Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
You probaly heard what Vincent Gallo’s THE BROWN BUNNY is all about, and so did I. I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t know what I was getting into. Obviously I’ve heard alot about this movie since its notorious debut over there in the Cannes. Most people said it really sucked, it sucked the big one. They said Academy Award nominee Chloe Sevigny really blew it by being in this one. Doesn’t matter if she did a good job, they said, because this movie really blows. They had a real hard time swallowing it. A real long, hard time. Also there is a blow job at the end I guess.
Gallo plays Bud Clay, a streetwise motorcycle racer who has just finished a fierce competition in New Hampshire. Now he has to get back to L.A. to have his bike tuned up by Renaldo (sort of his Q or Whistler), and only one thing can stop him: pining. He misses his former girlfriend Daisy (Chloe Sevigny) and he’s on a mission to find her. The mystery leads him on a deadly trail from Daisy’s parents house, to a pet shop, to a gas station, to a hotel, to another hotel, to Las Vegas, to another hotel, etc. Mostly down streets though. When I say “deadly,” by the way, I mean “boring.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cheryl Tiegs, Chloe Sevigny, not much happens, self-indulgence, Vincent Gallo
Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments »
Sunday, November 27th, 2005
The other day I was reading an article about Jack Abramoff, the notorious Republican lobbyist at the middle of a bribery scandal that’s dragging down Tom Delay and supposedly ties in to at least 30 other DC ho’s. The whole thing is real complicated and the charge right now is for wire fraud but the investigation has brought to light all kinds of payoffs, exploitation of Native Americans, embarrassing racist emails and a supposedly coincidental death that anybody with at least one eye will notice appears to be a mafia style hit. We’re talking more corruption than even Senator Billy Jack probaly knew about.
Anyway, the particular article I read referred to Abramoff as a “former b-movie producer.” Holy shit! I thought. I guess I hadn’t been following this closely enough because I hadn’t heard that before. The trusty ol’ internet movie database explained that Abramoff had produced and wrote the story for the Dolph Lundgren picture RED SCORPION, not to be confused with RED SONJA, RED DAWN, RED SUN, RED EYE, THE RED VIOLIN, THE RED BALLOON, or Krysztof Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS: RED. He’s also credited as executive producer on RED SCORPION 2. That’s it although his brother Robert went on to produce a bunch of other movies I never heard of. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brion James, Dolph Lundgren, Jack Abramoff, Joseph Zito, M. Emmet Walsh, Paul Erickson, right wing propaganda
Posted in Action, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Monday, November 21st, 2005
Hey folks, Harry here – Vern brings up a very important issue… Lee Marvin should have to fight Andy Serkis in a weird revenge film using the latest in time travel technology. What? Oh – read the review – you’ll get why that’s cool. Or maybe you intuitively get it. You rule. Here’s Vern…
Howdy boys
If you’re jonesin for a big scoop, you might want to put your pants back on, because this ain’t it. But I did find a pretty good revenge movie I never heard of that’s going straight to video this January here in the states. The box for the screener calls it an “Action-Packed Brand-new Feature Film!” which is advertising slang for “British movie from 2001.” Seems like it must’ve been released in the cinemas they got over there, but I’m not sure when since it doesn’t seem to be on video yet there either.
The movie is called THE ESCAPIST, but it’s not a remake of THE ESCAPIST from 1983 which stars actual escape artist Bill Shirk as himself. You would think you couldn’t go wrong with a movie where they do nothing but find excuses to hang the main character upside down in a straight jacket and put snakes on him and crap, but it doesn’t really work out. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Serkis, Jonny Lee Miller
Posted in AICN, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 17th, 2005
This is one of those movies that on the cover should have a big quote from Roger Ebert or somebody saying “Seriously, not that bad!” I’m not gonna try to convince anybody that ROLL BOUNCE is great but it is actually very well made and watchable for a movie about kids rollerskating. You can face that fact or not, I don’t give a fuck, but there it is. ROLL BOUNCE is kind of good.
Now if you are new around here you may not be familiar with me, I should probaly specify that I am not some pedophile or somebody, and personally I have never reviewed a movie about kids rollerskating before. ROLLERBALL was strictly adults and so was DERBY. I’m a first timer here for this type of material is what I’m saying, and don’t worry I won’t make it a habit. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Charlie Murphy, Chi McBride, Malcolm D. Lee, Meagan Good, Mike Epps, Nick Cannon
Posted in Family, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
CANDYMAN in: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH and CANDYMAN in: DAY OF THE DEAD
Last week I watched this CANDYMAN movie. The review is above but maybe somebody is too lazy to read it so I’ll just say it was surprisingly good and classy for a slasher movie about a guy with bees in his stomach that likes to gut people with a gorey hook hand. Anyway I decided as a completist and foolish optimist I should give these two other Candyman adventures a shot. Maybe lightning strikes three times, you know.
