Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
Yesterday was Roddy Piper’s birthday. I’m celebrating late with the Piper/Billy Blanks picture from 1993, BACK IN ACTION.
Script-wise, I gotta say, this is a half-assed affair. They got the maverick cop (Roddy Piper), the ex-soldier who is back in action on a one man mission of justice (Billy Blanks), standard issue evil druglords, damsel-in-distress sister and also the female reporter love interest always looking for a good story but who ends up trying to help (see also DARKMAN 2, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER). Also some obvious one-liners that I guess I got a laugh from, like when the bad guy thinks (let’s face it, naively) that Piper won’t kill him because of his Miranda rights. Piper stabs him and says “You have the right to remain silent. Forever.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Blanks, Roddy Piper
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Thriller | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Looking into the early works of Brian Trenchard-Smith I found a genre I never knew existed: stuntsploitation. Here are two movies about the world of stuntmen, with flimsy plots (if any) to string together a bunch of cool stunt sequences.
First and best is a goofy comedy called DEATH CHEATERS. The title daredevils are played by the mustached John Hargreaves and the bearded Grant Page. Page seems kind of like the sidekick here, but in reality he was and is one of Australia’s top stuntmen. He was the movie’s stunt coordinator and had already done the same for Trenchard-Smith’s THE MAN FROM HONG KONG. He even did the hang gliding for that one as you can guess when you see him do the same in this one. Later he would be the stunt coordinator for MAD MAX 1 and 3. He seems like a goofy kind of Jim Henson creative countercultural type in this, so it never occurred to me that he’s the crazy bastard stalking Stacy Keach in the excellent ROAD GAMES. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Grant Page, John Hargreaves, stuntsploitation
Posted in Action, Music, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Monday, April 13th, 2009
This lesser-but-still-good Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle came in 1986, a breather between COMMANDO and PREDATOR. It opens with some mobsters shooting up a house where cops are protecting a witness. The first line in the movie is a cop reading a Trivial Pursuits question about how many Oscars John Wayne won. The correct answer is never given, but we get the idea: John Wayne is awesome, we’re not in this for the Oscars, but John Wayne deserved Oscars, and so do we, etc.
(note: Marcel from Brooklyn points out that Wayne did get an Oscar for TRUE GRIT. So I guess RAW DEAL is supposed to be Schwarzenegger’s TRUE GRIT or something. I haven’t looked up if he got an Oscar for it or not.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: '80s Cheese, Action, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Convertible
Posted in Action, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Long before PUNISHER: WAR ZONE there was THE STORY OF RICKY, another hilariously violent, ridiculous movie based on a comic book. This is a lower budget Hong Kong movie, though. Raw and scrappy, not stylized. So it’s even more ambiguous how serious or goofy it’s actually supposed to be. I like that.
The movie starts with John Carpenter-ish keyboards and a bus pulling up to a prison. Ricky is a new fish who sets off the metal detectors, not with a random titanium knee like Seagal in HALF PAST DEAD, but with 5 slugs he keeps in his chest as a souvenir. (What’s wrong with one of those smashed pennies?) You know the rule: 5 bullets in the chest = tough. Hell, 50 cent only had 3 and I think one of those was in the ass. (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Martial Arts, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Two years after ENTER THE DRAGON, Brian Trenchard-Smith brought Australia their own Hong Kong co-production of a martial arts extravaganza. Jimmy Wang Yu (the One-Armed Swordsman himself) plays Inspector Fang, the man of the title, and he is a hell of a man. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him actually, he looks like kind of a dweeb, but throughout the course of the movie he will prove it. He is The Man from Hong Kong.
An Australian cop undercover as a tourist busts 22-year-old Sammo Hung (also the fight choreographer) during a drug deal. Inspector Hung is called in from Hong Kong to extradite Sammo. The two cops in charge of the case (including Hugh Keays-Byrne, Toecutter from MAD MAX) want Fang following Australian law, not trying to pull any shit, but they make the mistake of leaving him alone in the interrogation room with Sammo. This leads to a full-on close quarters kung fu battle. Not cool. But he gets a lead out of it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Jimmy Wang Yu
Posted in Martial Arts, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
You take the “the”s out, the title becomes more aerodynamic. This unlikely THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS part 4 combines elements of the previous 3: the characters and tone of part 1, the video game plotting and drug kingpin bad guys of part 2, the director and improved visual style of part 3. Combining all the technologies they’ve developed into a new model.
