Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Well here’s another American classic from AMC, the british version of The Mummy. Chris Lee plays the mummy and Pete Cushing plays the British archaeologist who gets bit on the ass by the mummy’s curse. I mean I don’t mean the mummy bites him on the ass or anything, that never happens. But after Pete, Pete Sr. and Uncle Joe unearth the princess Ananka in Egypt (best line: “There’s something evil in there Uncle Joe, I felt it. Oh well, let’s get it open.”) this angry Egyptian follows their British asses home and starts reading scrolls at em. Next thing of course the mummy’s come back from the dead and the Egyptian is commanding him to kill the party of three who fucked with the princess’s tomb.
This isn’t that good of a setup though, really. I mean you got one stiff, stumbling mummy, three potential victims, two of them old, one of them bedridden, the young one with a gimpy leg, and you know the mummy’s never gonna get Pete anyway. So I mean how much can possibly happen here? This is so little to work with that they have to spend about 10-15 minutes in the middle with Pete narrating a little educational film about ancient Egyptian burial rituals. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Hammer, mummies, Peter Cushing
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 68 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
disclaimer from the future: Back in ’96 when BOUND came out and then in 2002 when I wrote this I really believed the movie to be the work of two men who were horny to watch lesbian sex and trying to pass it off as enlightenment. This turned out to be not so accurate! But I will leave this review as-is for the historical record.
Well I saw this picture a long time ago, but now with all of America waiting anxiously for THE MATRIX PART 2: RETURN OF THE MATRIX and THE MATRIX PART 3: BEYOND MATRIXDOME, I thought it would be a good time to go back and take another look at the Wachowski brothers first picture, this stylish neo-noir with a side of lesbians.
It’s funny to think that these guys have now done 3 MATRIX movies in a row, and the only other movie was this one, which they made only to prove to the studio that they could direct THE MATRIX. At the time nobody knew what the fuck the Matrix was so they just thought they were trying to be like the Coen Brothers when they made their first movie BLOOD SIMPLE or the Dahl brothers when they made their first movie RED ROCK WEST but really they were just being the Matrix Brothers doing a demo reel. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Gina Gershon, Jennifer Tilly, Joe Pantoliano, Wachowskis
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Hey Harry and Father Geek, it’s me, Vern.
Well you know what guys I am going through some tough times in my life, sort of an introspective type deal, and what you do in this type of situations sometimes is you want to relax, go to an activity such as a barbecue, titty bar or film festival and get your mind off of things.
So that is what ol’ Vern did yesterday, I went and saw the BLOOD SIMPLE movie that every motherfucker has been recommending to me left and right. “Vern, see Fargo. Vern see Blood Simple. Vern, see Big Lebosky.” Well Blood Simple was playing at the Seattle’s International Film Festival, a film festival here in Seattle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Coen Brothers, Dan Hedaya, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Well god damn here’s an action picture like I’ve NEVER seen. This is a must see for ANY action fan and I am not fucking joking. I mean you don’t have to see Payback, you don’t have to see Die Hard with a Vengeance or any of these other movies I talk about but in god and mary’s sweet name of christ jesus, you OWE it to yourself and to the lord to see this chinese picture Hard Boiled.
I mean don’t get me wrong I like the van dammes and what not but this is on a whole other plane flying way up in the sky. It will forever change what you expect from an action picture in my opinion although I only saw it this afternoon so what the hell do I know. But it is to shootout movies what Godfather is to mob movies or Jaws is to shark movies. Don’t take this the wrong way but it is such a leap ahead it is like die hard times ten. It is WAY, and I mean WAY more violent than anything you will see in the US of A but at the same time the characters and story plot are far more developed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Wong, best movies ever, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, Tony Leung
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 54 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
I like the horror pictures. I used to just review them because I saw them, and what else am I supposed to do, you know? I already saw it, might as well Write the fuckin review you know.
But after a while I started to really like this stuff. I mean everybody likes monsters and shit. I started to watch all the Dracula pictures, all the Chucky pictures, everything. I started to seek them out.
