Yesterday I ran my last review from the Summer of 2001 10th Anniversary retrospective series, so let’s go over our findings. I hope I didn’t ruin it by spreading some of the reviews out to the anniversaries of their releases. I actually watched them all close together in chronological order and wrote about them but I wanted to have an ongoing series throughout the summer. At the end of this post I have the links to all of them in order in case anybody ever wants to read them in one long chunk. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
If a horror movie is a big hit, and it doesn’t look totally stupid, and especially if it ends up getting theatrically released sequels, I usually watch it at some point, just to give it a shot, or to understand it. For example after a while I sat down and watched all the SAW movies they had made up to that point, even though it was not something I had followed before. As a subscriber to Fangoria Magazine it is my duty. They got those “Chainsaw Awards” you can vote on every year, you want to take that shit seriously. But I always avoided JEEPERS CREEPERS. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
One thing about JOHN CARPENTER’S GHOSTS OF MARS: it’s definitely John Carpenter’s GHOSTS OF MARS.
It has plenty of elements that could be perfect for one of his movies. It’s kind of a siege movie like ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, although the simplicity of that type of setup is mired in flashbacks and narration. It’s got a western motif – even though it’s in the future and on Mars there’s a train, and colonists possessed by angry Martian spirits take the place of the Natives defending their land. It’s got a ready-made anti-hero – Ice Cube as the bad-but-not-guilty-of-the-specific-crime-he’s-accused-of prisoner-in-transfer Desolation Williams. It has a pretty good soundtrack where Carpenter melds his style with a bunch of rock n roll dudes with electric guitars and drums, playing Martian tribal rock. It has Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Joanna Cassidy and Pam Grier in the cast! This shit should be great. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
chapter 11: “Victoria Secret, Spring catalog, page 22.”
released August 3rd, 2001
I know, I know. Every motherfucker on the internet is putting up their essays marking the 10th anniversary of Brett Ratner’s RUSH HOUR 2 today. As fascinating a topic as we all know it is, I believe there could be a small chance that one or two of you are probly getting toward the area where pretty soon there is almost really not gonna be that much more to say about RUSH HOUR 2. And I know that for many of us this is a day when we want to be among friends and loved ones, thinking about how much they mean to us, and how much RUSH HOUR 2 means to them. But please, friends – if you have the time, take a few minutes to read my take. It would mean alot to me, just like this movie means alot to each and every one of us as movie fans, as thinkers, as sons and daughters, as mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, citizens, humans, spiritual beings.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Well, so far this summer of 2001 we’ve been having hasn’t been too hot. But at least we got that new Tim Burton movie coming out, right? I don’t know why they gotta remake PLANET OF THE APES but it’s a great cast and that guy knows what he’s doing, I’m sure he’ll do something interesting with it.
Nope. 10 years later I’m not sure I need to explain why the PLANET OF THE APES remake is no good. I don’t remember there being an argument about it at the time, or ever encountering anybody that liked it in the decade since. It was a bad idea, it was not good, let’s all pretend it never happened. The end.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Okay, I’m confusing myself here. In preparing for my Summer of 2001 10th Anniversary Retrospective I skipped watching JURASSIC PARK III (which was released July 18th, 2001), because I watched it again last summer to re-evaluate and my opinion had not changed from my original review.
Except the thing is now I cannot find any original review. Did I never write about it? I thought I did but I can’t find it in the review list or using Google. So I’m not sure why I didn’t write it up last summer. Whoops. This is not a review because it’s not fresh in my mind, but I will say a few things about it so we can discuss it in context of the other ’01 joints. This is the 10th anniversary and director Joe Johnston has a new movie coming out too so this is a good time to hash it out.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Let me tell you man, I’m not trying to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this movie. There’s no celebration here at all. It’s just analysis, I swear.
I saw FINAL FANTASY in the theater when it came out, found it incredibly boring, and really didn’t want to ever watch it again. Here is my review from back then. But I thought it was important to revisit for this study because, despite being a huge financial and artistic failure this movie did break alot of new ground that has turned out to be relevant to the movies of the decade since.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Today, as we celebrate the opening of the third Steven Spielberg produced Hasbro adaptation about overly detailed space robots with different accents wiggling around and smashing buildings, let’s also take a moment to note the tenth anniversary of that one time when Spielberg tried to make a thoughtful robot movie.
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Wow, I never would’ve predicted this: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS has aged well. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready for it back when I first saw it. Skimming over my intentionally pretentious and off-topic original review I can see that I saw it as an attempt to exploit a fad. This is supported by all the old dvd extras (now on blu-ray) which make a huge deal about it being based on a Vibe article about street racing, and how they went to watch races and ran from the cops and all the cars and extras in the car show scenes are real racers who responded to a web posting. They wanted us to know this “street racing” was a real thing happening somewhere at night, and director Rob Cohen and friends are on the front lines ready to show us what’s going down. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
I skipped EVOLUTION in the summer of 2001 because it didn’t look very good. Hey, what do you know, it turns out me-of-ten-years-ago knew what he was doing. But for this important scholarly work it was crucial that I not just view the 2001 movies people remember. To truly get a feel for the period I had to watch at least one movie that came out that summer and then nobody ever thought about it again. (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
(I get residuals and/or the respect of my publisher, you get to have your life changed forever by the power of my words)
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.
