Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Friday, February 13th, 2009
Clint Eastwood is Philo Beddoe in…
EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE
Don’t you hate it when you and your orangutan are driving somewhere in your pickup truck minding your own business and some fuckin biker assholes pull up and start harassing you about there being an ape? Why can’t a man and an ape travel together as equals without getting stared at and made fun of? And also, does someone who wears a viking helmet really have a leg to stand on in making fun of your choice of animal companion? And no wonder those morons put swastikas on everything, going around harassing different races and species.
Well when and if this happens to you you might get fed up and try to chase those fuckers down, possibly steal a street sweeper and tail them until they hop a train, at which point you will at least get to steal their bikes. This is a worthwhile option and one that works out for trucker/mechanic/bareknuckle brawler Philo Beddoe in this movie, but it also begins a war that leads to many fights and the destruction of more than a dozen motorcycles. So just know what you’re getting into here is all I’m saying. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Beverly D'Angelo, Bill McKinney, Clint Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis, James Fargo, Ruth Gordon, Sondra Locke
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
This heart-rending melodrama from Thailand tells the courageous story of Zen (newcomer Yanin Vismistananda), an autistic girl who finds out her mother has been suffering from cancer but hasn’t done anything about it because she can’t afford proper medical treatment. With the help of an orphaned street urchin, and despite her many mental obstacles (she is easily distracted by small round objects, she can barely speak, she is afraid of flies), Zen goes around the city struggling to collect enough money to save her dying mother.
Harrowing, huh? But you know come to think of it I should’ve mentioned that this is from the director of ONG BAK, so the way she collects money is by picking fights with gangsters, battling 15 or 25 guys at a time, doing flips, hopping over and under various furniture and pipes, hitting people with her feet, hands, knees, elbows or head, swordfighting, throwing people off buildings, etc. See, her mom used to be a gangster and all these assholes owe her money, and Zen wants to collect. And it just so happens that one of the things she is fascinated with is the movie ONG BAK. She has focused much of her mental energy on observing muay thai in that movie and in the kickboxing school she lives next to, and has somewhat superhuman hearing and reflexes. It’s just a lucky combination I guess. So look out. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: JiJa Yanin, Prachya Pinkaew, Thai action
Posted in Martial Arts, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
TAKEN has finally hit American shores many months after everybody else in the world already saw it and emailed me about it. As reported, it is a Luc Besson-produced version of a Seagal-type scenario: ex–CIA badass’s daughter gets kidnapped in Paris, he goes and gets her back. An old favorite. The hook is that this badass is not played by a Seagal, or even a Statham. It’s Liam Neeson (SCHINDLER’S LIST).
Okay, so admittedly action is not completely new for Neeson. He was a swordsman in both BATMAN BEGINS and PHANTOM MENACE. A long time ago he was Darkman. He even co-starred in a (not very good) Patrick Swayze action picture called NEXT OF KIN. (The one where not-famous-yet Ben Stiller plays a mobster’s douchebag son.) But mostly he’s moved beyond that, and I think most people consider him a Serious Actor. You know – MICHAEL COLLINS, KINSEY, GANGS OF NEW YORK, Spielberg’s choice to play Lincoln. And here he is playing a role that the first Ain’t It Cool review complained could’ve been played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. But of course you and I agree that’s why it’s so cool. We want to see a Van Damme movie but with Liam Neeson. Or how about a Michael Dudikoff with Frank Langella? Or a Bolo Yeung with Daniel Day Lewis? A Cynthia Rothrock with Susan Sarandon? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Besson productions, Liam Neeson, post-action
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 50 Comments »
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
THE READER
or
I WAS A TEENAGE NAZI-FUCKER (spoilers)
THE READER is the story of Michael Berg, a rich and successful German lawyer who is tormented that he cannot be emotionally open with the beautiful women he has sex with because when he was a kid he got sick and puked and a lady took him home and later he went to thank her but he accidentally saw her bush so he started to spy on her and then he helped her shovel coal and she gave him a bath but he got a boner so she got naked and they started to have sex every day and she liked him to read books to her but then she abandoned him and later when he was a law student he saw her in a war crimes trial and it turned out she had been a Nazi concentration camp guard who locked 300 people in a church and let them burn to death because she didn’t want them to escape and she took the blame for writing the report on it but he realized she didn’t know how to read but he was too afraid to speak up about it and she got a life sentence which made him feel guilty so decades later he started to send her tapes of himself reading books and she used those to learn how to read and then they were gonna let her out early anyway and he was gonna help her get a job but she hung herself so he took his daughter to her grave and started to tell her about it. the end. Best picture nominee, too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Kate Winslet, Oscar bait, Ralph Fiennes, Stephen Daldry
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
The third and final episode of the original Shaft trilogy is a little less classy without the direction of Gordon Parks, but it’s a hell of a fun sequel. After you’ve done one chapter that’s a good variation on the first one, might as well get crazy and fly off to another continent for part 3. You know Shaft has really earned his black James Bond stripes when he gets to go on an international adventure.
