I never heard of Lee Daniels before he got a best director nomination for PRECIOUS, BASED ON etc. Turns out PRECIOUS… is his third movie as a director, SHADOWBOXER is his first, and Kent M. Beeson insisted in the comments that I had to see it.
I’ve seen a few interviews and things with Daniels, and he seems like a nice, normal guy. Based on these movies alone, though, you’d have to assume the motherfucker is nuts.
SHADOWBOXER is a very serious crime drama. It has some colorful characters and intense violence, but it’s not an action movie at all. It’s focused on the characters, and with its lush colors, weakness for soft lighting and classical music it’s a similar style to PRECIOUS. It’s the story of a male-female team of assassins who, when hired to take out a crime boss’s pregnant wife (Vanessa Ferlito from DEATH PROOF) decide instead to deliver the baby and take mother and child into hiding.
The two killers have a strong attachment, they take care of each other, and they are lovers. And, uh, they’re played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Helen Mirren. Hahem. (read the rest of this shit…)
’90s studio action thriller – I’d like you to meet my friend SAW.
Man, this movie made me feel naive. It’s a documentary about black women’s hair, and it’s not really made for a white audience, it seems mainly designed to inspire discussion about beauty standards among the black community. But it was also fascinating for a white dude like me, and maybe more surprising. I had no idea. I never really thought about some of this stuff.
Here in the U.S. Sunday was Valentine’s Day, yesterday was President’s Day, and today is BLACK DYNAMITE Day. If you didn’t catch it at a random film festival or in its limited theatrical release (or even if you did) today is the day when you can finally buy or rent it on DVD or Blu-Ray.
There was a time in our cultural history, or in our life’s journey or whatever, when the freaky grossout shit seemed real interesting. The odd top shelf Troma, the young and hungry Peter Jackson, the works of Frank Henenlotter. These are home made labors of love obsessed with bodily fuction and dumb humor, trying hard to disgust you but not really to scare you, and not to be taken very seriously. For a while it’s fun, but you can only go so far with that. It gets old after a while, or you get old after a while.
I rented a PAL import of WHITE OF THE EYE after some of you guys were talking about it in the comments back around Halloween. I really didn’t know anything about it, so I was off balance from the beginning. The opening credits said in huge letters DONALD CAMMELL’S WHITE OF THE EYE so at first I assumed that was some writer like Dean R. Koontz or John Grisham. Turns out it’s the director, he co-directed PERFORMANCE, did a couple weird ones like this, then killed himself.
Cash is the full name of a big-shouldered, square-jawed, fresh-out-of-the-pen-and-eager-for-revenge individual on a rampage in an unnamed city that happens to have the Space Needle in it (more on that later). He’s a guy nobody should ever fuck with, but unfortunately for a couple guys it’s too late for that. They betrayed him on a messy bank job, and you never really know what could happen but I’m leaning toward him not accepting an apology. In the opening narration he says something like, “I was only ever good at two things. Killing’s one of ’em. I forget what the second one is.” So he goes to different clubs and back rooms roughing people up, shooting off heads, biting off ears, trying to get to the big man who betrayed him, or something. 
I laughed the first time I saw this DVD cover, Christian Slater with a combover and nerd glasses beneath that title, and clutching a bunch of dynamite. But I thought it was a serious movie. It turns out it’s a bit of a dark comedy and since it’s the only other movie from Frank Cappello, director of AMERICAN YAKUZA and NO WAY BACK, I decided to give it a shot.
The new Steven Seagal picture comes out in the States today. I couldn’t wait so I already imported the UK version. I like the design of the American cover a little better, but I don’t regret a thing because the UK one has the all important “Steven Seagal is” before the title, something that’s been sorely lacking from Seagal movies lately, not to mention from movies in general.
