It is a time of economic turmoil. The gap between the haves and the have-nots keeps getting wider and wider, like a hippopotamus’s mouth when he yawns. Hard-working people hit some bad luck and they lose their homes, property and life savings to the banks. Anger rises, and in the face of cruel systems too complex for guys like me to understand, it’s easy to fall into simplistic stick-it-to-the-man sentiment. These faceless institutions seem to be crushing people under their boots, and we want revenge. If a company can have the rights of a human being, it ought to feel the pain of a human being. We want it to suffer.
Am I talking about today? No, I’m talking about the Great Depression, as depicted in the movie BONNIE AND CLYDE. Arthur Penn directs Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the legendary armed-robber couple whose sex appeal and brazen outlaw lifestyle made them a media sensation in the early ’30s. You know come to think of it though I did say “we” a bunch of times, as if I was talking about us right here, the people alive now, that seems a little misleading if I was really talking about the movie. We’re not in the movie, we’re in today. Wait a minute, maybe I really was talking about today? I think maybe I was. Ah, shit. I can’t remember anymore. I get them mixed up. Man, I really fucked up this opening. Forget about this. Let’s start over. (read the rest of this shit…)
As a Chris Tucker fan in a white-people-heavy part of the country I too often find myself defending the kind-of-funniness of RUSH HOUR. I don’t love the movie or anything (MONEY TALKS is the real classic) but I have to admit that every time I come across it on TV I find myself laughing at the shit Chris Tucker says and saying, “I forgot how funny this was.”
I realize that you all think I’m crazy for that, so I got a new argument in defense of RUSH HOUR, and it’s called COLLISION COURSE (1989). You think RUSH HOUR is such a terrible movie – well, what about the version where instead of Jackie Chan it’s Pat Morita, and instead of Chris Tucker it’s god damn Jay Leno? This is a generic mismatched buddy-cop picture only made novel by the rare hero role for the famous Tonight Show host/usurper. It’s funny – not in the sense that the jokes are funny, but in the sense that it’s sometimes interesting to look back at older movies and remember what was considered cool or funny at that time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Right now Nimrod Antal is a director-of-interest because they got him doing that PREDATORS movie. And I hadn’t seen his movies (like KONTROLL and VACANCY) but ARMORED is out on DVD this week so I decided to check it out. (And yes, every movie he’s directed so far has a one word title.)
I read somewhere that when Robert Rodriguez saw ARMORED it sealed the deal for Antal doing PREDATORS. I’m not sure what that says, because there’s nothing too wrong with ARMORED, but nothing too right, either. (read the rest of this shit…)
You know how these things start out. A little kid in some medeivalish village, frolicking in the sunshine, his dad is forging a sword, everything is happy. There could be a whole movie just about this worry-free childhood, or about hobbits jumping on a bed, but instead the band of savage marauders storm in on their horses shooting arrows, lighting shit on fire, throwing women on the ground. The pricks.
And of course they kill the kid’s family and drag him away to become a slave in a mine. Not to sound racist, but it seems like Barbarians are always trying to pull shit like this. I mean, not all Barbarians. There have been many great members of the Barbarian culture throughout their proud history, such as Conan the Barbarian and Theobald Boehm, the inventor of the modern flute. But SOME Barbarians act like a bunch of dicks, doing shit like this. That’s where the stereotype comes from. (read the rest of this shit…)
Man, you guys have been trying to get me to watch this one forever. Now I’ve seen it, so I’m not sure what’s next on the list. Paddy Considine plays Richard, a soldier back in the small English town where he grew up, planning some kind of a revenge. We know this because of the first line of the movie: “God will forgive them. He’ll forgive them and let them into Heaven. And I can’t live with that.” So he’s basically the Christ equalizer, the guy who goes around pre-emptively un-forgiving people before Jesus shows up to forgive them. It could be called THE UNFORGIVER. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE COLLECTOR is a new horror picture and although the title does refer to the villain (who collects people – sorry, I was hoping it was gonna be Beanie Babies too, but it’s people) it focuses much more on the other guy. Not that he’s a saint either. He’s there to rob the place.
