Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
As I sit here putting together today’s updates, it is always a bonus pleasure when Vern sends me something to post. Today is no exception.
Trust no one. Anywhere. Except Vern.
This week’s horror movie is called TURISTAS (Portuguese for ‘Hostel’). It’s another story of young good looking backpackers whose vacations go badly due to bodily mutilation, etc. A crowded bus swerves to miss some asshole kids with surfboards and falls off a cliff. Luckily everybody gets out in time. The next bus won’t be for ten hours so some of the English-speakers band together and find a cool beachfront bar where they dance, make new friends, meet women and have such a good time they decide to ditch the bus. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Stockwell, Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde
Posted in AICN, Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Friday, November 17th, 2006
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to quickly introduce Vern’s review of CASINO ROYALE… and his admission of the huge mancrush he has for Daniel Craig. I saw the movie last night myself and you can add my name onto the “loved it” lists… Eva Green is the pretty and Daniel Craig could kill Cancer. Good stuff… but you didn’t click on this headline to hear me talk. Here’s the main man, Vern!
Fellas –
I liked CASINO ROYALE too. (review ends here if you’re one of those dicks who always complains that my reviews are too long) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 007, Daniel Craig, Martin Campbell
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Thriller | 58 Comments »
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
THE PRESTIGE and MARIE ANTOINETTE double feature
This week was one of those ones that start coming up toward the end of the year where there’s just too many movies you want to see all coming out on the same day. And me being an obsessive motherfucker I try to tackle them all at once. We got three reliable directors all hitting the same day here. #1 priority for me was Clint’s FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, but I already saw that at an early screening. So that left Chris Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE and Sofia Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE. So I watched them both in a row, liked both, also fell asleep during both. (You gotta go to sleep the night before one of these double-headers, it turns out.)
To be honest I wasn’t even gonna review MARIE because, let’s face it, I am not a girl. This is not only a girl movie but a long, arty, low on plot girl movie. I think some of you cinemasters are gonna love the shit out of it but alot of my readers would probaly never be able to sit through it. Still, I’ve read so many reviews that clearly didn’t fucking GET this movie that I decided I had to comment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Nolan, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Sofia Coppola
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
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 »
