Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
BEST OF THE BEST is a watchable movie, but not the best of any genre, except possibly Eric Roberts non-sequel karate tournament movies. So I’m not sure about using the word “best” two times in the title. Seems a little presumptuous, unless one is supposed to cancel out the other. They were definitely set on that title, though. It’s spoken out loud in the movie and appears in one of those ’80s inspiration-rock montage songs.
This isn’t a full-on martial arts movie or even on par with a JCVD. This is one of those mainstream-trying-to-come-to-grips-with-something-they-don’t-understand pictures, like a breakdancing movie. While it was written and co-starring the Korean-American martial artist Phillip Rhee, everybody else is a white American (Eric Roberts, Chris Penn), or a respected actor (James Earl Jones). Jones plays the coach and the rest play the five elite martial artists recruited for the U.S. National Karate Team to compete against The Koreans in Tae Kwan Do. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Penn, Countdown to The Expendables, Eric Roberts, James Earl Jones, Phillip Rhee, Robert Radler, Sally Kirkland
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Sport | 30 Comments »
Monday, July 26th, 2010
THE KARATE KID was such a phenomenon, man. It mainstream-popularized karate in the U.S. and was heavily imitated in everything from kid’s movies to sports movies to actual action movies. It was sequeled, next generationed, cartooned, action figured, parodied in REVENGE OF THE NERDS, postmodernly referenced and recently remade. It’s hard to remember what the context was then. I can’t really watch it without comparing it to martial arts themed movies made since then. But I’ll try to be nice. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John G. Avildsen, Pat Morita
Posted in Drama, Family, Reviews | 101 Comments »
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Wow, I must’ve really misread the ol’ zeitgeist. I thought for sure with that depressing new Ben Stiller indie drama having come out on DVD last Tuesday GREENBERG was gonna be all anybody had on their minds for weeks. But the comments thread there almost makes it seem like you guys are more interested in this “Inception” business.
Director Christopher Nolan first made his mark on cinema with the black and white (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Nolan, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 436 Comments »
Sunday, July 18th, 2010
GREENBERG (Ben Stiller from NEXT OF KIN) is a 40 year old sometimes-carpenter who, after some kind of breakdown and stint in a mental hospital, comes to house sit (crash at) his banker brother’s place in L.A. while the family’s on a business vacation to Vietnam. His plan is to “do nothing,” but he’s a huge fucking baby so he starts getting the family’s nice assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) to shop for him, have a relationship with the dog for him, etc. Through horrendously awkward maneuvers he gets sloppily into her pants and makes things weird. Then he starts being a dick until she doesn’t want to see him again, but the dog gets sick and he doesn’t have a car so she has to bring him to the vet, etc. Romance does not ensue, just awkwardness. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Noah Baumbach, Rhys Ifans
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Drama, Reviews | 121 Comments »
Friday, July 16th, 2010
I meant to do this back when I reviewed POINT BLANK (Mickey Rourke vs. mall terrorists version), but I forgot, so here’s another Mickey Rourke picture to kick things off on a new thing I’ll try called COUNTDOWN TO THE EXPENDABLES. Not sure if I got enough time before the movie comes out next month, but I’m gonna try to go down the list of all the main EXPENDABLES cast members and review one of their movies that I haven’t seen before. (See, it’s a good thing Seagal turned the movie down, because there’s not anything by him that I haven’t seen. Maybe I’d have to review the cameo on the episode of Roseanne that I didn’t find out about until after Seagalogy went to print.)
Whether or not Stallone’s movie ends up being any good I think we can all agree that he did a good job of casting a wide range of tough guys from different movements, generations and disciplines. So through this journey I think we will all learn a few things and expand our knowledge of the Badass Arts in its many forms. I know I’ve already seen one unexpected gem in preparation for this series, so this could be a great time.
