The Weight
THE WEIGHT is a movie playing theaters right now that I’m not sure everybody has heard about. It stars Ethan Hawke (EXPLORERS), and Russell Crowe (THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS) is also in it, two great actors who are probly gonna be good no matter what they’re in, but you’re not always guaranteed they picked a keeper. This time they did. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year.
Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a widower struggling to provide for his daughter Penny (Avy Berry, A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE) during the Great Depression. He stays positive and tries to shield her from their predicament, but it’s not looking good. When they get evicted from their apartment she (over his objections) sells her beloved teddy bear to a neighbor to try to raise cash. She’s a good kid. When they go to check on renting some godforsaken rathole some plain clothes police officers harass him, decide he’s trying to squat there, beat him up and arrest him. He tells Penny through the bars of the jail cell don’t worry, he’ll come find her, and she’s like… what do you mean? Where am I going? My eyes were misty before the title even hit.
He gets sent to a labor camp run by Clancy (Crowe), a tough warden but with a nice side to him. When he gives them a seemingly impossible task of moving a large boulder, Murphy engineers a method to cut holes into each side and turn it using the handles of pick axes. Clancy is impressed. Lets him hang out on his porch. Gives him a Dr. Pepper. Talks to him about his life. (read the rest of this shit…)
One Last Shot
ONE LAST SHOT is an event movie within the world of indie action: director James Nunn (GREEN STREET 3: NEVER BACK DOWN), writer Jamie Russell and star Scott Adkins have successfully completed an ambitious trilogy. Like ONE SHOT (2021) and ONE MORE SHOT (2024), this is a military action thriller shot ROPE-style (simulating one unbroken take). To do this kind of action on a VOD budget and schedule is an astonishing technical achievement, but honestly the stories are engrossing enough that I don’t think about that too much while watching them.
As I said about ONE MORE SHOT, I think this new one would make enough sense if you hadn’t seen the others, but I recommend watching them first because they do happen one after the other. That’s also a unique thing about this as a part 3: Adkins’ character Jake Harris begins the movie with two full movies worth of injuries and exhaustion. One of the people transporting him to the location of this movie says that he should be in the ER, not getting new orders. But you know how it is. He’s the only man for the job. (read the rest of this shit…)
Resident Evil (2026)
I come bearing good news: the new RESIDENT EVIL movie is a very fun time, even if you never played one of the games in your life, even if you wouldn’t notice that it “feels like game play,” even if “a more faithful adaptation of the games” does not remotely sound to you like a good alternative to 14 years of trend-chasing Paul W.S. Anderson joints about Milla Jovovich doing flips and stuff. I mean come on. How ya gonna keep e’m down on the farm after they’ve seen Milla flying around doing Matrix shit in 3D? Or at least, how are ya gonna keep me. I wasn’t looking for RESIDENT EVIL without the main thing that RESIDENT EVIL means to me. If not for some theories I’ve heard about auteurs I would not have gone to see this reboot on opening day.
Let’s face it, as a never serious, long retired game player, there is almost no chance I will ever play or see somebody play these games. It’s honestly none of my business what they’re about. Don’t even tell me, I’ll cover my ears. But I respect the games for the movies they’ve inspired. I really got a kick out of four of the six Milla joints (just not the first and last ones), and I thought the unrelated WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY was fun too.
But this is probly the best one. It’s directed by Zach Cregger, in what sounds in interviews like risky nerd dream fulfillment more than a sellout. I honestly thought the brand name would be a deterrent, but it’s his biggest opening to date. It’s simpler and more straight ahead than BARBARIAN or WEAPONS, but it moves, rips, etc., and it’s funny as hell. He told the Hollywood Reporter that “people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible.” I believe it, actually, because this has that rare, perfect EVIL DEAD II tone: so many laughs from the lead character and the absurdity of the situations, but not at the expense of the horror. Not a horror-themed comedy, but legit horror with a great sense of humor. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Stupids (and the conclusion of 1996 – Slam Evil Summer!)
