There’s alot of big movie anniversaries this summer. Everybody’s celebrating 30 years since the Summer of ’82 shit like E.T., THE THING, BLADE RUNNER, CONAN THE BARBARIAN. And I’ve been trying to commemorate the important summer of ’87 ones like PREDATOR and ROBOCOP. Little did I know that there was another movie, originally released July 9th, 1987, worthy of that kind of respect, but that I never saw before.
Geez, man. What have I been doing these last 25 years that was so god damn important I couldn’t be bothered to watch EASTERN CONDORS? Nothin, that’s what. Why did nobody convince me to watch this one before? This is my new favorite movie until further notice. The only legitimate reason to not watch it is if you’re worried that it will be hard to find another action movie to watch after that, because not many hold up to the EASTERN CONDORS standard of fun. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m starting to feel like a pushover, ’cause I’m enjoying all these poorly reviewed movies. RED TAILS is a simple pleasure – a straightforward, old-fashioned tribute to the camaraderie between the pilots and crew members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American Air Force squadron. It centers on the friendship between straight-laced, mustache-having but sometimes flask-swigging Easy (Nate Parker) and reckless, authority-bucking wannabe-ace Lightning (David Oyelowo). Easy (unlike his grandson Easy E) always wants to be professional and follow protocol, Lightning likes to disobey orders to go play chicken with a German ammunitaion train or carelessly dive on a battleship with no backup. (read the rest of this shit…)
Steven Spielberg’s WAR HORSE is the story of a horse named Joey. He is distinguishable because he is brown with a white mark on his head and above his hooves. Otherwise I’m not sure I could pick him out in a lineup. He’s just a horse. Doesn’t talk or do math problems or anything.
The story begins with Joey’s birth and ends with his ascension to the stars like E.T. (note: some facts have been altered) and in between he goes through a harrowing journey in turnip farming, WWI, etc. His primary equine-human relationship is with a youth named Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who is there at his birth and later becomes his owner and trainer. Despite going way beyond anyone’s expectations in his indentured servitude, the purchase of non-plow-ready pretty boy Joey financially ruins the family, their lives are destroyed and they have to sell him for cheap to the army for even more cruel and unusual treatment by different noble, handsome Englishmen. (read the rest of this shit…)
No joke, I never saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN before. I’ve never been big on war movies and I think back when it was a recent movie I was real cynical and suspicious of any type of flagwaving. I thought movies like this were just brainwashing kids to join up in case they needed to blow up Iraq again.
But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wow – for some reason I never had any interest in EMPIRE OF THE SUN before. Turns out it’s great and sort of a beginning for alot of things. It’s Spielberg’s first WWII drama. One of Christian Bale’s first movies. The one that gave Ben Stiller the idea for TROPIC THUNDER. etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Have you guys heard of this one? Pretty good. Newcomer Peter O’Toole plays T.E. Lawrence, or just “Awrence” to his friends, a goofball English soldier stationed in Cairo on Doing Jack Shit duty during WWI. He annoys his superior officers with his Jar Jar style clumsiness and just plain oddness (“it looks insubordinate but it isn’t, really,” is how he explains his sloppy salute). So they send him with a guide out to the desert “to appreciate the situation.” And he really does appreciate it. Throughout the course of this nearly 4-hour epic the strength of his personality brings him from nobody grunt sent out on a G14 classified in the desert to unlikely leader of a massive Arab revolt against the Turks. (read the rest of this shit…)
WARNING: contains spoilers for PEARL HARBOR and World War II
After three financially successful action movies in a row (BAD BOYS, THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON), Michael Bay got a once-in-his-career itch to make An Important Movie. He probly had SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the brain, and definitely TITANIC.
