"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Lee Tergesen’

Point Break (30th anniversary revisit)

Monday, July 12th, 2021

July 12, 1991

Hot on the heels of James Cameron’s TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY came the other most important action movie of summer ’91, Kathryn Bigelow’s POINT BREAK. Cameron was famously married to Bigelow at the time, and is credited as executive producer, and the film has parallels to his in its technical perfection and intensity of action. The pair had reworked an original script called JOHNNY UTAH by W. Peter Iliff (PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS), co-story credit to Rick King (director of PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS), with Cameron doing a last minute pass to improve the action scenes before immediately shifting to T2. “She basically is 100% responsible for the final film from that point on,” Cameron reportedly said at a convention in ’91. And clearly it’s Bigelow’s combination of impeccable craft and counterintuitive artistic choices that made POINT BREAK a hit, then a cult favorite, then an enduring classic.

The choice that seemed crazy at the time, and prophetic now, was her insistence on casting Keanu Reeves as the college football legend turned overachieving FBI rookie Johnny Utah. By all accounts Bigelow had to fight for Reeves, because producers wanted someone else. That’s understandable – he’d been in the dark indie thriller RIVER’S EDGE and the period piece DANGEROUS LIAISONS, but was best known to the world as Ted from BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, with whom he inescapably shared a lovable stoner airhead sounding voice. On the other hand, when the movie was almost made by Ridley Scott a few years earlier he’d had Matthew Broderick in the role. You’re telling me that made more sense!? (read the rest of this shit…)

The Collection

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

tn_collection slashersearch13Like its part 1, THE COLLECTOR (2009), I can’t say that the 2012 sequel THE COLLECTION is any great shakes. But man, it starts out with a bang.

If you haven’t heard of THE COLLECTOR it’s because it was a pretty low key release, opening on 1,325 screens. The first SAW movie was released on almost a thousand more screens. I make the comparison because this one’s definitely in the SAW vein – in fact it started with a rejected script for a SAW sequel. It has a genius inventor/torturer in an S&M mask who sets up preposterous contraptions, bear traps and hidden razor blades in the sizable home of a rich family. But the cool gimmick is that the protagonist Arkin (Josh Stewart, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES) is a traitor who installed the security system and then tried to rob the place while they were supposed to be on vacation, not tied up by a maniac. He stumbles on this nightmare and tries to do the right thing and help them. They’re like “I’m so happy to see you! Wait– why are you here?” (read the rest of this shit…)

No One Lives

Sunday, August 25th, 2013

tn_noonelivesWWEstudiosI’m not gonna try to convince you that NO ONE LIVES is a new horror classic or anything, but I enjoyed it. It’s from the prestigious WWE Studios and it has a level of absurdity and audacity that makes it a worthy successor to their first horror production, SEE NO EVIL. The British advertising even uses an Empire quote calling it a “guilty pleasure.” They’re not trying to fool anybody.

This one has an obvious SAW influence, but it’s not a so-called torture porno. It’s kind of a horror-formula moosh-up, combining the super-genius-psycho-with-ridiculous-death-contraptions with more of a traditional slasher movie formula (people in cabin being picked off one-by-one) as well as a little LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (class tensions and abduction courtesy of a family/gang of greaser reprobates).

It’s got one of these prologues that begins mid-terror, a screaming blond named Emma (Adelaide Clemens) chased through some woods, captured by booby traps. Turns out later she’s from a rich family, but judging by these traps the kidnapper is not in it for the money. He just likes hanging girls upside down and stuff. (read the rest of this shit…)