Posts Tagged ‘Elizabeth Banks’
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
COCAINE BEAR is a kind of funny new horror comedy written by Jimmy Warden (THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN) and directed by Elizabeth Banks (Rita Repulsa in the POWER RANGERS movie). I kind of enjoyed it and I’m certainly on board for this type of movie – pretty gory, not serious about anything, spending $35 million of Universal Pictures’ money to get very good bear animation FX in what is otherwise kind of on the level of a PIRANHA or ALLIGATOR sequel.
It’s just a silly goof with a simple nature-gone-amuck premise: a drug smuggling plane dumps its payload in the Chattahoochee National Forest, a black bear finds and eats some of the cocaine, now she’s angrily rampaging around eating tourists and the people searching for the other bags. And she’ll do anything to get more of that stuff. Fiending for it like a bear to honey. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, bear attack, Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery, Digital Native Dance, Elizabeth Banks, Hanna Hoekstra, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jimmy Warden, Keri Russell, Kristofer Hivju, Margo Martindale, Mark Mothersbaugh, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 17 Comments »
Thursday, January 27th, 2022
Raimi started work on SPIDER-MAN 2 immediately after the first one, and had it ready to go two summers later. Since it really is about following up on the events of the first film, it starts by running the credits over some of them, as depicted in paintings by Alex Ross. (He’s celebrated for his realistic portraits of comic book super heroes, which are more impressive when they come from his imagination and not photography we’ve already seen, but still, it was cool that they got him). The end of the sequence reminds us that in SPIDER-MAN Peter chose not to be with Mary Jane, who he loves, so that he could be Spider-Man.
Which does not seem to be working out great so far. The painting of Mary Jane dissolves into a closeup of her face on a perfume billboard that Peter has to walk under every day, reminding him of his pain. Though he tries to hide it, it’s clear his world crumbles when she is not near. He’s in college now, and living on his own in a small apartment. Much like part 1’s opening about all the ways Peter can be humiliated on the way to school, this one piles it on real thick about what a shit sandwich life still hands to him every day. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Ross, Alfred Gough, Alfred Molina, Alvin Sargent, Bill Nunn, Bill Pope, Brent Briscoe, Bruce Campbell, Christopher Young, Dan Bradley, Daniel Gillies, Danny Elfman, David Koepp, Dion Lam, Donna Murphy, Dylan Baker, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Deschanel, J.K. Simmons, James Franco, Joel McHale, John Dykstra, Kirsten Dunst, Michael Chabon, Miles Millar, Rosemary Harris, Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, Tobey Maguire
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Wednesday, January 26th, 2022
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
—Dead Auteur: How a 20-year-old ex-college student carved out his horror niche in Hollywood by Sue Uram, Cinefantastique, August 1992
Immediately following Raimi’s very serious director period, his career changed drastically again. After so many stabs at the mainstream, he finally made the leap to genuine blockbuster filmmaking, bringing one of the most famous characters in the history of American pop culture to the big screen for the first time. This is not the use-Intro-Vision-to-stretch-the-budget-enough-to-try-to-compete-in-summer of DARKMAN and ARMY OF DARKNESS, or the work-with-huge-stars-but-scare-off-boring-people-by-doing-something-different-with-them of THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. I’m talking a super hero event movie with ten times the budget of DARKMAN, working with Sony Digital Imageworks to pioneer effects techniques that nobody was even sure would be possible, and finally sharing his talents with pretty much the widest audience possible for a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alvin Sargent, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, Bill Nunn, Bob Murawski, Bruce Campbell, Ching Siu-Tung, Cliff Robertson, Clint Cadinha, David Koepp, Elizabeth Banks, J.K. Simmons, James Franco, Joe Manganiello, Kirsten Dunst, Larry Joshua, Laura Albert, Macy Gray, Marvel Comics, Michael Papajohn, Rosemary Harris, Sam Raimi, Scott Rosenberg, Ted Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 51 Comments »
Tuesday, March 10th, 2020
CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2019) continues the concept of the original Charlie’s Angels tv series and previous movies: some guy named Charlie (now the voice of Robert Clotworthy, who was in both WHO’S THAT GIRL and HE’S MY GIRL in 1987) who you only hear over a speaker runs The Townsend Agency, which originally was a private detective agency but now seems to be an international spy organization? Its agents are all beautiful, glamorous women who are martial artists, masters of disguise, etc.
