Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Wednesday, February 7th, 2024
There was a period of about 25 years, it now occurs to me, when I had seen every Pixar movie in the theater. It wasn’t some corporate brand loyalty bullshit, it was because for most of that time their track record was immaculate. They were the originators of computer animated features, and of their brand of storytelling, and no one could match them, though many tried. For a while I watched most of their competitors too, then I didn’t, but I still kept up with Pixar. 21 of them in a row. To me only CARS 2 was genuinely bad. Otherwise the worst ones were just forgettable. And that wasn’t many of them.
It was the pandemic that broke my streak. I can’t remember if theaters were even open here when ONWARD came out, but I wasn’t going until the vaccine, so I saw it VOD or something. I enjoyed the clever stuff they did with the premise of a sword and sorcery fantasy world evolved into modern civilization, but the emotional part rang false to me. Since it was about a son mourning his father I really thought it would wreck me, but I was annoyed how both the main character and the movie completely ignored that his mother suffered the same or greater loss. Made me kinda hate the kid. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Catherine O'Hara, Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Peter Sohn, Pixar, Ronnie del Carmen, Wendi McLendon-Covey
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, February 6th, 2024
I feel a little guilty for reviewing more Netflix movies than usual lately. But I’ve been catching up on some stuff and I think THEY CLONED TYRONE (2023), if not the best of them, is still the kind of thing that sinister corporation owes us as a civilization and culture. They gotta balance out their ills a little by spending money on movies by new directors, that have interesting ideas. Give them a name cast and some production value but let them make something that’s not necessarily very commercial, at least not enough that they would’ve made it if they were in the movie business, looking for paying customers.
This one they actually promoted more than most of their stuff and they still didn’t give a fuck, they released it on the same day as BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER! It’s distinct from the typical Netflix joint both structurally and stylistically – structurally because it has the confidence to let you be confused for a while before it starts to reveal what’s going on, or even that there is something going on; stylistically because it avoids that modern digital cleanness, instead having a beautifully grainy 16mm sort of texture to it. I assume they shot it digitally and did that in post (would it really have cigarette burns on the reel changes if it was never meant for projection?) but it works just the same. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: conspiracy, Desmond Murray, J. Alphonse Nicholson, Jamie Foxx, John Boyega, Juel Taylor, Kiefer Sutherland, Leon Lamar, Netflix, Pierre Charles, Teyona Parris, Tony Rettenmaier, Trayce Malachi
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 9 Comments »
Monday, February 5th, 2024
There are a bunch of directors who made legendary movies in the ‘70s and ‘80s but in the ‘90s were directing, like, episodes of Timetrax and shit. One such director is Lewis Teague, who gave us the outstanding large animal pictures ALLIGATOR and CUJO, plus FIGHTING BACK, CAT’S EYE, THE JEWEL OF THE NILE and COLLISION COURSE. But after NAVY SEALS it was all TV for the rest of his career.
Oh well. It’s respectable work if you can get it, and at least his small screen period started with a pretty fun sci-fi/action movie for HBO. WEDLOCK (1991) (also released on tape as DEADLOCK) is a futuristic prison escape movie that came out less than a year before Stuart Gordon’s FORTRESS. It’s not as good, but it was first. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Basil Wallace, Branko Lustig, Broderick Miller, Danny Trejo, Denis Forest, futuristic prison, Glenn Plummer, Grand L. Bush, James Remar, Joan Chen, Lewis Teague, made-for-cable-movies, Mimi Rogers, Rutger Hauer, Stephen Tobolowsky
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 18 Comments »
Thursday, February 1st, 2024
FIGHTING BACK (1982), a.k.a. DEATH VENGEANCE a.k.a. STREET WARS, is another vigilante drama produced by Dino De Laurentiis, obviously wanting to follow up on his success with DEATH WISH after selling that off to Cannon. DEATH WISH II came out about three months before this, but if Laurentiis was trying to take the wind out of its sails, he was not successful. Cannon kept all the wind and this one remains fairly obscure, despite a nice blu-ray release from Arrow.
