RED STATE Now Out On Blu Ray, DVD, and Netflix Instant

RED STATE (Dir. Kevin State, 2011)

Last month, I went to a one night only special showing of Kevin Smith’s new film RED STATE at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary. I was a bit hesitant to go because tickets were $20, which is a bit much for a movie even with the event featuring a live interactive Q & A with Smith via Twitter.

Remembering that in response to the negative critical reaction to his previous film COP OUT, Smith tweeted that critics should have to pay to see his films like everybody else and even held up a sign at this year’s Sundance that said “God hates press screenings,” I decided I should pony up the money to see RED STATE.

I figured that I had seen his last several movies free, and it was payback time. I strongly disliked COP OUT and agree with Roger Ebert’s quip: “Kevin Smith thinks critics should have had to pay to see COP OUT. But Kev, then they would REALLY have hated it,” but dammit I’ll still take the bait.

If I didn’t know Smith had made RED STATE, I never would’ve guessed. It’s refreshingly out of his cheap comedy comfort zone and smack dab into the world of scrappy cheap horror, with Smith taking chances in a way I thought he never would. It starts out like PORKY’S with a few high school kids trying to get laid, and winds up like Waco, with a compound of extreme religious fundamentalists under siege.

Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner, and Nicholas Braun are the teens who are captured by members of the Five Points Church led by Michael Parks as Pastor Abin Cooper. As the frightened captives squirm – Angarono in a cage, the others in a crawl space beneath the church’s stage – Parks sermonizes at grueling yet enrapturing length with gravely-voiced intensity about the homosexuals being Satan’s instrument on Earth hastening the demise of us as a species, then dismisses the children present: “It’s gonna get grown up in here!”

Realizing that they are going to be murdered by the crazy cult for being immoral fornicators, the frantic trio try everything they can to escape.

The always awesome John Goodman as an agent for the A.T.F. gets called in by a Sheriff played by Stephen Root, who is a closeted homosexual, and a shoot-out bloodbath results.

There are sloppy edits and some jarring set-ups, but this is easily Smith’s best work in ages. In the Q & A afterwards Smith said that he “got tired of making ‘Kevin Smith movies, as much as people were tired of seeing them.” Here he proves that he’s not a hack with a powerfully paced, engagingly plotted film that features some of his best dialogue and, in Parks, actually has a performance worth nominating for an Oscar. Can’t think of another Smith film you could say that about.

It looks like Smith raided the casts of Breaking Bad and Treme for RED STATE as Anna Gunn, Matt L. Jones, Goodman, and Melissa Leo (playing the woman that is used to lure the teens in with an online sex ad) are on hand.

Although I see that a lot of critics aren’t as enthusiastic about it, I really enjoyed RED STATE and think many will take to it too now that’s available on Blu ray, DVD, and Netflix Instant starting today. I’m not sure it was completely worth the 20 bucks I spent to see it, but I can honestly say I didn’t feel ripped off. Now, if I had paid to see COP OUT at any price mind you – that would REALLY be a different story.

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KILL BILL VOL. 2: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

KILL BILL VOL. 2 (Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2004)

 First off, let me start by saying that I wasn’t big on KILL BILL VOL 1. I thought it lacked true suspense, and at best it was just superficial entertainment pretending to be a big movie event.

Also it bothered me that it pretentiously introduced itself as “The 4th Film By Quentin Tarantino” in the credits. I mean who the Hell else does that? Can you imagine: “The 17th Film By Martin Scorsese” in the opening credits of GOODFELLAS? I didn’t think so.

But if Spike Lee can get away with calling his films “joints” in his credits I guess I can let it slide. What I couldn't let slide in KBV1 was the dry humorless tone and the fact that many characters were such general pop culture stereotypes of the sort that have already appeared multiple times in Tarantino’s work.

Take for example the redneck hospital orderly that whores out the Bride's comatose body to redneck scum for $75 a pop. Didn't we already go there in PULP FICTION? The orderly even has a tacky vehicle in the form of a souped-up pickup called “The Pussy Wagon” that would not look out of place in the same garage as the chopper (Zed's Motorbike) “Grace” in “The 2ndFilm By Quentin Tarantino.”

Also the out-of-sequence chronology that characterizes Tarantino’s work, once so innovative yet now feels like a transparent device that disguises the lack of a stronger story arc.

Michael Parks as a seedy but wise Texas sheriff when surveying the massacre that begins the entire rampage remarks: “if you was a moron you could almost admire it.”

That pretty much summed how I felt about the flick when I saw it last year. But lo and behold, I like KILL BILL VOL. 2 quite a bit, and it even made me re-evaluate the first one to such a degree that I have to say that it appears to me to be much more solid as a first parter.

KBV1 resonates with a passion and power that I cynically ignored first time around. The 4th film credit I previously bitched about now informs us that this is one big movie that is told in 2 parts.

KBV2 doesn't label itself as “The 5th film...” and its ending credits include actors that were only in the first film.

It truly is the cinematic equivalent of those two part TV episodes with the “to be concluded” caption that were done to death in the ‘70s and ‘80s. There is plenty of the stylized violence of the first half here but what makes this work is the back-story and genuine emotion fueling the character’s motives.

We learn why the Bride’s fiancée and entire wedding party were slaughtered, how Daryl Hannah’s eye-patch came to be, what connection the Bride and Bill (David Carradine) had, and most importantly who the Bride really is - name revealed and all.

Don't worry,  I won't reveal any of those spoilers here I'll just say that the dialogue while tense and filled with proverbs is smoothly recited and intensely felt by the actors especially Carradine.

Even with a monologue that's so Tarantino you can practically hear the director himself performing it about how Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race Carradine absolutely kills.

A number of critics are saying that KBV2 works alone without seeing KBV1 but I disagree. I mean none of them have actually experienced that so it seems like a silly appraisal. I would say you should not see KBV2 without seeing KBV1 first and since they are out the same week albeit in different formats there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.

KILL BILL as one big movie is a dense collection of styles and tones that will make many treasure their own obscure pop culture interests and realize that if that former video store clerk can make epic cinema out of lowbrow pulp why can't we get off our ass and create something too? At least that's how I'm thinking.

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