LE SAMOURAI is a movie I’ve meant to see for years. It just comes up so often when you’re into the shit I’m into. It was a big inspiration for THE KILLER and GHOST DOG, and probly THE AMERICAN, and since it’s both a crime movie and an instigator of that French wave that was new at the time it appeals to a broad range of movie buffs. People who wouldn’t normally watch too many French movies from the ’60s might watch it because it’s about a hitman, and vice versa. (‘Vice versa’ is Latin by the way, not French.)
So after hearing about it all these years it’s kind of a surprise still, ’cause it turns out I got the wrong impression. The way people talk about it I thought it was gonna be way more arty, way more slow and difficult, way more pretentious. But it’s a pretty straightforward crime movie in my opinion. It’s not fast-paced by modern standards, but it doesn’t have much fat on it either. Just alot of quiet. And a bird chirping.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Last year I honestly couldn’t remember which one was LET ME IN and which one was NEVER LET ME GO. It’s similar to the great “A ______ MAN” onslaught that made it easy to mix up A SINGLE MAN, A SERIOUS MAN, A SOLITARY MAN, THE EXTRA MAN, etc. And Denzel made a movie called UNSTOPPABLE even though Wesley already had a movie called that, and Seagal made BORN TO RAISE HELL around the same time as a gay porn of the same name came out. It’s all so confusing.
Ah shit, I hate it when this happens. I’m about to write a review for a sequel, or in this case a remake, and before I get started I figure I should go back and read what I wrote about the first one so I don’t repeat myself too much or forget something important. But it turns out I never wrote a review of the Swedish kid-befriends-vampire movie LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. And now I’m gonna review the American version of the Swedish movie everybody loves without reviewing the first one, and everybody’s gonna think I’m an asshole.
HATCHET II is at least more fun than HATCHET I. Both are maybe too tongue-in-cheek, but at least they’re kind of slasher throwbacks, nothing meta-y or postmodernish or self-reflexable about them, and I appreciate that. They got Kane Hodder from FRIDAY THE 13TH parts whatever playing Victor Crowley, a 
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You remember Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the girl with the dragon tattoo, also previously the one who played with fire? Well now she is the girl who kicked the hornet’s nest. Not literally. The first title was literal only, second was both literal and figurative, this one only figurative – there are no bees or insects of any kind involved in this plot. But man, this girl really kicked the hornet’s nest, they’re coming after her.
I got mixed feelings about some sucker remaking a Charles Bronson movie. On one hand it’s obviously foolish, because no man has ever been discovered who could stand toe-to-toe with Bronson in badass presence. It doesn’t matter who you get to star, unless maybe Lee Marvin is alive again, or Clint is interested in remaking old Michael Winner movies. Barring that, anybody’s gonna pale in comparison.
In the video store recently I overheard two college kids talking nerd shit. As they walked by me mid-conversation I heard one of them grumble, “And now he’s playing Green Lantern. Fuck you, Seth Green!”
Like the opening of BLACK CHRISTMAS, HALLOWEEN or THE FUNHOUSE, ENTER THE VOID starts out in a first-person-POV. You are Oscar, a young English speaking gwailo living in Tokyo. Oscar’s out on a balcony talking to this girl who’s wearing not much more than a t-shirt. Oscar’s doing it, so I’m doing it, I’m in his perspective. I see everything he looks at, I even see his blinks. He seems to blink alot, too.
