Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Wednesday, June 13th, 2018
June 5, 1998
Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey, THE DEAD POOL, PINK CADILLAC) thinks he just enjoys a normal white picket fence type life mowing the lawn and saying hello to the neighbors and putting on a suit to go work at the insurance company and all that type of shit. He has no idea that his idyllic town of Seahaven is actually a set built on a soundstage so huge it can be seen from space, or that everyone around him, from the random cars that drive past him to his own wife Meryl (Laura Linney, ABSOLUTE POWER, MYSTIC RIVER, SULLY), are hired actors, in on the deception. Literally everything in his life is staged for his benefit.
It sounds like a Twilight Zone premise, and it kind of is: there’s an episode of the ’80s incarnation of the show that’s pretty similar. In “Special Service,” written by J. Michael Straczynski (CHANGELING), David Naughton is shaving one morning when the bathroom mirror falls off the wall and he sees a camera behind it. A serviceman shows up and tries to make excuses but soon has to admit to him that his life is a popular TV show. He seems to be allowed to live in the regular world, though, and the people around him are just cool about keeping the secret until the cat’s out of the bag, at which point he gets mobbed by screaming women. He also got to grow up normal before they started doing this to him five years ago. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Niccol, Ed Harris, Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Paul Giamatti, Peter Weir, Philip Glass, Summer of '98
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 38 Comments »
Tuesday, June 12th, 2018
May 27, 1998
I have to admit I’ve never paid much attention to rapper turned filmmaker (I guess?) Master P. I say “I guess” because I GOT THE HOOK-UP is credited as “A MASTER P film,” but it’s directed by Michael Martin, a guy who directed some Outkast videos and the nearly unwatchable Snoop Dogg DTV movie EASTSIDAZ. P did write it though, along with Leroy Douglas and Carrie Mungo (who don’t have any other IMDb credits).
P grew up in the projects in New Orleans, studied business administration at a college in Oakland, and used money from a malpractice settlement related to the death of his grandfather to open a store called No Limit Records, which eventually turned into a record label of the same name. He released his first tape in 1990 and had five albums by the time he moved back to New Orleans in 1995 and built an empire with other rappers including Mystikal (currently on trial for rape) and his brothers C-Murder (now serving a life sentence for murder) and Silkk the Shocker (not accused of anything).
P’s mainstream breakthrough was the 1997 album Ghetto D, which went triple-platinum partly on the strength of the song “Make ‘Em Say Uhh!”, which is about making ’em say “Uhh!” Thanks to the success of the label and smart investing, at the time of I GOT THE HOOK-UP, P was #10 on Forbes magazine’s list of America’s highest paid entertainers. He had starred in and co-directed the straight to video I’M BOUT IT, with another one called MP DA LAST DON coming in December of ’98. I’ve never really looked into any of these things, but summer of ’98 hosted his first theatrical release, I GOT THE HOOK-UP, so I decided this would be a good time to try to figure out what was up with that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.J. Johnson, Anthony Boswell, Frantz Turner, Gretchen Palmer, Ice Cube, John Witherspoon, Master P, Snoop Dogg, Summer of '98, Tiny Lister
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 30 Comments »
Monday, June 11th, 2018
also on May 22, 1998
I remember THE OPPOSITE OF SEX being a big deal indie movie at the time, but it seems mostly forgotten now, mentioned even less often than its widely hated box office competitor GODZILLA ’98. Maybe more than LOST IN SPACE? I had kinda forgotten it too, at least what it was about, but I’m glad I decided to get a refresher on this really funny and kinda sweet dark comedy about a… well, kind of a wild thing, I guess.
Christina Ricci, in her second best movie released on this day, plays Dedee Truitt, a mean and grouchy sixteen year old who runs away from her home in Louisiana to find her grown up, gay half-brother Bill (Martin Donovan, SILENT HILL: REVELATION 3D) in suburban Indiana. She manages to seduce Bill’s younger boyfriend Matt (Ivan Sergei, DANGEROUS MINDS, the tv show of John Woo’s ONCE A THIEF) and uses pregnancy to convince him to steal ten thousand dollars from a safe deposit box and run off with her.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christina Ricci, Don Roos, Ivan Sergei, Johnny Galecki, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, Martin Donovan, Rodney Eastman, Summer of '98, William Lee Scott
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 36 Comments »
Thursday, June 7th, 2018
“Look, you’re a tough guy, but you’re also a good guy.”
“I ain’t that good, mate. You saw what I did to that lad, didn’t ya?”
Yeah, I know, you’re all aware that Scott Adkins is the reigning king of DTV action. That’s not new information. You’re all well acquainted with UNDISPUTED II and III and 4 and UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING, if not HARD TARGET 2 or EL GRINGO or the other ones.
