Why are you not yet reading The Goon? Literate comic fans like to talk about Hellboy and BPRD until they’re blue in the face but if you like comics about meaty big people punching monsters in the face, you can find a true brother in The Goon. The Goon is a tough book to pin down and creator, Eric Powell, tends to keep things light with sophomoric humor aided by the percussive visuals of a lead pipe/wrench/broken bottle to the head. However, this new softcover reissue of the Hardcover originally released simply as Chinatown, adds a flavor previously unseen in other Goon comics. At first glance, Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wicker looks like any other Goon comic with a lot of violence and pulpy dialog lifted from any Dead End Kids feature you can think of. Yet, Powell injects the usual silly antics of The Goon with real heart. Chinatown takes some time to explain a few things about the relationship dynamics of The Goon and Franky, the origins of The Goon’s facial scars and the truly touching cases of heart break in his life that sculpted the personality of The Goon.
At this point you may be asking yourself, what the fuck are you talking about? So to aid in this review I offer you this: The Goon is a comic published by Dark Horse Comics with art and writing by Eric Powell. It tells the story of The Goon and his sidekick, Franky, a pair of criminals that run the city with an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. The Goon is primary enforcer for a criminal that may or may not exist named Labrazio (he does). In this particular edition of The Goon, The Goon tangles with an extremely powerful and mysterious criminal entity named Mr. Wicker, a mobster made of twisted branches and surrounded by a supernatural fire. We flashback between then and now, then being a time in The Goon’s life when he was in love with a woman who broke his heart and now when The Goon tries to redeem himself in the eyes of one of the few women to ever show him kindness. In the end, he winds up ruining everything, though not entirely of his own actions. That’s just how it goes for The Goon.
The action plays out like most Goon comics tend to do but the angle of The Goon’s past and his relationships gone wrong adds this completely alien touch to the entire book. It’s a substantial sadness that The Goon typically lacks, therefore putting you, the reader, way off balance and humanizing a character that usually expresses himself strictly with his fists. Though Powell expresses some trepidation in the foreward about telling this kind of Goon story, it’s this uncommon mixture of familiar Goon elements and unfamiliar dramatic ingredients that make Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker, in my opinion, the best Goon story ever told. This special storytelling treat humanizes The Goon and it’s something that I’d like to see more of if only once in a while in order to maintain the enormous impact that it has.
Being a writer, I tend to downplay the artistic merit of comics when I review them, but Powell’s illustrations for Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wicker deserve mention. His style is an original blend of cartoons and anatomy depending on who the character is. Every panel of The Goon is a treat for the eyes, but the flashback panels receive a water colors treatment and a delicious red and gold color palette that perfectly communicates the dream-like recollections set in the seedy Chinatown district of this particular setting. The book winds up with a series of sketches and pre-inked panels along with notes that amount to a director’s commentary to explain the though process that went into the creation of this stellar comic. The Goon in Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker is not, under any circumstances, to be missed.
Back during the indie boom in the 90’s, these guerilla filmmakers were coming out of the woodwork making chat-heavy flicks that shifted the movie making paradigm. Guys like Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith were being celebrated for their new ideas in low budget production thanks to their dialog. The party line on reviews held these scripts up on high for what was often cited as natural or rhythmic dialog that was rich and organic enough to float 90 minute pictures without an action beat every ten minutes. These movies were succeeding strictly on the charm of their talkiest components. As much as I love Reservoir Dogs and Clerks, I have to disagree about the dialog. There is nothing natural about the talkiest parts of those movies. Smith’s actors frequently stumble on their lines and Tarantino’s casts most often sound like white people desperately trying to sound authentic while reciting lines and beats lifted from blaxploitation movies. I still like Kevin Smith and Tarantino quite a bit, but the high fives those guys routinely receive for their writing is, in my opinion, entirely undeserved.
Cinematic Titanic hit the road earlier this year and took their show to theaters across the country. I nearly got a chance to take one in at the Somerville Theater just outside of Boston but was furious when I went to buy tickets and found out that ticket pricing was on par with buying a Cadillac Escalade. Complaints about the ridiculously high price of seating at the CT forums wasn’t received particularly well as I discovered that many of the nerds who whore those boards were not just seeing the show in their local theaters, they were following the troupe around like they were The Dead or something. So this new release from the Cinematic Titanic crew, East Meets Watts, at least gives you a look at the live show from the comfort of your own home where you’re free to carry out your old MST3K rituals in relative privacy. East Meets Watts is a sort of Cinematic Titanic live album. It’s not clear where the show is being recorded but I’d like to see more of these live shows on disc. A lot more, actually.
