Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Monday, March 4th, 2013
I rented SPECIAL FORCES, which is American for FORCES SPECIALES, thinking it was an American DTV movie. It stars Djimon Hounsou (NEVER BACK DOWN). I thought after ELEPHANT WHITE he was just doing shit like this. It turns out to be a French movie from 2011, and therefore the second movie about French special forces that I’ve seen recently.
Diane Kruger plays a journalist in Afghanistan to interview a woman about how badly she’s been treated by the Taliban. But the Taliban doesn’t like this so they execute the woman, kidnap the journalist and bring her to Pakistan. The French send in a special forces team who rescue her, but the extraction plan doesn’t work out so most of the movie is them journeying on foot to try to get her safely across the border.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Denis Menochet, Diane Kruger, Djimon Hounsou, French, Taliban
Posted in Action, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Monday, March 4th, 2013
THE ASSAULT (which is American for L’ASSAUT) is almost like a French remake of DELTA FORCE. It’s based on the true story of a hijacking of a French airliner in Algeria. Four Muslim extremists posing as passport inspectors take control of the plane on the runway. They demand the release of two captured mujahadeen, and they try to fly the plane to Paris. But it takes them half the movie just to get the stairs detached from the plane, and then they find out they only have enough fuel to get to Marseille. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: French, terrorism
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 4th, 2013
I never heard of this movie before and didn’t really have a reason to watch it except that a weird dude I know through work insisted on loaning it to me. In a situation like that you never know. It could be the one.
It’s a good setup for a no-budget movie. There are only three actors in the whole thing and one of them has a bit part as a tow truck driver. It’s the story of a down-on-his-luck white dude named Ernie (Rusty Gray) whose car breaks down on a desert road one day. After hours of trying to wave someone down he’s finally picked up by a wealthy black man named Anthony (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs). Anthony’s on his way to Vegas for a wedding (could this be a sidequel to THE HANGOVER?), but he believes in a paying-it-forward type of philosophy so after initially passing Ernie he turns around and tries to help.
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Tags: Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Rusty Gray
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN isn’t related to the Donny Yen movies IP MAN and IP MAN 2. I mean obviously they’re all based on the same Wing Chun master famous for teaching Bruce Lee, but this isn’t the official prequel to those ones, because it doesn’t have the same director or producers or anything. It’s like if right now somebody who’s not Spielberg made their own prequel to LINCOLN.
Well, I’ll try to be open-minded if they do that, because when I finally got around to this LEGEND IS BORN one I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a very effective martial arts melodrama with alot of the classic themes: brotherhood, loyalty, betrayal, finding a master, challenging tradition, falling in love. As kids Ip Man and his adopted brother Tin Chi go to live and study with the Wing Chun master Chan Wah Shun (Sammo Hung) and become friends with a girl student named Mei Wai. The three grow up to be very close, in fact an incomplete love triangle (Tin Chi loves Mei Wai, Mei Wai loves Ip Man, Ip Man doesn’t notice). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dennis To, Fan Siu-Wong, Huang Yi, Ip Man, Rose Chan, Sammo Hung, Wing Chun, Yuen Biao
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 37 Comments »
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
I know they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but a movie is not a book and a cover is not always the same art as a poster so I sometimes feel okay writing off a movie because of its poster. And these days when a movie has kind of a quasi-retro poster with a sort-of-old-school-ish illustration and attempted ’70s font, I assume it’s just some bullshit by somebody who liked GRINDHOUSE like I did and thinks if they know about old movies they can make a movie like that even if they don’t have the chops. But some of you said I had to watch SUSHI GIRL, so I gave it a shot. I forgive you.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Mackenzie, Cortney Palm, Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, Kern Saxton, Mark Hamill, Michael Biehn, Noah Hathaway, Sonny Chiba, Tony Todd
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 182 Comments »
Sunday, February 24th, 2013
Remember when John Woo did a science fictional movie a while back that everybody said was shitty? This was after we’d all kind of given up on him, so I never saw it. Until now.
Ben Affleck, the director of ARGO, stars as Michael Jennings, an amoral engineering genius of a futurist Seattle, some time after the near-future one in STEALTH. (In the future the borders of Seattle will be stretched so far that they will include Vancouver, BC, which is all we see in this movie other than one helicopter shot over Seattle Center). His introduction is funny because he gets to do a John Woo slo-mo strut toward the camera wearing shades (it’s important to the plot that he’s finicky about sunglasses) and, uh, holding a computer monitor under his arm.
