52 Pick-Up # 20 – Wild Zero (1999)

Wow.

Sorry, that is just the best way I can think to describe this one.

Okay, okay, my first response would actually be 'holy shit', but I felt like I should start this a little cleaner.

Okay. Let's start again.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up. For those of you just showing up, this is my year long bid to keep myself consistently writing by going through my cinematic 'to do' list of 52 movies I have never seen before and doing a writeup of general impressions. As of this writing, we are now mid-way into month five and it's been a weird, wild journey so far.

And even with that bar set, and even knowing the upshot of this movie, I was still not prepared for the wonderful batshit insanity of Wild Zero.

For those of you wondering 'What the Hell is Wild Zero?' this is either going to be the movie you didn't know you wanted or something you'll know isn't your jam pretty early on.

In a nutshell – Wild Zero is a star vehicle movie for the Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf – a hard rock group sporting pompadours, leather jackets, and more than a fair bit of Ramones flavor. They appear in the movie as themselves, performing their music and acting as the superhuman guardian angels to protagonist Ace (Masashi Endo), a punk rock fan who finds friends, love, and survival amid an alien invasion and a zombie apocalypse.

No. That's not a joke. That all happens in this movie and more.

And it is a Goddamn delight.

I openly admit, I may sound like I'm copping out a bit in this write-up. I can assure you, I'm not trying to, but with a movie like this, it's hard to really break it down as a cinematic achievement and more just take it as a giant vibe. As I said above, this is a movie you'll either click with almost instantly or bounce right off of.

I'd almost argue this movie defies captioning,
simply because most jokes one could make here still fall
short of just how gleefully unhinged this movie lets itself get.

Okay, there may be some in the middle, but in general, it's a movie where it's really going to be a matter of whether you vibe with it or not whether than if it is an objectively good movie.

In the interests of at least trying to elaborate, I suppose I should go into just what about this appealed to me. Which, I will warn you, is still gonna read as a bit off form and outlandish.

So what is it about this movie that has me all kinds of hyped? If I had to put in a single word, it's the audacity. This is a movie that knows what it is and what it's doing and kicks right off with that in mind – the opening titles are going between the above mentioned aliens coming to Earth and a Guitar Wolf performance right from the jump. From there, it doesn't feel like it wants to take a slow road with any of the other elements it brings into play – be it Ace's chance encounter with the band that makes him their blood brother, the zombie outbreak that is only loosely tied to the alien invasion, or the band's unhinged manager, The Captain, on a quest for revenge against the talent he's fallen out with.

Yes, I didn't mention those two elements above. This is before getting into at least three other storylines and five other characters I didn't touch on before. That's the level of audacity at play here. This is a ridiculously packed 100 minutes of movie, and to the credit of director Tetsuro Takeuchi and writer Satoshi Takagi, it never feels overloaded. Each new twist and turn feels less like “Oh God, what now?” and more “You know what? That tracks, come on in!”, building on the earlier craziness as they go. By the time I got to the finale of this, I was in a state of grinning madly at the screen as I half-laughed and half-commented “What the fuck?” over one particular revelation. If you've seen the movie, you can likely guess which one. If not, oh, there is another reason to dig into this.

Case in point.

In first coming away from this movie, I found myself torn as far as comparisons to earlier movies. I could have easily done effective versions of the 'two nickles' bit comparing this both to Yellow Submarine (real world rock band, in a fictional form, is called upon to save the day when the world is attacked by an outlandish menace) and Streets of Fire (fantastical rock and roll genre mash-up that simultaneously both feels in a particular vein while seeming to defy said vein at the same time.) The more I work on this, I feel like it tips slightly closer to Streets of Fire, if only for the fact that, like that movie, the mash-up here turns into an almost superhuman balancing act. In this case, it's an action, horror, sci-fi, comedy, rock and roll movie with a quirky love story driving its hero, and somehow, all those threads feel well represented, rather than something feeling tossed in and ignored. It's a movie that, on paper, feels like it shouldn't work, and be an exhausting slog of a mash-up, and yet not only does it work, it somehow works spectacularly well.

At least, if you can get on its wavelength. Again, I recognize this won't land for everyone, and hey, maybe it won't land for most – in which case, I'm happy to be one of the weird freaks that this played beautifully for.