Ever since James Cameron’s movie broke all box office records studios had been threatening to make asses of themselves by blatantly trying to catch more lightning in that same melodramatic-love-story-during-historic-disaster bottle. Jan de Bont almost did a love-story-on-the-Hindenburg movie, for example. PEARL HARBOR wasn’t as obvious of a copycat as that because 1) it was a love story set against a war movie as much as a disaster and 2) the love song on the end credits was by Faith Hill instead of Celine Dion. Totally different. (read the rest of this shit…)
Some of you young kids might not know about The Curse of Van Damme. It was an early ’90s phenomenon named after (but not necessarily caused by) our favorite Belgian kickboxer/actor because of his track record for personally delivering talented Hong Kong directors to Hollywood. They’d come over, inject our action movies with a very small watered-down dose of what they had been doing back at home, then their bodies and minds would be completely drained by the studio beasts, leaving them hollow husks whose names on movies were no longer desirable. I mean you got John Woo – who used to wear his heart on the back of his director’s chair, who used special cameras powered by liquified male bonding and typed his scripts in inks made from tears of passion – directing a movie so obviously for a paycheck that, in my opinion, it was even titled PAYCHECK.
But the curse can be broken. Six years and no theatrical releases later John Woo returned home, filming a Chinese movie for the first time in 17 years, and what he came up with was a motherfucking masterpiece. The damn thing is so powerful somebody tried to chop it in half and it just grew into two complete movies. Whoever did it I bet they just ran away because they knew if they chopped those in half you’d have four RED CLIFFS and they would conquer the earth, guaranteed. (read the rest of this shit…)
In Act I, Scene III of Richard III, Shakespeare wrote that there are places up so high that only eagles got the balls to go up there (exact quote). Schloβ Adler up in the Alps is not one of those places. It’s all Nazis and undercover MI-6 operatives in this joint. No birds at all as far as I noticed.
Loosely based on Disneyland’s Skyway and Matterhorn rides, WHERE EAGLES DARE is the story of a team of British commandos (Richard Burton, others) and one American (Clint) sent on a mission to infiltrate the Nazi-infested castle and rescue a captured general before he’s enhanced-interrogationed into giving up the Allied war plans or something. So they have to skydive, go on a snow trek, mountain climb, sneak in wearing Nazi uniforms, fit in, drink German beer (which Clint was against in THE ROOKIE, saying it has no aftertaste), and all kinds of dangerous shit. (read the rest of this shit…)
TEARS OF THE SUN is a Bruce Willis picture I missed until now. It’s about Nigerian refugees fleeing for Cameroon after anti-democratic military guys assassinate the president and his family and go around “ethnic cleansing” innocent people. I know, sounds kind of racist, but the secret is Bruce doesn’t play a Nigerian, he is not in blackface. He plays the lieutenant of an elite Navy SEALS unit sent in by Tom Skerritt (playing the twin brother of his character from TOP GUN, in my opinion) to rescue a Christian aid worker played by Monica Belluci. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Mr. Majestyk on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “Vern, you can get a replacement ring on eBay for less than $15. I’d have bought you one but I…” Jun 16, 14:13
The Winchester on Welcome to the Dollhouse: “This was a huge deal for me when it came out because I was graduating high school and leaving for…” Jun 16, 11:42
The Winchester on The Arrival: “I remember the weekend this came out, my dad and only had enough time to see one movie, so we…” Jun 16, 11:34
The Winchester on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “Slam Evil With Milk! This is one of those that came out at the theater I had just started working…” Jun 16, 11:28
The Winchester on The Furious: “This blew me away! I was expecting it to be awesome, but also thinking it might be a little exhausting…” Jun 16, 08:58
VERN on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “grimgrinningchris – No, you’re right, for a giveaway it was definitely high quality. I just remember the ring part being…” Jun 16, 07:34
Ryan Aston on The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas: “In Leonard Maltin’s typically bizarre capsule review, he notes to “Look for 10-year-old Kristen Stewart as ring toss girl” -…” Jun 15, 23:18
grimgrinningchris on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “Vern, Dunno how cheap the giveaway rings were. They’re pretty heavy and sturdy. I got mine when I saw the…” Jun 15, 21:30
CJ Holden on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “Its reputation as actually really fun movie definitely grew through the years. In that regard it probably benefited from not…” Jun 15, 14:10
Tim Bobo on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “Not sure why I never saw it theaters or on cable after? Maybe it just looked terribly old fashioned compared…” Jun 15, 12:21
Alex R on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “That’s right, The Phantom is the ultimate ally. I didn’t ‘watch’ The Phantom, I sat my white ass down and…” Jun 15, 08:29
Todd Highlife on The Phantom (30th slamiversary revisit): “I genuinely love this movie, it has the perfect mix of Indiana Jones and Batman. I’d sit it right next…” Jun 15, 08:11
Bill Reed on Masters of the Universe (2026): “Agreed with most here, in that it baffles me that they spent decades of development and $200 million to lovingly…” Jun 15, 08:01
There’s alot of big movie anniversaries this summer. Everybody’s celebrating 30 years since the Summer of ’82 shit like E.T., THE THING, BLADE RUNNER, CONAN THE BARBARIAN. And I’ve been trying to commemorate the important summer of ’87 ones like PREDATOR and ROBOCOP. Little did I know that there was another movie, originally released July 9th, 1987, worthy of that kind of respect, but that I never saw before.
