Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Some individuals have been writing to me asking for me to “go on record” about Wesley Snipes getting sentenced to three years for not filing his tax returns. I don’t know, man. It seems to me like a bullshit sentence. You can skip down a couple paragraphs to get to BOILING POINT but I’ll say a few things here by request.
I got mixed feelings about taxes. On paper I believe in them strongly. I mean somebody’s gotta pave the fuckin streets so you hot shots can drive around on them. I like having electricity in the street lights. There’s alot of anti-tax sentiment here in Washington, there’s a rich prick who has made himself richer with a for-profit company that every election files a bunch of anti-tax propositions. They usually get shot down as unconstitutional but they’re popular so the state government ends up following them and the next thing you know the fuckin library is closed two months out of the year and the bridges are ready to collapse with no money to even tape ’em up with duct tape and there’s twice as many homeless people sleeping on my street and everybody is confused. WHY is the soccer field by my house closed?! I demand justice! … What’s that? Lower property taxes? Of course, where do I sign? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Viggo Mortensen, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
The Burns Gang, three brothers, recently attacked some family, raped and killed a pregnant woman. I don’t know about you but I’m against it and in fact so is middle brother Charlie (Guy Pearce) who was so offended he decided to take little brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) and run off. But of course it’s those two remorseful brothers that have been captured by Ray Winstone now, not the ringleader Arthur (Danny Huston). Since we didn’t see the attack we don’t know for sure how guilty they are or how much of a chance they had to stop it, but Winstone seems to believe this Arthur is the guy to get. So he takes Mikey, lets Charlie go, says I’m gonna kill little brother on Christmas Day unless you kill older brother. That’s the proposition.
This is a western, but it takes place in Australia. I’m not familiar with the geography of Australia, for all I know this takes place on the East Coast, but oh well. It’s a western. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Christmas, Danny Huston, Guy Pearce, John Hillcoat, Nick Cave, Ray Winstone
Posted in Reviews, Western | No Comments »
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
CHOPPER came out in 2000 and in the 8 years since I don’t think I’ve seen too many characters or performances as good as Eric Bana playing Mark Brandon Read, whose friends call him Chopper and he calls himself Uncle Chop Chop. I never heard of him before the movie but he’s a real Australian criminal who became a celebrity writing his memoirs while he was locked up. And the movie’s based on some of those.
It’s kind of a weird movie. It threw me at first because it doesn’t have much of a structure and it’s kind of a small story. Maybe I was expecting some kind of crime epic or something, but instead a bunch of stuff happens and then it ends. I prefer a tight story but it still had me. It was so captivating I ended up watching it again the next day. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Eric Bana
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
How do you do an Australian version of JAWS? You can’t have a killer koala. Maybe a rogue kangaroo that goes around punching people or stealing babies in its pouch. In 1984 these guys went with a huge fucking boar. And that would’ve been a great headline for a review if the movie was bad, but actually I really liked it.
I know this is the kind of movie people write off immediately. It definitely is a ripoff of JAWS and redoing JAWS with a huge pig seems even funnier than redoing it with an orca. But the movie doesn’t give a fuck what you think. It knows what it is and it has no shame. Go ahead, laugh at the razorback. Laughing is healthy and will make you taste better. As one of our heroes says, “It has two states of being. Dangerous or dead.” Mostly the first one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, giant pig, killer animals, Russell Mulcahy
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
I like to think I’m a pretty tough individual, even on a cellular level. So I don’t usually watch movies like this and I don’t usually get sick. A year or two ago I got some crud that really knocked me out, so while I was laying there a useless husk of my regular self I decided that God had opened a window – a window of opportunity for me to watch KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and VOLUME 2 in a row. The movie seemed even better in one sitting and I was healed the next day. Thanks God. You got good taste in movies.
So the next year when I got real sick I did the same thing, with the same success. Only trouble is when I got sick again this month and it was the worst I had in years. My KILL BILL treatment had been too recent, I didn’t know if it would work and I didn’t want to overdo it and create a KILL BILL-resistant supervirus. So I watched a bunch of other DVDs I had laying around. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: musicals
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Family, Reviews | 3 Comments »
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 »
