Posts Tagged ‘Gene Hackman’
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 »
Wednesday, January 19th, 2022
THE QUICK AND THE DEAD has a very traditional western story, other than featuring a woman – Sharon Stone (ABOVE THE LAW) as Ellen – in the role of vengeance-seeking gunslinger. You’ve got your western town desperate to get out from under the yoke of a cruel ruler (Gene Hackman [THE SPLIT, PRIME CUT] as John Herod), and your mysterious drifter in town trying to get up the guts to shoot him for killing her father in front of her. All the shootists with the fastest guns and biggest mouths are coming in for a quick draw tournament, and she enters in hopes of getting a shot at her enemy.
But I think it’s truly distinct among ‘90s westerns, with two major things that make it stand out. One is the incredible cast. It includes great western icons: Woody Strode, Roberts Blossom, Pat Hingle, and of course Hackman in a performance arguably on par with UNFORGIVEN. It has colorful roles for genre favorites: Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Mark Boone Jr., Tobin Bell, Sven-Ole Thorsen. It has Gary Sinise immediately after his star-making, Oscar-nominated performance in FORREST GUMP. And it has two right-before-they-exploded co-stars: pre-L.A. CONFIDENTIAL Russell Crowe as former outlaw turned pacifist preacher Cort, and known-for-WHAT’S-EATING-GILBERT-GRAPE Leonardo DiCaprio as The Kid, the cocky, baby-faced son of Herod entering the contest just to get the attention of his asshole dad. We actually see The Kid mobbed by young women at one of the shooting matches, something that would become more familiar to DiCaprio a year later when ROMEO + JULIET came out. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Silvestri, Dante Spinotti, Fay Masterson, Gary Sinise, Gene Hackman, John Sayles, Keith David, Kevin Conway, Lance Henriksen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Boone Jr., Olivia Burnette, Pat Hingle, Pietro Scalia, Roberts Blossom, Russell Crowe, Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, Sharon Stone, Simon Moore, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Tobin Bell, Woody Strode
Posted in Reviews, Western | 28 Comments »
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019
THE PACKAGE is… kind of an action movie from director Andrew Davis. After the better-than-average Chuck Norris vehicle CODE OF SILENCE (1985) and Steven Seagal’s debut ABOVE THE LAW (1988) the director put some similar elements into a thriller with Gene Hackman in the lead. Hackman had just done MISSISSIPPI BURNING (which he got Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for) but did not have any black belts in anything, so I’m not sure why he thought he should be in movies?
He plays U.S. Army Master Sergeant Johnny Gallagher, who I assume is respected for his skills, but he seems mostly just beloved for being a great guy. He’s introduced arriving for security detail at the site of U.S.-Soviet Union disarmament talks in West Berlin and walking around smiling and saying hi to everybody. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Davis, Dennis Franz, Gene Hackman, Harry Lennix, Joanna Cassidy, Kevin Crowley, Pam Grier, Summer of '89, Terry J. Leonard, Tommy Lee Jones
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 19 Comments »
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014
SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (not to be confused with Superman: The Imitation Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread) is an important movie. It was the first big comic book super hero picture, and an early entry in the world of post-STAR WARS blockbusters that shaped today’s generation of filmatists. By casting Marlon Brando as Joe L. Superman (plus Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor and Glenn Ford as Pa Kent), director Richard (LETHAL WEAPON) Donner set the precedent, still in place today, that big respected actors in supporting roles can add credibility to a super hero picture. And by casting only-one-movie-under-his-belt Christopher Reeve as Kal L. “Clark Kent” Superman he showed that sometimes a fresh face is better than a familiar veteran to play an iconic character. That later worked for Wolverine (whose first movie was executive produced by Donner), Thor and two subsequent Supermen. (Other actors who were supposedly on the producers’ wish list: Al Pacino, James Caan, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman and [why not?] Muhammad Ali. Any one of those would’ve automatically been a completely different movie.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Reeve, David Newman, DC Comics, Gene Hackman, Glenn Ford, John Williams, Leslie Newman, Margot Kidder, Mario Puzo, Marlon Brando, Ned Beatty, Richard Donner, Robert Benton, Tom Mankiewicz, Valerie Perrine
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 76 Comments »
Friday, September 21st, 2012
What more high pressure situation could there be than two men in a submarine arguing over whether or not to launch a nuclear missile? I guess the only thing that would make it more tense would be if they also had to get home in time for a kid’s birthday party. Luckily the birthday party happened at the beginning of the movie, right before they were deployed to take part in “the worst standoff since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, James Gandolfini, Quentin Tarantino, Rick Schroeder, Steve Zahn, submarine, Tony Scott, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 51 Comments »
Monday, April 20th, 2009
There are two Richard Stark based movies left that have never been released for the home video in the U.S. One is MISE A SAC, a French one based on The Score, where Parker and a crew try to rob an entire mining town. The other is THE SPLIT, based on The Seventh, where Jim Brown as the Parker character robs a football stadium and then has some trouble afterwords. My man David M. in France has seen both – he saw a restored print of MISE A SAC and told me it was great. As for THE SPLIT he did me one better than telling me about it, he sent me a recording from when it played letterboxed on the French Turner Classic Movies channel. (I don’t know who the French Ted Turner is, but it sounds like he plays better shit than the American one.)
