“Excuse me everyone – I surrender!”Wow – for some reason I never had any interest in EMPIRE OF THE SUN before. Turns out it’s great and sort of a beginning for alot of things. It’s Spielberg’s first WWII drama. One of Christian Bale’s first movies. The one that gave Ben Stiller the idea for TROPIC THUNDER. etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE ARTIST is an enjoyable, cleverly made tribute movie by the French director (Michel Hazanavicius) and star (Jean Dujardin) of those O.S.S. 117 movies, which from what I have heard are also enjoyable, cleverly made tribute movies. In this one the guy plays George Valentin, beloved silent film star, on top of the world right before the dawn of the sound era. And then he’s in trouble.
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I haven’t read the Stieg Larsson DRAGON TATTOO books, but I liked the Swedish movies. Or at least the first two. Lisbeth Salander is a cool pulpy heroine, a unique type of badass with an interesting, complex relationship with this reporter dude she’s fucking/investigating with. I enjoyed (if you can call it that) her adventures and hoped things would turn out well for her and her dragon. (read the rest of this shit…)
For those keeping score, THE SCORPION KING 3: BATTLE FOR REDEMPTION is the sequel to the prequel to the prequel to the sequel to the re-imagining of THE MUMMY. It would’ve been worth reviewing just to point out that important fact, but the truth is I have a sincere interest in the Scorpion King saga. There’s only one movie in that entire lineage that I like alot (THE SCORPION KING starring The Rock), but I believe it’s a series they could do something fun with, even on lower budgets and without The Rock. I believe in hope. I believe America. (read the rest of this shit…)
(KILLER ELITE is enjoyable if unspectacular. Luckily it’s more in the vein of the sort-of-classy studio action thrillers like THE BANK JOB than the gloomy Millennium Pictures joints I halfway expected it to be like. So it co-stars Robert DeNiro, the legendary actor, and not Robert DeNiro, that old man from the 50 Cent movies. But the star is definitely Jason Statham, looking exactly the same in 1980-81 as he does in any other time period (minus the track suit). (read the rest of this shit…)
Well, this is depressing. I skipped over Spielberg’s stone cold masterpieces RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and E.T. OF THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS ’cause I’ve seen ’em a bunch before, but decided to watch TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE because I don’t think I’ve seen it since the ’80s. Turns out it’s Spielberg’s first bad movie, at least for his segment. And that’s small fish compared to John Landis’s, since it was an actual legitimate tragedy that ended lives and derailed a great filmatist. Bummer. Not worth it. (read the rest of this shit…)
This movie has a reputation as kind of a mess. Admittedly it is a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In my opinion a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was not necessarily one of the top two or three things the world hoped for as Steven Spielberg’s followup to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. But fuck ’em. It’s what they got and they oughta fuckin appreciate it. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS is the feature debut of young TV director Steve Spielberg. It’s hard to think of it as his first real movie when DUEL was so damn good, but officially it’s the first one he made for theatrical release. Things have really changed, haven’t they? You don’t get hungry young up-and-comers starting out in TV and then making a splash in movies. There’s great TV now but it’s not a place for visionary directors.
To commemorate the 2 (two) new Spielberg movies that came out recently I decided to finally get aorund to watching all the Spielberg movies I’ve never actually seen. This is gonna include a couple that you guys will be surprised by because everybody else in the world saw them a long time ago. But mostly it will be the “lesser” Spielbergs. Not JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or E.T. (read the rest of this shit…)
If a DTV movie comes out and it’s called FREERUNNER, it’s gotta have some parkour stunts in it, right? So what can you do, you give it a shot. Or at least I do. I remember a couple years ago Channing Tatum from FIGHTING was supposed to star in a movie called PARKOUR. That never happened but I guess we have its would-be-counterpart here, starring the guy from NEVER BACK DOWN.
I forgot all about it after Michael Jai White’s NEVER BACK DOWN 2, but the star of part 1, Sean Faris, looks and acts an awful lot like Tom Cruise. But FREERUNNER is pretty low-rent for Tom Cruise even when he was younger. It’s not good, but it’s not the usual type of churned-out-dispassionately bad DTV, it’s more of a scrappy independent we-gotta-get-this-shot-somehow production. It’s artisan crap. (read the rest of this shit…)
I can’t claim COLOMBIANA is anything special, because I’m not a fuckin liar. But I enjoyed it as a solid Luc Besson production, a retelling of the good ol’ cliches about elite assassins and avenging the deaths of parents, but with the novelty of an up and coming star we haven’t seen in this type of role before.
It’s a hitwoman movie, but not the post-Tarantino type where you see they’re just like us and watch TV and stuff. It’s the opposite. The one where she’s so driven that she has no real life. Her man friend (Michael Vartan from ROGUE) has to quiz her just to try to get her to say where she’s from. And she won’t say. All we really see about this Cataleya lady outside of her job is that she enjoys dancing by herself and sucking on lollipops. Those are her hobbies. By sheer coincidence those are also the type of things Luc Besson would like to see an attractive actress doing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Toss me a couple bucks a month, support the good shit, also get access to a bunch of exclusive writing. This is my primary source of writing money that has allowed me to cut down to part time at the day job. Thank you!
(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.
