BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F is a perfectly entertaining, perfectly obvious long-awaited nostalgia sequel, perfect for streaming once and forgetting. Eddie Murphy (DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) returns to play Detroit police detective Axel Foley 40 years after the original and 30 years after the disappointment of BEVERLY HILLS COP III. He still has the same job, same basic outfit, the soundtrack repeats “The Heat Is On,” “Neutron Dance” and part II’s “Shakedown,” and the score by Lorne Balfe (TERMINATOR GENISYS, BAD BOYS FOR LIFE, TOP GUN: MAVERICK) reworks Harold Faltermeyer’s beloved “Axel F Theme” and mimics some of his 1984 synth sounds.
So this is not a “He’s having to face age and change!” sequel like ROCKY BALBOA or a “He’s passing the torch” one like CREED. Instead it’s a “He’s still here, not much has changed!” His boss in Detroit was killed in part III, but his old partner Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser, WHIPLASH) is the chief now. Jeffrey tries to convince Axel to visit Beverly Hills not for a case, but to reconnect with his grown up, estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige, ZOLA). He moved her to Beverly Hills when she was young and then divorced her mother, they have not spoken in years but somehow she’s family to his 90210 cop friends Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold, GREMLINS) and Taggart (John Ashton, HIDDEN ASSASSIN). Billy was pushed off the force and became a private detective (but still loves Rambo), Taggart is the chief now. (read the rest of this shit…)
Well, I’m afraid it seems my fellow people who write about movies were not open to a giant corporation treating an 80+ year old animation masterpiece as i.p. to remake in a modern style, especially coming from a once A-list director they’ve turned on in his later, weirder years. So they engaged in a hyperbole measuring contest to find out who could hate Robert Zemeckis’s PINOCCHIO (2022) most outlandishly.
I get it, I guess, but I don’t relate. I can see refusing to give in to the existence of these remakes, I can see not wanting them to do it to PINOCCHIO specifically (it’s my personal favorite Disney movie), I can see not liking the finished product. But I can’t see thinking it’s terrible, let alone the worst thing you’ve seen lately/in years/ever. That’s just silly talk.
Yes, that is correct, I liked it for what it was. I’ll get into it in a minute. Just let me pre-amble a little bit more. (read the rest of this shit…)
Earlier this month when I reviewed HALLOWEEN II I wrote that it was “easily one of the best or the best HALLOWEEN sequel they made.” I was being a little cagey, saving it for today to reveal my opinion that the actual best sequel is 1998’s HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER. First I watched it again and verified that the verdict still stands now that we’re only a couple years away from being able to make HALLOWEEN H20-20: HALLOWEEN H20 TWENTY YEARS LATER. Also this time I learned that it plays even better when watched immediately after II.
It seems designed for that, because it begins with “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes, the same thing that played as Laurie rode off in the ambulance at the end of II. Unlike the other sequels it leaves Loomis dead after blowing himself up with Michael (Donald Pleasance had passed away by this point anyway). But Laurie isn’t the only major character to survive II: there was also Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Loomis’s nurse colleague. That’s who Michael comes after first.
Marion’s still working as a nurse, and still chain smoking. She comes home to her house in a different Illinois suburb besides Haddonfield and finds it broken into. The police take their sweet time coming, but two neighbor boys (one played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, SHADOWBOXER, KILLSHOT, LINCOLN) keep her company while she waits. I like that because in HALLOWEEN Laurie tried to run to a neighbor’s house for help and they turned off the lights and wouldn’t answer the door. Marion does have helpful neighbors, but things don’t turn out any better.
Of course this is the opening kill scene, but it’s also a strategic move by Michael, who ransacks Marion’s office, searches her files and leaves an empty one labeled “Laurie Strode,” signaling that he’s figured out the whereabouts of his sister (a triumphantly returning Jamie Lee Curtis), last survivor of the Halloween Murders. She’s in California, working as headmistress at a boarding school attended by her 17 year old son John (introducing Josh Hartnett) under the assumed name Kari Tate. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m not saying I liked SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR exactly, but it wasn’t as bad as reported. Considering that its two directors’ last films were THE SPIRIT and MACHETE KILLS, which I would consider among the worst things I’ve ever paid to see in theaters, this almost seems like a real movie.
