Posts Tagged ‘Paul W.S. Anderson’

Death Race 2

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

tn_deathrace2You know, sometimes life brings you down unexpected roads. I never asked to be the guy who liked Paul Not Thomas Anderson’s gratuitous remake of DEATH RACE 2000. It just didn’t seem like something that would happen to me, especially after I skipped the movie in theaters and everybody told me it was shit. But then the DVD came along and I wanted to see what it was like and I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy it. (In other words I will not be damned. I did enjoy it.)

And this week life struck again. Turns out I also like DEATH RACE 2, the DTV prequel.

(more…)

6 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Action, Reviews | 69 Comments »

Mortal Kombat

Friday, July 9th, 2010

tn_mortalkombatI know MORTAL KOMBAT is not exactly a high kwality movie. It has one or more leads who are completely unconvincing as fighters. Linden Ashby as Johnny Cage can maybe get by on arrogance, but the teacher from BILLY MADISON as Sonya Blade just comes off as a grouchy aroebics student in a black painter’s cap that’s supposed to make her a supercop. This movie is a pioneer in bad computer generation imaginations, possibly the first movie to prove that CGI not good enough for a feature film is in fact good enough for a feature film. (Say thank you, SPAWN).

But I gotta admit, I kind of like this stupid fucking movie. It has, as we Americans say that the French say, a certain… I don’t know how to spell it in French. It invented a completely new style of cheesy stupid fun. And it keeps a straight face the whole time. I mean, look at Scorpion there. Does he look like he’s gonna wink at you? Fuck no. The man is serious. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts, Reviews | 82 Comments »

Soldier

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

After seeing Paul Not Thomas Anderson’s remake of DEATH RACE 2000 and finding it surprisingly enjoyable, I decided to finally go back and see that Kurt Russell movie he made more than ten years ago that I wanted to see but didn’t because everyone said was garbage. And maybe the lowered expectations helped, but I thought SOLDIER was a good one.

The movie begins in the ’90s with a group of babies being taken out of a hospital into military custody (wonder if the parents noticed?) where they will be raised to be super soldiers. The opening is a montage of these soldiers from infancy to their 40s, being indoctrinated, training and participating in various intergalactic conflicts. I was impressed that I could immediately tell which kid was supposed to be Kurt Russell. I thought they did an amazing job of finding a kid who looked like him, but then I found out they just cast his son, which is kind of cheating. Anyway this character’s name is Todd, but don’t worry, if you forget that it’s tattooed on his face, they all have their names and numbers tattooed on their faces. (I honestly think it would be cool if the movie was called TODD.)

Of course, they get the usual kind of training – running, shooting practice, etc. – but also they have to watch three dobermans fight a boar without looking away. So you can understand how this kid grows up into a stoic, glassy-eyed Kurt Russell, sort of channeling Michael Dudikoff in AMERICAN NINJA. I don’t mean that as mockery either, I thought Kurt Russell was great in this role. He is credible as a great soldier and also as a sort of Frankenstein monster who doesn’t know how to relate to normal humans.

The real story begins when the soldiers are in peace time (”in between wars”), pretty much just sitting there motionless. (That’s what they do.) Todd is the best of the bunch, so he gets to sit at the front. Then Jason Isaacs (with sinister mustache) shows up to brag about his new model of super soldiers, distinguished by their tank tops and led by Caine (Jason Scott Lee, now bald and looking about twice as big as he was when he played Bruce Lee.) (more…)

4 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 8 Comments »

Death Race

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

In these trying times it’s hard to have any faith in a lowbrow movie delivering on a good high concept or even a classic standby. There’s just too many ways to fuck it up. You see all the wonderful explosions in the trailer for THE MARINE and you know it’s a pro-wrestler playing a soldier saving his fiancee or somebody from kidnappers, that seems like it should be easy to pull off. And then they fill the movie with lame comic relief and have the wrestler spend most of the movie walking around a field trying to track the bad guys before his brief stints of PG-13 revenge. It’s just boring.

Or more often they go in the other direction, they force in way too much. Like CRANK – I should be able to totally get behind a movie where Jason Statham has been pumped full of a drug that will cause his heart to explode if he does not keep his pulse rate constantly up, and therefore he has to get into all kinds of action and craziness. I know some people like that one but I guess I’m picky, I just can’t stand when they take an exciting premise like that and then seem to worry that unless they throw in ten thousand random quick cuts and split screens and CGI zooms and switches to black and white and video and shit that maybe somebody will get bored. Similar deal with DOOMSDAY which has just about everything you could want in a derivative sci-fi action yarn and then ruins every single one of them with terrible camerawork and editing. For me all that hyperactive shit and lack of thought put into visuals just ruins these movies.

