For this Sunday Kino Night, we’re starting off with Hellzapoppin’ (1941), the highly-acclaimed cult classic meta-musical about a group of comedians who want to turn their romantic play into a movie, but are sick of romance clichés, so they spend the whole runtime mocking love-story conventions and breaking the fourth wall. According to critics, this film may hold the all-time record for most jokes in a movie. It has become a cult movie in recent years due to its highly self-referential and anarchic structure; it was a major influence on Mel Brooks’ filmography, containing much of the DNA of The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, etc. This is by far the best-known and best-regarded film of otherwise-undistinguished director H.C. Potter. Excellent reviews everywhere for this one, so we’ll give it a shot. After that, since The Raid (2011) was a hit on Friday, we will watch its even-better-reviewed and more-ambitious sequel, The Raid 2 (2014). This time, the protagonist, Rama, goes undercover to infiltrate the Jakarta criminal underworld. Uh-oh, he’s going too deep. Will he end up kicking a bunch of people in the face? Probably. This film is one of the highest-rated action films of the 2010s and the highest-rated Indonesian film on Letterboxd (though, as with the first, the director is Welsh transplant Gareth Evans.) Let’s check it out.
We’ll start at 9PM EST on Hextube, right here:
https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies
Be there, comrades!
Letterboxd:
- Hellzapoppin’: https://letterboxd.com/film/hellzapoppin/
- The Raid 2: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-raid-2/
Doesthedogdie.com links:
- Hellzapoppin’: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.
- The Raid 2: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/20625
CWs for Hellzapoppin’:
- Slapstick violence.
- Problematic ethnic caricatures.
CWs for The Raid 2:
- Protagonist is a cop.
- Blood and gore.
- Fist fights.
- Torture.
- Cutting of flesh.
- Decapitation.
- Bloody nose.
- Gun violence.
- Police brutality.
- Strangulation.
- Stabbing.
- Broken bones.
- Drug use.
- Drug addiction.
- Profanity.
- Misogyny.
- Squashed heads.
- Finger mutilation.
- Death by falling.
- Eye mutilation.
- Death of parent.
- Audio gore.
- Misophonia.
- Anxiety attacks.
- Claustrophobia.
- Shaky cam.
- Flashing lights.
Links to movies:
- Hellzapoppin': https://vimeo.com/904843687
- The Raid 2: https://vimeo.com/904650484