Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
ROUND 1, FIRST BOUT, BLOODSPORT SEQUELS VS. TEAM BOLO
aka FINAL FIGHT
“Stop him! You mustn’t let him keep practicing martial arts! Please! Please! Ryu is not a fighter. He’s a warm and caring person!”
BLOODFIGHT is from Japanese director Shuji Goto (FIGHTING BLACK KINGS) and star Yasuaki Kurata (HEROES OF THE EAST, EASTERN CONDORS, FIST OF LEGEND) but it’s a Hong Kong production featuring Bolo Yeung and Simon Yam. I rented it on a triple feature called Great Martial Arts Movies, and it had a warning about the picture quality not being up to modern standards, so I expected the worst. But other than being cropped it looked fine.
I also thought it might be dubbed, and there’s not any dialogue for the first ten minutes or more, so I was in suspense. Turns out it’s one of the rare Hong Kong movies that was actually filmed in English. Some of the actors sound like they’re just repeating it phonetically, so it’s hard to understand some of it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bolo Yeung, Shuji Goto, Simon Yam, The Super-Kumite, Yasuaki Kurata
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Monday, May 27th, 2013
THE ISLAND I guess was Michael Bay’s big failure. He held his head high during his public shaming as the asshole who directed PEARL HARBOR, but this time he hit the type of bump that means more to him: he made a movie that didn’t make very much money. In the U.S. I guess it only made $36 million, which would be enough for his monthly Lamborghini allowance but doesn’t even cover a third of the shooting budget. For comparison, PEARL HARBOR made $75 million on its opening weekend.
Of course I’m coming to it eight years and three TRANSFORMERSes later having heard of its growing reputation as Michael Bay’s Not As Bad Movie. So when I was looking for a dumb summer blockbuster to get me in a summer movie mood it leapt off the video store shelf into my cold, reluctant embrace. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: clones, Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Michael Bay, Michael Clarke Duncan, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 88 Comments »
Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
Ladies and gentlemen, the title is FURIOUS 6. They’ve been advertising it as FAST & FURIOUS 6, and every time I see that I think “if the last one was FAST FIVE then why can’t this be FURIOUS SIX?” Well, the actual movie says FURIOUS 6. And this is not the first time that the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series has come through for me. We’re family.
Director Justin Lin returns for his fourth and final installment, and I hope they gave him a hell of a gold watch. When he came along there was this one really enjoyable POINT BREAK ripoff and one ridiculous sequel and he had to follow up without the original cast or characters. The series was left for dead. But he did a great job with TOKYO DRIFT, then reunited Vin Diesel and Paul Walker for FAST AND FURIOUS, then brought back almost the entire team and added The Rock for FAST FIVE. With FURIOUS SIX he takes everything he learned from those movies and supercharges the engine and adds spoilers and shit. Having the whole team (minus Don Omar and Tego Calderon, plus Michelle Rodriguez) together isn’t a novelty the second time around, so to make up for that he kicks the action sequences into ridiculous new extremes. Which is saying alot in a FAST AND FURIOUS – have you seen these movies? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Morgan, Gina Carano, good part 6s, Joe Taslim, Jordana Brewster, Justin Lin, Luke Evans, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Screen Actor's Guild Award Winner Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Sung Kang, The Rock, Tyrese, Vin Diesel
Posted in Action, Reviews | 190 Comments »
Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
This week in my Daily Grindhouse column I check out STRANGLEHOLD, another Cirio H. Santiago picture. This one is from 1994 and stars Jerry Trimble, who you may know as the guy who fights Dolph in front of the welders in THE PACKAGE. It’s an UNDER SIEGE type scenario where delighted-with-himself terrorist Vernon Wells has taken over a chemical plant while Trimble was doing security for a visiting congresswoman.
Take a look.
Tags: Cirio H. Santiago, Jerry Trimble, Vernon Wells
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
The genius of J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK: NOT THE MOTION PICTURE BUT STAR TREK (2009) was not just that it had a good gimmick for recasting the original cast of characters and restarting their adventures without denying the existence of their old ones. It was also the way it worked for both Trekkos and regulars. I was able to see it with a girl that grew up watching Star Trek and she loved it, but I enjoyed it too even though, come on. We, as citizens of the world, were all able to share it and enjoy it together equally as brothers and sisters.
