Working in a video store at the age of 15 is most likely the greatest thing ever.
A friend of my uncle has asked me to help work at the store and I jumped at the chance. At this stage in my life, I loved to watch movies, but it reached fever pitch quickly as I was able to watch a few movies every time I worked. It was bliss.
This is where I was introduced to Kevin Smith.
My uncle had convinced his friend to carry Kevin Smith's Mallrats. Now this was a big thing because the owner never got anything that he had never heard of before and even them, he would only get one copy of even the biggest blockbuster movies. My Unca (yes, this is what I call my Uncle) spoke highly of this movie and gave it his stamp of approval by calling it, "This generations Porky's."
So, on a slow Wednesday night, I popped the VHS (remember those?) into the the player and watched what became my favorite comedy of all time.
Leave me alone, I was only 15.
The best thing about Mallrats was that it reminded me of me and my friends...except the part where they had girlfriends and saw boobies in real life. It also made me believe, for the first time ever, that I could make a movie.
So, you could say that Mallrats of all movies, inspired me to be a writer.
I bring all of this up because I had the fantastic privilege of seeing my favorite filmmaker in person to screen his upcoming cinematic departure, Red State.
Now, being a Broke Nerd, one of the ways that I attempt to be able to get the things I want is by entering contests and this was no different. I sent a text to a code that was given on Twitter to try to get free tickets to the closest show to me in New Orleans.
I lost, but a week later the same code sent a text message to my phone telling me that I could get the $60 tickets at half price if I used a, rather obvious sounding, discount code.
I still felt that it was going to be too much, as I keep making a point to explain, I'm a broke nerd; however, the boss saw the hope in my eye as I explained to her that I would be able to see the flick and Kevin Smith talk with it for only $30 and my wife agreed as long as I could get a ride from Jayzus.
Jayzus, whose blog is available here, is a name that you may hear a lot of in this blog since he is my best good friend and writing partner. We met forever ago when I was working at Sicily's. He was brought in from the D'Iberville store (I think) and all I knew before he got there was that he was also a musician (which is what the blog I linked to was about) and that one of our co workers thought he was hot.
We became fast friends as our level of nerdom was evenly matched and so it came as no surprise that he was fine with giving me a ride to NOLA.
So after all of this build up, we had a pretty uneventful trip there, but it was kind of strange getting into the New Orleans area at about the same time that Kevin Smith tweeted that he had entered LA.
We stood in line outside the theater and I noticed that the crowd's demographic was all over the place. There were kids who weren't even thought of when Clerks came out and older couples on dates.
Now this is the first time I had ever been to a movie with a Q &A with someone famous, but I was well aware of Kevin Smith's shows as I had seen all of them on DVD or Netflix and love the way he can weave a story.
He came out and explained an encounter that he had with the inspiration for the film we were about to watch, the Westboro Baptist Church and his buddy Malcolm. Now I'm not going to spoil the story, but I can say that it was a greak ice breaker before the marathon of a movie he showed us...
RED STATE
Kevin Smith says that if you took his name off of his newest movie, Red State, that you would have no way of knowing that he made it and if someone had told you that it was his, you wouldn't believe it.
This is not true.
Kevin Smith has a very distinct voice when making a motion picture and I could definitely hear it when I watch this movie.
Without giving too much away that hasn't already been given away, Red State has been marketed to us as a horror movie from the first mention, to the SMODcasts that preceded it and followed it's making to the end. This wasn't a horror movie at all, really. I mean, there are some tense moments and Jayzus knows that I don't want to ever be in the situation that these folks were in, but this was more a straight action movie with frequent uncomfortable sequences.
This is one of those movies that start out in a bad situation and things begin to escalate to the point where you have no idea how it's going to end and how the "good guys" are going to get out of the situation. The twist here being that I'm not quite sure if there really was any "good guys" though and this dynamic works because I could totally see something like this really happening and no one would be good or bad, but varying shades of grey.
A lot of people in the critic community have been giving this movie a lot of crap and I'm not sure why. I can't help but feel that if Kevin's name wasn't on this movie, there would be a little more praise for it.
I'm not going to lie, I was entertained by this whole affair.
The acting was superb, especially by Michael Parks. His performance seemed sincere and he was unsettling as hell because of it. The script was well written and has all kinds of twists, turns, and surprises, one of which literally had me sit up in my seat and exclaim, "HOLY SHIT!"
The direction was the best yet for Smith and I HAVE to mention the sound design as it seems like a character on it's own.
For those out there who will suggest that I would like everything Smith makes, that is simply not true as I thought Cop Out wasn't that good. It wasn't terrible, but not good either. It just felt wrong.
So to summarize my feelings on Red State I thought that it was a very entertaining way to spend a few hours in a theater and I can;t wait to be able to watch it when it gets on Netflix.
Four Fundamentalists out of Five
***Tell me your thoughts! Do you want more reviews with a personal touch or do you want me to just review the damn thing? SOUND OFF
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