Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
“Ron, now you know, I’m a great low budget filmmaker now. So when we bring somethin it’s got to be devastatin. I don’t want no bullshit.” –DOLEMITE EXPLOSION director Ron Hall, recounting what Rudy Ray Moore would always say to him
About a year and a half ago Xenon Pictures released the Dolemite Total Experience box set. I thought it was the same as the old box set I already had, except with more compact packaging and a better cover. I didn’t realize that it included Rudy Ray Moore’s unreleased final film, THE DOLEMITE EXPLOSION.
When I put the DVD in my first thought was they didn’t make this shit anamorphic? This is 2012! But in retrospect even the shitty transfer fits the home-made, do-what-you-can, sell-it-out-of-your-trunk ghetto tradition of Rudy Ray’s entire career.
It was hard for the fringe icons of the ’70s to recapture the magic even in the ’80s or ’90s. There was that SUPERFLY RETURNS movie with a different actor playing Priest for the hip hop age. There was the last Curtis Mayfield album with beautiful songs interrupted by terrible rapping, there were pretty good George Clinton albums trying a little too hard to cram in guest appearances by Ice Cube, there were attempts to remake DOLEMITE as a studio movie starring LL Cool J. Always trying to use what’s popular at that moment to try to legitimize the O.G. shit for the kids. Sometimes it’s okay, but it’s never a home run. It’s never devastatin. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: blaxploitation, Rudy Ray Moore
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2012
I’m kind of interested in this Kurt Wimmer guy. My favorite movie by him is before he made it big, the first of his three directorial works so far, ONE TOUGH BASTARD a.k.a. ONE MAN’S JUSTICE (1996) starring Brian Bosworth and MC Hammer. And I just discovered that his first writing credit was DOUBLE TROUBLE starring the Barbarian Brothers. But since then he’s had some success in much bigger, studio-backed b-movies: he wrote LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, SALT and the remake of TOTAL RECALL. He also wrote the remake of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, which I liked.
But as a writer/director his best known movie is EQUILIBRIUM (2002), that sort of asinine dystopian one where Christian Bale rebels against A World Where Love Is Against The Law because they try to make him kill a puppy. ULTRAVIOLET (2006) is Wimmer’s only directing job since then, and his biggest budget one. I heard it was kind of dumb fun, so I rented it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cameron Bright, Kurt Wimmer, Milla Jovovich, Nick Chinlund, vampires, William Fichtner
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 67 Comments »
Saturday, April 7th, 2012
Last year it was in the news that James Franco wanted to direct an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Other– let’s say, more experienced directors like Ridley Scott had tried already, but the book defeated them. Now here’s this young actor, he’s got a couple Oscar nominations under his belt, but he’s often confused with his dumb stoner comedic persona and called pretentious for his goofball side projects like being on General Hospital and going to Yale. He apparently shot a 20-minute test film starring Mark Pelligrino, Scott Glenn, Luke Perry and his brother Dave to prove his directorial chops. Later he was moved over to a different McCarthy project, CHILD OF GOD.
But here’s the thing: he was already a director. In 2005 he directed, starred in and adapted (from his own play) THE APE, about a writer sharing a New York City apartment with a slobby gorilla. (He has other directing credits on IMDb too, but this looks like the earliest one available on video.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: gorillas, James Franco
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 44 Comments »
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
You probly don’t need me to tell you that THE RAID is the new action movie phenomenon with a big buzz coming off multiple film festival conquests and a kickass trailer that made it a must-see for those of us into this type of shit. Here in the U.S. it’s in a slowly widening release (we got it in Seattle this week) under the dumb title THE RAID: REDEMPTION. The subtitle has no relation to the movie, so in my opinion it’s just called THE RAID. The THE REDEMPTION is silent.
THE RAID is from the team that debuted with a more traditional martial arts movie that I really dug, MERANTAU. It’s the Indonesian star and choreographer Iko Uwais and Welsh director Gareth Evans. Uwais is a master of the Indonesian martial art Silat, but here he’s playing a cop so he’s also a master of shooting a whole bunch of people in the head. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Doni Alamsyah, Gareth Evans, Iko Uwais, Indonesia, Silat, Yayan Ruhian
Posted in Action, Reviews | 333 Comments »
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
10 years after the titans clashed, Zeus (Liam Neeson, NEXT OF KIN) and Hades (Ralph Fiennes, STRANGE DAYS) are about to feel their wrath. See, they’ve had their asshole dad Kronos imprisoned in the underworld forever, but with humans not praying to them they’re losing the power to contain him, and Ares (Edgar Ramirez) and some of their other kids are conspiring to set the old man free. And when he gets out he’s gonna get his revenge.