3. Straight up give me some money
(I still have this Paypal donation thing you can use if you hate the name Patreon or something)
6. Spread the word
Tell your friends about my reviews and my books and everything. Only cool people though please, we don't need a bunch of suckers around here.
THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
* * * *
4. If you ever shop at Amazon, go through my links or search engines
(you pay the same amount you were gonna pay anyway but Amazon sends a little slice of it my way)
I also have an Amazon UK one:
(I can't get the search box widget to work anymore, so click on MOONWALKER and then search for what you want. Or buy MOONWALKER.)
VERN’S “I RECOMMEND THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PRODUCT” CORNER:
Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Dustin on Doctor Sleep: “Shelly Duvall's work in The Shining deserves as much praise as Nicholson. I understand why Jack sucks all the attention…” Nov 14, 17:03
Jacob on 20th Outlawversary Excellencefest: “Dude! I was in the middle of moving back to Seattle and missed the anniversary. Congratulations! I seriously can't believe…” Nov 14, 15:47
ebonic_plague on Ad Astra: “"actual space is fucking terrifying" This has been my greatest fear from the first time I learned…” Nov 14, 13:11
Palermo on Ad Astra: “I wish I'd liked this one, but found it very boring - a character study without a defined lead character,…” Nov 14, 13:08
HALLSY on Good Time: “Man, this movie is so good. I caught it on Netflix like a year ago knowing absolutely nothing about it…” Nov 14, 12:54
geoffreyjar on Gemini Man: “Correction: my nephew and I saw it in 2K 120fps not 4K. But who knows how important those extra…” Nov 14, 12:44
HALLSY on Cobra Kai (Season 1): “This show is just absurdly enjoyable. I am fully ready to pay youtube for season 3 so if they show…” Nov 14, 12:42
HALLSY on 20th Outlawversary Excellencefest: “I still haven't gotten around to reading this but congrats Vern. I love this site, your writing has deepened my…” Nov 14, 12:33
Dan Prestwich on Ad Astra: “Mr. M, I don't think you're going to like this one. Probably 50% of it is Brad…” Nov 14, 12:21
Sternshein on Ad Astra: “Wait? Ad Astra is really about grief? Did A24 produce this? :) I actually wanted to see…” Nov 14, 12:13
Mr. Majestyk on Ad Astra: “Wait, that’s what this movie is about? Why didn’t anybody tell me? If you’d have asked me if this was…” Nov 14, 12:11
Crushinator Jones on Ad Astra: “Space has always terrified me (and like you, I don't count Star Wars as being "in space" proper) so I…” Nov 14, 12:02
Mr. Subtlety on Doctor Sleep: “Having just read the novel for the first time (after having seen the movie often) my red-hot take is that…” Nov 14, 11:35
CJ Holden on Gemini Man: “Random note: Thankfully nobody would ever hire me to do a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake, but I thought it…” Nov 14, 09:55
Yesterday I ran my last review from the Summer of 2001 10th Anniversary retrospective series, so let’s go over our findings. I hope I didn’t ruin it by spreading some of the reviews out to the anniversaries of their releases. I actually watched them all close together in chronological order and wrote about them but I wanted to have an ongoing series throughout the summer. At the end of this post I have the links to all of them in order in case anybody ever wants to read them in one long chunk. (read the rest of this shit…)
If a horror movie is a big hit, and it doesn’t look totally stupid, and especially if it ends up getting theatrically released sequels, I usually watch it at some point, just to give it a shot, or to understand it. For example after a while I sat down and watched all the SAW movies they had made up to that point, even though it was not something I had followed before. As a subscriber to Fangoria Magazine it is my duty. They got those “Chainsaw Awards” you can vote on every year, you want to take that shit seriously. But I always avoided JEEPERS CREEPERS. 
One thing about JOHN CARPENTER’S GHOSTS OF MARS: it’s definitely John Carpenter’s GHOSTS OF MARS.
released August 3rd, 2001
released July 27, 2001
Okay, I’m confusing myself here. In preparing for my Summer of 2001 10th Anniversary Retrospective I skipped watching JURASSIC PARK III (which was released July 18th, 2001), because I watched it again last summer to re-evaluate and my opinion had not changed from my original review.
Let me tell you man, I’m not trying to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this movie. There’s no celebration here at all. It’s just analysis, I swear.
released June 29th, 2001
released June 22nd, 2001
released June 8th, 2001
