Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This is a nice little 1967 action picture starring Lee Marvin and directed by John Boorman, the sick fuck who made the movie deliverance I think you know what I’m talking about, oink oink.
Lee Marvin plays Walker. Not Walker the Texas Ranger, this walker is a Badass criminal type who is betrayed by his partner and his wife and left for dead. But he resurfaces, sees his wife die of a drug overdose and then works his way through his ex-partner and a crim corporation called The Organization, trying to get back the $93,000 that was stolen from him. As you can tell the plot is very similar to 1999 Outlaw Award winner Payback. There is even one scene in Payback that seems to be a direct lift from Point Blank, and believe it or not alot of the characters even have the same last names! An even stranger coincidence is that both films are based on the same book, “The Hunter” by Richard Stark. I mean what are the chances of something like that happening it boggles the mind, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angie Dickinson, arthouse badass, John Boorman, John Vernon, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Parker, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
If you’re on the internet (and I’m betting you are), maybe you heard legends about it. Or if you know how to read, maybe you saw the article in Vanity Fair a while back. The story is these kids who, from ages 11 to 17, took upon themselves the monumental task of remaking that movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was popular at the time.
Their movie has all the same dialogue, and they pretty much faithfully re-created the whole god damn thing, with the one exception being the scene where the big bald guy gets chopped up in the propellor blade, because they decided it was too dangerous. They’re just kids, man, cut them some fucking slack. But they have everything else: jungles, caves, deserts, the giant boulder, real live snakes, a teenage Indiana dragged from a truck. And most of this was filmed in their basement, garage or backyard. A few times they had to be clever to be able to pull it off, so one plane chase was changed to a boat chase, and instead of a traitorous Nazi monkey on his shoulder, he carries a sieg-heiling weiner dog. But as the years went on and they got more on tape, they convinced more and more people they weren’t fucking around and they were able to shoot on a real boat and submarine. (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Action, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
The Fifth Element is your usual Bruce Willis movie that starts out in Egypt in 1934 and ends up in some fancy space hotel in 2334 with this blue skinned space opera lady singing opera and then busting off dance moves. Bruce is introduced down on his luck, pretty much like in the Die Hards – his wife left him, he’s trying to quit smoking, his mom won’t stop hassling him and he’s “5 points away” from losing his job as a flying cab driver in space age New York.
In fact this is a lot like a Die Hard movie except in a cartoony comic book space world instead of a building. Instead of talking to a cop on a walkie talkie, he just talks to his mom on the phone, and instead of terrorists there’s this big ball of fire hurtling toward the earth that turns light to dark, life to death, sometimes has a giant skull for a face, eats missiles and sattelites, and calls himself Mr. Shadow during phone calls. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brion James, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Luc Besson, Luke Perry, Milla Jovovich, Tiny Lister
Posted in Action, Bruce, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 78 Comments »
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 »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
This is the story of some magical midgets called the hobbits (sort of like the smurfs except caucasian instead of blue). What they do is, one of them inherits a powerful magic ring created by an evil individual from the past. If this took place in america in 2001, the hobbits would just go ahead and use the ring, and everybody would be all for it. It might not even make the headlines, it might be buried on page 11 like the story I read yesterday about how the Bush regime is already developing “small” nuclear weapons to use in the caves in Afghanistan.
But this is Hobbitland or whatever so they do the right thing, they take the weapon, they REFUSE to use it because they know it corrupts them, and they travel toward the Mountain of Doom, the only place it can be destroyed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Peter Jackson, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2001
Well, it looks like I’m doin these columns once a month now, and I guess that’s better than nothin. This time I’ll be reviewing a handful of movies that have NOTHING to do with politics. I haven’t seen this Henry Porter witchcraft movie that everybody has a boner about but I have seen some other current pictures and some older ones that I will be discussing.
There’s a catch though. First I’m gonna hafta talk politics some more. I’ll keep it shorter, but this is more important than ever.