I should mention that Kronos is not a man, he’s a giant lava monster that makes the Kraken from part 1 look like a shrimp. So by “get his revenge” I basically just mean that he’s gonna walk around and stuff is gonna get destroyed. In fact Zeus and Hades don’t seem as bad now that I realize the type of family they grew up in. I’m sure even during peace time Kronos is constantly “getting revenge,” unless there is some sort of all-lava-monster community he can go to. If he’s expected to integrate with the mortals or even the Olympians there’s always gonna be a size and heat difference that’s gonna be problematic. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Nighy, Danny Huston, Edgar Ramirez, Greek mythology, Jonathan Liebesman, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Rosamund Pike, Sam Worthington, Toby Kebbell
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 67 Comments »
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Like some sort of mythological Greek hero whose companions have been struck down in the midst of a daring journey, I stand alone on this: I liked the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake.
I cannot lie. I thought it was good. Don’t sacrifice me to a kraken, I have the right to admit this publicly. Remember, the first amendment is about protecting all speech, no matter how vile. Just give me a chance to try to explain where I’m coming from here.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Greek mythology, Liam Neeson, Louis Letterier, Mads Mikkelsen, Ralph Fiennes, remakes, Sam Worthington
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 84 Comments »
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
“We have… we have a flying horse!”
The original CLASH OF THE TITANS has most of the things I don’t like about ’80s fantasy movies: a bland, dorky hero (Harry Hamlin), slow pacing, stiff action, lifeless settings in dusty wastelands or fake-looking soundstages, interchangeable nameless non-characters in helmets or robes. On the other hand it has the best and final pre-retirement work of stop motion monster legend Ray Harryhausen. These are really cool depictions of Greek mythological monsters and other shit – Medusa, a two-headed pooch, a giant buzzard, etc. – and that’s enough to make it stand out and be worth watching. Most fantasy movies don’t have that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Greek mythology, Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Neil McCarthy, Ray Harryhausen
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 61 Comments »
Sunday, March 25th, 2012
I found this DVD called MOTORCYCLE GANG, starring Carla Gugino and Jake Busey, directed by John Milius. That’s gotta be a TV movie, right? Yes, upon closer inspection I figured out it was part of the Rebel Highway series that Showtime did in 1994.
Rebel Highway was what happened when producers Lou Arkoff (son of Samuel Z.) and Debra Hill (one-time producing partner of John Carpenter) put together a group of ten directors and let them choose titles from the American International Pictures library of ’50s drive-in movies. They could remake it or just use the title if they wanted. They got low budgets and short shooting schedules, but apparently they were given final cut and encouraged to make them sleazy. So it was alot like the original AIP. Some of the directors included John McNaughton, Joe Dante and William Friedkin. The only one I’d seen before this was ROADRACERS, which was Robert Rodriguez’s practice movie between EL MARIACHI and DESPERADO. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: bikers, Carla Gugino, Debra Hill, Gerald McRaney, Jake Busey, John Milius, made-for-cable-movies, Rebel Highway
Posted in Action, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Monday, March 19th, 2012
THUNDER SOUL is kind of like that movie WHEEDLE’S GROOVE, another documentary about a now-mostly-forgotten regional funk phenomenon of the ’70s, recounting the glory days through photo montage and vintage clips, with interviews of the musicians now that they’re all grown up and square with regular jobs and families but can use their rediscovery by young white record geeks as an excuse to reunite and prove to themselves that they’re still kinda cool. In my opinion that was a long sentence. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: funk, music documentaries
Posted in Documentary, Music, Reviews | 7 Comments »
I wanted to watch a Charles Bronson movie, accidentally picked one where he doesn’t show up until 25 minutes in. He doesn’t ride in on the rain – the title refers to a different dude, a bald weirdo who a lady named Mellie (Marlene Jobert) sees getting off of a bus. Later he starts peeping on her and then actually attacks her. 
