THE ASSAULT (which is American for L’ASSAUT) is almost like a French remake of DELTA FORCE. It’s based on the true story of a hijacking of a French airliner in Algeria. Four Muslim extremists posing as passport inspectors take control of the plane on the runway. They demand the release of two captured mujahadeen, and they try to fly the plane to Paris. But it takes them half the movie just to get the stairs detached from the plane, and then they find out they only have enough fuel to get to Marseille. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
The Assault
Monday, March 4th, 2013Limitless
Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
In the beginning of LIMITLESS, Bradley Cooper is actually pretty limited. He somehow has a contract to write a sci-fi novel, but it’s overdue and he hasn’t even started. He doesn’t seem to know how to clean his apartment or brush his hair. His ex-girlfriend (Abbey Cornish from SUCKER PUNCH) is still supporting him, but bristles at his attempts to rekindle their love. He also has an ex-wife who won’t even talk to him. At least he doesn’t have the drug problems he had back when he lost her.
Then he runs into his ex-brother-in-law/dealer on the street, reluctantly goes for a drink with him and ends up leaving with one free sample of a pill this guy claims has been approved by the FDA and will go on the market soon for $850 a pop. Supposedly we only use 20% of our brains and this unlocks our access to the rest. I’ve read that that we-only-use-part-of-our-brain thing is an urban legend, but maybe this guy just doesn’t understand how the pill works. However they do it, they unlimit you. (read the rest of this shit…)
K-19: The Widowmaker
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
Well, I was stupid to write off K-19 all these years. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t even know what it’s about. I think I knew K-19 wasn’t a mountain, it’s a submarine. I knew it had kind of an audacious name but was directed by this year’s #1 Oscar snub, Kathryn Bigelow. That should’ve been enough, but I never heard anything too good about it and didn’t feel the need to see it.
Maybe it’s the submarine thing. I know this is blasphemy to alot of people, but I never even got into that one submarine movie that everybody loves that’s by the director of DIE HARD and PREDATOR. I’ve tried and it’s fine and everything but I just can’t get myself excited about it like everybody else. Maybe I’m subconsciously rebelling against my old man, who worked on subs. I never went that way. I’m a proud surface dweller. Strictly a land man. Vote no on Atlantis.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Eye See You
Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
aka D-TOX
Here’s a movie that brings a new angle to my Badass Auteur Theory. If this starred Ben Affleck or Ewan McGregor or somebody it would just be a mediocre stalker thriller from the director of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. But since it stars Sylvester Stallone we can only see it in the context of his body of work. It forces us to look at it as a Sylvester Stallone vehicle and compare it to CLIFFHANGER and stuff. So it has the advantage of being an interesting tangent in his filmography.
Stallone plays Jake Malloy, former city cop turned FBI agent. The wikipedia entry makes me think he was supposed to be a Seattle cop, but I didn’t pick up on that from the movie and it wasn’t filmed here. Anyway, he’s on the trail of a serial killer who targets cops. He’s been chasing this guy for 6 months but he’s not in so deep he doesn’t have a personal life. He buys an expensive ring so he can propose to his girl (Dina Meyer), so I think you know what that means. He better own a black suit.
Alex Cross
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
I have no familiarity with this Alex Cross character, either from the books by James Patterson or the two previous movies starring Morgan Freeman. But when they do a new one starring the guy from the Madea movies and from the director of STEALTH and the bad guy is Matthew Fox as a perverted ex-military, scuba-diving, charcoal-drawing, mixed martial artist assassin/rapist I figure it might be worth a look. And it is.
I’m not saying this is a good or even passable movie. It seems more like a fake parody movie from within another movie or a TV show than an actual thing that professional people would purposely make and release. But I mean that as a compliment. This is some awesomely stupid bullshit right here. You will like it. Or at least I did.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Zero Dark Thirty
Thursday, January 10th, 2013
Okay, we were all horses pulling the Kathryn Bigelow bandwagon, right? We loved her for POINT BREAK and NEAR DARK, mostly. Also BLUE STEEL and STRANGE DAYS and all that. But did any of us ever predict Respectable Kathryn Bigelow would come about, and if so, did we guess how fuckin good that Bigelow would turn out to be? I sure didn’t.
The respect came for THE HURT LOCKER in 2008. It got the Oscar for best picture and she got best director, the only woman to receive that honor so far. It also had one of those career-exploding performances, the one that launched Jeremy Renner, at the time known mainly for playing Jeffrey Dahmer, into the guy who has two Oscar nominations and co-starred in big ass movies like THE AVENGERS and GHOST PROTOCOL and starred in THE BOURNE LEGACY and hosted Saturday Night Live and all this. I loved THE HURT LOCKER, which I saw as an ingeniously structured suspense thriller and character drama for its time that also worked as a deconstruction of many of our favorite action movie tropes. So I had high expectations for ZERO DARK THIRTY, and somehow it exceeded them.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Argo
Monday, January 7th, 2013
ARGO is based on an amazing true story, recently declassified and told in this great Wired article. During the Iran hostage crisis, it turns out, the CIA managed to rescue a group of stranded American workers using an unusual cover story: they were part of a Canadian film crew scouting exotic locations for a STAR WARS inspired sci-fi fantasy epic. John Chambers, the genius makeup artist behind the PLANET OF APES series (and played by John Goodman here), had done “some contract work” for the CIA according to the article (let’s hope he gets a whole series of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE style thrillers) and helped to set up real Hollywood producers and offices for the fake movie. The now-worshipped-by-nerds comic book artist Jack Kirby (seen only in a cameo here, played by DEATH WISH V’s Michael Parks) provided the artwork that they used as pre-production set and costume designs.
(read the rest of this shit…)
The Bourne Legacy
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013
THE BOURNE LEGACY is a sequel with the uphill task of replacing its title character. Not recasting, like James Bond, but creating a new hero, like when Valerie Harper got fired from Valerie and they brought in Sandy Duncan as her sister-in-law. I actually think that’s more interesting than if they just made another Matt Damon BOURNE. I liked those movies but I think they’re pretty repetitive, and they wrapped up that storyline anyway. Enough of that, I say. But I’m surprised the studio thought there were enough people like me to justify making this movie.
(And I thought they were wrong, based on the reviews I’d heard. I know at least a couple of you guys hated it, and I assumed not many went to see it. But I just looked it up and it turns out it made more money than they expected it to and they might do another one.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Assassin’s Bullet
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012
Friends, it is my sad duty to verify reports that Isaac Florentine’s ASSASSIN’S BULLET (formerly titled SOFIA on IMDb, and out on DVD today) is no good. I guess it played a couple of theaters at some point, and it has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I can’t say I really disagree. It’s dull and amateurishly written and even though it has a weird thing going on with being a vanity project for some lady I never heard of, that’s not enough to make it very fun.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Crimson Tide
Friday, September 21st, 2012
What more high pressure situation could there be than two men in a submarine arguing over whether or not to launch a nuclear missile? I guess the only thing that would make it more tense would be if they also had to get home in time for a kid’s birthday party. Luckily the birthday party happened at the beginning of the movie, right before they were deployed to take part in “the worst standoff since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
(read the rest of this shit…)
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