"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Banks’

Flipper (1996)

Tuesday, May 19th, 2026

FLIPPER is a nice PG-rated movie about a teen named Sandy Ricks (Elijah Wood, NORTH) sent to spend the summer in the Florida Keys with his wildman uncle Porter (Paul Hogan a decade after CROCODILE DUNDEE, half a decade before CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES). It’s a picturesque little island with nature and beauty and shit but this kid’s not into it. He shows up with round sunglassses, baggy jeans and a flannel tied around his waist, and his focus is on trying to arrange a boat to get him to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Orlando that he somehow has two all access passes for.

Porter is an eccentric goof who has his a beat i[ p;dfishing trawler, feeds beer to a pelican, makes his toast with the aid of two nails and a welding torch, and mostly lives off of Spaghetti-Os because he bought a pallet of them for cheap from enterprising cruise ship employees. In his house we see bongos, a framed ENDLESS SUMMER poster, and a bunch of surfing trophies, and we first see him waterskiing with two babes while smoking a cigar. He is maybe dating a neighbor named Cathy (Chelsea Field, flight attendant from COMMANDO, Teela from the original MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE), whose son Marvin (Jason Fuchs, who grew up to become the screenwriter of PAN and ARGYLLE) seems to be neuro-divergent, and thankfully Sandy is nice to him. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Commuter

Thursday, January 31st, 2019

Liam Neeson is… The Commuter, starring in his self-titled, totally solid addition to the catalog of Neeson vehicles directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN, NON-STOP, RUN ALL NIGHT). Written by previously unknown Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi, this is a gimmicky suspense thriller taking place almost entirely in the limited location of a New York City commuter train, but it manages to also mix in a couple of impressive action exclamation points, not to mention the director’s endlessly playful computer-assisted camera show-offery.

The Commuter is Michael McCauley, an ex-cop who is suddenly fired from his current job at an insurance company, and then finds himself under siege in dark territory on the ride home. It’s the train he’s been riding for ten years, and most of the passengers know him by name, make small talk with him and ask about his wife (Elizabeth McGovern, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, CLASH OF THE TITANS) and kid (Dean-Charles Chapman, Game of Thrones). The usual sameness of his mornings is cleverly illustrated in an opening scene that shows him getting up, having breakfast, talking to the family and getting dropped off at the train, jaggedly cutting between seasons, emotions and conversations to show the passage of time without interrupting the flow of the daily routine. (read the rest of this shit…)

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory – celebrating 20 years of nobody beating him in the kitchen

Tuesday, July 14th, 2015

tn_us2us2-20I know the internet reminds us that every day is the 20th anniversary of something or other, and that’s not always a good thing. There is too much nostalgia, and too many factoids. We need to learn how to live in the present, otherwise what the hell anniversary are we gonna celebrate 20 years from today? But today, my friends, is an important one: July 14th, 1995 was the day the world was gifted UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY.

I think you know how I feel about this movie. It stands as one of Seagal’s best big studio movies, one of the great sequels in the history of action, and one of the best DIE HARD rip offs. It’s a cool, accessible Seagal with a great supporting cast (especially the villains) doing enjoyable special-effects-based spectacle action while also spreading the gospel of choking and wrist-snapping. I’m not sure I can write a new review of it, since of course I wrote a whole chapter about it for my book Seagalogy: The Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal and talked a little more about it in my Cinefamily Journal last year. So instead, to honor the occasion, let’s take a look at some of the key players and consider how much they’ve accomplished in the two decades since. (read the rest of this shit…)

Bullet

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

tn_bulletIn BULLET, Danny Trejo plays Frank “Bullet” Marasco, who’s in the drug industry with Max Perlich and gets caught and kills two cops. Or the opening scene says so anyway, but I read the box and it said he was playing a cop. Weird.

In the next scene he’s a cage fighter. It’s kinda funny in this day and age to see Trejo do fight scenes, because you expect a guy to do some moves, but he’s just a puncher like Charles Bronson. His opponent Jake the Tank says he has business to settle with him from San Quentin, but luckily Trejo gets in a good one and KO’s him. Very luckily, because Jake is played by mixed martial arts legend Kimo Leopoldo, the guy who carried a full-sized cross on his back when he entered the ring at UFC 3. I think it was genuinely meant as an expression of his Christianity, but it’s also a pretty good way to psyche out your opponent. I am about to fight a crazy motherfucker who carried a cross to the ring. After a long battle Kimo lost to UFC 1-2 champion Royce Gracie, but he wore him out so bad Gracie had to drop out of the tournament. No such problem for Bullet. Bullet probly could’ve been UFC champion I bet, but he’s too busy. (read the rest of this shit…)