Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Friday, September 24th, 2010
There’s a new version of THE PHANTOM out on DVD that tries to be BATMAN-BEGINS-realistic instead of old-fashioned-serial-goofy. It uses the same concept of the Walker family and associates passing down the name and methods of The Ghost Who Walks, but in the context of the modern world. You know, computers and internet and shit. The new Phantom can do acrobatics and what not but not because of jungle training. He does it because he’s a parkour dude. I actually thought that was a good way to explain it. I just didn’t like the dad saying, “None of this parkay stuff” and the kid whines “Daaa-aad, it’s called parkour!”
This new Phantom (Ryan Carnes) is a young pretty boy law student, what is commonly referred to as a bag containing douche. He’s not rich like Batman, Iron Man or Green Hornet, but he follows that same currently popular super hero formula of self-absorbed do-nothing finds his purpose through a masked alternative lifestyle. These stories tell us that you will never truly be happy with yourself until you help others. The Fountainhead would hate the Phantom. Actually, The Fountainhead would be a really good nemesis for a future Phantom movie. The Phantom could rescue people from his building before he blows it up. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: mini-series
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 74 Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
You know what movie gets a bad rap, or unfairly ignored? Well, you probly already guessed it’s gonna be the one I wrote the title of above and then there’s a picture of it to the left. Maybe this is not the best format for a guessing game of this type, now that I think about it. If that’s your answer then you are correct, THE PHANTOM from 1996 starring Billy Zane gets a bad rap or is unfairly ignored.
I’m sure in its darkest moments THE PHANTOM believes that nobody understands it, but it doesn’t care. It knows what it is. It’s comfortable with itself. I mean, I don’t know how you guys feel about slamming evil, but THE PHANTOM is all about slamming evil according to the American poster, and I think it does a good job of making the slamming of evil entertaining. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: adventure, Billy Zane, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Catherine Zeta-Jones, James Remar, Kristy Swanson, old timey super heroes, Simon Wincer, Treat Williams
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 122 Comments »
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
You guys ever heard of this one?
Okay, you were right, STREETS OF FIRE is pretty cool. I was a little skeptical because the poster calls it “A Rock & Roll Fable,” which is not really one of my top kinds of fables. I’m more of a free jazz fable type of guy, I like SPACE IS THE PLACE. Also I got some prejudices against the ’80s rock and the retro ’50s style fetishes. Luckily the singer gets kidnapped for most of the movie, so the long onstage performances are only at the beginning and end. It’s not a rock musical or anything. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Madigan, Diane Lane, Michael Pare, Rick Moranis, Walter Hill, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Action, Music, Reviews | 68 Comments »
Friday, September 17th, 2010
I’m starting to think the underground fighting movie is to modern DTV what the western was to b-movies in the ’50s. They just never stop coming and yet somehow they’re not all terrible, in fact a few of them are great. You got BLOOD AND BONE of course, you got UNDISPUTED II-III (unless you consider prison fighting a separate genre), DAMAGE with Stone Cold Steve Austin was surprisingly good, and there’s even a good theatrically released one, FIGHTING. I’d recommend all of those above PIT FIGHTER, but I’ll be damned, here’s another pretty enjoyable and distinctively different take on this same type of storyline. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dominiquie Vandenberg, DTV, Jesse V. Johnson, MMA, Scott Adkins, Steven Bauer, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
THE LOST MAN is a 1969 Sidney Poitier heist movie, a pretty obscure one, never released on DVD. Maybe if it was better known then Tony Scott and Denzel would do a juiced up remake. But actually it’s already sort of a remake, based on a novel that was made as ODD MAN OUT in ’47, but that version had James Mason as an IRA type, this has Poitier as a Black Panther type. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: heists, Paul Winfield, Quincy Jones, Sidney Poitier, Vonetta McGee
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
