Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Wednesday, March 8th, 2023
You know I love the CREED movies and the ROCKY movies. ROCKY V is easily the weakest of all of them, and I even like that one. I don’t expect there ever to be another one as impressive as CREED, a miraculous rebirth by a brilliant director who deeply loved Stallone’s movies and evolved them into something new, so I enjoyed CREED II for what it was. I was thrilled that it brought back Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago and let us care about him the way I always wanted to. As I wrote in my review at the time, “He was a human specimen in ROCKY IV, and now he’s a human.”
CREED II is a solid sequel, but CREED III is a truly great one. It’s the directorial debut of Michael B. Jordan, and being populated only by characters from the CREED part of the series it stands more on its own, less on our nostalgia and good will. It follows the ROCKY sequel template in that it checks in with Adonis Creed (Jordan) at a new stage of his career and life, catches up with his family, introduces a new rival, and builds up a conflict that will result in a big match wrapped up in personal meaning. To his credit, Jordan also introduces a bit of stylization in the fight scenes that stands out from the others in the series. But most importantly he tells a story that genuinely has things to say about life and relationships that to me is as exciting as any of the boxing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron D. Alexander, boxing, Florian Munteanu, Jonathan Majors, Joseph Shirley, Keenan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, Phylicia Rashad, Ryan Coogler, Tessa Thompson, Thaddeus J. Mixson, Wood Harris, Zach Baylin
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Sport | 48 Comments »
Tuesday, March 7th, 2023
“The earth doesn’t belong to humans alone. It’s ours too, and we should defend it.” —Mothra
GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER is Godzilla movie #5, released in 1964, 8 months after MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA. Like numbers 1,3, and 4 it’s directed by Ishiro Honda. And by now he’s getting cocky, so he uses cool freeze frame credits of Godzilla and his co-stars Rodan and Mothra #2 (one of the two larva of the previous Mothra. Godzilla killed the original Mothra and the other larva died of unknown causes between installments.)
The movie opens on the roof of a clock tower where a gathering of the UFO Society (who wear lab coats like legit scientists – they’re not kooks) try to receive a transmission from space. When they fail they blame the attendance of skeptical TV reporter Naoko Shindo (Yuriko Hoshi, KILL!). “They sensed your mistrust through your brain waves.”
They’re desperate for help from beyond, because shit is getting crazy. We hear about a heat wave in January, constant sirens, an encephalitis outbreak. “Everything has gone haywire,” we’re told, and “It’s getting strange out there. The Earth has gone mad.” Yeah, I know the feeling. I’ve lived through some times that feel like that. Also, “Strange things have been happening beyond our galaxy too,” whatever that means. There are meteor showers happening all around the world. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Akiko Wakabayashi, Godzilla, Hisaya Ito, Ishiro Honda, King Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan, Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi
Posted in Reviews, Monster | 12 Comments »
Monday, March 6th, 2023
FIRE OF LOVE is a 2022 best documentary feature Oscar nominee that’s produced by National Geographic, but it’s not the sort of thing I associate with them. It’s one of a couple different movies telling the odd story of maybe history’s first married volcanologist couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft of France. They married in their twenties and spent the rest of their lives traveling around documenting volcano events. And I really mean right until the very end… we’re tipped off at the beginning that they died in the eruption of Mount Unzen in 1991.
Though officially directed by Sara Dosa (TRICKY DICK & THE MAN IN BLACK), the credits are clear that it’s compiled from footage “from the deep archives” of the Kraffts. Clips of TV appearances, illustrative stock footage and a few bits of animation fill in some storytelling gaps, but it’s mostly footage shot by the Kraffts “and friends” – there’s no contemporary talking heads explaining what we should know about them or any of that type of bullshit. The volcanoes they’ll be seen visiting are credited as co-stars. The movie transports us to a different time and primarily lingers in what seems like a different world, far from any sign of human life, where we can see the earth’s raw power up close, as these self-proclaimed weirdos stare right into its gaping jaws, almost seeming tempted to jump in. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: best documentary feature nominee, Katia Krafft, Maurice Krafft, Miranda July, National Geographic, Sara Dosa, volcano
Posted in Reviews, Documentary | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
It’s weird that there’s a studio action-thriller starring Jeff Bridges (THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT) and Tommy Lee Jones (ROLLING THUNDER) from the prime year of 1994, and I never bothered to see it before. I think I heard it was bad at the time, but when did that ever stop me? I think more recently I’ve seen people writing fondly about it, and I realized it was directed by Stephen Hopkins (following DANGEROUS GAME, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD, PREDATOR 2 and JUDGMENT NIGHT), so I got myself excited to see it.