Since their helper “Bosley” has been played by many different actors throughout the franchise, this one explains that “Bosley” is a rank, like General, and we meet Bosleys played by Patrick Stewart (GUNMEN), Djimon Hounsou (ELEPHANT WHITE) and Elizabeth Banks (SLITHER), the latter of whom also directed and wrote the screenplay (story by Evan Spiliotopoulos [BATTLE FOR TERRA] and David Auburn [Tony and Pulitzer winner for the 2000 play Proof]. They bring together wild American Angel Sabina (Kristen Stewart, PANIC ROOM) and former MI-6 Angel Jane (Ella Balinska) to protect engineer Elena (Naomi Scott, Jasmine from live action ALADDIN, Pink Ranger from POWER RANGERS movie). Having created a vaguely defined clean energy device called Calisto for her employer, Elena has gone whistleblower after learning that it can be used to give people strokes, and now some tattooed hipster assassin asshole named Hodak (Jonathan Tucker, who played Boon, the last guy Raylan killed on Justified) is trying to kill her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Pang, David Auburn, Djimon Hounsou, Elizabeth Banks, Ella Balinska, Evan Spiliotopoulos, Jonathan Tucker, Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, Nat Faxon, Patrick Stewart
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Wednesday, March 29th, 2017
I know what you’re thinking, ’cause it’s the same thing I’m thinking: if it’s just called POWER RANGERS now instead of MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS does that mean there’s no morphin anymore? Or that there is morphin but they didn’t want to mention it in the title because it’s not particularly mighty as far morphin goes? And is morphin actually just morphin’ without the apostrophe or is it some mythological Power Ranging concept that I’m unaware of and it’s not explained in the movie and that’s why it’s not in the title? Also, did they foresee that I would try to text “It’s morphin time!” to my friend and it would autocorrect to “It’s morphine time!”? I mean, this is a movie that raises many questions.
There is in fact morphin (not morphine) in the new 2017 movie POWER RANGERS, but they have to earn it. A do-over, not a sequel to the ludicrous 1990s after school TV show, director Dean Israelite (PROJECT ALMANAC) and writer John Gatins (FLIGHT) (story by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless [THE LAST WITCH HUNTER, GODS OF EGYPT] and Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney [SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS]) try to make sense out of a mythology that started as just some bullshit that importer Haim Saban made up to string together library footage from the Japanese robots vs. giant monsters show Super Sentai Rangers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Becky G, Bill Hader, Bryan Cranston, Dacre Montgomery, Dean Israelite, Elizabeth Banks, giant robots, Haim Saban, John Gatins, Kieran Mulroney, Ludi Lin, Matt Sazama Burk Sharpless, Michele Mulroney, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 37 Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015
MAGIC MIKE XXL is a movie about a group of musclebound dudes going on a road trip together to enter a big competition. Along the way they pick up girls, get drunk, get high, meet new friends, reunite with old ones, repair old wounds, learn lessons, fall in love, get laid, confess vulnerabilities, get in a wreck, go to a hospital, all the things you would expect. And yet it feels one-of-a-kind in its attitude.
Like the first MAGIC MIKE this stars and was produced by Channing Tatum, inspired by his past as a “male entertainer,” or stripper, and written by his friend Reid Carolin. People don’t seem to remember this, but Tatum was kind of the co-lead of that first movie, trying to get out of the game while showing the ropes to The Kid (Alex Pettyfur), who ends up becoming a drug addict, turning the fun times into a cautionary bummer. I liked the movie but the sequel is significantly better for ditching The Kid and focusing on Mike taking a vacation from his designer furniture company to get in a food truck with the boys and take One Last Ride to Myrtle Beach.
