Video Depot Recaps

A few posts ago, I proclaimed something to the effect of my passion for cinema being renewed after watching Ang Lee's Lust, Caution.

I figured that I had donned my figurative black beret and my face would soon be lit in an otherwise darkened room with the glows of well-crafted moving images. Oh, how often my plans and my actions deviate.

Instead of pulling titles down from esteemed oak shelves, I've been scraping the scrap bins at the proverbial video depot. These movies have had the benefit of putting me in a vegetative state after work so that I may decompress and transition out of the matrix.

Never Back Down - "Ralph Machio" becomes whiter and buffer and gets more comfortable fighting on the ground. And "Mr. Miyagi" has become a huge black man from Brazil. The special move at the end is nowhere near as cool as the crane kick.

Baby Momma - Good for a few laughs. Baby momma drama and the line "sorry I farted into your purse."

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - Really funny. Had a great discussion with a co-worker the next day on how changes in music being a direct result of the popular drugs at the time.

Death Race - Every single character speaks in a deep guttural way throughout this whole movie. Some part of the budget must have been earmarked for throat spray.

Indiana Jones -- Bad.

The Forbidden Kingdom -- I saw this one most recently. Jet Li and Jackie Chan in one film. Back in the day, I would have waited in line overnight to see these two in a movie together.

On weekends, a friend and I would make a pilgrimage to the Topanga Canyon Mall, a beat up mall with a decent food court. In the mall was a comic book store where the manager would direct us to the back of the store behind a black curtain. There, we'd step up to a big wall of extremely ghetto bootlegs of any kung fu movie you could imagine. We'd pick out a few. Jet Li's Once Upon a Time series were staples as well as the Jackie Chan's Drunken Masters. We'd stack them on the counter and begin the haggle.

From our side, we'd tell him to look at how many we were getting and to hook us up. If he seemed to waffle, we'd hit him with a well-timed and earnest, "Come on."

Looking back, it was a stupid dance we played because the tapes practically cost him nothing and he knew we were desperate for them. I question the moral fiber of a man working in a comic book store or a magic shop, two industries designed to rip off kids with a skewed sense of a desirable object's worth.

Anyway, Forbidden Kingdom should have been made decades ago, when they were both in their prime and without the Princess Bride hook. The training scenes were tepid and there were no original or special moves to be learned. Basic KF movie plot elements 101. Real Talk.