Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
ROBOCOP
Since my recent viewing of the TERMINATOR trilogy was a smashing success I decided to look for some other ’80s-’90s sci-fi/action robot trilogy to watch, and I came up with ROBOCOP. I’d seen the first one a million (1,000,000) times and never seen the sequels, but I had a pretty good idea it was not gonna be pretty. And it wasn’t.
To me the real trilogy is not ROBOCOP 1-3, it’s ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL and then STARSHIP TROOPERS, Paul Verhoeven’s three ultraviolent, FX heavy studio sci-fi action satires. ROBOCOP started off that trilogy with a bang, and even including those other Verhoeven classics there’s really nothing quite like this one. Its unique approach is established at the very beginning when it opens with a TV newsbreak (co-anchored by Leeza Gibbons) that’s a weird hybrid of news from the ’80s and from today. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Paul Verhoeven
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 216 Comments »
Friday, July 27th, 2007
I’ve seen this movie many times over many years, and I’m sure you have too. I don’t think I need to try to convince anybody to like ALIENS. Asking somebody if they like ALIENS is like asking them if they like pizza or ice cream. You can assume the answer is “yes” and if not it’s just some weird quirk that person has, you can’t really make much of it.
But having noticed signs that the BIG FUCKIN SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER POPCORN MOVIE may be ailing here in 2007 I decided to get nostalgic and watch T2 (theatrical cut, back to ’91) and I had such a good time with that I thought, jesus, where do I go from here? Is there anything that big and yet at the same time that good? I wasn’t sure but I did know of one other James Cameron part 2 that I like even better and that of course is ALIENS. So I watched the theatrical cut of that too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: James Cameron
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 88 Comments »
Monday, July 23rd, 2007
After watching the TERMINATOR movies for the first time in years I was so excited about James Cameron I decided I should go back and re-watch the Cameron movies I didn’t like, see if maybe my perspective has changed. Maybe there was some magic there I just wasn’t picking up on.
So of course I had to go back to the beginning, the smash debut, the one that started it all for director James Cameron. Orson Welles started out with CITIZEN KANE, James Cameron started out with PIRANHA PART TWO THE SPAWNING. What can you say, man, it was a different era. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: James Cameron, Lance Henriksen
Posted in Drama, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 5 Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
THE TERMINATOR
Summer, 2007. 1:52 AM. Mindless, soul-less, visually indecipherable and crassly commercial garbage such as TRANSFORMERS has invaded America’s movie screens disguised as “good ol’ summer popcorn entertainment.” Labelled a madman for his harsh condemnation of TRANSFORMERS, Vern began to search for proof that a better, more powerful type of summer blockbuster once existed…
I’m obviously a zealot when it comes to this TRANSFORMERS shit. Most people either like the movie or aren’t as offended by it as I am. But my contention that they used to make actual smart/good versions of this type of moronic horse shit has met with some sympathy. I was happy that even the morning radio guy Adam Corolla brought up TERMINATOR 2 when discussing TRANSFORMERS on his show. He agreed with his staff that the movie was “fun” but said, “Still… it’s no Terminator.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 90 Comments »
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
Three words for you about TRANSFORMERS: Ho. Lee. Shit. Not as in “Holy shit, I was blown away, it was a blast as well as AWESOME!” but as in “Holy shit, society really is on the brink of collapse.”
Usually if a movie is already playing in theaters I don’t send my review here, I just use it at my geocities.com/outlawvern sight, but jesus, SOMEBODY had to say something. I can’t believe how many positive reviews I have read of this. I think Harry’s was the only negative I saw, but he was polite about it. I read Moriarty’s review before the screening and I thought wow, what if I actually like this movie? Like me, Moriarty hates Michael Bay’s movies from head to toe, style and content, and me and him agree on all kinds of stuff. I don’t remember too many cases where I thought he was being too easy on a movie, at least not a big one like this (only one that comes to mind is the much smaller DAREDEVIL). I never thought I would like this movie until I read his review. He had me about 80% convinced that it would surprise me and win me over, like LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD did. And I might have to seek counseling after enjoying those two movies in a row, but that’s life. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Michael Bay, robots, unwatchable garbage, what's wrong with America
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 42 Comments »
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF
PREAMBLE
Here in the US these two movies were designed and released as a double feature with trailers for fictional movies in between. They were released under one unifying name that starts with a ‘G’ that is a word used to describe the shitty theaters that used to churn out sleazy horror, sexploitation, kung fu and blaxploitation movies back in the day.