I’m starting to feel like a pushover, ’cause I’m enjoying all these poorly reviewed movies. RED TAILS is a simple pleasure – a straightforward, old-fashioned tribute to the camaraderie between the pilots and crew members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American Air Force squadron. It centers on the friendship between straight-laced, mustache-having but sometimes flask-swigging Easy (Nate Parker) and reckless, authority-bucking wannabe-ace Lightning (David Oyelowo). Easy (unlike his grandson Easy E) always wants to be professional and follow protocol, Lightning likes to disobey orders to go play chicken with a German ammunitaion train or carelessly dive on a battleship with no backup.
Steven Spielberg’s WAR HORSE is the story of a horse named Joey. He is distinguishable because he is brown with a white mark on his head and above his hooves. Otherwise I’m not sure I could pick him out in a lineup. He’s just a horse. Doesn’t talk or do math problems or anything.
No joke, I never saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN before. I’ve never been big on war movies and I think back when it was a recent movie I was real cynical and suspicious of any type of flagwaving. I thought movies like this were just brainwashing kids to join up in case they needed to blow up Iraq again.
“Excuse me everyone – I surrender!”
Have you guys heard of this one? Pretty good. Newcomer Peter O’Toole plays T.E. Lawrence, or just “Awrence” to his friends, a goofball English soldier stationed in Cairo on Doing Jack Shit duty during WWI. He annoys his superior officers with his Jar Jar style clumsiness and just plain oddness (“it looks insubordinate but it isn’t, really,” is how he explains his sloppy salute). So they send him with a guide out to the desert “to appreciate the situation.” And he really does appreciate it. Throughout the course of this nearly 4-hour epic the strength of his personality brings him from nobody grunt sent out on a G14 classified in the desert to unlikely leader of a massive Arab revolt against the Turks. 
released May 25th, 2001
Some of you young kids might not know about The Curse of Van Damme. It was an early ’90s phenomenon named after (but not necessarily caused by) our favorite Belgian kickboxer/actor because of his track record for personally delivering talented Hong Kong directors to Hollywood. They’d come over, inject our action movies with a very small watered-down dose of what they had been doing back at home, then their bodies and minds would be completely drained by the studio beasts, leaving them hollow husks whose names on movies were no longer desirable. I mean you got John Woo – who used to wear his heart on the back of his director’s chair, who used special cameras powered by liquified male bonding and typed his scripts in inks made from tears of passion – directing a movie so obviously for a paycheck that, in my opinion, it was even titled PAYCHECK.
In Act I, Scene III of Richard III, Shakespeare wrote that there are places up so high that only eagles got the balls to go up there (exact quote). Schloβ Adler up in the Alps is not one of those places. It’s all Nazis and undercover MI-6 operatives in this joint. No birds at all as far as I noticed.
TEARS OF THE SUN is a Bruce Willis picture I missed until now. It’s about Nigerian refugees fleeing for Cameroon after anti-democratic military guys assassinate the president and his family and go around “ethnic cleansing” innocent people. I know, sounds kind of racist, but the secret is Bruce doesn’t play a Nigerian, he is not in blackface. He plays the lieutenant of an elite Navy SEALS unit sent in by Tom Skerritt (playing the twin brother of his character from TOP GUN, in my opinion) to rescue a Christian aid worker played by Monica Belluci. 
