Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
After watching PREDATOR for the first time since the ’80s and realizing that it’s actually a good movie, I decided to watch PREDATOR 2. I never seen this one before and I knew the reputation wasn’t too good. More ominous, instead of John McDIEHARDTiernan the director is Stephen LOST IN SPACE Hopkins. Not lookin good.
But damn if the opening isn’t a scorcher. It starts out with the familiar Predator POV heat vision in the jungle… but as it pans across you realize it’s not the jungle – it’s the outskirts of Los Angeles. THE URBAN JUNGLE! In the futuristic year of 1997. (Think about it: a Predator is loose in Los Angeles at the same time Snake Plissken is looking for the president in New York. Meanwhile, the Spice Girls are topping the charts and TITANIC is breaking box office records.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Predator series, Stephen Hopkins
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
If you read my LADY IN THE WATER review you might remember my tangent about a thing I saw on TV called “To Catch a Predator.” Well, HARD CANDY I guess must be the big screen adaptation of that show, but it also works as a prequel to X-MEN PART 3. Ellen Page, the girl who made a bitch out of Juggernaut, does the same thing here with a guy she believes is a pedophile. But instead of “Shadowcat” she’s called “Thong-Girl” and instead of walking through walls her power is tying up a guy and threatening to cut off his balls.
The trailer for the movie was really unsettling because it cleverly stuck to the first 20 minutes of the movie, when Thong-Girl seems to be an innocent 14 year old girl who thinks she’s more adult than she really is, getting in over her head by going to meet a much older guy she flirted with on the internet. The thing was creepy as hell because Ellen Page looks much younger than most horror movie victims, and the guy is a photographer who APPEARS to be a normal guy and therefore you figure must actually be a deranged pervert. You get the idea that the movie is sort of an I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE type scenario where the guy rapes her or tries to rape her, or she finds out he killed her friend, or something, and then she enacts a vicious revenge. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Slade, Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, revenge, Sandra Oh
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 21st, 2006
For me SNAKES ON A PLANE is like an ex-girlfriend: my feelings toward it are complicated. There is alot to say about my relationship with this movie, and I’m gonna try to say it all. But it all boils down to this: I used to think I loved SNAKES ON A PLANE, but now I just want to be friends.
I still fondly remember those glory days when all it was was a title on IMDB for a movie that Ronny Yu was actually gonna direct, and yes it was about what it sounded like it was about. The perfect concept for a Ronny Yu movie and the perfect title for a movie period. So simple, so blunt, so minimalistic, like some kind of Asian poem style that’s not as well known as haiku because it’s too hard to do, but in this case somebody did it. Four words, four syllables, no more than necessary, no extra flourishes. Boiled down to its basic elements. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David R. Ellis, Julianna Margulies, Kenan Thompson, Lin Shaye, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
“From the studio that brought you HOSTEL and SAW…”
(comes a British movie from last year that they bought the rights to.)
Let’s say you’re six ladies (5 British) who go together to explore an uncharted cave somewhere in the Appalachians. And after you crawl through a very narrow tunnel, your entrance caves in and as far as you know there’s no way out, you’re under 2 miles of rock and nobody knows you’re there.
Well, you gals are pretty much fucked. So it’s almost beside the point that after you wander around for a while longer you’re gonna run into some weird underground fuckers (or wufs) who are gonna crawl around squealing like fighting cats and try to eat you. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Neil Marshall
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Sunday, July 30th, 2006
This is a pretty enjoyable, totally forgettable action movie directed by Dean Semler, a cinematographer who also directed Steven Seagal’s historic first DTV picture THE PATRIOT. The star is Howie Long, formerly of the Oakland Raiders, currently of the Radio Shack commercials. After a supporting role in BROKEN ARROW they tried to give him the football-star-to-action-star transition like they did to Brian Bosworth. The Boz never caught on big, but he was able to continue starring in DTV movies for several years after STONE COLD. Things didn’t work out that way for Howie, and this is his only starring role. I was gonna say he was more comparable to Lyle Alzado, but I just looked up Lyle and he’s starred in more than I realized. So I don’t know who he’s comparable to.
