You might be asking yourself what’s the purpose of a list like this? Is there really that large of a body of work dealing with the brave men in blue who trench through neighborhood lawns, dodging the near death encounters with Chihuahuas and lonely old people? Well there probably isn’t. In fact, most of the films on this list are a complete stretch for being classified as “postmen” films. On top of this, films like Il Postino and Jour de Fete, were brushed aside for more major works, as in the films of Sinbad and Janet Jackson, reaffirming that this article was lost at birth.
Let me just start off by saying that Waterworld was a fuckin’ cool film. Imagine Mad Max beating the shit out of Deep Blue Sea (like the whole film; posters, producers, sets, concepts, all shit blasted by Mad Max.) If that makes as little sense as I assume it did, then basically just imagine a post-apocalyptic Pirates of the Caribbean and you get what was considered Kevin Costner’s first flop Waterworld. For his 2nd attempt at the worst film ever, Costner home runs the most idiotic, frustrating, smash your TV in its face with a burrito, kind of movie ever made. Don’t get me wrong – I love bad movies mainly because I loathe good films for being everything that I wish I could have done in a film of my own. The Postman doesn’t make me feel good about myself, like other big flops like Knowing or Next did. It doesn’t make me high five my Dad while he’s sleeping (or at least that’s what he calls it, but I never needed a bottle of J&B and 7 midget hookers to fall asleep) like most post-apocalyptic films tend to do for me. What this film does do however, is make you want to throw your hands up in despair, stand up and kick the air as if to beat the oxygen away in hope that you might shrivel up and die at that very moment versus having to try and figure out why the fuck Larenz Tate is playing someone named Ford Lincoln Mercury and it’s NOT funny as shit! How do you mess that gold up? That’s like watching an episode of the Bob Ross show and not wanting to move to Alaska, kill the first three people you encounter, bury their bodies on some resourceful spot of land (I’m pretty sure the land is all free up there so just take whatever looks the prettiest) and plant your seed (dead bodies) in the ground to grow a family of super-psychos to take over the world (i.e. your little corner of Heaven in Alaska.) In other words, as in not how I talk, it sounds like it should be fucking great. But, No. Costner has to try and make another Samba with the Wolf and ruins a perfectly good bad movie.
4. POETIC JUSTICE
The title alone screams awesomeness. Like a brick being smashed into a bad guy’s face with the word “metaphor” written on it. How’s that for being blunt about my feelings! I don’t need no similes for my thoughts, I just need a nickname like Justice and then no one would fuck with me. “Can I get your lunch money? Oh, wait it’s you Justice, sorry, I didn’t…” smash, through the window (probably of a bar because that’s where bullies hang out to take your milk money.) Or, “You failed grade 8, I’m sorry but you’ll have to do it over again. Unless your name is Justice in which case you now can become president-cowboy-astronaut of the Universe, here’s my wallet.” This makes poetry cool, like chicks make Sex and the City totally straight to watch, duh.
3. JINGLE ALL THE WAY
Two Dads, One Toy, No Prisoners. Schwarzenegger vs. Sinbad, that’s like a modern day version of two Greek gods fighting in the skies, i.e. Thunder vs. Lighting. How COULD this movie be bad? With classic Arnie lines such as “I’m not a pervert! I was just looking for a Turbo Man doll” accompanied by Sinbad’s Socratic rebuttals “I’ll know if you move ’cause I have the ears of a snake”, this movie is like the guy at a party who no one really likes but then he barfs all over himself and eats a raw hot dog stuffed into a raw pizza pocket and everyone kinda likes him again for about 5 minutes, or at least until he barfs all over himself again. Other than the godly battle between these two movie titans, the film also works on a more human level. Fighting over toys has is an essential part of growing up, if your BFF has a G.I. Joe that you don’t have, you’ll do anything to get it: murder, rape, murder-rape. No one’s safe when toys are in play. So just imagine what happens when you put Commando and Cherokee Kid Sinbad, on the same screen, instant magic. Abracadabra. Hocus-Pokus. Presto, in yo face-o, Jingle All the Way-O. Best movie I don’t remember on this list hands down.
Filled with murder, botched cover ups, disobedient spouses, drunken logic, and identity theft, this NFB short is like Blood Simple spun through the animated doodlings of a sociopath’s Reading Rainbow fantasies. (Rainbow Fantasies, sounds like a cool new band name. Anyone down? I shotgun animal sounds and also pretending to know how to play the finger drums, while all the time thinking it’s a code word for sticking your finger in your J-Lo and then looking at it like “what do I do now?”) Films like this make you wonder why you’re reading articles about postmen in the first place (or for that matter writing about them….shit they’re cool) and not out there in the “real world” (we all know that the inter-web is now the new real, real world) making our own postmen movies, sorry totally sexist, postperson movies. But then again after watching this one, you kinda get all discouraged and like “ahhh-man I’ll do it later” cause this movie already had all the cool stuff in it mailmen, mailman murder, murder man, mailman lust, lust man, whiskey driven madness, male mail man nudity (or mail male nudity?), and some of that good ol’ reckless abandonment that we all call the Canadian life.
http://www.nfb.ca/film/special_delivery/
1. RSVParty – SHAPARTY
Now given that this is a music video and given that it’s my friend’s, I can’t stress enough how biased I am. In fact, this whole article could be seen as just a shameless plug for his shameless face but nonetheless he’s a handsome devil with the voice of mute angel. Filled with postal service heartbreak and smooth back-ups, RSVParty is like a wet dream about a girl you saw in the mall and then followed home and the wrote a song about and then went to jail for awhile and then wrote more songs about her while in jail and then went to the same mall where you saw her every day and played those songs hoping she’d walk by and forget all the “sexual” harassment, sorry, harassments. Join the Facebook page to see the dance-tastic video to “Somebody Asked 4 A Party” or hear the other party-pression (the feeling you get when a party is over) songs from the album War and Peace and Party.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shaparty/10405732447
– Detroit Burns