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…)
Remember that scene in SCHOOL OF ROCK where the character Tomika (Maryam Hassan) timidly tells her enthusiastic substitute teacher Dewey Finn, played by Jack Black, that she doesn’t want to be a roadie, as she’s been assigned? He tries to tell her it’s an important job, but he’ll let her do something else, like security, or…
She’s really trying to tell him she wants to be a singer, but she hesitates, so he doesn’t take her seriously. And then—
That’s Taron Egerton in ROCKETMAN. Oh my goodness, nice pipes, Egerton! I thought I already liked him, because he was good in KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE and LEGEND, and I even kind of enjoyed that fake-Guy-Ritchie version of ROBIN HOOD he starred in. But I thought he was just… a dude, you know? I didn’t see this coming from him. I didn’t know he had this kind of power, to become Elton John. And make me care about Elton John. (read the rest of this shit…)
What you gotta do with some of these movies, you gotta wait a year, so it’s after it already came out and the director publicly disowned it and it flopped and everyone said it was a piece of shit and dissected how the studio reshoots ruined or failed to save it. That’s what I did and then FANTASTIC FOUR didn’t seem as bad. I’d go so far as to say I kind of enjoyed watching it.
The opening threatens to be GREEN LANTERN, with its kid versions of two of the four. But it’s okay, it just establishes that Reed Richards (Miles Teller, FOOTLOOSE) is a genius inventor prodigy and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell, SNOWPIERCER) is his working class buddy who helps. When their high school science project actually warps matter to another dimension, Reed gets a scholarship to The Baxter Institute, where Sue Storm (Kate Mara, TRANSSIBERIAN) and her dad Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey, THE MACHINIST) plus grouchy ex-student Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell, DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) are working on a similar project. With Baxter’s son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan, CREED) taking Ben’s assistant role, they build a dimensional portal to be used by NASA.
That’s when they make a poor decision: they get drunk and call Ben and try the thing out themselves. (Not “The Thing.” The dimensional portal thing.) That’s pretty original, actually. I believe Ultron is the only other comic book movie character with a scientists-had-a-few-too-many-beers origin. (read the rest of this shit…)
SNOWPIERCER, the Hollywood-stars/English words debut of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, is the second best train movie I saw on the big screen in June. While UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY is DIE HARD on a boat on a train, SNOWPIERCER is the post-apocalypse on a train. The whole world has been frozen over, eradicating all life except for the lucky bastards that got onto a giant train that has been traveling a globe-spanning track for 17 years.
It has similar themes of class inequality to ELYSIUM and the HUNGER GAMESes, but I liked it quite a bit more than those. The concept is that the poor people live in squalor at the back and the rich people in luxury at the front. It’s a brutal dictatorship; the tail dwellers get threatened and beaten, limbs severed as punishment for defiance, fed nothing but green jelly protein bars. Every once in a while a lady in a pretty yellow dress comes back with a tape measure to size up which of their children to steal. You can just feel the anger and humiliation of the people when this shit happens. It’s easy to hate those motherfuckers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Word of warning: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is really only about 1 (one) specific adventure that this guy Tintin has, it’s not about all of his adventures. I don’t know if that was a typo or a mistranslation or what but it’s fucking bullshit.
Tintin (Jamie Bell from UNDERTOW) is a boy reporter from Belgium. I think. But I don’t remember them specifying where it was or having Belgian accents, and I didn’t notice any cameos by famous Belgians like Jean-Claude Van Damme and other famous Belgians. But I’ve read it’s based on a Belgian comic strip. (read the rest of this shit…)
The fabulous Vern sent in his thoughts on FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. His reviewis rather long, so I’ll get out of the way and let him speak for himself.
Here’s Vern…
Well, shit. I feel like an asshole giving a room-temperature review to my man Clint Eastwood’s long awaited WWII drama. Because Clint is the best. If there was some reason why the entire human race had to be destroyed except for one movie star, and I had to choose who it would be, I would choose Clint. I don’t care if he’s old, he’s the number one Badass Laureate of all time. He’d make a damn good last representative of our species, and he could still take on the vampires pretty good I think. But despite (and partly because of) my great respect for the man, I gotta be honest: I don’t consider this a great movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
Okay, so it’s not the first one ever. Or even in the first hundred at this point. But it’s before mine, and it’s by Vern, so there’s two things it’s got going for it. Check this out:
What’s up fellas –
I heard some shit about your butts were numb or something like that. Sorry to hear about that I hope you get well soon.
