"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Brendan Fletcher’

Freddy vs. Jason

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023

Now we come not to the end of this Ronny Yu series, or to its peak, but at least to a watershed moment. If you read this whole series, or at least the BRIDE OF CHUCKY review, you don’t need to ask the question “how the hell does the guy who made THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR end up making FREDDY VS. JASON?”

But at the risk of reptitition, let’s run through it again real quick. For starters, Yu had been making horror movies for 20 years (THE TRAIL, THE OCCUPANT, MUMMY DEAREST, BLESS THIS HOUSE), so that part wasn’t out of the blue. Then in the ‘90s two things happened: the new wave of Hong Kong cinema became popular around the world, and many Hong Kong filmmakers began to worry about what would happen to artistic freedom once colonial rule ended in 1997. That combination of circumstances led filmmakers like John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark, as well actors like Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, to start finding opportunities in Hollywood. (read the rest of this shit…)

Violent Night

Monday, December 12th, 2022

When I first heard that the trusted manufacturers of sturdy action cinema at 87North Productions were making a Santa Claus movie, I misunderstood. I pictured sort of a BAD SANTA meets DIE HARD – a serious action movie where it’s some deadbeat mall Santa who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and has to save the day, hopefully using a velvet sack’s worth of seasonally themed methods.

So when I realized that the Santa Claus played by David Harbour (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) in VIOLENT NIGHT is the actual Santa Claus, having his Christmas Eve deliveries interrupted by hostage takers and using “Christmas magic” to fight back, I was disappointed at first. Sounded corny, I thought.

I was wrong. I want to apologize to Santa. VIOLENT NIGHT is an admirable and solid take on a type of movie I treasure: the genre mash-up that knows it’s ludicrous to combine these particular types of movies but moves forward trying to deliver on both genres as well as the unique opportunities offered by their combination. So it has the trappings of a DIE HARD/UNDER SIEGE scenario (ruthless mastermind, elite mercenary force, carefully planned heist, hero mixed up in it by mistake, shocking deaths of innocent people, bad guys picked off one-by-one with stolen or improvised weapons) but also a heartwarming holiday tale (little girl wavering in her belief in Santa, family having trouble getting along, lessons about selflessness). It’s a comedy, but not a spoof. It tries to deliver faithfully on the mission of each genre. (read the rest of this shit…)

Braven

Tuesday, April 10th, 2018

Jason Momoa is… BRAVEN.

BRAVEN is the story of Joe Braven (Jason Momoa, BULLET TO THE HEAD), a nice, rugged logger guy who lives with his family in some snowy area in Newfoundland (or at least that’s where it’s filmed). I really didn’t know what the movie was going to be about, so when he wished a brotherly goodbye and safe driving to his co-worker buddy Weston (Brendan Fletcher, FREDDY VS. JASON) I thought Weston would never come back. And then when his wife Stephanie (Jill Wagner, Blade: The Series) had to leave and repeatedly talked about what she was going to do with him when she got home, I worried she would never come back. And then when he made his daughter Charlotte (Sasha Rossof) go to bed and wait until tomorrow to give her bracelet to grandpa (Stephen Lang, BAND OF THE HAND, DON’T BREATHE), I thought oh shit, Pops is not gonna make it through the night.

Well, I guess none of this is foreshadowing, they’ll all be okay. For a bit. And then they’ll all be in trouble. (read the rest of this shit…)

Leprechaun: Origins

Tuesday, September 30th, 2014

tn_leprechaunoriginsWWEstudiosThis is gonna be short and mean, like a leprechaun. To be frankly honest I almost didn’t try to write a review of this one, because I didn’t think I had much to say. But I decided it was my moral obligation to warn everybody. The only thing necessary for LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS to triumph is for men who have already seen LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS to do nothing.

Let’s be realistic. This is the LEPRECHAUN series. You and I, we are not devastated or surprised that the new LEPRECHAUN movie is not good. We weren’t expecting it to be, we weren’t even wanting it to be. But one thing we did expect, in my opinion, was it to be a movie that had a leprechaun in it. When you really think about it, that is one of the number one things tying all the previous movies together. “Has a leprechaun in it” has always been one of the steadfast rules of the franchise. Until now.
(read the rest of this shit…)