Posts Tagged ‘Dennis Quaid’
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
At some point in the last decade or so the movie-discussers really latched onto the term “body horror.” They kinda act like if you can identify a movie as body horror that means it’s legit. But also when they say it they almost always mean one thing: it has some David Cronenberg-inspired New Flesh type stuff at some point. I kinda wonder how many of the people comparing any vaguely misshapen flesh to Cronenberg bothered to see his last movie, but I suppose that’s irrelevant.
THE SUBSTANCE definitely fits the category, and there are reasons to compare it to Cronenberg, but tonally, I gotta say, this is way more Frank Henenlotter and Brian Yuzna. Picture a movie that’s a descendent of SOCIETY and the BASKET CASE trilogy and makes you wonder what Screaming Mad George is up to these days, but that also boasts an acclaimed lead performance by Demi Moore, won Best Screenplay at Cannes and is distributed by MUBI. That’s what THE SUBSTANCE is.
For me it was a must-see because it’s movie #2 from Coralie Fargeat, writer/director of REVENGE (2017). It sucks that it took her 7 years to do another feature (with only the serial killer convention episode of The Sandman in between), but thankfully she struts into her delayed sophomore outing like she has diplomatic immunity. She brings along her stylish design, blood-smeared rich people homes and mythic battles between beautiful women with star-shaped earrings and awful men, but this time in a sci-fi vein and much broader, sillier and more indulgent. I’m not sure if I would’ve noticed it was 141 minutes if I didn’t know it going in, but I love Fargeat’s dedication to overdoing absolutely everything, beginning with its narratively redundant (but all the more beautiful for it) time lapse sequence about the lifespan of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: body horror, Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, Margaret Qualley
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 30 Comments »
Friday, June 28th, 2024
June 24, 1994
It always seems to surprise people when I admit stuff like this, but until now I had never seen WYATT EARP. And when I was getting ready to watch it and do this review I worried I was gonna get myself into trouble because it came out six months after TOMBSTONE, and lived and died in its comparisons to TOMBSTONE, so I know everyone in the comments is gonna want to talk about that. And the thing is I still haven’t seen TOMBSTONE either. Yeah, I know. I’ll get around to it.
Initially I thought I should do that first, but then I realized it was a unique opportunity to be the one guy watching WYATT EARP on its 30th anniversary with zero instinct to compare and contrast to TOMBSTONE. I have been preparing three decades to be this specific guy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Baldwin, Annabeth Gish, Betty Buckley, Bill Pullman, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Gordon, David Andrews, Dennis Quaid, Doc Holliday, Gene Hackman, Ian Bohen, James Newton Howard, Jeff Fahey, Jim Caviezel, Joanna Going, Jobeth Williams, John Doe, Kevin Costner, Lawrence Kasdan, Lewis Smith, Linden Ashby, Mackenzie Astin, Mare Winningham, Mark Harmon, Martin Kove, Michael Madsen, Tea Leoni, Tom Sizemore, Wyatt Earp
Posted in Reviews, Western | 26 Comments »
Thursday, July 20th, 2023
July 22, 1983
JAWS 3-D (viewed by me in its shameful flat version) is another summer of ’83 movie that I’ve previously reviewed. But that was 13 years ago, and if I’m doing a summer movie series I can’t really skip over a sequel to the movie that kinda invented the summer blockbuster. I also thought it would be a good marker on the timeline, much like how RETURN OF THE JEDI and STAYING ALIVE indicate how much culture had changed in the six years since STAR WARS and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. In eight years we went from a popular beach read elevated by a knockout directorial vision to a gimmicky studio product sequel with twice the budget but a fraction of the style or substance.
It’s tempting to see sequels as emblematic of the ‘80s, but the truth is I counted almost as many released in 1975 as in 1983*. I suppose a difference is that 8 of the 10 in ’75 were part 2s, whereas 1983 gave us such part 3s as this, RETURN OF THE JEDI, SUPERMAN III, AMITYVILLE 3-D, and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3. THE OMEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH, HALLOWEEN and ROCKY series’ had also hit part three in 1981 or 1982. So maybe it really was a different movie landscape. The era of part threes, heading into part fours. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Bess Armstrong, Carl Gottlieb, Dennis Quaid, Guerdon Trueblood, Harry Grant, Joe Alves, John Putch, Lea Thompson, Louis Gossett Jr., Michael Kane, part 3-Ds, Richard Matheson, SeaWorld, Simon MacCorkindale
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, May 10th, 2023
The 2019 film THE INTRUDER – not to be confused with the 1989 horror movie I like called INTRUDER (let alone the 1914, 1933, 1939, 1944, 1953, 1956, 1962, 1975, 1986, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2016, 2017 or 2020 films called THE INTRUDER) is a pretty good example of the classic American tradition of the domestic stalker thriller, specifically the subset kicked off by OBSESSED in 2009, that pit an upper class African American couple against an enjoyably over-the-top white villain.
