Cinemavenger
The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.
True Romance
If your life absolutely depended on it, could you spot a narcissist? Here's a hint. In a room full of people, the narcissist is the twat wattle spouting off about how "everything happens for a reason." Which is just the granola and crystals way of saying, "The entire universe revolves around me."
Fuck you, you fucking me-me-me fucks! The universe couldn't care less about your conceited ass! Still, sometimes the planets do align.
I was already thinking about dropping a Cinemavenger Classic review this week. Seeing Michael "Gift" Rapaport's name - a name I haven't heard in years (*takes long drag off of cigarette*) - splashed all over the Interwebs for making a bad Thai-boys-trapped-in-a-cave joke sealed the deal. Grab your suitcase full of coke and your blue suede shoes. Light some scented candles and cover the bed in rose petals, because Cinemavenger's about to spray love gravy all over True Romance.
The year was 1993. It was a simpler time when the story of a poverty-stricken geek marrying a hooker after a one-night stand and becoming the world's worst drug dealer could be considered a love story. 25 years is a long time. Let's count the ways in which True Romance could never happen today.
True Romance was the second feature script Quentin "Five Head" Tarantino got made, and let's face it, Q-dog may have more money, fame and pussy than any gargoyle like him could ever hope for, but he hasn't written a flick worth pissing on since Pulp Fiction. Tony Scott, the enfant terrible kid brother of Sir Ridley, directed. Now he's deader than those Thai kids almost were, and today's army of Abrams clones and hipster douchenozzles couldn't come close to his beautifully lunatic style.
Gary "Now Really Is An" Oldman plays a dreadlocked White guy acting like a ghettotastic Black pimp/drug dealer and drops more N-bombs than your racist granddad. Try getting away with that shit today. Brad Pitt "Of Despair" cameos as a Honey Bear bong-smoking stoner. You think a Hemsworth or Efron could match that high? The fuck they could. Val "E Girl" Kilmer drops in and out as ghost Elvis, and he's about 10 sizes too big even to play fat Elvis these days.
True Romance features bar none the best nutjob-on-nutjob scene in any movie in the history of history. All measured and quiet like, Christopher Walken "In A Winter Wonderland" and Dennis "Clod" Hopper try their absolute damndest to out-crazy each other. Walken may still be walkin', but Hopper has taken his last easy ride. Nobody could do James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini's pre-Sopranos mid-level mobster any better than he did, and he's dirt napping, too.
Rapaport, doing some of the best work of his long and otherwise undistinguished career, is the hero's pal, Dick Ritchie. Is that an awesome fucking name or what? He may not be dead, but Rapaport, rotting in podcast/Netflix purgatory, has lost that lovin', Dick Ritchie feeling. This fucking universe.
July 13, 2018