Posts Tagged ‘Mel Gibson’
Sunday, August 12th, 2007
BEYOND THUNDERDOME has always been the red-headed stepchild of the MAD MAX series. Everybody loves ROAD WARRIOR, on account of it being one of the best movies everybody has ever seen. So if Miller just rehashed it but added a new Joe Pesci character or something then everybody probaly woulda been happy. Instead he expanded on the universe, he took the story in another entirely new direction and alot of people still aren’t ready to follow.
I haven’t seen this movie in years and I actually remembered it being more different than it really is. In fact, I was thinking there weren’t even cars in this one. I just remembered planes and pig shit and that song by Tina Turner. I thought it wasn’t as good as the other two but that it got a bum rap. Seeing it again – well, okay, it’s my third favorite, and there is a section in the middle that I had a problem with, but it needs to be said that this is a great fucking movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: car chases, George Miller, Mel Gibson, post-apocalypse
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 89 Comments »
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
(or MAD MAX 2)
Man, I love MAD MAX. So raw with its low budget, so fierce with its ridiculous car stunts and harsh view of humanity. There’s something about that one that nobody has really captured again. Still, in a way this amazing sequel takes it to a new level.
The world is further down the shitter now. Society is not just crumbling, it’s in crumbs. Max is still hauling ass down Australia’s highways in his Interceptor (the last one left), battling high speed maniacs and stealing any gas he can find. The opening scene is the most reminiscent of the first movie, a classic chase scene. It also introduces the gang that will be the villains in this one. Vernon Wells plays Wez, the dude with the mowhawk and shoulder pads, riding a motorcycle with his blond punk (or bitch, or desert life partner) on his back. On the other side a dude in a car tries to shoot Max with a crossbow, but Max hits the brakes and the arrow hits Wez in the arm. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: car chases, George Miller, Mel Gibson, post-apocalypse
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 29 Comments »
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
I don’t know how familiar any of you are with Payback, the 1999 Mel Gibson-starring adaptation of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. That’s the same book that inspired one of the all time canonical works of Badass Cinema, Point Blank.
Well, Mel Gibson is no Lee Marvin and writer/director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) is no John Boorman. But I think Payback is an underrated movie. It’s a good balance of vicious and funny. It’s got a bit of a ’70s throwback feel and lots of weird touches to make it an indistinct time period. There are rotary phones, and primitive credit card technology that makes fraud more convenient, and the film is washed out with bleach making everything have a pale blue tint to it. You’re not sure when this is supposed to be taking place, which in a weird way reminds me of the experience of reading the books. Most of it reads pretty modern but obviously you are dealing with armed robbers, there is money, communication and security technology that would make some of the stories impossible today. So I sometimes have to check the copyright dates to be sure when this would’ve happened. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Helgeland, Donald Westlake, Mel Gibson, Parker
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Other Sites, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007
MEL GIBSON’S APOCALYPTO
by Mel Gibson
not anti-semitic
APOCALYPTO opens with a wild pig being chased through the jungle. Eventually the group of hunters on his ass lure him into a trap that impales him on a set of wooden spikes. Victorious, the hunters step through the leaves and reveal themselves to the camera. They’re Mayan so they’re half naked, covered in ritualistic scars and tattoos, piercings through their noses and chins. We’ve seen guys like this in movies before, they’re called “savages.” I just saw a more fantastical version in the “300” trailer before this movie. You see these type of guys, they might as well be bloodthirsty aliens, you just can’t relate. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mel Gibson
Posted in Action, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
I meant to see APOCALYPTO this week but I was too god damn sick to haul my ass to the theater. So I figured what the hell, it’s December, I’m Vern – might as well revisit LETHAL WEAPON. Haven’t seen that one since the ’80s. One of my buddies swears by it.
Well, it was interesting to watch this movie again, and I had fun, but I can’t say it has aged too well. I know it’s not fair to compare everything to DIE HARD, but LETHAL WEAPON is no DIE HARD. Bruce knew to keep the hair conservative, it will be timeless, no problem. His hair in that movie is so not dated that today, when the LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD teaser debuted online, everybody was pissed that he didn’t have the old hair do. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mel Gibson, Shane Black
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 17 Comments »
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
Dear Mel Gibson,
You fucked up, dude. First you let MAD MAX 4 slide away from our grasp, now this whole “I hate Jews when I’m drunk” business. So here’s what you do now, Mel. There is one and only one way you can have a shot at fixing this: a documentary.
You already took the first step that I was gonna suggest, you are making arrangements to meet with leaders of the Jewish community to be scolded and hopefully learn some things. You will definitely be spending some time at the Holocaust museum, my friend. Probaly less than you deserve. But what I’m telling you is, you’re gonna have to film some of these meetings.
Like it or not, you are in the public eye (see your crazy movie PAPARAZZI for more info). Everybody knows you are a fuckin anti-Semite nutbag now, so if you’re gonna be Mel Gibson the Huge Movie Star again you need to convince us that we can trust you again. That’s why you’re gonna make this documentary about your journey from “crazy drunk guy who hates Jews” to the new, down-with-the-Jews Mel Gibson of the future. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mel Gibson
Posted in Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 21st, 2004
This is one of those mysterious movies that suddenly appeared out of nowhere one Friday night, then disappeared again a week later without so much as a puff of smoke. It straddles that blurry line between mainstream studio movie advertised on national television and straight to video thriller nobody’s ever heard of.
I actually saw an ad for it that week and I gotta admit I was a little intrigued. You just saw some dude falling down a fire escape and maybe a car flipping or something, and I thought maybe it was some gritty low budget late ’70s early ’80s style down and dirty revenge thriller. I mean there were no stars in it, it looked like the main character was that sleazeball Tom Sizemore (actually it’s Cole Hauser, some guy who looks kind of like Christian Bale but sounds kind of like Willem Dafoe). The only way they tried to make it sound like a Real Hollywood Movie was to brag that it was produced by Mel Gibson. (the guy from MAD MAX.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cole Hauser, Daniel Baldwin, Dennis Farina, Mel Gibson, Paul Abascal, revenge, Robin Tunney, Tom Sizemore
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Friday, August 2nd, 2002
There are bigger fans of M. Night Shymalan than me. He seems a little too nice to me, trying too hard to please everybody. They call him a new Spielberg but if so he’s a new Spielberg who skipped over the young vital years of Spielberg when he made shit like DUEL and JAWS. Still, I really like this young man’s style. He seems to have a couple of trademarks already. He treats supernatural themes very seriously and in a unique style that tricks mainstream audiences into thinking they are not watching a genre picture. He populates his stories with precocious child actors and movie stars who give uncharacteristically quiet performances. His stories have themes of tragedy and loss, and they are much more about character and suspense than about actual action. SIXTH SENSE was about discovering what’s goin on with these ghosts, not running from them or fighting them. And UNBREAKABLE was a super hero movie without a single scene of somebody swingin on a rope or shooting a laser or something. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Joaquin Phoenix, M. Night Shyamalan, Mel Gibson
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
Well in late December as I was preparing to face down the ol’ Y2K problem I got to thinking about the old Mad Max and Road Warrior movies I used to like so much, and that got me thinking about Mel Gibson, the young Australian actor who played Mad Max.
Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Duke, Brian Helgeland, Gregg Henry, James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Lucy Liu, Maria Bello, Mel Gibson, Parker, Paul Abascal, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
