Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, December 4th, 2012
“If anyone’s gonna pee on him, it’s gonna be me!”
THE PAPERBOY is the new one from Academy Award nominee for Best Director Lee Daniels. That’s the guy that did PRECIOUS, BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE as well as SHADOWBOXER, BASED ON THE IDEA THAT HELEN MIRREN AND CUBA GOODING JR. ARE ASSASSINS AND SHE RAISED HIM BUT ALSO THEY’RE FUCKING AND SHE HAS CANCER. I feel like the critical community embraced PRECIOUS without really picking up on how nutty it was, or doing a background check on Mr. Daniels’s previous work. So they did cartoony “wh-wh-whUHHH?” double-takes when THE PAPERBOY played at Cannes and had a part where Nicole Kidman territorially pisses on Zac Efron from HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Because it’s a Lee Daniels movie.
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Tags: David Oyelowo, John Cusack, Lee Daniels, Macy Gray, Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, Peter Dexter, Zac Efron
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Monday, December 3rd, 2012
Remember after THE ROAD director John Hillcoat had this movie called THE WETTEST COUNTY IN THE WORLD that was written by his THE PROPOSITION writer (and famed singer) Nick Cave, he had at-that-time-hot-stuff Shia LaBeouf signed on and everything but nobody would fund the fuckin thing. Then suddenly a mysterious benefactor named Megan Ellison comes into Hollywood and gives him money and gives P.T. Anderson money to make THE MASTER and Andrew Dominik to do KILLING THEM SOFTLY and a bunch of other guys like this. So the legends were true, there are some good rich people out there.
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Tags: Dane DeHaan, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke, Jessica Chastain, John Hillcoat, Mia Wasikowska, Nick Cave, Noah Taylor, Prohibition, Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 27 Comments »
Thursday, November 29th, 2012
From the director of THE EXPENDABLES 2 and a synonym for the word “TAKEN” comes this mediocre Cager about a “master thief” whose disgruntled ex-partner kidnaps his daughter.
Mr. Cage plays Will “Gum” Montgomery, the leader of a crew of thieves about to heist $10 million in cash from a bank vault. The FBI (Danny Huston and Mark Valley) are hot on their trail, staking the place out, SWAT team at the ready. But when I say “the place” I mean some diamond place that the crew decoy-cased to throw the man off their scent. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cagers, Danny Huston, Josh Lucas, M.C. Gainey, Mark Valley, New Orleans, Nicolas Cage, Simon West
Posted in Action, Reviews | 21 Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
After some family related emotional exhaustion this Thanksgiving I thought it would be a good time to seek the comfort of the ol’ Clint Eastwood box set. Clint and his movies are always there for us, even if we chose not to follow his political advice. He forgives us, that’s why his movies are still there.
Unfortunately when I flipped through the set the first one I came to that I didn’t remember seeing was TIGHTROPE. And it’s a pretty good movie but let’s just say it’s not the most wholesome and thankful one. It’s pretty nasty. This is about him exploring the sexual underworld to catch a serial killer-rapist. Pre-CSI sex crimes shit, with a not so pleasant view of humanity, in my opinion. And that’s including the good guys.
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Tags: Alison Eastwood, Clint Eastwood, Dan Hedaya, Genevieve Bujold, New Orleans, serial killer
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 42 Comments »
Tuesday, November 27th, 2012
LIFE OF PI is the story of an Indian guy (Irrfan Khan) who for some reason has a white author guy (Rafe Spall) he doesn’t know come over to his house to interview him about his life. It’s kind of unclear what the situation is here, but apparently the writer guy is not in the book the movie is based on, so I guess this is a dramatization of what the making of the book would’ve been like if it was a true story that a a real guy told to the author instead of something that he made up and wrote using his imagination and talents. I don’t get it, but it kind of reminds me of BIG FISH. Sophomore year imagination class. That’s at least a huge step forward for screenwriter David Magee, considering he wrote FINDING NEVERLAND.
[UPDATE: Okay, never mind, I’m told the writer is in the book. It would be cooler if in the book it was Ang Lee that comes over to his house.]
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Tags: 3D, Ang Lee, animals, boats
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 39 Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2012
LOCKOUT is pretty much what I hope for from a Luc Besson production: solid b-movie fun, good gimmicks, good energy. But unlike the B13s or the TRANSPORTERs or the TAXIs or the YAMAKASIs it’s not the action that’s the highlight, this is more of a character and concept driven entertainment.
