Posts Tagged ‘Demian Bichir’
Thursday, January 6th, 2022
Twenty years ago when I was an enthusiastic but not that good internet movie reviewer I wrote a column called “I have seen the future of Badass pictures,” because I had seen THE DAY OF THE BEAST (1995) and PERDITA DURANGO (1997), the second and third films of Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia. Although the director hasn’t quite become a household name here in the intervening years, he has made many interesting films, of which I’ve reviewed 800 BULLETS (2002), FERPECT CRIME (2004) and THE LAST CIRCUS (2010). He’s still going strong, for example I’ve heard good things about his recent TV show 30 Coins.
For the holidays I rewatched the Christmas-Eve-set THE DAY OF THE BEAST (it held up – I wrote about it a little bit on Letterboxd) and I’d been meaning to revisit PERDITA DURANGO for quite some time. Reviewing Javier Bardem’s first English language movie, where he plays a human-sacrificing psycho who looks like this…
…as a followup to his more Oscar-baity turn in BEING THE RICARDOS is the sort of thing that amuses me, so I pulled the trigger.
PERDITA DURANGO is based on a 1992 book called 59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango by Barry Gifford (who co-wrote the script with de la Iglesia and two others). It’s part 3 in the Sailor and Lula series, part 1 being the basis of WILD AT HEART. (Isabella Rossellini played Perdita in David Lynch’s movie.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aimee Graham, Alex de la Iglesia, Barry Gifford, Carlos Bardem, Demian Bichir, Don Stroud, El Santo, Flavio Martinez Labiano, Harley Cross, Herb Alpert, James Gandolfini, Javier Bardem, Josefina Echanove, Las Vegas, Mexican border, Roger Cudney, Rosie Perez, Santeria, Santiago Segura, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Simon Boswell
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Thursday, April 1st, 2021
GODZILLA VS. KONG follows GODZILLA, KONG: SKULL ISLAND and GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS as the fourth movie in the 21st Century American kaiju series known as The MonsterVerse. When it comes to the giant monsters, as I’ve told you before, I’m a Gamera guy. I’m not trying to be a hipster and choose the less popular thing to show off, it’s just a fact – he’s the Guardian of the Universe. But setting him aside, Godzilla and his Monster Island pals have always interested me more than the King Kong movies, as great as some of those are.
So hopefully that puts some weight behind me saying that this crossover – which stacks the cards for Kong by starting with him, spending much of the movie with him and treating him as the underdog hero – is easily the best of the series.
It got me instantly. Opening with Kong waking up to a perfect needle drop and a sunny day on Skull Island, he scratches his ass as he groggily stumbles to the waterfall for a shower. It’s just a great example of those times I love when monsters just get to live a normal life instead of always leaping through the air and roaring at the camera. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Wingard, Alexander Skarsgard, Ben Serisin, Brian Tyree Henry, Demian Bichir, Eiza Gonzalez, Eric Pearson, Godzilla, Julian Dennison, kaiju, Kaylee Hottle, King Kong, Kyle Chandler, Lance Reddick, Max Borenstein, Michael Dougherty, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Shun Oguri, Terry Rossio, vs., Zach Shields
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 46 Comments »
Monday, May 22nd, 2017
More like ALIEN: LOVIN’INT, am I right?
I don’t know.
Hello everyone. I don’t think it would be appropriate to discuss the sequel that Ridley Scott decided to make to PROMETHEUS until we first bow our heads in a moment of silence for the completely insane one we imagined when PROMETHEUS ended with Shaw in a stolen Engineer ship carrying a severed robot head on an impossible mission to stick her foot up the ass of the Space Jockeys on their home turf.
PROMETHEUS 2
b. June 8, 2012 – d. May 19, 2017
R.I.P. the way better movie in our minds. Gone too soon. Sleep well my sweet baby prince.
Instead of that legendary greatness we have something pretty good: ALIEN: COVENANT, a hybrid between what-people-expect-in-an-ALIEN-sequel and weirdo-philosophizing-PROMETHEUS-shit. Scott, with returning cinematographer Darius Wolski (CRIMSON TIDE, DARK CITY), gives us another gorgeous-looking sci-fi horror, this time with a script by John Logan (THE LAST SAMURAI) and Dante Harper that’s not as outwardly dunderheaded as PROMETHEUS at its worst, though not as imaginative as it at its best. It starts out with circa 1979 pacing (very effective) but eventually throws a modern amount of frantic action at the screen (pretty enjoyable too).
(WARNING: spoiler-heavy analysis ahead) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Crudup, Carmen Ejogo, Danny McBride, Dante Harper, Darius Wolski, Demian Bichir, John Logan, Jussie Smollett, Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Ridley Scott
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 110 Comments »
Wednesday, December 30th, 2015
(SPOILERS. This is a don’t-read-before-seeing-the-movie review.)
