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Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

ZigZag

Wednesday, July 10th, 2002

Leguizamo, and Snipes, the box says. The Star & Writer of Blade & Blade II Reunite, the box says. For the first time in months, I think.

I don’t know, this is only a screener, maybe they’ll change the cover, which is colored like THE ROCK or TRAFFIC and just shows giant closeups of John and Wesley’s faces, lookin real serious. You have no fuckin clue what kind of movie this is. “One’s good. One’s bad. An innocent boy is caught in the middle.” Where’s the boy, then?

See, this movie is not a Wesley Snipes movie at all. He plays a crucial role but he’s only in a handful of scenes. Leguizamo is more important but the actual star is Sam Jones III. This young man plays a 15 year old autistic kid who’s bein looked after by Singer (Leguizamo), who named him Zig Zag and convinced him his talents were super powers. Wesley is great as Zig Zag’s dad, an abusive crackhead. The story is about how Zig Zag steals money from work, and then his dad steals it from him, but Singer doesn’t want Zig Zag to get in trouble so he tries to steal it back from the dad so he can give it back to the work and I mean, you know, complications happen. Not real spectacular complications, really, but complications. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Powerpuff Girls

Thursday, July 4th, 2002

What this is about is hard to explain. It’s a cartoon about a professor who creates these three little girls. They have super powers to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes and basically anything that pussy Superman can do. Only they have big round heads, giant eyes, and no fingers. And the professor is all made out of squares. At the same time he creates them in a laboratory accident he doesn’t know he also gives his pet monkey a giant brain. The monkey goes off to live in exile, plotting his revenge which involves monkeys and robots. Then there is fighting. (read the rest of this shit…)

Halloween: Resurrection

Monday, July 1st, 2002

A couple years back you’ll remember that I reviewed the whole HALLOWEEN series. And I mean the WHOLE series. The first one, the middle ones, the last one. The very last one. The one where they got the original stars back, they got a halfway decent script, they brought everything full circle, they chopped that fucker’s head off and they cut to the credits. The end, forever. Never again. Against all odds, they came up with a decent wrapup to an endless series of bad sequels.

Well sadly what they went and did, they talked poor Michael Meyers into doing ANOTHER one, one that nobody in the world wanted, one more in the tradition of parts 4, 5 and 6, but even worse. I guess I can’t blame Mike, with a mug like that how you gonna get leading man roles. He’s a character actor at best unless he’s in HALLOWEEN, then he’s the star. (read the rest of this shit…)

Minority Report

Friday, June 21st, 2002

Like PLANET OF THE APES, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and soon STAR WARS PART 2, MINORITY REPORT is a sci-fi picture that will mainly be discussed in context with the politics of the time. (the time being now. because it came out today.)

Again like the Yoda picture, it has been in the planning stages long enough that director Steven Spielberg (JAWS) and co-writer Scott Frank (I only remember him because he did OUT OF SIGHT. who knows who the other writer is) couldn’t have known how timely it would turn out to be. The movie takes place in Washington DC, 2056, where Tom Cruise is an agent in the flagship “Pre-Crime Deparment” – cops who use three water-submerged psychic “precogs” to track crimes of passion that haven’t even happened yet. (read the rest of this shit…)

Windtalkers

Saturday, June 15th, 2002

Sometimes in a man’s life, he decides to move from Hong Kong to America, do a movie with Jean Claude Van Damme and then spend the rest of his life struggling to regain what he once had. Fighting to just be John Woo again. Hoping to recapture that innocent time when he was the guy who did THE KILLER and HARD BOILED and not the guy who wants to produce a computer animated movie about ninja turtles.

Maybe you read about all those teenage Iraqi christians who went on a long journey hidden between boxes in the back of a truck to escape persecution and find freedom in America, and Uncle Ashcroft thanked them by throwing them in prison on unspecified “immigration violations” with no charges or plans to ever release them. Well this isn’t as bad, but I think most americans are still pretty ashamed of how we rewarded all the Hong Kong directors seeking asylum in Hollywood with the Curse of Van Damme. Anyway, if anybody could’ve overcome it we all thought it would be John Woo. (read the rest of this shit…)

How to Make a Monster (2001)

Wednesday, June 12th, 2002

Some of you will wonder why I choose to watch this kind of crap. The answer is because of the French.

