"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

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 »

Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful

Today in S91: JUDGMENT SUMMER I’m going to time travel slightly into the future for some supplementary material. MEDUSA: DARE TO BE TRUTHFUL was not released during the summer – it first aired on Showtime on December 1st. But seeing as how it was a quick-turnaround parody of one of the important films of the summer it seemed to me worthy for the time capsule as a document of attitudes in the culture at the time.

It’s not really a movie per se, but (thankfully) a 51-minute comedy special for Julie Brown (ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN, BLOODY BIRTHDAY), transplanting her ditsy, entitled but well-meaning Valley Girl persona into a parody of Madonna. I was familiar with Brown in the ‘80s from her comedic songs “‘Cause I’m a Blonde” and especially “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun,” where she juxtaposed All-American high school imagery with violence (which seemed edgy in those days), and then from her MTV show Just Say Julie. I had seen her in EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY, but didn’t realize that she wrote and produced it based on one of her songs. At this time she had a sketch comedy show on Fox called The Edge, which co-starred Jennifer Aniston, Wayne Knight and Tom Kenny. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 12th, 2021 | 8 Comments »

Madonna: Truth or Dare

May 10, 1991

There were several movies in the summer of ’91 that were major pop culture events, widely discussed, referenced, parodied. One of them, surprisingly, was a music documentary shot mostly in 16mm black and white.

Or really more of a tour documentary than a music documentary. One thing that’s unusual about MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE is that it’s entirely about its subject being a performer, a troupe leader, and a celebrity, and not at all about her music, or even the creation of her show.

The Blond Ambition World Tour was not a normal concert – it was more like an extravagant stage musical. On the four month, 57-show tour from Chiba, Japan to Nice, France, Madonna promoted her 1989 album Like a Prayer and 1990 DICK TRACY tie-in I’m Breathless, backed by seven dancers, two backup singers, an eight-piece band and a $2 million, 80 x 70 foot stage set that was hauled in 18 trucks and set up by over 100 crew members. Every song we see in the movie has its own backdrop, wardrobe (by the fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier – or, as we know him, the guy who did the costumes for THE FIFTH ELEMENT – who Madonna recruited in 1989 by sending him a nice letter) and complex choreography. When the movie begins they already seem like old pros at performing it. If there’s drama about something going wrong it’s not any of them messing up. It’s the sound system or the weather. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 11th, 2021 | 31 Comments »

FX2

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 10th, 2021 | 10 Comments »

Sometimes They Come Back

May 7, 1991

I don’t think I’ve ever included a TV movie in a summer movie retrospective, but this came up on a summer of ’91 list and I figured why not? After the opening weekend for A RAGE IN HARLEM and ONE GOOD COP, some people checked out a new Stephen King movie on the CBS Tuesday Movie Special. It aired against a Roseanne episode that introduced Shelly Winters as Nana Mary, the fourth episode of a short-lived sitcom called Stat, and a thirtysomething about Hope (Mel Harris) volunteering at a homeless shelter.

One could reasonably assume that a Stephen-King-based TV movie in the ‘90s would be a Mick Garris joint, but in fact it’s a different notable horror director: Tom McLoughlin of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES fame. He also did ONE DARK NIGHT and, come to think of it, co-created She-Wolf of London with Garris. This one comes from a King short story first published in Cavalier in 1974, and later included in Night Shift. It was adapted by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal, whose all-over-the-place filmography at this point included THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, THE JEWEL OF THE NILE, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, and DESPERATE HOURS. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 7th, 2021 | 8 Comments »

Dude – I’m on Adkins Undisputed!

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.

