I got an email recently from Ricardo S., who recommended I should see this new movie SECUESTRO EXPRESS which he said was very popular in his country of Venezuela and “We usually don’t give a shit about our own films here, because, they usually suck balls.” So I filed that title away in the back of my mind and remembered to rent it and now here is my review.
I should mention that when I say he emailed me “recently” what I mean is that the email is dated November 1st of 2005. But I mean, that’s late 2005, at least it wasn’t January of ’05. Cut me some slack. Anyway don’t ever say I don’t follow through. (read the rest of this shit…)
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN – which came out this week on the dvd and the blu-ray – stars Rutger Hauer (BLIND FURY) as the titleistical armed derelict. I don’t think he ever gets a name, he’s just an old drunk who rides the rails into Hope City, better known as “Fuck City,” a small Canadian town overrun with barbaric crime and ruled savagely by a psychotic crimelord called “The Drake” (Bryan Downey) and his two douchebag sons, who I think are supposed to be modeled after Tom Cruise in RISKY BUSINESS. They wear sunglasses and letterman’s jackets but participate in public beheadings and sex slavery. Some of the cops are corrupt too, and one likes to serenade the local prostitutes with smooth come-ons like “You’re so hot I wanna cut off my dick and rub it all over your tits.” (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…)
From the director of PUNISHER #2 and the star of PUNISHER #3 comes a solid, entertaining period gangster movie. It’s a biopic of Danny Greene, an Irish American union president, gang enforcer and dodger of car bombs in Cleveland, Ohio circa early ’60s through late ’70s. If it had been done as two separate movies maybe it would’ve got an arthouse release and some critical respect, but they did it as one so it was barely released by Anchor Bay and nobody ever heard of it. (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…)
I know what you’re thinking: if I had remembered that there was a STREET KINGS 1 I think I would be surprised to find out that there’s a STREET KINGS 2. Well, this is a new movement of unexpected DTV franchises along with S.W.A.T. and SMOKIN’ ACES. To my surprise it also fits with the current trend of increasingly high quality DTV sequels. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED is a simple story about two kidnappers and their hostage. And it’s not one of those stories where they become friends. It’s a simple, well-executed thriller and especially before the plot starts thickening this thing is deeply unsettling.
It had me right from the great opening scene: a montage of these two nefarious individuals (Martin Compston and Eddie Marsan) shopping at a hardware store and then preparing an abandoned house as a kidnapping hideout. It just goes through step-by-step as they add locks, cover windows, soundproof the walls, put together a bed with chains on it… it’s like a sinister version of one of those home makeover shows. (read the rest of this shit…)
ELITE SQUAD is a 2007 Brazilian movie about BOPE (Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais), the titular squad of Brazilian military police. They’re basically a special forces unit, but unlike in the U.S. their job is to go after their own citizens. If you saw CITY OF GOD you know how the drug gangs control the favelas of Rio, so you can imagine what the supercops would have to be like in that world. They wear berets and they got a logo straight out of STARSHIP TROOPERS. (read the rest of this shit…)
Kim Sun-Woo (Lee Byung-hun, the ninja-in-white from GI JOE) is the liver of the titular life, and at first I gotta say it mostly seems sweet. He works at a hotel (but really he’s an enforcer) and he seems to be very good at his job. In fact he’s very good at other people’s jobs too, because when some slacker isn’t there to take care of some rowdy guests from a rival gang Kim goes downstairs and personally martial arts the shit out of them. (read the rest of this shit…)
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I got an email recently from Ricardo S., who recommended I should see this new movie SECUESTRO EXPRESS which he said was very popular in his country of Venezuela and “We usually don’t give a shit about our own films here, because, they usually suck balls.” So I filed that title away in the back of my mind and remembered to rent it and now here is my review.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN – which came out this week on the dvd and the blu-ray – stars Rutger Hauer (BLIND FURY) as the titleistical armed derelict. I don’t think he ever gets a name, he’s just an old drunk who rides the rails into Hope City, better known as “Fuck City,” a small Canadian town overrun with barbaric crime and ruled savagely by a psychotic crimelord called “The Drake” (Bryan Downey) and his two douchebag sons, who I think are supposed to be modeled after Tom Cruise in RISKY BUSINESS. They wear sunglasses and letterman’s jackets but participate in public beheadings and sex slavery. Some of the cops are corrupt too, and one likes to serenade the local prostitutes with smooth come-ons like “You’re so hot I wanna cut off my dick and rub it all over your tits.” 
released June 22nd, 2001
From the director of 
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.
I know what you’re thinking: if I had remembered that there was a 
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED is a simple story about two kidnappers and their hostage. And it’s not one of those stories where they become friends. It’s a simple, well-executed thriller and especially before the plot starts thickening this thing is deeply unsettling.
ELITE SQUAD is a 2007 Brazilian movie about 
Kim Sun-Woo (Lee Byung-hun, the ninja-in-white from GI JOE) is the liver of the titular life, and at first I gotta say it mostly seems sweet. He works at a hotel (but really he’s an enforcer) and he seems to be very good at his job. In fact he’s very good at other people’s jobs too, because when some slacker isn’t there to take care of some rowdy guests from a rival gang Kim goes downstairs and personally martial arts the shit out of them.
