"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

The Legend of Hercules

Recently I was a guest on the Adkins Undisputed podcast and the subject of the episode was THE LEGEND OF HERCULES, the 2014 movie in which Scott Adkins plays the villain. Somehow I had never gotten around to seeing it, despite knowing about Adkins’ participation, and that it was directed by Renny Harlin (between DEVIL’S PASS and SKIPTRACE, but I haven’t seen those either), and that I tend to go to these F.S.G. (Fantasy Sword Guy) movies and at least somewhat enjoy them. For example I saw the other Hercules movie starring The Rock that came out the same year. I didn’t understand why they made it a world where there was no magic, and I still liked it.

This is the Hercules played by Kellan Lutz, who you may know as one of the young guys in THE EXPENDABLES 3, if not from TWILIGHT. He also starred in a DTV action movie I reviewed called ARENA. And it looks like he played William Shatner in Michael Almereyda’s EXPERIMENTER? His thing is I guess he’s a uniquely babyfaced burly guy. He looks young and doesn’t try to macho up with a beard or something but is also very, like… wide-headed. I guess he’s tall, but he always looks to me like a comics-Wolverine, Ram Man type guy. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 31st, 2021 | 10 Comments »

Hudson Hawk

“Certainly I am a lot to blame for the film but I can’t say the alchemy of it was well balanced. What I have always said about my participation in action films in general is that I like to cut the head off of a rhinoceros and put a giraffe’s head on it. For some people, a rhinoceros with a giraffe’s head on it is interesting and something to look at. ‘Wow, you don’t see that every day!’ Other people will say ‘That is wrong! That is an abomination against nature! Kill it now! Get it out of my sight!’”

—HUDSON HAWK screenwriter Daniel Waters to Money Into Light, 2016


May 24, 1991. Yes, THELMA & LOUISE, BACKDRAFT and HUDSON HAWK were all released on the same day. (Also ONLY THE LONELY and WILD HEARTS CAN’T BE BROKEN.) And cinema was never the same.

I reviewed HUDSON HAWK 11 years ago, and I stand by that review. There are many things about the movie that don’t work, but none of them overshadow how much it makes me laugh or how much I enjoy seeing, as the quote above puts it, “a rhinoceros with a giraffe’s head on it.” So read that review if you’d like to hear more detail, including my theory about its flop status being partly caused by Eddie “Hudson” Hawk being in many ways the opposite of John McClane. But this is so much the type of movie I love to look at in a summer retrospective – an attempted blockbuster, using star power and production value to try to draw normal people into something kinda weird – that I felt I should rewatch it and add further thoughts in the context of the other 1991 releases. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 27th, 2021 | 62 Comments »

Backdraft 2

Yes, it’s true – in 2019, 28 years after the release of the hit movie BACKDRAFT, it got a DTV sequel. Since I hadn’t seen the original when this came out two years ago I didn’t really pay attention, and kind of assumed it was just an unrelated firefighter movie taking on the brand name.

In fact there’s quite a bit of continuity: original screenwriter Gregory Widen (HIGHLANDER) returns, the lead character is meant to be the grown up son/grandson of Kurt Russell’s characters, William Baldwin returns as Brian McCaffrey (now assistant chief) and Donald Sutherland returns as crazy/fun pyromaniac Ronald Bartel. Also it’s supposed to be the same fire station, there are photos of Russell and Scott Glenn on the wall, the events of part 1 are discussed, and (in a real fuckin stretch) Brian uses the phrase “career dissipation light,” which was already a stretch when he repeated it back to a corrupt Alderman he heard using it 28 years ago. Are we really to believe he loved it so much he made it part of his lingo? (read the rest of this shit…)

May 26th, 2021 | 19 Comments »

Backdraft

May 24, 1991

This may surprise you, but I had never seen BACKDRAFT until now. It’s often mentioned as the Ron Howard movie people like, or a good Kurt Russell movie or ‘90s thriller, or a movie with amazing pyrotechnic effects, and I knew I’d heard people speak of it fondly. I asked on Twitter and received many emphatic confirmations that people consider it a classic, some having even reaffirmed their love semi-recently in a theatrical screening.