I heard alot about this director, Larry Fessenden, who is some new york independent filmatist who has made a trilogy of pretentious horror movies – NO TELLING, HABIT, and WENDIGO which got some good reviews when it played at a film festival here but I haven’t seen it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Larry Fessenden, vampires
Posted in Drama, Horror, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This movie is about as corny as they make em, but I kinda liked it. Supposedly the stars here are a real group of young fellas who are known for climbing up buildings, jumping off buildings, sliding down ropes and all that sort of shit. Sort of like the poor french man’s cirque du soleil.
So Luc Besson found out about them and decided to make a movie showcasing their talents. This is kinda what Besson does if you think about it. I haven’t seen KISS OF THE DRAGON yet but that was his attempt to make a better English language Jet Li vehicle than ROMEO MUST DIET. FIFTH ELEMENT was a vehicle for the detailed sci-fi world he had created when he was in boarding school. And what was THE MESSENGER if not a vehicle for his lolita bride of the time, Milla Jovovich, who he manages to make look stunning even with a pageboy haircut and splattered with blood and dirt. Now he’s doing the same thing but for some guys who run around and jump off things and what not. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Besson productions, parkour
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
I can’t remember who recommended this picture to me. It’s sort of a different take on the “hood movie.” You know, the old “two friends, one more crazy than the other, get mixed up in urban crime but then they try to go straight but at least one of them dies at the end” movies like BOYZ N THE HOOD and MENACE 2: SOCIETY.
I gotta warn you, it’s meandering and slow, sometimes amateurish, sometimes pretentious, and mostly humorless. But I still thought it was pretty fuckin good and I’ll explain why. (that’s what I do in these writings.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DMX, Hype Williams, Method Man, Nas
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
note from the future: I was mad at Arnold when I wrote this review, please forgive me, or don’t read it.
I couldn’t tell you what made me decide to rent this one. I’m not a Schwarzenegger fan, I don’t like looking at gigantic veiny muscles, and I’m not really interested in finding out why some people are. And yet, for some reason, I bring this one home and watch it. And it’s pretty fuckin good.
First off I gotta warn you, there is some horrible fuckin music in this movie. It starts right at the opening and it’s hard not to turn it off. Once you get past it, you basically see a story about a bunch of blond oafs lifting giant metal things, grunting, sweating, making ridiculous faces, not knowing what else to do with their lives. A young Arnold Schwarzenegger turns out to be the star of this professional bodybuilding world, sort of the Michael Jordan who everybody talks about, hopes to meet, doesn’t think they can ever beat. They interview him and he talks about how he is really an artist, making a sculpture, only instead of clay he’s using his body. You know, like Michael Jackson or that french gal in the upcoming cronenberg picture. Or that guy that pounds nails through his dick. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Butler, Lou Ferrigno
Posted in Documentary, Reviews, Sport | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This is a nice little 1967 action picture starring Lee Marvin and directed by John Boorman, the sick fuck who made the movie deliverance I think you know what I’m talking about, oink oink.
Lee Marvin plays Walker. Not Walker the Texas Ranger, this walker is a Badass criminal type who is betrayed by his partner and his wife and left for dead. But he resurfaces, sees his wife die of a drug overdose and then works his way through his ex-partner and a crim corporation called The Organization, trying to get back the $93,000 that was stolen from him. As you can tell the plot is very similar to 1999 Outlaw Award winner Payback. There is even one scene in Payback that seems to be a direct lift from Point Blank, and believe it or not alot of the characters even have the same last names! An even stranger coincidence is that both films are based on the same book, “The Hunter” by Richard Stark. I mean what are the chances of something like that happening it boggles the mind, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angie Dickinson, arthouse badass, John Boorman, John Vernon, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Parker, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
I always wanted to see this one but never got around to it back in the day, and now it is available on DVD for the first time since its original release, as well as the first time ever. And it was worth the wait, because this is the best picture I have seen Mr. Rudy Ray Moore involved in.
Rudy plays Petey Wheatstraw, a famous comedian and rhyming Badass much like Dolemite without the criminal record. In the introduction he is a godlike narrator in some netherworld rhyming about all the great things he can do because he’s the devil’s son in law. Then it shows him being born on a stormy night. First thing he does is bite the doctor. He comes out looking about 13 years old and beats the doctor’s ass for slapping him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: blaxploitation, Rudy Ray Moore
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 2 Comments »