This one is from a series of movies made for cable called Creature Features. They have special effecting by Stan Winston (director of A GNOME NAMED GNORM) and are all based on the premises or titles of old movies produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff. They got SHE-MONSTER, DAN AYCKROYD VS. SPIDERMAN and many others. The one I’m waiting for is actually TEENAGE CAVEMAN directed by Larry Clark, the pervert who did KIDS and BULLY and ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE where the main kid wears his pants so low you can see his fuckin pubes. Jesus, Larry! (read the rest of this shit…)

SIFF: OUTLAW VERN Sees PISTOL OPERA and MISSING PERSONS!!

Tuesday, June 11th, 2002

Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

I’m giddy. I get to publish reviews by Outlaw Vern and Clarence Beaks, two of my favorite AICN contributors, in the same day. Vern’s in Seattle, checking out the scene at the Seattle International Film Festival, and has the following report to file:

Dear Harry and Moriarty,

Vern here. I saw two more movies at SIFF and here is what they are.

MISSING PERSONS

First of all I saw MISSING PERSONS which is a low budget computer animated feature done by two twin brothers named Matt and Dan O’Donnell. At least I think there are two of them, they are twins. And no these are not the creepy american twin animators who speak with british accents, you’re thinking of the Quay brothers. This is a completely different set of twin animators, as far as I can tell.

The credits only list these two guys, and then the songs, so apparently they did the entire thing themselves (all the animation, all the voices, even apparently designed the software, etc.) so it’s pretty impressive. On the other hand, for this reason it is not always up to the technical standards expected by most grown adults who watch cartoons. (read the rest of this shit…)

Outlaw Vern Reports On BIGGIE & TUPAC From SIFF!!

Monday, June 3rd, 2002

SPOILER ALERT !!

Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Vern is one of my very favorite Internet writers about anything, much less movies. A reformed outlaw who channelled his energy into writing about films after his last stint inside, he’s been a constant presence on the web for the last few years, and he’s got a voice all his own. Here he is with a look at the new documentary from the always controversial Nick Broomfield:

Dearest Harry and Moriarty,

It has been a while since I’ve had my works printed on your page there (ain’t it cool news) but this time I got somethin that I think will move your heart. I know how much Tupac and Biggie Smalls mean to you young people today so I’m sure both of you are very anxious to see BIGGIE AND TUPAC, the new documentary about them from Nick Broomfield (who directed the Heidi Fleiss picture and maybe more in this vein, KURT AND COURTNEY). Because Tupac means to a young man like Harry or Moriarty the same thing Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash meant to their dads, only with more tattoos and brighter colored suits. (read the rest of this shit…)

Undercover Brother

Saturday, June 1st, 2002

I’ve always been a man who enjoys this one kind of movie hero, let’s call it the counter-hero. The counter-hero is the type of hero who fits the usual mold of the action hero or super hero or what not, but who represents a set of values closer to yours or mine than of the assholes you usually see in movies.

For example you got Snake Plissken or Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE, who are sort of an anti-Rambo. They go around by themselves and take on armies and blow shit up but they aren’t doing it in the name of the american government or military conquest or nothing. Snake is the anarchist Rambo, Roddy is the anti-alien-republican Rambo. John Carpenter pictures are full of these type of characters. (read the rest of this shit…)

How High

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2002

What this is is Bob Dylan’s son decided to direct a completely retarded pot comedy starring Method Man and Redman. Now those names may sound like a couple of cartoon comic strip heroes but really they are just two rappers who found that music was too limited a form of expression to communicate their message. Now they are speaking in the language of Cinema, and the dialect of Friday.

Or that’s what they’re trying I think. The mentality is more along the lines of worthless attempted-comedy garbage like Revenge of the Nerds and Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. This is one of those movies where established adult music stars are playing teenagers, like House Party or Purple Rain, the movie where Prince is driving around on a motorcycle wearing fluffy scarves and purple leather coats with tails, but still lives with his parents. This is also one of those movies where the stuffy college dean and rich boyfriend and nerdy hall monitor dude either a) are the butt of some outrageous joke and they get so mad steam practically starts sprayin out their ears or b) get stoned, lose the starch from their collar and show that, believe it or not, they really know how to party! (read the rest of this shit…)