I’m afraid the early rumors weren’t wrong, though – this is a laughable movie, and not entirely in the way that I enjoy. On the positive side, it will be fun to write about, and seeing this type of studio thriller craftsmanship did give me some of that particular warm nostalgia I was looking for. You know, you’ve got all this production value, on location shooting, glorious crane shots (cinematographer: Peter Levy, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, BROKEN ARROW, TORQUE), and composer Alan Silvestri (THE DELTA FORCE, PREDATOR, THE ABYSS) admirably does his thing without giving in to the temptation to just do a bunch of Celtic cliches. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Silvestri, bomb squad, Boston, Forest Whitaker, Jay Roach, Jeff Bridges, Joe Batteer, John Rice, Lloyd Bridges, Stephen Hopkins, Stephi Lineburg, Suzy Amis, Tommy Lee Jones
Posted in Reviews, Action, Thriller | 26 Comments »
Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
Right after western star Clint Eastwood first directed himself in PLAY MISTY FOR ME, but before he directed his first western with THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, Sidney Poitier beat him to it with BUCK AND THE PREACHER (1972). It was his first time directing a movie and first time leading a western (though he’d been in DUEL AT DIABLO).
Much like POSSE will have to do 21 years later, BUCK AND THE PREACHER starts out by establishing that yes, silly head, there were Black people in the old west. This history is communicated visually by showing the film’s characters in sepia tone photos. The story takes place after the civil war, when some former slaves decided sharecropping was just slavery 2.0 and tried their luck traveling west to find, as a title card puts it, “new frontiers where they could be free at last.” Where the western genre comes in is that “they placed their hopes in the hands of the few black wagonmasters that knew the territories of the West.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benny Carter, Cameron Mitchell, Denny Miller, Enrique Lucero, Ernest Kinoy, Harry Belafonte, John Kelly, Joseph Sargent, Julie Robinson, Nita Talbot, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier
Posted in Reviews, Western | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
COCAINE BEAR is a kind of funny new horror comedy written by Jimmy Warden (THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN) and directed by Elizabeth Banks (Rita Repulsa in the POWER RANGERS movie). I kind of enjoyed it and I’m certainly on board for this type of movie – pretty gory, not serious about anything, spending $35 million of Universal Pictures’ money to get very good bear animation FX in what is otherwise kind of on the level of a PIRANHA or ALLIGATOR sequel.
It’s just a silly goof with a simple nature-gone-amuck premise: a drug smuggling plane dumps its payload in the Chattahoochee National Forest, a black bear finds and eats some of the cocaine, now she’s angrily rampaging around eating tourists and the people searching for the other bags. And she’ll do anything to get more of that stuff. Fiending for it like a bear to honey. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, bear attack, Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery, Digital Native Dance, Elizabeth Banks, Hanna Hoekstra, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jimmy Warden, Keri Russell, Kristofer Hivju, Margo Martindale, Mark Mothersbaugh, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 17 Comments »
Monday, February 27th, 2023
Tsui Hark’s groundbreaking 1983 wuxia epic ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN recently got a fancy new blu-ray release, inspiring me to finally get around to seeing it. In fact I watched it right before I watched IRON MONKEY for the first time, so that was a hell of a night of filling in (some of) my Hong Kong cinema blind spots.