August 30, 1996
As I often say, writing about comedies can be hard, because humor is so subjective. I always end up listing parts that I (and not necessarily you) think are funny. And today I’m trying to write about a comedy that was universally shat upon. It was nominated for Razzies for Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Picture, and I could not find any positive reviews from the time; I couldn’t even find any that didn’t call it “painfully unfunny” or similar. It was also a flop, making around a 7th of its budget in theaters. I am not aware of it ever being subject to any kind of re-evaluation, and when Nathan Rabin wrote about it in 2011 he classified it as a fiasco. But my objective today is to try to explain why, since 1996 and continuing through 2026 and the foreseeable future, I have found THE STUPIDS, directed by John Landis (in his follow up to BEVERLY HILLS COP III), to be extremely laugh out loud funny. I sincerely can’t fathom why a normal, joyful person would have a reason to look down on it, and not find it at least a little amusing. But they don’t. And I have to try to convince them to change their ways. Wish me luck! (read the rest of this shit…)
Hope
HOPE is the new movie from the great South Korean director Na Hong-jin, his first since the horror movie THE WAILING nine years ago. Before that he did two really excellent, bleak crime movies, THE CHASER (2008) and THE YELLOW SEA (2010). This shows some of the detail, personality and mastery of those films, but it’s Na’s version of going into blockbuster mode – a big, action-packed monster movie. And though it shares some of the matter-of-fact horrors of his previous movies (it’s not the anti-septic death and destruction we’re used to from PG-13 Hollywood), it’s pleasant by comparison, because it’s very funny, and even a little warm at times. (Other times it’s mean as hell.)
Oddly, a movie it kept reminding me of was TREMORS, because it’s about the quirky residents of this small, rural area called Hope Harbor gathering their resources to deal with some crazy shit involving a monster. The lead is the police chief, Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min, THE WAILING), who in the opening scene pulls up to the spot where some guys found a dead cow with giant claw marks on her. His second cousin Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung, HUMINT) has gathered some of the boys and their hunting rifles – there’s a great running joke that Bum-seok keeps being surprised by how many illegal guns everybody has – and they tell him about sightings of a tiger in the area. He’s incredulous until they insist and tell him detailed stories about it, but later we find out they were just fucking with him. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Trigger Effect
August 30, 1996
David Koepp’s THE TRIGGER EFFECT is the last movie in this review series that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not one anybody seems to talk about, so I could’ve gotten away with skipping it. I’m glad I didn’t, though. I don’t think it’s good, but it’s deranged in a really odd way that I appreciate.
It opens with two coyotes playing tug-of-war with a dead animal, then howling, then walking past a power station. This is meant to encapsulate the movie because it’s about people not getting along during a power outage.
But for now the lights are on, and there’s a DePalma style tracking shot witnessing a chain of small conflicts between strangers at a mall: a drink spilled on a shirt, the person spelled on bumping into a lady and offending her boyfriend, etc. – and it’s a very unsettling intro because for one five minute shot we get this onslaught of characters and incidents where not one person ever reacts to anything in a way that seems natural to me. The culmination is in a movie theater lobby where a woman (Kerri Vickers) strolls past two long lines of customers, right up to the concession counter and just starts ordering. The person who was next in line, Raymond (Richard T. Jones, RENAISSANCE MAN), calls her on it, but she says, “Well, I didn’t see you” and goes back to ordering… so he leaves without buying anything. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) – 30th anniversary revisit
August 23, 1996
I don’t remember knowing anybody else like this, but I loved THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU at the time. It was a big summer movie, hugely expensive by New Line Cinema standards, but it was sci-fi horror, and rampant with outstanding Stan Winston makeup effects. It had more of Fairuza Balk fresh off of THE CRAFT, but this time she grows cat fangs. I knew that Ron Perlman (CRONOS, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN) was under the makeup of the goat man called “The Sayer of the Law,” and Mark Dacascos (CRYING FREEMAN) was the leopard man Lo-Mai, but I didn’t know who Temuera Morrison (BARB WIRE) was yet so I didn’t know it was motherfuckin Jango Fett as the dogman Azazello. A great character I’ll come back to in a bit.
The crucial thing about the movie is that it was defiantly, extravagantly weird. Watching it now I realize how much of it tonally and texturally reminds me of NIGHTBREED, but since it starred two big time movie stars it wasn’t marketed as weirdo shit. It was marketed toward a mainstream crowd, and they didn’t like it. Nor did any of the other crowds. But sometimes you gotta stay away from crowds.
There are many possible criticisms of the movie, a few I might even agree with, but the popular one that to this day infuriates me is the claim that Marlon Brando is bad in it as Dr. Moreau. Unsurprisingly he won the Razzie and Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Supporting Actor, so for the record that’s the company you keep if you hate this performance. The way they talked about it at the time it seemed like it wasn’t a performance, it was documentary footage of Marlon Brando misbehaving. Why is he on set wearing white makeup and a weird hat, riding a popemobile, making weird speeches, playing a piano duet with a little mutant pal? How unprofessional! He was supposed to be the normal version of this character. Why did he do it unlike anything we’ve ever seen? Why must he be so captivating and bizarre and hilarious? What an embarrassing bungle, that they accidentally did this. I want to talk to the manager. I’m calling the cops. I’m going to sue.
