Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Hey Harry and Father Geek, it’s me, Vern.
Well you know what guys I am going through some tough times in my life, sort of an introspective type deal, and what you do in this type of situations sometimes is you want to relax, go to an activity such as a barbecue, titty bar or film festival and get your mind off of things.
So that is what ol’ Vern did yesterday, I went and saw the BLOOD SIMPLE movie that every motherfucker has been recommending to me left and right. “Vern, see Fargo. Vern see Blood Simple. Vern, see Big Lebosky.” Well Blood Simple was playing at the Seattle’s International Film Festival, a film festival here in Seattle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Coen Brothers, Dan Hedaya, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Well god damn here’s an action picture like I’ve NEVER seen. This is a must see for ANY action fan and I am not fucking joking. I mean you don’t have to see Payback, you don’t have to see Die Hard with a Vengeance or any of these other movies I talk about but in god and mary’s sweet name of christ jesus, you OWE it to yourself and to the lord to see this chinese picture Hard Boiled.
I mean don’t get me wrong I like the van dammes and what not but this is on a whole other plane flying way up in the sky. It will forever change what you expect from an action picture in my opinion although I only saw it this afternoon so what the hell do I know. But it is to shootout movies what Godfather is to mob movies or Jaws is to shark movies. Don’t take this the wrong way but it is such a leap ahead it is like die hard times ten. It is WAY, and I mean WAY more violent than anything you will see in the US of A but at the same time the characters and story plot are far more developed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Wong, best movies ever, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, Tony Leung
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 54 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This movie is about as corny as they make em, but I kinda liked it. Supposedly the stars here are a real group of young fellas who are known for climbing up buildings, jumping off buildings, sliding down ropes and all that sort of shit. Sort of like the poor french man’s cirque du soleil.
So Luc Besson found out about them and decided to make a movie showcasing their talents. This is kinda what Besson does if you think about it. I haven’t seen KISS OF THE DRAGON yet but that was his attempt to make a better English language Jet Li vehicle than ROMEO MUST DIET. FIFTH ELEMENT was a vehicle for the detailed sci-fi world he had created when he was in boarding school. And what was THE MESSENGER if not a vehicle for his lolita bride of the time, Milla Jovovich, who he manages to make look stunning even with a pageboy haircut and splattered with blood and dirt. Now he’s doing the same thing but for some guys who run around and jump off things and what not. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Besson productions, parkour
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
I can’t remember who recommended this picture to me. It’s sort of a different take on the “hood movie.” You know, the old “two friends, one more crazy than the other, get mixed up in urban crime but then they try to go straight but at least one of them dies at the end” movies like BOYZ N THE HOOD and MENACE 2: SOCIETY.
I gotta warn you, it’s meandering and slow, sometimes amateurish, sometimes pretentious, and mostly humorless. But I still thought it was pretty fuckin good and I’ll explain why. (that’s what I do in these writings.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DMX, Hype Williams, Method Man, Nas
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
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
Both of these pictures are real good pictures that happen to be inspired by the Leopold and Loeb murder case. Who those two are is two rich kids who thought they were smarter than everyone else and above the law and decided to kill one of their cousins and destroy the body with acid just for the thrill of it.
Rope is Alfred Hitchcock’s picture which started the real time gimmick where you try to make the movie look like it was all done in one shot. The movie is actually done in 8 shots because you can’t put that much film on a camera I mean gimme a break, it’s too much. So they shoot until the roll of film is about to run out and then they zoom into the back of a guy’s jacket and then zoom out from the jacket on the next roll of film and you pretend it’s continuous. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dean Stockwell, E.G. Marshall, Hitchcock, James Stewart, Orson Welles, Richard Fleischer
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
(a.k.a. Deranged – The Confessions of a Necrophile)
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a serial killer out of Wisconsin called Ed Gein. He is the most fucked up motherfucker that ever was fucked up. He is the original American Psycho as they would say on Entertainment Tonight. When they caught him he had a dead lady hanging in his shed cleaned out like a deer. He had a heart on his stove and all kinds of heads and skulls and chairs and clothes made out of human skin. He started out digging up graves and then started killing people, collecting their body parts, wearing them and possibly eating them. I mean jesus, I’m not making this up, but don’t read it if you’re eating – the dude had a box full of vaginas and he liked to dance around in the moonlight wearing a belt he made out of nipples. In my opinion, he had a problem with women.
Anway this fucker inspired alot of the most famous horror pictures, from Psycho to Texas Chainsaw to Hannibal Lecter and, I forget which other ones, possibly The Fly or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or one of those. But this picture Deranged is a more obscure one from 1978 which is based much more closely on the actual case. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ormsby, Ed Gein, true crime with the names changed but you know who I'm talking about
Posted in Crime, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
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 »
Friday, December 7th, 2001
When you get two Oscar nominations for best director in the same year (for Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and you’re at the commercial peak of your career, what do you do for a followup?
I think Steven Soderbergh has the right answer. Two Oscar nominations is nothing to commit suicide over. Sure it’s embarassing, but it’s not the end of the world. After all it was only one year earlier that his picture The Limey won Best Picture, Musical Comedy or Badass in the 1999 Outlaw Awards, and that magic could not be entirely faded. So Soderbergh packed up the political pretensions, left them out on the porch in a box marked for the retard center, and went and made a casino heist movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Steve Soderbergh
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 3rd, 2001
Last time we spoke I found that the best way to forget about the nightmarish USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act – which is designed to protect freedom and democracy by, among other things, allowing police to enter and search your house without probable cause, warning or even notification after the fact – was through the delights of French Cinema.
As you know the french are very romantic, very beautiful, full of whimsy and what not. The French always know how to make you smile, like they did with AMELIE, or MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, or those musicals with the umbrellas and etc.
For example they got this movie called SEVEN DEADLY SINS that I just discovered. Anyone who has read my works thoroughly knows of my admiration for the director Roger Vadim, who married Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. Also, his movies were pretty good.
Vadim is most famous for BARBARELLA, and then for SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, the edgar a. poe anthology picture he did a segment of along with whatsisname, the frenchy, as well as godard, malle, fellini, and etc. etc. SEVEN DEADLY SINS is another one along the lines of SPIRITS but this one is in black and white and has the, you know, the seven deadly sins theme. Seven segments, seven sins, all french. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anthologies, Jean-Luc Godard, penetration, Roger Vadim
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