The opening establishes that this guy is doing repairs on a rich family’s home and his interactions with each family member. But it also shows why he’s so desperate for money that he’d pull an asshole move like robbing their safe. He tells a crime boss (Robert Wisdom) that he’s the only guy that can get into that safe, but I think it’s a lie. He just has a little box he can use to listen to the clicks as he spins the dial – I feel confident that I could figure out how to use that thing if you gave me a couple minutes. But maybe he’s the only guy with one of those boxes, that’s why he said it. And because he knows the code to turn off the alarm. (read the rest of this shit…)
I have to admit I don’t really get the Boondock Saints. Haven’t seen it since it first hit video, but I remember it just being kind of a shitty Guy Ritchie/post-Tarantino wannabe tough guy movie. It just seemed delusionally confident about how cool it was. It probly had some good bits here or possibly there, but it mostly seemed to me like some guys saying unconvincing macho lines and then some techno music comes on and the camera rotates around. It’s like an applause sign lights up that just says “AWESOME!” on it and you’re supposed to take its word for it. (read the rest of this shit…)
ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Louis Carroll or whoever is one of the most beloved and iconic children’s literatures of our times. It has also been one of the most adapted, referenced and re-interpreted. Ever since the books Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and A2: Rise of the Looking Glass were first published in such and such a year, I myself as a child growing up was inspired by, blah blah blah and you know the rest. In 1951 Walt Disney, etc.
As an adaptation of the original book, ALICE IN WONDERLAND is not entirely faithful. Like many versions it combines characters from the first book and the sequel (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and Humpty Dumpty were from the second book according to Wikipedia, a popular websight). However it’s not meant as a straightforward translation of the book, but more a riff on the world of Wonderland, using our familiarity with some of the imagery and characters from previous adaptations and trying to be clever about re-interpreting them in a different context. (read the rest of this shit…)
This is not the romantic one where Christian Slater has a baboon heart, this is the dramatic one where Jeff Bridges may soon need a baboon liver, on account of his country singer lifestyle. I heard alot about CRAZY HEART being good only for Bridges’s about-to-win-an-Academy-Award performance. (Did you know he was also nominated for THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT?) But I thought the movie itself was pretty damn good too, let’s give it some credit please. (read the rest of this shit…)
Okay, my last two reviews brought out everybody’s expertise of mixed martial arts competitions and professional wrestling. Let’s see how you guys do with this sport.
RANK is another John Hyams documentary in the tradition of THE SMASHING MACHINE, but this one’s in the world of professional bullriding. In both sports Hyams has documented so far, the athletes break parts of themselves that they aren’t gonna be able to fix. And the filmatistic approach he used in SMASHING MACHINE ain’t broke so he doesn’t fix that either: it’s almost-direct cinema (just following people around, but they do talk to the camera sometimes), hypnotic score, themes that make themselves apparent and don’t need to be underlined. This time around it looks like he got better cameras, though. The cinematography is outstanding. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
JeffG on The Cycle: “I freakin LOVED Head Hunter” Nov 13, 08:28
JeffG on The End of Oak Street: “One of the biggest ‘HOLY SHIT” moments I can remember in a theater……. SPOILER Ewan McGregor getting eaten. Reminded me…” Nov 13, 08:27
Dtroyt on The Cycle: “I went into this one cold without ever even hearing of it or knowing that there was a big twist…” Nov 13, 06:47
Marcus Nolan on War: “The point about Jet Li’s role wasting his martial arts talent lands — Yuen choreographs a gun-and-suit thriller, not a…” Nov 13, 05:42
Caleb Gibson on Vern’s Underrated Horror A-Z: “You put ORCA on this list, and you’re right: Ennio Morricone’s score plus Richard Harris make it far more than…” Nov 13, 05:34
Caleb Gibson on Vern’s Underrated Horror A-Z: “You put ORCA on this list, and you’re right: Ennio Morricone’s score plus Richard Harris make it far more than…” Nov 13, 05:14