Quentin Tarantino tries out a couple new tricks in his new one, THE HATEFUL EIGHT: he shot in extra-wide 65mm Cinemascope, and helped hook up a bunch of theaters with 70mm projectors (and projectionists, I assume) to show an early, longer version of the movie complete with an overture, intermission and program. He got Ennio Morricone to compose and orchestrate some new music for it (Tarantino’s only previous original scoring was some bits by RZA and Robert Rodriguez for the KILL BILLs). But it also feels pretty familiar: his second extreme-racism western in a row, with chapter titles like KILL BILL, full of conversation suspense scenes like INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, mostly one location like RESERVOIR DOGS, some non-linear jumps like most of his movies, and a cast with plenty of his regulars (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, James Parks, Zoe Bell, Waltong Goggins [I almost forgot he was in DJANGO UNCHAINED). Just as INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS got away with some out-of-the-blue, seemingly incongruous narration by Jackson, HATEFUL EIGHT follows up its intermission with some omniscient narration that you suddenly realize is Tarantino himself. I can see why some people would hate that, but I loved it. I mean, who are we fooling, we all know it’s this guy talking to us through this movie anyway. And it helps kick off the second half with an energy the first was lacking.
Here’s something brand new for a Tarantino movie: I didn’t immediately love it. I’m honestly still trying to figure out how I feel about it. I’m not sure I get it. I remember that with both INGLOURIOUS and DJANGO I had misgivings on the first viewings that later seemed completely irrelevant. With the former it was thinking that Brad Pitt seemed like Brad Pitt playing a funny character, he didn’t inhabit the character the way previous Tarantino leads had. With the latter it was that Tarantino had never done a movie that followed one character chronologically, and it seemed kinda too simple for him. Both of those seem like dumb complaints to me now, and I loved both movies without reservations on subsequent viewings. Even so, their first times I liked better than this first time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir, Ennio Morricone, James Parks, Michael Madsen, Quentin Tarantino, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins, Zoe Bell
Posted in Reviews, Western | 133 Comments »
Monday, October 14th, 2013
There are lots of funny things in MACHETE KILLS. For a while it coasts on enjoyably stupid jokes, like the ridiculous trailer for part 3 of the series that it opens with. Early on it has a little faux-serious melodrama, playing it almost straight when a clash with rogue soldiers, a Mexican drug cartel and an army in lucha libre masks leads to the death of Machete (Danny Trejo, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, MARKED FOR DEATH)’s partner. I like the setup, with a redneck Arizona sheriff (William Sadler, DIE HARD 2) failing to hang Machete before he gets called in by the president (Charlie Sheen, NAVY SEALS, credited as Carlos Estevez) who offers him citizenship in exchange for doing a dangerous mission. I thought the joke of casting him was to have a guy as crazy as Sheen as the president, like wasn’t Mickey Rourke the president in MASKED AND ANONYMOUS? It honestly didn’t occur to me until seeing him on a White House set that his dad played the president in The West Wing (not to mention playing Kennedy). Anyway, the best part is the idea that this unsavory slasher/wife-and-daughter-fucker/assassin gets to sit in the White House and hear his offer.
Trejo’s face is even more rugged than ever, if possible, and he doesn’t have to joke around. He’s fun to watch just being that same character, but now equipped with various high-tech variations on machetes to chop people up with. Robert Rodriguez (credited as sole director this time, and also with his name above the title, but only a co-story credit) once again fills the movie with a huge, unlikely cast, mostly playing colorful gimmicky characters: Mel Gibson (PAPARAZZI) as a weapon inventor/space cultist planning to blow up the world, Demian Bichir (2012 best actor nominee for A BETTER LIFE) as a revolutionary/terrorist/something, Amber Heard (DRIVE ANGRY) as a government agent undercover as a beauty queen, Walton Goggins/Cuba Gooding Jr./Lady Gaga/Antonio Banderas all playing the same assassin called El Camaleon, Vanessa Hudgens (SPRING BREAKERS) as a girl that’s in one part, Sofia Vergara allowing Salma Hayek some dignity by stepping in to play the deadly Madam character with army of killer prostitutes (see also Lucy Liu in THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS, Zoe Bell in BAYTOWN OUTLAWS, etc.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexa Vega, Amber Heard, Antonio Banderas, Charlie Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr., Danny Trejo, Demian Bichir, Jessica Alba, Lady Gaga, Marko Zaror, Mel Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Tom Savini, Vanessa Hudgens, Walton Goggins, William Sadler
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 45 Comments »
Saturday, July 7th, 2012
SAVAGES is the new crime film from Oliver Stone, about two young idealistic pot entrepreneurs taking on a ruthless Mexican cartel (which is one of the most common types of cartels). The tale is narrated to us by O (GREEN LANTERN’s girlfriend Blake Lively) who is the shared lover of botany genius/philanthropist Ben (Aaron KICKASS Johnson) and Iraq vet/muscle-of-the-operation Chon (Taylor JOHN CARTER Kitsch). The two grew up together as surf bums in Laguna Beach and then one day decided to bring home marijuana seeds from Afghanistan and create a new strain. And the shit blew up like Apple. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Johnson, Benicio Del Toro, Blake Lively, Demian Bichir, Don Winslow, Emile Hirsch, John Travolta, Oliver Stone, Salma Hayek, Shane Salerno, Shea Whigham, Taylor Kitsch
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 62 Comments »