Also, gotta hand it to this one -
For a movie made in 1999, Guitar Wolf
being pretty open minded here.

It took me several years from when I first watched this to finally see it. In the lead up to this week, I was initially concerned I might have built the hype for this up in my head to more than it could match.

Damn, am I glad it measured up.

With that, it's time to move on as month 5 here starts to come to a close. I've got one more on deck to go before we head into June though.

And the shuffle has decided the month of May needs to close out with a little emotional whiplash. Coming on the heels of this light, fun three weeks, I'll be closing out the month with an early breakout movie for Denis Villeneuve, Incendies.

It feels weird to sound hyped with a dark note like that one ahead, but that's how it goes when you left shuffles call the line-up.

All the same, will be looking forward to this one.

Till then.

Okay, one last bonus.
Just cause Ace's crashout moment here was one I looked at and thought
"2026 in a nutshell."

52 Pick-Up #19 – Hail, Caesar! (2016)

 Don't compare the release date to now. Don't compare the release date to now. Don't compare the--

Oh, hi!

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my coming-up-on-halfway bid to keep myself doing some form of writing and working through my cinematic to do list project that I'll eventually find a clever short hand for. Until then, you're stuck with this.

With May now fully underway, I'm coming into this week's title off of two weeks of John Waters. In one way, this is a fitting jump as it is going into the works I'd missed from another acclaimed American director (okay, directors.) In another, going from John Waters to the Coen Brothers is a shift I didn't see coming when I started this. Can't complain, really – I picked the shuffle approach in part to keep things from getting into a rut, so this is performing exactly as intended.

So, as I leave the delightful chaos of Mortville in the rearview, it's time to let Joel and Ethan Coen take the wheel and head to the west coast for a change in time zone and...well...time, with their old Hollywood caper Hail, Caesar!

As of this writing, it's been a few days since I watched this movie, and I've been pondering how to proceed in terms of focus. Normally this is the point where I tend to give a pitch of just what the movie is about, that will still be happening. But what this movie is about is also, the more I think about it, a big part of what I wanted to focus on here. Going in, I had avoided trying to look up too much on the plot, at most allowing some memory of the promotion on its initial release.

Looking back at it now, especially on having rewatched the trailers after the movie, that was the smart decision, which brings us to what this film is about.

Hail, Caesar! takes us into the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of production at a Hollywood studio in the 1950s – a job that is as much about fixing up messes behind the camera as it is making sure everything in front goes to design. Mannix has his hands full in a number of areas – one talent has gotten pregnant out of wedlock, another is being woefully miscast in an attempt to change his image, and the star of his big budget epic (George Clooney, continuing his streak of lovable buffoons with the Coens) being kidnapped. All this as Mannix jockeys a potential job offer that would trade the hectic world of the arts for a more stable world in airlines.

At the time of the movie, the offer is with just Lockheed, 
so it's not AS morally dubious a choice yet.

As I was watching this, I was struck by those memories of the promotions on this movie and why it seemed like they were putting more emphasis on Clooney's storyline.

So I went back and rewatched that trailer – and realized they didn't just overemphasize it, they actively recut it to make it feel like that storyline was the whole movie. To the point where it plays several of the people involved as though they're part of this wild plan to solve the kidnapping.

Which suddenly made the cold audience reception make a lot more sense. I get that marketing had a challenge on this one – the movie as it is is essentially more of a 'a few days in the life of' story, where the central conflict everything hangs on isn't if Mannix will get his epic's leading man back but rather if he will take the job offer that will get him out of the movie business. Yes, the kidnapping storyline is presented as the biggest hurdle Mannix has to navigate, and that is less the crime and more keeping his studio's big tentpole picture afloat and free of scandal (externalized best in Tilda Swinton double billed as two competing gossip columnists each trying to get a behind the scenes exclusive.) The stakes are less about what becomes of the star and more the movie within the movie. The Coens even play into that with the repeated cuts back to Clooney and his kidnappers – where the closest thing to any danger may depend on how the audience feels about the idea of a 1950s actor learning some of the basics of communism.

In true Coen fashion, there's something genuinely
entertaining about the fact that, for all their
in-fighting and practical ineptitude, they actually succeed (sort of.)

