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Urgent Breaking News! Vern Says SEE NO EVIL Is ‘Completely F#*king Awesome!!’

SPOILER ALERT !!

Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…

What could I possibly add to a review this good?

Boys–

This is kind of a weird question, but have you ever thought there should be a movie about a big bald retarded muscleman with extreme religious views running around an abandoned hotel banging people against walls and plucking their eyeballs out? If so, today’s your lucky day, and SEE NO EVIL is your movie.

The retarded muscleman is played by Kane, not the rapper Big Daddy Kane but apparently a famous wrestler of some kind, making his acting debut. According to the credits he is playing “Jacob Goodnight,” a name they unfortunately never say in the movie. Like the character, the movie is big, dumb, almost definitely using steroids, and also way more fun than you would think. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 19th, 2006 | No Comments »

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

As part of my striving for excellence I’m trying to strengthen my background in the filmatic arts. I’m always trying to catch up on the Badass Cinema that I’ve missed, but it’s also important to watch some of the regular folk movies that are considered classics. MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER is no THE GODFATHER or nothin but if you talk to film buffs alot of times they have a boner for Robert Altman, and this is one of the movies they all mention. Before POPEYE. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 16th, 2006 | 1 Comment »

Code of Silence

In 1985, a couple years before director Andrew Davis introduced the world to Steven Seagal in the classic ABOVE THE LAW, he did another, similar movie, sort of a rough draft, starring Chuck Norris.

They have the same setting (Chicago), the same villain (Henry Silva) and alot of the same supporting actors playing cops and criminals. They have the same type of cheesy ’80s scores by David M. Frank. (Get ready for cheesy slap bass and the whitest horn section you ever heard.) ABOVE THE LAW is about CIA corruption (inspired by the Iran-Contra affair) but CODE OF SILENCE sticks with corrupt cops. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 16th, 2006 | 9 Comments »

Art School Confidential

A while back I wanted to get a copy of the book Cockfighter by Charles Willeford. The one the Monte Hellman movie is based on. I found it in a collection with two other Willeford books, so I read those first. I knew what Cockfighter was about obviously, but the other two I had no idea, so from page 1 on the books had me guessing where the hell they were going, and usually being wrong.

The Pickup starts out with this guy spending his days drinking in bars and finding jobs at diners, who seems to have real bad luck and get in fights everywhere he goes. And he meets this rich girl. Of course you assume she’s gonna be a femme fatale, she’s gonna lead him on and trick him into killing somebody or stealing her father’s money or some shit, but it never happens. Instead they fall in love for real but they have this fucked up Sid and Nancy love. They are tormented and depressed and they bring the book spiraling down into the abyss with them. Before you know it they decide to slit their wrists, and end up in an insane asylum, and it keeps going from there. Even the very last sentence of the book makes you say, “Whuh?” and have to go back and reconsider everything that happened before. I like that. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 15th, 2006 | 4 Comments »

The Godfather Part II

aka GODFATHER: RESURRECTION

When last we saw The Godfather part II (Al Pacino, DICK TRACY), he was in a room, closing a door. Nobody knows what happened inside that room, probaly some gangster shit. But THE GODFATHER PART II picks up years later with Michael Corleone now living in Las Vegas. Remember, he sent poor Robert Duvall there to stake out some territory, well apparently that went well. It seems there is some mafia roots in modern day Las Vegas. Huh, go figure.

Now, part 2 is even more epic than part 1. This one actually has time travel in it. It skips back and forth between The New Adventures of Michael Corleone and The Young Vito Corleone Chronicles. Hell it goes all the way back to the motherland. Remember that villa where Michael hid out in part one, then he married a girl with no nipples and watched her get blown up? Turns out that’s Vito’s childhood hood, and that place Michael lived is where the OG Godfather lived, and killed Vito’s mom. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 11th, 2006 | 16 Comments »

Mission: Impossible III

I like this “Mission Impossible” series. The first one, by Brian DePalma, is the best, a real tight and stylish twisty thriller with amazingly tense suspense scenes and cinematic tricks and surprises. And the occasional show offy special effects action scene. The perfect combination of Brian DePalma and summer event movie.

The second one, by John Woo, is a horrible piece of shit that finally made America realize what they had done to John Woo. But if you don’t hold it to the standards of “being a good movie” it’s pretty fucking funny. The amazing motorcycle chest bump scene comes to mind. In the John Woo filmography I consider this in the same dumb-action category as HARD TARGET and BLACKJACK. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 6th, 2006 | 49 Comments »

Road to Perdition

ROAD TO PERDITION is that gangster movie that came out to pretty good reviews a couple years ago that we all forgot about already, but I never saw it until now so I’m late to the party I guess. Please disregard.

