Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
For ONLY GOD FORGIVES, the latest from writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn (DRIVE, VALHALLA RISING, etc.), Ryan Gosling trained in Thai boxing to play a quiet American running a Muay Thai gym in Bangkok. That lady who sued DRIVE for not being like THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS is gonna have to sue this one for not being like BLOODSPORT.
Or for not being like DRIVE, for that matter! This is not a commercial movie at all. It’s all mood and ambience. Slow, deliberate camera moves down hallways, precise, Kubrickian compositions, men introduced standing in poses rather than walking into rooms, not alot of dialogue, credits in Thai. It doesn’t explain much and leaves alot of weirdness lying around to either interpret, enjoy as surrealism, or get frustrated by. Of course I like to read a little symbolism into some of it, but I think it also works taken literally. This is a foreign, dangerous world that people like us wouldn’t understand. Not just because it’s Bangkok, either. The Bangkok you live in is just a sugar coated topping. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: arthouse badass, Kristin Scott Thomas, Muay Thai, Nicolas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling, Thailand
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 135 Comments »
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013
If I were to tell you I watched a movie with characters named Flik Royale, Chazz Morningstar, Blessing Rowe, Deacon Zee, Mother Darling and Bishop Enoch, what would that tell you? That’s right – it was a Spike Lee movie.
(Later we find out that Flik is a nickname and Enoch is an assumed name. Gator Purify didn’t have that luxury.)
RED HOOK SUMMER is the low budget indie movie Lee put out last year, kind of a return to his roots after a couple bigger studio movies, INSIDE MAN and MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA. Spike says it came about when he was talking to James McBride, author of the St. Anna novel, about what they saw as the dire state of black cinema. (I take that to mean “complaining about Tyler Perry movies.”) He had recently bought a digital camera so he asked McBride to write something and they would make it. Together they came up with a story about a middle class Atlanta Kid, maybe 13-14, coming to stay with his estranged grandpa in the Red Hook housing projects of Brooklyn.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: church, Clarke Peters, James McBride, Nate Parker, New York, Spike Lee
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Sunday, July 21st, 2013
I’m always open to a James Wan movie just because I love DEATH SENTENCE so much. But everything else he’s done (until FAST AND FURIOUS 7 next summer) is horror, so it’s pretty different. SAW was okay, I kinda liked INSIDIOUS, haven’t seen the other one (DEAD SILENCE) yet. I probly wouldn’t have rushed out to see this except I heard good word including from some of you commenters who I trust.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ed and Lorraine Warren, supernatural investigators or demonologists. They’re actually based on a real couple who famously investigated the cases that AMITYVILLE HORROR and A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT and I think GHOST DAD and CASPER MEETS WENDY were based on, and wrote several books about this type of shit. I guess this is kind of like CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND where the movie pretends to believe their story and tells it as they would tell it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: demonic possession, ghosts, James Wan, Lili Taylor, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, Vera Farmiga, witches
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 51 Comments »
Thursday, July 18th, 2013
Here’s how I know marketing failed HIT & RUN: I was one of its test subjects. Some time last year I was at the multiplex picking up tickets for later in the day. In the lobby sometimes they have these survey people showing trailers on little monitors and asking focus group type questions. I always wondered what that was about, and I had some time to kill, so when they asked me to do it I said yes.
I saw other people being tested on THE EXPENDABLES 2, which at the time seemed exciting. But too my disappointment the survey focused on HIT & RUN, which I learned was a comedy starring Dax Shepard, Kristen Bell, Tom Arnold and Bradley Cooper as the bad guy. They showed me variations of different commercials, mainly consisting of Arnold yelling, Shepard getting hit in the face with a golf club, a car going off a jump, and the various actors in cars looking scared like they’re gonna crash. Some had a heavy emphasis on a scene where squeaky-voiced Kristen Chenoweth talks about taking Xanex. I struggled to answer questions like “What do you think the movie is about?” and “What is your favorite part?” (Answers: 1. “Well, they said he was a bank robber, so they’re after him? I don’t know.” 2. “I guess Bradley Cooper in dreadlocks looks funny.”) In the end I had to answer that no, I did not think there was any chance that I would see this movie, because it doesn’t look funny at all.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Beau Bridges, Bradley Cooper, car chases, Dax Shepard, Kristen Bell, Kristen Chenoweth, Tom Arnold
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, July 16th, 2013
It’s a crazy story, and it really happened pretty much like this: a group of well-off high school kids in the Valley, obsessed with celebrities and their clothes, decided to start robbing them. Using Google to find their addresses, and TMZ and Twitter to find out when they were out of town to host a party or attend an awards show, they’d show up at their mansions, let themselves in, then have the run of the place like it was the mall in DAWN OF THE DEAD. They stole clothes, handbags, jewelry, cash and (they say) cocaine. They chose Paris Hilton as their first victim because they thought she was “dumb” and might leave a door unlocked – sure enough they say they found the key under the welcome mat. Others (Lindsay Lohan, Brian Austin Green, Orlando Bloom, some reality show people I never heard of) left doors or windows unlocked. These kids chose celebrities whose fashion they admired, and they happened to be people with so much shit that they didn’t even notice when it was gone. Not until more experienced criminals got involved and knew to take the most expensive jewelry. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a magazine article, Harris Savides, Katie Chang, Leslie Mann, Lifetime movies, Paris Hilton, Sofia Coppola
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 47 Comments »
Monday, July 15th, 2013
DISCLAIMER (skip if you don’t give a shit): I haven’t reviewed Guillermo Del Toro’s movies since 2004, when Drew McWeeny got him to write a blurb for a book I self-published (later used by Titan on my other books). I never met or e-mailed the guy but it was a harsh, self-imposed rule to avoid any perception of being easier on his movies because of that connection, or worse, actually doing that. But I decided I want to write about PACIFIC RIM anyway. Maybe it was just a 9 year rule.