I could tell this wasn't the movie I remembered them selling in 2016, even before actively revisiting the marketing. Having said that, I didn't mind that. In fact, I think I actually preferred this version. Yes, I would have been interested to see what the Coens could have done with that flavor of movie where it is a giant kidnapping caper, but I also feel like this kind of a character study is still very much in their wheelhouse. 

Additionally, for all the star power that goes into this cast (alongside Clooney, the cast also sports Scarlett Johannson, Channing Tatum, Alden Ehrenreich and a pre-troubles Jonah Hill), there's something that feels appropriate about the fact the movie is centered on Josh Brolin – an actor who has led movies, but marketing never quite managed to make into a big name in quite the level of the people cast as on-screen talent. In fact, one of the things I've pretty consistently appreciated about Brolin is he has had something of a chameleon streak that lets him disappear into a role that is an asset in this case. He comes across believably as a put upon producer whose need to keep his actors' problems out of the public eye requires him to be an on the ground fixer as well as a dealmaker. It's the normal guy in the movie surrounded by larger than life figures and he helps ground it well.

Also, I know it's gotten its laurels in general, but it bears
repeating - damn, Channing Tatum is a very pleasant surprise
in this entertaining song and dance number.

I know this movie does have its defenders, but it's also one I hope more people come back around on if it left them cold when it first came out. Yes, the Coens have made better, but this is still a very solid entry in their work (from what I have seen, there are other gaps to fill ahead!)

But, the works of Joel and Ethan will have to wait for another time as I wrap this week up. Don't worry though, the lighter tone is keeping up next week, if in a VERY different direction.

See you next week where I'm taking on a movie that has been on my to do list for years and I'm excited to finally see it – the cult favorite Japanese zombie rock and roll movie, Wild Zero.

Till then.

52 Pick-Up # 18 – Desperate Living (1977)

 This MIGHT have the most quoted line in all of John Waters' filmography, even if not everyone knows they're quoting it.

With that as the opener, welcome to 52 Pick-Up, my ongoing year-long experiment in cutting down my cinematic to do list and keeping myself consistent with writing.

The last couple of weeks were a little erratic – that was on me due to a mix of life in general and a busy rehearsal schedule, but things will be getting back on track for the foreseeable future.

Now that the housekeeping notice is out of the way, let's get into this week's movie. As April turns to May, the chance shuffling of titles means I'll be staying in Uncharted Waters for just a little bit longer. Going from last week's correspondence from the front lines of the Cinema Wars, I'm taking things a bit further back into John Waters's filmography, this time closing out his Trash Trilogy with 1977's Desperate Living.

I'm trying not to make this a theme, but this is the third time in a row I've had a John Waters movie that I find myself looking at particularly in light of when it came out. In this case, like Multiple Maniacs, this is going into where this falls specifically in Waters's own body of work. Alongside being the final chapter in the Trash Trilogy (the previous two parts being Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble), this also feels like a turning point in Waters's movies in general. While his subsequent movies maintain a lot of his gleefully subversive elements, such as following this up with his gleefully warped take on melodramas in Polyester, this marks him taking a step back from the more overtly shocking. As though to signal this, we start seeing the cast of some of his movies shifting as well: David Lochary is not present due to issues he had been having with drugs (and his subsequent death meant Female Trouble would be his final Waters appearance), while Divine would return, a prior commitment meant she had to reluctantly bow out from this, and this would be the second to last appearance by Edith Massey. I can't quite call it a full 'end of an era' picture, as many of Waters's regulars did continue with him from here, but looking at where his work went after the 70s, this movie definitely feels like something of a turning point.

So how did Waters close out that wilder era of the 70s? Starting in a vision of archetypal American suburbia, we're introduced to Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole, opening this movie in top form) a, to put it mildly, high strung housewife coming off of a nervous breakdown. After a crash out involving yelling at the neighborhood children, she gets into an altercation that leaves her with a dead husband. Wasting no time, she finds herself on the lam with her maid, Grizelda (Jean Hill.) Eventually, the two make their way to the shantytown of Mortville, an ostensibly lawless burg ruled over by the iron-fisted Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey.) From there, they become caught up in the lives of many of Mortville's regulars, such as wrestler Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe), her lover Muffy (Liz Renay) and Carlotta's daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce.)

Told ya. Easily one of his most quoted lines.