You could say the same about TAKEN, ’cause it’s a post-action mess made palatable by Liam Neeson getting to play a black ops hardass with a straightforward, personal goal. Like TAKEN, this has Maggie Grace playing an abducted daughter who has to be rescued (this time the president’s daughter taken hostage on a low orbit maximum security prison/space station). But it’s not the SPACE-TAKEN I was expecting, because the tone is completely different. The biggest surprise and the best part of the movie is that Guy Pearce as Snow, who has to rescue her, is a total smartass. He speaks mostly in quip, and successfully so, always keeping the movie fun instead of being annoying like could sometimes happen. The movie around him takes itself seriously, but he refuses to follow its lead.
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Tags: Guy Pearce, Joseph Gilgun, Luc Besson, Maggie Grace, Peter Stormare, Vincent Regan
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 56 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is the name of a tournament where the best fighters from around the world are invited to come stay on a remote island where they are pitted against each other in un-refereed fights with few rules. It’s like Mortal Kombat except not interdimensional, no monsters, during daylight, and not to the death. So they probly could’ve picked a better name. Maybe just “A.”
They’re wedded to this DOA title, though. They got the logo on parachutes, computers, signs, even a volleyball. That’s the kind of island we’re dealing with here, it has custom made non-tournament related sporting gear. These are professionals. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian J. White, Collin Chou, Corey Yuen, Devon Aoki, fighting tournament, Holly Valance, J.F. Lawton, Jaime Pressly, Kane Kosugi, Kevin Nash, Matthew Marsden, ninjas, Sarah Carter
Posted in Action, Reviews, Videogame | 59 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
When BAD ASS came out in the summer I took a look at it and considered it, because it’s that rare Danny Trejo starring role we’ve always wished for. But the title and the tagline “They messed with the wrong senior citizen” made me think it was another one of these post-GRINDHOUSE neo-Troma type tongue in cheek movies that I’m not really interested in. And then I looked up director/co-writer Craig Moss and learned that the rest of his filmography is:
1. SAVING RYAN’S PRIVATES (not a porno, but way worse – a parody)
2. THE 41-YEAR OLD VIRGIN WHO KNOCKED UP SARAH MARSHALL AND FELT SUPERBAD ABOUT IT (a parody of comedies?) and
3. BREAKING WIND (TWILIGHT parody with farting).
This was before his next movie was listed, it’s gonna be 30 NIGHTS OF PARANORMAL ACTIVITY WITH THE DEVIL INSIDE THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. So not only did I put BAD ASS back on the shelf, but would’ve reconsidered everything I believed about civil liberties if given an opportunity to deport Craig Moss just for making up those titles. And what, I’m supposed to believe this guy has no friends or family who could intervene and tell him to have some fucking dignity as a human being and stop making those? Come on, people. You’re just as culpable in this SARAH MARSHAL IS SUPERBAD fiasco as he is. If you see something, say something. What did you know and when did you know it. All that is necessary for the release of BREAKING WIND is that good men do nothing.
But a buddy said BAD ASS was pretty good, so now I watched it.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a fucking Youtube video, Charles S. Dutton, Craig Moss, Danny Trejo, Ron Perlman, vigilante
Posted in Action, Reviews | 177 Comments »
Sunday, November 18th, 2012
Samuel L. Jackson, these days maybe he doesn’t get the greatest roles. I mean it’s cool that David Hasselhoff handpicked him as his replacement when he passed on Dr. Fury or whatever in the Marvel Comics Books movies, but that’s a supporting player. You don’t see him carrying too many movies anymore. That’s why I had some hopes for this lower budget crime picture produced by IFC and given a very limited theatrical release, probly less screens than he has lines in THE AVENGERS.
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Tags: Gil Bellows, Luke Kirby, Ruth Negga, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Thursday, November 15th, 2012
Remember when it got out that Channing Tatum had been a stripper before he was an actor? I forget if he said it in an interview or if it was Wikileaks or something, but there were alot of stories about it in the entertainment journalism and it was a big joke to everybody. But who’s laughing now, motherfuckers? Tatum found the best possible way to own that on the set of HAYWIRE when he convinced Steven Soderbergh that his experiences would make a good movie. It might’ve gone a different way if it was on the set of GI JOE and it was Stephen Sommers that ended up directing MAGIC MIKE. But Soderbergh is the guy to take any subject matter, find what’s interesting about it, bring out the innate and sometimes unknown talents of his cast, and shoot it beautifully. He’s made one of his little independent character pieces, but he threw in just enough shirtless cowboys humping stages to advertise that for the ladies.
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Tags: Alex Pettyfer, Channing Tatum, Cody Horn, Kevin Nash, Matthew McConaughey, Steven Soderbergh
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 31 Comments »
