Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
First of all I gotta note that it’s weird this movie exists at all. Walter Hill’s prison/boxing movie UNDISPUTED is not exactly a title that appears in everyone’s home library. It was not a box office hit, it did not catch on huge on video, it does not hold a nostalgic place in anyone’s heart, it did not inspire other movies or hip hop videos or launch a catch phrase. I think I know one guy besides me who saw it, he liked it, I didn’t. He hasn’t seen part 2. I never saw it until now. There’s your audience.
The original got a brief theatrical release, the sequel was straight-to-video. Maybe they could’ve gotten Wesley Snipes to return, since he’s stuck in straight-to-video lately. Instead it stars Michael Jai White – you know, the guy who was cut out of KILL BILL who everybody on the internet thought should’ve replaced Wesley in BLADE: THE SERIES. So that’s cool. Except Wesley’s character is not mentioned – White is playing Ving Rhames’s villain character George “The Iceman” Chambers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, DTV sequels, DTV sequels better than theatrical originals, Isaac Florentine, J.J. Perry, Michael Jai White, Scott Adkins
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Sport | 11 Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007
This review is dedicated to Ryan Kenner, who’s been bugging me to see this for almost a year, and to the soldiers and planners of the American Revolution, especially if any of them were ninjas (not sure)
AMERICAN NINJA is not something I consider a classic, but it is a solid, enjoyable b-movie and it finally made me understand the Michael Dudikoff phenomenon. When I saw him in a much later movie, BLACK THUNDER (a Stealth bomber thriller remade as Seagal’s FLIGHT OF FURY) I was surprised at his lack of fighting. I assumed he was some karate champion or something like most of the ’80s action stars, but when I looked him up I found out he started as a model. No wonder.
But in this movie wouldn’t’ve noticed, because he does do plenty of fighting and makes it convincing. His line deliveries are sometimes bad but they manage to make him not talk very much. In fact, he doesn’t speak for the first 15 minutes of the movie, it almost seems like he’s mute. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cannon Films, Michael Dudikoff, ninjas, Sam Firstenberg, Steve James
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Sport | 34 Comments »
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
Until recently I was the guy who had never seen POINT BREAK. But the other day I busted my cherry on that matter, pardon my French, so I’m some other guy now.
I’m sure you’ve already seen it but let me refresh your memory: Keanu Reeves plays the perfectly named Johnny Utah, college football hero turned fresh-faced FBI rookie teamed with Gary Busey (in one of the first roles of his Crazy Post-Motorcycle Accident Period) to track down a gang of bank robbers who Busey (correctly) theorizes are surfers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Busey, Kathryn Bigelow, Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Sport, Thriller | 19 Comments »
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
A couple weeks ago I saw a theater marquee that said APOCALYPTO and ROCKY BALBOA on it. And I thought damn, Mad Max and Rambo are both directing movies now. Tryin to join the ranks of the Badass Laureates like Clint and Takeshi. While my man Seagal is busy revolutionizing the world of DTV self expression, these guys are going in a more societally accepted direction. Of these two action hero directors, Crazy Fuckin’ Mel obviously gets the medal for ambition because he made an epic about a culture rarely portrayed on film, in a language never spoken on film. He’s moving forward. Stallone is moving backwards but that’s okay, he’s taking care of some personal business. He’s putting a cap on the ROCKY series. And doing a fine job of it in my opinion.
It turns out I did the right thing preparing for this movie. I watched the original ROCKY for the first time in more than a decade. I meant to watch the sequels again too but didn’t get around to it. Well it turns out ROCKY BALBOA is a direct sequel to ROCKY. Forget about what happens in the middle, that still happened but this is all about revisiting what happened in part 1. This is what becomes of that young guy we saw 30 years ago, with the mumbling and the bad jokes, the deep hunger for achievement and the funny hat. It’s almost like those 7 UP documentaries, or BEFORE SUNRISE/BEFORE SUNSET, or maybe HALLOWEEN H20. With punching. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: boxing, Burt Young, Sylvester Stallone
Posted in Action, Reviews, Sport | No Comments »
Friday, September 15th, 2006
GRIDIRON GANG is the latest in this year’s new wave of inspirational high concept true story football movies. This one is THE LONGEST YARD meets STAND AND DELIVER: Dwayne T.R. Johnson plays an officer at a juvenile detention center who decides to start a football team to instill self esteem, discipline and teamwork in young criminals. I didn’t see INVINCIBLE and McG’s WE ARE MARSHALL hasn’t come out yet, but I’m guessing this one is the most generic of the bunch. There’s almost no point in me describing the movie. Try this: close your eyes. Now read that premise I just described, and picture a movie about that. There it is, what you just pictured is exactly what the movie is.
Holy shit, how are you reading this with your eyes closed? I didn’t say you could open them. This is weird. Well, I’m not sure exactly what to say about these amazing powers of yours, so instead I will ignore them and just go ahead and review the movie. Even if you don’t close your eyes, if you make a list of everything you expect to happen in a movie like this, you’d probaly get to cross off everything on the list. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: The Rock, Xzibit
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Sport | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
Merrick here…
Here’s the inimitable Vern with a look at TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY – a film I really, really enjoyed (the racing sequences were surprisingly well done, too!)
