Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
As you know I like to watch the classics but the only way to tell for sure if it is a classic is based on what channel it is on. This one was on American Movie Classics so that’s how I know. If it was on TBS or especially USA that would be another story. Anyway it is an old one from James Whale the director of Frankenstein.
Boris Karloff from the Frankenstein gets top billing but let’s be honest here, he’s playing a mute butler for christ’s sake. This is not a starring role it is strictly a gimp role in my opinion. I mean I know for a fact the man can talk, and can talk well. But you wouldn’t know it the way he’s typecasted in some of these pictures. Here he’s just a big oafish brute who gets drunk and tries to grab the pretty ladies. He looks like they left the Frankenstein makeup on him and pasted a beard over it the poor bastard. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, James Whale
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
Monday, December 31st, 2001
First off friends welcome to 2002. Sorry about that 2001 business. Just a couple more of these and Bush’ll be gone, we hope. Auld lang sine, etc. etc.
Anyway, enough holiday theme shit, let’s get to the point here. If I had a most anticipated movie of last Wednesday, it woulda been ALI. Why? Because it’s a movie about Muhammed Fucking Ali. To my knowledge it is the ONLY movie playing in theaters right now that is about Muhammed Fucking Ali.
I didn’t know what to expect from this movie though, on account of the casting. The real Muhammed Ali already played himself in the movie THE GREATEST and in the documentary WHEN WE WERE KINGS. And why fix what ain’t fucked? I didn’t understand this new casting of Will Smith in the part. I gotta admit I was pretty pissed, like the nerds get whenever they cast somebody new as Superman, James Bond, Dr. Zauis or Green Aqua.
And that’s what Ali is, is a super hero. Not the kind who wears a cape, although I must admit he does wear boots. Anyway I think we all agree that Muhammed Ali is one of the greatest american heroes there is. You don’t even have to like sports – and I don’t – to understand that Ali is what the kids call “the mothafuckin MAN.” They don’t make ’em like Ali anymore. In fact they never did. It was probaly some typa mistake on the assembly line. Some freak accident that only happens once or twice every thousand-thousand years. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Michael Mann, Muhammad Ali, Will Smith
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 8 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
Well in late December as I was preparing to face down the ol’ Y2K problem I got to thinking about the old Mad Max and Road Warrior movies I used to like so much, and that got me thinking about Mel Gibson, the young Australian actor who played Mad Max.
Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Duke, Brian Helgeland, Gregg Henry, James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Lucy Liu, Maria Bello, Mel Gibson, Parker, Paul Abascal, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
This is the story of some magical midgets called the hobbits (sort of like the smurfs except caucasian instead of blue). What they do is, one of them inherits a powerful magic ring created by an evil individual from the past. If this took place in america in 2001, the hobbits would just go ahead and use the ring, and everybody would be all for it. It might not even make the headlines, it might be buried on page 11 like the story I read yesterday about how the Bush regime is already developing “small” nuclear weapons to use in the caves in Afghanistan.
But this is Hobbitland or whatever so they do the right thing, they take the weapon, they REFUSE to use it because they know it corrupts them, and they travel toward the Mountain of Doom, the only place it can be destroyed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Peter Jackson, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Saturday, December 15th, 2001
Vanilla Sky is an american remake of OPEN YOUR EYES, the second picture by the young spanish gentleman Alejandro Amenabar, who also did THESIS and THE OTHERS. After the movie I was saying to a gal that the ending was kinda different on the original, and the guy next to me was saying the same thing to his friend. Except he was just getting out of OCEAN’S 11.
Everything is fucking remakes now, huh? The above took place in Seattle, Washington, where as we speak the Dreamworks company is hard at work on an unneccesary remake of (the) RING. History has not been kind to american remakes of foreign pictures. Even when you get the same guy to remake it – like with THE VANISHING or NIGHTWATCH – the movie will piss everybody off and the director will be forgotten forever. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cameron Crowe, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, remakes, Tom Cruise
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 5 Comments »
Friday, December 7th, 2001
When you get two Oscar nominations for best director in the same year (for Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and you’re at the commercial peak of your career, what do you do for a followup?