Party’s over, though. Trekkos want their shit back. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anton Yelchin, based on a TV show, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bruce Greenwood, Chris Pine, J.J. Abrams, Karl Urban, Peter Weller, Simon Pegg, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 123 Comments »
Friday, May 17th, 2013
I got a ticket to the opening film of this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, a movie called MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, from the director of THE AVENGERS and the writer of HAMLET. Yes, idolized big brother of the internet Joss Whedon had some time off after directing the highest grossing non-James-Cameron movie of all time so he invited all his actor friends to his house to do a low budget William Shakespeare movie. It was so low budget he had to do it in black and white even though it was on a RED camera.
The cast includes Reed Diamond from Homicide: Life On the Street, the younger sister that was added later on in Growing Pains, two people from the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake, and nobody else you ever heard of except for like ten or fifteen people that starred in Joss Whedon’s TV shows. A couple of them got intrusive applause when they showed up on screen or after their scenes were over, and to be fair at least nobody in the audience was dressed up like Firefly characters, but come on people, it’s called self control, and it can be yours. I believe in you. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Clark Gregg, Fran Kanz, Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Reed Diamond, William Shakespeare
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance, SIFF | 35 Comments »
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
It’s hard out there in Neo-Tokyo. I don’t have to tell you guys. I’m sure shit was even worse right after the old Tokyo got nuked, but it’s still no picnic. You got a police state trying to crack down on all the protesters, not just the terrorists setting off bombs everywhere. You got cultists carrying on about the end times and the second coming, and it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to. All you can really do is go to bars, buy capsules, steal motorcycles, customize ’em, then get out there with your friends and attack some other gang, chase ’em through the streets, hit ’em in the head with pipes, try to murder them. That’s what childhood pals Kaneda and Tetsuo do, fighting some clowns. And I don’t mean that like jokers or bozos, but an actual gang of guys who wear clown makeup. I don’t see any juggalo type symbols on them, so I’m not sure if it’s that type of deal or not.
Anyway, it’s the only fun a young man has these days and the cops even interfere with that. Ruin everything. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anime, dystopian futures, motorcycles, telekinesis
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 65 Comments »
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Do you know about a female pro-wrestler from the ’80s called Magnificent Mimi, and if so did you know she wrote, produced and starred in a series of low budget action movies in the ’90s, and if so did you know that one of them was from the director of FORBIDDEN ZONE and SHRUNKEN HEADS? I didn’t know any of these things until recently. Mimi will be popping up again in a major series of reviews I’ve been working on that I’ll hopefully be ready to unveil next week. Until then read my review of STREETS OF RAGE over on Daily Grindhouse.
Tags: DTV, Mimi Lesseos, Richard Elfman
Posted in Action, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Saturday, May 11th, 2013
I didn’t post about this while I was out of town, so if you missed it:
I accidentally discovered a doozy of an only-on-VHS-Vietnam-vet-ex-boxing-champion-with-metal-hand-bones-sent-on-secret-mission-to-Hawaii-to-kill-Henry-Silva movie called FISTS OF STEEL. Not the best movie I’ve seen for this column so far, but definitely the craziest. Details on Daily Grindhouse.
Tags: Carlos Palomino, Hawaii, Henry Silva
Posted in Action, Musical, Mystery, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Friday, May 10th, 2013
(yes, the ‘Three’ is spelled out on the actual movie, so I consider that the official title)
[by the way since the movie’s been out a week or more in most countries this review is written in the spirit of HEAVY SPOILERS]
IRON MAN THREE takes the modern super hero movie and shakes it up a little bit, weirdly enough to be interesting and fun, but not well enough to be great. Directed and co-written by Shane Black, the writer of LETHAL WEAPON and THE LAST BOYSCOUT, it’s an odd mix of the ongoing Iron Man story and the unmistakable Shane Black style.
I know the script is originally written by Drew Pearce, but it’s got Black all over it: burnt out, mentally disturbed protagonist, conversational and self-aware first-person narration, most characters have witty responses to most situations, little moppet hardened by messy parental situation, constantly sets up movie conventions only to deflate them, and yes, it follows LETHAL WEAPON, THE LONG KISS GOOD NIGHT and KISS KISS BANG BANG in taking place at Christmas. Coincidentally it even has a crazy white guy and straight laced black guy buddy team. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Kingsley, Christmas, Guy Pearce, Gwyneth Paltrow, James Badge Dale, Marvel Comics, Rebecca Hall, Robert Downey Jr., Shane Black
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 153 Comments »