What hasn’t been discussed as much is that our favorite English martial artist has hit a new stride in his string of collaborations with director Jesse V. Johnson. Last year they did SAVAGE DOG, a weird and brutal period piece, followed a few months ago by the smart-ass assassin tale ACCIDENT MAN. Adkins gives honestly great performances in stoic roles like Boyka, who grunt almost as much as they speak, and I love those types of characters. But as co-writer and producer of ACCIDENT MAN, he not only gave himself a ton of great fight scenes, but all kinds of witty dialogue and first person narration that no other onscreen kicker could handle. And his latest continues the trend of retaining his Englishness and showing great charisma and verbal dexterity while still living up to the action expectations of a marquee-name martial arts star. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jesse V. Johnson, Louis Mandylor, Luke LaFontaine, Michael Pare, Sarah Finley, Scott Adkins, Tony Todd, Vladimir Kulich
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 41 Comments »
Wednesday, June 6th, 2018
Until now, Leigh Whannell has seemed like James Wan’s sidekick. I guess technically he’s the creator of SAW, because he wrote the short film, but he’s mainly known for co-writing the first three SAWs, DEAD SILENCE and all the INSIDIOUSes. And then he directed INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY CHAPTER THREE. But did you know he had it in him to go off on his own and write and direct a ferocious low budget cyberpunk action thriller? Man, why didn’t you tell me?
Logan Marshall-Green (from THE INVITATION and Quarry, but I’ll always think of him as “I just want answers, baby” from PROMETHEUS) stars as Grey Trace, a simple mechanic who loves listening to Howlin’ Wolf records in the garage and working on his Firebird even though he lives in a near future with self-driving cars and cyber implants and shit. (Yeah, I know. But at least they don’t say out loud that he’s an analog man in a digital world. They just show you visually and then move on.)
Then one night mysterious criminals shoot him and his wife (Melanie Vallejo, the Blue Ranger on Power Rangers Mystic Force), leaving him paralyzed and her dead. Though his house is set up with some pretty sweet robot arms that can prepare food for him, he’s miserable and suicidal without his wife or the ability to work with his hands. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Betty Gabriel, cyberpunk, Harrison Gilbertson, Leigh Whannell, Logan Marshall-Green, Melanie Vallejo, Simon Maiden
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 31 Comments »
Tuesday, June 5th, 2018
At a glance the PROM NIGHT of 2008 doesn’t seem like a remake at all, but more of a re-use of the title. It doesn’t take any major elements of the original or its unrelated sequels – there’s no children’s game turned deadly, no principal’s son or masked killer or prom queen burned alive and back as a ghost or evil priest, no Hamilton High or Brock Simpson or even ambiguity about which North American country it takes place in (it’s in Bridgeport, Oregon, though filmed mostly in L.A.). It does take place on prom night, though, so I totally get why they wanted that title.
If you look closely it is arguably based on a somewhat forgotten plot point of the original 1980 PROM NIGHT, but if so that detail is now a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of the fifth revision of the 13th draft. The part in question is the original’s red herring about the pedophile who was blamed for the sister’s death and now has escaped and the police are trying to make sure he doesn’t come to the prom for revenge. The remake/”remake” uses a similar escaped lunatic template, but in this one it’s ex-teacher turned stalker Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech, ACTS OF VENGEANCE) who, three years ago, became delusionally obsessed with his student Donna (Brittany Snow, PITCH PERFECT, BUSHWICK) and murdered her family in front of her. Unlike PROM NIGHT (but like PROM NIGHT IV and their original inspiration, HALLOWEEN) there’s no whodunit mystery in this one. He definitely did it, he really is here, he for sure is killing a bunch of people, and we’re seeing it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brittany Snow, Collins Pennie, Dana Davis, Idris Elba, J.S. Cardone, Jessica Stroup, Johnathon Schaech, Kellan Lutz, Nelson McCormick, Oregon, prom, remakes, Scott Porter, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 81 Comments »
Monday, June 4th, 2018
By the time they finished off the PROM NIGHT series it was 12 years after the original. The ’80s horror cycle that had given rise to Mary Lou Maloney had petered out. This was a year of studio auteur horror (BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, RAISING CAIN, DEATH BECOMES HER), genius cult directors getting to work with more resources (DEAD ALIVE, ARMY OF DARKNESS), shitty horror with morphing (Stephen King’s SLEEPWALKERS, not Stephen King’s THE LAWNMOWER MAN) and in my opinion the best horror movie of the decade (CANDYMAN). The PROM NIGHT series was part of another trend of lesser or totally unwanted sequels, arguably including PET SEMATARY TWO, HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH, HOUSE IV, STEPFATHER 3, WITCHCRAFT IV & V, 976-EVIL 2, CRITTERS 4, AMITYVILLE 3: IT’S ABOUT TIME, BASKET CASE 3: THE PROGENY, THE GATE 2: TRESPASSERS and SCANNERS III: THE TAKEOVER (and some might say ALIEN 3).
