Favorite Films: Point Break 2 Frontman Cops to His Guilty-Pleasure Movies: ‘Mortal Kombat,’ ‘Terror,’ ‘Elvis,’ More
Earlier this month saw a new release by Point Break 2 – no, not a sequel to the immortal 1991 surfing-undercover-cop-thriller-pseudohomoerotic-unintentional-comedy-action masterpiece starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, but rather a fresh record by a band using that amusing name as its moniker. Featuring members of Brooklyn indie bands These Are Powers and The Flag including Ted McGrath, Point Break 2’s self-titled EP dropped on Naturally Records.
McGrath originally assembled Point Break 2 to bide his time while The Flag’s second LP was in the works. But he hit it off so well with Flag bandmate Ryan Crozier, Jason Robira of Sunwatchers, Fixtures’ Kris Liakos and Billy Bouchard (Ice Balloons, Dancehall Crashers) that they decided to formalize Point Break 2 as a full-fledged project.
And how could they not, with a fuzzy, skronky song as infectious as lead single “Hall of Justice”?
The Bad Penny recently touched base with McGrath to talk about not only his new side project-turned-proper band but to also pick his brain about movies. Given that he named the band Point Break 2, we had a hunch he’d have some amusing B-movies to enlighten us about, and he sure did.
We started delving into his guilty pleasures with some discussion about Point Break before McGrath delved into his other so-bad-they’re-great choices.
Point Break (1991)
I came here to defend Point Break, first and foremost, as [being] a quality film. It’s aged better than people give it credit for. You have this platonic but very much bordering on erotic relationship between Swayze and Keanu. It’s just simmering by the end of it … but then, on top of that [there’s] this fantastic duality to the whole thing, [exemplified by the] cartoonishly angry FBI bureau chief, contrasted against the unknowingly in-over-their heads gang of Swayze’s surfing bank robbers. Swayze’s morally fluid master criminal and his rivalry/friendship/romance(?) with Keanu’s morally fluid FBI agent.
The closer they get together, the more they’re violating their own codes of conduct, and that’s where the whole thing comes unglued. I could talk about that movie all day.
Megalopolis (2024)
This is a recent favorite of mine in terms of compulsively watchable schlock. It’s certainly not the most progressive film made in the last five or 10 years, but if you know the whole story, Francis Ford Coppola sold his vineyards to pay for it. So it’s the most expensive independent movie ever made, because there were no studio notes, no edit notes – nothing. He was responsible for all the marketing, all that jazz, and all of it was on his dime. It is a wild movie. The screening I saw in the theater here in New York, people were openly laughing at it – but when the credits rolled, it was also applauded. It was that kind of thing. You gotta see it to believe it.
The Terror (1963)
On the other end of the spectrum of Megalopolis would be Roger Corman’s The Terror. It [stars] a very young Jack Nicholson as an errant French soldier who gets embroiled in these weird psychedelic happenings in the German countryside, involving Baron von something-or-other, who is played by Boris Karloff. They only had Karloff for a day, so there are all these insane continuity errors around it … there’ll be scenes where, suddenly, Nicholson will [be wearing] this giant-ass Napoleon hat. Then, when he delivers his next line, it’s gone. you know, like, like, it’s, like, clearly they’re not in the same room anymore. There’s this great sequence at the beginning where Jack Nicholson is getting pounded by waves in a period French military outfit, fist-fighting the ocean. And it goes on for, like, 10 minutes. Also, he tries a French accent for a little bit, and then completely gives up. It’s utterly terrible.
Mortal Kombat (1995)
What a spectacular piece of trash. It’s a compulsively watchable garbage movie, and I just never get tired of it. You don’t need any familiarity with the video game. They cribbed from A-plus martial arts movies and include your typical reluctant chosen hero character who doesn’t want you to know he’s reluctant to get involved but has to purify his spirit somehow to overcome these demons that are menacing the town or something or other, blah blah blah. But there are some genuinely impressive practical effects in that film that I have zero idea how they were accomplished with what was seemingly a modest budget, but then some of the worst CGI effects I’ve ever seen. But the cast is totally committed to the insanity, and as a result it shines as an action/horror B-movie.
Elvis (2022)
Compulsively watchable tripe worth it alone for Tom Hanks’ fascinating acting performance. Oh my God. But he totally chose to be committed to this voice, which I suppose is commendable in a sense. It’s like somebody said, “Great, go with that,” and he just never broke from it.
Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Stephen King directed this in response to how much he hated [Stanley] Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. He was, like, “I’m gonna show you how it’s done.” And he wrote the original story for the screen. It’s super-watchable-hilariously-bad. So here’s the deal: There’s a comet passing by Earth that brings machines to life, and it turns out machines all hate human beings, so any kind of electronic appliance or car or anything that has any kind of electric component comes to life and tries to kill everyone in the immediate area. One of the first things that happens is a little league baseball team wins, and the coach is pumping money into a soda machine to get sodas for the kids, and it starts like blasting him with cans of soda. So he gets hit in the chest and knocked down, and when he looks up, one gets him right between the eyes. And the next one that hits him [causes his] head to explode. It’s definitely a VHS-era classic.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Let’s close it out with another childhood favorite of mine: Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, one of the all-time greatest terrible movies. From the jump, Costner is in and out of his English accent; he’s all over the place. Meanwhile, Alan Rickman was fresh off Die Hard, and his dialogue was so terrible that he allegedly rewrote most of it himself, and ultimately won a BAFTA for the role (his acceptance speech was brief, and typically gracious). If anybody was adept at chewing the scenery under any circumstance, it was Alan Rickman. I don’t know whether it was the presence of Uncle Al on set that everybody just decided to go full ham or what the deal was, but like there is not a moment of subtlety over the course of that two hours at all. It’s this escalating million-dollar Renaissance Faire nightmare. But I think that one I put on this list more just out of nostalgia than anything else. I was 10 or 11 when I saw it in the movie theater, and it was Robin Hood, and it looked cool. At the time.
Go to Point Break 2’s Bandcamp page to pick up their just-released self-titled EP.
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