This movie is modeled after old fashioned gangsters movies. But it’s based on a comic book by Max Allan Collins. The comic book itself is modeled after LONE WOLF AND CUB, either the Japanese comic books or the great movies based on the comic books, I’m not sure which. Also I’m guessing it’s a little bit based on some real life historical type business since it’s got Al Capone and whatsisdick Nitti in there and I think somebody said Elliot Ness is in the comic book, and maybe some other historical figures like Thomas Jefferson or Voltaire or one of those guys. As you know I don’t read comic strips, but I have read a good book by Collins called TWO FOR THE MONEY. Actually it’s two books reprinted as one by Hardcase Crime, taken from the Nolan series, which is modeled after Richard Stark’s Parker series. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 4th, 2006 | 3 Comments »

Vern Finds Al Gore’s INCONVENIENT TRUTH!!

Merrick wishes more people would at least think about stuff like this…

Vern got a look at AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH – Al Gore’s cinematic admonition regarding the various ecological “crises” facing our world today.

Regardless of politics, anyone who uses FUTURAMA as a learning aid (as Gore does here) is aiight in my book!

Here’s Vern…

This summer there will be many exciting movies you can watch. There will be guns, cars, pirates, snakes, probably Superman or somebody, maybe Spiderman will show up, maybe a time machine or space ape of some kind. These are all thrilling scenarios, but I got another one for you. What about a movie about A GOD DAMN GLOBAL CATASTROPHE? Cities under water. Whole lakes drying up. Glaciers disappearing. Hurricanes and tornadoes, bugs and diseases, miscellaneous terror. Pretty much everything horrible except giant snakes and killer bees. Innocent polar bears drowning right and left. A fuckin’ nightmare. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 3rd, 2006 | 6 Comments »

Vern’s Been To SILENT HILL!!

SPOILER ALERT !!

Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…

And so has Quint and, to my great pleasure, so have I. I’m not sure when Quint’s going to write about it, or even if he is, but I’ve got some things to say, and I’ll do my best to get them on paper before I head to bed. For now, though, here’s the one and only Vern, and he and I are really in tune today, since he seems to have reacted much the same way I did:

I’m not gonna lie. If you’re reading this, you probaly shouldn’t see this movie. I’m betting 95% of you who do are gonna hate it. At the screening I saw it at, people were laughing and loudly criticizing (and for some reason one crazy dude was naming the makes and years of the cars parked on the streets). The people I saw it with, who were more polite, said it was a huge pile of shit.

And in some ways they got a point. The dialogue in this movie is terrible. (Apparently that wasn’t Roger Avary’s job on PULP FICTION). It’s best when it’s just about running around facing creepy obstacles. The more it gets into plot and conversations, the more it loses its momentum. It’s pretty muddled and confusing and has an awkward explanatory narration near the end and like most of the movies by this director, the frenchman Christophe Gans, it’s probaly too long. (By the way, I looked it up and Christophe Gans is NOT Chris Gaines, that famous singer who looked exactly like Garth Brooks but with a soul patch. I know, I thought so too but let’s clear up that misconception right here.) (read the rest of this shit…)

April 21st, 2006 | 11 Comments »

Vern’s Seen ABOMINABLE! And So Has Everyone Else Online, It Seems!!

SPOILER ALERT !!

Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…

I had a chance to see the film myself this week, and I thought it was low-key fun. I think it makes a lot of first-time-filmmaker mistakes (Ryan Schifrin never met a close-up he didn’t like, for example), but every time the film strikes a false note, it also manages to do something very right. In the end, I don’t want to act like a Grinch when we’re talking about a Bigfoot movie, and I’m willing to bet this is a great movie to see with a group of friends. I saw it alone, and this one almost demands group participation. But enough about my reaction… here’s the one and only Vern, who will be back a little later this morning with another review, as well:

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet,

The other day Harry recommended this tiny little bigfoot movie called ABOMINABLE, directed by the son of legendary film composer Lalo Schifrin. Alot of people probaly thought Harry was full of shit since they’ve never heard of this movie and it’s not playing anywhere except one screen of one theater in Seattle and, according to legend, at Harry’s house. I mean if such a movie really exists, how the hell has it gone on so long without once being spotted by a credible witness? Why is it always some crazy redhead in a Tigger costume from Texas? (read the rest of this shit…)

April 21st, 2006 | 1 Comment »

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