Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
aka 3:15 THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
When you’re a grown adult you normally don’t fear somebody who you perceive as a kid. No matter how hateful the bastard is you have something over him – probly size and strength, intelligence, if not you at least have the authority of being an adult. You’re supposed to be in charge here. You enforce the rules if it comes to that. They fear you. I think maybe that’s what all these ’80s juvenile delinquent movies were about was the fear of losing that authority. As kids looked weirder and acted scarier the grownups were terrified of the world turning upside down so they couldn’t say anything to these fuckers. Oh my god, they have war paint and chains, they’re gonna eat me alive.
So it’s fitting that in 3:15 I have a hard time telling the kids apart from the adults. The students are all played by actors in their mid-twenties, maybe older. So you only know it’s a teacher if he’s wearing a tie. The school only seems to have a couple teachers, but a whole lot of gangs. I guess I can see why they’re physically overwhelmed and don’t seem to make any effort to patrol the halls or anything. It’s a hopeless situation so they gave up a long time ago. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Baldwin, back to school, Mario Van Peebles
Posted in Action, Reviews | 27 Comments »
Friday, September 18th, 2009
Everybody knows there’s a TEEN WOLF TOO starring Jason Bateman. I know I personally have been aware of this fact for many years. But until this week it never really occurred to me to actually watch it. I decided to do just that, and here’s what I found.
TEEN WOLF was about a teen who turned into a wolf, and TEEN WOLF TOO is about a teen who turns into a wolf too. He’s the cousin of the Michael J. Fox character, whose whereabouts are not mentioned. Maybe they wanted to leave the possibilities open for a THREEN WOLF, or maybe they just wanted to avoid pulling a MATRIX RELOADED. The original MATRIX had such a nice open ending where you could imagine what happened next, but then they put a cap on that by showing what’s next in part 2. The TEEN WOLF saga doesn’t make that mistake, it lets Scott Howard continue his journey through your imagination. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jason Bateman, unwanted sequels, werewolves
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
By part 4 the SUBSTITUTE series is almost entirely divorced from the theatrical original. It’s the only one not written by Rocco Simonelli and Roy Frumkes – this time it’s Dan Gurskis, who apparently did an uncredited rewrite on part 3. It’s Treat Williams as Karl Thomasson again, but he’s not even really an undercover substitute. He discusses it that way, but really he’s given the job of history teacher at a military academy under slightly sneaky but not really clandestine circumstances. He’s not THE SUBSTITUTE anymore, he’s THE NEW TEACHER.
For once he’s not on a mission on behalf of a teacher – this time an old general friend is worried about his nephew at this academy, and is sending in a team to check things out. He was right to be worried because the head of the academy, Colonel Brack (Patrick Kilpatrick), is an open white supremacist maniac who’s training an elite corp of neo-nazis called “The Werewolves” and sending them on terrorist bombings of minority owned power plants (?). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angie Everhart, DTV, DTV sequels, Treat Williams
Posted in Action, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
THE SUBSTITUTE 3 is much shittier than the previous ones, but still fun because I like the Thomasson character and because of the goofy way returning writers Frumke & Simonelli and new director Robert Radler (BEST OF THE BEST 1-2, various POWER RANGERS episodes) decided to mix things up (hint: more white people). It opens with Thomasson (still Treat Williams) a prisoner in Kosovo. His partner (David Jensen) is tortured nearly to death, but still jokes that he tipped them for their troubles. Before escaping captivity Thomasson has to put the poor guy out of his misery and make a promise to deliver a message to his daughter (Rebecca Staab). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: back to school, Claudia Christian, DTV, DTV sequels, Treat Williams
Posted in Action, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
I was concerned about THE SUBSTITUE 2: SCHOOL’S OUT because it substitutes Treat Williams for Tom Berenger. What kind of a trade is that? And when will Tom Berenger get healthy enough to come back? That’s why despite being Mr. DTV Sequel I avoided this movie for years.
Don’t get me wrong – Treat Williams has his place. But it’s not behind Tom Berenger’s desk. Berenger was so good in the first one with his gruff voice and scarred face. Williams is more of a pretty boy nerd with a squeaky, whiny voice. I couldn’t see how it would work.
Well, duh – by having him play a different character. That was a relief to find out. Not a relief on the level of “phew, the MRI shows I don’t have M.S.,” but still a relief My pre-judgment of Treat Williams was off-base. I really like him in this movie.
It turns out Shale and Jane joined the Peace Corps and went to teach in Costa Rica. (I guess he was just fucking around at the end of part 1 when he said he wanted to go to L.A. to teach. Or maybe this is a tribute to the way DEATH WISH 2 refuses to follow the sequel setup from the end of part 1.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: B.D. Wong, back to school, DTV, DTV sequels, Treat Williams
Posted in Action, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
TEEN WOLF is the story of a teen who turns into a wolf. But he looks more like those cavemen from the commercials, or the “dog-faced boy” from the cover of that old video about the different “freaks” (see diagram).