Alan Marsh on Us: “Jordan Peele’s staging of the mirror family in the driveway is the moment the film stops being a home-invasion thriller…” Nov 13, 05:11
Alan Marsh on Us: “Jordan Peele’s staging of the mirror family in the driveway is the moment the film stops being a home-invasion thriller…” Nov 13, 05:11
JTS on The Rivals of Amziah King: “I adored this, i couldn’t wait to watch it again when I was done. A lot of the reviews on…” Nov 13, 01:41
Gavolt on The Cycle: “I liked this one a lot. It’s kind of 1 hour of Nordic crime procedural, and then for 30 mins…” Nov 12, 21:17
Dreadguacamole on The Cycle: “I liked this one – the (spoiler) is really well done, and the twist on the formula is genius; Really…” Nov 12, 17:59
Mr. Majestyk on The Cycle: “I am automatically suspicious of movies that rely on the audience’s complete ignorance of their basic premise. It is exceptionally…” Nov 12, 15:18
The Allusionist on The Cycle: “This one left me pretty cold. I feel it’s a victim of its own hype. I saw a bunch of…” Nov 12, 14:29
braak on The Cycle: “oh whoah, haha, sorry, I didn’t realize the picture would come up like that.” Nov 12, 12:25
braak on The Cycle: “All the other details aside, “Peter Stump” is also a bit of a clue; it’s a deep cut but it’s…” Nov 12, 12:22
It is a time of economic turmoil. The gap between the haves and the have-nots keeps getting wider and wider, like a hippopotamus’s mouth when he yawns. Hard-working people hit some bad luck and they lose their homes, property and life savings to the banks. Anger rises, and in the face of cruel systems too complex for guys like me to understand, it’s easy to fall into simplistic stick-it-to-the-man sentiment. These faceless institutions seem to be crushing people under their boots, and we want revenge. If a company can have the rights of a human being, it ought to feel the pain of a human being. We want it to suffer.
As a Chris Tucker fan in a white-people-heavy part of the country I too often find myself defending the kind-of-funniness of RUSH HOUR. I don’t love the movie or anything (MONEY TALKS is the real classic) but I have to admit that every time I come across it on TV I find myself laughing at the shit Chris Tucker says and saying, “I forgot how funny this was.”
Right now Nimrod Antal is a director-of-interest because they got him doing that PREDATORS movie. And I hadn’t seen his movies (like KONTROLL and VACANCY) but ARMORED is out on DVD this week so I decided to check it out. (And yes, every movie he’s directed so far has a one word title.)
You know how these things start out. A little kid in some medeivalish village, frolicking in the sunshine, his dad is forging a sword, everything is happy. There could be a whole movie just about this worry-free childhood, or about hobbits jumping on a bed, but instead the band of savage marauders storm in on their horses shooting arrows, lighting shit on fire, throwing women on the ground. The pricks.
Man, you guys have been trying to get me to watch this one forever. Now I’ve seen it, so I’m not sure what’s next on the list. Paddy Considine plays Richard, a soldier back in the small English town where he grew up, planning some kind of a revenge. We know this because of the first line of the movie: “God will forgive them. He’ll forgive them and let them into Heaven. And I can’t live with that.” So he’s basically the Christ equalizer, the guy who goes around pre-emptively un-forgiving people before Jesus shows up to forgive them. It could be called THE UNFORGIVER. 
THE COLLECTOR is a new horror picture and although the title does refer to the villain (who collects people – sorry, I was hoping it was gonna be Beanie Babies too, but it’s people) it focuses much more on the other guy. Not that he’s a saint either. He’s there to rob the place.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Louis Carroll or whoever is one of the most beloved and iconic children’s literatures of our times. It has also been one of the most adapted, referenced and re-interpreted. Ever since the books Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and A2: Rise of the Looking Glass were first published in such and such a year, I myself as a child growing up was inspired by, blah blah blah and you know the rest. In 1951 Walt Disney, etc.
(pretty big spoilers in this one, sorry)
Okay, my last two reviews brought out everybody’s expertise of mixed martial arts competitions and professional wrestling. Let’s see how you guys do with this sport.
