Posts Tagged ‘Gregg Henry’
Monday, September 19th, 2022
August 7, 1992 brought us the release of not only best picture winner UNFORGIVEN and feature length movie 3 NINJAS, but also one of the most joyfully deranged thrillers of the era, Brian De Palma’s RAISING CAIN. I reviewed RAISING CAIN a few years back… oh jesus actually it was 18 years ago what the fuck… and it’s an okay review as far as describing what the movie is like, but I could not in good conscience do a series on the weirdness of Summer ’92 and not revisit it. This is one of the top achievers in the field.
Five years earlier, De Palma had had a huge mainstream success with THE UNTOUCHABLES, a well-reviewed hit movie that nabbed four Oscar nominations and won best supporting actor for Sean Connery. He’d already cashed that in to make the acclaimed war drama CASUALTIES OF WAR (1989), and then his attempt at a big zeitgeisty literary adaptation, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (1990), had been one of Hollywood’s most notorious fiascos. So it might’ve seemed at a glance like a shrewd move to return to the genre he’d originally been known for – the amped up Hitchcockian thriller. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barton Heyman, Brian De Palma, Frances Sternhagen, Gregg Henry, John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich, Pino Donaggio, split personality, Steven Bauer, Teri Austin, Tom Bowers
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 45 Comments »
Tuesday, August 5th, 2014
Peter “Star Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt, ZERO DARK THIRTY) is a wannabe legendary space outlaw, a good fighter with a cool breather mask and ship who takes gigs from unsavory characters retrieving rare objects and stuff. A Transporter, if you will. When he finds something called “the orb” for a scary space guy with the scary space name of Rhonan the Accuser, he learns that it endangers everybody in the galaxy, and he decides he’s against that. So he teams up with an alien lady trying to snatch it from him (Zoe Saldana, but green this time instead of AVATAR blue), two bounty hunters trying to capture him (Bradley Cooper [MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN] and Vin Diesel, both voicing cartoons), and a psycho they met in prison (Dave Bautista, RIDDICK) to try to get it somewhere safe, wherever the fuck that would be. I don’t think they discuss throwing it into a volcano like a lord of the rings would do. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Djimon Hounsou, Glenn Close, Gregg Henry, James Gunn, John C. Reilly, Lloyd Kaufman, Marvel Comics, Michael Rooker, Vin Diesel, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 88 Comments »
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
So nice they named it twice for some reason? I actually was always curious to see what this BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER movie was all about, so those of you who voted it up in the SUGGESTIONS gave me that nudge I’ve been needing for years.
Antonio Banderas plays Jeremiah Ecks, an ex-FBI agent who went deep undercover and faked his death but also thought his wife was dead but she wasn’t but now he’s retired but they come to him and say his wife is actually alive and he should help them go after this kidnapper Sever (Lucy Liu) because she knows where his wife is. She took the son of innocent Talisa Soto (MORTAL KOMBAT) and rich asshole Gregg Henry (PAYBACK) and she keeps him in a big metal cage in a Batcave type underground lair but she seems to like him because she brings him cafeteria lunch trays loaded with good food like home made macaroni and cheese, Jello and Ding-Dongs, and he says “Thank you” politely. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan B. McElroy, Antonio Banderas, Gregg Henry, Lucy Liu, Ray Park, Talisa Soto, video games
Posted in Action, Reviews, Videogame | 76 Comments »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
THE REUNION is another entertaining and kinda unexpected release from the prestigious WWE Studios. Even more than INSIDE OUT it doesn’t really follow THE MARINE’S approach of just sticking one of their wrestlers into the lead of a formula action movie. This one’s an ensemble crime comedy with only one wrestler, WWE Heavyweight Champion of the World or whatever John Cena, as Sam, one of three estranged brothers forced to work together in a family business to earn a big-ass inheritance. The other two brothers are Leo (Ethan Embry), a fast-talking fuckup bail bondsman, and Douglas (Boyd Holbrook), a James Dean type leather-jacket wearing, brooding, fresh-out-of-lockup half brother they didn’t even know about ’cause he grew up in youth homes. Embry wears an I’m-quirky-and-sort-of-retro hat like Michael Rapaport in INSIDE OUT or like a less boneheaded Matt Dillon in THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Smart, Boyd Holbrook, DTV, Ethan Embry, Gregg Henry, John Cena, WWE Films
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
SUPER is the landmark thirty-seventh movie about “what if somebody really tried to be a super hero?” But this one was made by James Gunn, the Troma guy turned SCOOBY DOO screenwriter who got some cred when he wrote the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake and then directed SLITHER. Looks like he’s had trouble getting anything off the ground since then (I guess the suits didn’t go for his take on Pepe Le Pew) so he made this one independently like he used to do, but maybe with some more skills and connections he’s made in the big leagues. For example the bit part of the lady at the pet store is played by Linda Cardellini from E.R., because she was Velma in SCOOBY DOO. (That was weird, I thought that character would come back or something, but no. She’s just a pet store lady.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ellen Page, Gregg Henry, James Gunn, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Michael Rooker, Rainn Wilson, vigilantes
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 86 Comments »
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Did you know that in 1987 there was a pilot for a TV spinoff of the PSYCHO series, starring Bud Cort? It was a failure, it never turned into a series and it’s never been available on a legitimate video in the US, but you can catch it on cable occasionally, get it from the fine bootleggers at revengeismydestiny.com or download it from this incredible websight I just stumbled across while researching this review.
Cort plays Alex West, a sanitarium buddy of Norman Bates. Alex got locked up at the age of 6 for killing his stepfather (kids do the darndest things), and had a great father-son relationship with Norman. Now not only is Alex free, but Norman has just died and willed the motel and house to Alex so he can make something of his life. Or peep on women and then kill them, I guess. Hopefully the first one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bud Cort, Gregg Henry, Lori Petty, Moses Gunn, TV movies
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Monday, October 12th, 2009
Here’s a pretty obscure one – a good kind of DELIVERANCE / TEXAS CHAIN SAW type inbreds-in-the-woods movie from director Jeff Lieberman (SQUIRM, SATAN’S LITTLE HELPER). Gregg Henry (Val Resnick from PAYBACK) plays a guy who’s inherited some undeveloped land in some mountains somewhere. So against the warnings of a park ranger (George Kennedy) he takes some friends up there to camp and check the place out.
I love this type of movie, and this has a good twist on the usual subtext. There’s the traditional class difference – Henry and friends drive into town in a top-of-the-line RV, listening to Blondie and snapping pictures of people like they’re tourist attractions. Henry wears a trucker cap and sleeveless shirt, so maybe he’s not a yuppie, or maybe he’s a yuppie and a poser. Either way you still get a feeling from that slick RV (I think Kennedy calls it “your fancy wagon” later) that he’s too arrogant about being able to overcome Mother Nature with his money and technology. He and his girlfriend fancy themselves climbers, but they’re kind of amateurs when it comes to camping. Which is allowed. But there’s that whole city-mouse/country-mouse tension, you know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Gregg Henry, inbreds, Jeff Lieberman
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 25 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 »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
Well in late December as I was preparing to face down the ol’ Y2K problem I got to thinking about the old Mad Max and Road Warrior movies I used to like so much, and that got me thinking about Mel Gibson, the young Australian actor who played Mad Max.
Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Duke, Brian Helgeland, Gregg Henry, James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Lucy Liu, Maria Bello, Mel Gibson, Parker, Paul Abascal, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