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Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Ben Affleck, Ivana Milicevic, Joe Morton, John Woo, Michael C. Hall, Paul Giamatti, Philip K. Dick, Uma Thurman
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 30 Comments »
Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
In the beginning of LIMITLESS, Bradley Cooper is actually pretty limited. He somehow has a contract to write a sci-fi novel, but it’s overdue and he hasn’t even started. He doesn’t seem to know how to clean his apartment or brush his hair. His ex-girlfriend (Abbey Cornish from SUCKER PUNCH) is still supporting him, but bristles at his attempts to rekindle their love. He also has an ex-wife who won’t even talk to him. At least he doesn’t have the drug problems he had back when he lost her.
Then he runs into his ex-brother-in-law/dealer on the street, reluctantly goes for a drink with him and ends up leaving with one free sample of a pill this guy claims has been approved by the FDA and will go on the market soon for $850 a pop. Supposedly we only use 20% of our brains and this unlocks our access to the rest. I’ve read that that we-only-use-part-of-our-brain thing is an urban legend, but maybe this guy just doesn’t understand how the pill works. However they do it, they unlimit you. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abbey Cornish, Bradley Cooper, Neil Burger, Robert DeNiro
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 25 Comments »
Friday, February 22nd, 2013
When BAIT came out in 2000 I had no interest. That continued for 12 years. Then one night, in a dream, I was thinking that because of my love for Jamie Foxx’s performance in DJANGO UNCHAINED I was gonna rent his closest thing to an action vehicle. When I woke up I thought, “Yeah, actually I do want to rent BAIT.” So I did. You see, I don’t have a hundred updates a day for you guys, but I’m always working, even when I’m not conscious.
Foxx plays Alvin, a petty thief who gets busted trying to steal a bunch of prawns, and winds up in a cell with a guy (Robert Pastorelli) who recently betrayed his partner (Doug Hutchison) in a gold heist, and also is dying of a heart condition and gives Alvin a message for his wife which is a hint about the location of the hidden gold. The betrayed partner is a psychotic computer genius, and the Treasury Department wants him real bad ’cause he 1) killed two security guards and 2) broke a type of encryption that’s used to protect weapons, therefore posing a threat to national security. Or at least that’s their pitch when they ask for the money for a super-high-tech tracking device/bug that they implant in Alvin’s jaw without his knowledge before they get him released so they can surveil him until the psycho comes after him to get his gold back. (And no, the psycho is not a leprechaun. Maybe a metaphorical leprechaun, I haven’t really considered that yet. I’ll have to think on that a bit.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Antoine Fuqua, David Morse, David Paymer, Doug Hutchison, Jamie Foxx, Jamie Kennedy, Kimberly Elise, Mike Epps, Robert Pastorelli
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
THE MIGHTY QUINN is a 1989 Denzel joint where he does a Jamaican accent. Or maybe it’s a Jamaican-ish accent, because it takes place on a fictional Caribbean island, where Denzel’s character Xavier Quinn is the chief of police.
One day a white guy at the rich white people resort gets his head chopped off, and the white guy in charge blames it on Quinn’s irresponsible childhood best friend Maubee (Robert Townsend). All the authorities are convinced except Quinn, who’s a little unsure at first and alot unsure the more he investigates and uncovers a conspiracy.
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Tags: Art Evans, Carl Schenkel, Denzel Washington, Esther Rolle, M. Emmet Walsh, Mimi Rogers, Robert Townsend, Sheryl Lee Ralph
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
Well, I was stupid to write off K-19 all these years. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t even know what it’s about. I think I knew K-19 wasn’t a mountain, it’s a submarine. I knew it had kind of an audacious name but was directed by this year’s #1 Oscar snub, Kathryn Bigelow. That should’ve been enough, but I never heard anything too good about it and didn’t feel the need to see it.
Maybe it’s the submarine thing. I know this is blasphemy to alot of people, but I never even got into that one submarine movie that everybody loves that’s by the director of DIE HARD and PREDATOR. I’ve tried and it’s fine and everything but I just can’t get myself excited about it like everybody else. Maybe I’m subconsciously rebelling against my old man, who worked on subs. I never went that way. I’m a proud surface dweller. Strictly a land man. Vote no on Atlantis.
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Tags: Cold War, Harrison Ford, Kathryn Bigelow, Liam Neeson, National Geographic, Peter Sarsgaard, Russia, submarine, Walter Murch
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 26 Comments »
