You guys know I got a soft spot for the unlikely DTV franchise. Back in the day I loved to review ’em for The Ain’t It Cool News. Sequels to WILD THINGS, CRUEL INTENTIONS, ROAD HOUSE, THE HOLLOW MAN… movies that really had no business getting sequelized, it made no sense, but there they were on the video store racks. Or now on the VOD menu or something. Of course, very few thrive in this medium. UNDISPUTED is a rare exception, and since it was originally about boxing it wasn’t that much of a stretch to turn it into this generation’s BLOODSPORT. Most of these sequels are not high quality like that, they’re mildly amusing at best, so I should probly stop wishing for those DTV followups to GHOST DOG and REDBELT (starring Harry Lennix). They would probly lead to disappointment. (read the rest of this shit…)
Green Street 3: Never Back Down
Mandela
Well, I didn’t want to trivialize the passing of Nelson Mandela by having my dumbass post about it on my websight where I write about Van Damme movies and shit. And right in the middle of a GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS DTV sequel series. Doesn’t seem respectful. But then I started to feel like kind of an asshole for not acknowledging it at all. As much as we all liked Paul Walker, in my opinion Mandela is a more important historical figure. Not to be controversial.
I’m no expert on the topic, I’m sure I know more about the legend of Mandela than the specific historical facts. But living in the world at the same time as him was inspiring and amazing. Going through life for so many years taking for granted the story of the revolutionary jailed for opposing an unjust regime, just knowing him as a cause more than a person, then seeing him not only freed, and the wicked system he fought against ended, but seeing him become their democratically elected leader? Incredible. And then he lived to 95 and died naturally. Not bad. (read the rest of this shit…)
Happy 15th Anniversary of Gus Van Sant’s PSYCHO!
Yes it’s true, 15 years ago ago today Universal unleashed the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO from the director of DRUGSTORE COWBOY. I didn’t really pay attention but I’m sure everything turned out okay with that. And I see no reason why this new Village Voice piece of mine in which I write positive things about the movie should go over poorly.
I’m spending my evening planning a shot-for-shot-ish remake of the TV movie BATES MOTEL, hopefully with DJ Qualls in the Bud Cort role and with Vince Vaughn’s stunt double (or Jon Favreau) as Norman Bates. How are you celebrating?
Green Street Hooligans 2
GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS 2: STAND YOUR GROUND opens with another BRAVEHEART style two-crowds-running-at-each brawl set to an upbeat punk anthem. But the ground they have to stand in this one is fenced in – they’re in the joint. It’s about exactly what you dreamed the DTV sequel to GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS would be about: one of the supporting characters from part 1 is in prison for the big fight they got into at the end and continues to feud with the guy that killed Petey, now played by a different actor.
Ross McCall (SUBMERGED) triumphantly returns to his role of Dave, he was the guy who was the airline pilot, he called them up and warned them there were a bunch of guys that were gonna beat them up at the game or whatever. I don’t remember him being that important of a figure but prison is one of those small ponds that makes his fish parts look bigger or whatever. It’s just him and two oafs we never saw before from the GSE (Green Street Enthusiastic Soccer Fans Club dot org) and all the sudden he’s the brains of the operation, he acts like the leader and they follow him around and stuff. McCall is good actually, I had to look him up to make sure he was in the first one because he has a much stronger presence here, he seems like a different guy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Green Street Hooligans
GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS (as we call GREEN STREET in America) is a very watchable but meat-headed movie about assholes (as we call cunts in America) obsessed with soccer (as we call soccer in America) and exploiting the American fascination with English exoticism. Elijah Wood (THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY Extended Edition Blu-Ray + Blu-Ray 3D + UltraViolet Digital Copy combo pack) plays Matt Buckner, a young writer who gets unfairly expelled from Harvard and decides to go visit his sister (Claire Forlani, POLICE ACADEMY: MISSION TO MOSCOW) and her family in London. His brother-in-law Steve (Marc Warren) wants to get rid of him so he sends him to a soccer game with his little brother Petey (Charlie Hunnam). So they go out to drink beer and sing songs with the fellas and then go to the game. (read the rest of this shit…)
Getaway
Ethan Hawke started out as a promising child star, kinda like River Phoenix, who he co-starred with in EXPLORERS. He was a pretty big deal in DEAD POETS SOCIETY, right? Then he became Hollywood’s Gen-X guy in REALITY BITES and he’s from Austin so he hooked up with Richard Linklater and he starred in GATTACA and he did the Alfonso Cuaron version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS and later he actually got nominated for best supporting actor for TRAINING DAY (even though honestly he was the lead). So he had a good run as a pretty respectable actor.
