Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Tuesday, June 14th, 2022
JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION* is not exactly the “dinosaurs running loose in the world” story I expected from the ending of JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM – it ends up centering on yet another dinosaur park – but it does indeed take place at a time when dinosaurs have been running loose in the world long enough to proliferate, and for humans to respond with new governmental agencies, black market industries, etc. Which is an interesting world to spend time in.
Maybe that’s why some of the best stuff is before the plot really gets going – that part of a sequel that’s a loose set of scenes catching us up with the old characters and their new situations. First we get a nice web video about the state of things, featuring fun clips like a wedding where the bride and groom release doves and a pterodactyl swoops down and eats them. It’s in a joyful Dinosaurs Attack! spirit (though admittedly the cards themselves had an even better dinosaur wedding crasher – see right). Then we join JURASSIC WORLD co-lead Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard, HEREAFTER) and her FALLEN KINGDOM dinosaur rights associates Franklin (Justice Smith, The Get Down) and Zia (Daniella Pineda, MERCY BLACK) raiding an illegal breeding facility and rescuing a caged baby triceratops. The chaotic shots of adult triceratopses ramming Jeeps as they escape are a total joy.
*I dig the lack of a colon!
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: B.D. Wong, Bryce Dallas Howard, Campbell Scott, Chris Pratt, Colin Trevorrow, Daniella Pineda, DeWanda Wise, Dichen Lachman, dinosaurs, Isabella Sermon, Jeff Goldblum, Justice Smith, Laura Dern, Mamoudou Athie, Sam Neill
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 48 Comments »
Friday, June 10th, 2022
At first I wasn’t sure I needed to revisit LETHAL WEAPON 3 for this series, because I already wrote a perfectly good review of it (and the other three) back in 2014. But it’s clearly the kick off to the real deal summer movie season of ’92 if you look at the box office charts for its opening weekend, May 15, 1992. It took #1 of course, but everything else on the charts had been out fora while: BASIC INSTINCT in its ninth week, BEETHOVEN in its seventh week, WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP in its eighth week, THE PLAYER in its sixth week, WAYNE’S WORLD in its fourteenth week, etc.
More importantly, I decided it was necessary for comparison. There will be three other big tentpole type sequels this summer, one of them being PATRIOT GAMES (which I’ve also reviewed, but probly won’t revisit) and the other two being, you know… weird. In contrast, this one wants to be exactly what you would imagine a third LETHAL WEAPON to be, no real surprises. As Desson Howe wrote in his review in the Washington Post, “If there’s an original moment in this movie, producer Joel Silver and director Richard Donner sincerely apologize… essentially, they guarantee you the same product you consumed twice before.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Danny Glover, Jan de Bont, Jeffrey Boam, Joe Pesci, Joel Silver, Mary Ellen Trainor, Mel Gibson, Renee Russo, Richard Donner, Robert Mark Kamen, Steve Kahan, Sting, Stuart Wilson
Posted in Action, Reviews | 33 Comments »
Wednesday, June 8th, 2022
(warning: to the extent you can spoil a movie like CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, this review contains spoilers)
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE is your typical undercover story – a guy is working for The Man and thinks he’s doing the right thing, but through his investigation he starts to see a different perspective, rethinks his loyalties, and questions whether or not to narc these people out. In this case the guy is a performance artist famous for growing inexplicable new internal organs and having them removed in front of an audience by laying in a machine that looks like a chrysalis, with robotic bone arms cutting him open under the control of a partner sensually poking her fingers into a gooey bladder. And the people he may or may not bust are (spoiler) an underground movement of people surgically altering their digestive systems so that they can eat plastic. But you’ve seen that before too. Just a good old fashioned organ opera like the ones we all grew up on.
Okay, yeah, on second thought maybe it’s fair to say that this is a weird fuckin movie that could only be made by writer/director David Cronenberg (TOP GUN [offered but turned down]). When he did that trilogy of more reality-based Viggo Mortensen joints (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, EASTERN PROMISES and A DANGEROUS METHOD) people thought he’d moved beyond slimy mugwumps and uncharted glands and shit, and that this is a throwback. But he wrote and tried to make this before all those, so maybe he’s just getting back on track.
Either way, this has a scene where Mortensen (AMERICAN YAKUZA) has had a zipper installed on his belly and can open it up, and Léa Seydoux (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL) pleasures him by spreading it open and licking his innards. So it was cool to see at a multiplex on a giant screen with Minions ads and shit playing before it. The summer movie season has finally begun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ???, David Cronenberg, Don McKellar, Ephie Kantza, Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux, Nadia Litz, performance art, Scott Speedman, surgery, Tanaya Beatty, undercover, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, June 7th, 2022
INTERCEPTOR is a new straight-to-Netflix action movie with a story in the tradition of an UNDER SIEGE, but a feel more like a (good) DTV movie. You know – you don’t have the scope or production value of those ‘90s studio action programmers that warm our hearts, and you don’t have an army of veteran character actors in the supporting cast, but the trade off is you get fewer explosions and vehicle crashes and more care put into choreographing and executing exciting hand-to-hand duels between the heroine and her various opponents. Less spectacle, but more intimate.
