Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Wednesday, December 5th, 2018
36.15 CODE PÈRE NOËL – a.k.a. WANTED: MR. XMAS, GAME OVER, DIAL CODE SANTA CLAUS, HIDE AND FREAK, or DEADLY GAMES on the German Blu-Ray I rented – is an A+ Christmas action-horror cult movie from 1989 that I can’t believe I’d never heard of before. I read about it in the book Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television edited by Paul Corupe and Kier-La Janisse. That’s a small press book I pre-ordered last year and there was some mishap that caused it to be delivered a little after Christmas, so I had it set aside for 11 months, excited to bust it out this year.
As I go through it I’ve been making a long list of things to check out. This was at the top, but I can’t imagine anything else on the list will match it. I was convinced I was sitting on the mother of all Christmas recommendations here and then I asked a friend if he’d ever heard of it and… yeah, there’s a new A.G.F.A. restoration of it that was a big hit at Fantastic Fest this year and is even playing here in Seattle at the Grand Illusion this week.
Oh.
Still, I’m so excited to tell you guys about this one. Though it was made a year before HOME ALONE, it combines the kid-defending-his-house-at-Christmas concept with SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT killer Santa horror and tinges of Jean-Pierre Jeunet heightened reality. It’s so joyous in putting its young hero and his Danny-Cooksey-worthy spikey mullet through kid versions of ’80s action tropes that if I didn’t know it was from ’89 I’d assume it was a tribute movie made by some French answer to Taika Waititi. And yet it’s not at all a comedy. It absolutely works on the level of a serious stalk and slash movie, and it’s about serious ideas. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christmas, Christmas action, Christmas horror, killer Santa, Patrick Floersheim, Rene Manzor
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Tuesday, December 4th, 2018
ROBIN HOOD (2018) was part 2 in my “have to be out of the apartment during certain hours but THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB starts too late” programming series. I probly shoulda just seen CREED II again, but you know how it is. Sometimes you want to see ROBIN HOOD.
Taron Egerton (LEGEND) plays Sir Robin of Loxley, a reverse Kingsman raised as a “spoiled toff,” he later fights with the commoners against the government, without his fancy clothes. The movie opens with a narrator bragging about how this is not the “bed time story” you know, and it kinda plays as a super hero origin story (in fact it was originally announced as ROBIN HOOD: ORIGINS). It’s a Robin Hood trained by his mentor John (Jamie Foxx [STEALTH]), a Muslim P.O.W. who, in an act of defiance, he freed during the Crusades, even though the dude had almost killed him. Through some decent training montages (sadly lacking in Stan Bush songs) he gets even better at shooting off a whole bunch of arrows real fast, including when whirling through the air in slow motion. Which I am in favor of. Much of the action (which includes exploding carriages and what not) is shot a little shaky to remind you of that not-a-bed-time-story thing, but luckily they can’t resist the occasional slow motion leap or rope swing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Laswell, F. Murray Abraham, Jamie Dornan, Jamie Foxx, Otto Batthurst, Robin Hood, Taron Egerton, Tim Minchin
Posted in Action, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Monday, December 3rd, 2018
For me OVERLORD was the definition of a time killer, because I needed to be out of my apartment for fumigation at 10 and at work by 3 and the movie I actually wanted to see wasn’t playing in a time slot that worked for that, but this was. So happy Veteran’s Day, OVERLORD, and thank you for your service in filling that window with okay-though-arguably-making-light-of-the-real-atrocities-of-WWII entertainment.
This is a Bad Robot (J.J. Abrams) production of that old usually-low-budget-horror saw of the soldiers who come across monsters, zombies or demons created or summoned by Nazi mad scientists or occultists. In this case they’re doing a Universal Soldier, trying to turn dead bodies into soldiers. Of course in this case they’re using their own victims. I guess that’s positive that they don’t have enough people who believe in their insidious ideology – they have to manufacture them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Ray, Bokeem Woodbine, J.J. Abrams, John Magaro, Jovan Adepo, Julius Avery, Mark L. Smith, Mathilde Ollivier, Meg Foster, Nas, Pilou Asbaek, WWII, Wyatt Russell
Posted in Horror, Reviews, War | 27 Comments »
Thursday, November 29th, 2018
This week for anyone who pledges $1 or more on Patreon I have my third Twilight review, ECLIPSE. This is the one directed by David Slade (30 DAYS OF NIGHT), who added some interesting new weirdness. I particularly had fun with this review because of some Seattle-specific details I noticed.