It has all the same problems as the first SIN CITY without the novelty of being a weird new approach to a comic book adaptation, and with very little technological or stylistic advancement considering it was done 9 years later. But I think maybe things bugged me about the first one that people overlooked at the time and now are having a problem with, so they’re being harder on it than me. I don’t know. (read the rest of this shit…)
The best way to explain the genius of INCEPTION is just to describe what’s going on at the climax. The main characters are all asleep on a jet, dreaming that they’re in a van that’s crashed and is falling off a bridge. All but the driver, Dileep Rao, are asleep and are also in a dream-within-a-dream where they’re tied together floating weightlessly in an elevator. Joseph Gordon Levitt is preparing to wake them up, the rest are asleep and in a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream about blowing up a snowy fortress. But Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page are asleep there because they’re actually in a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream where Leo is making the emotional decision to leave behind a SOLARIS-type living memory of his dead wife Marion Cotillard to go into a limbo to rescue his client, Ken Watanabe, who has lived a whole life there and is now an old man and forgets that he’s not in reality, because time passes at a different pace within each of these worlds. And there is a decades long slowed down music cue that tells Leo the van in the first dream is about to hit the water and wake them all up.
And here’s the kicker: all of this was understandable even on the first viewing for knuckleheads like me and the millions of people who made it a huge hit summer movie. I mean, you don’t have to like it, but it takes a silly motherfucker to deny the accomplishment of making such an effective mainstream thriller out of a concept this complicated. (read the rest of this shit…)
Do you ever notice the movie posters where it shows the faces of all the leads but then the names above their heads don’t match? You see that and you understand that it was some legal thing, they were required to list them in that order by contract, there’s alot of politics involved. But then you wonder why they don’t plan for that reality ahead of time and make a composition with that in mind. I know it can be done. And KILLSHOT, the long-delayed-then-poorly-received-then-put-off-seeing-by-me-until-now Elmore Leonard adaptation from the director of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, does something rarer. It introduces the characters in the actual movie in credits order so the actor’s names can appear over them on screen. I was really impressed by that extra effort. (read the rest of this shit…)
LOOPER is the new time travel related science fictional picture by Bruce Willis. But due to scheduling conflicts Bruce is only in part of the movie, most of the time he’s played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (SHADOWBOXER) with a fake nose. This one is written and directed by Rian Johnson, the guy that did BRICK.
“Looper” is a made up futuristic word similar to how “Rian” is a made up spelling of a real name. I’m not buying either one. But I did like the movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Well, shit. I had been staying offline working on this review for a couple hours before I had to check a detail on IMDb and found out about the massacre in Colorado last night. Fucking horrible, man. Be safe everybody.
We had a fucked up tragedy in Seattle a few months ago, and even though that was on a smaller scale you see how many people it affects. For those of us blessed enough to be unscathed it still has a psychological effect, it forces you to think about yourself and your loved ones having to go through that. Because I walk by the place where it happened, I know people who went there all the time, I’ve dealt with mentally ill people that could’ve been that guy. Or in this case I love movies too, I went to a midnight showing too, alot of my friends did, alot of you guys did. It’s just as bad as all the other things we read about on the news but it seems more personal.
But I’ve also seen how the community has come together, has celebrated the lives and the art of the people who died, are continuing to hold benefit shows and fundraisers for the families and for the little cafe where it happened. You see that people really do care about their neighbors. And I hope we will also try to learn from these horrible things and figure out how to improve the system to identify the root causes and fix things, get sick people help or whatever needs to be done long before it comes to this.
Warner Brothers is pulling advertising for the weekend, canceled a premiere in France and all TV appearances for the stars, because it seems tacky to promote a movie during this. But instead this sick asshole gets to pretend he’s a super villain, he gets to be on TV, the whole world has to pay attention to him. He gets to stand in for the big summer event movie.
Is it wrong to let one psychopath intentionally take away this source of joy, this thing we’ve been looking forward to so long, that we we want to discuss and (possibly) celebrate? Or is it superficial to still want to do that in the face of this sickening loss of human life? I don’t think Batman movies are the most important thing in the world but shit, I want to talk about Batman movies!
