Archive for the ‘Romance’ Category
Wednesday, December 9th, 2020
I have been sort of aware of JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO since its release in 1990, but never decided to actually see it until now. I know it was poorly received at the time, and somewhat infamous for a time, and also that it was staunchly defended by Roger Ebert, and beloved by a select few – I most associate the movie with Bright Wall, Dark Room editor Chad Perman, who talks about it similar to how I talk about BLADE.
It’s pretty different from what I pictured, especially in the beginning. This is an Amblin production that starts out feeling way more Terry Gilliam than Steven Spielberg. That’s not enough to make me one of those people who swears by it, but it seems crazy to me that anybody hated it!
It’s the story of Joe Banks (Tom Hanks, precariously perched between TURNER & HOOCH and THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES in his filmography), a depressed hyopchondriac working miserably as a clerk at a Staten Island rectal probe factory that looks like a dystopian prison. Every day the employees do a slow sort of death march through the gates to the entrance (I liked that they were forced to walk further by an inexplicably zig-zagged path, though I can’t say I grasp the significance of this shape being a reoccurring symbol throughout the movie).
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Plummer, Carol Kane, Dan Hedaya, John Patrick Shanley, Lloyd Bridges, Meg Ryan, Ossie Davis
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, September 15th, 2020
Wow, THE JEWEL OF THE NILE came out less than two years after ROMANCING THE STONE, which was expected to be a flop, so it’s not like they had a head start. Fast turnaround. Robert Zemeckis was off making BACK TO THE FUTURE and Diane Thomas was writing scripts for Spielberg (and wanted to be paid well) so producer/star Michael Douglas hired director Lewis Teague (ALLIGATOR) and writers Mark Rosenthal & Lawrence Konner (THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, later SUPERMAN IV, SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK, STAR TREK VI, MERCURY RISING and the bad PLANET OF THE APES).
The story starts six months later, with Joan and Jack sailing around the world on the boat he bought with the proceeds from part 1’s stolen jewel. (I thought he bought it for her as a gift, but I guess not.) This time she’s having trouble writing her books because her life is too much romance and adventure. She’s actually bored of all the exotic locales and beautiful sunsets and sits in the boat with her typewriter writing a garbage pirate adventure which she now imagines starring herself and Jack but also gets thrown off and accidentally turns the pirates into punks? I don’t know if that represents a typo or a failed artistic flourish or what. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Avner Eisenberg, Billy Ocean, Danny DeVito, Glenn Randall Jr., Jan de Bont, juggling, Kathleen Turner, Lawrence Konner, Lewis Teague, Mark Rosenthal, Michael Douglas, Paul David Magid, Spiros Focas
Posted in Action, Reviews, Romance | 19 Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2020
I don’t think I’ve seen ROMANCING THE STONE since the ‘80s. I’ve been curious to rewatch it forever because it’s one of those things that was huge at the time that hasn’t survived as much in the cultural memory as other things. Like, maybe I didn’t study the crowd scenes enough, but I didn’t notice Kathleen Turner’s character Joan Wilder in READY PLAYER ONE. I suppose because this appealed a little more to the parents of the kids now in charge of the world’s nostalgia. But it’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, who I tend to like, so when I heard that my friends at the podcast The Suspense Is Killing Us were doing a Patreon bonus episode about the ROMANCING THE STONE/JEWEL OF THE NILE duology it prompted me to finally get to it.
Kathleen Turner (who’d only been in BODY HEAT and THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS previously) stars as Joan Wilder, Waldenbooks Romance Author of the Year winning author of Love’s Wicked Kiss, who we meet just as she’s completing her latest novel, as depicted through a re-enactment with her first person voiceover. She imagines her heroine Angelina as March 1981 Playboy Playmate of the Month Kymberly Herrin (GHOSTBUSTERS blowjob ghost, BEVERLY HILLS COP II, ROAD HOUSE, ZZ Top “Legs” video), but our glimpses of the rugged hero who rescues her look suspiciously like Michael Douglas. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: adventure, Alfonso Arau, Danny DeVito, Holland Taylor, Kathleen Turner, Kymberly Herrin, Lem Dobbs, Manuel Ojeda, Mary Ellen Trainor, Michael Douglas, Robert Zemeckis, Zack Norman
Posted in Reviews, Romance | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2020
August 16, 1985
Two John Candy movies in a row, and now all the sudden we’re back to weird science? THE BRIDE asks the question “What if WEIRD SCIENCE happened not in the modern day with teenagers, but with adults a long time ago, and instead of Gary the main guy’s name is Frankenstein?” Or “What if FRANKENWEENIE was a Franken-adult-human-lady?” Or I guess if you want to be a wet blanket you could call it a riff on BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. But it’s totally different. The hair is not even the same, to name only one example.
