Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Monday, September 22nd, 2014
Many of us know Pai Mei from his strict teachings of Beatrix Kiddo. In KILL BILL VOLUME 2 he’s a mean old bastard with long white hair. But he’s meaner and older than you may realize: his first movie appearance is in EXECUTIONERS FROM SHAOLIN (1977), a movie that opens with him dueling a Shaolin priest to the death and burning down the temple with most of the monks inside. He was already an old man then, and that was 1727 (at least according to the first literary references to the alleged historical figure he’s based on).
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chen Kuan-tai, Dragon Dynasty, Gordon Liu, Lily Li, Pai Mei, Shaolin Temple, Shaw Brothers, Wong Yue
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Friday, September 19th, 2014
or “What I Did With Charles Bronson On My Summer Vacation”
CHINO is the last western by John Sturges. Here’s the director of GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL practically making a spaghetti western – it’s a Dino De Laurentiis production, but filmed in Spain. I guess I don’t really know what kind of noodle that would be. But he reunites with his MAGNIFICENT SEVEN / THE GREAT ESCAPE star Charles Motherfuckin Bronson in his prime.
Bronson plays Chino Valdez, a loner who ran with the Cheyenne Indians in his youth and now lives all by himself on a ranch catching wild horses, training and breeding them. One day this blond kid named Jamie (Dick Van Patten’s youngest son Vincent) rides by looking for work and Chino – first seen in scary silhouette – lets him sleep in his barn. He keeps calling him “boy” and is the opposite of friendly, almost scares him away by chopping meat in front of him, but then shames him into staying so he doesn’t look like a sissy.
Of course they form a sweet friendship as Chino keeps getting a little nicer to him. He talks gruff but offers him things like letting him borrow a horse to ride into town and help him with different tasks. He makes him smile by threatening to cut his ears off. After a couple days he admits he likes having the boy around and hires him, even though he’s Chino, for fuck’s sake, why would he need anyone to help him with anything? Ridiculous. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charles Bronson, Charles Dickens, Clair Huffaker, Dino De Laurentiis, horses, Jill Ireland, John Sturges, Tony Curtis
Posted in Reviews, Western | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, September 17th, 2014
Here’s one of those beloved I.P.s that the studios are always looking to repackage and the fans get real excited for. It’s a high concept that’s practically a movie trailer already, it’s like LORD OF THE RINGS meets TITANIC meets DR. DOLITTLE. And just like with Batman or Superman there’s alot of great interpretations from different eras for the filmatists to draw from. You got the Bible version, you got the Quran version, you got the FANTASIA 2000 version. Alot of people grew up on the Noah property. But like THE LONE RANGER last year maybe the whole premise is a little bit too campy for today’s audiences. It might be a little too late for this to become a franchise.
Russell Crowe (NO WAY BACK, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS) plays Noah, a survivalist living off the grid in the wastelands traveling with his wife (Jennifer Connelly from PHENOMENA) and kids, trying to avoid men and cities. I’m not sure if it’s the future or the past, but they dress kinda like the people of Zion in THE MATRIX. There’s a weird scaly dog like Riddick would be friends with. We see when he’s attacked by barbarians that Noah does know how to kick ass, but he and his family live by a monk-like code, or maybe a hippie one. They don’t carry weapons, they don’t eat meat, they respect nature, the women are allowed to wear pants.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bible, Darren Aranofsky, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Russell Crowe
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 54 Comments »
Tuesday, September 16th, 2014
ESCAPE (or FLUKT) is a great little Norwegian period action movie. If I had seen any other Norwegian period action movies I’m confident this would still be one of the best. It’s kind of like a post-apocalypse movie because the population has been decimated by the Black Plague, and gangs of brutes terrorize anybody with the balls to travel around. One such balls-having family is attacked by one such gang, and only their teenage daughter Signe (Isabel Christine Andreasen) is spared.
