B-Movie Bingo: Traxx
Your monthly opportunity to literally check off a bingo card full of B-movie clichés! This month, get your mind boggled by the cinematic refuse that is 1988’s Traxx, starring ’80s pop-culture flotsam Shadoe Stevens as an ex-cop who’s retired from murdering international drug dealers to focus on baking cookies. As you watch Stevens blow shit up in all his sweaty, hairy glory, keep in mind his day job was introducing Roxette records on Los Angeles Top 40 radio. And yet he’s still more convincing in this role than anything Adam Carolla’s ever done outside of Loveline. Go figure. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.
Beware the Slenderman
See review, this issue.HBO.
The Comedian
Oh good: a Robert De Niro movie dribbling out in early February after going through three different directors over the course of six years, each trying to bring to life a script credited to four different writers (one of whom is “Roastmaster General” Jeff Ross) about a salty old shithead comedian who gets community service for assaulting an audience member, where he meets a young woman and god-fucking-dammit what happened to you, Bobby D? Various Theaters.
Ghost in the Shell
Of the many films that followed in Blade Runner’s wake, Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga Ghost in the Shell gets closest to usurping that cyberpunk throne, with a similarly mesmerizing blend of visuals and music in service of a similarly frustrating and awkwardly ponderous story that muses on the meaning of humanity in a future where robots and cyborgs are better people than actual people. Catch up with its slow-motion delights now, before the live-action remake starring Scarlett Johansson drops later this year. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.