Director Franc Roddam had done QUADROPHENIA (1979) and THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE (1983) and was attempting his first big mainstream movie. According to his refreshingly frank DVD commentary track, he had Sting (who had been in his first film) originally slated to play the small part of Josef, but “we said to ourselves this could be a great movie for young people” if they had it star this huge rock star, with his first solo album coming out in June, alongside Jennifer Beals, the hot newcomer fresh off the massive success of FLASHDANCE. So they gave the Josef role to some schmuck named “Carrie Elways” or some shit and Sting played Baron Charles Frankenstein opposite Beals as the titular Bride. But it’s only modernized in some of its themes, while being fairly classical in form and content. It’s not rock ’n roll or flashdancy at all. So I’m not sure the young people much noticed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cary Elwes, Clancy Brown, Franc Roddam, Frankenstein, Jennifer Beals, Jim Whiting, Lloyd Fonvielle, Michael Seymour, Quentin Crisp, Steven H. Burum, Sting, Summer of 1985, Timothy Spall
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 32 Comments »
Thursday, December 13th, 2018
My friends, the time has come for the THRILLING CONCLUSION to the Twilight Saga review saga. This is the one where the most crazy shit happens, especially in a big deadly snow battle between all the characters. So I had fun. If you support me on Patreon thank you, if not thank you also but consider signing up some time if you can. Either way, more reviews coming soon and
GLITTERY VAMPIRES FOREVER
Tags: Bill Condon, Jeff Imada, Kristen Stewart, Lateef Crwoder, Maggie Grace, Rami Malek, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, vampires, Wendell Pierce, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Romance | 11 Comments »
Thursday, December 6th, 2018
My friends, we have come to the penultimate chapter in the special Patreon-only Twilight Saga Review Saga. In Twilight Part 4a there’s a big wedding, destructive humping, and some truly creepy birth related stuff. This one is directed by Bill Condon (GODS AND MONSTERS) and he does his thing with it.
or to sign up to pay as low as a dollar to support my writing, with the side benefit of reading these reviews.
Thanks!
Tags: Bill Condon, Carter Burwell, Kristen Stewart, Patreon bonus content, Robert Pattinson
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Romance | 18 Comments »
Thursday, November 29th, 2018
This week for anyone who pledges $1 or more on Patreon I have my third Twilight review, ECLIPSE. This is the one directed by David Slade (30 DAYS OF NIGHT), who added some interesting new weirdness. I particularly had fun with this review because of some Seattle-specific details I noticed.
Thanks everybody!
Tags: Bryce Dallas Howard, David Slade, Kristen Stewart, Patreon bonus content, Robert Pattinson, Stephenie Meyer, vampires, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Romance | 22 Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2018
Okay, let’s try this again. Due to the troubles with the Patreon plugin I’m going to try housing the exclusive reviews on Patreon itself. (Thanks for the suggestion, Shan.) So if you pledge $1 or more to my Patreon you can enjoy the ever-loving werewolf shit out of this exclusive review series. Thanks for your patience!
And here’s a link for the first one, TWILIGHT.
Tags: Chris Weitz, Kristen Stewart, Patreon bonus content, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, vampires, werewolves
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Romance | 17 Comments »
Thursday, November 15th, 2018
This is the first in a Patreon-only review series of THE TWILIGHT SAGA. For as little as $1 a month you can support an ol’ so-called outlaw in his writing endeavors, and as a thank you I got these exclusive reviews for you.
This one was originally housed here on outlawvern.com but I had to move it to Patreon due to technical difficulties, and I didn’t want to delete all your comments so I left the post here. So what the hell, this time I’m gonna include an excerpt so you non-Patreons can get an idea of the approach I’m going for. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anna Kendrick, Billy Burke, Cam Gigandet, Catherine Hardwicke, Christian Serratos, Justin Chon, Kellan Lutz, Kristen Stewart, Matt Bushell, Michael Welch, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Clarke, Stephenie Meyer, Taylor Lautner, vampires
Posted in Horror, Monster, Reviews, Romance | 39 Comments »
Tuesday, June 26th, 2018
June 12, 1998
Ivan Reitman’s SIX DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS is a kind of low concept romance/adventure that I don’t think you’d see today, and didn’t generally see twenty years ago. It’s basically just a woman and a man who don’t initially like each other getting trapped on an island together, and then starting to like each other after a bit of survival shenanigans.
There’s more romantic-comedy trappings than adventure ones. Robin Monroe (Anne Heche, PSYCHO) is a hard working assistant editor for the fashion magazine Dazzle who’s in a long term relationship with Frank (David Schwimmer, WOLF). He’s a sweet but immediately off-putting guy who makes grand romantic gestures like surprising her with a sudden six-day-seven-night (you see, that’s the title, SIX DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS) vacation to the South Pacific, where he proposes and she says yes.
But she also meets Quinn Harris (Harrison Ford, THE EXPENDABLES 3), a grizzled, hard-drinking pilot of the small plane who gets them from a larger island to their final destination of Makatea after their more lush charter falls through. On the island he drunkenly hits on her at the bar, forgetting that he was the one who just got her there, and Ford does a good bleary-eyed horny dude. Robin is polite but unimpressed, in contrast to Frank, who could not for the life of him hide his boner for Quinn’s busty and flirtatious co-pilot/sort of girlfriend Angelica (Jacqueline Obradors, UNSTOPPABLE, BAD ASSES). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anne Heche, Cliff Curtis, Danny Trejo, David Schwimmer, Harrison Ford, Ivan Reitman, Jacqueline Obradors, Michael Browning, Summer of '98, Temuera Morrison
Posted in Reviews, Romance | 14 Comments »
