ANACONDA (1997)

A sweaty group of nerds take a boat down the Amazon River in order to make a documentary about a long-lost indigenous Amazonian tribe.  Along the way, they make the wise choice of picking up a hitchhiker. This dude immediately starts talking hella mad shit.  Then before you can ask “How the fuck has HBO still not discovered Robert McCammon?”, there’s a big ass computer-generated snake floating around eating people.

I remember seeing ANACONDA in the theater back in 1997 and being severely disappointed at how bland, weak and soulless it was. It hasn’t gotten any better with age.  Zero blood, zero gore, zero nudity, zero tension.  Just a bunch of actors running around some crappy-looking boat collecting a paycheck.  The idea of a large killer snake hunting humans is ripe with entertaining possibilities, but none of them are present here.

For some misguided reason I thought it would be fun to revisit ANACONDA for a review. Maybe I was too young to enjoy it back in 1997?  Maybe it’d be fun to giggle at?  Nope. Instead, I just sat there dumbfounded that it was even worse than I remember it being. Shit script, Danny Trejo’s name in the opening credits even though he dies during the opening scene and only has around 1:22 minutes of screentime, bland colours, bland acting, bland cinematography, bland action scenes, bland special effects, bland dialogue…you know what?  Fuck this movie, fuck this review.  I’ve already wasted too much time on this stinky bowel movement. Watch it if you want, maybe you and your friends will get some laughs out of it. Just don’t expect a good movie.

[Note: As I was proofreading this review, I noticed that today is April 11 and ANACONDA was released 26 years ago today on April 11, 1997. Happy birthday, you boring piece of fuck.]

Part 2 - Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)
Part 3 - Anaconda 3: Offspring (2008)
Part 4 - Anacondas: Trail of Blood (2009)
Part 5 - Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015)

BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991)

"They want us to kill ourselves."

1984. Ten-year-old Tre Styles lives with his single mother (Angela Bassett) n Los Angeles.  She can't handle his shit and sends him to live with his father, Jason "Furious" Styles (Laurence Fishburne) n the hood. Some STAND BY ME shit happens and suddenly it's 1991 and 17-year-old Tre is now 23-year-old Cuba Gooding Jr. who looks like he's 30 and hasn't slept n 4 days.  He also has a shirt with two random dots on it. N order to show off his shirt, he goes to a neighborhood BBQ party where we're introduced to the important characters n the film.  Namely, half-brothers Darren 'Doughboy' Baker (Ice Cube) and Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut).  Doughboy and Ricky might be brothers, but they are very different.  Ricky is a football start who hopes to get a football scholarship while Doughboy is a drug dealing gang member.

What can I say about BOYZ N THE HOOD that hasn't already been said a billion times by people who actually get paid to write about such things?  Probably nothing. It's definitely a product of it's time and dated as fook, but it's still a great film and historically important.  It's also unfair to carelessly lump BOYZ N THE HOOD nto the "hood film" genre thinking that it's nothing but endless drive-bys and people randomly yelling "motherfucker", because BNTH is more of coming-of-age than anything else.  It just happens to take place n the hood.

Good pace, hit or miss acting, less violence than some might expect, Duck Hunt, awesome early 1990's Los Angeles scenery, uneven direction (that kinda adds to the film n a weird way), dude getting hit with a garbage can, so many loose ends n the script that is seems like the movie is more a fable than an actual story, multiple now iconic scenes and characters, actors that all (distractingly) look 5 years older than their characters (example: 22-year-old high school footballer applying for college), badass dated fashions, vintage cars, a Freddy Krueger reference, director cameo (Mailman), an Eazy-E dis, dated slang that I still use, male dominate story, interesting soundtrack that features everything from 2 Live Crew to The Five Stairsteps.

BOYZ N THE HOOD is mandatory viewing for anybody interesting n American Cinema or just good films n general, but for me personally the single greatest thing about BNTH isn't anything to do with the film itself, but instead its obvious influence on one of my favorite films: the 91-minute cut of 1995's FRIDAY.  Watch them back-to-back and you'll see what I'm talking about.  Hell...Cube's even wearing the same exact clothes n the opening scene of FRIDAY that he was wearing n the last scene of BOYZ N THE HOOD!  Half-dead motherfucker. Come on, sister!

If you need me, I'll be outside raking leaves n a yard with no trees.

[Fun fact: I remember going to Wal-Mart right after this film came out (and before I saw it) and being confused as to why so many people were walking around with baby pacifiers n their mouths.]