THE LAST OUTLAW is not that unexpected gem. Sorry. It’s not too bad, though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Countdown to The Expendables, Dermot Mulroney, Eric Red, Geoff Murphy, Keith David, made-for-cable-movies, Mickey Rourke, Steve Buscemi, Ted Levine
Posted in Reviews, Western | 78 Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
MORTAL KOMBAT ANNIHILATION is an asinine sequel by any standards, but as long as you don’t hold the MORTAL KOMBAT legacy too close to your heart it’s pretty fuckin funny.
In the first one it seemed like they tried hard to mold the vibe of the game into a new type of martial arts movie for the early digital era. In this one I really thought the video game creators must’ve got a big head and forced every bullshit video game concept they could think of onto the poor bastards who had to try to turn it into a passable story. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: James Remar, Robin Shou, video games
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts, Reviews | 67 Comments »
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
DRAGON’S BALLS: EVOLUTION is the weird story of a young misfit named Goku (Justin Chatwin, the guy who everybody thought ruined WAR OF THE WORLDS by not dying) who has a strange hair do and on his 18th birthday finds out that he has to collect 7 (seven) magic dragon’s balls before the eclipse, or an alien guy named Piccolo is gonna resurrect another guy that’s gonna somehow destroy or conquer the world or whatever. That’s why Goku’s grandfather (Randall Duk Kim, “the Keymaker” from the MATRIX sequels) taught him martial arts and magic “airbending techniques” such as using his ki energy to light torches. I’m not clear though why the grandpa waited until the shit went down to explain what was going on. I guess this kid got his John Connor style childhood’s worth of training, but it seems like getting a head start on collecting dragon’s nuts wouldn’t be a bad idea when the entire earth is at stake. I like the earth. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Ramsey, Chow Yun Fat
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 64 Comments »
Saturday, July 10th, 2010
Well, whattya know? PREDATORS really is a good old fashioned action movie in the tradition of PREDATOR. Whichever corporate overlord holds the deed to the PREDATOR licensed property seems to be taking a temporary break from the “make sure they know we just want their money” policy that was in place for the two cheesy movies where the PREDATOR predators and the ALIEN aliens all got humiliated together fighting that pizza delivery boy at the pool party or whatever.
The movie begins with THE PIANIST himself, Adrien Brody, dropping from the sky. He just wakes up mid-air, hurtling toward an unknown jungle, no idea how he got here, and luckily finds that he has some kind of small parachute contraption attached to him. We’ve all been there, so it’s a real relatable way to start a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Laurence Fishburne, Nimrod Antal, Oleg Taktarov, Robert Rodriguez, Topher Grace, Walton Goggins
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 164 Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
I know MORTAL KOMBAT is not exactly a high kwality movie. It has one or more leads who are completely unconvincing as fighters. Linden Ashby as Johnny Cage can maybe get by on arrogance, but the teacher from BILLY MADISON as Sonya Blade just comes off as a grouchy aerobics student in a black painter’s cap that’s supposed to make her a supercop. This movie is a pioneer in bad computer generation imaginations, possibly the first movie to prove that CGI not good enough for a feature film is in fact good enough for a feature film. (Say thank you, SPAWN).
But I gotta admit, I kind of like this stupid fucking movie. It has, as we Americans say that the French say, a certain… I don’t know how to spell it in French. It invented a completely new style of cheesy stupid fun. And it keeps a straight face the whole time. I mean, look at Scorpion there. Does he look like he’s gonna wink at you? Fuck no. The man is serious. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bridgette Wilson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Christopher Lambert, George S. Clinton, Hakim Alston, Linden Ashby, Paul W.S. Anderson, Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, video games
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts, Reviews | 118 Comments »
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
I never got into Brian D. Palma’s THE FURY so much, but since you guys mentioned it during my SCANNERSathon I decided to give it another shot. Sure enough it’s a pretty good one with some solid DePalma slo-mo suspense sequences and some crazy shit here and there for flavoring. As you can see to your left, Kirk Douglas has a shootout in his swim trunks. He looks so manly and yet also like your dad embarrassing you on a vacation. Or like a middle school wrestling coach that makes everybody uncomfortable ’cause his balls hang out of his shorts. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Irving, Brian De Palma, Kirk Douglas
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 27 Comments »
