FX2 – which is not subtitled THE DEADLY ART OF ILLUSION, that’s just a very memorable tagline, like DIE HARDER for DIE HARD 2 – arrived a surprising five years after the hit first film. It comes from a completely different creative team, but they’re pretty much all-stars. The director is Richard Franklin, (ROAD GAMES, PSYCHO II, LINK). The screenwriter is Bill Condon, who had so far done STRANGE BEHAVIOR, STRANGE INVADERS and SISTER, SISTER, but would be an Oscar winner before the end of the decade. And the score is by the legendary Lalo Schifrin (Mission: Impossible, DIRTY HARRY, PRIME CUT, HIT!).
It’s not any of their best work. Especially Schifrin – this is some cheesy-ass late ‘80s TV cop drama smooth jazz type shit. But in a mildly endearing way. And the movie as a whole is kind of the same.
Our first part 2 of the summer opens, of course, with another movie-within-a-movie fake out. This time what seems to be an ordinary New York City street erupts with crazy sci-fi violence. A convertible pulls up, and a homeless man hits on the “lady” driver with the very hairy arms, who (gasp) turns out to be a burly man with a vaguely Arnold accent (did they know this was coming out the summer of T2?) who gets into a shootout with cops, revealing robot parts beneath and spewing beautiful bright blue blood. “The Cyborg” is played by James Stacy, the star of Lancer, portrayed by Timothy Olyphant in ONCE UPON A TIME …IN HOLLYWOOD. Since he lost his left arm and leg in a 1973 motorcycle accident he must’ve even done the parts where his robot limbs get blown away. (read the rest of this shit…)
May 7, 1991
Do you all listen to ADKINS UNDISPUTED? It’s a podcast done by a guy named Mike Scott, who goes through the Scott Adkins filmography in chronological order. I can imagine a version of that concept that’s fun to listen to, but not as good as what Mike does. He takes the job seriously, with heavily researched scripted intros, followed by a more free-wheeling discussion with the week’s guest (or “champion”). And very early in the run of the show Mr. Adkins himself caught on to it and has provided interviews for each episode. I’ve learned many things about the movies from Adkins, plus the side discussions have led me to all kinds of Hong Kong movies I hadn’t seen, and the rotating guests have introduced me to some cool people from the world of action movie fandom. It is fun to listen to, but also a genuine work of action movie scholarship. I love it.
TOM CLANCY is simply WITHOUT REMORSE is a new loosely-based-on-a-Tom-Clancy-book action movie starring Michael B. Jordan (
May 3, 1991
It’s that time of year again. The time when the sun comes out and my instincts tell me to crawl into a dark theater. It’s also become the time when I take a deeper look at summer movie entertainment of the past. Especially in this strange year, when the vaccines are starting to kick in but an immediate return to normal life seems unlikely, there’s something I find very comforting and fascinating about this form of time travel. I especially like looking at times I remember living in, but when I was too young to see everything that came out or to understand them in the way I would now. It’s partly nostalgia but partly wanting to learn about everything I missed.
“I have a problem with cold-blooded killers.”
F/X is a pretty cool little thriller from 1986 that I think I saw back in the VHS days, but I didn’t remember it at all. And since Bryan Brown (THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH) on the poster looks like Roy Scheider to me, I was really picturing something different. Brown is Australian and is allowed to fully use his accent here, a rarity in American movies that I was prepared to credit to the international success of CROCODILE DUNDEE until I saw that this came out earlier in the same year. So instead I will credit the success off CROCODILE DUNDEE to the success of F/X.
MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) is a perfectly okay movie, especially given the past success rate of video game adaptations. It does a decent job of putting some of the Mortal Kombat characters into a passable modern movie. I found it reasonably entertaining, and had I expected it to be bad I might even have been pleasantly surprised. It also might’ve played better in a theater, if I could go to one.
DON’T PANIC, a.k.a. EL SECRETO DE LA OUIJA, is a 1988 English-language Mexican horror film that seems designed to crossover to American audiences, with its lead character Michael (Jon Michael Bischof, who directed a movie called RATAS NOCTURNAS three years later) a blond, curly haired kid who explains in narration that his family moved from Beverly Hills to Mexico City, a situation he considers “the pits.”