I can’t say I liked ZU as much as IRON MONKEY, because I can’t say I followed it as well. Like much of Tsui’s work it has a haphazard, is-he-making-this-up-as-he-goes-along? feel to the storytelling, which here I think is a combination of his sensibilities and the difficulty of someone from another culture (me) processing a DUNE-like cinematic condensation of a famous 1932 Chinese fantasy novel steeped in mythology I don’t necessarily have a context for. But I can say that it’s an enjoyable fun house ride, an absolute visual delight, and a key missing link in my understanding of Tsui’s filmography. Everything else he’s made makes more sense after seeing this. I guess it’s kinda like if I’d seen all the modern Spielberg movies and then saw E.T. and JAWS for the first time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Cheng, Arnie Wong, Brigitte Lin, Chris Casady, Corey Yuen, Damin Lau, John Scheele, Mang Hoi, Moon Lee, Norman Chu, Peter Kuran, Robert Blalack, Sammo Hung, Tama Takahashi, Tsui Hark, wuxia, Yuen Biao
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 12 Comments »
Thursday, February 23rd, 2023
Watching Ryuhei Kitamura’s latest THE PRICE WE PAY this week reminded me to finally catch up with his previous one, THE DOORMAN (2020). I remember I was excited that he did a Ruby Rose action vehicle, but I heard some negative things and it scared me off. I shouldn’t listen to that stuff, because I like so many movies that normal humans hate, but I’m susceptible to rumors of poor action scenes.
That criticism is fair. Many of the action scenes are pretty choppy, they’re certainly not up to the state of the art in the 87Eleven era. And I do think this is a movie that could go over really well if it had a couple knockout fights. So that’s too bad. But I still enjoyed it on a story and character level like I would, say, a Liam Neeson movie where you’d have way less of the real shit than this. So if you’re okay with that, I recommend it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aksel Hennie, Dan Southworth, David Sakurai, Delianne Forget, Die Hard on a ____, Easter, George Gallo, Hideaki Ito, Jean Reno, Juju Journey Brener, Julian Feder, Kila Lord Cassidy, Louis Mandylor, Morgan Freeman, Nick Vallelonga, Patrick Muldoon, Petre Moraru, Philip Whitchurch, Ruby Rose, Rupert Evans, Ryuhei Kitamura, Simon Rhee
Posted in Reviews, Action | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023
Ryuhei Kitamura is an interesting director. He started in Japan with the attention-grabbing yakuzas vs. zombies movie VERSUS (2000). That one was kinda cool but I straight up loved his fourth movie, the samurai manga adaptation AZUMI (2003), and by 2004 he was doing that crazy GODZILLA: FINAL WARS. If nothing else, he’s a hero for doing the one thing everyone wanted to do but nobody knew they could do: assassinate Roland Emmerich’s version of Godzilla. I think we all remember where we were when we first heard the news. Ladies and gentlemen, we got ‘im.
That unprecedented act of heroism made Kitamura so huge and important to cinema that in 2008 Hollywood chose him for the crucial job of directing Bradley Cooper’s first serious leading role. He agreed to do it only under the condition that it could take place at midnight on a meat train. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amazon Eve, Emile Hirsch, Gigi Zumbado, organ trafficking, Ryuhei Kitamura, Sabina Mach, Stephen Dorff, Tanner Zagarino, Tyler Sanders, Vernon Wells
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Horror | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, February 21st, 2023
SENTINELLE is a pretty good 2021 French revenge movie that’s mostly made out of cliches, but benefits from a dedicated performance by its star Olga Kurylenko (HITMAN, MAX PAYNE, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, OBLIVION, THE NOVEMBER MAN, BLACK WIDOW) and the artful direction of Julien Leclercq (THE ASSAULT, THE BOUNCER). You may also be interested to know that it’s only 80 minutes long. I don’t really subscribe to the “movies are too long these days” conventional wisdom, but I was looking for something to watch kind of late and I have to admit that brevity was one of the selling points for me in this instance. (It’s on Netflix.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Carole Weyers, French action, Jerome Gaspard, Julien Leclercq, Marilyn Lima, Melissa Humler, Michel Nabokoff, Olga Kurylenko, revenge
Posted in Reviews, Action | 9 Comments »