Thanks everybody!
Tags: Bryce Dallas Howard, David Slade, Kristen Stewart, Patreon bonus content, Robert Pattinson, Stephenie Meyer, vampires, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Romance | 22 Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2018
THE NIGHT COMES FOR US is another outstanding gauntlet of gory martial arts violence and honor among killers from Timo Tjahjanto, writer-director of the excellent HEADSHOT. Once again the action is choreographed by Iko Uwais (star of THE RAID), and he’s in it and he’s great, but Joe Taslim gets to play the lead this time. Taslim played Jaka in THE RAID and was also in the best FAST & FURIOUS movie (FURIOUS 6) but he doesn’t seem to get noticed like Iko and Yayan. Or at least he didn’t get to be eaten by a monster in THE FORCE AWAKENS with them. So every time I read his name I imagine Phife Dog saying “And oh shit, Joe Taslim, he gets props too*.”
Taslim’s character Ito is one of the “Six Seas,” elite enforcers for the Triads who from the sounds of it are kinda like the Seal Team Six of international crime. For his job he has to be ridiculously skilled and completely heartless, but one day during a routine massacre-of-entire-village he doesn’t feel like killing the last survivor, a little girl named Reina (Asha Kenyeri Bermudez). Instead he guns down his own team and takes off to hide the kid in Jakarta. And sure, this doesn’t erase all the people he’s killed in his three years on the job, but it’s like when the Grinch’s heart grows at the end of his story. Let’s give the man credit for changing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hannah Al Rasheed, Iko Uwais, Indonesia, Joe Taslim, Julie Estelle, Netflix, Timo Tjahjanto, Zack Lee
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 40 Comments »
Tuesday, November 27th, 2018
Hey man, I’m not a monster, I enjoyed WRECK-IT RALPH like anybody, and the sequel is fun too. This licensing crossover bonanza shit has kinda become its own genre since WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT invented it in earnest, so we’ve had the toy version (TOY STORY), the other toy version (THE LEGO® MOVIE), the… everything version (READY PLAYER ONE) and the horrific, soul-rattling nightmare version (FOODFIGHT!). RALPH’s video game version does it just right – an elegantly executed premise full of Pixar-worthy well-thought-out world building, funny characters, good jokes, loving homages, minute detail, occasional Q*Bert cameo. I mean they even had an end credits jam by Buckner & Garcia (look it up). Some time later I went to Disneyland and they had playable Fix-It Felix, Jr. games in the Starcade, and especially seeing it in person you realize what a nice tribute it is to the beautiful design of the Donkey Kong game cabinet and the 8-bit animations of that era of video games. It makes you remember that, crude as they seem now, they are an artform.
So now we have the sequel RALPH BREAKS [sic] THE INTERNET, and at least it’s not a rehash. Sentient video game characters Ralph (John C. Reilly, CRIMINAL) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman, THE WAY OF THE GUN) are inseparable friends from frame 1, and when the arcade they live in gets wi-fi they find themselves exploring the big city that is the internet. It has an actual help desk for a search engine, an eBay building where auctions take place, flocks of Twitter birds overhead, and lots of little blocky avatars of internet users walking around trying to avoid people waving pop-up ads and clickbait in their faces. It’s all very clever and observant (they get a big laugh from an auto-fill in gag, and there’s one about “one weird trick”) and designing the behind-the-scenes characters (a messenger who delivers eBay reminder emails) in the style of ’50s advertising icons helps keep it from feeling desperately current. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Disney, Gal Gadot, John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Taraji P. Henson, Vin Diesel
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews, Videogame | 27 Comments »
Monday, November 26th, 2018
CREED was a perfect movie, a miracle that unexpectedly resurrected the ROCKY series. CREED II, coming from a different director and writers, cannot match it. But it’s a solid continuation of beloved characters from both the original series and the new one that brings them to new places in life, with some boxing, training montages and dramatic music in between. Kinda like ROCKY II.