Early in the movie Shaft comes home to his building and somebody tells him some Africans are looking for him. He sees a guy in an African robe and ducks out of the elevator and seems proud of himself as he goes unmolested into his apartment. He hits his punching bag once and struts in but before he can relax the door is kicked down and there’s that huge African dude ready to beat his ass. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: blaxploitation, Richard Roundtree
Posted in Action, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
APPALOOSA does have a little post 9-11 political relevance, but for the most part it’s a straight ahead western. I’ve talked to some people who thought it was too slow or needed more gunfights, so if that’s what you’re looking for, beware. It’s a character piece about two gunmen who’ve gotten real good at dealing with assholes and cleaning up small towns overrun with bandits and bullies.
If the cast was just nobodies it might not work, instead we got Ed Harris (also director) as Virgil Cole, Viggo Mortensen (not director) as trusty sidekick Everett Hitch. Virgil has aspirations to become a legitimate lawman, Hitch has an 8-gauge shotgun. They come into the town of Appaloosa to work for the elected officials who’ve been shoved aside by Jeremy Irons, a tyrant whose big shot status comes from claims he’s friends with Chester A. Arthur (come on, everybody uses that one). Him and his gang run the town, everybody’s afraid of them, the usual. So our boys become marshals and to everybody’s shock they have the balls to start arresting people, and the shit and fan quickly become intimates. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Badass Laureates, Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Reviews, Western | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
After seeing Paul Not Thomas Anderson’s remake of DEATH RACE 2000 and finding it surprisingly enjoyable, I decided to finally go back and see that Kurt Russell movie he made more than ten years ago that I wanted to see but didn’t because everyone said was garbage. And maybe the lowered expectations helped, but I thought SOLDIER was a good one.
The movie begins in the ’90s with a group of babies being taken out of a hospital into military custody (wonder if the parents noticed?) where they will be raised to be super soldiers. The opening is a montage of these soldiers from infancy to their 40s, being indoctrinated, training and participating in various intergalactic conflicts. I was impressed that I could immediately tell which kid was supposed to be Kurt Russell. I thought they did an amazing job of finding a kid who looked like him, but then I found out they just cast his son, which is kind of cheating. Anyway this character’s name is Todd, but don’t worry, if you forget that it’s tattooed on his face, they all have their names and numbers tattooed on their faces. (I honestly think it would be cool if the movie was called TODD.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Webb Peoples, Jason Scott Lee, Kurt Russell, Paul W.S. Anderson
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 10 Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
Wrestling is so weird. It’s boxing, circus sideshow, cheesy stage play and soap opera all in one. The big time wrestling leagues try to drown the show in pyrotechnics and flashy computer animation on giant screens but alot of the appeal is still very old fashioned. It’s the circus. I went to a match one time and saw Andre the Giant. It wasn’t so much like seeing a star as like seeing a Greek god. Or maybe a sasquatch. There was a reason they called him “The 8th Wonder of the World.” These guys are not human, they’re super heroes.
Or it seems that way when you see them up close. But actually they are human. Greek gods might be able to toss lightning around all day without spraining anything, but not humans. God or evolution did not equip humans to break metal chairs over their heads every night, or break tables with their ribs. Wrestlers make their living by not following the proper care and maintenance instructions for the human body, and they always pay the price. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Darren Aranofsky, Mickey Rourke, wrestling
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
MAX PAYNE is the story of the conveniently named Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg), a burnt out shell of a man working as “a glorified file clerk” in the dark caverns of the cold case department of the such and such police department. (IMDb says New York, I thought it was supposed to be one of those New York-like nameless Every-Cities, but whatever.) But actually he doesn’t work, he just spends his days gloomily trying to find out who killed his wife and baby an unspecified time period ago. (Long enough ago that his wife’s co-workers don’t recognize him.)
Everybody describes Max as this scary guy – they think he never sleeps, and at one point a guy compares interaction to him with kids holding their breath as they walk past a graveyard. But Wahlberg is in his regular grimacing badass mode. He’s cool but the way they talk about him he should be a walking mess of a man, not just a sculpted tough guy who doesn’t smile. Oh well. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mark Wahlberg
Posted in Action, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
I believe there are different levels of slasher movies. There are the masterpiece ones like HALLOWEEN and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE – ingenious, masterful works of art that happen to be about weirdos on murder sprees. Below that there are the perennial favorites, not necessarily on the same level but that I like to dig out every few years: FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, THE PROWLER, BLACK CHRISTMAS, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, THE BURNING, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, that kind of stuff.
The best in that category are the ones that really master the mechanics of the form. They have great chase scenes, new and innovative forms of fake violence, spooky atmosphere and imagery. And then they usually have an unexpectedly weird touch or two, a few clever surprises, and maybe some laughs (usually unintentional, which is kind of better because I don’t like alot of clownin around in my horror).
Since almost all of the best are made in the ’70s and ’80s I have to admit that part of the appeal is a certain vibe, a nostalgia for that time period and a reaction to whatever modern form of slickness has developed in horror movies since. So I think for me and even moreso for alot of my horror purist buddies the old ones can get away with a level of crappiness that the new ones can’t. I got buddies who will go on and on about hating the characters in some modern horror movie and not believe me when I try to tell them that almost all of their favorite slasher movies from the ’80s were inhabited by characters who were just as obnoxious, but with different clothes and hair. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Jensen Ackles, Kevin Tighe, Patrick Lussier, remakes, slashers, Todd Farmer, Tom Atkins
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 37 Comments »
