young man who is convinced that aliens from Andromeda are taking over the earth.  He’s so sure of this that he kidnaps a local businessman that he believes to be the alien’s leader, planning to torture him with exfoliating sponges and anti-insect bite lotion until he reveals the alien’s entire plot.  Is our hero a disturbed young man suffering some sort of mental illness?  Absolutely… but he might also be right.

The genius of the film lies in Jeong’s ability to turn the mood on a dime, taking us from outrageous comedy, to some truly disturbing torture sequences as Byeong-Gu descends deeper and deeper into his paranoia, to serious psychological drama, to brilliant parodies of both the hard-boiled cop and sci-fi genres—the 2001 homage is truly hysterical—and back again without ever once disrupting the overall flow of the film.  It works because Jeong has written his characters so well that they’re able to encompass a wide range of moods and behaviors perfectly naturally, and his actors all turn in top notch performances.

Anyone who follows Asian film will tell you that Korea has become one of the brightest lights in the region, and Jeong’s debut is a prime example of why.  There’s a willingness to experiment, to break the rules, and such a high level of technical expertise that you can be sure the film looks mighty fine all the while.  From cinematography to soundtrack—the killer punked out version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that opens the film is one of the best things I’ve heard in ages—to effects to performances, everything is pitch perfect.  Save The Green Planet is a classic cult film.

Written by Chris Brown.