Michael J. Fox (CLASS OF 1989) plays Scott Howard, a weiner who has the hots for some bitch who hates him and who doesn’t notice that his female best friend adores him. To be fair her name is Boof so you can see why he wouldn’t take her that seriously, but still. One day when he gets a 
boner it brings out the changes in his body and then when there’s a full moon he turns into a wolf. So his dad reveals to him that he also is a wolf, an Adult Wolf, because it’s just this harmless thing that runs in the family.
That doesn’t comfort Scott. He’s real worried and embarrassed, but then he gets upset during a basketball game and wolfs out, and it makes him really good. Ain’t no rule says a werewolf can’t play basketball.
Being good at sports is the best thing anybody could do, so everybody accepts this wolf thing and thinks he’s cool now. They lift him up like a champion, bring him to the diner, chant his name. People cheer him on wherever he goes, they high five him. Being a teen wolf seems very similar to being Arsenio Hall. Also there’s a part where he spontaneously starts breakdancing in the hallway at school. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: cheesy '80s comedies, Michael J. Fox, werewolves
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 48 Comments »
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
There’s a new horror movie out this week called SORORITY ROW. This isn’t that, it’s the original, which was called THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW. Or actually HE HOUSE ON SORORITY RO on the (out of print) full frame DVD, because the credits get cut off. (I noticed that when I set my DVD player to zoom out it was less cropped though. So try that if you watch it before the new DVD comes out in November.)
This is the story of six or seven sorority girls staying the week after graduating to have a big party. The house mother is a real bitch though and tries to make them leave. One of them gets mad and pulls a gun on her as part of a “practical joke,” then accidentally shoots at her and knocks her into a dirty swimming pool and kills her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: prank gone wrong, slashers, sororities
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
The rest of the movies in VERN’S BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL will be more specifically about school, but this one is about underground fighting within the world of high school teens, so I think it counts. When I reviewed FIGHTING recently the commenter ‘a’ suggested I see this as a comparison, so I did.
NEVER BACK DOWN is a much cheesier movie than FIGHTING. It’s almost exactly the slick, dumb, commercial vehicle you’d expect FIGHTING would be. It’s based partly in the tradition of kickboxing movies, partly high school movies, although there’s not a part about a nerd being taught how to be cool by dressing different or taking off their glasses. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Djimon Hounsou, MMA
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Friday, September 11th, 2009
Since Labor Day was last Monday I figure the kids are either back in school or about to go back to school, so I might as well do VERN’S BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL. And if I’m gonna do that there is one movie that I would have to be a fuckin moron not to start with. And I’m not talking about BACK TO SCHOOL.
THE SUBSTITUTE is not necessarily a great action movie. It doesn’t have any particularly memorable action scenes or anything. But I really like this movie for the simple fact that the idea behind it – combining a mercenaries/drug gangs action movie with a DANGEROUS MINDS style white-teacher-makes-a-difference-in-the-big-city movie – is flat out brilliant, a once-in-a-cinematic-history opportunity. Seriously, I sit around trying to think of genre combinations this absurd and yet this natural. There aren’t many left. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ormsby, back to school, Ernie Hudson, Luis Guzman, Raymond Cruz, Tom Berenger, William Forsythe
Posted in Action, Reviews | 64 Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
How do you know to lower your expectations for the sequel? When it’s included on the DVD with the first movie. And not as a double feature, but as a bonus feature. I didn’t realize this was on the DIRTY DOZEN dvd when I rented it, but I found it while browsing the extras. Never seen it before so I decided to give it a shot.
THE NEXT MISSION was made for TV in 1985. It’s supposed to take place about 6 months later, but Lee Marvin has aged 18 years. Somehow they got Marvin, Borgnine and Richard Jaeckel all to come back. They have a new mission with a new Dirty Dozen including Ken Wahl and Sonny Landham.
Alot of the movie, especially the first half hour or so, just made me sad. Marvin’s age is really showing (this was his next to last movie) and he just doesn’t seem like he’s into it at all. They make poor Lee and Ernest rehash the whole Borgnine-pitching-the-mission sequence and the Marvin-recruiting-the-convicts one and they even use whole chunks and paragraphs of the exact same dialogue as in the original. Then Marvin will say things like, “That sounds familiar.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Borgnine, Ken Wahl, Lee Marvin, made-for-TV-sequels, Sonny Landham
Posted in Action, Reviews, War | 23 Comments »
