note: this review is excessively long and convoluted and takes forever to get to the point, but only as a clever form-is-an-extension-of-content type reference to the movie it describes, in my opinion. Unfortunately I could never match the feel of the movie no matter how hard I tried. It’s like when some asshole reviews a Dr. Seuss movie in rhymes or some shit like that.
introductory remarks/overture
My friends, we have lost. Michael Bay has defeated us. First he invaded the shores of the genre we hold most dear. He brought us gifts of explosions, while behind our backs he robbed us of the very language of geography and context we use to communicate what is exploding and who or what is endangered by said explosion. Then he confiscated our property, buying up our favorite low budget horror classics to rebuild as slick, soul-less product – just to crush our spirits. And now he has completely subjugated us. (read the rest of this shit…)
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…)
Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie)’s trade is a “tomb raider,” which is like an asskicking archaelogical adventurist. It’s just like whatsisdick, the guy with the hat from that other movie that also used the word “raider” in the title – but don’t worry, that’s a coincidence. Lara’s introduced in what looks like some sort of an ancient crypt. She’s wearing short shorts, a The Phantom belt, spinning two pistols. Her crotch and her large, pointy boobs are somewhat emphasized, in my opinion. Might just be me.
Wouldn’t you fuckin know it, her search for treasure is interrupted by a large robot. Cue the electronical music and the wire-assisted acrobatics (remember we’re just two years after THE MATRIX). The fight is too forced to be very exciting in my opinion, but it ends on a nice touch: after killing the robot Lara takes a breath, then laughs to herself. (read the rest of this shit…)
WARNING: contains spoilers for PEARL HARBOR and World War II
After three financially successful action movies in a row (BAD BOYS, THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON), Michael Bay got a once-in-his-career itch to make An Important Movie. He probly had SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the brain, and definitely TITANIC.
Ever since James Cameron’s movie broke all box office records studios had been threatening to make asses of themselves by blatantly trying to catch more lightning in that same melodramatic-love-story-during-historic-disaster bottle. Jan de Bont almost did a love-story-on-the-Hindenburg movie, for example. PEARL HARBOR wasn’t as obvious of a copycat as that because 1) it was a love story set against a war movie as much as a disaster and 2) the love song on the end credits was by Faith Hill instead of Celine Dion. Totally different. (read the rest of this shit…)
Okay, now the summer is really starting. Crocodile Dundee, Stallone in a car, those were appetizers. This is the first bonafide Big Ass Summer Movie of ’01, with the advertising and the toys and what not. It opened huge, and eventually made more than $433 million worldwide. I don’t think I know anybody that likes it, though.
THE MUMMY RETURNS is the second one, the one where the mummy returns for a while, then leaves again. Like the first MUMMY it begins with a narrated prologue that’s better than the movie proper because it doesn’t have Brendan Fraser or a bunch of talking in it. This one tells a little bit about the legend of The Scorpion King (The Rock), a guy who led a bunch of warriors in trying to conquer the world, but they all died of heat stroke so he was bit by a scorpion or whatever, and magic. His part is less than 5 minutes, he speaks one line and it’s not in English, and his narrative purpose is to return as a shitty CGI bug monster at the end. Also to set up a prequel spin-off that’s way more entertaining than the mummy movies, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
In the tradition of SNIPER and THE MATRIX RELOADED comes a movie that has the words SNIPER and RELOADED in the title. Actually this is the fourth entry in the SNIPER series and yet another example of the 21st century’s trend of surprised-they-made-this, not-bad, not-great DTV sequels.
Get it, though? For The Matrix it was a computer program or something that was reloaded, for Sniper it’s a gun.
THE PROTECTOR is Jackie Chan’s second English-language starring vehicle after BATTLE CREEK BRAWL/THE BIG BRAWL. Both are notorious as terrible wastes of Chan’s talent.
I never used to understand the hatred for THE BIG BRAWL – that’s the first Chan movie I remember seeing, so I thought it was great. He has a bunch of goofy fights, is involved in a huge rollerskate race, does gymnastics on some high up metal bars just to show off, (read the rest of this shit…)
POLICE STORY, directed by and starring circa-1985 Jackie Chan, starts out seeming more serious than most of his movies. Jackie and a bunch of other cops have to raid a huge shantytown looking for drug dealers, and it leads to a chaotic shootout through narrow paths and rickety structures. One of the cops is so scared he actually pisses his pants, and it’s played for humiliation, not for laughs. These guys know that alot of people are about to be killed, including some of them. (read the rest of this shit…)
FREEBIE AND THE BEAN is an early example of the buddy cop movie, but it seems like it was made after that was a long-established genre, and by a director who got bored and tried to subvert it at every possible turn. The director in question is Richard Rush in 1974, before he did THE STUNT MAN. The story seems fairly by-the-numbers after we’ve seen so many other movies of this type, but that doesn’t prevent the whole thing from seeming really fuckin odd, sometimes in ways that it’s hard to put your finger on. (read the rest of this shit…)
This is another one of these random movies I came across in the action section at the video store. It stars Mariel Hemingway as a Secret Service agent who has to rescue the Vice President from guerillas after Air Force 2 crash lands on a remote island. You don’t usually see a woman playing that type of action hero, but what really caught my eye was a logo from the Here! cable network, which I believe is all gay-themed programming.