Like most guys my age in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I discovered The Misfits through the usual channel: Metallica. They had this EP out that was all covers and on it they did Last Caress and Green Hell (an interesting juxtaposition of a track from their first studio full length and a track from their last studio full length). I asked the punk kid who sat in front of me in Algebra if he knew who The Misfits were and the following day he sent me home with a copy of Walk Among Us. From the very beginning of 20 Eyes, Suicidal Tendencies had been unseated as my favorite band and The Misfits have sat on that grim throne ever since. I’ll consume anything with The Crimson Ghost on it, that is everything except for these new Jerry Only albums because I happen to think that they suck a dog’s cock but everything having to do with that golden Glenn Danzig period is something special to me. I’ve processed the volumes of information on Mark Kennedy’s exhaustive biographical site of all things Misfits, 
We got a glimpse of things to come out of France in the form of Brotherhood of the Wolf, which was the flashpoint for a series of genre pictures that smashed the stereotype of beret wearing cheese eaters flaunting the importance of Godard. It became perfectly acceptable to love low-brow genre movies and France thanks to the ass kicking fury of Brotherhood of the Wolf, a picture so often mistaken for a werewolf movie that I don’t even bother explaining anymore. It pulls the greatest rope-a-dope in the third act by spending the first two acts convincing you that Mark Dacascos, our protagonist’s Indian buddy from America, is the movie’s central badass but the final movement of the movie becomes an ass-whipping revenge tale that shows us just how fucking mean our frilly collared good guy, de Fronsac, really is. At this point, I’d point out that Taxi sparked my love of French action movies since its amazing car chase and stunt sequences define the French flavor, but the picture came out in 1998 and the sequel in 2000. Taxi 3 would come out in a couple more years but I tend not talk about that one much.
Back in Japan, Takashi Miike proved to the world that he’s not a fan of sleep and kicked out both The Happiness of the Katakuris which mixed themes from Hitchcock’s Psycho, zombies and musicals and created the sort of thing I see in my dreams after going to sleep with vodka and klonopin, and Ichi The Killer, which qualifies as one of the goriest pictures I’ve ever seen. I’m still not even sure what that movie is about. This was the beginning the golden period of his entire career. People still smarting from the Columbine High School shooting, which was still haunting the headlines until 9/11 redirected everyone’s attention, got a real rude awakening in the form of Kinji Fukasaku’s mindfuck of an action movie, Battle Royale, which wins top honors from Cinema Suicide as a best of the 2000’s title. Fukasakusan would begin production a couple of years later on the mostly shitty sequel before his death in 2003, but Battle Royale was the best swansong a man could possibly ask for.
Slightly off to the left a little bit, Hong Kong launched one of its biggest comedy stars into the international film scene with Stephen Chow in Shaolin Soccer, a film which finally managed to bridge the gap for me when it came to Hong Kong comedies. As much as I love martial arts and heroic bloodshed, there was a tragic disconnect when it came to comedies from Hong Kong. Often far too cultural and slapsticky to the point of making The Wayans Brothers look like comic royalty, I wouldn’t pay too much attention but Shaolin Soccer is a mixture of any given martial arts movie and Loony Toons. It also features a song about why Shaolin kung fu is awesome and took the personal liberty of showing that matial arts and CGI could, in fact, mesh nicely and not have to carry the name Andrew Lau in the director’s credit.
The old word of mouth buzz that attracted me to cult movies in the first place was starting to die out thanks to the internet. No movie could be quietly released and then would make its way to fans simply by one person telling another person that it was good but Donnie Darko came along and put a stop to this. What first appears to be an infinitely complex movie about fate and time travel is, in fact, director Richard Kelly’s signature brand of cryptic unwatchability. Both of his follow up features are high concept jumbles of nonsense and put in that context, Donnie Darko fits right in but on its own, going back to that moment when you discovered and connected with it, it seems like something else, entirely, as though it’s some kind of deep mystery to be unraveled. The director’s cut did little to clear anything up but afterthoughts aside, the power of Donnie Darko as a modern example of the cult movie is undeniable. I’m still wondering why it’s set in 1988.
