SXSW1998–Chicago Cab/The Newton Boys/Six-String Samurai

I’m still at the South By Southwest festival. I’ll be there all week, so watch for new reviews all the time. I saw three movies between yesterday and today and all three were pretty cool. Two of them were awesome!

The first of the movies was Chicago Cab. It was an interesting little movie about a cabbie in Chicago, hence…Chicago Cab. It didn’t really have much of a plot, of course. Just people getting in and out of Paul Dillon’s cab. The riders start to take a toll on the cabbie, though. He does something that cabbies shouldn’t do: he gets involved. Not as involved as Travis Bickle, but involved nonetheless. He wants to help these people, but he doesn’t really know how.

Some of the riders are hilarious. Laurie Metcalf gets in and tells him to wait for a little bit. Then another guy slickly gets in the cab. They drive for a while and then the two decide that they can’t wait for the motel. One guy at the beginning tries to tell the cabbie that he can’t drive. A couple of other guys from New York try to get to him by constantly saying that the Cubs suck.

Other riders are a little more serious. Gillian Anderson is a woman who is tired of her boyfriend joking about her past. She was apparently pretty loose at one time, but now she’s a one man woman. Someone brought it up at a party and her boyfriend agreed with them instead of defending her honor (“Which is more than she ever did.” Sorry. Groucho took over for a second). It’s kind of funny, but the seriousness is much more important. And no, she doesn’t smile. Two other women are verbally abused by their boyfriends. John C. Reilly plays a man who is using a woman who the cabbie doesn’t think deserves to be used. In the most poignant scene in the movie Julianne Moore plays a woman who has been raped just a few minutes before the cabbie got to her. She had been talking to the cops, but they, for some reason, didn’t take her home. He wants so badly to do something more for her than say “I’m sorry,” but there’s really nothing more he can do.

There’s also one really weird, almost frightening scene. John Cusack (who also executive produced) plays a total psycho who never really specifies where he wants to go. He makes the cabbie take him down an alley, and, well, I don’t like to give things away. Let’s just say that Cusack is great in this part.

The last rider sums up the whole movie. This movie is not about endings or beginnings. It’s about a man who wishes he could help the whole world. He’s a good hearted man who doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He gets too involved with his rider’s lives and then can’t follow through with it.

Basically, it’s a day in the life of a cabbie. That’s all. It’s a pretty good movie, though. Not a masterpiece, but it’s worth seeing. Especially Cusack’s scene. He’s awesome. The Newton Boys was the next movie I saw yesterday. It was one of the two really good ones I mentioned earlier. It’s the new one by the slacker himself, Rick Linklater. He heard a story about a gang of brothers back int he late teens and early 20s who pulled off the most successful bank robberies in American history. They did almost all of their jobs at night when there was no one in the bank. What a concept!

The movie stars a cast of young Hollywood heavyweights and near heavyweights. Matthew McConaughey plays Willis, the smartest of the brothers. This, of course, means he’s the leader. Ethan Hawke plays Jess, the craziest of the brothers. He stops drinking and fooling around just long enough to rob the banks. Skeet Ulrich plays Joe, the youngest and most moralistic of the brothers. He always wants to stop pulling the jobs. To get him to do it in the first place Willis has to tell him that he’s really stealing from the banks before they can steal it from the farmers. Vincent D’Onofrio plays Dock. He gets out of prison in the middle of the movie and then follows Jess on his drinking binges. Dwight Yoakum plays Glasscock, the ballistics expert. He’s not one of the brothers and doesn’t really understand why Willis wants the others around.

The movie starts with Willis getting out of prison and going back home to see his family. After a while he’s back to his old tricks and falls in with Glasscock and Slim (Charles Gunning). They rob a bank in broad daylight and are chased by the cops. Slim gets caught and the other two barely get away alive. Glasscock gets the idea to use nitro to get into the safes at night, but they need a crew. Enter Jess and Joe. This starts the official career of the Newton Boys. They rob banks from Texas to Omaha where Willis meets Louise (Julianna Margulies) and quickly falls in love. She winds up on the road with them and their spree makes it to Canada.

