Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, October 1st, 2002
You know, there are alot of really spectacular documentary type pictures out there and it seems like a common feature to almost all of them is a really strange cast of characters that you couldn’t make up. Pictures like AMERICAN MOVIE, AMERICAN PIMP, GREY GARDENS, CRUMB, SALESMAN, DERBY, BIGGIE AND TUPAC, PARADISE LOST, WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, BROTHER’S KEEPER, BEYOND THE MAT… these are full of these people that are too real to be in a fictional movie and yet somehow more interesting and bizarre than most of the people I ever end up hanging out with. Not that I’d want to hang out with that maniac with the lopsided head in PARADISE LOST, or Jake “The Snake” Roberts. The american movie dude seems kinds of cool, though.
But I mean how do they know it’s gonna happen that way? What if they zero in on a topic that in itself is fascinating but then it turns out all the people involved are pretty regular and don’t have anything funny to say about it? How is it that guys like the Maysles and this Nick Broomfield can have such high batting averages in this department? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Nick Broomfield
Posted in Documentary, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Monday, September 30th, 2002
Hey folks, Harry here with that damn Outlaw Vern chiming in on LOVE AND A BULLET, which is… I believe an inane Reese Witherspoon Romantic Comedy that will make you weep, laugh and cheer. Awwwww, it’s an Outlaw Vern sort of film, he gets touchy feely like that. And he’s dead right about the coming civil wars of Comic Traditionalists and Revisionists and the deaths upon the fields of dishonor! I tell ya, TWO TOWERS has nothing on it! hehehe
Boys –
Did you notice how Mel Gibson’s Jesus movie was really controversial in the talkbacks until you mentioned Superman? Man I don’t think I’ve ever seen the newsies so worked up. I think in about 20 years when this generation of “geeks” is in power we will see comic book fundamentalists controlling governments around the world the way religious fundamentalists do today. Trying to force their Superfriends morals on everybody else. Some nutty congressman from the Utility Belt will get them to hang up the X-Men letters page in schools and courthouses. It’ll be an interesting time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Ramsey, DTV, Treach
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 24th, 2002
Yeah I know, this Iraq deal is getting even worse but let’s just take one fuckin column to talk about what I used to talk about, the movies.
This month has been hard on the wallet not just because of the economy but also because of numerous high quality dvd releases of important films of Badass Cinema. Today I will take some time to review a few of those dvds.
First of all we got my pick for the best movie of the year so far, BLADE II. I feel I have already written enough about the many fine qualities of this picture so I will focus this review only on the many fine dvd extras brought to you by one of our best directors, Mr. Guillermo del Toro. This is a part of the “New Line Platinum Series” which I have come to know and trust as a series of dvds with extra material above and beyond your “theatrical trailer” or your “chapter stops” or even your “weblinks.” (Does anybody really have a DVD-ROM drive? And if so, do they really need a dvd to figure out how to find the web site for BONES?) BLADE II is no exception, in fact it has even better extras than BLADE I. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bridget Fonda, Chris Penn, David S. Goyer, Don Gordon, Guillermo Del Toro, Harvey Keitel, Michael Campus, Michael Madsen, Pam Grier, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Pryor, Robert DeNiro, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, vampires
Posted in Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 14th, 2002
Well ol’ Ice Cube has put out some clunkers lately, even when he teamed up with one of my favorites, Mr. John Carpenter, for GHOSTS ON MARS. When he’s not making mediocre action movies he’s trying to recapture the magic of FRIDAY, or trying to do a mediocre action movie that also recaptures the magic of FRIDAY. And even when he’s taking a break from recapturing the magic of FRIDAY, you got DJ Pooh out there trying to recapture it with movies like THREE STRIKES and THE WASH. But he recaptures even less of the magic than Ice Cube manages to recapture during his recapturing. With all the attempted recapturing going on you start to wonder whether the magic is even available to be recaptured anymore. It’s probaly busy.
BUT, in my opinion Mr. Cube has some new magic now, some THE BARBERSHOP magic. This magic is not as powerful as FRIDAY magic but it’s still fairly magic, in my opinion. In a way. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Anderson, Cedric the Entertainer, Ice Cube, Tim Story
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Friday, August 23rd, 2002
I decided a long time ago to stop reviewing prison movies. People always ask me what I thought of this prison movie or that. They recommended ANIMAL FACTORY and that was a real good one, but I don’t want people to take me more seriously about prison than they would other film writers like the guy from Entertainment Weekly or the guy from People Magazine and etc. Plus, why would I want to sit around and watch movies about a place like that anyway.
