Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
Never heard of this one, but when Vern starts tossing around comparisons to the original TEXAS CHAINSAW, I start paying attention, because I know how highly he regards that film. I love indie horror that comes out of nowhere to surprise you, so is this going to be a film worth seeking out? Only Vern knows…
THE WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD is a ’70s style low budget horror movie that’s going to be playing the Tribeca film festival in New York later this month. But it originates from Harry’s neck of the woods. The “Wild Man” of the title is a mysterious being – sasquatch? lunatic? – who lives near the Navidad River in Sublime, Texas, does not necessarily have the best manners, and may or may not take some bites out of any animals or humans that encounter him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Duane Graves, Justin Meeks
Posted in AICN, Reviews | No Comments »
Friday, April 11th, 2008
the complete 96 hour saga
48 HOURS is a well made and highly influential movie, but I think you sort of had to be there. Today about 30-42 hours of it holds up.
Coming 5 years before LETHAL WEAPON this is the father of the ’80s interracial buddy movies. The premise is that edgy cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte), in a desperate ploy to stop a killer, manages to get custody of convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) for two days to help him with the case. Of course they hate each other until they slowly earn each other’s respect. It’s cop vs. criminal, white vs. black, etc. Part of the fun is watching them flip each other shit and get in fights, although it gets uncomfortable because Nolte uses most of the racial slurs he knows – yes, including the N-word. He later apologizes and says he was just doing his job of keeping Reggie down – I’m not sure what that’s meant to say about cops but you can interpret it how you want. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Nick Nolte, Walter Hill
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 79 Comments »
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Here’s a John Carpenter movie I somehow never reviewed before. Kurt Russell plays Jack Burton, a loudmouthed truck driver who stops in Chinatown to gamble with an old buddy, and ends up stuck in the middle of a gang war, an ancient prophecy, magic powers, monsters, etc.
The opening scene of the movie is classic. It fades in on Egg Shen, the driver of a tour bus in Chinatown, being interviewed by a lawyer about “what happened.” We know that something big and crazy happened, that a whole block erupted into “green flames,” and that people want to know where “Jack Burton and his truck” are. Shen admits that he believes in Chinese black magic and when the lawyer asks why he should believe in it Shen holds up his hands and shoots bolts of green lightning between them. “See?” he says. “That was nothing. But that’s how it always begins. Very small.” Then it cuts to a shot of a truck as the opening credits begin, and you realize “okay, a truck. This must be that Jack Burton they were so concerned about.” Classic! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Carpenter, Kurt Russell
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
I try to watch alot of DTV movies, but I don’t always succeed. Most of you have probaly never watched them, and you may assume that they are very good and enjoyable, and capable of adding meaning to one’s life. However, this is almost never the case. In the world of DTV filmmaking it seems pretty clear that nobody gives a shit. Most of them are trying to just reach 90 minutes and throw the shit on a shelf. You could argue that more effort goes into pornography, since some poor girl has to take it in the ass. That’s elbow grease.
So this is an unusual couple of days because I’ve managed to watch a bunch of DTVs and all of them were actually okay. So okay, in fact, that I was able to watch them in two or less sittings. In this world that’s almost a miracle. Either that or I have somehow increased my attention span overnight. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dolph Lundgren, DTV, Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Action, AICN, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
I don’t know if Sylvester Stallone forced them to step up their game, or if they all got together and had a meeting and decided to start putting more effort into this shit or what but lately all the old ’80s and ’90s action stars who are in exile on the small screen have started doing a better job. Seagal’s had a couple good ones in a row, Dolph’s have been watchable, Van Damme had that movie where he was a heroin junkie. None of these are yet matching the full potential of DTV, but at least they’re getting there. The latest in the trend is Van Damme’s double-titled THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL.
I will go ahead and give the credit for this one not to Van Damme but to the director Isaac Florentine. I will have to investigate the guy’s works further but if he has anymore as good as this one and UNDISPUTED II then I think he must be one of the top DTV directors. He’s an Israeli martial artist who came to the U.S. and directed POWER RANGERS shows for years and then got into DTV movies like US SEALS II. And as far as the DTV directors go he has a real good style. His movies have hard-hitting martial arts scenes that are well staged, he uses some energetic but not hyperactive editing and camera angles to keep things moving and he has some odd touches here that suggest a sense of humor. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Isaac Florentine, JCVD, Scott Adkins
Posted in Action, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
This isn’t the type of movie I would usually review, but according to the infallible search engine it’s never been mentioned once on The Ain’t It Cool News and, having seen it today, I think it is worth mentioning.