Anyway, the big heist of the movie is one of the biggest train robberies in American history. They got away with three million 1924 dollars. Not too much more can be said that wouldn’t give the ending away. I’ll just say that a mistake is made and that’s what starts their downfall.

This movie has more universal appeal than any of Linklater’s other movies. It’s not just about a bunch of slackers hanging out and talking. It actually has a plot! Not only that, but all of the actors are really good. We don’t have any Wiley Wiggins in this one to ruin it. Ok, Skeet might not be the greatest actor in the world, but he plays his part pretty well. Vincint is a great actor, but he’s the only complaint I really have about the movie: he doesn’t get to do anything. He’s just sort of there. Dwight is a much better actor than he is a singer. (Ok, ok. I don’t like country music at all, so I’m not a very good judge.) I’m always impressed when I see him in movies. Without his hat he’s almost unrecognizable, though. You can actually see his face.

It’s a great movie. When it opens on April 17 go see it. I got to see it at the world premiere (COOL!!!) with Rick, Matthew, Ethan, Julianna and Dwight. The five of them did a question and answer afterwords that was almost as entertaining as the movie. They talked about the two scenes that were shot in the Paramount theatre where we were seeing the movie. Someone asked Dwight why he was the only singer who can act. He, of course not wanting to put anyone down, said that he was lucky in that he always gets good material. He actually wanted to say, “Becauce I’m awesome and everyone else sucks!” Of course, Ethan was the most at ease and the funniest of the five on stage. He was back home, after all!

Now for the really cool one. Six String Samurai. It is exactly what it sounds like. It takes place in an alternate universe where the Russians dropped the bomb in 1957 and took over America. The last real outpost for freedom was a place called Lost Vegas. Elvis was crowned king, but he’s just died. Now everyone with a six string is trying to make it to Lost Vegas to become king…even Death, who looks quite a bit like Slash. Our hero is Buddy, a bespectacled guy in a tuxedo (“Nice tuxedo to die in!”), who looks amazingly like another Buddy from the 50s. He meets a kid who doesn’t seem to want to stay behind. After a while they form a bond pretty much like Harry Calahan and his partners. “This doesn’t mean that we’re together.” Through a series of amazing kung-fu and sword play scenes they make it through a fight with some cannibals (a really weird scene with a Cleaver-wannabe family), a Richie Valens lookalike, some windmill people in space suits, and, of course, Death. (“Bow to the power of heavy metal!”)

There are so many influences and references running around this movie. Lance was spouting a bunch of them at the screening. One of the biggest influences, surprisingly enough, is The Wizard Of Oz. There’s also, of course, the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and the speghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. There’s even a cameo by a Clint Eastwood lookalike.

There’s a lot of really cool music playing through the whole thing performed by the Red Elvises. These guys are a band from Russia who seem to know what rockabilly is. The director (Lance Mungia) said that there is a soundtrack coming out at some point, so I’ll have to pick that up.

As small as the movie was originally, it is very professional. The action scenes (directed and choreographed and actually acted by Buddy, Jeffrey Falcon) were absolutely amazing. Lance and Jeffrey were both at the screening and had a lot to say about the film. Jeffrey said that he has been studying martial arts for 20 years. He’s also been in the Far East for the past 15 years making movies. I can only find one in the IMDB, though, called Lethal Contact. It’s actual title is in Cantonese, so he at least made the one. All the experience shows through the action we see in this one. Not to mention the fact that he really does look like Buddy Holly!

I only have two little complaints about the movie. Two tiny little anachronisms that were pretty glaring to me. Near the beginning of the movie Buddy fights three bald guys in bowling shirts called the Pin Pals. They are flipping Kennedy half-dollars. If the bomb was dropped in 1957 there’s no way that Kennedy was on a coin. Also, the Red Elvises make an appearance in the same sequence. One of them is wearing a Rolling Stones tie. I know the Stones weren’t around in 57 and that the tongue symbol didn’t come around until the mid-70s. Oh well. They’re just little things, but they stuck out to me.

Everything about this movie was really cool. It’s definitely going to be a cult classic if it gets a big enough distribution. I hope that the distributor they got knows what they’re doing. Lance said that there is already a prequel running through their minds. I can’t wait.