If you’re reading this in the future maybe every movie ever made is available for instant download, but in my day you had to be patient. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to see this thing. The closest I came before now was an old movie magazine I bought at an antique mall because it had Barbarella on the cover (wait a minute, is Roger Vadim the French Ted Turner?) So I bought it for the Barbarella, because a man has needs, but it turned out there was also an “article” – really just a plot summary – about THE SPLIT. I’d been meaning to read it and write a book-to-movie-summary comparison until they get off their ass and release it. But now thanks to French Ted Turner I don’t have to stoop to that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, heists, Jim Brown, Parker, Richard Stark, Warren Oates
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Monday, August 13th, 2007
I don’t remember this one, but it was in a book about action movies I’m reading (Action Speaks Louder by Erich Lichtenfeld) and sounded pretty good. It’s one of those “Vietnam vets go back to rescue POWs” movies, but according to the book it’s the first one. And the weirdest part is that it’s from Ted Kotcheff, director of FIRST BLOOD, and made two years before George P. Cosmatos’s RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. Maybe that’s why Kotcheff didn’t come back for part 2, he’d already done that movie.
Of course, the feel is pretty different from RAMBO. And there are three major differences in the type of story we’re dealing with here. Number one, it’s a team movie, it’s not focused on one dude. Number two, these are normal vets who have gone back to civilian life, they are not maniacs who have gone on a rampage and must get a pardon to go on the mission due to their skills with explosive tipped arrows. Number three, they are privately funded, they are not working for the government. In fact, the government is trying to stop them from doing it (you know how those fuckin bureaucrats are, with their red tape and what not. It makes you so mad BRING OUR BOYS HOME! etc.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Fred Ward, Gene Hackman, John Milius, Patrick Swayze, Randall "Tex" Cobb, Reb Brown, Ted Kotcheff, Tim Thomerson, valor
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Friday, January 14th, 2005
Okay, so everybody in their right mind loves the old Clint Eastwood pictures, and most people and critics love the Serious Clint Eastwood Pictures like Unforgiven, Mystic River and now Million Dollar Baby. But the period between Unforgiven and Mystic River is kind of an ignored period. The in between period is not as Serious or Important as those movies and they usually get mixed reviews. Well I was busy at the time so I missed most of these but now I decided to catch up starting with 1997’s Absolute Power.
Now this is a suspense thriller and the way it unfolds, it almost reminds me of a less flashy Brian DePalma. It even has the old DePalma voyeurism. But what I’m talking about is it takes its time setting up all the pieces and giving you the information you need a chunk at a time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clint Eastwood, Ed Harris, Gene Hackman, Laura Linney, William Goldman
Posted in Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 8th, 2004
Scroll up a little bit and you can read about POINT BLANK, Lee Marvin’s great Richard Stark adaptation. Directed by John Boorman, an obvious influence on THE LIMEY, one of the classics. Well here’s another one in the same tough guy vein. But it’s less arty, less thoughtful, and has a weird ass meat theme to it.
The movie starts with a slaughterhouse montage showing cows going from cows to sausages. Like the e-coli version of the opening credits to WILLY WONKA. Along the way a dead dude gets thrown in there, chopped up, ground and turned into links, then a big sweaty dude says, “Special order,” packs ’em up and mails ’em to the guy’s boss. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin, Michael Ritchie, Sissy Spacek
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews | 5 Comments »