The team is no longer led by Matthew McConaughey as Dallas. That sounded like a problem when the news first got out, but it’s actually an asset. With his character no longer there to absorb all your attention the movie gives way more shine to the other dancers, especially Joe Manganiello (SABOTAGE) as the towering, abrasive but large-hearted doofus Big Dick Richie, and Matt Bomer as the eyebrow plucking pretty boy Ken, who reveals a funny New Agey side. Like all of their eccentricities they tease him about it but also accept it. True friendship. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Rodriguez, Amber Heard, Andie MacDowell, Channing Tatum, Donald Glover, Elizabeth Banks, Gabriel Iglesias, Greg Jacobs, Jada Pinkett Smith, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, Matt Bomer, road trip, Stephen "Twitch" Boss, Steven Soderbergh, strippers
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Monday, November 11th, 2013
Okay, I admit it. I kinda liked THE HUNGER GAMES. I was real turned off by all the pre-release hoopla, the reporting of every miniscule detail of casting and filming, for a movie from an only okay director (sorry, Pleasantvillamaniacs) based on a book written for kids and too recent for any of the reporters to have grown up on it and have a personal connection to it. It seemed pretty transparent to me that publicists had convinced everybody that this was gonna be the next TWILIGHT, and they were running scared trying to learn the lingo and the character names to show they knew all about this. Hey man I’ll suck your dick for a hit.
Okay that last sentence was harsh but I wrote it down in my notebook and it’s too late to back out now, it’s part of the historical record. I still feel that way but also I gotta admit I was wrong when I predicted nobody would like the movie that much and it would be quickly forgotten. Then they hired a director I kinda like (I AM LEGEND’s Francis Lawrence) for parts 2-3 so I figured it was time to shut up and listen to all the cool uncles of the internet and try this out. Also I was kind of into Jennifer Lawrence after SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. Sorry. But I watched it with an open-minded and I mostly enjoyed it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Elizabeth Banks, Gary Ross, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, Woody Harrelson
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 66 Comments »
Friday, March 31st, 2006
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our main man Vern who has seen SLITHER and wants to tell you about it. Give him your ear… uh… I mean, give him your eye. Enjoy!
Boyos–
I guess horror movies are like anything else, they go in cycles. We’ve had this whole drought where it seemed like there was nothing but sissy PG-13 studio horror, and lots of horror fans whining. Now the harsher R-rated horror movies are starting to trickle back in, and a whole other set of people get their chance to whine. (It turns out that our society is just now going down the shitter because there’s a movie where mutant cannibals are mean to a baby. Even though it’s a remake of a 30 year old movie about mutant cannibals being mean to a baby.) Anyway, now with SLITHER we get back another old buddy we haven’t seen in so long we almost forgot about him: the funny horror movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Darren Shahlavi, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, James Gunn, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Sunday, August 21st, 2005
I am no expert on comedy or laughing, and you know that. But not too long ago I reviewed a movie called “THE WEDDING CRASHERS” which I said was lazy formulaic forgettable throwaway crap that will be forgotten forever about 20 minutes after the last time they advertise the dvd on tv. The movie is already considered a smash hit but I still stand by my evaluation. If you want to see Owen Wilson lie to a girl to get laid and then really fall in love and go riding bikes onbeaches and saying cutesey shit and then having his secret discovered and being hated but then proving himself by going and making a long humiliating speech about how much he really loves her and that other horse shit, please, by all means, go watch it. You’ve never seen anything like it, unless you have a TV or grew up in a country where there are TVs.
I wanted to say a few words about STEVE CARRELL IS… THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN though because in my opinion this is a movie that could be a good influence on WEDDING CRASHERS and teach it how to grow up and become a man and contribute to society. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Catherine Keener, Elizabeth Banks, Judd Apatow, Kat Dennings, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Seth Rogen, Steve Carrell
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 1 Comment »
