{     Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers     }    

Hear hear! I haven't sat through this yet, but I couldn't agree more with the sentiment that war does not make good film. It's way too easy to load a film with that heaviness, let the story depend on something overarching that excuses or justifies unrealistic or irresponsible behavior. It kills me that these films are often so lauded and revered when really they are just a showcase for violence as drama.
My favorite war film- Paul Veerhoeven's Starship Troopers. Nobody believes me when I tell them this movie isn't just sci-fi scrapple (nobody will listen to a defense of Verhoeven's work either) it actually points out, by utilizing hyperbolic war film stereotypes, all the ludicrousness of war and war film as a genre.

Damn E, you made me get all ranty and stuff!

Good point, Adam. Not enough people give my man Paul Verhoeven enough credit. He DOES deal with pretty deep themes in some of his work, he just always seems to go about it in a slightly goofy way... like invading a planet of giant bugs or designing the ultimate robotic law enforcer in the mold of Peter Weller. Of course, all our arguments go straight out the window once someone brings up Showgirls...
But I found out Paul also directed a few episodes of HBO's "the Hitchhiker", a show in the mid-80s which satisfied a young Eric Swisher's cravings for female nudity on a consistent basis. So I consider myself indebted to the man. Down by law.

Did Verhoeven direct Pitch Black too? Because that's another movie like that I kinda liked that nobody else did. Except it wasn't all artsy. And it didn't have an underlying point. Or idea. Or anything beyond cool effects. Okay, it sucked, but for some reason I like it. Back to my point though, I love Starship Troopers. A lot. It thought it was a very smart movie that just happened to be really campy and funny, and great.

Oh, and you know something else I love since Showgirls was brought up? The other stripper flick with Demi? "Stripper" or whatever, I can't be bothered to remember... But it had Ving Rhames with a monkey on his shoulder the whole time. That was funny as fuck. I didn't see the whole movie, I just saw him in the stripper dressing room in the beginning with a monkey on his shoulder and I turned it off, knwoing it would get no better than that.

Crowndozen.com ---- where insightful reviews of the work of Jean-Luc Godard degenerate into discussions of boobs, bugs and monkeys.

IMDB gives David Twohy credit for Pitch Black, but I give you credit for pointing out the similarities in that film and Starship Troopers. Both are very slick, very fx filled and very violent, not to mention the whole bugs on another planet thing. But only one of those films features Neil Patrick Harris (of television's Doogie Houser, M.D.) as a psychic nerd-boy turned psychic military strategist nerd-boy. Starship Troopers also had the cojones to do some nude scenes (unfortunately none with Doogie Houser) showcasing the buttocks of uber-gay man-hunk Casper Van Dien and a bevy of delightful ta-tas from the supporting cast, in what may be the only uni-sexual military shower scene we'll ever see filmed. But I swear I only dig the film because of it's underlying subtext of "war-as-absurdity"!
Since the subject of Showgirls has been broached, (due to a court order, I'm not allowed to bring it up in conversation, only to respond if somebody else does) I'd like to weigh in on that- Veerhoeven is no stranger to crap, but I think even the shittiest of his films carry some merit. I always kind of viewed Showgirls as a retelling of the director's own experiences in encountering Hollywood. The Elizabeth Berkely character is really Veerhoeven himself- arriving in some fantastically glamorous and glitzy world from some far-off and culturally disenfranchised backwood (Nomi is from the rural South, Veerhoeven is Dutch), following their dreams and passions, discovering the harsh realities of Tinseltown/Vegas, realizing that violence is the only way to make it in the industry, and finally exploiting your natural talents to cater to the purile desires of the audience.
Maybe I'm just full of shit.
In case you missed it, Striptease also featured a delightfully toupeed Burt Reynolds, who turned out a rather creepy performance foreshadowing his role in Boogie Nights a few years later.

Sorry Eric and Adam, I didn't mean to dumb down the convo.

But still, I mean, Ving Rhames! A monkey!

You didn't dumb down shit! This blog has been all about retardation from the get-go, and we're all active participants in that. Besides, Eric's the one who brought up Showgirls and wanking it to espisodes of The Hitchhiker....

I will admit that I went to see Showgirls in the theater. However, the only thing I remember from the experience was that halfway through the film, I heard the sound of what I thought was running water. I turned to look in the direction the noise was coming from, and the guy 2 rows behind me was sitting up in his seat, pants down, hunched over, pissing on the floor. Worse yet, he didn't even notice when we turned around and caught him. It seemed he was so engrossed in the action, he refused to leave the theater to urinate. My man must have got the extra large gallon soda cause there was a sizable river of piss flowing down the middle of the theater (and on my shoes) and all we could do was get up and move. Now I can't say I'm all that big of a Showgirls fan, but I've seen many movies and been to many movie theaters... I've never seen a movie have that much of a grip on their audience to where their choosing pissing in their seats.
I guess I've led us further down the spiral.

A little off-topic but just wanted to say I liked the layout of the site