Posts Tagged ‘Damon Herriman’
Monday, May 19th, 2025
Summer is headed our way, there’s actually a slate of incoming would-be blockbusters I’m excited for this year, and this is also the season when I like to look back thoughtfully and/or nostalgically at memorable summers of the past. As with so many things I get in the habit of doing annually, I’ve painted myself into a corner – I’ve already written about so many movies and so many specific years that it becomes harder to find fresh ground. But on the positive side I’ve been reviewing movies for so god damn long that I can look back at a summer from during my career and realize that enough time has passed that I really could look at most of those movies with new eyes.
Case in point: the summer of 2005. Doesn’t sound like that long ago when I say it. I was definitely a grown adult at the time, and I’d been a self-appointed film critic for 5+ years, even self-published a best-of collection. But I have run the numbers and though of course I’m open to corrections on this I do believe that particular year was 20 (twenty) whole years ago at this time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Van Holt, Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, Chad Michael Murray, Damon Herriman, Dark Castle, Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki, Jaume Collet-Serra, Jon Abrahams, Paris Hilton, remakes, Robert Ri'chard
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
Thursday, January 16th, 2025
BETTER MAN is a musical biopic of Robbie Williams that came out last week, but according to Slash Film it’s already “the first big box office bomb of 2025,” “a certifiable, massive flop” and “at serious risk of becoming one of the biggest bombs of all time.” There are some theories that it could be because people in North America don’t know who Robbie Williams is, but I would argue that also maybe they don’t know why he’s portrayed in the movie by a realistic CG chimp. Or at least that’s one thing I wonder, and I’ve seen the movie (at a preview screening with friends who are fans and said it might be because he has a song called “Me and My Monkey”?)
I was vaguely aware of the human version of Williams – he’s a British pop singer who in 2000 did the song “Rock DJ,” which I think is a good, catchy song even though I don’t approve of the rapping part, if that’s what it’s supposed to be. I had forgotten this but it had a really good video where he’s performing in a club, and slowly strips off all his clothes, then rips off his skin, then muscle, until he’s a skeleton. He’s throwing bloody chunks of himself-meat into the crowd and women are pretty excited about it. Now that I’ve seen the movie I know he was a guy from a boy band, so I can put together that that must’ve been the point when he goes solo and does something provocative to make us see him in a different light, like when Justin Timberlake did that Francis-Lawrence-directed “Cry Me a River” video where he’s a creeper. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Damon Herriman, Jonno Davies, Kate Mulvany, Michael Gracey, music biopic, Raechelle Banno, Robbie Williams, Steve Pemberton
Posted in Reviews, Music, Musical | 31 Comments »
Wednesday, June 26th, 2024
THE BIKERIDERS is writer/director Jeff Nichols’ (TAKE SHELTER, MUD, LOVING) version of a biker gang movie. It’s loosely adapted from a 1968 book by Danny Lyon, who spent several years riding with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club of Chicago. Nichols incorporated Lyon as a character (played by Mike Faist of WEST SIDE STORY and CHALLENGERS) who’s spending time with the fictional Vandals motorcycle club, taking photos and recording interviews, and if you step back you can picture a version where he’s the lead. We would learn about this world along with him and then it would sort of become his story as he deals with the macho insecurities raised by trying to fit in with these guys. Eventually he realizes it’s bringing out a dark side of him but in the end he learns about himself or some shit. You know the drill. Like a sleeveless version of Matthew Rhys’ character in A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Austin Butler, Beau Knapp, Boyd Holbrook, Damon Herriman, Danny Lyon, Emory Cohen, Happy Anderson, Jeff Nichols, Jodie Comer, Karl Glusman, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, motorcycles, New Journalism, Norman Reedus, Toby Wallace, Tom Hardy, Will Oldham
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, April 27th, 2021
MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) is a perfectly okay movie, especially given the past success rate of video game adaptations. It does a decent job of putting some of the Mortal Kombat characters into a passable modern movie. I found it reasonably entertaining, and had I expected it to be bad I might even have been pleasantly surprised. It also might’ve played better in a theater, if I could go to one.