And of course there are other parallels. Adonis (Michael B. Jordan, RED TAILS) becoming champ, getting married and becoming a father, and also being embarrassed to be seen by the media while coming out of the hospital all beat up. But he doesn’t get a tiger jacket, so it’s not a remake of ROCKY II. Mostly it’s a direct sequel to CREED and ROCKY IV.
Before they ever even announced a CREED II, you and I and everybody else were dreaming of the same thing: a sequel where Adonis meets the man who killed his father in the ring, Ivan Drago, and has to fight his son. It’s one of those things that’s so obvious that they sort of had to do it. If the sequel was about anything else, no matter how exciting, you’d just think “Yeah, but why not Ivan Drago?” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: boxing, Dolph Lundgren, Floyd Munteanu, Ludwig Goransson, Michael B. Jordan, Phylicia Rashad, Russell Hornsby, Steven Caple Jr., Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 81 Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2018
Okay, let’s try this again. Due to the troubles with the Patreon plugin I’m going to try housing the exclusive reviews on Patreon itself. (Thanks for the suggestion, Shan.) So if you pledge $1 or more to my Patreon you can enjoy the ever-loving werewolf shit out of this exclusive review series. Thanks for your patience!
And here’s a link for the first one, TWILIGHT.
Tags: Chris Weitz, Kristen Stewart, Patreon bonus content, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, vampires, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Romance | 17 Comments »
Wednesday, November 21st, 2018
I don’t know why there was a Wes Craven movie that I didn’t bother to see in the theater and then didn’t bother to see on home video for over 20 years. Granted, everyone said it was terrible, and it seemed to be an Eddie Murphy comedy vehicle, not a real horror movie, and he started wearing fat suits and shit right around that time.
But these days you can’t take fresh Wes Craven movies for granted, so I decided the moment had come to watch VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. The verdict: it’s not an unheralded gem. But it’s also not what I had pictured. It’s a mildly interesting failure.
Murphy (DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) plays Maximillian, the only survivor of a tribe of Egyptian vampire who “traveled south through Africa and over the Atlantic to a beautiful island hidden deep in the Bermuda Triangle,” where they lived for centuries before the vampire hunters found them. There’s a certain parallel to COMING TO AMERICA, because he’s this confident, exotic visitor from another culture, looking for a woman. In this case it’s a specific woman, Rita (Angela Bassett, PANTHER, BLACK PANTHER), a rookie NYPD detective who doesn’t know there are vampires, or that her dad was one, or that she’s the last descendent and only hope to revive the race. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allen Payne, Angela Bassett, Charlie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Joanna Cassidy, John Witherspoon, Kadeem Hardison, Simbi Khali, vampires, Wes Craven
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 34 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2018
When last we heard from director Steve McQueen U.K., his movie 12 YEARS A SLAVE had won best picture. Five years later he finally has a followup, and it’s a violent, artfully crafted heist movie. Now you’re earning that name, my friend.
It’s credited as “based on ‘Widows’ by Lynda La Plante,” which seems to refer to the 1983 ITV mini-series, though there’s also a book version that says “SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE” on the cover, and I have found no definitive answer as to which La Plante wrote first. Anyway, McQueen adapted whatever it was he adapted with Gillian Flynn of GONE GIRL (both book and movie) fame.
Liam Neeson (THE DEAD POOL), Jon Bernthal (THE ACCOUNTANT), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO) and Coburn Goss (MAN OF STEEL) star as a Chicago-based crew of highly skilled, even highlier armed and armoured robber motherfuckers in the vein of HEAT or L.A. TAKEDOWN or DEN OF THIEVES or POINT BREAK or POINT BREAK REMAKE. And by “star” I mean for a couple minutes at the very beginning we see a tiny bit of their heist intercut with them saying goodbye to their wives beforehand and then they get blown up. You barely even see that last guy’s face. Because this is not about dudes like that. It’s about their loved ones who have to clean up their mess. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a TV show, Brian Tyree Henry, Carrie Coon, Chuck Inglish, Coburn Goss, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, Elizabeth Debicki, Garrett Dillahunt, heist, Jon Bernthal, Kevin J. O'Connor, Liam Neeson, Lukas Haas, Lynda La Plante, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Michael Rocks, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert Duvall, Steve McQueen UK, Viola Davis
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 12 Comments »
