Thursday Movie Picks: Star-Crossed Lovers

A few weeks ago, Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves, sent me scurrying to Google when the topic for Thursday Movie Picks was "downstairs people." She's done it again for this week's topic.

To be clear, I've heard the term "star-crossed lovers" about a million times in my life. I was just never completely clear on what that meant. Now, I know that it means lovers for whom external forces seem to conspire against them. Their love seems doomed from the start. There are a lot of great movies about that. Can't promise I'll get to any of those. Let's see what I do get to, shall we?


There are no more star-crossed lovers than Shakespeare's most famed couple. As such, adaptations of Romeo and Juliet are a dime a dozen, hell, a dime a hundred if we add all of those that just use the basic framework of the plot and slap its own title on it. Even this one came out the same year as another much more popular version. That one stars a young, future Oscar winner (hopefully) Leonardo DiCaprio. Still, no matter how many of versons you've seen, I'll bet you haven't come across anything like this one. That is, unless you've seen this one. Like the DiCaprio flick, the action is moved to the modern day. Manhattan, in this case. Like that movie, this is a fairly faithful adaptation. That's where the similarities end. Yes, Romeo Tromeo Que and Juliet Capulet fall head over heels in love despite their families not exactly getting along. Just imagine if Shakespeare decided to add lots of violence, gore, sex, all sorts of strangeness to his story. Yeah, it's so bad it's awesome!


Sigh. I've picked this before. I try not to repeat myself for these TMPs, but I couldn't resist it this week. After all, it's another variation on the Bard's classic tale of undying love. Well, they actually did die...never mind. This time around, we're in modern day Oakland, California. Once again, our star-crossed lovers are from opposing factions. Sorta. I'll explain. Our Romeo isn't actually named Romeo. His name is Han and he's just escaped from a prison in Hong Kong and has come to Oakland to find out who killed his brother. He quickly finds himself in the middle of a gang war between the Chinese gangs ran by his dad, and African-American gangs. Yes, that's where our Juliet comes from, except her name is Trish. Of course, she's the daughter of that gang's leader. Basically, she takes pity on Han and tries to help him stay alive since everyone on both sides wants to kill him. Unsurprisingly, the two take a liking to each other. What makes this such a fun movie is the killer cast assembled who all effort mightily to elevate an infinitely goofy story. That cast includes Russell Wong, Anthony Anderson, Henry O., Isaiah Washington, and my main man Delroy Lindo. Oh yeah, our R and J are played by none other than Jet Li in just his second American feature and R & B songstress Aaliyah, making her big screen debut. She's not terrible. Li is...at acting. However, he kicks so much ass we hardly notice.


One of my go-tos for guilty pleasures is slasher flicks. I grew up on them and still love them to this day. Jason Voorhees is my friend. Over time, I've come to also appreciate the well done spoof of slasher flicks. This is most certainly that. The setup is pretty typical. A group of co-eds show up at a cabin in the woods for some fornication and drug abuse over Memorial Day weekend. As they should in a slasher flick, they sit around the campfire and tell the story of what happened in this very location 20 years earlier - the infamous "Memorial Day Massacre" which was perpetrated by some local hillbillies. If you guessed that there are a pair of hillbillies living in a rundown cabin nearby, you'd be correct. That would be Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine). Through a misunderstanding, Allison (Katrina Bowden) is injured, so Dale takes her back to his cabin to heal up and the two begin forming a bond. Naturally, Allison's friends assume that Tucker and Dale are psycho hillbillies in the mold of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and set out to rescue her. That's where the star-crossing comes in because damn if they aren't determined to get her away from Dale. Trust me, hilarity ensues.