PROM NIGHT IV: DELIVER US FROM EVIL, the finale of the original Canadian PROM NIGHT series (so far), ditches parts II–III‘s story of the avenging prom queen ghost for some new religiously themed horror about some Catholic school students and their boyfriends from Hamilton High who get dressed up and rent a limo and do not go to prom. (So there is no disco, no rock, no Maestro Fresh-Wes, no popular music at all.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alle Ghadban, Brock Simpson, Canadian, Clay Borris, evil priest, J.H. Wyman, James Carver, Joy Tanner, Kenneth McGregor, Krista Bulmer, Nicole de Boer, Phil Morrison, Richard Beattie, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 20 Comments »
Thursday, May 31st, 2018
PROM NIGHT III: THE LAST KISS is the only PROM NIGHT movie to directly follow up on the previous one. It opens on the grave of Mary Lou Maloney, who we see is now in Hell, where chained up dead girls in underwear and torn stockings do a kick line barefoot on burning-hot bricks to the tune of ’50s rock ‘n roll saxophone and moans of agony. But somehow Mary Lou (now played by Courtney Taylor, COVER ME, CAMP BLOOD) got a hold of a nail file, and when she manages to file through her chain she explodes out of her grave and EVIL-DEAD-cams right back to the school, where she manifests a working jukebox to lure in the night janitor (Terry Doyle, NIGHT FRIEND) and ask him to dance with her. She knows him by name because he was one of the many boys she dated in high school.
It’s a depressing commentary on small town life that this poor guy would still be living in the same god damn town where he grew up, mopping floors, and so mush-brained that when a mysterious sexy trespasser calls him by the same pet name as the girl he dated in high school who was burned alive in front of his eyes and recently came back from the dead, killed several students and burned down the gym during the prom he smiles nostalgically and says “I haven’t heard that name in 30 years. There was a girl–” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brock Simpson, Courtney Taylor, Cyndy Preston, David Stratton, Maestro Fresh-Wes, Peter Simpson, prom, Roger Dunn, Ron Oliver, Terry Doyle, Tim Conlon
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Wednesday, May 30th, 2018
HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the first PROM NIGHT, but it follows the same basic template of opening with a tragic past incident and then skipping to the present day, when older actors playing some of the same characters await impending tragedy at the senior prom.
This one seems even more CARRIE-inspired than the first one, even having a part where the protagonist is teased while playing volleyball in P.E. and gets hit in the head with the ball and knocked to the ground. But instead of having an obvious HALLOWEEN influence it’s the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series. This is, after all, a relatively late sequel – seven years later, in a whole new era of horror.
The classics were just pouring out in 1987: EVIL DEAD II, THE STEPFATHER, THE MONSTER SQUAD, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS, HELLRAISER, PRINCE OF DARKNESS and many others. There was so much going on in the genre that this didn’t make the cover of Fangoria when it came out in October – that honor went to Jason Voorhees, with THE HIDDEN, PUMPKINHEAD, THE UNHOLY, GHOULIES II and WEREWOLF on the sidebar.
When PROM NIGHT came along in 1980 the modern age of horror had been just kind of kicking off. By ’87 it was an industry, it had a built-in audience that worshiped special effects artistry and loved franchises. So hey, PROM NIGHT was a big one. Time for another PROM NIGHT. Doesn’t even need Jamie Lee. She would’ve graduated by now. Who was the killer again? The brother? Well, that doesn’t work. Do a new one. Make her a prom queen. And put her name in the title. Maybe make it rhyme? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Beverley Hendry, Bruce Pittman, Canadian, Lisa Schrage, Louis Ferreira, Michael Ironside, Richard Monette, Robert Lewis, Ron Oliver, slashers, Steve Atkinson
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, May 29th, 2018
PROM NIGHT is one of the early slasher cash-ins. It has a 2008 remake, though, so it’s a classic. It kind of seems like there’s not alot going on, because the body count is pretty low and the killings don’t start until 2/3 of the way in and there’s a surprisingly long uninterrupted disco dancing scene. But at the same time there’s a couple movies’ worth of things going on.
1. There’s the whole HALLOWEEN plot. A killer (also child molester) has been locked up (and burned up) and now it’s the anniversary of the murder of a little girl and he’s escaped and kidnapped a nurse and the police are trying to find him and I hope he doesn’t come after Jamie Lee Curtis (this time playing prom queen Kim, whose little sister was the murder victim).
2. Also there’s the CARRIE plot. A mean popular girl named Wendy (Eddie Benton, DR. STRANGE, HALLOWEEN II, Sledge Hammer!, married Michael Crichton and co-wrote TWISTER with him) is jealous of Kim getting to go to the prom with her ex-boyfriend Nick (Casey Stevens, THRESHOLD) so she gets a thuggish gum-chewing neanderthal lookin guy named Lou (David Mucci, “Quick Mike” in UNFORGIVEN) to help her with a cruel prank planned to take place when the king and queen are being crowned. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Canadian, David Mucci, disco, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeff Wincott, Leslie Nielsen, prom, Robert Silverman, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 39 Comments »
