Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
I meant to see APOCALYPTO this week but I was too god damn sick to haul my ass to the theater. So I figured what the hell, it’s December, I’m Vern – might as well revisit LETHAL WEAPON. Haven’t seen that one since the ’80s. One of my buddies swears by it.
Well, it was interesting to watch this movie again, and I had fun, but I can’t say it has aged too well. I know it’s not fair to compare everything to DIE HARD, but LETHAL WEAPON is no DIE HARD. Bruce knew to keep the hair conservative, it will be timeless, no problem. His hair in that movie is so not dated that today, when the LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD teaser debuted online, everybody was pissed that he didn’t have the old hair do. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mel Gibson, Shane Black
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 19 Comments »
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
Carnahan fans have been waiting a while now for his follow-up to NARC, and it seems crazy that it’s almost here.
If you’re a fan, you might want to hop over to CHUD, where Devin Faraci has been fielding questions that Carnahan’s been answering on his very own blog.
In the meantime, let’s see what our own Vern has to say about this film that I’m eagerly looking forward to:
You know what this movie is, it’s a remake of BOBBY. Almost the whole movie takes place in and around this hotel. And you got your huge all-star cast of characters with their various intersecting stories going on. But instead of them all living their lives and making corny speeches not knowing Bobby Kennedy is about to be assassinated, they are all trying to sneak into the hotel to kill Jeremy Piven. And instead of tons of stock footage of Kennedy speeches there is all kinds of fighting and guns. So it’s a reflection of our times. Or a very loose remake. A reimagining. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Garcia, Ben Affleck, Jeremy Piven, Joe Carnahan, Peter Berg, Ray Liotta, Ryan Reynolds, Wayne Newton
Posted in Action, AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
get it, gingerDEAD instead of gingerBREAD
For hundreds of years, gingerbread has been a delicious and vibrant European treat. It was used to make soft cakes that would be drenched in hot lemon sauce and whipped cream, or for ornate candy-covered houses like the “witch’s house” from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, or to form the shape of a small man, a reflection of its creator. As man is to God, gingerbread man is to man. And therefore also to God.
No one knows the origin of gingerbread, because how do you pin down something like that? I’m sure they could figure out who invented the McRib Sandwich, but not gingerbread. Some believe it came from the Eastern Mediterranean, and spread across Europe as soldiers came home from the Crusades. At least something good would’ve come out of the Crusades then. Wherever it came from, its ginger packs a powerful punch, so much so that throughout the 17th century you needed a license to bake gingerbread except at Christmas and Easter. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charles Band, DTV, Gary Busey, Robin Sydney
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
As I sit here putting together today’s updates, it is always a bonus pleasure when Vern sends me something to post. Today is no exception.
Trust no one. Anywhere. Except Vern.
This week’s horror movie is called TURISTAS (Portuguese for ‘Hostel’). It’s another story of young good looking backpackers whose vacations go badly due to bodily mutilation, etc. A crowded bus swerves to miss some asshole kids with surfboards and falls off a cliff. Luckily everybody gets out in time. The next bus won’t be for ten hours so some of the English-speakers band together and find a cool beachfront bar where they dance, make new friends, meet women and have such a good time they decide to ditch the bus. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Stockwell, Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde
Posted in AICN, Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 27th, 2006
This is a documentary about the Dixie Chicks. Now, you probaly won’t be surprised to hear that I got no interest in the music of the Dixie Chicks. But you may or may not be surprised to hear that I liked the movie alot.
Of course the title refers to the main subject of the movie, the controversy that came in 2003 after Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines ad-libbed the dangerous sentence, “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States comes from Texas,” during a concert in London. Because of that one sentence (and some mild anti-war, pro-human life comments on the eve of the invasion) right wing web sights organized call-in campaigns to country music stations across the country, causing the corporation that runs the computer that programs every radio station to not play Dixie Chicks songs anymore. Meanwhile, idiots with bad handwriting made signs and stood outside of Dixie Chicks concerts reinforcing all the worst stereotypes about lower class white southerners. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: music documentaries
Posted in Documentary, Music, Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, November 27th, 2006
No, this is not the one where Adam Sandler has a magic remote control that he uses to conquer the world, that’s CLICK. This is CRANK, this is the one where Jason Statham (the Transporter himself) is a hitman who gets injected by high concept poison. It’s gonna kill him, but he figures out that it won’t finish until his adrenaline rate goes down. So he tries to run around, have sex, do coke and get in shootouts until he is able to get revenge on the poisoner. So it’s SPEED in a guy, with a side order of revenge.
An inventive thrill ride full of imagination and wit that keeps you constantly involved as it builds to an unbelievable climax… would be a good way to do this movie. Instead they went the DOMINO route of “if you throw every stupid show-offy technique you ever saw in a commercial at the screen, technically it counts as entertainment.” I think I know what they were thinking: he has to keep his adrenaline up, so the movie has to keep its adrenaline up too. But it’s flawed logic. THE JERK is about a moron, but the movie doesn’t have to be moronic. I don’t think SPEED had cameras flying around constantly to convince you that it’s about speed. If you show a guy in hospital gown zooming around on a motorcycle pursued by police, that is by definition somewhat exciting. But when you throw in unnecessary zooms and split screen and do a jokey flashback on one side and then freeze on a guy’s goofy expression and then switch it to black and white and then zoom into Statham’s chest to show an x-ray of his heart beating (a nod to the Furious Movement) AND you gotta throw in “exciting” guitar music made by a guy who used to be in Tangerine Dream who is now trying to rock out, it seems like you’re overcompensating. It isn’t exciting anymore, it’s just annoying. To me it’s another movie that has no build or rhythm at all, just the same frantic shit for 87 minutes straight. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Smart, Jason Statham, Neveldine/Taylor
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 27th, 2006
This is a movie that’s not on video as far as I know. In order to see it you either gotta travel through time, or you gotta deal with those seemy individuals who sail the seven seas putting the stuntmen out of work. Or at least the non-copyright holding movie transferers at 5minutestolive.com.
MR. NO LEGS is a badly acted low budget movie about two cops (one with mustache) investigating the death of one cop (the one with the mustache)’s sister. They don’t know what we the audience know, that she was accidentally killed by her no-good-drug-dealing boyfriend who they will not be able to bring to justice because his sloppiness earned his face an intimate date with a shotgun shell, chaperoned by the gang’s toughest enforcer, Lou.
That does not sound exciting, but what if I were to tell you that Lou HAS NO LEGS? And in fact, I had to check IMDb to find out his name was Lou because he is mostly referred to as “No Legs”? What would you do then, smart guy? You would watch the movie is what you would do. (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Action, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to quickly introduce Vern’s review of CASINO ROYALE… and his admission of the huge mancrush he has for Daniel Craig. I saw the movie last night myself and you can add my name onto the “loved it” lists… Eva Green is the pretty and Daniel Craig could kill Cancer. Good stuff… but you didn’t click on this headline to hear me talk. Here’s the main man, Vern!
Fellas –
I liked CASINO ROYALE too. (review ends here if you’re one of those dicks who always complains that my reviews are too long) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 007, Daniel Craig, Martin Campbell
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Thriller | 58 Comments »
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey, “Moriarty” here. Just wanted to drop in to present a review that made me stand up and applaud. I am not a mean man when I write about film. I don’t think I take cheap shots at people. At least, I try not to. I think we all bubble over on occasion and… well…
… you remember when Vern fought and conquered the CHAOS DVD back in August?
Well, this is a better review.
Unless you are Paul Haggis. Or Emilio Estevez. Or pretty much the entire cast of BOBBY. In which case, you might want to go enjoy something over in Coax for a while, cause this… this gets ugly:
Question for you fellas:
Why is Emilio Estevez famous again? I can’t think of many legitimately good movies he’s in besides REPO MAN. People love their BREAKFAST CLUB, I think I liked STAKEOUT at the time, can’t remember. I think now he mostly just directs TV shows, but that’s not enough Gatorade to quench the artistic thirst for this guy. With his new all star ensemble BOBBY he’s going serious. He’s wearing two hearts, one on each sleeve, maybe even has his targets set on the Academy’s notorious weakness for actors turned directors. Who knows what those chumps will fall for these days? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater, Emilio Estevez, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy
Posted in AICN, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
THE PRESTIGE and MARIE ANTOINETTE double feature
This week was one of those ones that start coming up toward the end of the year where there’s just too many movies you want to see all coming out on the same day. And me being an obsessive motherfucker I try to tackle them all at once. We got three reliable directors all hitting the same day here. #1 priority for me was Clint’s FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, but I already saw that at an early screening. So that left Chris Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE and Sofia Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE. So I watched them both in a row, liked both, also fell asleep during both. (You gotta go to sleep the night before one of these double-headers, it turns out.)
To be honest I wasn’t even gonna review MARIE because, let’s face it, I am not a girl. This is not only a girl movie but a long, arty, low on plot girl movie. I think some of you cinemasters are gonna love the shit out of it but alot of my readers would probaly never be able to sit through it. Still, I’ve read so many reviews that clearly didn’t fucking GET this movie that I decided I had to comment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Nolan, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Sofia Coppola
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
