Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Friday, September 11th, 2009
Since Labor Day was last Monday I figure the kids are either back in school or about to go back to school, so I might as well do VERN’S BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL. And if I’m gonna do that there is one movie that I would have to be a fuckin moron not to start with. And I’m not talking about BACK TO SCHOOL.
THE SUBSTITUTE is not necessarily a great action movie. It doesn’t have any particularly memorable action scenes or anything. But I really like this movie for the simple fact that the idea behind it – combining a mercenaries/drug gangs action movie with a DANGEROUS MINDS style white-teacher-makes-a-difference-in-the-big-city movie – is flat out brilliant, a once-in-a-cinematic-history opportunity. Seriously, I sit around trying to think of genre combinations this absurd and yet this natural. There aren’t many left. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ormsby, back to school, Ernie Hudson, Luis Guzman, Raymond Cruz, Tom Berenger, William Forsythe
Posted in Action, Reviews | 64 Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
How do you know to lower your expectations for the sequel? When it’s included on the DVD with the first movie. And not as a double feature, but as a bonus feature. I didn’t realize this was on the DIRTY DOZEN dvd when I rented it, but I found it while browsing the extras. Never seen it before so I decided to give it a shot.
THE NEXT MISSION was made for TV in 1985. It’s supposed to take place about 6 months later, but Lee Marvin has aged 18 years. Somehow they got Marvin, Borgnine and Richard Jaeckel all to come back. They have a new mission with a new Dirty Dozen including Ken Wahl and Sonny Landham.
Alot of the movie, especially the first half hour or so, just made me sad. Marvin’s age is really showing (this was his next to last movie) and he just doesn’t seem like he’s into it at all. They make poor Lee and Ernest rehash the whole Borgnine-pitching-the-mission sequence and the Marvin-recruiting-the-convicts one and they even use whole chunks and paragraphs of the exact same dialogue as in the original. Then Marvin will say things like, “That sounds familiar.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Borgnine, Ken Wahl, Lee Marvin, made-for-TV-sequels, Sonny Landham
Posted in Action, Reviews, War | 23 Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Man, it’s one of those concepts that’s too perfect to fuck up: twelve WWII era inmates of a military prison are sent on a dangerous mission to kill as many Nazi officers as they can. The Americans have this target, but they don’t want to waste good soldiers, so why not these lifers and death row cons, murderers and rapists? It’s kind of the same concept as “paint clothes.” You don’t paint the house in pants you’d wear to church, and you don’t want to waste your best soldiers on a suicide mission so you use these fuckos you got in storage. If they die – well, you weren’t planning on using them anyway. No loss.
For the cons it’s a good deal too. They get to go outside. If it’s true they like killing, here’s their chance for more. They get to postpone their executions, or kill some time before their executions. And if they do a good job and survive they might get pardoned, maybe, if fuckin Ernest Borgnine sees it in his heart. If they die in the line of duty, well, maybe they’d rather die that way than on a rope. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, men-on-a-mission, Robert Aldrich, Telly Savalas, WWII
Posted in Action, Reviews, War | 22 Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
I gave CRANK two tries. I really wanted to like the movie, but I sort of hated it. I had a hard time getting past the hyperactive editing and camerawork – Jason Statham would do these things that should be exciting but the directors, “Neveldine/Taylor,” were hammering me over the head so hard with all their visual tricks that it just seemed boring. I honestly fell asleep the first time I saw it and missed that charming moment where he causes an innocent cab driver to be lynched by pointing at him and yelling “Al Quaeda!” on a crowded street.
And that’s maybe a bigger problem I had: the overall douchebaggy attitude of it, the Marilyn Manson going door-to-door trying to shock people approach to humor. Ha ha, he said something racist, you’re not supposed to do that. Oooh, he raped his girlfriend in front of a bus of Japanese school girls and they took pictures, what a fun time at the movies. (NOTE: I have been informed it’s not rape because she eventually liked it, like in STRAW DOGS.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jason Statham, Neveldine/Taylor
Posted in Action, Reviews | 80 Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
From the director of THE HITCHER, the writer of SHOWGIRLS and the stars of BLOODSPORT, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and IGBY GOES DOWN comes this mysterious drifter vs. greedy developers action drama. Co-story credit goes to the guy who directed RETURN OF THE JEDI.
Somehow I never got around to this Van Damme vehicle before, but it kept coming up in IMDb searches: first when I saw THE HITCHER and looked up director Robert Harmon, then when Geoffreyjar emailed me about Joe Eszterhas. It’s a little light on action compared to some Van Damme pictures, but the story (generic as it is) is executed well enough to make up for it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: JCVD, Joe Eszterhas, Robert Harmon, Rosanna Arquette, Ted Levine
Posted in Action, Reviews | 31 Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Cohen & Tate. Sounds like a buddy movie, huh? Cohen. Tate. Just a couple guys goin around together, their last names eventually linked together with and to form a team. Ol’ C & T. Co and Ta. Some mismatched dudes maybe, sounds like one’s Jewish, maybe the other guy’s real Catholic and they always bicker about it. Ha ha, what a great time for everybody.