Well truth be told, number 2 is not all that bad. It’s just not all that good either. This one is directed by Bill Condon, who went on to do GODS AND MONSTERS and KINSEY and write some musicals. So it’s not just a random hack, although nobody knew it at the time because this was 1995, it was before they had time travel. Anyway it treats the material as seriously as the first one does, but it’s less dreamy and more literal. The setting is moved to New Orleans which we find out is Candyman’s birthplace. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Condon, Bill Nunn, Clive Barker, Donna D'Errico, DTV sequels, Tony Todd
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 7th, 2005
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE meets THE WEATHER MAN
Okay first of all I gotta ask, why does every movie lately gotta be about a nasty divorce, somebody’s dad dying, or both? I guess that’s just what happens when the sky turns grey and the leaves start falling off the trees, all the sudden you get all these depressing movies about how either you or your dad is a novelist and you fucked up everything with your wife and kids and you want to fix your marriage but that’s completely delusional, your wife has a new guy and she hates you because you’re an asshole and she can do better. (that’s what both of these are about.)
Which brings me to my second comment, you better look up what these movies are about before you see them because the titles are misleading. I know, how could you go wrong with a movie called SQUID VS. WHALE, but unfortunately it turns out that title is some kind of a metaphor or something. Which answers my question of how this got a theatrical release. There is no squid vs. whale fight, at least not a living squid and whale. And the dead ones that fight is only in a museum and only in the very end. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anna Paquin, Gore Verbinski, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg, Laura Linney, Michael Caine, Nicolas Cage, Noah Baumbach, Steve Conrad, William Baldwin
Posted in Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my man Vern and his opinion of the newest cheesefest from Mr. Steven Seagal. If you know Vern, you know you’re in for a treat. If you don’t, then shame on you, but you’ve still got a chance to redeem yourself! Read below brother! Vern’s got the gospel for ya’!
To Harry and friends:
Shit, it seems like just a few weeks since I saw TODAY YOU DIE. In fact, it just came out last month. But here I am with an early review of another straight to video Steven Seagal picture, BLACK DAWN, which comes out a couple days after Christmas.
Seagal plays Jonathan Cold, “ex-CIA, current freelance operative specializing in covert operations and nuclear weapons intelligence.” He seems to be a bad guy because he’s hired to bust a guy out of prison and help him acquire the parts for a suitcase bomb. I never got the chance to realize this before but Seagal makes a good bad guy, always standing around, narrowing his eyes and grimacing like a henchman. He should look into that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Matt Salinger, Seagalogy, Tamara Davies
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Seagal | 1 Comment »
Sunday, October 30th, 2005
This movie surprised me. Everything about it is classier than I expected. From his reputation you’d think this Candyman guy is just a B-list Jason or Freddy type. But it turns out he’s more a classic movie monster like Dracula or the Phantom of the Opera. And his movie has more subtext than all of Freddy and Jason’s pictures put together, including JASON X. Hell, throw in a couple Child’s Plays too. And one or two Halloweens. And one Silent Night Deadly Night. No Texas Chainsaws though, that would tip the scale.
You know why we have to deal with Jason? Because of some horny counselors not doing their job. Freddy, because of some overzealous parents who took the law into their own hands. Dr. Phibes because some doctors fucked up a heart operation. But we got Candyman because of a bigger reason: America’s history of racist oppression. This is the only slasher/ghost movie I know of that deals with the legacy of slavery and racism (only BLACULA comes close). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernard Rose, Clive Barker, Kasi Lemmons, Tony Todd, Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
Well as you know I am always searching for straight to video movies that don’t suck. And even I sometimes forget why that is my mission, so let me put it down in writing here as a reminder. See, in the old days you had b-movies, you had exploitation movies, etc. And the idea of these movies was low budget, lowbrow, easy investment quickie moneymaker. Like squeezing out sausages. And there was alot of disposable garbage made, because that was the whole point. But within that world there were people like Roger Corman, William Castle, Jack Hill etc. who sometimes made movies that transcended just being a product, movies that some people still watch and hold dear today. Lots of directors like John Sayles, John Demme and maybe one or two other guys got their start working on cheapo Roger Corman movies about women in prison or giant alligators. Also unfortunately Ron Howard but that doesn’t count. And people like George Romero and Sam Raimi started with low budget independent movies made for the drive-ins, movies that nobody would expect to still be considered great all these years later. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Josh Olson, Zach Galligan
Posted in Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
In the type of acting tour de la force that everybody loves unless they’re some kind of a dick, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Truman Capote, the famous writer and weirdo. Although the use of only his last name as the movie’s title seems to imply that it will tell the entire story of his life and maybe even the entire story of the life of everybody with the last name Capote, this is actually not a full on biography. The story is narrowed down to the 4 or 5 years when he was working on his famous book IN COLD BLOOD, starring Robert Blake.
The movie starts out with a young girl discovering the dead bodies of a family murdered in a farmhouse. And before you know it Capote and his research assistant Harper Lee (author of the book TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, starring Gregory Peck) are nosing around asking everybody questions. So at first I thought this was gonna be kind of a LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN thing with famous authors going around solving crimes. I bet the Marquis De Sade did these murders. Or Edgar Alan Poe. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bennett Miller, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Clifton Collins Jr., P.S. Hoffman
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