In this case the couple are Scott (Michael Ealy, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA) and Annie (Meagan Good, HOUSE PARTY 4: DOWN TO THE LAST MINUTE) Howard, who after a big deal goes through decide it’s finally time to buy a house in Napa Valley like they’ve always talked about. The one they find is so old and fancy it has a name (Foxglove). They buy it from Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid, JAWS 3-D), who inherited and lived there his whole life and is very protective of it. In fact, it turns into kind of a CABLE GUY situation where he uncomfortably works his way into their life – they keep finding him, like, mowing their lawn and shit well after he was supposed to have moved to Florida. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Loughery, Dennis Quaid, Deon Taylor, Joseph Sikora, Meagan Good, Michael Ealy
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2020
I remember the sci-fi/horror movie PANDORUM coming out – I thought it was more recent than 2009, but that’s how it goes – and I don’t think I heard anything good about it. It was not something that was on my list to see until I found out Cung Le was in it, and then it still took me years to get to it. But now I can report that, though certainly not perfect, this is a very interesting space movie with lots of cool ideas. It’s in English with a decent budget and stars Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid, but director Christian Alvart is the German guy who did the serial killer movie ANTIBODIES. So it’s gonna be a little more off-kilter than most movies produced by Paul W.S.Anderson.
It has some overlap with what I call the Space Loneliness movies, because it’s about some people waking up from hypersleep during a 123 year interstellar trip. It’s different, though, because they’re not just the small crew of one ship like DARK STAR, ALIEN, BLOOD MACHINES, etc. The Elysium is built to carry much of the earth’s population to a new home on the planet Tanis, so it’s enormous, and when they run into other people they’ve never met them before. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Antje Traue, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Christian Alvart, Cung Le, Dennis Quaid, Eddie Rouse, Paul W.S. Anderson, Travis Milloy
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Saturday, March 10th, 2012
Enough about premaquels. How about a good old fashioned straight up remake? Kinda refreshing!
I guess I never saw the original FOOTLOOSE before, ’cause I always thought it was about a town where you’re not allowed to dance because they’re real religious. In this remake by Craig Brewer (yes, HUSTLE AND FLOW, BLACK SNAKE MOAN Craig Brewer) the ban happens in response to a great tragedy, when five promising high school teenagers are killed in a head-on collision after a dance. In other words, this movie is about the Patriot Act. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Craig Brewer, dancing, Dennis Quaid, good remakes, Kim Dickens, remakes
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010
Okay, good. If you’re gonna be an asshole and make a sequel to JAWS, I figure this is more how you should do it. You’re never gonna match the achievement of the first one, so you should zig where that one zags.
First you acknowledge that the directors you hired won’t have the skills to fill Spielberg’s filmatic shoes. You put director Joe Alves into the shoes and fill the extra toe-space with credit-flying, severed-limb-and-head-floating, dolphin-and-orca-jumping, water-splashing-in-the-camera, slow-motion-water-ski-jumping, harpoon-firing-just-like-FRIDAY-THE-13TH-3D-but-what’re-you-gonna-do-you’re-fighting-a-shark, fake-dragons-and-snakes-popping-out, shark-exploding-and-spraying-goo-all-over-the-audience 3-D. I mean, not on video, but that’s what it was originally, and I would’ve enjoyed that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Bruce, Dennis Quaid, killer animals, sharks
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 51 Comments »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
I thought DAYBREAKERS was much better than the dumb B-movie I expected, but if I needed one of those in my diet it’s a good thing LEGION also came out on DVD this week. It’s a cheesy but sort of interesting movie about a group of stock characters trapped at one of those old timey diners that if you’re a character in a movie you will drive out into the middle of nowhere and happen to be at when some shit goes down. In this case it happens to be ground zero in God’s plan to wipe out humanity because, according to the narrator, “He got tired of all the bullshit.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Paul Bettany, Tyrese
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 56 Comments »
Friday, November 22nd, 2002
FAR FROM HEAVEN is the lovingly crafted new film from Todd Haynes (VELVET GOLDMINE), about an upper class socialite house wife (the great Julianne Moore from JURASSIC PARK PART 2 and ASSASSINS) dealing with the shameful prejudices and social pressures of the time. When she discovers that her husband (one of the Quaids, I think Randy) kissing a man, she tries to be loving and understanding about it. Her friends joke about her liberalism and call her “Red” but she naively deals with it as a medical problem, and brings him to a doctor to be “cured”. Soon she strikes up a friendship with her black gardener (the president from that stupid tv show 24) and again tests the limits of her liberalism when she finds that both whites and blacks scorn their innocent relationship.
Part of what makes it work is that the styles of acting, the dissolve-heavy editing, and the music by Elmer Bernstein are all taken directly from the films of that time period. It’s as if Haynes had travelled back in time and created a movie that he wishes they could’ve made back then, dealing with issues no one wanted to face, ones that are still embarassingly relevant today. It’s all a perfect re-creation of the melodramas of Douglas Sirk. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dennis Haysbert, Dennis Quaid, Julianne Moore, Todd Haynes
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »
