HEAVEN’S PRISONERS is a new-to-me ’96 joint. I was vaguely aware that it’s based on a book, and I think somebody recommended it to me at some point in my life, though it seems to have gotten terrible reviews and was also a flop. Alec Baldwin (THE SHADOW) plays Dave Robicheaux, a recovering alcoholic former New Orleans homicide detective, now living “back on the bayou selling worms and all that jazz.” One day he and his wife Annie (Kelly Lynch, ROAD HOUSE) are on their boat, about to get out the air mattress to fuck on, when a small plane swoops down and crashes in the water right next to them.
They heroically leap into action to try to rescue the passengers, but the only survivor is a little girl from El Salvador (Samantha Lagpacan), who they assume is “an illegal” and “immigration is gonna send her right back” so they decide to off-the-books adopt her and name her Alafair after his mother. She doesn’t speak English, they only speak a tiny bit of Spanish, and don’t make much of an effort to change this, so the subject of didn’t she already have a name she could be using never does come up. I feel like she probly had a name she’d been using up to that point though. (read the rest of this shit…)
ROAD HOUSE is one of the canonical works of… I don’t even want to say action cinema, or badass cinema, I just want to say cinema. When I first wrote about it 15 years ago I was in awe of its unique mix of raucous bar brawls, quotable lines and heightened badassness. I mean, you’d just have to be such a chump not to get something out of a well-made movie about the world’s second best bar security expert (Patrick Swayze shortly after STEEL DAWN) being called into Jasper, Kansas to straighten out “the kind of place that they sweep up the eyeballs after closing,” along the way falling in love, ripping out a guy’s throat and freeing the town from the corrupt grip of rich bully Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara, BUFFALO ’66), who within one scene is revealed as a domestic abuser, shuts off his victim’s aerobics music because it “has no heart,” and boasts “JC Penney is coming here because of me!” It’s a glorious elevated drive-in classic forged from the undiluted sincerity of Swayze, the rioutous fight choreography of Benny “The Jet” Urquidez (BLOODMATCH, THE BIG HIT, WAR INC.), and the savage entertainment instincts of producer Joel Silver (COMMANDO, LETHAL WEAPON, PREDATOR, ACTION JACKSON, DIE HARD, THE MATRIX). It may top even RICOCHET as the most Joel Silver movie ever made. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hey look, here’s a minor gem that I found via video store browsing. I never heard of it and it seems to have gotten not-great reviews and little mileage for its rookie director (despite having the audacity to have “a film by Oren Shai” not only on the cover, but the DVD menu). But it’s a solid and great looking little neo-noir kind of in the vein of RED ROCK WEST, but smaller scale and more retro.
Like so many of these stories it follows a mysterious drifter who stops at a small diner/motel on a desert road somewhere, desperate, hiding a secret and then getting mixed up in some more trouble. An unusual twist is that this drifter is a woman, Laine, played by Jocelin Donahue from HOUSE OF THE DEVIL. And she’s not some BOUND style tough girl either, she wears nice sweaters and skirts and doesn’t intimidate anybody. But she has blood on her hands, both literally and figuratively.
Her backstory is implied and revealed through small things: stashing a money clip in the bathroom, examining a rope burn on her neck, reports of murder in another city, a cop (A.J. Bowen, YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST) having one of those conversations with her that could be honest friendliness but is more likely a veiled threat. We watch Laine navigate small talk questions she doesn’t want to answer, wind up with a room for the night and a job as a waitress, and practically give us a heart attack by sneaking into the rooms to look through guests’ luggage for something valuable enough to get her the fuck out of Dodge. This stuff is very reminiscent of Marion Crane trying to get away with the money in the first part of PSYCHO. (read the rest of this shit…)
There are many things I don’t understand about the sci-fi world and story of VIRTUOSITY. It opens with Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington) in a Captain Panaka cosplay outfit chasing a killer through the business district, where everybody is in a suit carrying a briefcase, like they’re in The Matrix. It does turn out to be a virtual reality simulation and Parker turns out to be a prisoner, though he was formerly a cop until he accidentally killed an innocent(ish) journalist while killing the guy who killed his family.
But what is the reason for this simulation? I guess it’s supposed to be for training? But then why are they training prisoners? I guess because it’s still in Beta testing. With its current calibration, getting killed in the virtual world can cause the player to go into convulsions and die in real life. (You hear that, Wachowskis? See if you can take that idea and do something better with it.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Yes, it’s true, this is a movie about Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray fighting over Megan Fox because she has wings. Mickey plays a jazz trumpeter (the serious type who always wears colorful suits, a fedora and pointy shoes) who gets in trouble because he accidentally slept with the wife of a gangster named Happy (Murray). So he gets beat up and left in the desert.
When he wakes up he wanders and finds a carnival with a sideshow. That’s where he sees this winged lady. Not riding a ferris wheel – she’s in the sideshow, because she has wings. Not sure if you got that. (read the rest of this shit…)
You know, people recommend movies to me all the time. They got a pretty good idea what I’m into, and they got some movie they like, they figure I would like it too. And I’ve discovered some damn good ones this way. For example I still wouldn’t’ve picked up MR. MAJESTYK if it wasn’t for Jeff McCloud, I think was the first guy who told me about it.
Well I can’t remember who told me this one, ROADHOUSE. A film by Rowdy Herrington. Whoever recommend this must’ve been jerkin my chain, but that’s all right. I enjoyed this one, even though it is about Patrick Swayze is the world’s second greatest bouncer who is sent in to clean up a rough redneck bar, ends up having to kill Ben Gazarra. You know how it is.
I knew this was a good one pretty quick, because a couple minutes into the movie a woman stabs a guy in the hand with a pen, and as payback she gets kicked in the balls. There are alot of feet and knees crushing balls in this movie, but that’s normal. I’ve seen that before. A woman getting kicked in the balls though is not something I believe I’ve seen before. Until now. (read the rest of this shit…)
If you want a good picture about junkies this is it. This is not a western like you may think it is the story of Matt Dillon, his lady and another couple who travel the Pacific Northwest region knocking down drugstores to score various pharmaceuticals. As someone who has known these type of people I can GUARANTEE you they do not have prescriptions for these items. They are addicts.
What I like about this one in my opinion is that it is an anti drug movie that doesn’t stack the deck. It makes it clear that drugs are fun when you are doing them, they make the world happy and the cowboy lifestyle as they call it is exciting. So then after being honest it goes on to deal with the negative side. (read the rest of this shit…)
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2. Buy my books from your local bookseller or somebody
(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.
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THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
wmjahn on The Harder They Fall: “The first app. 20 minutes are fantastic (10/10), the next 20 are still pretty good (8/10), but then the movie…” Jun 14, 12:23
Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs on I Love Boosters: “Goddamn what a treat this was. Love the cast, the music, the look. Love the Katamari Damacy-style ball of anxiety.…” Jun 13, 23:11
VERN on The Furious: “Update on the language: I had heard that Lionsgate made a dub with the original actors and digitally conforming the…” Jun 13, 15:00
Bill Reed on I Love Boosters: “I’m on record as believing SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is a top 5 movie of the 21st century, so my…” Jun 12, 05:49
renfield on I Love Boosters: “I’m with Vern at every point here as well. I thought the straightforward earnestness of the ending was real nice,…” Jun 11, 21:54
MdM on The Furious: “Choreography- I’ve never seen anything this extravagant. I wish they remembered they were making a movie – not just an…” Jun 11, 17:53
Paul Constant on I Love Boosters: “Great review, Vern. I’m in complete agreement about the movie and The Coup. One thing I learned after watching the…” Jun 11, 14:50
grimgrinningchris on Heaven’s Prisoners: “My only memory of the movie is that they WERE real, but decidedly nothing near “spectacular”.” Jun 11, 12:41
Felix Ng on The Furious: “Just came back from this. Some incredible martial arts here. Especially the 4 way fight at the police station in…” Jun 11, 02:38
KayKay on The Furious: ““It’s set in unspecified Southeast Asia” Yup…this is square in the territory of your standard China Web Movie, which takes…” Jun 10, 23:21
KayKay on The Furious: “““Warning: she’s billed as a “special appearance,” so…” Didn’t come as a surprise, she’s been clear on cutting down on…” Jun 10, 23:10
KayKay on The Furious: “I caught this at a special screening* in my neck of the woods. So…I caveat this to those excited up…” Jun 10, 23:08
Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs on The Furious: “Jeeja Yanin! YES! “Warning: she’s billed as a “special appearance,” so…” GODDAMMIT! I had to stop reading there, I already…” Jun 10, 21:44
Furious Fred on The Furious: “Entirely possible some lines were dubbed by different actors if the on camera performer struggled with the lines. Hell Hong…” Jun 10, 19:32
HEAVEN’S PRISONERS is a new-to-me ’96 joint. I was vaguely aware that it’s based on a book, and I think somebody recommended it to me at some point in my life, though it seems to have gotten terrible reviews and was also a flop. Alec Baldwin (THE SHADOW) plays Dave Robicheaux, a recovering alcoholic former New Orleans homicide detective, now living “back on the bayou selling worms and all that jazz.” One day he and his wife Annie (Kelly Lynch, ROAD HOUSE) are on their boat, about to get out the air mattress to fuck on, when a small plane swoops down and crashes in the water right next to them.
They heroically leap into action to try to rescue the passengers, but the only survivor is a little girl from El Salvador (Samantha Lagpacan), who they assume is “an illegal” and “immigration is gonna send her right back” so they decide to off-the-books adopt her and name her Alafair after his mother. She doesn’t speak English, they only speak a tiny bit of Spanish, and don’t make much of an effort to change this, so the subject of didn’t she already have a name she could be using never does come up. I feel like she probly had a name she’d been using up to that point though. (read the rest of this shit…)
ROAD HOUSE is one of the canonical works of… I don’t even want to say action cinema, or badass cinema, I just want to say cinema. When 
Hey look, here’s a minor gem that I found via video store browsing. I never heard of it and it seems to have gotten not-great reviews and little mileage for its rookie director (despite having the audacity to have “a film by Oren Shai” not only on the cover, but the DVD menu). But it’s a solid and great looking little neo-noir kind of in the vein of 
Yes, it’s true, this is a movie about Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray fighting over Megan Fox because she has wings. Mickey plays a jazz trumpeter (the serious type who always wears colorful suits, a fedora and pointy shoes) who gets in trouble because he accidentally slept with the wife of a gangster named Happy (Murray). So he gets beat up and left in the desert.
You know, people recommend movies to me all the time. They got a pretty good idea what I’m into, and they got some movie they like, they figure I would like it too. And I’ve discovered some damn good ones this way. For example I still wouldn’t’ve picked up MR. MAJESTYK if it wasn’t for Jeff McCloud, I think was the first guy who told me about it.
If you want a good picture about junkies this is it. This is not a western like you may think it is the story of Matt Dillon, his lady and another couple who travel the Pacific Northwest region knocking down drugstores to score various pharmaceuticals. As someone who has known these type of people I can GUARANTEE you they do not have prescriptions for these items. They are addicts.