Here’s the problem: I’m the type of guy who thinks you could make something truly kick ass out of any bullshit that involves colorful characters fighting each other. They’ve been talking about a new Mortal Kombat movie for more than 10 years, with James Wan announced as producer for six of those, and I think the ‘90s incarnations are fun (if ridiculous) movies that have plenty to build upon. So for years now I have been anticipating this movie that ended up being directed by Australian commercial director Simon McQuoid and written by Greg Russo (first credit) and Dave Callaham (DOOM, THE EXPENDABLES, WONDER WOMAN 1984), with a story credit for Oren Uziel (who had been developing it with Kevin Tancharoen after his unlicensed Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short and an episode of the official web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy). And I thought it might be something special. Maybe next time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chan Griffin, Chin Han, Damon Herriman, Daniel Nelson, Dave Callaham, Greg Russo, Hiroyuki Sanada, James Wan, Jessica McNamee, Joe Taslim, Josh Lawson, Kyle Gardiner, Laura Brent, Lewis Tan, Ludi Lin, Max Huang, Mehcad Brooks, Mel Jarnson, Nathan Jones, Oren Uziel, Simon McQuoid, Sisi Stringer, Tadanobu Asano
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Videogame | 30 Comments »
Thursday, August 29th, 2019
THE NIGHTINGALE, now in limited theatrical release, is Australian director Jennifer Kent’s followup to THE BABADOOK. That 2014 debut of hers was a critical sensation and cult hit that made less than 1/34 the box office of ANNABELLE the same year, but it reached a ton of people, including many who don’t usually bother with the genre. Certainly some of the hype was about it being directed by a woman, and I think that’s relevant in that its scares are based in motherhood. I can point you to plenty of pro-woman horror movies, but few that are about such specifically female fears.
That made Kent one of those directors whose names get reported as being on the short list to direct every WONDER WOMAN or CAPTAIN MARVEL that comes along. She told Indiewire “I did entertain one blockbuster seriously and I thought, yeah, I could give this something really special. But then ultimately I heard about the way the films are made, and I thought it would kill me.” So five years later she still hasn’t been sucked into the ol’ i.p. game, unless you count developing an adaptation of the 19th century lesbian thriller book Alice + Freda Forever. Instead she made this. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aisling Franciosi, Australia, Baykali Ganambarr, Charlie Shotwell, Damon Herriman, Jennifer Kent, Michael Sheasby, rape-revenge, revenge, Sam Cliflin
Posted in Reviews, Western | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, July 31st, 2019
THIS IS A FREE RANGE SPOILER REVIEW. THE SPOILERS ARE NOT KEPT IN CAGES. THEY JUST RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE, INCLUDING THE FIRST COUPLE SENTENCES. SEE THE MOVIE FIRST.
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD is an odd and beautiful movie from… Quentin Tarantino. It’s undeniably one that only he could or would make – it’s even in his now-trademark ‘wish-fulfilling rewrite of a historical atrocity’ mode – but it’s different. It’s not as mean and angry as the last three, or as carefully plotted as any of them. It’s sort of a hang out movie, a day-in-the-life of two friends, and a gentle tale of surviving a mid-life crisis, wrapped in a love letter to Los Angeles of the late ’60s, and to the then-fading leading men of the ’50s, with a chaser of gruesome violence. The fun kind, though. The cathartic kind.
Throughout his career, Tarantino has shown his affinity for cool shit like spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation movies, kung fu and crime novels. Here’s where he says “Fuck it, I also like old cowboy shows and procedurals and stuff.” When the guy who makes film exhibition and criticism a major element of his WWII epic does one that’s actually about the Hollywood film industry, obviously he’s gonna go buck wild. The amount of detail he puts into the fictional career of TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, two episodes of The New Lassie) – to the point of needing a narrator to talk us through each entry from his Rome period – reaches the level of sci-fi world building. And of course Tarantino, being Tarantino, gives us a soundtrack that drips the sixties without one whiff of Creedence, Dylan, the Doors or Hendrix. Admittedly “Mrs. Robinson” is in there somewhere, but he leans more Deep Purple, Vanilla Fudge and Paul Revere & the Raiders. One of the few I knew was the Neil Diamond song. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Al Pacino, Austin Butler, Brad Pitt, Bruce, Bruce Dern, Bruce Lee, Dakota Fanning, Damian Lewis, Damon Herriman, Emile Hirsch, Julia Butters, Kurt Russell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Luke Perry, Margaret Qualley, Margot Robbie, Martin Kove, Mike Moh, Mikey Madison, Quentin Tarantino, Rebecca Gayheart, Scoot McNairy, Sharon Tate, Steve McQueen, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Bell
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 204 Comments »
