I rented SPECIAL FORCES, which is American for FORCES SPECIALES, thinking it was an American DTV movie. It stars Djimon Hounsou (NEVER BACK DOWN). I thought after ELEPHANT WHITE he was just doing shit like this. It turns out to be a French movie from 2011, and therefore the second movie about French special forces that I’ve seen recently.
Diane Kruger plays a journalist in Afghanistan to interview a woman about how badly she’s been treated by the Taliban. But the Taliban doesn’t like this so they execute the woman, kidnap the journalist and bring her to Pakistan. The French send in a special forces team who rescue her, but the extraction plan doesn’t work out so most of the movie is them journeying on foot to try to get her safely across the border.
(read the rest of this shit…)
THE ASSAULT (which is American for L’ASSAUT) is almost like a French remake of DELTA FORCE. It’s based on the true story of a hijacking of a French airliner in Algeria. Four Muslim extremists posing as passport inspectors take control of the plane on the runway. They demand the release of two captured mujahadeen, and they try to fly the plane to Paris. But it takes them half the movie just to get the stairs detached from the plane, and then they find out they only have enough fuel to get to Marseille. 
I never heard of this movie before and didn’t really have a reason to watch it except that a weird dude I know through work insisted on loaning it to me. In a situation like that you never know. It could be the one.
THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN isn’t related to the Donny Yen movies IP MAN and IP MAN 2. I mean obviously they’re all based on the same Wing Chun master famous for teaching Bruce Lee, but this isn’t the official prequel to those ones, because it doesn’t have the same director or producers or anything. It’s like if right now somebody who’s not Spielberg made their own prequel to LINCOLN.
I know they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but a movie is not a book and a cover is not always the same art as a poster so I sometimes feel okay writing off a movie because of its poster. And these days when a movie has kind of a quasi-retro poster with a sort-of-old-school-ish illustration and attempted ’70s font, I assume it’s just some bullshit by somebody who liked GRINDHOUSE like I did and thinks if they know about old movies they can make a movie like that even if they don’t have the chops. But some of you said I had to watch SUSHI GIRL, so I gave it a shot. I forgive you.
On this, the 
Remember when John Woo did a science fictional movie a while back that everybody said was shitty? This was after we’d all kind of given up on him, so I never saw it. Until now.
In the beginning of LIMITLESS, Bradley Cooper is actually pretty limited. He somehow has a contract to write a sci-fi novel, but it’s overdue and he hasn’t even started. He doesn’t seem to know how to clean his apartment or brush his hair. His ex-girlfriend (Abbey Cornish from SUCKER PUNCH) is still supporting him, but bristles at his attempts to rekindle their love. He also has an ex-wife who won’t even talk to him. At least he doesn’t have the drug problems he had back when he lost her.
When BAIT came out in 2000 I had no interest. That continued for 12 years. Then one night, in a dream, I was thinking that because of my love for Jamie Foxx’s performance in DJANGO UNCHAINED I was gonna rent his closest thing to an action vehicle. When I woke up I thought, “Yeah, actually I do want to rent BAIT.” So I did. You see, I don’t have a hundred updates a day for you guys, but I’m always working, even when I’m not conscious.
THE MIGHTY QUINN is a 1989 Denzel joint where he does a Jamaican accent. Or maybe it’s a Jamaican-ish accent, because it takes place on a fictional Caribbean island, where Denzel’s character Xavier Quinn is the chief of police.