But it has some good people behind it. It’s directed by Lewis Teague between ALLIGATOR and CUJO, written by Tom Hedley (FLASHDANCE) and David Zelag Goodman (STRAW DOGS, LOGAN’S RUN, THE EYES OF LAURA MARS, FREEDOM ROAD). Rather than a badass like Charles Bronson it stars the more everyman-ish Tom Skerritt (who would follow this with THE DEAD ZONE, TOP GUN and SPACECAMP) and it seems to be going for a less pulpy, more down to earth approach… except in the important matter of the inciting incident. For that they provide us with as hysterical of a “crime is out of control these days” exaggeration as we could ever ask for. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Rasche, David Zelag Goodman, Debra Laws, Dino De Laurentiis, Earle Hyman, Gina DeAngelis, Jim Moody, Lewis Teague, Machael Sarrazin, Patti Lupone, Pete Richardson, Peter Brocco, Piero Piccioni, Ted Ross, Tom Hedley, Tom Skerritt, vigilantes, Yaphet Kotto
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Drama | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, January 31st, 2024
SIXTY MINUTES (60 Minuten) is a really impressive new addition to the Netflix library of international action, this one hailing from Germany. It feels very modern in the execution of its hard-hitting martial arts action, but it’s classical in its simplicity. A straight forward set up, an easy to understand goal, an emotional underpinning.
Here’s how it works. Octavio Bergmann (Emilio Sakraya, Warrior Nun), nickname Octa, is an MMA fighter successful enough to have his own gym in Berlin. He has a fight scheduled for today but it keeps getting delayed, and his team are trying to keep him warmed up, but he’s preoccupied because it’s his daughter Leonie (Morik Heydo)’s seventh birthday and he wants to make sure not to miss her party.
It must be said that this man is a bit of a fuck up. No one seems to think he’s been there enough for his daughter, who he had when he was 19 and didn’t stay with the mother, Mina (Livia Matthes, “Model,” CHARLIE’S ANGELS). On phone calls both his daughter and his ex don’t seem to believe he’ll really show up. And it’s implied that it was out of his control, but somehow he agreed to a fight on her birthday. The English title could’ve been DEADBEATDOWN. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce Willow, Dennis Mojen, Emilio Sakraya, Eniko Fulop, German cinema, Livia Metthes, Marie Mouroum, MMA, Oliver Kienle, Thomas Hacikoglu
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, January 30th, 2024
Man, what am I doing leaving all these Johnnie To movies unseen? Whenever I watch one I seem to fall in love. Case in point, THROW DOWN (2004). As far as I knew it wasn’t even one of his more popular ones when Criterion released it in 2021, at least not in the U.S. It was just a forgotten Tai Seng DVD from the aughts. But now it is the recipient of the prestigious The Best Thing I’ve Seen Lately award.
Most of To’s movies I’ve seen have been crime movies. They have good action but they’re more notable for their visual beauty and operatic emotion. They usually feel more poetic than badass, though they can be both. THROW DOWN technically has some crime in it, but that’s not the main topic, and to my surprise this is largely a comedy. Not the broad type of humor I associate with Hong Kong cinema, but a very dry, offbeat sort of humor of different characters matter-of-factly following their idiosyncratic pursuits into strange situations and never making a big deal out of it. Never mugging, never underlining. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Kwok, Calvin Choi, Cherrie Ying, Eddie Cheung, Haitao Li, Ho Sai-Man, Johnnie To, judo, Lo Hoi-Pang, Louis Koo, Tony Ka Fai Leung, Yuen Bun
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts | 18 Comments »
Monday, January 29th, 2024
If they were in America, Rudolf (Christian Friedel, THE WHITE RIBBON) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, who just got a best actress nomination for ANATOMY OF A FALL) would say they were living the American dream. They’re in a big new house near a river where they can swim and fish. They have a bunch of kids and a dog and their backyard is huge, with an elaborate garden, cobblestone paths, a huge greenhouse, a nice deck, and a small swimming pool with a slide. They even have servants. All because Rudolf’s doing so good in his job. And they live right next to work, so he doesn’t have to commute at all, he’s home right after work to spend time with the family. The kids love him (they got him a canoe for his birthday), and he and Sandra get along well, they make each other laugh, they talk about the trips they’ll go on after all this.
