"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Speed (30th anniversary revisit)

June 10, 1994

So far my study of summer ’94 hasn’t found much excitement in the big blockbuster type movies. THE FLINTSTONES got all the hype but the ones I’ve been most invested in were quirky things by well known directors – SERIAL MOM, CROOKLYN, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. Now finally we come to a straight ahead action spectacle that truly delivered at the time and still holds up today.

SPEED came out 30 years ago as I post this, and it’s a classic. It feels like a very traditional studio crowdpleaser, but also not quite like anything else before or since. Twentieth Century Fox figured out what they had on their hands and moved it up from August to June, but no one else was sure at first if Keanu Reeves would be accepted as an action hero outside of POINT BREAK, or even if people would want to see him with short hair. So for many it was a surprise how big it became (5th highest grossing movie of 1994). (read the rest of this shit…)

June 10th, 2024 | 63 Comments »

Renaissance Man

June 3rd, 1994

RENAISSANCE MAN is a really-not-that-bad inspirational teacher movie directed by Penny Marshall (A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN) and written by Jim Burnstein (a rookie who later did D3: THE MIGHTY DUCKS). It’s corny in the usual ways but also benefits from the simple appeal of the formula and a more-subtle-than-usual performance by Danny DeVito (ROMANCING THE STONE, THE JEWEL OF THE NILE, BATMAN RETURNS).

He plays Bill Rago, a fuck up in the world of advertising who gets fired after missing an important meeting with out-of-town VIPs. Ed Begley Jr. (last seen two weeks ago in EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) appears briefly as his friend Jack who hired him and still cares about him but has run out of jobs for him. While defending him to the boss Jack says “the man’s had a few personal setbacks the last couple years,” and we can infer that one of them is a divorce, but I like that they never elaborate. Maybe it was some weird shit too. We don’t know. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 6th, 2024 | 23 Comments »

The Cowboy Way

June 3rd, 1994

I should’ve known better after BEVERLY HILLS COP III, but I was kind of excited to watch a ‘90s studio action comedy that I’m not really familiar with. I might have seen THE COWBOY WAY on video back in the day, but I don’t remember for sure, so it was basically new to me. Could’ve been an unheralded gem! But it wasn’t. Just some competently produced, very dumb bullshit. I always think of ’94 as a great year for film, but so far, I gotta tell you, the summer movies are not contributing to that impression.

The story is about two bickering New Mexico rodeo pals, Sonny (Kiefer Sutherland, TWIN PEAKS: FIREWALK WITH ME) and Pepper (Woody Harrelson, DOC HOLLYWOOD), who go to New York City to look for their missing friend Nacho Salazar (Joaquin Martinez, JOE KIDD). Nacho turns out to have been killed trying to save his daughter Teresa (Cara Buono) from traffickers, so they try to save her. Both the action premise and the comedy premise are that they only know how to live “the cowboy way” so they don’t really understand the city much but also can punch better than any mere city boy on account of cowboy ruggedness. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 5th, 2024 | 19 Comments »

The Flintstones (30th stoniversary revisit)

May 27, 1994

THE FLINTSTONES was undeniably one of the big movie events of the summer of ’94. Sure, it got poor reviews, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone who thought it was anything more than fine, but people definitely went to see it – it made almost $300 million over its budget, the #5 grossing movie of the year. Since we all agree that box office is important because movies are a business etc. etc., this figure proves that THE FLINTSTONES made a bigger mark than SCHINDLER’S LIST, PULP FICTION, THE CROW, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, SHORT CUTS, ED WOOD, and CLERKS that year. Only THE LION KING, FORREST GUMP, TRUE LIES and THE SANTA CLAUSE were more impactful. Sorry, that’s just science. There are fossils to prove it.

So I thought it was important to include in this series, and also I wanted my sainted wife, who had never seen it, to watch it with me. (Don’t worry, it was fine, she didn’t hate it.) But when I did that and then I re-read my review of the movie from the Summer Flings series in 2017, I realized that oh jesus, I covered this very thoroughly at that time. Didn’t leave much more to write about. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 4th, 2024 | 32 Comments »

The Primevals

THE PRIMEVALS is about an expedition to a forgotten land in search of ancient creatures untouched by evolution (but a little bit by aliens), and the incredible thing is that we as viewers are witnessing a similar miracle. The Ray-Harryhausen-esque fantasy film was first conceived and pitched in the late ‘60s by stop motion animators David Allen, Dennis Muren and Jim Danforth, and then had various false starts in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so by the time it was filmed by Allen with funding from Charles Band in 1994 it was already a throwback. Then Full Moon Entertainment’s financial situation stalled the completion of the animation, and the movie was left in limbo when Allen died of cancer in 1999.

You’d think that would be the end of it, but fortunately Allen left the storyboards and puppets with the right person – his friend Chris Endicott, an FX artist for many Full Moon and Marvel pictures. Another couple decades later, through Indiegogo funding and the hard work of many of Allen’s animator and VFX friends, the movie was completed and premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival last summer. I was able to see it a few weeks ago at the Seattle International Film Festival, and I had a great time with it. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 3rd, 2024 | 15 Comments »

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Note: There aren’t exactly twists or anything to spoil in FURIOSA, but this is all spoilers. You really should see the movie first. This review is the discussion afterwards.