THE HAMMER is an independent comedy about boxing. It stars the talk radio host Adam Corolla as Jerry Ferro, a carpenter who on his fortieth birthday gets fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend. He still has a job as a part time boxing instructor at a gym so he tries to pick up some more work there. Without trying he ends up catching the eye of a veteran trainer who gives him a longshot chance to take part in Olympic trials, something he failed at 20 years ago through his own laziness. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Carolla, boxing, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance, Sport | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 28th, 2008
For part 3 Michael Winner stripped DEATH WISH down to its crudest elements. There was nowhere further to go within. So for THE CRACKDOWN new director J. Lee Thompson (GUNS OF THE NAVARONE, the last two PLANET OF THE APES movies, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, tons of other shit) dresses it back up again. You know this right away from the opening which contains suspense, mood, atmosphere, build, surprise, and symbolism, all forbidden by part 3’s strict DOGME style rules.
Kersey is an architect again, and has a family again – another reporter girlfriend with a teenage daughter he regards as his own daughter (we know this because he says “I regard her as if she were my own daughter.”) Oh jesus, not more gang rape, right? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cannon Films, Charles Bronson, vigilantes
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 5 Comments »
Friday, March 28th, 2008
From the Academy Award winning writer of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and MYSTIC RIVER, and the director of DEEP BLUE SEA, and with a story by the guy who did the novelization of E.T., comes a new old name in terror…
or, to put it another way, from the writer of PAYBACK and the director of DIE HARD 2 comes a part 4 that’s not as awesome as that sounds. If you are a Freddy devotee like myself you enjoy watching this crap every once in a while, but it’s the first one in the series that doesn’t advance the story at all.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s kind of nice that they continue with some of the characters from part 3, you don’t see that in too many slasher sequels. This one starts out with Kincaid, Joey and Kristen (now played by Tuesday Knight instead of Patricia Arquette and seeming to have a completely different personality) out of the institution and in a regular high school like the kids in parts 1-2. (I wonder if they all go to the same school Nancy did? I’m not sure.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Renny Harlin, Rodney Eastman, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
THE MIST is called THE MIST because it’s a cool and refreshing vapor of soothing horror quality in a sea of crappy bombast. Also because it’s about a mysterious mist that surrounds a small town and when they go into it there’s monsters. The small town is Castle Rock, Maine and you know what that means: based on a Stephen King story. The weird thing is the hero, Thomas Punisher Jane, is not an alcoholic writer, he is a guy who paints movie posters exactly like Drew Struzan (he even painted the poster for THE THING, just like Drew Struzan did, and came up with the same poster). So this is real new territory for Stephen King.
After a storm wrecks Tom Jane’s painting, his window, his boathouse, and his asshole neighbor’s Mercedes he takes his son and the neighbor (the great Andre Braugher of TV’s HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET) to the Food House grocery store. The place is chaotic with everybody stocking up in case of more storm and you can imagine how much worse it gets when The Mist traps everybody inside. By the way, even though this is Stephen King the grocery store is not possessed, not even the mist is possessed, it’s just mist that happens to surround monsters, which may or may not be possessed. I’m not really sure if monsters can be possessed or not, I have not considered this before. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Stephen King, Thomas Jane
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 33 Comments »
Monday, March 24th, 2008
and the end of the world of action and horror movies
Well, shit. I been looking forward to this one for a long time. ROAD WARRIOR + ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK from the director of THE DESCENT? Yes please. I thought. And in the week since it came out I’ve gotten alot of emails about it and talked to several people who saw it and only 2 of them said they didn’t like it. Most weren’t willing to call it “good” but they did seem pretty delighted by it.
So hopefully most of you who see it will like it too, but Jee and Zuss. To me DOOMSDAY seems like my own personal doomsday, the end of the line for my two favorite genres. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Neil Marshall, post-action, unwatchable garbage
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews | 6 Comments »