Anyway here’s the deal. I saw KING KONG. Not sure if you know about this one but it is a remake of an older picture from ’33 or so. This version is by Pete Jackson who won an Oscar, etc. You LORD OF THE RINGS fans will know who I’m talking about. If not there is always the internet. I’m not sure if they have IMDB translated into elfish, but I’m sure you can find the information somewhere or other. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Mike on F1: “As an F1 and film fan, I liked it. The other drivers, cars and even commentators are all the genuine…” Jan 27, 09:15
Mike on F1: “As an F1 and film fan, I liked it. The other drivers and carsall the genuine article too, and it…” Jan 27, 08:55
Mike on F1: “As an F1 and film fan, I liked it. The other drivers and cars are all the genuine article too,…” Jan 27, 08:55
Llamakazi on The Killer (2023): “The Killer also gets caught on camera on the way up the elevator to the billionaire’s home. Since the heat…” Jan 27, 00:30
Zameer on Fast X: “Fast X is easily one of my all time favorite movies. I loved every minute of it.” Jan 27, 00:02
Alex R on Train Dreams: “Sanding off Robert’s edges seems as much a symptom of being afraid to fully grapple with Denis Johnson’s tone as…” Jan 26, 16:35
Matt on Train Dreams: “Alex R – I really don’t understand the revenge killing, I suppose. I’m not sure what it was trying to…” Jan 26, 15:55
Alex R on Train Dreams: “Matt— I agree with you on almost all of this, especially the Malick worship, though I liked the revenge killing…” Jan 26, 15:14
Matt on Train Dreams: “Has anyone here read the book? It is very, very good, and perhaps my familiarity with it colored my experience…” Jan 26, 13:11
MarioSB on Passion: ““REDACTED made you almost want to apologize for being against the war” I think this is one you REALLY need…” Jan 26, 11:31
Bill Reed on Train Dreams: “Of the five Best Picture nominees I’ve seen so far, this is easily my favorite. Meditative and existentialist, but in…” Jan 26, 08:34
Ben Railton on Train Dreams: “Great stuff as ever, Vern. My Mom loves loves loves this movie (seriously, she’s seen it many times already!) and…” Jan 26, 08:26
Hammer Time on Train Dreams: “Good review, the only trouble is when I’ll be in the mood AND have time for something like this. I…” Jan 26, 07:29
Stu on Masters of the Universe: “Apparently Adam’s mother is from Earth in the original version’s history, so that aspect feels consistent, and it’s arguably better…” Jan 23, 19:56
Skani on Marshmallow: “Yeah, there was quite a little buzz around this, and I was with it -ish for the first half, but…” Jan 23, 19:21
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.
Remember that scene in SCHOOL OF ROCK where the character Tomika (Maryam Hassan) timidly tells her enthusiastic substitute teacher Dewey Finn, played by Jack Black, that she doesn’t want to be a roadie, as she’s been assigned? He tries to tell her it’s an important job, but he’ll let her do something else, like security, or…
What you gotta do with some of these movies, you gotta wait a year, so it’s after it already came out and the director publicly disowned it and it flopped and everyone said it was a piece of shit and dissected how the studio reshoots ruined or failed to save it. That’s what I did and then FANTASTIC FOUR didn’t seem as bad. I’d go so far as to say I kind of enjoyed watching it.
SNOWPIERCER, the Hollywood-stars/English words debut of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, is the second best train movie I saw on the big screen in June. While UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY is DIE HARD on a boat on a train, SNOWPIERCER is the post-apocalypse on a train. The whole world has been frozen over, eradicating all life except for the lucky bastards that got onto a giant train that has been traveling a globe-spanning track for 17 years.
Word of warning: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is really only about 1 (one) specific adventure that this guy Tintin has, it’s not about all of his adventures. I don’t know if that was a typo or a mistranslation or what but it’s fucking bullshit.
Merrick here…
SPOILER ALERT !!