There are over one million things I’ve always loved about the MAD MAX movies, and one of them is that they’re separate tales. There’s no continuity, no narrative references to or consequences from a previous chapter, and other than Max Rockatansky and his Last of the V8 Interceptors there’s never been a returning character, location or faction. They don’t necessarily take place in any order, and they’re so separate that some people think Tom Hardy’s Max is a different character from Mel Gibson’s. I’ve always thought of them as more like the Man With No Name trilogy than, say, STAR WARS.

But FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA isn’t a MAD MAX movie. Says it right there in the title – it’s a saga. And we knew it was the backstory of Furiosa, written in conjunction with MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, shown to Charlize Theron to help her performance, at one point supposedly considered to be shot back-to-back, at another to be done as an anime movie directed by Mahiro Maeda (director of the Second Renaissance episodes of THE ANIMATRIX and animator on NAUSICAA and KILL BILL VOL. 1). So FURIOSA is a traditional prequel in the sense that it depicts an earlier stage of the specific world and characters of FURY ROAD. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 30th, 2024 | 127 Comments »

early review on Patreon: THE PRIMEVALS

For those who currently do or want to start patronizing me on the ol’ Patreon, I have posted my review of THE PRIMEVALS, Full Moon’s Yeti vs. lizard men movie that was the passion project of their top stop motion animator David Allen, first pitched in the late ’60s, filmed in 1994, and thought dormant when he died without quite finishing it in 1999. Now it’s been miraculously unfrozen and coming to VOD soon.

If you’re not able to or don’t want to give me money, I get it and I plan to post this particular one for free here very soon. But I gotta self promote and remind you every once in a while that for less than it costs to buy a refrigerator magnet at the $1.01 Store you can get access to a bunch of exclusive posts and help me continue to work only part time at the day job and put most of my time and mental focus into providing you the good shit here at outlawvern.com. Thank you!

CLICK HERE TO MEET THE PRIMEVALS TODAY!

May 29th, 2024 | 1 Comment »

Little Buddha

May 25, 1994

LITTLE BUDDHA is a film by Bernardo Bertolucci, so I always assumed it was highly respected. Maybe I confused it with THE LAST EMPEROR, his 1987 film that won best picture and eight other Oscars. This one only got decent reviews and one Razzie nomination.

It’s the very earnest story of some friendly Tibetan Buddhist monks who come to Seattle because they believe a 9-year-old blond kid named Jesse Conrad (Alex Wiesendanger, “Child,” THE NUTCRACKER) might be the reincarnation of their teacher, Lama Dorje. It’s also the story of Siddhartha (Keanu Reeves, last seen five days earlier in EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) in gorgeously shot sequences interspersed throughout as Jesse hears about him.

(read the rest of this shit…)

May 29th, 2024 | 6 Comments »

Beverly Hills Cop III

May 25, 1994

BEVERLY HILLS COP is one of those movies that was huge for me as a kid, but that I don’t really care much about anymore. Its significance to me was that it was my first theatrical R-rated movie and an important early chapter in my appreciation for the art of cursing. Also my brother bought sheet music for Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F Theme” and learned to play it on piano. That song is still a jam, but the movie is just one of those things I see parts of on cable and find some bits mildly amusing. I thought I remembered liking the very stupid, but more stylish sequel directed by Tony Scott when I watched it a long time ago, but reading my review again I don’t sound all that enthused.

For those reasons I was actually pretty optimistic about checking out BEVERLY HILLS COP III (which I definitely didn’t see in theaters, think I saw on video at some point, but maybe not because it didn’t seem very familiar). I figured since I don’t have much of an attachment to those other ones I would be more open to it than all the people who hated it at the time. And though I understand the modern rejection of director John Landis (COMING TO AMERICA) due to the fatal helicopter crash on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, I happen to really love some of his movies, and think he’s a good director. Plus this is written by Steven E. de Souza (48 HRS., COMMANDO, THE RUNNING MAN, DIE HARD, RICOCHET). And the one thing I remembered was that there were scenes shot at Great America, a theme park my family used to go to when visiting grandparents in California. I thought that might be cool to see.

Um, yeah, this is pretty bad though. Starts out semi-interesting, gets very tedious. Oh well. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 28th, 2024 | 29 Comments »

Challengers

The trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s CHALLENGERS looked kinda like a 2020s version of a WILD THINGS or CRUEL INTENTIONS type movie, and not just because it hyped up a naughty threesome scene. It looked like a similar type of straight faced but knowing erotic thriller soap opera about rich women who delight in using their sexual power to manipulate men. And it kind of is that, but also it’s way more of a sports movie than I expected. It just sees the world of tennis being a little like those movies.

It’s sort of a love triangle, more of a tennis triangle. It’s the non-linear story of the events leading up to the 2019 Phil’s Tire Town Challenger in New Rochelle, New York, in which legendary-great-trying-to-get-his-groove-back Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, PINBALL: THE MAN WHO SAVED THE GAME) faces debit-card-declined-at-the-hotel-so-he-slept-in-his-car nobody Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor, FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS).

(read the rest of this shit…)

May 23rd, 2024 | 4 Comments »

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