So I hope you won’t all feel direspected when I tell you I thought this movie was pretty fuckin ridiculous! Maybe that’s part of what you like about it? It’s also true that the fire stuff is impressive, and of course Russell is good in it, and his character is pretty interesting because he’s about 85% total asshole and 15% guy you root for, which is not the obvious choice. Also, it’s fair to say that there aren’t very many movies specifically about firefighters; usually the macho ball-busting sweaty working class bros who go to the pub together to be rowdy and are in dutch with the old lady because of the job in movies are cops. Also, I can’t fault people for loving the type of corny old-fashioned weepy-eyed hand-over-your-heart astronaut movie type salute it gives to the heroism of firefighters. I think these are all legitimate reasons to like the movie, I’m not questioning that. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 25th, 2021 | 68 Comments »

Thelma & Louise

“Check the booty, yo it’s kinda soft an’ / If you touch it you’re livin in a coffin / I’m in the ‘90s, you’re still in the ‘80s, right / I rock the mic, they say I’m not ladylike”

—“You Can’t Play With My Yo-Yo” by Yo-Yo

On May 24, 1991 – exactly as the above-quoted song debuted on the Billboard charts at #87 – a parallel but more wide-reaching pop culture event arrived. Ridley Scott’s THELMA & LOUISE isn’t the type of movie we normally think of as a summer blockbuster, but it was a phenomenon arguably bigger than most of the t-shirt and Slurpee selling spectacles I love to document in these retrospectives. A surprise hit, an Oscar winner, a capturer of the zeitgeist, it inspired months of back-and-forth editorials and feature articles, and was soon declared a watershed moment for women in movies. A genuine cultural moment.

But I hadn’t re-watched it since that moment, and I really wasn’t sure how it would play now. It turns out when you remove it from any newness or perceived importance, it only emphasizes what an effective piece of entertainment it is. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 24th, 2021 | 12 Comments »

Switch

May 10, 1991

Okay, I’m looping back a little here. I initially skipped SWITCH because it didn’t look very fun to me. But as I think about MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE and a couple of the movies coming up later I’m realizing that changes in the portrayal of women in pop culture will be a major theme of this series, so it seems like a mistake not to look at a movie about a sexist guy waking up in the body of a woman. Also, Bryan in the FX2 comments wrote, “I don’t blame you for not wanting to review SWITCH but I was excited to hear your thoughts about it. It seems it could teach us a lot about 1991.” Good point. So I’m doing it.

SWITCH is late period Blake Edwards. That’s not a period held in high regard by anyone I’ve come across, but I did kind of like BLIND DATE (four years and three movies before this), which got terrible reviews. So you never know.

Steve Brooks (Perry King, CLASS OF 1984, MANDINGO) is “one hell of an advertising man,” which of course means he’s introduced in his office putting golf balls into that thing that business assholes putt into in all ‘80s and ‘90s movies. Then he gets an an unexpected call. Three of his ex-girlfriends, Margo (JoBeth Williams, POLTERGEIST), Liz (Lysette Anthony, KRULL, Bryan Adams videos) and Felicia (Victoria Mahoney, Brewster Place) invite him over for “a surprise party.” (read the rest of this shit…)

May 20th, 2021 | 35 Comments »

The Paper Tigers

THE PAPER TIGERS is a warm-hearted indie underdog comedy set in the martial arts world. It’s about three former American gung fu (that’s the spelling and pronunciation they use) prodigies now living unremarkable middle aged lives, who reunite after their master is killed. It has a smattering of jokes that are too broad for me, but it takes its characters and its martial arts very seriously, and it’s so full of heart it’s hard not to love. So why fight it?

The goofy thing is I only rented this on VOD because Vyce Victus and Adkins Unleashed’s Michael Scott were separately raving about it on Twitter. Then in the cold open I saw what sure looked like the Smith Tower, and the credits were set to a song by Kid Sensation (beatboxing padawan of Sir Mix-a-Lot), and holy shit, this movie is entirely filmed in Seattle (and nearby Shoreline), how did I not know about it already? I’ll go into some Seattle stuff later, but please accept the praise of the above mentioned as evidence that I’m not just rooting for the local product. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 19th, 2021 | 6 Comments »

What About Bob?

