Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
Lance Henriksen is one of my favorite actors. His chiseled-from-clay face and gravelly voice are always interesting even in the worst movies (and in my opinion he’s done some of those). They imply a life full of experience, and work perfectly for his wide array of roles, from humane robot (in ALIENS of course) to flamboyant cowboy (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD) to heartless rich madman/pianist (HARD TARGET, probly others). Now Not Bad For a Human, a new book credited to Henriksen and Joseph Maddrey, gives us insights to both the art on screen and the life that inspired it.
Also there are pictures, if that helps. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: books, Lance Henriksen
Posted in Reviews | 55 Comments »
Saturday, April 30th, 2011
First of all, let’s take a moment to pause and reflect on the miracle of the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series. It started in 2000, a studio b-movie, a dumb subculture exploiter with hot up-and-coming stars, quite good for a Rob Cohen movie and with a star-making performance by Mr. Vin Diesel, but undeniably corny. I don’t think anybody could predict that 11 years later it would be Universal’s most valued franchise/trademark/anti-intellectualproperty or that a part 5 would be bigger and better than the previous ones. Especially when you consider that Diesel ditched out on part 2 and Paul Walker bailed before part 3 and that even the naming of the movies poses a challenge. You don’t see I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER still coming out with new chapters but they keep doing FASTs and FURIOUSes even after running out of sensible combinations of those words.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: cars, Joaquim de Almeida, Jordana Brewster, Justin Lin, Matt Schulze, Paul Walker, Screen Actor's Guild Award Winner Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, The Rock, Tyrese, Vin Diesel
Posted in Action, Reviews | 200 Comments »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Yes, it’s true, this is a movie about Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray fighting over Megan Fox because she has wings. Mickey plays a jazz trumpeter (the serious type who always wears colorful suits, a fedora and pointy shoes) who gets in trouble because he accidentally slept with the wife of a gangster named Happy (Murray). So he gets beat up and left in the desert.
When he wakes up he wanders and finds a carnival with a sideshow. That’s where he sees this winged lady. Not riding a ferris wheel – she’s in the sideshow, because she has wings. Not sure if you got that.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Chuck Liddell, Kelly Lynch, magical realism, Megan Fox, Mickey Rourke, Mitch Glazer, Rhys Ifans
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 41 Comments »
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
God DAMN I’m excited for FAST FIVE. It’s only April and that’s my most anticipated movie of the summer by far. But I gotta wait a couple more days, so in honor of Dwayne “The Rock is a registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.” Johnson’s addition to the series I decided to finally catch up with his last movie, which I never saw because when I went to see it the showing that I chose turned out to be an “open captions” deal, and I decided to bail. (Ironically there’s so much mumbling in the movie I had to turn the subtitles on a couple times anyway. But at least it was my choice. It’s about freedom.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Bob Thornton, Carla Gugino, George Tillman Jr., Mike Epps, Moon Bloodgood, revenge, The Rock, Tom Berenger
Posted in Action, Reviews | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
As successful as they may be in their own countries, global superstars always seem to have their eye on the juicy, low-hanging grape of Hollywood. It doesn’t matter how many soldiers have fallen before them, stumbling on a new language, style and approach to filmmaking and bleeding away everything that made them great in the first place. It’s still hard to resist the temptation. They’re still gonna jump and try to bite it.
And so it was that in the late ’90s and early 2000s Jet Li left Hong Kong to make some Hollywood-produced, English language movies. Of course if you have a guy who’s a legendary martial arts champion and iconic star of many of his generation’s most popular movies (the SHAOLIN TEMPLE series, the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series, the FONG SAI YUK series, and FIST OF LEGEND) what you do in the U.S. is put him in a movie with DMX and Anthony Anderson that’s billed as “an urban Romeo and Juliet.” I mean, what else would you do with him? That’s just obvious.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bridget Fonda, Corey Yuen, Cyril Raffaelli, Jet Li, Luc Besson, Tcheky Karyo
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 74 Comments »
Monday, April 25th, 2011
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED is a simple story about two kidnappers and their hostage. And it’s not one of those stories where they become friends. It’s a simple, well-executed thriller and especially before the plot starts thickening this thing is deeply unsettling.
It had me right from the great opening scene: a montage of these two nefarious individuals (Martin Compston and Eddie Marsan) shopping at a hardware store and then preparing an abandoned house as a kidnapping hideout. It just goes through step-by-step as they add locks, cover windows, soundproof the walls, put together a bed with chains on it… it’s like a sinister version of one of those home makeover shows.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eddie Marsan, Gemma Arterton, J Blakeson, Martin Compston
Posted in Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 20 Comments »
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
SOMEWHERE is a quiet, simple little thing, like a haiku or a bowl of strawberries. In a movie I usually like to see things like plot, momentum, music, etc., but this isn’t that kind of party. It’s Sofia Coppola trying out a new minimalistic style kind of like what seems to be her own personality: soft spoken and shy, but showing a subtle wit. Some of you would fucking hate it. I liked it though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Pontius, Michelle Monoghan, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Dorff
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 120 Comments »
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
LITTLE BIG SOLDIER played at the Seattle International Film Festival last year, and I didn’t see it. Then a region 2 dvd and a blu-ray came out and I didn’t see it. Then it played at ActionFest, which was far away, so I rented the blu-ray.
To answer your question, no this is not the movie where Jackie is only 3 inches tall and then at the end he turns giant like Godzilla. That’s RUSH HOUR 3. And it’s not a remake of LITTLE BIG MAN either. The title I guess refers to the two lead characters, one a small–time foot soldier, the other a big time general and member of the ruling class. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Actionfest, Jackie Chan, Leehom Wang
Posted in Martial Arts, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
(here’s another one I watched because it played at ActionFest this year)
Largo Winch (Tomer Sisley) is an unusual hero: he’s a globetrotting adventurer and/or vagabond, he knows how to fight and how to escape, he likes to rebel against authority, tends to fall for beautiful aid worker women helping the poor… and he’s the CEO of a huge Hong Kong-based international corporation called the W Group.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Actionfest
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Thriller | 20 Comments »
Sunday, April 17th, 2011
The SCREAM movies had their day in the sun. They arrived at the end of 1996, during what seemed like a horror drought. “Horror” was so out of sorts that the characters just call it “scary movies.” The actors, while promoting it on talk shows, called it a “thriller.”
We all remember that, but I thought it would be interesting to look up the specifics. According to my research there were only six other scary movie thrillers released theatrically that year: CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH, THE DENTIST, THE FRIGHTENERS, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE* and THINNER. DTV releases included TREMORS 2: AFTERSHOCKS, CARNOSAUR 3: PRIMAL SPECIES and CHILDREN OF THE CORN IV: THE GATHERING.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Anderson, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Kevin Williamson, meta-slashers, Neve Campbell, slashers, Wes Craven
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 187 Comments »