Anyway, Howie’s movie career was not a success, that is if you define success as “the ability to make enough money that they can keep making action movies starring this particular football player.” That never happened, but as far as I’m concerned he is successful in this movie. He’s square but likable and I guess it’s just nice to see a capable hero you haven’t seen a million times before. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry Pepper, Dean Semler, firefighters, Howie Long, Suzy Amis, William Forsythe
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN’S LADY IN THE WATER
a bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan
directed by M. Night Shyamalan
produced by M. N. Shyamalan
written by M. Night Shyamalan
co-starring M. Night Shyamalan
inspired by the true adventures of M. Night Shyamalan
dedicated to M. Night
The movie I really wanted to watch this week was WASSUP ROCKERS, but for some reason it went straight to the second run theater in Seattle. That theater’s a little out of the way for me and today I just wanted somewhere nearby with some air conditioning, so instead of seeing Larry Clark ogle Hispanic skateboarders from Compton I got to see M. Night Shyamalan ogling Ron Howard’s daughter. I’m not sure which one’s freakier. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Balaban, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, M. Night Shyamalan, Paul Giamatti
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Friday, July 21st, 2006
Every once in a while I’ll get in a gentlemanly argument with a motherfucker about whether Michael Bay single-handedly ruined the future of action cinema forever, or whether he’s just an asshole. And invariably a Bay-defender will claim that although his movies are not fun to watch and you don’t know what’s going on while you watch them, Michael Bay “blows things up real good.” I think the idea is supposed to be that Regular Folk like to watch a big fiery explosion with no brains involved and if you got a problem with that you must be some kind of snob.
Well I am not a snob and I think you guys know that. The problem is that in my opinion he DOES NOT blow things up good. He blows things up and then by the camera placement and quick cuts forces us to wonder whether we are in fact watching an explosion or a closeup of Billy Bob Thornton’s shoe or perhaps the reflection off a bead of sweat dripping down Josh Hartnett’s adam’s apple. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Al Leong, Carl Weathers, Craig R. Baxley, Vanity
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 19 Comments »
Saturday, July 15th, 2006
This is part 2 of the Underworld saga and unfortunately I’m less sold on this Len Wiseman individual after part 2. I gotta admit, I had hopes for this one. From the trailers it looked more exciting than the first one. I thought maybe after a little practice and with a bigger budget this guy was gonna make a movie that was more fun. Now I’m not gonna say that Len Wiseman has destroyed my faith in the human spirit and man’s knack for overcoming obstacles with innovation and hardwork, but the guy was definitely trying to. We, as a people, can do better than this.
This is one of those rare part 2s where if you haven’t seen the first one, you will have no clue what in fuck’s name is going on. Also, if you have seen the first one, even if you have seen it recently, and if you are me, you also will have no clue what in fuck’s name is going on. The movie starts with a long flashback to 1602 or something, where you find out all this new information about how there were two twin brothers who were the first vampire and first werewolf and the werewolves were attacking villages so the vampires were trying to kill the first werewolf and then they caught him and his brother didn’t want to kill him on account of them being brothers but the vampires were assholes and got mad so they locked the werewolf brother away forever. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Len Wiseman, vampires, werewolves
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Thursday, June 1st, 2006
ONE MAN’S JUSTICE aka ONE TOUGH BASTARD
from the director of Equilibrium
starring Brian Bosworth
This 1995 Bozploitation vehicle is on the more enjoyable end of the DTV action pictures I’ve seen. It’s not as awesome as Bosworth’s theatrical starring role STONE COLD, but director Kurt Wimmer’s slightly pretentious touch gives it the feel of an authentic ’80s action picture that Seagal or Chuck Norris might’ve made. Not the usual unwatchable crap you get on DTV, this is solid cable level filmatism.
The plot is a variation on a HARD TO KILL type of revenge deal. Bosworth is a drill instructor/hand-to-hand-combat teacher for the Army. Whether or not he will ever find a practical application for these fighting skills is anyone’s guess. He’s estranged from his wife but planning to work things out, and he has a little blonde daughter. Unfortunately, wife and daughter happen to be at a gas station where an ugly motherfucker named Marcus (Jeff Kober, the same guy who played Beserko in COYOTE MOON) is making a nefarious arms deal. The daughter witnesses the arms deal through the bushes so, under cell phone orders from a mysterious boss (all we see is the hoop ring on his nose) the bad guys massacre everybody at the gas station. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Kurt Wimmer, The Boz
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Saturday, May 6th, 2006
I like this “Mission Impossible” series. The first one, by Brian DePalma, is the best, a real tight and stylish twisty thriller with amazingly tense suspense scenes and cinematic tricks and surprises. And the occasional show offy special effects action scene. The perfect combination of Brian DePalma and summer event movie.
The second one, by John Woo, is a horrible piece of shit that finally made America realize what they had done to John Woo. But if you don’t hold it to the standards of “being a good movie” it’s pretty fucking funny. The amazing motorcycle chest bump scene comes to mind. In the John Woo filmography I consider this in the same dumb-action category as HARD TARGET and BLACKJACK. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a TV show, Jay-Jay Abrams, Michelle Monoghan, P.S. Hoffman, Tom Cruise
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 49 Comments »
