Archive for the ‘Mystery’ Category
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
If you know your horror you know about Dario Argento, the crazy Italian fuck responsible for SUSPIRIA, DEEP RED and Asia Argento. Even if you don’t dig his movies or daughter you have to give him credit for putting together Goblin, the band who made the distinctive scores for alot of his movies as well as DAWN OF THE DEAD and that movie where Art Carney refuses to leave before Mount St. Helens erupts. I also really like INFERNO, the movie I brought up the most when trying to convince people that SILENT HILL was a surreal nightmare world and not just a moronic video game adaptation with stiff dialogue that made no sense like they thought it was.
I thought I had seen most of the big ones by Argento and I had kind of avoided this one PHENOMENA that didn’t have as good of a reputation. Maybe part of the problem is that it’s better known in the U.S. as CREEPERS, the version where they cut out about a half an hour. But at least in its uncut form I really dug this strange fucking movie about an American girl (Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly) sent to a Swiss boarding school during a murder spree. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Argento, Donald Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, primate horror
Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Thursday, September 21st, 2006
The original TOOLBOX MURDERS was made because of TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. You can’t really say it’s a ripoff, because the movies don’t have much in common. But on the DVD, the producer explains that he read in Variety or somewhere about the amount of money TEXAS CHAIN SAW had made so he rented a print of it and hired a screenwriter to watch the movie and make something like that.
So it’s weird that 24 years later poor Tobe Hooper, director of TEXAS CHAIN SAW, wound up doing a remake of TOOLBOX MURDERS. But just like before, his movie doesn’t have much connection with the movie that inspired it. There’s a guy in a ski mask killing people with tools in an apartment building, but everything else is different. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bettis, DTV, Juliet Landau, Rance Howard, remakes, Tobe Hooper
Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 15th, 2006
Fellas –
Brian DePalma’s new picture has gotten alot of good reviews, but it’s the really harsh ones that stick with you. The Ain’t It Cool’s own MiraJeff was so mad he literally said he wanted to recreate the mutilations of the real crime on Brian DePalma. (Maybe he’s moody getting psyched up for his bout with the House of the Dead guy.) “Like high-school kids playing dress-up, or bad Kabuki,” is how David Edelstein described it in his capacity as film and apparently kabuki critic for New York Magazine. And a crazy person at the screening I went to announced during the credits that the movie had “nothing to offer to society,” had too much violence and smoking, and would flop at the box office.
Well, I wish I could give a more passionate defense, because I really have no idea where some of these people are coming from. But I also thought that as a DePalma fan (for here on referred to as “a DePalmaniac”) the movie was pretty underwhelming. It kept me interested, it has some great scenes, I even thought Michael Meyers’s nephew Josh Hartnett was surprisingly good playing the boxer/cop protagonist. But since DePalma’s last movie FEMME FATALE was pretty much The Ultimate 100% Unadulterated Brian DePalma Film, it’s a little disappointing to see him doing what seems like just his little spin on material that alot of other directors could’ve done almost as well. I’m guessing fans of the book, though, will be more interested. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Brian De Palma, Hilary Swank, Josh Hartnett, Mia Kirshner, Mike Starr, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in AICN, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN’S LADY IN THE WATER
a bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan
directed by M. Night Shyamalan
produced by M. N. Shyamalan
written by M. Night Shyamalan
co-starring M. Night Shyamalan
inspired by the true adventures of M. Night Shyamalan
dedicated to M. Night
The movie I really wanted to watch this week was WASSUP ROCKERS, but for some reason it went straight to the second run theater in Seattle. That theater’s a little out of the way for me and today I just wanted somewhere nearby with some air conditioning, so instead of seeing Larry Clark ogle Hispanic skateboarders from Compton I got to see M. Night Shyamalan ogling Ron Howard’s daughter. I’m not sure which one’s freakier. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Balaban, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, M. Night Shyamalan, Paul Giamatti
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Saturday, June 24th, 2006
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Vern, who is in top form with his review of I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, the direct-to-video sequel of that b-level franchise. Once again, my words are meaningless when one as great as Vern is waiting for your attention, so I will give the man his stage. Enjoy!
Howdy fellas –
I’ll always know what you did last summer. You wore short sleeves and complained about Star Wars 3 alot. Also, that’s the name of the new DTV sequel to I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It’s from the director of TROIS 3: THE ESCORT and the writer of OCTOPUS 1&2 and stars a bunch of young TV actors I never heard of.
When last we left our heroes (you know, the kids who ran over a guy and then lied about it), they were in the Bahamas fighting against a vengeful fisherman with a hook. There was no need for a surprise twist of who the killer was, it was still the guy with a hook. I believe Jeffrey Combs was involved, the R&B singer Brandy (who your parents used to listen to) survived due to contract negotiations, and an uncredited Jack Black grunted “it’s all good” as he was gored to death. I’m sure other things happened but that’s what I remember. Then Jennifer Love Hewitt had to leave to prepare for the GARFIELD movies. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, DTV sequels, slashers
Posted in AICN, Horror, Mystery, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Friday, April 14th, 2006
BRICK sounds like a good name for a blaxploitation movie about a dude named Brick, but that’s not what it is. It’s actually a detective movie starring all teenagers. There are only two grown ups in the whole movie, and one of them, incidentally, is Shaft.