A gay action movie? That’s something I’ve never come across before, and I like coming across things I’ve never come across before. But it’s a made-for-cable movie, so I hesitated. My instincts to give it a shot only won out because the director is Brian Trenchard-Smith, the sometimes-great director of DEAD END DRIVE-IN, THE MAN FROM HONG KONG and DEATH CHEATERS. And, uh, LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE. (read the rest of this shit…)
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if that's your thing:
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2. Buy my books from your local bookseller or somebody
(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
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.
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THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
CJ Holden on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “It’s pretty obvious that the title is a try to differentiate the movie from the Brendan Fraser ones. The newest…” Oct 12, 22:21
Curt on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Well, JOHN CARPENTER’S HALLOWEEN (as the opening credits have it) was Carpenter’s third feature and first horror movie. So dare…” Oct 12, 20:54
Skani on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Lee Cronin Presents Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: A Lee Cronin Joint.” Oct 12, 17:08
tim Bobo on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “I want to meet the person who went and paid for this movie based on the Lee Cronin name. “It’s…” Oct 12, 16:58
RRA on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Fun fact one of the few hits WBD has this year and 2026 was dire for them right before the…” Oct 12, 16:49
Kim Cardassian on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “My favorite YouTube channel (Overly Sarcastic Productions, despite they’re title they’re very sincere about their analysis of narrative tropes and…” Oct 12, 14:31
Skani on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “I think the title is genius. They’re trying to will him into being a Wes Craven type “brand.” So, less…” Oct 12, 13:26
Mr. Subtlety on Ogroff: “Hey Vern! I salute the noble spirit of trying to keep this beloved yearly tradition alive. As you point out,…” Oct 12, 11:31
so-and-so on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “i mostly enjoyed this and the only thing i have to add is extremely nitpicky, but spain does an astoundingly…” Oct 12, 11:20
TKFopp on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Lee Cronin making a movie to process the loss of his mother and then they made the title of it…” Oct 12, 09:38
emteem on Ogroff: “By vintage what time period are we looking at? I mean Scream is 30 years old. If you ever go…” Oct 12, 09:38
Peter Campbell on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “This one is a lot of fun. The dark humour helped a lot. I do wish it was a little…” Oct 12, 09:26
Kevin W on Ogroff: “I can’t recommend it because I’ve never actually seen it, but back in 2015 I was commissioned to design a…” Oct 12, 08:40
Ryan on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Before Evil Dead Burn, I thought this was the best Evil Dead movie of the year. Bless that we get…” Oct 12, 08:29
CJ Holden on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “I believe you that it’s good, but I remember seeing the trailer, liking it for a minute and then instantly…” Oct 12, 08:11
note: this review is excessively long and convoluted and takes forever to get to the point, but only as a clever form-is-an-extension-of-content type reference to the movie it describes, in my opinion. Unfortunately I could never match the feel of the movie no matter how hard I tried. It’s like when some asshole reviews a Dr. Seuss movie in rhymes or some shit like that.
released June 22nd, 2001
released June 15th, 2001
released May 25th, 2001
released May 4th, 2001
In the tradition of SNIPER and THE MATRIX RELOADED comes a movie that has the words SNIPER and RELOADED in the title. Actually this is the fourth entry in the SNIPER series and yet another example of the 21st century’s trend of surprised-they-made-this, not-bad, not-great DTV sequels.
THE PROTECTOR is Jackie Chan’s second English-language starring vehicle after BATTLE CREEK BRAWL/THE BIG BRAWL. Both are notorious as terrible wastes of Chan’s talent.
POLICE STORY, directed by and starring circa-1985 Jackie Chan, starts out seeming more serious than most of his movies. Jackie and a bunch of other cops have to raid a huge shantytown looking for drug dealers, and it leads to a chaotic shootout through narrow paths and rickety structures. One of the cops is so scared he actually pisses his pants, and it’s played for humiliation, not for laughs. These guys know that alot of people are about to be killed, including some of them.
FREEBIE AND THE BEAN is an early example of the buddy cop movie, but it seems like it was made after that was a long-established genre, and by a director who got bored and tried to subvert it at every possible turn. The director in question is Richard Rush in 1974, before he did THE STUNT MAN. The story seems fairly by-the-numbers after we’ve seen so many other movies of this type, but that doesn’t prevent the whole thing from seeming really fuckin odd, sometimes in ways that it’s hard to put your finger on.
This is another one of these random movies I came across in the action section at the video store. It stars Mariel Hemingway as a Secret Service agent who has to rescue the Vice President from guerillas after Air Force 2 crash lands on a remote island. You don’t usually see a woman playing that type of action hero, but what really caught my eye was a logo from the Here! cable network, which I believe is all gay-themed programming.