Part 3 might still be my favorite, with its comprehensive visual tribute to everything that looks cool in Tokyo and its charismatic lead performance by Lucas Black (plus Sonny Chiba bit part, Incredible Hulk car and stupid cameo at the end). I was surprised how much I liked that one and even more surprised how many people I know who have no interest in the series liked it too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Gal Gadot, John Ortiz, Jordana Brewster, Justin Lin, Laz Alonso, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Ron Yuan, Shea Whigham, Sung Kang, Vin Diesel
Posted in Action, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Most Americans, when they think of Australia they think of kangaroos and koalas and shit. Me, I think of high speed car chases and vicious (but wise) giant crocodiles. And I guess maybe occasionally I think of 6’5″ Seattle Storm center Lauren Jackson. But usually it’s the cars and crocodiles, because as you maybe noticed I’ve been watching the Australian films this last year or so – ROGUE, DARK AGE, ROAD GAMES, RAZORBACK, etc. I’ve never been there, but something about that place really appeals to me, and so do their movies, I’m not sure why. They seem to have an untapped (by me) reservoir of really good filmatists there who work in a style that appeals to me. Energetic but not frantic, stylish but still raw, serious but not pretentious, lots of car flips.
I was kind of embarrassed though when I found out there was a documentary going around called NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD that lumps these movies together under the silly name “Ozploitation.” It was real popular down there in Austin where my Ain’t It Cool colleagues are and Tarantino’s interviewed in it and everything so it got them all interested. I swear it’s a coincidence, I had no idea this was a big thing right now. If anything, the documentary probaly copied the idea from me. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Brian Trenchard-Smith
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Seven strangers. One man connects them. Or some stupid bullshit like that, is what the commercials said. They had a hard time explaining what the hell this movie was supposed to be about, and didn’t make me curious to find out. That is, until somebody gave away the ending.
I’m gonna go ahead and make you have to highlight this one, because it’s at the end of the movie, it’s a pretty huge spoiler. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Will Smith
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Not too long ago it was in the nerd-news that Samuel L. Jackson had signed on to play the character “Nick Fury” in as many as nine Marvel Comics movies. Some people said, “Well, that’s not surprising. Samuel L. Jackson will sign onto anything!” But that’s not really fair, they were probaly just actors who were bitter because they didn’t get the roles in THE SPIRIT, CLEANER, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, S.W.A.T., SOUL MEN, JUMPER, HOME OF THE BRAVE, FREEDOMLAND, FARCE OF THE PENGUINS, BASIC, CHANGING LANES, SPHERE, LOADED WEAPON 1, etc.
Where does this Nick Fury come from? Probaly some comic book, but in my opinion mainly from this TV movie starring David Hasselhoff. I actually have wanted to see this for years because it was written by David Goyer in the same year he did BLADE, but they rarely showed it on TV. One time I happened to catch part of it on cable so I checked to see when it would air again – never, it turned out. That was the one and only scheduled airing. But that was before Fury Fever swept the nation, so now it’s on DVD. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Hasselhoff, David S. Goyer, Marvel Comics, TV movies
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Saturday, March 21st, 2009
Donny Yen plays Ip Man, the grand master martial artist who I guess was the first to openly teach the Wing Chun style of kung fu. If you’ve heard of him it’s probaly because he was Bruce Lee’s Wing Chun master, although that’s only mentioned in the text at the end of the movie.
Like Ronny Yu’s JET LI’S FEARLESS, IP MAN is a prestige martial arts picture, a fictionalized take on a historical figure, a beautifully shot period piece (in this case the ’30s) mixing drama and inspirational nationalism with topnotch martial arts choreography. The look is a little more timeless than FEARLESS though – I didn’t notice any digital shots, and only a couple wire-assisted moves. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Donnie Yen, Fan Siu-Wong, Ip Man, Simon Yam, Wilson Yip
Posted in Martial Arts, Reviews | 6 Comments »