It’s a gang of five men and one woman, Dagmar (Ingrid Bolso Berdal), who is their leader. Dagmar seems like a real savage and they’re all scared of her, but when they get back to the camp it seems like maybe she’s got some sense of sisterhood, some instinct to be protective of her fellow females. There’s an innocent little girl there named Frigg (Milla Olin), and as soon as she sees her Dagmar turns all motherly, talking to her sweetly and kissing her on the cheek. The men try to intimidate Signe, but Dagmar reassures her. “Don’t worry, they won’t touch you.”
But then, “Unless I let them.”
See, what Dagmar has planned for Signe is worse than what happened to her family. She says she’s barren, but Frigg needs a little sister. So you can see why Signe needs to flukt. Or escape.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Isabel Christine Andreasen, Milla Olin, Norway, Roar Uthaug, Thomas Moldestad
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 15 Comments »
Monday, September 15th, 2014
“The rate this is going we’re going to run out of Russians soon.”
A GOOD MAN – not to be confused with A DANGEROUS MAN, A SERIOUS MAN, A SINGLE MAN, A SOLITARY MAN, HE WAS A QUIET MAN, etc. – is the latest Steven Seagal picture, continuing what at first glance looks like Seagal’s Goatee Period (SGP). The new facial hair seems to represent the evil Seagal from another dimension, or at least a slightly darker Seagal. In the opening narration he explains that he has both light and darkness in him. Later he calls himself “a regular man who does bad things to bad people.”
He doesn’t seem like as much of an anti-hero as the Russian gangster he played in his last movie, FORCE OF EXECUTION, but he is a guy who goes around literally chopping up gangsters and leaving them strewn across alleys. Technically that’s not that different from what he does in other movies, but it’s presented differently. The first pile we don’t see as an action scene, we see it as a crime scene investigated by detectives. And he leaves a calling card – incense in their hands, the Chinese characters for “Gwai-Lo” – like a serial killer.
But on closer examination, this gangster-slayer actually is an alternate reality version of the guy from the last movie. On a behind the scenes featurette writer/director Keoni Waxman says they originally started writing it as a sequel to “our last movie,” which would explain the returning beard and that both characters are named Alexander. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Keoni Waxman, Steven Seagal, Tzi Ma, Victor Webster
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Seagal | 35 Comments »
Wednesday, September 10th, 2014
Note: I sincerely considered whether or not it was feasible to write this review one paragraph per year for 12 years. I decided maybe somebody else should do it.
When we first met Richard Linklater in the ’90s, his specialty was the one-day movie. SLACKER and DAZED AND CONFUSED captured a moment in time by following a group of characters (or a random selection of Austin weirdos) at a particular time. But all these years later he’s fascinated with the opposite: showing the same actors over a long period of time, seeing how things change. He started by following up the characters from the one-day BEFORE SUNRISE seven years later, and then fourteen years later. And with BOYHOOD, as you’ve probly heard, he somehow managed to make a movie with a star who is 7 years old at the beginning and he filmed a little bit each year until the year he starts college. About the only thing that would be more ambitious would be if he made a movie about trying to get me to sit through WAKING LIFE again.
The result is a movie as impressive as it sounds and much more involving. It still has that day-in-the-life feel, it’s just that it’s a whole bunch of days spread out across years. You know what, maybe alot of you other directors are just rushing things. Where’s the fire, man? Take the time to let your actors grow up on camera. Don’t be lazy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Hawkins, Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke, Marco Perella, Patricia Arquette, Richard Linklater, Wayne Bell
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Wednesday, September 10th, 2014
WILLOW CREEK is the latest Bobcat Goldthwait directorial work, but mostly it’s just the latest found footage movie. This one is about a couple visiting the area in Northern California where the famous (admitted hoax I thought, but I guess not) Sasquatch footage was filmed in 1967, retracing the journey of the filmers and making their own video about it. Boyfriend Jim (Bryce Johnson, also star of Goldthwait’s SLEEPING DOGS LIE) is a believer, but has enough of a sense of humor about it that a stranger angrily tells him “It’s not a joke!” after seeing him film in front of a wooden Bigfoot statue. Girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore, SURFER, DUDE) has to confess complete Bigfoot atheism, which leads to some tension and arguments. She’s just going along to have fun with her boyfriend, but it upsets him that they’re not on the same page.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexie Gilmore, another fucking found footage movie, Bobcat Goldthwait, Bryce Johnson, sasquatch
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Monday, September 8th, 2014
I don’t think FALCON RISING is a new b-action classic like BLOOD AND BONE or UNDISPUTED II. It’s not as imaginative or expertly executed as those. But it is something I love that the world doesn’t get enough of these days: a solid meat and potatoes action movie molded entirely around the badassness of a martial artist, the great Michael Jai White.