Well, no. Cohen and Tate are the two mob hitmen who massacre a couple and all the cops protecting them and kidnap their 9 year-old-son so they can bring him to their bosses to be questioned about a shooting he witnessed. Then somebody’ll probaly kill him and throw him in a lake somewhere. It’s not that funny of a movie, is what I’m getting at. Cohen and Tate hate each other, they hate the kid, the kid hates them, they’re all pretty much plotting how and when to kill each other for the whole movie. No jokes except when Tate tells that old one about “what’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s brain when he hits your windshield?” So there are no laughs. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Baldwin, Eric Red, Roy Scheider
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Monday, August 24th, 2009
FIGHTING is a new movie about fighting. The “fighting” in the title is not a metaphor for struggling against crushing poverty, self doubt or family troubles, it’s only a metaphor for fighting. Actually, now that I think about it I guess it is a double meaning, I was trying to be a smart ass here but actually it’s true. But mainly it just means fighting.
You could definitely compare the movie to HARD TIMES. It also made me think of LIONHEART because it’s this circle of rich assholes setting up underground fights in different weird locations. But honestly it’s more Spike Lee or Martin Scorsese than Jean-Claude Van Damme. This is not the slick Hollywood movie I expected, it’s a gritty New York movie, layered with texture and naturalism. It makes you feel like you’re in New York, surrounded by people, hearing sounds coming from all directions. It’s all shot in interesting, dirty and cramped locations. The dialogue sounds partly improvised, mumbled and overlapping, sentences that trail off. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Channing Tatum, Dito Montiel, MMA, Terence Howard, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews | 27 Comments »
Friday, August 21st, 2009
AIR FORCE ONE is a good example of the ’90s style of studio prestige action movies, along with THE FUGITIVE and EXECUTIVE DECISION. They feel almost exactly like an UNDER SIEGE movie (this one is DIE HARD on a plane, if John McClane was the president of the United States) but by using respected actors (Harrison Ford, Glenn Close, William H. Macey, Gary Oldman) and dressing it up with lots of effects shots of jets taking off and lots of talk about military and White House protocol they make sure mainstream audiences don’t get embarrassed. Nobody has to know they’re watching an action movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Die Hard on a ____, Harrison Ford, Wolfgang Petersen
Posted in Action, Reviews | 42 Comments »
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
I think I owe each and every one of you an apology, because I’ve been neglecting my duty by not seeing 12 ROUNDS until now. The thing has been out on video for a month or two – how are ordinary citizens gonna know whether to watch a Renny Harlin/WWE Films tag team event if I don’t test it out first? Honestly I planned to see it in the theater, but the PG-13 kept me away. Let that be a lesson to you, Fox Atomic. Next time go for a hard-R, maybe you won’t go out of business.
From the director of DIE HARD 2 and the plot of DIE HARD 3 comes this generic but enjoyable festival of property destruction. Wrestler turned wrestler who is in movies John Cena plays Danny, a New Orleans police detective who one year ago arrested a terrorist or arms dealer or something named Miles (Aiden Gillan from THE WIRE – that’s where all the cheesy villains come from now). Miles’s girlfriend randomly got run over at the scene and he blames Danny so he’s after him With a Vengeance. (I’m not sure if he’s already gotten revenge on the guy who drove the car.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Cena, Renny Harlin, WWE Films
Posted in Action, Reviews | 79 Comments »
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
After FLESH + BLOOD, audiences were thirsty for more of that Rutger Hauer/Jennifer Jason Leigh team. They wanted to see more romantic chemistry from the Hepburn and Tracy of the ’80s. So they got to see him tie her to a truck and… well, it’s even worse than what he did to her in FLESH + BLOOD. And she didn’t fall for him afterwards.
THE HITCHER starts off as a really good horror movie. Atmospheric shots of C. Thomas Howell driving out on the highway, drinking coffee out of a Thermos, trying to stay awake. Looks like he’s been up all night driving. It starts to rain. Maybe out of desperation to stay awake, maybe out of spontaneity, he picks up a hitchhiker, Rutger Hauer. He jokes about how his mom told him never to pick up hitchhikers. But when he tries to ask Hauer where he’s going the weirdo keeps not answering, changing the subject. Every time he does it it gets more uncomfortable. Then he starts talking about murder and dismemberment, making threats, pulls out a switchblade. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eric Red, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rutger Hauer
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 76 Comments »