But I’m always looking for a good one, I just want something more like PREDATOR and less like ERASER or some shit. Or I want a STONE COLD or an ACTION JACKSON. I don’t want to have to settle. When I saw the trailer for DEATH RACE it looked like one of those premises that could really work, but then it had a gloomy grey look, it was from Paul Not Thomas Anderson (ALIEN VS. PREDATOR) who has long since earned his reputation as a crappy director, it starred Jason Statham who doesn’t exactly have a flawless track record either, and it was clearly a dumbed down version of one of the classic pre-Verhoeven subversive action sci-fi movies. And I was still gonna see it until several people I knew told me it was unwatchable. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 8 Comments »

AVP: Alien vs. Predator

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Judging by this title, we are dealing with a story about 1 (one) Alien facing off against 1 (one) Predator. Maybe the Alien dripped acid blood on the Predator’s invisibility machine, so they start getting up in each other’s face or something. It is hard to predict what would cause them to fight, but it is easy to predict the outcome. The Alien wins because the Alien is hands down cooler than the Predator. Sorry Predators, just tellin it like it is. Of course, the title could also mean the actual movie ALIEN is facing off against the movie PREDATOR. In that case ALIEN will be defeating PREDATOR for tension, atmosphere, originality, and artistic legitimacy, while being roundly defeated in the oneliner and gun size departments.

But the title ALIEN VS. PREDATOR is misleading. It is actually MODERN DAY HUMANS + SOME CGI ALIENS AND TEENAGE PREDATORS. It turns out that the ancient Predators built a pyramid in what is now Antarctica and it’s still there under the ice. Once every 100 years exactly, a Predator ship comes down, sets loose some Alien eggs and has their Predator boys fight the Aliens as a rite of passage. Maybe they are from the south of Predator planet and this is their equivalent of deer hunting. Or Texas football.

You learn alot of new things about the Predator culture from this movie. Number one, they have a pyramid. Number two, they look fat when they have all their armor on. These teenage Predators would make pretty good bouncers, but not the greatest movie monsters.

The movie stars Sanaa Lathan (Blade’s mom), Ewen Bremner (JULIEN DONKEY BOY) and unfortunately Lance Henriksen (everything). As always, Mr. Henriksen does a good job and adds depth to the movie (taking it from negative depth to just about sea level). But I say “unfortunately” because it’s a crying shame he has to say yes to a project like this and, worse, that this is probaly one of the better movies he’s gotten to do in recent years. (Not including ABOMINABLE.) It’s a crime that a guy with as much talent and unique presence as Lance Henriksen is stuck being what I call a Paypal actor, meaning it seems like you can just go onto his websight and order him using Paypal and then he has no choice but to show up on your set and do your movie. (more…)

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »

Resident Evil

Friday, March 15th, 2002

Apparently this one’s based on a video game that’s kind of based on the night of the living dead movies. So it turns out real crappy like a xerox of a xerox. And apparently the machine needs servicing. The video game is probaly better because after three of your pac-men get eaten by zombies, the game is over. The movie lasts, like, more than an hour.

The plot isn’t that bad. Milla Jovovich, who is still gorgeous even after leaving Luc Besson and becoming integrated into society, plays some kind of security agent or something in a dress. (Not sure.) She wakes up naked in the shower of a mansion with no memory. Some army goons rush in and bring her along with them into a secret underground chamber to investigate, even though she doesn’t remember how to help them.

Okay so I am not really backing my claim that the plot isn’t that bad. Well it turns out that before she lost her memory (I never understood how) she was undercover, living in the mansion to guard the secret entrance to this underground facility “the hive” where a realistically sinister corporation performs illegal genetic experiments. But somebody let loose a deadly virus, the computer put the place in lockdown, and all the scientists and dogs inside were turned into zombies. Also some monster comes out at the end.

Where the not that bad part comes in is that while the team of toughs (including 2000 Outlaw Award Winner Michelle Rodriguez) try to contain the virus, the computer senses that they will be infected and spread the virus to the city, so it contains them. And then Milla starts to get back bits of her memory which make her slowly piece together who released the virus and why. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Videogame | 3 Comments »