Rocky Horror is pretty much the last word on cult musicals but even Dr. Frank N. Furter was given a run for his money when the tranny rock opera, Hedwig and the Angry Inch came roaring into theaters. John Cameron Mitchell’s stage show translated seamlessly with a kick ass script and a soundtrack inspired by some of rock’s most gender bending icons. It was funny as hell and absolutely filthy in a way that evokes John Waters by way of The New York Dolls. Special screenings and midnight shows started seeing patrons arriving dressed as Hedwig and other characters and entire scenes and songs were acted out as the movie played. Sound familiar? I find this very reassuring.
The top honor for 2001, though, is easily Peter Jackson’s international breakout, The Fellowship of the Ring. I’d been scratching my head since the first news about a Lord of the Rings adaptation hit the web and what shocked me to the core was that this sprawling epic that was promising an entirely new dimension in special effects was being directed by a guy I was familiar with for making one of the most hilarious zombie movies, a hyper-gore flick about aliens eating humans as fast food and a filthy Muppet show loaded with bodily fluids and the AIDS virus. They were going to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to Peter Fucking Jackson? Sure, he had Heavenly Creatures under his belt by this point, a genuinely moving and well crafted film and he’d more or less gone mainstream with The Frighteners, but none of this did anything to convince me that he was the man for the job. The end result was startling! It was cast perfectly and adapted with only mild changes to suit the screen better and no Tom Bombadil. As much as I hate big event movies because of how vapid and preoccupied with fireballs they tend to be, The Fellowship of the Ring sucked me in and I eagerly awaited the rest of the series. However, while these movies are topping many people’s best of the aughts movie lists, not one of them takes my top spot. You won’t find out what my favorite movie of the decade is until we hit 2008.
Look. Everybody is doing it and I’d be remiss in my duty if I were to skip out on a look back at the last ten years. The only problem that I’m having at this time is a nagging suspicion that the decade actually began on January 1st, 2001 and would, in fact, end around this time next year. So fuck it. I’ll pretend that I don’t know maths and stop raining on the parade and get to that listicle shit that the internets and VH1 seem to love so much.
Extract isn’t exactly Cinema Suicide material but I get a lot of solicitations and I’m always looking for something that falls even so much as a foot inside the cult movie spectrum. Director Mike Judge qualifies for this almost appropriate criteria because he has, under his belt, two movies that have both developed respectable cult audiences. Office Space is a picture that speaks for itself. There isn’t an office worker on Earth who hasn’t cracked a Lumbergh quote while on the job. Idiocracy has also managed to build a following based on its hilarious premise and the mysterious circumstances surrounding its weak theatrical release so I figured that Extract, another quietly released Mike Judge feature might follow this trend.
It’s a hallmark of proper exploitation to produce a low budget version of a theatrical sensation and even though Ninja Assassin seems to have slipped through the cracks of this year’s much-bemoaned short box office dollar, there’s certainly room for imitators because ninjas are timeless, baby! Who doesn’t like a good ninja movie? More to the point, who doesn’t like a bad ninja movie? In the 80’s, Golan Globus and Sho Kosugi carved veritable video store empires with a series of godawfully shameful ninja flicks, many of which starred round eyed gaijin holding high ranking positions in a tradition of martial arts that is historically exclusive to the Japanese. This, itself, is hilarious but it’s also an artifact of 80’s racist policies about Western audiences embracing ethnic hero archetypes in their schlocky, stupid fucking movies. Still, it’s an ironic breath of fresh air to find that this policy is alive and well in 2009.
When I think of martial arts, I don’t typically think of Chile. South America actually has a pretty rich a legacy of martial arts with Brazil’s own tropical dance fighting, capoeira and a modified system of jiu jitsu that put the Gracie family right in the middle of mixed martial arts fame. In spite of this, however, no one down there is really making martial arts movies. That is, with the exception of Marko Zaror and Ernesto Espinoza, Chile’s own musclehead stuntman and his collaborating director.
My opinion of Stephen Romano is colored by a really unfortunate series of interactions between the two of us last year. As Shock Festival, the book, was starting to make the rounds and he was becoming a name on the horror circuit, he pitched Cinema Suicide for some work that involved a lot of erratic capitalization, pluralization with a lot of Z’s and use of the phrase “the buzza goes great guns” which won my 2008 Quote Of The Year award. The email rubbed me the wrong way but it wasn’t a total turn off. If this site had anything resembling a budget, I probably would have commissioned some art. I completely burned the bridges when I attacked Dread Central in their comments for being what I considered a corporate schill in an article that involved Romano and Richard Griffin. I operated under the stupid assumption that all publicity was good publicity and that a beef with Dread Central might raise my profile a bit but all it did was preserve one of my many asshole moments in internet history forever.