Gary Thompson in Philadelphia Daily News: “with comical dialogue that can only have been meant to elicit laughter.” Oh, you think so? You think so? (read the rest of this shit…)
Solo (1996)
August 23, 1996
SOLO is a sci-fi action movie starring Mario Van Peebles (EXTERMINATOR 2, DELIVERY BOYS, RAPPIN’, JAWS: THE REVENGE, POSSE, FULL ECLIPSE, GUNMEN, HIGHLANDER III, PANTHER) as an android super soldier. General Clyde Haynes (Barry Corbin, MY SCIENCE PROJECT) explains the idea upfront: “He’s proficient at all types of combat. He has no family, no friends, not even a Social Security number. If he’s wounded beyond repair, we throw him away. No guilt, no worries, no medical benefits. No one will cry when Solo is gone. We’ll simply build another one.” (Personally I think it’s rude that he says that right in front of him.)
One issue with this two billion dollar program comes out in the first mission we see, an attack on an airstrip being built for rebels in an unnamed South American country. (No, not Val Varde, I think I would recognize it.) When Solo sees that civilians are being forced to build the airstrip it clearly upsets him, and he overrides his commands to avoid blowing them up. (Also he takes home a tarantula as a pet.) There’s a great part where the humans detonating the bombs on the outskirts have given up on Solo and abandoned him, then there’s a thunk on their helicopter and he’s hanging from the bottom.
Afterwards his creator (?), the young hotshot scientist Dr. Bill Stewart (twentysomething Adrien Brody!) can sense his trepidation, and is impressed that a program somehow has emotions. (Disclaimer that I feel like I need to include in every other sci-fi review now: this is a completely not real sci-fi concept that has poetic meaning in fictional stories, but if someone today is telling you it will really happen they are a scammer, a mark, or a kook, in my opinion.)
The General and especially his asshole colonel Frank Madden (William Sadler, BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY) are pissed at Solo, who argues that he’s programmed to prevent harm to noncombatants. Madden, of course, claims the civilians count as combatants because they’re “working for” the rebels. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Fan (1996)
August 16, 1996
THE FAN is one of those movies I saw at the time, thought was pretty decent, didn’t think much about for 30 years, watched again, still thought was the same pretty decent. In fact, I might have to bump that up to pretty good.
One good thing about it is the same thing that happens when you watch many of the Tony Scott movies, even lesser ones: you remember that god damn, movies used to look good. The cinematographer is Dariusz Wolski, who’d just shot CRIMSON TIDE for Scott, but also he’s the guy who did THE CROW, and later DARK CITY, and then he did some Gore Verbinskis and Tim Burtons, and then a whole bunch of Ridley Scotts. A high ranking cinematographer of my lifetime, in my opinion. So here he’s doing those hazy orange Tony Scott skies, he’s making shots of the most routine shit look god damn beautiful, he’s staging business meetings in conference rooms with magic hour light shining through slit blinds, just ridiculously beautiful shots in a regular ol’ stalker thriller.
In his followup to CASINO and HEAT, Robert De Niro stars as Gil Renard, a very serious fan of the San Francisco Giants. Not just a guy who watches the games and has the hats and bobbleheads and shit (though of course he does), he’s also a regular sports radio caller, apt to defend his team, for example when radio personalities Jewel Stern (Ellen Barkin, MAN TROUBLE) and Bernie (Kurt Fuller, MIRACLE MILE, NO HOLDS BARRED) are a little too hard on the highly paid new player Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes between WAITING TO EXHALE and MURDER AT 1600). (read the rest of this shit…)
Onslaught
After spending nearly a decade making the literally gigantic FX extravaganzas GODZILLA VS. KONG and GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE, director Adam Wingard has returned to the territory of YOU’RE NEXT and THE GUEST – horror/action/thriller hybrids where he doesn’t have as much money but can kinda do what he wants. This time he’s armed with that blockbuster experience and a bigger small budget (three times as much as THE GUEST) courtesy of A24, so he and his long time writer Simon Barrett (FRANKENFISH) had a chance to really let ‘er rip. I thought. Maybe next time.
I hope other people will get more out of it than I did. It has many of the elements for a movie I could love. Adria Arjona (TRIPLE FRONTIER, 6 UNDERGROUND, MORBIUS, HIT MAN, but mainly Bix from Andor) is very charismatic as Celeste, a cynical war vet who purposely isolates herself in a desert town, living in and managing a trailer park, her only loves in the world the daughter she has partial custody of and the illegal stockpile of guns in the cabinet. She’s not ready when her more responsible ex (Jacob Scipio, WITHOUT REMORSE) drops off young Daisy (Blake Kennedy) on an unscheduled weekend. She missed the text about it because she was out shooting jack o’lanterns. So compared to everyone else she is pretty ready for the other unexpected guests, the rampaging super soldiers who escape from a nearby secret military site and start killing everybody. (read the rest of this shit…)
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