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Reviews
Hudson Hawk (1991)
Time Will Be Kind To The Hawk
The most undeservedly panned film of my lifetime, HUDSON HAWK is a wonderfully loopy film that is endlessly inventive, and never boring. Sometimes, audiences just don't like a film that's smarter than they are, and I certainly believe that to be the case with this film. It cross-references pop culture like mad, and asks that you be open to even the most outrageous plot twist. Skulduggery in the Vatican, CIA operatives named after candy bars, timing burglaries with pop standards..... if only most Hollywood films exhibited this kind of go-for-broke creativity. Instead, we're ladled feel-good crap like PATCH ADAMS, or STEPMOM.
Preston Sturges used to write with this kind of reckless abandon. They'd probably pan his movies nowadays, as well.
Also, if you look back on the climate in which this film was released, it came on the heels of Die Hard 2. Bruce was on top of the world, and the critics were sharpening their knives. Yet another example of the pack mentality prevalent in film criticism.
Bad Taste (1987)
The One That Started It All
If you're a Jackson fanatic like me, you probably fell under his spell with this twisted classic. Maybe it's the exploding sheep, or Lord Crumb getting a "chunky bit," or..... well, the fact that "Derek's don't run." It's an exhausting experience, and the kind of film that, to borrow a phrase from Entertainment Weekly's film critic Owen Gleiberman, who used it on the woefully undeserving SLAM, "the kind of movie that makes you believe in movies." It's gleeful, anarchic, and downright disgusting.
Viva Peter Jackson!
Forgotten Silver (1995)
Spinal Tap With A Heart
I guess it's unfair that every "mockumentary" evokes comparisons with Spinal Tap, but this one is so very well done that it actually transcends its inspiration. While FORGOTTEN SILVER provides its share of hilarious moments (the Stan-The-Man sub-plot is a stroke of pure comedic genius,) it's the poignancy of Jackson's film that makes it special. If you find yourself shedding a tear by the movie's end, it's a testament to the quirkily gifted Jackson that, even with a lark of a project, he can deliver an unexpected masterpiece.
Amazing.