Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
I really don’t have a problem with America’s team captain, Paul Walker. Alot of people seem to hate this guy, but I think he’s pretty good at playing these straight laced hunky characters in movies like THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and EIGHT BELOW. But I gotta admit, when I saw the trailer for RUNNING SCARED I thought it looked like the worst shit ever. Paul Walker doing an accent, playing a mob guy? I wasn’t buying it. It didn’t help that the trailer ended with mobsters trying to hit a glowing hockey puck into Walker’s mouth. Like it’s not enough to hit the guy in the face, they gotta make it visually appealing and EXTREME.
But there are two things that the trailer didn’t get across. One, that Paul Walker actually does a pretty good job playing this type of character. I was hoping that Clint’s FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS would be the movie that shows Walker is a little better than people thought, but his part in that one turned out to be minimal. Instead it was this one that makes you think huh, maybe he could play other types of characters. Hard to say. The second thing the trailer didn’t get across about RUNNING SCARED is that it’s a crazed, ridiculous movie where the day-glo hockey rink fits right in. And I guess the third thing is that Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines are not in this one, it’s Paul Walker. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cameron Bright, Johnny Messner, Paul Walker, Vera Farmiga, Wayne Kramer
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
If you know your horror you know about Dario Argento, the crazy Italian fuck responsible for SUSPIRIA, DEEP RED and Asia Argento. Even if you don’t dig his movies or daughter you have to give him credit for putting together Goblin, the band who made the distinctive scores for alot of his movies as well as DAWN OF THE DEAD and that movie where Art Carney refuses to leave before Mount St. Helens erupts. I also really like INFERNO, the movie I brought up the most when trying to convince people that SILENT HILL was a surreal nightmare world and not just a moronic video game adaptation with stiff dialogue that made no sense like they thought it was.
I thought I had seen most of the big ones by Argento and I had kind of avoided this one PHENOMENA that didn’t have as good of a reputation. Maybe part of the problem is that it’s better known in the U.S. as CREEPERS, the version where they cut out about a half an hour. But at least in its uncut form I really dug this strange fucking movie about an American girl (Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly) sent to a Swiss boarding school during a murder spree. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Argento, Donald Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, primate horror
Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
The second ever film under the prestigious WWE Films banner is sort of a half-assed COMMANDO rip-off starring John Cena. Yeah, I never heard of him either but apparently he is or was the heavyweight champion, he has a rap album and his championship belt has a rotating thing on it like those asinine spinning rims that rappers use to dispose of some of their disposable income. But he doesn’t do anything that cool/asinine in this movie. Basically, imagine a bland clean cut muscleman with no personality, and the PG-13 action movie that would be built around him.
The movie starts out with promising ridiculousness. First you got the WWE Films logo, which is still misleadingly classy with an orchestra tuning up, and still does not even explode or bleed or anything that you would expect it to do. But it does rotate into the opening titles which involve Mr. Cena in full marine uniform doing a salute while standing on top of a giant flag. So far so good. Then it goes to the prologue where John Cena (as the fictional character John Triton) is in Iraq, sneaking around an “al Quaeda compound, 100 miles outside of Tikrit.” (Bush hasn’t convinced the world that there’s a connection between 9-11 and the Iraq fiasco, but maybe he’s convinced the WWE.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: WWE Films
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Friday, October 6th, 2006
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
Honestly, I didn’t even have the energy to write this one up. I am depressed by how much I disagree with Harry and anyone else who gave this a pass. This is what we’re settling for now in horror? I think it’s a huge mistake to demystify something as potent as Leatherface, and I think this is every bit as rotten and bankrupt as Nispel’s remake a few years ago.
But why take my word for it? Here’s Vern, who I trust to explain it for you:
My friends,
Against all odds, this is actually alot better than anyone could’ve imagined. Admittedly, a prequel seems like a bad idea, and the director has only done one movie (that even he says is bad), and he told the Fangoria horror magazine he never even saw any TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE movies before he signed on. But somehow this movie is good ol’ horrory fun!
That’s how my review would start if I was a lying scumbag. But I tell it like it is, so I gotta tell you, if you hated the remake like I did you should skip this one. It’s the same old shit. The best compliment I can muster is “It has a couple funny lines.” Or how about, “I haven’t decided if it’s as bad as the remake or not.” That would make a good quote on the poster I think. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jonathan Liebesman, Jordana Brewster, Michael Bay, Platinum Dunes, prequels, R. Lee Ermey
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
As you’ve probaly figured out by now, I love THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Hell, I’d go so far as to call it the DIE HARD of horror. The Mohammed Ali of horror. The Bruce Lee of horror. I also love part 2, not as fond of part three, hated part 4, fucking DESPISED the remake.
This week they got the prequel to the remake coming out. I’m sure I’ll probaly hate it, but who knows. In some ways it doesn’t sound as bad as the remake, and since it’s not a remake you can hold it to the lower standards of a sequel. And lucky for it, there have been two not so hot sequels already to lower the bar. So I came up with a plan. First, I devised a method by which I will see the prequel without Michael Bay getting any of my money. Then I rented parts 3 and 4 so I can have them fresh on my mind while watching the prequel. That way I will have the maximum possible open-mindedness when I see the new one and might be able to appreciate it. The only problem is I watched Part 3 here and it’s not as bad as I remembered. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Duane Whitaker, Jeff Burr, Ken Foree, slashers, Tom Everett, Viggo Mortensen, William Butler
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Sunday, October 1st, 2006
Back in 2001, long before he ever challenged me to a wrestling match, CHAOS director David “The Demon” DeFalco wrote an action movie called POINT DOOM. It’s directed by a guy named Art Camacho, who was in HALF PAST DEAD and directed a bunch of Don “The Dragon” Wilson movies. The producer is the same guy from CHAOS, here credited as Steven Jay “Bernie” Bernheim. It was sold as a Blockbuster Video exclusive, which I’m sure everyone involved was very proud of.