I think Steven Soderbergh has the right answer. Two Oscar nominations is nothing to commit suicide over. Sure it’s embarassing, but it’s not the end of the world. After all it was only one year earlier that his picture The Limey won Best Picture, Musical Comedy or Badass in the 1999 Outlaw Awards, and that magic could not be entirely faded. So Soderbergh packed up the political pretensions, left them out on the porch in a box marked for the retard center, and went and made a casino heist movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Steve Soderbergh
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 3rd, 2001
Last time we spoke I found that the best way to forget about the nightmarish USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act – which is designed to protect freedom and democracy by, among other things, allowing police to enter and search your house without probable cause, warning or even notification after the fact – was through the delights of French Cinema.
As you know the french are very romantic, very beautiful, full of whimsy and what not. The French always know how to make you smile, like they did with AMELIE, or MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, or those musicals with the umbrellas and etc.
For example they got this movie called SEVEN DEADLY SINS that I just discovered. Anyone who has read my works thoroughly knows of my admiration for the director Roger Vadim, who married Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. Also, his movies were pretty good.
Vadim is most famous for BARBARELLA, and then for SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, the edgar a. poe anthology picture he did a segment of along with whatsisname, the frenchy, as well as godard, malle, fellini, and etc. etc. SEVEN DEADLY SINS is another one along the lines of SPIRITS but this one is in black and white and has the, you know, the seven deadly sins theme. Seven segments, seven sins, all french. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anthologies, Jean-Luc Godard, penetration, Roger Vadim
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 30th, 2001
Remember for a little while there people thought Quentin Tarantino’s job was to find washed up actors who can’t get good roles anymore, put them in a great role and revive their career. He did it for Harvey Keitel and John Travolta anyway, and sort of for Bruce. He also helped bring attention to Steve Buscemi, outlaw award winner Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and others. But somehow, when he gave both Pam Grier and Robert Forster in the best roles of their careers in the great JACKIE BROWN, the same magic didn’t work.
I mean these two were incredible in JACKIE BROWN. And what do they get? Oscar buzz that amounts to nothing, and some more really bad roles. Poor Pam Grier was in JAWBREAKER and SNOW DAY. Robert Forster kept doing straight to videos, with only an occasional bit part as a generic cop or doctor in things like MULHOLLAND DRIVE and the remake of PSYCHO PART 1. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Donnie Wahlberg, heists, Robert Forster
Posted in Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2001
Well, it looks like I’m doin these columns once a month now, and I guess that’s better than nothin. This time I’ll be reviewing a handful of movies that have NOTHING to do with politics. I haven’t seen this Henry Porter witchcraft movie that everybody has a boner about but I have seen some other current pictures and some older ones that I will be discussing.
There’s a catch though. First I’m gonna hafta talk politics some more. I’ll keep it shorter, but this is more important than ever.
There is a grave threat to America right now. Well, another one. In addition to Islamic extremists crashing planes into our buildings, and right wing extremists sending anthrax to us in the mail, and turbulence symbolically knocking the tails and engines off of our American Airlines planes on Veteran’s Day as an accidental commentary on our foreign policy, now we have to worry about our acting president completely and blatantly abandoning the supposed ideals of America, and no one caring. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Dickerson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mark Dacascos, Snoop Dogg
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 10th, 2001
In Hollywood they have a saying that goes something like, “if you can’t think of anything funny, put a movie star in a fat suit.” On some magazine I saw on a news stand they had another saying that goes, “Fat suits: the new blackface.”
It’s true too. I mean the less acceptable it becomes to make fun of the gays, the more people need somebody else to pick on. So they start pickin on these big folks.
I don’t know why but for some reason people think it’s hilarious to see a celebrity made up to look all fat. They did it on Big Momma’s House. They did it on one of those sitcoms that is popular now, I believe it was either Friends or Cheers. The one about the kids in the apartment who have relationships, etc. Also Eddie Murphy did it. He thought it was so funny he based two movies around it. And within each movie he had to play four or five different fat characters in order to try to fill the whole movie with laughs. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Farrelly Brothers, fat suit, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