I am not going to be using the g-word in this review, because I am sick and fucking tired of hearing it. It’s a perfectly legitimate title for this concept, but here is the problem. Mr. Tarantino is a huge fan and expert on these types of movies, he is the human IMDb judging from some of those interviews. So I don’t mind seeing him talk about it in every article about KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and then KILL BILL VOLUME 2 and then when they announced this g-word movie, and then while he was filming it and now to promote its release. Tarantino can use the g-word all he wants, he has earned it. So I don’t mind him and the trailers for his movie trying to explain to the kids what the g-word means. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Bruce Willis, Jordan Ladd, Josh Brolin, Kurt Russell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Biehn, Michael Parks, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Zombie, Rosario Dawson, Rose MacGowan, stuntsploitation, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tarantino, Tracie Thoms, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoe Bell
Posted in Action, Bruce, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
(originally BANLIEUE 13)
I’m way behind on this movie. I remember a couple years ago I went to see some movie at the film festival here, and this one was just getting out on the same screen. I saw some people I knew coming out and I asked them how it was. They said it was ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK except in France, and with some weird martial art where they run up walls and shit. I knew it was a Luc Besson joint so I thought wait a minute, is this related to that YAMAKASI movie I saw? The art of climbing and flipping?
Now it’s years later and the movie has long since played American theaters and DVD players in a dubbed version called DISTRICT B13. The advertising campaign has tried to convince us we know what the word “parkour” means. Another practicioner of the art has battled (and lost) the new, badass James Bond. Now it’s old news, the excitement has worn off, so I saw it now. That’s just how I roll. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Besson productions, Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, parkour, Pierre Morel
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 19th, 2007
I don’t know why, but I never saw a LEPRECHAUN picture before. You guys know I got a taste for straight to video trash, as well as little bastard killers. Nobody is as good as Chucky, but I had fun writing about THE GINGERDEAD MAN. Plus, the Leprechaun made it into space 4 years before Jason did, and I loved JASON X. (HELLRAISER won the space race, after false starts from HALLOWEEN, give credit where credit is due. But Leprechaun was there second.)
More importantly, it was St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m not Irish, and I can’t drink, so what the fuck else am I supposed to do on St. Patrick’s Day besides watch some Leprechaun pictures. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Trenchard-Smith, DTV, DTV sequels, Ice-T, Jennifer Aniston, Warwick Davis
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Friday, February 16th, 2007
PLOT SUMMARY: When a dwarf with no hands or feet and some little kids try to stone a naked dude they found passed out, pissing himself with his face covered in flies, the naked dude and the little guy smoke a joint, hug and become fast friends. So they go into town, where tourists laugh and take pictures of the troops executing school children, and they watch the frogs and chameleons re-enact the conquest of Mexico in a model city. Also the naked dude looks like Jesus and these guys drug him and make a cast of him and he wakes up surrounded by hundreds of duplicates of himself so he screams and smashes them but takes one and carries it around for a while and later he eats its face off and ties it to a bunch of helium balloons and sets it free. He hangs out with 12 hookers in matching see-through black outfits. One of them is an old lady, one is a little girl and they also have a chimpanzee. Some people might call it 13 hookers I guess, but I’m old fashioned so I’m gonna assume the chimpanzee is just an associate and not a professional. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jodorowsky
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 5 Comments »
Sunday, December 31st, 2006
There was a time a couple years ago when it seemed like every day the headlines were just trying to out-crazy the day before. Planes falling out of the sky, anthrax in the mail, snipers on the loose, hurricanes, that lady releasing doves for each charge Michael Jackson was acquitted of… you wouldn’t have been surprised to get the morning paper and read that killer bees had swarmed Congress, rabid baboons were loose on the Space Shuttle and the Olsen twins had torched themselves outside of the “Today Show” window to protest censorship of rap music and video games. There are no baboons in CHILDREN OF MEN (there is a deer walking through a building, come to think of it) but this is a movie that perfectly captures that knot in your stomach, that feeling of madness, where the world has gone so crazy you keep bouncing between complete desensitized detachment and wanting to cry at the slightest provocation.
Technically this is a sci-fi movie, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels so fuckin real. Most dystopia movies are stylized in some way to make them look cool. This one goes for reality. The only futuristic technology you see is for mundane things like video games and animated bus ads. It looks great (like all of director Alfonso Cuaron’s movies) but not like a beautiful painting, more like a good documentary, and mostly shot handheld. There are 4 or 5 classic sequences here that I have no idea how they could’ve possibly been done. Like, there’s a scene where Clive Owen, the hero, runs through a war zone surrounded by total fuckin mayhem. In what appears to be one continuous handheld shot he runs between buildings, up stairs, through hallways evading hundreds of gunshots, seeing tanks blow up buildings, having emotional moments with other characters. And not a moment of it looked artificial to me. The only thing in the whole movie that struck me as a special effect was, of all things, a baby. And that was a good special effect. But the rest looked like reality. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alfonso Cuaron, Clive Owen
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 15 Comments »