Then at some point he said “Fuck it” and decided he was gonna do a bunch of genre movies, mostly ones with ridiculous premises. I think DAYBREAKERS is a real under-the-radar gem all around, regardless of Hawke’s participation, but SINISTER and THE PURGE are corny movies elevated by his commitment to the roles. I think he’s got a little Kevin Bacon in him. If he signs onto a movie about a dumb looking demon who haunts super-8 home movies and children’s drawings or whatever he’s gonna give it equal or greater effort than what he did in SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. I respect that. I like him. (read the rest of this shit…)
R.I.P. Paul Walker
Terrible news about Paul Walker dying today. You guys know how much I love the whole FAST & FURIOUS saga, and most of you share that love, so you know exactly how much it bums me out. But I wanted to write a few words about his career.
I wrote somewhere, maybe in my first review of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, that I think of Walker as the popular guy on the football team who’s so nice that you can’t hate him for it. I guess he was raised Mormon, which might be part of where that vibe comes from. I know Mormons get a bad rap because of Mitt Romney and the Joseph Smith sphinx and etc. but every one of ’em I ever knew was a little square and alot nice. I bet Paul Walker really was a nice guy but maybe not that square because I bet he really did wear Pumas every day just like Brian O’Conner. (read the rest of this shit…)
Badass Trailer Roundup
Hey everybody, I might not post any new reviews until after Thanksgiving. We’ll see. But I wanted to say thank you everybody for your support and just for reading and commenting and everything. I appreciate it and it inspires me to continuing striving for excellence.
Also I’m thankful that the films of badass cinema are alive and well enough that some of our favorite action movie icons have movies on the way, and some of them recently released trailers. So I have gathered some of them here for us to watch and discuss.
I’ll start with my favorite one…
Drug War
Johnnie To’s DRUG WAR is a hell of a procedural, a fast-moving, heavily detailed look at a batallion of Chinese narcotics cops flipping a big time meth manufacturer and trying to use him to take out a guy that’s above him. We watch them step-by-step, finding the guy, making him give in, making a plan on the fly, changing things up as the facts on the ground evolve. They gotta worry if they can trust him, is he gonna blow the whole operation, are they gonna get him killed. They’re like high stakes gamblers almost. Seems like stressful work in my opinion.
In the opening scene the squad catches a bus full of drug mules on a toll bridge. They bring them to the hospital and proceed with the unglamorous work of making them shit out the “drug pods” into bowls before they burst inside them and kill them horribly. I’m looking for a HOLY MOUNTAIN Alchemist/shitting in a bowl joke here, but maybe I’ll just let the moment pass. I am nothing if not classy as all fuck. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
(I’m trying to mark the biggest spoilers as usual, but be careful with this one if you don’t want anything given away)
You remember back when THE HUNGER GAMES came out I avoided it. I know this makes me a weirdo, but it wasn’t until Francis Lawrence signed on to direct the sequels that I got interested. The conventional wisdom was that part 1’s Gary Ross (PLEASANTVILLE, SEABISCUIT) was a classy director and this was a step down to replace him with the guy who did CONSTANTINE and I AM LEGEND. But I’m a fan of Mr. Lawrence, I see some genius behind the admittedly large flaws of those movies. As pretty good as THE HUNGER GAMES is I’m way more impressed by Lawrence’s depiction of post-human-New-York-City and Will Smith’s performance as the lonely omega-scientist. Yeah, we all know that there are some problems when the vampires turn out to be leaping computer animated beasts, but shit, they’re better than the animated dogs in HUNGER GAMES. Scarier and with more personality and meaning. Let’s not pretend either of these is flawless, but I know which one I like better.
Now Lawrence’s first HUNGER GAMES chapter has hit, and virtually ever review I’ve seen says what I predicted, that he made a better movie than the first one. See you guys, I know shit.
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