Since I haven’t reviewed them all here’s where I stand on Del Toro: been a fan since MIMIC. BLADE 2 is my favorite, followed by the three Spanish language movies in reverse chronological order. I enjoy the HELLBOYs but don’t love ’em. The second one frustrated me because it has many flashes of brilliance but doesn’t all come together for me. I like the movies he produces, also.
* * *
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Burn Gorman, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, giant monster, giant monsters, giant robots, Guillermo Del Toro, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, robots, Ron Perlman, Travis Beacham
Posted in Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 202 Comments »
Friday, July 12th, 2013
When I found out that Matt Schulze (OUT OF REACH, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, FAST FIVE, BLADE, BLADE II, THE TRANSPORTER) actually got to be the lead in a movie where he is a psychic chess expert trying to stop a serial killer I knew I had to watch it and review it for my column over on Daily Grindhouse. So that’s what I did.
click here to read it
Tags: chess, Joey Travolta, Matt Schulze, psychic, serial killer
Posted in Mystery, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Thursday, July 11th, 2013
I don’t want to say I’m a zombie fan. I mean, George Romero’s first three LIVING DEAD movies are some of my all time favorite movies. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a classic. Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 is pretty good. I keep watching The Walking Dead. And there’ve been other ones I’ve enjoyed. But I mean, it goes without saying that this particular type of monster has gotten overexposed. I do not envy whichever poor bastard decides to do a book chronicling all the zombie movies, and has to watch every imagination-free piece of shit that’s come along in the last ten years or so. Don’t make any more zombie movies for a couple ten years, you guys. You wore ’em out. I’m sick of fuckin hearing about em.
But it’s true, I do like a good one, and I was open to Brad Pitt’s blockbuster-budgeted zombie epic because it’s an approach that hasn’t been tried before. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, Christopher McQuarrie, Damon Lindelof, disaster, Drew Goddard, J. Michael Straczynski, Marc Forster, Matthew Michael Carnahan, zombies
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 124 Comments »
Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
THE KINGS OF SUMMER is a real good indie movie about teenagers, around 15 years old I believe, an emotional age. Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso from SUPER 8) don’t seem to be the popular kids, but they’re not “geeks” either. Their parents aren’t bad people, but they can’t get along with them. They’re old enough to sneak out and go to keggers, to get embarrassed talking to girls, but also they can’t drive, they gotta ride bikes. They’ve got a little bit of kid still in them, enough that it seems like a good idea when Joe convinces Patrick (and Biaggio [Moises Arias], a weird kid that just starts following them around) that they should ditch their parents and build themselves a house out in the woods.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alison Brie, Chris Galletta, coming of age, Erin Moriarty, Gabriel Basso, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Megan Mullally, Moises Arias, Nick Offerman, Nick Robinson
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
It’s been a while since I’ve seen William Lustig’s MANIAC, but its memory lingers as a favorite movie somewhere in the scummy part of my brain. It’s not a slasher movie by my definition because it follows the killer the whole time, but that makes it more upsetting. Played by GODFATHER I-II supporting player Joe Spinell (who also co-wrote the movie), this maniac is a sweaty, disgusting mess living in the shadows of the flea-bitten New York City of 1980, the era of peep shows and grindhouses. He was the weirdo women had to worry about following them on the subway. He was literally the guy you didn’t want to run into in a dark alley, partly because he might be dumping a body in the garbage, and you don’t want any part of that.
To me the most memorably fucked up scene is the one where he’s handcuffed himself to a mannequin that has a real woman’s scalp attached, and he’s crying and he says, “I’m so happy.” And then later there’s one of my all time favorite turnarounds where this sicko leaves the private world of his dingy apartment, he goes into the city in the daylight, and it turns out he knows people. He’s wearing sunglasses and he’s hanging out at a photo shoot. They think he’s cool! Great movie.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexandre Aja, Elijah Wood, first person POV, Franck Khalfoun, good remakes, Gregory Levasseur, remakes, synth score
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 27 Comments »