So it was a great honor to be a guest on this week’s show. The subject is THE LEGEND OF HERCULES, which I hadn’t actually seen until now, despite Adkins playing the villain and Renny Harlin being the director. Mike originally invited me on for a better movie a little later in the filmography, but we realized it was going to be months before he got to it and nobody was slotted for HERCULES so I was happy to do it. I hope I did okay!
HERE IT IS

P.S. I’ll post a review of the movie after the episode has been up for a bit

May 6th, 2021 | 14 Comments »

Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse

TOM CLANCY is simply WITHOUT REMORSE is a new loosely-based-on-a-Tom-Clancy-book action movie starring Michael B. Jordan (RED TAILS) as John Kelly, the character who I guess is later played by Willem Dafoe in CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and Liev Schreiber in THE SUM OF ALL FEARS. It was meant to be a major theatrical release, but after, you know – all this – Amazon bought it, so you gotta watch it on Prime. But you should do that if you can. This is a good one.

I am absolutely not a Tom Clancy guy, not even in movie form. One reason this is more my shit: less military hardware. It’s a more Seagal-ian premise: Navy SEAL’s wife is murdered, he goes out to avenge those responsible whether the agency will help him or not. In the book I guess that meant he killed a bunch of drug dealers, here it’s reimagined as a conspiracy related to a mission he went on, and I think it makes a statement against nationalism and even militarism. Kelly is very matter-of-fact about the violence upon his family being an extension of the violence he committed for the government. Of course, the film’s main objective is just to work as a military thriller, but it also seems cognizant that this stuff shouldn’t be thoughtlessly glorified, and I appreciate that. (Maybe it should be called NOT WITHOUT SOME REMORSE.) (read the rest of this shit…)

May 5th, 2021 | 29 Comments »

One Good Cop

May 3, 1991

I’d never seen this one before, and from the title I always thought it was a thriller about police corruption. I guess I had only seen the tough guy poster on the DVD and blu-ray, and not the theatrical one that looks like SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE or something.

I think there is some subtle commentary about policing early in the movie, which I will go into, but for the most part it’s not about that. Instead this movie – which was only the fifth release from Disney’s not-for-kids label Hollywood Pictures – really is a fusion of the type of vibe of those two posters. It’s a gritty police/crime thriller about a cop whose partner gets killed, but in addition to going after the people he considers responsible, he and his wife take care of and then try to adopt the dead partner’s three adorable daughters. The amount of screen time and sincerity it puts into the second part is very unusual, so although this is in many ways not my type of movie, I respect its bold mix of genres. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 4th, 2021 | 20 Comments »

A Rage in Harlem

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.

It becomes harder to do each year, as there become fewer stretches that I haven’t already mined (or, in the case of anything in this century, that I wasn’t writing about at the time). Fortunately this year we’ve hit the 30th anniversary of a crop of movies from what I think is kind of an interesting transitional period with some cultural shifts in progress. It’s a summer with some fresh territory for me and although I’ve already reviewed what I consider its two most important releases, they’re both monumental enough to justify writing up more than once. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 3rd, 2021 | 27 Comments »

Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite

“I have a problem with cold-blooded killers.”

As longtime reader Sternshein has been promising me for a couple years now, BLOODSPORT 4: THE DARK KUMITE is some crazy shit – maybe the strangest sequel in a name brand action franchise. It completes the trilogy of BLOODSPORT sequels starring Daniel Bernhardt (ATOMIC BLONDE, NOBODY), but it doesn’t follow the tradition of framing it as a story told to children. Instead it opens with Bernhardt fighting in a tiled pit that looks like it might be a drained fountain, with sicko spectators above chanting “KILL! KILL! KILL!”

He raises his leg like a sledge hammer above his downed opponent – but abruptly stops himself, and turns to address the crowd. They drop silent.

“No! I will not kill this man! This man fought with skill, and dignity, and you would have me destroy that integrity. And why? To satisfy your lust for death?”

He helps the man up, hugs him, pats him on the back.

“There was a time the Kumite meant honor. But I see now that Kumite here is dead. It has become nothing more than a bloodsport.”

(It should smash cut to a giant ‘4: THE DARK KUMITE’, but no such luck.) (read the rest of this shit…)

April 29th, 2021 | 5 Comments »

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