Reviews
The Big Lebowski (1998)
99/100 (the highest review I've given movies)
I'm one of those sick people who actually didn't like Fargo all that much. The characters were boring, the plot was uninspired, and the sense of humor was irritating and pretentious (I guess I'm the only one that doesn't think boring dialogue about ice and snow between cops at a murder scene is laugh-out-loud hilarious). The Big Lebowski, however, is ten times the movie Fargo is.
The characters are just great. Even minor characters get special quirks that make them far more interesting than the major characters in most recent movies. And the protagonist, Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), is the kind of guy who wanders down to the supermarket in his bathrobe at night to write a 69 cent check for a carton of milk. I'm tired of boring, ridiculously one-dimensional main characters who get close-ups every other second while using lines like, "I'm not going back without my men!" The Dude is an unlikely hero if there ever was one, and that is why he is a most refreshing and memorable one. There's The Dude's best friend Walter (John Goodman), a well-read and impulsive Vietnam vet; Jesus, the purple -clad sex offender/bowler; Maude Lebowski(Juliane Moore), the feminist artist who speaks of "coitus"; and a crazed group of ideologically-confused nihilists, among so many other great characters. The dialogue is priceless.
The plot is very unique and ridiculous, but it fits the movie absolutely perfectly. The Dude and Walter get involved in a shady world of kidnapping , embezzlement, porn, reactionary cops, and just about everything else, when all the Dude ever wanted was compensation for a rug of his that had been urinated on by confused debt collectors who were looking for a different man also named Jeff Lebowski.
There are so many great little touches in this movie. The Dude's dream /blackout sequences are hilarious (complete with Saddam Hussein handing out bowling shoes and bowling combined with porn imagery). The script is very clever and the movie as a whole is an incredible experience. The best part of The Big Lebowski is how strangely wonderful the whole thing is; don 't expect most moronic movie critics to understand it. In a perfect world, The Big Lebowski would be in the AFI's Top 100 instead of Fargo. It's the type of movie you never want to end.
Q (1982)
Excellent Movie
Writer/Director Larry Cohen is the genius that brought the world such classics as Hell Up in Harlem, Original Gangstas, Special Effects, and the It's Alive series. Nearly all of his movies are examples of low budget filmmaking at its best. Q (standing for Quetzecoatl, the flying Aztec god) is his giant monster movie in the tradition of King Kong and Godzilla. It's an excellent movie and succeeds best because of it's quirky qualities.
An excellent B-movie cast combined with Cohen's wonderfully realistic dialogue makes for some excellent characters. Micheal Moriarty (from "Law and Order" and Cohen's The Stuff) plays a loser who finds the nest of the beast, and Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and David Carradine (Death Race 2000 and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues) have excellent roles as two detectives trying to locate it before it devours more construction workers.
The plot has some great twists and turns and there's some great obligatory B -movie gore in this one, too. The monster plucks heads off of window washers and snatches sunbathers off of rooftops. Blood and body parts rain down on the unsuspecting citizens beneath. Meanwhile, some lunatic is busy skinning people alive. Is there a connection? The special effects are limited and not too spectacular, but effects don't make a movie (as is apparent in the 1998 remake of Godzilla), and everything else about this movie makes it a winner. The uneven effects actually add to the fun of this movie if you can appreciate low budget horror. Q constantly amazes me with its quirky attitude, great sense of humor (maybe the window washer's head "just fell off" says one of the detectives), creative characters, camp value, and energetic cast. This 1982 cult classic is further proof that Larry Cohen is nothing less than a god.
Final Review 98/100 (A+)