The thing that piqued my curiosity is that this is an action vehicle for Elsa Pataky, who apparently was in BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR and SNAKES ON A PLANE, but I know her as Brazilian police officer Elena in FAST FIVE. Elena falls in love with Dom, but steps aside when Letty turns out to be alive in FAST & FURIOUS 6, and by the time of FATE OF THE FURIOUS she gives birth to Dom’s son and dies. I like her in the FAST movies but she’s not exactly a standout character, so it’s cool to see a movie all about letting her show off. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Glenane, Chris Hemsworth, Elsa Pataky, Ingrid Kleinig, Luke Bracey, Matthew Reilly, Mayen Mehta, Michael Lira, Netflix, Paul Caesar, Rhys Muldoon, Sam Hargrave, Steve Morris, Stuart Beattie, Tim Wong, Zoe Carides
Posted in Action, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Monday, June 6th, 2022
ONE FALSE MOVE was the Summer of ’92’s little crime movie that could. Like POISON IVY’s Katt Shea, director Carl Franklin was an actor turned director of Roger Corman productions (NOWHERE TO RUN, EYE OF THE EAGLE 2: INSIDE THE ENEMY, FULL FATHOM FIVE). Here he moved into the film festival/arthouse side of the indie world, having come across a hot screenplay from the new writing team of Billy Bob Thornton (an actor who had been in HUNTER’S BLOOD, GOING OVERBOARD, CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIETOWN, an episode of Knots Landing, etc.) & Tom Epperson.
Thornton told Entertainment Weekly at the time that they’d been trying to get it made for five years. He said the studios “all pounced on it” but then decided they couldn’t make it because “it didn’t have a rocket launcher or an oversized baby.*” Instead it was produced independently through I.R.S. Media (hip record label and makers of Cynthia Rothrock’s RAGE AND HONOR I & II), completing it in May of ’91. It sat on a shelf for a year except for playing some film festivals, where it was well received enough that the producer convinced I.R.S. to release it in a few cities on May 8, 1992, ostensibly to get review quotes for the VHS cover. It did better than they expected, though, and eventually expanded to 51 markets. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Carl Franklin, Cynda Williams, Earl Billings, IRS Media, Janusz Kaminski, Jim Metzler, John Mahon, Michael Beach, Natalie Canderday, Tom Epperson
Posted in Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Friday, June 3rd, 2022
O
utlawvern.com’s heroic master of coding Clubside Chris has been going through the old reviews as part of preparing some new features, and he’s noticed that we’re missing a few things. Back in the day he tried to grab all my old Ain’t It Cool reviews, but he’s noticed some that reference other reviews we don’t have in the archive and can’t find on that difficult-to-search websight. For example I definitely remember writing about CABIN FEVER when it played the Seattle International Film Festival in 2003, and we’ve found other people’s reviews that referred to mine (like this one) but haven’t been able to find my actual review. So if some adventurer out there wants to be The Phantom, go find that artifact and return it to the original owner, it would be appreciated!
Luckily I was able to find the text of one (1) of the pieces Chris was looking for in an email reply buried deep in my inbox. So today I am vaguely semi-proud-ish to present for the historical record, and for the benefit of future generations, a goofy, dated review I wrote 18 years ago (in Spring of 2004) of a straight to video sequel most people forgot (or never knew) existed. I did not polish anything, but I added five parenthetical notes from the future about what some of the people referred to have been up to since I originally wrote the review.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV sequels, Kerr Smith, Kristina Anapau, Rhett Reese, Scott Ziehl
Posted in AICN, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Thursday, June 2nd, 2022
POISON IVY was a movie, then a franchise, and a genre, and an American institution. I don’t know if it was the first erotic thriller that could be described as “teenage FATAL ATTRACTION,” but I do think it kicked off many more of them, likely influencing movies like THE CRUSH, THE BABYSITTER, DEVIL IN THE FLESH and SWIMFAN, and evolving into WILD THINGS and CRUEL INTENTIONS and their DTV sequels. POISON IVY mostly spread its metaphorical itchy rash of underage femme fatalery by growing in clusters on late night cable and in the suspense/thriller section of video stores, but before that it had a very limited theatrical release on May 8, 1992.