There's something fitting about the fact Divine had to back out of her commitment to this due to being involved in the play Women Behind Bars. While it's not expressly giving off the same vibe, the very woman-focused (and yes, very gay) nature of the characters in Desperate Living evokes feelings of the exploitative prison genre that the play is similarly poking fun at. In particular, some of the character dynamics and the power structure, right down to Queen Carlotta serving as the archetypal corrupt warden figure all feel a hop, skip, and a popper-fueled jump from the more traditional tropes of the genre.

Having said that, I do feel a little bit torn on this movie. It has its charms, and when it's funny, it can be very funny. In fact, like I said above, the opening to this may be one of the most quoted moments in Waters's cinematic body of work, and it is a genuinely hilarious sequence in its own right as well as one of the career highs for Mink Stole. Unfortunately, it also sets a high note that the rest of the movie never quite manages to match. There are still elements of what follows that are fun (Massey is clearly having fun with the over the top villainy of Carlotta, and Lowe is a scene stealer as Mole for two big examples) but the movie feels like once it gets to Mortville it goes from the bonkers charge it starts with to a more meandering pace that causes the movie to feel like it loses some steam. I'm also not sure how to feel about the fact the movie seems to pivot its focus with the arrival of Mole and Muffy. Like I said before, Susan Lowe is a lot of fun in the role, and she is an enjoyable character to follow, but it also makes it feel like the movie lays on a heavy dash of Peggy and then she gets sidelined out of what is initially framed as her story.

This MIGHT be my favorite Edith Massey performance.

All in all, I still enjoyed this even with those flaws factored in. Yes, it makes it feel uneven, but the highs are still enjoyable and more than balance out the lows (which aren't even as much lows as just not quite landing as strong as they could.) As to its role in the concluding the Trash Trilogy? Maybe my opinion will change with time, but as it is now, it feels like it's probably the one I'd put at the bottom in ranking the three, though that is also just a matter of the fact the other two movies are Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. What can I say? They set a high bar. Beyond the quality, like I said above, it also feels fitting as the final offering from the younger, more overtly shocking era of Waters as he transitioned into a different brand of subversive.

Two titles left to go before the final rankings. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty intrigued to see where the last of his filmography goes.

But, that is for another month. In the meantime, the rest of May has been rolled and next week marks a shift to another notable filmmaker (or filmmakers) whose body of work I have gaps to fill. So, next week I mark the first of a few gaps in the work of the Coen Brothers that have been on the to do list with Hail, Caesar!

Till then.

52 Pick-Up #17 - Cecil B. Demented (2000)

Welcome back to another installment of 52 Pick-Up, my year long attempt to keep consistently writing and work through my cinematic to do list.

Hey, by the end of this year, I may have worked out a better way to word that.

But, that's a talk for another time. For now, this entry is coming to you live from the trenches of the Cinema Wars, where art house is a battle cry and bad movies a cause for vengeance.

This isn't that hyperbolic, actually. The side series of Uncharted Waters continues this week with Waters's 2000 black comedy, Cecil B. Demented. This is one which, like I said last time, I had been looking forward to. Of the unseen Waters movies for me, this has been riding high and just didn’t quite get the chance before.

Having now seen it? Well, I’ll tip a slight hand here for something coming up - first, after this side series completes, I’m going to close it out with a John Waters ranking list for people to enjoy and/or nitpick. Second, I can safely say that this movie will be placing somewhere high. It hasn’t quite dethroned my number one, but I definitely had a lot of fun with it.

As a pitch goes, this is on the more plotted end for Waters - starting with A list star Honey Whitlock as played by Melanie Griffith, cycling through a few modes in this role that get increasingly more unhinged. On the evening of a big premiere (which she has no shortage of behind the scenes cursing about) she is kidnapped by self-proclaimed cinematic terrorist Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff, equal parts manic and engaging in his full ‘cult leader’ vibe) and his dedicated team of cinematic warriors known as the Sprocket Holes. The team has kidnapped Honey for a specific purpose - they have a movie to make and they need a leading lady. Sure, she hasn’t exactly agreed to it, but all’s fair in cinema and war, so she is soon forced into their guerilla production, quickly becoming caught up in their renegade style and embracing the ethos summed up in their rallying cry: Demented Forever.

26 years later, Waters finding a new way to ask
"Who wants to die for art?"
It's like poetry, they...you get the idea.