At first I thought it was like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: THE ADAPTATION where a bunch of kids made the movie but they didn’t know very many grownups who would hang out in the backyward with them so they just got their friends from class to play adults. But then I realized no, it’s just a gimmick. It’s kind of like those movies like BUGSY MALONE and HAWK JONES where it’s kids playing adult type characters. Or like that episode of M.A.S.H. where a magic genie turns them all into kids but they have little kid-sized army uniforms and they build a tree house and do combat surgery in there. Or what about Veggie Tales, it’s like that only instead of vegetables as the Bible it’s teens as hard boiled noir type characters. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, neo-noir, Rian Johnson
Posted in Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
I might’ve mentioned before, I like this Steve Soderbergh guy. Number one, he knows what the fuck he’s doing. Number two, he does what the fuck he wants. He’s the epitome of the guy who does smart but crowdpleasing commercial movies (OCEAN’S 11, ERIN BROCKOVICH) then turns around and makes a crazy no budget weird ass movie (SCHIZOPOLIS, FULL FRONTAL). I wish he’d make more badass crime movies like THE LIMEY and OUT OF SIGHT but that’s just me. If I could tell him what to do that would violate number two (see above). A violation like that would probaly ruin the roll he’s on and all the sudden he’d start doing half-assed FINAL DESTINATION sequels or something.
Now that this guy has a best director Oscar (for TRAFFIC), a Criterion Edition (for SCHIZOPOLIS), an outlaw award winner (THE LIMEY) and the all important misunderstood sequel (OCEAN’S 12), he decided there was one thing he was missing: a series of six digitally shot improvisational movies starring non-actors in their real home towns to be released in theaters, on dvd and on cable all at the same time. BUBBLE is the first in this ridiculous experiment and let’s be honest here. Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into, you do know what you’re getting into. First motherfucker that watches BUBBLE and complains that it’s not INDIANA JONES gets a knuckle sandwich. This is not designed to entertain the whole world. It’s designed to be the type of movie you shoot quickly with a low budget on hi-def video and release on DVD at the same time as theaters. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Steve Soderbergh
Posted in Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
Some day I gotta come up with a name for this certain style of movie I like, a movie that is really fuckin dumb, but in a good way. It manages to be so spectacular, almost innovative in its level of stupidity that it is what the young people now and in the ’80s called “awesome.” I’m not talking a dumb comedy like HOW HIGH, I’m talking about a movie that as far as anyone knows is supposed to be serious. One really good example is DEEP BLUE SEA, Renny Harlin’s movie about super intelligent sharks. That takes the genre to its highest levels because there are so many things that play with the audience’s expectations that it is undeniably clever, almost brilliant. And at the same time, so fuckin dumb. A movie where a girl has to take her scuba suit off and stand on top of it so as not to get electrocuted. Because of the super intelligent sharks. That’s the best, when it’s so smart and so dumb that you can’t even tell which is which anymore.
Well this is not that good but it is another dumb movie by the same director. I think maybe the pressure of doing a sequel to DIE HARD was too much for Renny Harlin to take, it damaged his brain and he’s been mushy ever since. MINDHUNTERS isn’t as good as DEEP BLUE SEA but it’s worthwhile if you’re into that type of stupid shit, like I am. It has Val Kilmer, Christian Slater and of course DEEP BLUE SEA’s LL Cool J in the cast but it sat on the shelf for a couple years. It actually came out on DVD in Russia a long time before it came out in american theaters. So maybe the Russians could tell me what to call this genre. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: LL Cool J, Renny Harlin, Val Kilmer
Posted in Action, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 30 Comments »
Monday, April 18th, 2005
How’s this for a weird eight-legged-pig-fetus-in-a-jar of a movie: Jean-Luc Godard experimental noodling based on a Richard Stark novel! I knew it existed thanks to our friends at the Movie Database of the Internet, but I never figured I’d see it. Then I discovered a PAL CODE 2 triple feature Godard set that includes it along with PRENOM CARMEN (First Name: Carmen) and PIERROT LE FOU (Parrot Kung Fu I guess).
Now first of all I gotta admit upfront, I couldn’t make ass or tits of this picture. I didn’t get it. I know about that wave the french had over there. As in, I know they had it. I seen a couple of your Truffauts and I saw SEVEN DEADLY SINS once but that’s about it. So if you want to talk to somebody who knows what the fuck they’re talkin about when it comes to Monsieur Godard, I ain’t the one. Ask the cinemasters. There’s a couple good reviews of this on IMDb by people who know their Godards, so you can go to them for a perspective if that’s what you need. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jean-Luc Godard, Parker, Richard Stark
Posted in Crime, Mystery, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2005
In this one Bruce plays a cop from a long line of cops. Which of course means his uncle is played by Dennis Farina. You also got John Mahoney as his dad and Tom Sizemore and Robert Pastorelli as his knucklehead cousins. All cops. Sarah Jessica Parker is the love interest, also a cop but not related, so they can fuck in one part. The movie takes place in Pittsburgh and I guess they even got local people to work on the movie, because I recognized the editor’s name, Pasquale Buba, from watching DAWN OF THE DEAD a thousand times. The director also has a familiar name, Mr. Rowdy Herrington of ROADHOUSE fame.
Unfortunately the bad guy is a serial killer – always a bummer. Terrorists and robbers and CIA agents are a good time a the movies, but some asshole that gets a boner tying up women? Not really as fun, in my opinion. Anyway they keep getting real close to catching the fucker, even chase him in a good over-the-top car chase at the beginning. I mean there’s a pretty serious maneuver the killer pulls when completely surrounded. Excellent use of the extreme Y-turn.(The new rule is, always put the best action scene at the very beginning.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Bruce Willis, Joe Pantoliano, Rowdy Herrington, Sarah Jessica Parker
Posted in Action, Bruce, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