It’s the biggest possible “all this,” though: World War II. And I think you’ll share my objection to Rudolf’s job. He’s the commandant of Auschwitz. A very bad person. The conceit of writer/director Jonathan Glazer (SEXY BEAST, BIRTH, UNDER THE SKIN)’s gut punch of a movie is to matter-of-factly depict the mundane activities of this family as they go through their daily activities without a thought to the suffering they’re causing and benefiting from on the other side of the wall. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: best picture nominees, Christian Friedel, Holocaust, Jonathan Glazer, neo-nazis, Sandra Huller
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 19 Comments »
Thursday, January 25th, 2024
Chen Kaige is an acclaimed Chinese filmmaker I have no familiarity with. Too classy for me, I guess. Now I finally watched one, but not one of his famous ones from the ‘80s or ‘90s, it’s his 14th film, a straight up kung fu movie from 2015 called MONK COMES DOWN THE MOUNTAIN. And the reason is because it’s based on a book by Xu Haofeng, who wrote Wong Kar Wai’s THE GRANDMASTER and directed THE SWORD IDENTITY, JUDGE ARCHER and THE FINAL MASTER. I adore his style and his themes and his two most recent (THE HIDDEN SWORD and 100 YARDS) aren’t available here yet, so I’ll take what I can get.
This is a good one but totally different from those other movies I mentioned. The ones Xu directs have a very artful economy and restraint to them, the compositions and camera movements are often very classical, the fighting styles are uniquely straightforward, often based around quick, simple movements rather than flying around all over the place. Don’t get me wrong, obviously I love flying around all over the place, but I like how distinct this other approach is.
MONK COMES DOWN THE MOUNTAIN is not that. Nor is it a TV movie starring Tony Shalhoub. It’s a big show-offy kung fu fantasy, with lots of digital FX, some of them pretty goofy. It was released in 3D Imax, and (unlike American movies, which are too cowardly to do 3D stuff in 3D movies) you can tell. And it’s often comedic in a broad, muggy kind of way. Xu’s movies tend to have a much dryer humor. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Kwok, Chen Kaige, Danny Chan, Dong Qi, Fan Wei, Jaycee Chan, Ku Huen Chiu, Li Xuejian, Lin Chi-Ling, Pinocchio, Vanness Wu, Wang Baoqiang, Wang Xueqi, Xu Haofeng, Yuen Wah
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 24th, 2024
I didn’t know what a NYAD was, but it’s the last name of a real life person, Diana Nyad, a marathon swimmer who broke a bunch of distance records in the ‘70s and in 1978 tried to swim from Havana to Key West. She made it about 76 miles in 42 hours but had to quit.
Now it’s 2010, she’s played by Annette Bening (MARS ATTACKS!), she’s been retired since her 30th birthday, and she’s just hitting her 60th. She spends her time with Bonnie (Jodie Foster, HOTEL ARTEMIS), they seem like a couple at first, but they’re just best friends. Quirky lesbian pals. Since she’s been angsty about aging, Bonnie convinces her to get back into exercise, and she swims for the first time in years. That goes well, so she announces out of the blue that she’s going to try the Cuba swim again. Bonnie is kinda like jesus christ lady you cannot be serious and then somehow agrees to be her coach. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Annette Bening, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Jodie Foster, Julia Cox, Rhys Ifans, swimming
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Sport | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024
After THE FAVOURITE gave Yorgos Lanthimos success, acclaim and a game lead actress on a bigger budget than his earlier films, the director aimed those resources at a project he’d been trying to do since 2009: an adaptation of the 1992 novel Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer by Alasdair Gray. While I’ve read that the novel is set in a realistic Victorian London, Lanthimos has turned it into a colorful (and sometimes black-and-white) gothic cartoon world, with shades of Tim Burton and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, maybe a little BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, while retaining his cock-eyed view, dark humor and fascination with chaotic people upending social mores. POOR THINGS was nominated for Oscars for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, actress, supporting actor, makeup, music, costume design, cinematography, editing and production design this morning because they heard I was posting my review today and wanted to try to capitalize on that. I’ll allow it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Emma Stone, Hanna Schygulla, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Margaret Qualley, Mark Coulier, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Suzy Bemba, Vicki Pepperdine, Willem Dafoe, Yorgos Lanthimos
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords | 47 Comments »