Sara Gilbert (four seasons into Roseanne) made her movie debut starring as Sylvie “Coop” Cooper, protagonist and narrator-via-journal-entries. She’s a private school kid who sees herself as an outcast whose very rich parents don’t understand her. She wears Doc Martens, a tie-dyed yin yang shirt, and has an Egyptian eye design shaved discreetly under her hair. She smokes cigarillos, including in bed. She claims to have no friends*. She tells needless lies, like that she’s adopted, and that she’s half Black, and that she tried to commit suicide. Also she plays piano, loves her dog Fred (who she says doesn’t like any other humans), and teaches reading to inner city kids two days a week. A messed up kid but a good kid. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cheryl Ladd, Drew Barrymore, erotic thriller, Katt Shea, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sara Gilbert, Tom Skerritt
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, May 31st, 2022
Well, the crazy sonofabitches did it. They made a 36-years-later-part-two to TOP GUN. Tony Scott had actually developed a script and scouted locations before he died. Eventually the duty fell upon Joseph Kosinski, who had previously directed Cruise in OBLIVION (2013) and who ushered in the age of legacy sequels with the 2010 smash hit cultural sensation TRON: LEGACY [This review’s factual accuracy is disputed].
I gotta admit that I was unreasonably excited just to hear the electronic beat of Harold Faltermeyer’s TOP GUN anthem over the production company logos – I love that synthesized gong sound – and it’s kind of comical how much they mine that type of nostalgia at the beginning of this movie. The original opening title card, the original theme, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, similar footage of jets landing on an aircraft carrier – is this just gonna be a re-enactment?
Then we reunite with Captain Peter “Pete” “Maverick” “Mav” Mitchell (Tom Cruise, THE MUMMY), fittingly working as an experimental test pilot. He dons his old patch-covered leather jacket and aviators (both kept in places of honor as if he understands their iconographic significance) and rides his motorcycle very fast to the hangar. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher McQuarrie, Ed Harris, Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Joseph Kosinski, Justin Marks, Lady Gaga, legacy sequel, Lyliana Wray, Tom Cruise
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews | 88 Comments »
Monday, May 30th, 2022
Before TOP GUN: MAVERICK, director Joseph Kosinski did a movie with a few of the same actors that did not receive as much attention. Released in 2017, ONLY THE BRAVE is the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite fire fighter crew in Prescott, Arizona specializing in clearing fire-fueling plants and starting controlled burns to cut off the spread of wildfires. Warning: the story is tragic, and this is a crier. But it’s a great movie.
It’s technically impeccable. As on his previous movies TRON: LEGACY and OBLIVION, Kosinski has Claudio Miranda as his director of photography. Miranda also shot THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON and LIFE OF PI, so obviously he has chops. I don’t know what amount of pyrotechnics vs. cg they use, but many fire scenes are much more convincing than THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (though I liked that movie). It’s a high level of filmmaking craft, but the thrills and adventure and shit are honestly backdrop for a story about people, with uniformly strong performances and very effective characterization in the script adapted by Ken Nolan (BLACK HAWK DOWN and, uh, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT) and Eric Warren Singer (THE INTERNATIONAL, AMERICAN HUSTLE, an episode of Æon Flux) from the GQ article “No Exit” by Sean Flynn. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andie MacDowell, based on a magazine article, Dylan Kenin, Eric Warren Singer, firefighters, forest fire, Geoff Stults, Jake Picking, James Badge Dale, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly, Joseph Kosinski, Josh Brolin, Ken Nolan, Kenneth Miller, Miles Teller, Natalie Hall, Rachel Singer, Ryan Michael Busch, Scott Foxx, Scott Haze, Taylor Kitsch, Thad Luckinbill
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Thursday, May 26th, 2022
“Are you telling me there’s some thing running loose in this city ripping the hearts out of people and eating them so he can take their souls back to Hell?”
“Looks that way.”
I think you will be surprised to hear that I never saw SPLIT SECOND until now. Released against LEAVING NORMAL and NIGHT ON EARTH on May 1, 1992, I guess we could say it was the first sci-fi or action movie of Weird Summer. It’s part of that brief, beautiful phase when Rutger Hauer could be the protagonist of action movies (see also WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, BLIND FURY and THE BLOOD OF HEROES).
He plays Harley Stone, an infamously burnt out London homicide detective in the futuristic year of 2008. His first line of the movie is “Police, dickhead,” said to a barking guard dog while flashing his badge. Later he’ll call the dog a dickhead again and accuse him of knowing something about a murder. So he’s a pretty good action hero.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alun Armstrong, Arthur Wooster, Dave Duffy, Francis Haines, Gary Thompson, global warming, Ian Sharp, Kim Cattrall, Michael J. Pollard, Neil Duncan, Pete Postlethwaite, Roberta Eaton, Rutger Hauer, Stephen Norrington, Stephen W. Parsons, Tony Maylam, Wendy Carlos
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