As timing the selection of the movies for this goes, I do love the fact this happened to be the next Waters offering after Multiple Maniacs. Much as I appreciated Multiple Maniacs watching it later into Waters’ filmography, going from that to Demented resulted in a further appreciation of Waters’s evolution as a filmmaker. Where Maniacs has a bit more of a free-flowing narrative going for it, Demented is a straight shot of a movie - a psychotic joyride from end to end that starts building from the jump, and quickly hits the ground running once Cecil and his team make their official debut. Even with some of Waters’ comedic tangents, this feels like some of the tightest filmmaking I’ve seen from him, and given the story being told here, that benefits it.

Speaking of that story - damn, Waters called the shot. Obviously, this isn’t a 1:1, but watching this movie in 2026, it’s hard not to feel like Waters’ critiques of Hollywood became prescient. Even sadder, many of these were exaggerated at the time for comedic effect. The opening titles, for example, contain lists of what were fake sequels that the time, a reference to the industry’s penchant for repetition and familiarity. Watching it now, I was struck by the realization that at least two of the sequels they put out as jokes DO exist now. From there, we get jokes about the mining of non-cinematic IP for movies and a running theme about how one of Demented’s biggest nemeses is the push for more family friendly-fare in films. This last one is interesting to look at nowadays, as in some ways it’s an old refrain, but at the same time, run through a new filter. Waters has thumbed his nose at the idea of making all cinema clean and tasteful before (the protesters in Polyester presenting film as a stark binary between Disney movies and pornography, for example) but in the time since he made these jokes, even as far as Demented goes, it’s gone from church groups to board meetings. Now we’re living in an age where the push for clean wholesomeness in films is born out of a desire for the widest market share possible.

Not only do they exist, each has gone on to multiple sequels
past these. I literally just found out there are now five
Lake Placid movies.

Much like the discourse around The Simpsons, I wouldn’t look at this and say Waters is a prescient prophet. The man is an incredibly talented individual with a way with the words and a wonderfully filthy mind, but not a Nostradamus. So when I see something like this, the feeling is less ‘this blew my mind’ and more ‘Oh God, we actually got worse.’ Waters went loud for comedy and the world decided to go louder.

Not saying all modern film is bad, of course, but again, a lot of what Waters was making fun of here just feels like Hollywood looked at it and upped the ante.

The feeling is a curious one. I mean, the movie is, in some ways, depressing for how much the world seemed to get the wrong idea from it. But on its own, it’s still a very funny movie and wildly entertaining, some of the laughs coming harder for the same reason they have that feeling of ‘we learned nothing.’ Rather than hurting the film, they just further bumped it up for me and made Demented and his devoted army of Sprocket Holes even more likable in their passionate-to-some-insane-to-others devotion to cinema.

Speaking of said army, I did want to give a shout-out there before we wrap this up. While Griffith and Dorff were the big star power at the time this was made (and, again, both great in this one) Cecil’s crew has a fair amount of star power going for it as well. In particular, was surprised to see Alicia Witt as well as a still up and coming Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon among the ranks fighting for cinema.

And in a call back to last week, Adrian Grenier,
known to a lot of the internet for playing Anne Hathaway's
jerk boyfriend, seen here huffing from a bag.
This crew is a whole lot of 'Oh, hey!'

Two people would not have expected to see in a Waters movie. Not only are they there, they are both making an effort and it’s working.

Back to my initial point though.

Comedy is one of the genres in film that seems to be the most at risk of dating itself quickly. The good ones can still play, seemingly untouched by the years, while the less lucky creak louder with the years. Cecil B Demented is, arguably, part of that rare breed that have actually gotten better with age. Granted, there are parts that are definitely couched in the 2000s (Cecil’s group crashing a screening of a director’s cut of Patch Adams comes to mind) but a lot of the general swipes at Hollywood, in the light of the past 26 years since this came out land even more accurately.

With that, we bid adieu for another month. I know the back half of this month got a little erratic in terms of which day of the week. That’s on me from jockeying a rehearsal schedule. May will be getting a little more back on track, and per the shuffle, we’re staying in Uncharted Waters for just a little bit longer. Next time we leave behind the glitz and glamor of Hollywood for the dingy depths of Mortville as we conclude Waters’s Trash Trilogy with Desperate Living.

Till then.