There is a grave threat to America right now. Well, another one. In addition to Islamic extremists crashing planes into our buildings, and right wing extremists sending anthrax to us in the mail, and turbulence symbolically knocking the tails and engines off of our American Airlines planes on Veteran’s Day as an accidental commentary on our foreign policy, now we have to worry about our acting president completely and blatantly abandoning the supposed ideals of America, and no one caring. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Dickerson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mark Dacascos, Snoop Dogg
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Saturday, August 25th, 2001
John Carpenter is one of the most controversial directors of our time. Not because he gets into touchy subjects, like he goes and does some movie about jesus doing somebody in the ass or whatever it is that offends people these days. But because of his actual work. Because no one can really seem to agree whether he sucks with a few brilliant exceptions, whether he used to be brilliant and now he sucks, or whether he is really one of the great masters of the horror and Badass Cinema and that some of these new ones are just an off day.
The correct answer is c.
This new one follows many of the great John Carpenter stylistic motifs and thematic type themes. For example, if you ever read an interview or listened to his dvd commentary tracks, you know that practically every movie he ever did he claims is “really a western.” So he always has some stranger walking into town, or has some prisoner being transferred from a jail or a new sherriff in town or what not. In Assault On Precinct 13 he has the gangsters doing blood rituals like evil movie indians in a John Wayne picture. In They Live Roddy Piper strolls into town, walking down the middle of the street even though it’s LA. In Escape From LA he does the old jumping from horse to horse routine, except with motorcycles. Vampires takes place in a sunny Mexican ghost town even though it’s about fuckin vampires. Even Big Trouble In Little China and if I remember right the Elvis TV movie started as western scripts but were re-written to modern settings. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ice Cube, Jason Statham, John Carpenter, Natasha Henstridge, Pam Grier
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Friday, July 27th, 2001
It pains me to be that jackass who tries to point out that the remake is not as good as the original. Whoah, you’re blowin my mind, Galileo! But facts are facts, and science is science, fellas. The one and only mainstream event movie of the summer of 2001 is a big fat mess.
Planet of the Apes is the story of Mark Wahlberg landing on the Planet of the Apes. After this happens, there are many apes, etc.
Now if you’ve seen the original 1968 film by Rod Serling and friends starring Charlton Omega Man Heston, you know what not to expect in the remake – a strong story with unique elements of social commentary, good direction and atmosphere, etc.
Now I’ve read a thing or two about this one in the magazines and what not but I wouldn’t have to know it already to tell that this is one of those mega budget hollywood vehicles where they were still trying to Write it when they had already filmed it. And I know this is gonna be unpopular but buddy, you need a script for a picture like this. I know Mike Leigh, Wayne Wang, Christopher Guest etc. would disagree with me but improv is for pussies, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mark Wahlberg, remakes, Tim Burton
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2001
(working title: BORING: THE MOVIE)
All right, you computer nerds have fucking done it. You’ve spent millions of dollars and years of research and god knows how many man hours of animation, and you’ve created the closest thing yet to photorealistic, computer generated, human-type individuals. And then you’ve put them in the most boring sci-fi movie since the extended director’s cut of Wing Commander.
And both of these are based on fucking video games, come to think of it. I’m starting to notice a pattern here. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: unintentional creepiness
Posted in Action, Cartoons and Shit, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 22nd, 2001
There are many arbitrary ways to divide filmatists into two groups. Today I’m gonna separate out the ones who have an obvious vision/theme/style/obsession (good or bad) that can be seen throughout most of their works. For example you can look at your Alfred Hitchcock or your David Lynch or your Roger Vadim and you can usually tell who is responsible for this business. I mean even a Michael Bay or a Kevin Smithee, the lowest of the low, has a signature style. Or you can at least see what the dude was going for there.
Then in the other group we have the commercial or “hack” filmatist who goes from one project to the next just looking for something that might be successful, or that seems cinematic, or that might capture that fuckin zeitgeist thing the germans are always so interested in. Some of these guys might even be decent at the directation of films but they just don’t put that strong of a personal stamp on them. For example you got your John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Dracula [1979], Short Circuit, Point of No Return) or your Randal Kleiser (Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Big Top Pee-Wee, Honey I Blew Up the Kid). Occasionally they make a good picture like Saturday Night Fever but you still have no idea what these clowns are trying to do artistic-wise. They’re just doing a job, like plumbing or washing windows or passing out pizza coupons and gum samples on the street corner. They punch the clock and then they go home. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a magazine article, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Rob Cohen, Vin Diesel
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 7 Comments »