I made an exception for UNDISPUTED though because I been looking forward to this ever since I saw the trailer before BLADE II. The BLADE pictures made me love Wesley Snipes and I try to see any movie he does now, even if it looks like some asinine remake of ROCKY, but in prison. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ed Lover, underground fighting, Ving Rhames, Walter Hill, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Sport | 10 Comments »
Monday, August 19th, 2002
Hey folks, Harry here… I’m not allowed to say anything further about Vern, under penalty and threat of death… Knowing the rumors I’ve read about what Vern can do and organize to be done, I have great fear for the man known as Vern. Beware of Vern. Be Afraid… He’ll hurt you with laughter sometimes… sometimes with sledgehammers… You’ll see…
Dearest Harry and Moriarty,
I thought for a second there I discovered a movie you didn’t know about. But after a thorough study of your “search engine” device I found out that some other individual reviewed COMIC BOOK VILLAINS once when it played at Cannes (a popular french film festival). I read over the review though and I disagreed with almost every point he made. I’m not saying it’s BLADE 2 or even CITIZEN KANE, but it is a surprisingly good small straight to video type picture and I have reason to believe that Harry and others would enjoy it when it comes out September 3rd on the video and dvd type mediums. By others I mainly mean Moriarty, I guess. But I will get to the movie after this next paragraph which is just rambling and bullshit, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cary Elwes, Donal Logue, DTV, James Robinson, Michael Rapaport
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | No Comments »
Saturday, August 10th, 2002
This latest directorial work by our greatest Badass Laureate, Mr. Clint Eastwood, didn’t go over too well in theaters. It was barely advertised and it disappeared about as fast as Mr. De Palma’s great FEMME FATALE. I figured how could you go wrong – starring Clint, directed by Clint, written by Brian Helgeland who wrote the Outlaw Award winning picture PAYBACK. But everyone told me it wasn’t too hot, kind of boring, with a predictable plot twist.
Well now I’ve finally caught up with it and although it’s not an outstanding new high for Clint like FEMME FATALE is for Brian DePalma, there is nothing wrong with it at all. In fact any fan of Badass Cinema owes it to themselves to see it as one of the only american pictures relevant to our genre this year. It’s an old school cop thriller but for some reason it reminded me most of IN THE LINE OF FIRE. I think one reason Clint has stayed relevant (well, up until now I guess since nobody saw this one) is because he acts his age. He doesn’t pretend to be a young man even if he’s kissing gals who are younger than him. He is very conscious of being an old man. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anjelica Huston, Brian Helgeland, Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels
Posted in Action, Crime, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Friday, August 9th, 2002
Well you know me, I’ve been talking about the badass presence of Vin Diesel just as long as anyone has, anyone except for him. I’ve been looking forward to this moronic concept of a Vin Diesel star vehicle, figuring anything this stupid starring Vin Diesel would have to be a good time. You saw my epic dissertation on THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS so you know how I enjoy Vin’s egomaniacal charisma combined with Rob Cohen’s pathetic zeitgeist-chasing high conceptualism.
XXX is completely asinine. And I loved that about it. For about half an hour. Then it just got boring in the exact same way all the modern James Bond movies are boring. It takes a special type of standard lowering to enjoy ANYBODY driving around dreary european villages on motorcycles shooting machine guns and blowing things up in the usual ways. You can only watch a henchman shot into the air by an explosion so many times before you start to ask for more from your badass cinematists. I don’t care if you had a young Clint Eastwood riding piggyback on Steve McQueen, you’d still get bored with this movie before it got to the climax. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Asia Argento, Rob Cohen, Samuel L. Jackson, Vin Diesel
Posted in Action, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Thursday, August 8th, 2002
This is the latest from the director Miguel Arteta and the Writer Mike White, who did CHUCK AND BUCK together. Mr. White also used to write for some tv shows, one supposedly really good and the rest called DAWSON’S CREEK and PASADENA. More recently he wrote the only okay ORANGE COUNTY and had a funny cameo in it. He has a small role here where he gets some laughs. He was the star of CHUCK AND BUCK and he’s a real goofball so when he appears in his movies you always want him to have a bigger part.
Before we move on I gotta ask, is this or is this not the same Mike White who does the zine Cashiers Du Cinemart that I used to always get spam for until dejanews shut down and I changed my e-mail? [UPDATE: I e-mailed the Cinemart Mike White, and he said he was not the GOOD GIRL Mike White.] If so that would also make him the same Mike White who makes the videos trying to point out which parts of Tarantino movies are similar to other people’s movies, which would make him kind of an ass. Somebody told me it was the same dude and I tried to verify it but the closest thing I could find for verification was that the Cinemart guy says he doesn’t have a new issue because he spent all of 2001 finding a new house, and then an interview with Miguel mentions that they auditioned Jake Gyllenhall in Mike White’s brand new house and he threw a chair and put a hole in the wall. That’s a pretty good clue I think but I don’t know if it would hold up in a court of law. I mean I wouldn’t want to besmirch Mike White’s name if there were two of them, like how there’s one George Miller who did MAD MAX and the other one who did the Steve Guttenberg movie where a dog rides on a dolphin’s back. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly, Miguel Arteta, Mike White, Tim Blake Nelson, Zooey Deschanel
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 7th, 2002
This is the story of a man (me), a famous television critic (Gene Shalit) and a children’s action picture called SPY KIDS PART 2. Three entitities living their separate existences. Independent and peaceful. And it coulda easily stayed that way, if not for the simple words of a newspaper advertisement. But it was not to be. Because of those words, our three lives converged. And we would be changed for a while, I guess.
GENE SHALIT OF The TODAY Show RAVES:
“THE MOST JOYOUSLY IMAGINATIVE MOVIE OF THE SUMMER! JUST ABOUT EVERY MINUTE IS FUNNY OR INGENIOUS… IN A WORD, FUN-TASTIC!”
Now I gotta be honest. Normally I don’t pay attention to these fuckwads on the ads. I am one of the most important film Writers today and I never been quoted once. So obviously these people aren’t the cream of the crop. But there was something about this quote from Gene Shalit that intrigued me. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Robert Rodriguez
Posted in Family, Reviews | 4 Comments »
