Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
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 »
Thursday, April 5th, 2007
They got a real unique advertising campaign for THE LOOKOUT, they are trying this new thing where you don’t promote the movie at all, and nobody knows it even exists. So there is this mystery around it. I don’t know why it hasn’t blown up yet but so far this playing-hard-to-get approach does not seem to be capturing the public consciousness.
About the only thing I knew about THE LOOKOUT was the reason I wanted to see it: it is the directivational debut of screenwriter Scott Frank, who wrote many movies but most importantly OUT OF SIGHT. He also wrote GET SHORTY so it’s easy to expect Elmore Leonard if you know this is a movie involving a bank heist. But the feel is very different, it’s not really fun or jokey, it’s actually a little sad. But it is a real good and tightly-written thriller. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Scott Frank
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 26th, 2007
THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE II
First, a review of my review of THE HILLS HAVE YES REMAKE I: not so hot. I had so much I wanted to say about that movie that I couldn’t figure out what was actually worth saying. Just skip to the end where I ask, “Are you asking for a movie about mutant cannibals who steal a baby and then raise it in a safe and loving environment? Because I don’t think I would like that movie as much. (I’d watch it, though.)” Somebody oughta do a remake of that review. Sorry, everybody.
Second, a review of the advertising for THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE II: top-notch. The teaser trailer was one single shot of two weird mutants dragging bodies through the desert, then the title of the movie. Because what more needs to be said? A masterpiece of simplicity. I also enjoyed the TV commercial narrator who said, “Last year, critics said THE HILLS HAVE EYES went too far. Now, get ready to go even further…” I am not a fan of advertising in general, so I gotta give credit when credit is due. You did it, fellas. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Wes Craven
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
Monday, March 5th, 2007
David Fincher’s movie SEVEN (no, I’m not gonna do that cute shit where you type the number seven instead of a v, do I look like the type of dude that would try to pull that sort of typographic horseshit, I don’t think so) is the deadbeat dad of the modern serial killer thriller. Or the killer that inspired all the copycats. Ever since then, hacks have been trying to cop that thick atmosphere, that dark-as-tar nihilistic tone, that sicko mix of religion and violence, that serious treatment of the type of gimmicky murder sprees that used to be fun when Vincent Price did ’em, and especially those fonts used on the opening credits. Simply put, without SEVEN there would be none of those other movies where Morgan Freeman tries to catch a serial killer, nor would there be a GLIMMER MAN. And then where would we be as a society?
When you take away the artfulness of Fincher’s direction (and add a side order of Seagal/Wayans bickering) you can see how morbid and ugly that type of subject matter is. So the fact that Fincher took the time to do such a good job of it makes you question his mental health a little. Didn’t they say he personally splattered the fake blood on some of those victims? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Fincher
Posted in Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There’s alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.
Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese’s young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson’s gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who’s really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody’s gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he’s fighting some kid in a treehouse. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Baldwin, Boston, Jack Nicholson, James Badge Dale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Ray Winstone, Scorsese, Vera Farmiga, William Monahan
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Sunday, February 18th, 2007
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
It wouldn’t be a holiday weekend without our own Vern digging in with a review of a new Steven Seagal film.
Savor it like fine wine. I did.
FLIGHT OF FURY
Starring Steven Seagal
co-written by Steven Seagal
Well, it pains me to admit it guys, but Steven Seagal may be in a small rut here, at least movie-wise. Everyone knows his heart is in playin the blues right now, yet between guitar solos he’s still poppin out 3 movies a year. I’m definitely not counting my man out yet, especially with him directing PRINCE OF PISTOLS still a possibility. But after MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, SHADOW MAN, ATTACK FORCE and now FLIGHT OF FURY all in a row, I feel like he’s not at his highest potential of achievement right now. Somebody forwarded me his tour rider for some reason (somehow people got the idea I was obsessed with Steven Seagal) and I noticed he’s drinking Red Bull, not his own Steven Seagal Lightning Bolt energy drink. So that might be part of the problem. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, remakes, Seagalogy, Steven Seagal
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Seagal, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
Long ago, before the rogue Finn Renny Harlin’s Samson locks were shorn, he was not the director of DEEP BLUE SEA. He was the director of DIE HARD 2. Or DIE HARDER as everybody thought it was called then. (This was before the internet, so I couldn’t explain to them that it was called DIE HARD 2.) Well, CLIFFHANGER is another movie from that o.g. Renny Harlin, or Renny Harlin Classic. And from where I stand this may be his finest McClane-free picture.
Of course, I’m coming late to the party. I missed this one when it came out in 1993 but I was planning on seeing it, so I saw it this week in 2007. So the rest of the world has had 14 years to know what I’m about to tell you: some guys robbing money from a treasury plane drop the money in the mountains, call a rescue team to try to steal their helicopter, and wind up having to deal with ace mountain climber Sylvester Stallone. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Janine Turner, John Lithgow, Leon, Max Perlich, Paul Winfield, Renny Harlin, Sylvester Stallone
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 4 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 »
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
ATTACK FORCE is Steven Seagal’s latest, where he takes on a bunch of sexy people given super powers by an experimental military drug. But until recently it was listed on IMDb as HARVESTER, where he takes on a bunch of aliens. After I savaged the last one, SHADOW MAN, I got a nice email from Seagal’s co-writer Joe Halpin, who I found very humble and down to earth. Having his ear for a minute I didn’t want to be rude and bury him in an avalanche of questions, but I couldn’t resist asking if this HARVESTER movie would really end up being about aliens, or if they would chicken out like they did with the “biological mutants” that ended up not being in SUBMERGED.
His answer: “Who knows.” He explained that they had shot it both ways. It could be about aliens, it could be about European mobsters, the studio and Seagal would have to come to an agreement in post-production. This of course brings up alot more questions (the main one being “Shouldn’t you decide on the premise before shooting the movie?”) but it also gives a huge amount of insight into how Seagal’s DTV movies end up the way they do. I mean, if they don’t even know who he’s fighting until after they’re done, no wonder they end up with these weird overdubbed lines, randomly dropped story threads, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Seagalogy
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Seagal, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
I meant to see APOCALYPTO this week but I was too god damn sick to haul my ass to the theater. So I figured what the hell, it’s December, I’m Vern – might as well revisit LETHAL WEAPON. Haven’t seen that one since the ’80s. One of my buddies swears by it.
Well, it was interesting to watch this movie again, and I had fun, but I can’t say it has aged too well. I know it’s not fair to compare everything to DIE HARD, but LETHAL WEAPON is no DIE HARD. Bruce knew to keep the hair conservative, it will be timeless, no problem. His hair in that movie is so not dated that today, when the LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD teaser debuted online, everybody was pissed that he didn’t have the old hair do. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mel Gibson, Shane Black
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 19 Comments »