It’s weird how the secret to a good movie idea sometimes is just to think of a really limited location and then figure out everything that could happen inside there. Like there’s that movie coming out where Ryan Reynolds is buried alive, and there was the one where Colin Farrell couldn’t leave the phone booth. There’s the building in DIE HARD, the bus in SPEED, the mall in DAWN OF THE DEAD, the hockey stadium in SUDDEN DEATH, and there should be one that takes place entirely in one of those Japanese compartment hotels. Or a nerd gets stuffed in his locker and then terrorists take over the school and he has to fight them from inside. Or a cartoon about a cat stuck in a tree and there’s a bird’s nest there and they’re forced to get along and learn from each other, like Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune in HELL IN THE PACIFIC.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexandre Aja, Christmas, Christmas horror, confined spaces, Franck Khalfoun, Gregory Levasseur, Rachel Nichols, Wes Bentley
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 44 Comments »
Sunday, September 12th, 2010
Albert Johnson (Charles Motherfuckin Bronson) is a trapper drifting through snowy 1931 Canada when he happens to come across some assholes betting on dog fights. One of the dogs is injured and apparently Albert loves animals (when he’s not trapping them) so he takes the dog at gunpoint. In order to smooth things over he gives the owner $200, but just to be clear he’s not negotiating. He’s taking the dog. It’s just like a convenience charge or a dogfight interruption processing fee or something like that. The owner of the dog is Ed Lauter, so this whole incident must be why they don’t seem to like each other in DEATH WISH 3. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angie Dickinson, Charles Bronson, Ed Lauter, Lee Marvin
Posted in Action, Reviews, Western | 35 Comments »
Saturday, September 11th, 2010
THE FOUNTAINHEAD is the weirdest, most deranged movie I’ve seen in a while. I know you’re thinking wait a minute, that old Gary Cooper movie? He must mean ERASERHEAD or something. No, man, have you seen this thing? I guess to most people it doesn’t make sense to say that a beautiful 1949 drama from the director of DUEL IN THE SUN is more fucked up than THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, but that one was trying so hard to be outrageous. This one is effortless. It seems like a very well-made studio picture, but created by some very troubled individuals.
Director King Vidor designed and shot the thing really well, really stylish compositions and uses of shadows and what not. He did a good job filming this screenplay, and it’s a fascinating movie to watch, but I can’t let him off the hook morally. If he spent the time making this thing he must’ve agreed with it. I think he really believes the character you see at the upper left there is the ideal man. Yeah, he looks like one, but trust me, the guy’s a dick. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ayn Rand, Gary Cooper, King Vidor, Patricia Neal, rival architecture critics, Toughshitism
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 112 Comments »
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
I’ve never been much of a Chuck Norris fan, but maybe some day I could be if I fill in that gap in my badass cinema knowledge. I’ll always give a guy a shot. So I figured I couldn’t go wrong with THE DELTA FORCE. Not only is it about an elite counter-terrorist special ops team (same one as on THE UNIT), but with Lee Marvin as the man in charge. Even in his fuck-it-I’m-not-grooming-my-eyebrows-anymore later period Lee Marvin is a plus for any movie, so he could be my gateway drug to Chuck Norris.
Well, could’ve been, but this movie is not very good. It’s written and directed by Cannon head Menahem Golan (OVER THE TOP, ENTER THE NINJA) and seems to be his attempt at an all star ensemble movie with some kind of social message, like Irwin Allen used to make. Yeah, it seems like it’s mainly a Chuck Norris movie, but then you see Martin Balsam (Arbogast from PSYCHO), Joey Bishop, Susan Strasberg, Robert Vaughn, Kim Delaney… (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bo Svenson, Cannon Films, Chuck Norris, George Kennedy, Lee Marvin, Menahem Golan, Steve James
Posted in Action, Reviews | 76 Comments »
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
George Clooney is… THE AMERICAN. In Anton Corbijn’s Americanized remake of Soderbergh’s THE LIMEY, Clooney plays–
nah, that’s not true, it’s not a remake. That would be weird though, especially since Clooney knows Soderbergh pretty good. But I do think THE AMERICAN joins THE LIMEY in a modern genre that I think of as arthouse badass. These are movies that are too quiet and leisurely paced to show to a bunch of teens in a multiplex, but also got motherfuckers getting shot or punched. THE AMERICAN is much more basic and straightforward than THE LIMEY, LIMITS OF CONTROL or GHOST DOG, and admittedly less original. But there’s something powerful about its simplicity. Like a bullet. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anton Corbijn, arthouse badass, George Clooney, is...
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 69 Comments »
