or Max Von Sydow’s Badass Revenge
Recently on The Ain’t It Cool News I reviewed this movie CHAOS, which is a rip-off of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (not on purpose, I am assured by the filmatists) which itself was an update of THE VIRGIN SPRING. One of the talkbackers, Readingwriter, was annoyed that I didn’t mention VIRGIN SPRING in the review. He had a good point that it would’ve been interesting to compare all three of them, not just those two, and I’m sure I would’ve done that if I had actually seen VIRGIN SPRING. But I hadn’t.
Until now. Today, I return to the topic armed with a new, more Swedish perspective of the classic revenge tale. (read the rest of this shit…)
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is one of the most notorious of the revenge pictures. Why? I bet it’s mostly because the title is so good. LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is a great title too, because it sounds cool but it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s enigmatic. I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is the opposite approach, it’s blunt and harsh and to the point. Whoever this is that’s speaking the title, he or she DOES NOT like you. That much is clear.
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
If you read my LADY IN THE WATER review you might remember my tangent about a thing I saw on TV called “To Catch a Predator.” Well, HARD CANDY I guess must be the big screen adaptation of that show, but it also works as a prequel to X-MEN PART 3. Ellen Page, the girl who made a bitch out of Juggernaut, does the same thing here with a guy she believes is a pedophile. But instead of “Shadowcat” she’s called “Thong-Girl” and instead of walking through walls her power is tying up a guy and threatening to cut off his balls.
THEY LIVE is one of my favorite movies ever. It is probaly the very best version of a rare type of movie I love: the badass action movie that also works as a political statement. BILLY JACK may be more political, but it seems so self important and it has no sense of humor. THEY LIVE is kind of saying the same thing THE MATRIX is saying about a society brainwashed by media and advertising, but it’s saying more than that. It’s about the America of the Reagan years, when everything was geared to help the rich at the expense of the working class. Which for some reason seems awfully familiar today. Huh. Weird.
For me SNAKES ON A PLANE is like an ex-girlfriend: my feelings toward it are complicated. There is alot to say about my relationship with this movie, and I’m gonna try to say it all. But it all boils down to this: I used to think I loved SNAKES ON A PLANE, but now I just want to be friends.
PREDATOR starts out with a shot of an alien spacecraft jettisoning a shuttle towards earth. We just see it from the distance, there’s not alot of detail visible, but we don’t live under a rock, so we know what’s going on here. The extra-terrestrial hunting enthusiast known only as “Predator” is arriving on Earth. The human characters in the movie get all the screen time, but Predator gets the first shot, so we know this is really his story.
Hey folks, Harry here – with the latest from Vern. This time, Vern tackles the ever evolving career of one, Wesley Snipes. I miss Wesley Snipes. He was never just the muscle action guy and I kinda hate that THAT is what he’s becoming in these cheap straight to DVD flicks. Snipes is a dramatic actor of an immense amount of range. He just needs to calm down and begin straightening out a lot of the bad press he’s had – and just do the work. Put himself in some independent films – showing his range and humility and getting back to where filmmaker’s won’t be taking a “chance” directing him, but taking the OPPORTUNITY to use him. He’s incredibly talented, I just want to see that back on screen again. Here’s Vern to tell us if we see any of that talent in HARD LUCK…
As if the whole world wasn’t going to shit already, now we got this war going on between Israel and Hezbollah in Syria. Or according to some people, between the US via Israel and Iran via Syria via Hezbollah in Lebanon or I don’t know. Whatever the fuck is going on over there, it’s not good. People are dying every day and it seems like this could be just the humble beginnings of this latest phase of the world’s biggest mess.
“From the studio that brought you HOSTEL and SAW…”