This is a terrible movie, but it has its own style of craziness and ineptitude that to me makes it much more interesting (if less competent) than the straight up rehash of CHAOS. It has a distinct ’80s retro L.A. sleaziness and an insulated world view that makes you wonder if these people only know cliches or if they are shut-ins who live in a strip club before. I think Grieco is supposed to be a straight-up hero, not an anti-hero, but it’s hard to imagine who would find this chump sympathetic. And the females in the cast have the gravitas of BAYWATCH stars. Almost everybody in this movie is a talent agent, a biker, or an employee of a strip club. The only exceptions are Ice-T (gangster, but not biker) and Angie Everhart (sister of strip club employee). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Dice Clay, Angie Everhart, Art Camacho, David DeFalco, Ice-T, John Enos III, Richard Grieco, Zach Galligan
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Sunday, October 1st, 2006
In Sweden back in the ’70s there was some crazy shit going on, just like they had in the woods there in the 1800s. Take for example the case of Frigga (Christina Lindberg), the subject of this cruel picture. She’s just an innocent farmgirl who keeps running into some filthy scumbags. In the opening scene she is a little girl being spun around by an old man who you assume is her grandpa or something. Then the guy keels over and blood pours out of his mouth. I don’t understand why, but this somehow symbolizes that the guy raped her. Don’t get me wrong, I am very, very glad that they chose to depict that through symbolism instead of showing it, but I got no clue what that’s all about. It’s a Swede thing.
The trauma of that opening scene causes her to be mute and, the neighbors say, not quite right in the head. She is seeing a special doctor for her troubles but one day she misses the bus and gets picked up by a sleazy hipster asshole who takes her to dinner and hits on her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christina Lindberg, rape-revenge, revenge, Swedish cinema
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 6 Comments »
Monday, September 25th, 2006
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to intro Vern and his look at a DVD I’m certainly picking up for this Halloween season: the newly spiffed up TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE SE. Vern goes through all the reasons this is better than the previous editions and some area where it isn’t, then wraps up the whole shebang with a final verdit. Is it worthy or unworthy? See for yourself!!!
Well friends, we all agree that THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is one of the greatest films in the history of American independent cinema, etc. etc.
[imagine 30,000 words here about why I love this movie. And believe me, I could do it.]
[Okay, maybe I’d have to pad it out by going off on a tangent about how underrated part 2 is, and why I hate the remake, and I’d have to spell “alot” as two words, but I could still make it to 30,000.] (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: slashers, Tobe Hooper
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 27 Comments »
Friday, September 15th, 2006
UNDER PRESSURE is another one by director Craig Baxley, this time starring an actor I’ve never heard of before named Charles Sheen. This guy reminds me almost EXACTLY of the better known actor Charlie Sheen, but with the more formal name “Charles” obviously he must be more sophisticated and more serious about acting.
Mr. Sheen plays a fireman, and in the opening scene he saves a baby from a burning crack house. Nobody should go in there because all the vials of delicious crack ingredients are exploding, but for chrissakes there’s a BABY in there! So he goes in and he saves the baby. There is a pretty impressive amount of close up fire in this scene and you could tell the stuntman in Baxley was getting excited, figuring out how to get some good fire stunts in there. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charlie Sheen, Craig R. Baxley, Dawnn Lewis, John Ratzenberger, Mare Winningham
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 15th, 2006
Fellas –
Brian DePalma’s new picture has gotten alot of good reviews, but it’s the really harsh ones that stick with you. The Ain’t It Cool’s own MiraJeff was so mad he literally said he wanted to recreate the mutilations of the real crime on Brian DePalma. (Maybe he’s moody getting psyched up for his bout with the House of the Dead guy.) “Like high-school kids playing dress-up, or bad Kabuki,” is how David Edelstein described it in his capacity as film and apparently kabuki critic for New York Magazine. And a crazy person at the screening I went to announced during the credits that the movie had “nothing to offer to society,” had too much violence and smoking, and would flop at the box office.
Well, I wish I could give a more passionate defense, because I really have no idea where some of these people are coming from. But I also thought that as a DePalma fan (for here on referred to as “a DePalmaniac”) the movie was pretty underwhelming. It kept me interested, it has some great scenes, I even thought Michael Meyers’s nephew Josh Hartnett was surprisingly good playing the boxer/cop protagonist. But since DePalma’s last movie FEMME FATALE was pretty much The Ultimate 100% Unadulterated Brian DePalma Film, it’s a little disappointing to see him doing what seems like just his little spin on material that alot of other directors could’ve done almost as well. I’m guessing fans of the book, though, will be more interested. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Brian De Palma, Hilary Swank, Josh Hartnett, Mia Kirshner, Mike Starr, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in AICN, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