Career-wise, MJW has diversified more than his golden age predecessors like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal (who he fought in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN and EXIT WOUNDS, respectively). He’s supplemented his many action credits with Tyler Perry movies and sitcoms (WHY DID I GET MARRIED 1-TOO, For Better or Worse) and with creating and writing BLACK DYNAMITE (both the movie and the animated series, soon in its second season). But one look at his cartoonishly inflated muscles or at one of his flying kicks and it’s clear that he was meant for an endless series of action vehicles, even if that’s not what Hollywood (or Sofia, or whoever) thinks they’re supposed to be making in this era. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernie Barbarash, Isaac Florentine, Jimmy Navarro, Laila Ali, Larnell Stovall, Lateef Crowder, Masashi Odate, Michael Jai White, Millie Ruperto, Neal McDonough
Posted in Action, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Thursday, September 4th, 2014
15 MINUTES is a transitional Robert De Niro thriller bridging the Everybody Respects Robert De Niro era with the Robert De Niro Is a Guy Who Stars In DTV Movies With 50 Cent one. Here De Niro plays Detective Eddie Flemming, famous NYC supercop who steps on the toes of younger hot shot Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw (Ed Burns in a practice run of his sidekick character in ALEX CROSS) when both report to the scene of a deadly apartment fire.
Eddie is famous for being on the tabloid show Top Story, where he lets the host, Robert Hawkins (Kelsey Grammer, Cheetos*), follow him on busts, so everybody treats him like a rock star and it pisses Warsaw off. But he really has been around the block and has alot of wisdom to share, so it’s a buddy movie where they butt heads but then he unexpectedly goes out on a limb for the kid and sort of mentors him and what not. All that type of stuff.
But also this is a satire about this crime celebrity culture, that’s what that title’s about. Back in the late ’80s, early 2000s we were very concerned about tabloid news shows and their morbid obsession with O.J. Simpson, the Menendez Brothers and etc., so here is a movie coming years after after MAN BITES DOG, SERIAL MOM, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, SCREAM, etc., and hitting at kind of an embarrassingly obvious target in my opinion. But it does get a little bit of novelty by framing it as the American dream, showing a crime spree committed by two European immigrants (introducing Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov) who have come to America seeking opportunity. Well, actually to collect their share of the money from a bank robbery, which it turns out their buddy already spent while they were in prison. Whoops. Sorry fellas.
By the way I wonder if they ever met Yuri Boyka in prison? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anton Yelchin, Charlize Theron, Ed Burns, John Herzfeld, Karel Roden, Kelsey Grammer, Kim Cattrall, Melina Kanakaredes, Oleg Taktarov, Robert De Niro, Vera Farmiga
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014
You know, if I find some funk record I never heard of I look at the year, if it came out between 1970 and 1976 then I get higher hopes. ’77 and later is risky. This is a similar concept. There’s still a few Dolph Lundgren pictures I haven’t seen, but I figured COVER-UP was the most promising one because of where it came in his filmography: 1991, that glorious time between the late ’80s and mid-’90s when American action movies were reaching their peak fitness levels, their maximum potential. Dolph did THE PUNISHER and I COME IN PEACE, then this, then SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO and UNIVERSAL SOLDIER.
Well, turns out there’s a reason why you hear those ones mentioned occasionally and this one never. It’s not that memorable. But it has moments. I like moments.
It’s directed by Manny Coto (DR. GIGGLES, STAR KID) who is now mainly known as a writer and producer on 24. This was probly pretty good practice for that. Writer William Tannen is usually a director, he did HERO AND THE TERROR. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dolph Lundgren, John Finn, Manny Coto, Vic Armstrong, William Tannen
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 31 Comments »
