Screenscene

Published: Friday, January 29, 1999

Friday, January 29, 1999

Screenscene

"Tinseltown"

Starring Arye Gross and Tom Wood

Directed by Tony Spiridakis

Bland acting, bland directing and a script that simply begs the question, "Why?" These are not the components of a brilliant film, and unfortunately, Tony Spiridakis' new film "Tinseltown" is one worth skipping at the multiplex.

The film attempts to be a comedic look at the dirty inner workings of Hollywood, but ends up falling flat on its face and being more annoying and boring than humorous.

The film follows the lives of two men recently arrived in Hollywood - writer Tiger (Wood) and his idea man Max (Gross) - who are about ready to call it quits because they are homeless and broke. They soon discover that Cliff (Ron Perlman),however, the man who kindly gives them temporary shelter, is actually the serial killer who is terrorizing Los Angeles. Instead of turning him in, they decide to capitalize on the situation as a career move by working with Cliff to create a brilliant film project about the real life of a serial killer. Sounds hilarious, right?

The script badly wants to be a witty black comedy, but the premise is awkwardly unfunny at best, and the jokes throughout provoke more groans and grimaces than laughs. The final third of the film, intended as a surprising and comedic twist in Tiger and Max's quest to get their film produced, comes across as both uncomfortable and completely unfunny and is probably the appropriate time to run out of the theater and demand your eight bucks back.

The cast is unspectacular, and you can't help but feel sorry for them and wonder how they got trapped into making this lackluster project. As the pesky idea man Max (Gross) succeeds in being both pathetic and unfunny. Kristy Swanson plays an icily determined USC film student, but her performance lacks any sort of bitchy edge that could have made her character stand out.

"Tinseltown" could have been a witty indictment of the lengths people will go to in order to succeed in Hollywood. Aiding a serial killer is hardly the stuff of which brilliant comedies are made, and this is one film that leaves you asking how the movie got made and why you wasted your time seeing it.

Ricky Herzog

Rating:1

"Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane"

Starring Dan Leis and Joe Carnahan

Directed by Joe Carnahan

Made for only $7300, "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane" marks the film debut of writer, director and star Carnahan. The story revolves around Bob (Leis) and Sid (Carnahan), a pair of fast-talking, though unfortunately broke, used car salesmen. Their only chance for salvation comes when shifty car broker Ray (James Salter) makes them an offer they can't refuse: sit on a mysterious Pontiac LeMans for two days and collect a quarter million dollars for their trouble.

What they don't know, though, is that this car is at the center of an intricate conspiracy of murder and massacre, stretching all the way from their car lot to the depths of South America.

The story is fast and furious, full of unexpected plot twists and gratuitous camera tricks, but it's also muddled and chaotic. The movie has a nasty habit of repeating every plot point three or four times. Ken Rudolph is wasted as an FBI agent whose main job is to explain things that even the dullest viewer will have already understood.

At times, Carnahan tries too hard to imitate the casual carnage of "El Mariachi" or the unpolished banter of "Clerks." Random title cards divide the film into chapters, in exactly the same way they did in "Clerks."

Also, when Bob and Sid disagree over whether or not Johnny Cash was ever a prison bitch, you can almost hear that film's Dante and Randall pondering the ethics of destroying the unfinished Death Star. Even so, most of the humor works well; the scene where an excitable motel owner tries to get rid of the FBI agents who have just discovered a dismembered body in his dumpster is quite funny.

For the most part, the actors are competent and believable. Carnahan and Leis bring a sense of frustrated sleaziness to their roles, although one quickly gets tired of watching them scream at each other. Just about every character speaks a mile a minute, constantly spouting one-liners and obscenities. The writing is usually witty enough to sustain this sort of dialogue, but there are lulls where you'll find yourself wishing that these guys would just stop whining and get on with the story.

The only quiet character is the taciturn Mr.Reich (Hugh McChord), the stone cold killer pulling the strings in this operation. With his commanding presence and Teutonic goon sneer, McChord is by far the most interesting actor to watch. His final monologue, a grisly list of all his "activities," constitutes one of the film's major high points.

Ultimately, neither the splattervision antics nor the smart-mouthed dialogue can disguise the fact that the movie doesn't seem to go anywhere. The visual effects are little more than distracting eye-candy, as if the director threw them in merely because he thought they would look cool.

If you are willing to overlook these annoyances, however, the film does contain scattered moments of brilliance: it manages to keep a creepy, edgy atmosphere throughout and the grand finale is rather original. Despite all its flaws, "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane" is still a promising first effort.

Michael Rosen-Molina

Rating: 6

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