What does Vern think? Read on…
I don’t usually review these “comedy” type movies for you guys but I felt like maybe I should do this one just to show some of my talkback pals that I do know how to laugh and have a good time, etc. I think last time I reviewed a comedy for you guys it was the fucking WEDDING CRASHERS movie and I caught some hell in the talkbacks for saying that it was “something your friend’s girlfriend who you hate would claim is really good.” Of course, America is in a vulnerable state right now so she quickly fell in love with the movie and they are still happily married. So I was very wrong when I said nobody would remember it two weeks after it came out on video. Even I still remember the movie and how much you motherfuckers are crazy for thinking it’s good. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam McKay, Gary Cole, Sacha Baron Cohen, Will Ferrell
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Sport | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
This third picture in the FAST AND THE FURIOUS trilogy saga is pretty different and at first doesn’t even seem to be connected to the other ones. I never saw Academy Award nominee for best director John Singleton’s 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, but I know Paul Walker returned and Vin Diesel didn’t. And I believe Tyrese showed up. This time around we lose everybody and start over with a new character played by Lucas Black (the kid from SLING BLADE who I last saw in a small role in JARHEAD).
The first section of the movie, which is also the best section, is all about Lucas Black getting into macho confrontations with dudes and then having a race. In the opening he’s leaving school, getting into his junker car when he exchanges words with a rich asshole jock dickhead (HOME IMPROVEMENT’s Zachary Ty Bryan, still wearing a letterman’s jacket at 24). You can already tell this is gonna be a worthwhile movie when it starts playing western style music and showing closeups of their faces as they stare each other down. They’re about to get in a wrench fight when the jock’s girlfriend suggests a peaceful solution: a fast and/or furious race. Lucas Black says, “I only race for pink slips,” (he doesn’t mention whether or not he lives life a quarter mile at a time) but since the HOME IMPROVEMENT guy’s Viper is worth $80,000, the bet is not agreed upon. So the girlfriend suggests herself as the prize. So you know the western music was not lying about this movie being awesome. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Justin Lin, Lucas Black, Sonny Chiba
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Sport | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
As you know I’m not one for the cartoons but somehow I ended up seeing this new one called CARS. What CARS is about is cars. However they are not any ordinary type of car like you’ve ever seen before, they are living cars. And when I say that I am not even talking about a Knight Rider or Herbie the Love Bug type of scenario here, I am talking about an entire society devoid of human life, but dominated by living, feeling cars with weird eyeballs on their windshields. They can make gestures and they can use their tires sort of like hands, and they have jobs, etc. Even the insects of this world are cars, but there are regular non-car plants.
These cars have not only created a civilization, but their civilization has been around long enough that the good old days are gone. The story is about Lightning McQueen, who is apparently not named after Steve McQueen despite his brave service to the cause of cars in LE MANS and BULLITT. Thanks alot, assholes. Lightning is a hotshot race car, basically a NASCAR star without a driver. Because he’s a stubborn egotistical asswipe of a car he fucks up and blows his huge lead making the big race a three way tie. One of the other racers is played by Michael Keaton but he looks like the Burt Reynolds of cars. Anyway Lightning has to go to California for another race and because he’s a celebrity he doesn’t even bother to drive there himself, he goes inside his friend, a Mack truck played by Cliff from Cheers. Basically, he is inside his friend’s ass, but you can’t completely blame him because the inside of his friend’s ass looks like some kind of luxury apartment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Pixar
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs, Family, Reviews, Sport | 5 Comments »
Thursday, January 6th, 2005
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
You know why I don’t pay attention to Oscar talk? Because it reduces an entire quarter of every year to a horse race. People don’t talk about the merits of movies. They talk about whether or not they’ve “got what it takes to win.” They pit films against each other. People start digging trenches and getting nasty about their team. And inevitably, the films that mean the most to me from a given year aren’t the ones that have the giant campaigns or the marketing muscle. So instead of getting all worked up and expending dozens of column inches to explain to you why someone else’s opinion is wrong, I’ll just stick to my own personal opinions of a film’s merits for the two hours I’m in a theater, and fuck the Oscars.
While I wasn’t knocked out by Clint Eastwood’s latest, I think it’s a nice little film, sincere and unadorned for the most part. When I got in this review from Vern, who is a raving Clint Eastwood fanatic, I figured it would be nice to run it as the film starts its expansion from limited release on Friday. Check this out:
Boys,
Just to prove that I don’t ONLY watch straight to video Steven Seagal movies (just mostly), I thought I’d send you my review of the latest from Clint Eastwood, America’s Badass Laureate. I know MILLION DOLLAR BABY is already playing in a few hotshot Oscar qualification type cities but I was lucky to see it before its official release here. In my parts this is early. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Oscar bait, Oscars
Posted in AICN, Drama, Reviews, Sport | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 5th, 2003
Vinnie Jones was the highlight of LOCK, STOCK, AND ETC. ETC., playing the shotgun carrying thug who brings his son with him on the job (SEE: theory of badass juxtaposition; Vern, author). He had a very convincing tough guy, take no shit presence, and I’ve enjoyed seeing him in motion pictures since then, even though most of the british crime pictures that have come my way have been self conscious garbage trying to imitate that earlier picture. I know alot of you liked SNATCH but, I mean, jesus people. Let’s have some standards, is all I’m saying, in my opinion.
According to the british, Mr. Jones was already a famous soccer player known for grabbing a guy in the nutsack during a game. Not in a loving and consensual way either, from what I understand. I guess that’s how people knew he was tough even though he was running around in little shorts bouncing a rubber ball on his head. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Hemmings, Jason Flemyng, Jason Statham, remakes, Vinnie Jones
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Sport | 1 Comment »