May 17, 1991

If we agree with director Bill Duke that A RAGE IN HARLEM is “no god damn comedy,” then we have now come to Summer 1991’s first actually funny comedy. WHAT ABOUT BOB? is also the first ’91 release we’ve come to that seems arguably too problematicTM to be made now, at least quite like this.

You see, Bill Murray (following SCROOGED, GHOSTBUSTERS II and QUICK CHANGE) plays a person with multiple debilitating psychological disorders who follows his psychiatrist to his vacation home and, as they say, drives him crazy. Of course this is uncomfortable because we know so many horror stories of stalkers – troubled people crossing boundaries with results that are less hilarious and more tragic. But what really feels of-a-different-time is just how much poor Bob Wiley’s struggles are played for laughs. As he squirms and winces while struggling just to step outside of his apartment or touch a doorknob or get on an elevator, the score by Miles Goodman (TEEN WOLF, K-9) makes sure we know that it’s cute and funny. That seems kind of mean, or just off base when I think about how much Bob reminds me of a much less lovable Bob I dealt with for years at my day job. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 18th, 2021 | 17 Comments »

Mannequin: On the Move

May 17, 1991

On this day, Craig R. Baxley’s STONE COLD starring Brian Bosworth opened. It’s genuinely one of my favorite movies, which is why I reviewed it in 2005 and then again in 2007 when it first came to DVD and then again in 2015 when One Perfect Shot published my piece Strictly Bozness: The Fiery Majesty of ‘Stone Cold’. And I admit it would’ve been pretty fuckin cool for me to somehow squeeze yet another piece out of it for this series, but I did not. Instead, please read Strictly Bozness and then we’ll move on to another May 17th, 1991 release that is seriously lacking in motorcycle-on-helicopter violence, among many other failings.

I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but it is a fact that the sequel to MANNEQUIN – part two #2 of Summer 1991 – is called MANNEQUIN: ON THE MOVE. There is no number in the title. The video covers have it as MANNEQUIN 2: ON THE MOVE and the theatrical poster says MANNEQUIN TWO: ON THE MOVE (important for “on the move” to be underlined) and I’m a fan of sequels that spell out their numbering, but I try to stick to on screen titles only. So really the MANNEQUIN franchise saga of properties understood it was the ‘90s and that pretty soon it would be in vogue to drop the numbers and just use subtitles (HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE, ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, etc.)

It’s not like a road trip or chase movie or anything, it’s more of a rehash but, do you get it though? It’s ON THE MOVE because mannequins normally don’t move but this one moves so it’s on the move. That’s why it’s a good title.

Note: I did watch the first MANNEQUIN (1987) in preparation for this, did not feel I had a full review’s worth of thoughts on it, and had almost completely forgotten it a week later when I watched this. So forgive me if I mix up any of the Mannequinverse mythos.

(read the rest of this shit…)

May 17th, 2021 | 9 Comments »

The Empty Man (plus AM1200)

THE EMPTY MAN is an interesting horror movie that’s on VOD right now. Turns out it’s based on a comic book from Boom! Studios, but I was not aware of that when I saw it. I just knew it was getting some word-of-mouth as a good horror movie that had not gotten its due upon its release in October. After further research I learned that after it got dumped by the studio (with a misleading trailer dropping one week before release) and completely flopped it got bad reviews and a D+ Cinemascore. Luckily I was listening to the right people.

If you’re game, I suggest doing a trust exercise here and just watching it without reading what it’s about. I liked seeing it unfold knowing nothing at all. But for those of you who can’t do that, I’ll get more specific. It opens in Bhutan in 1995, where four American friends are on a hiking trip. You know – all excited to visit a foreign land, waving at passing monks and shit. They get to the top and it’s beautiful and amazing and then Paul (Aaron Poole, THE SAMARITAN) is all, “Do you hear that?,” walks toward a ledge and slips right into a crevice. Just drops right in like it was an open manhole. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 13th, 2021 | 30 Comments »

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