January is here. For film it can mean two different things. You see Golden glo- oh…I mean the People’s Choice Indepedent New York Actors Directors Guild thingy-mabob nominated films. And then the studios release the crap they don’t expect anyone to pay money to see, but the blitzkrieg (a word my spell checker just corrected) advertising campaign can net a few 20 million on opening weekend.
So I found it really f*ckin’ weird when the opening credits of Alpha Dog came to life on the big screen this evening before my very eyes. These glorious VHS opening images were set to the classic film song “Over The Rainbow”. But this ain’t your Grandma’s version, this ain’t Liza Minelli we’re talking about here. Alpha Dog, a period piece, takes place in the Y2K (or the AK- as in AK47 if you’re drinkin’ goodwater). Alpha Dog has not the time for a time honored classic. Over the Rainbow has been “re-imagined” by Eva Cassidy.
So anyway, I’m with Ang and she hasn’t been to the movies in awhile. And as these credits are rolling I say to myself: “Wow. We just drove 20 minutes on the highway to get to this theater. We have gone out of our way for this screening. Five minutes from the apartment, we can see both Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth. What have I done?”
And by the way, if you’ve been putting off seeing both Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth, because perhaps a neighbor says let’s drive the extra 20 miles and see JT in Alpha Dog…when you rent them or see them on a crappy flat screen TV you won’t be able to experience them with the random strangers in your community. The woman sitting next to me during my second viewing of Children of Men ran out of the theater before the last fluid master. My inner Bogdanovich is telling me to shut up, but Alfonso Cuarón’s fluid masters are insane. It’s the second movie that passes the No Popcorn Test. The NPT test was developed back when I sat next to a couple on a date. They had the Biggie popcorn and soda. The film was Saving Private Ryan. When the lights came up, the tub of popcorn was full. No popcorn had been eaten. The third movie to pass the NPT was Pan’s Labyrinth. Something about the future and horrors of the past that makes people not want to eat their popping corn.
ALPHA DOG cares not for fluid masters! Alpha Dog falls into two categories for me. The first is my most hated category of all time: Rich White People with Problems. It’s also known as The Michael Douglas Syndrome. The second category is one of my favorites: Sex in a Pool. When I found out it was about rich white kids and JT, without even having seen a preview I just knew there was gonna be Sex in a Pool. Usually in Rich White Kid movies, the kids are male. Women are usually thrown into the mix for sexual purposes. Alpha Dog has just enough misogyny, and in all the right places. You’ve really got to wonder what a director is going to tell the actors during the “get away/failed blow job” scene.
“This scene…It’s a very important scene to this picture we’re working on here. It’s the scene where you JOHNNY tell, uh, Sweetheart over there, that you’ve got more on your mind then sex. But you don’t say it verbally. Get it? That’s why your mouth won’t make his dick hard, sweetheart.”
Alpha Dog cares not for boners! January is the month when the studios release the Statue Movies. It’s also the month they release the crap. Most of the holiday films look like Jackson Pollack came over and decorated the insides of the toilet bowl with earth tones, then a studio thought it’d be a good idea to release it. Alpha Dog cares not for the likes of art!
[SPOILER WARNING]
It’s really hard to watch a movie that starts off with Somewhere Over the Re-Imagining and not think about the Statue films playing in the next theater over. But then…The Man Behind the Curtain is revealed. And that man is Bruce Willis. Big Upz to Sam Jaeger for Realz. Sam has starred in at least one movie with Kevin Smith, two movies with Bruce Willis, and over 400 Jeff Seibenick productions. If they could list all of Sam’s movies with Seib on his IMDB account the scroll down would be like sitting through the closing credits of Episode III. I ain’t playin’. So Bruce Willis gets trumped by none other than Harry Dean Stanton. I’d love to cast him, Powers Boothe, and Sam Elliot in a Statue Movie. Harry Dean is hard as nails and soft as a teddy bear. A drunk-ass teddy bear.
Alpha Dog is really good. It’s got a few flaws, but it is really good. Ben Foster was hilarious and I don’t mean that to be condescending, or do I mean contradictory? His performance is great, along with Anton Yelchin. Their performances were great despite the fact that nobody in this movie really cares about anything besides getting wasted and getting some ass. At one point in the movie a girl tries to tell her mother that they need to talk and the mother responds by saying “I’m X’ing right know, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense.”
The plot is really simple. A Punk, Foster, rips off a Drug Dealer. The Drug Dealer picks up the Punks kid brother, Yelchin, and holds him hostage until he gets his money. But Johnny doesn’t watch the kid, he gets the Thug With A Heart Of Gold to do it ( JT). Sex, drugs, sex, drugs. Sex. Beer. Drugs. Fight. Sex. And then it gets really messed up. Only one person is to blame. It’s the richest white kid with the most power over his other rich friends&em;who is this man, this Puppet Master? The one who gives them their happiness, the Drug Dealer. All the witnesses to this kidnapping somehow thought because the Rich White Kid was behind it, it was cool. “Yeah pass me that reefer. Sweet.” But in the end, somehow oral sex just doesn’t get you off anymore. Then the law comes in. And now you’re on death row, Alpha Dog.
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