I don’t know what the right thing to do is. Maybe it’s too depressing to think about right now, but when you’re ready for my review of the new Batman movie here it is.
THIS IS AN ALL SPOILERS, I’M-ASSUMING-YOU’VE-ALREADY-SEEN-IT REVIEW. If there’s anybody out there still deciding whether to see it or not this is not gonna help, don’t read it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wow, I must’ve really misread the ol’ zeitgeist. I thought for sure with that depressing new Ben Stiller indie drama having come out on DVD last Tuesday GREENBERG was gonna be all anybody had on their minds for weeks. But the comments thread there almost makes it seem like you guys are more interested in this “Inception” business.
I never heard of Lee Daniels before he got a best director nomination for PRECIOUS, BASED ON etc. Turns out PRECIOUS… is his third movie as a director, SHADOWBOXER is his first, and Kent M. Beeson insisted in the comments that I had to see it.
I’ve seen a few interviews and things with Daniels, and he seems like a nice, normal guy. Based on these movies alone, though, you’d have to assume the motherfucker is nuts.
SHADOWBOXER is a very serious crime drama. It has some colorful characters and intense violence, but it’s not an action movie at all. It’s focused on the characters, and with its lush colors, weakness for soft lighting and classical music it’s a similar style to PRECIOUS. It’s the story of a male-female team of assassins who, when hired to take out a crime boss’s pregnant wife (Vanessa Ferlito from DEATH PROOF) decide instead to deliver the baby and take mother and child into hiding.
The two killers have a strong attachment, they take care of each other, and they are lovers. And, uh, they’re played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Helen Mirren. Hahem. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “@Fred, probably you’ve broken through to that next level of celebrity and have a fan account. Or maybe an evil…” Nov 17, 05:20
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Hi @GlaiveRobber – I think you raise good points here. I think Trump is pretty damn hardy for his age,…” Nov 17, 03:34
Franchise Fred on Man, I don’t know.: “Do I have a Letterboxd account? I never use it. Is there a fake Franchise Fred????” Nov 16, 20:49
Glaive Robber on Man, I don’t know.: “Skani, many thanks for the reply. I may have been a little misunderstood. I do honestly think there should have…” Nov 16, 20:24
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Hey Fred, I’m glad some of this nonsense has been helpful to someone. Other than a LinkedIn account under my…” Nov 16, 20:18
Franchise Fred on Man, I don’t know.: “Skani, I have appreciated your very level headed posts about some very volatile subjects in this thread and would even…” Nov 16, 17:16
Skani on Juror #2: “That’s pretty hilarious, Milton Friedman and Chomsky. No, yeah, that’s about right, as far as my read on Eastwood –…” Nov 16, 14:42
Miguel Hombre on Juror #2: “Man oh man, I do not want to start a war on another thread about politics – but since Eastwood…” Nov 16, 14:31
Skani on Juror #2: “Miguel, that’s all very well-said, and I did not know that shit. I am a more casual Clint fan, but…” Nov 16, 14:03
Miguel Hombre on Juror #2: “Skani: This is also in no way a defense of Zaslav either – but Warner Brothers has released a very…” Nov 16, 13:34
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Actually, I should say — a lot of my analysis of media is based on written news, and I can’t…” Nov 16, 13:25
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Hey, @GlaiveRobber – To your first point about masculinity. There definitely is a “there” there with the concept of “toxic…” Nov 16, 13:13
VERN on Juror #2: “The problem with that is that the investment of streaming movies is just promoting your streaming service, or your stock…” Nov 16, 09:52
BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F is a perfectly entertaining, perfectly obvious long-awaited nostalgia sequel, perfect for streaming once and forgetting. Eddie Murphy (DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) returns to play Detroit police detective Axel Foley 40 years after the original and 30 years after the disappointment of BEVERLY HILLS COP III. He still has the same job, same basic outfit, the soundtrack repeats “The Heat Is On,” “Neutron Dance” and part II’s “Shakedown,” and the score by Lorne Balfe (TERMINATOR GENISYS, BAD BOYS FOR LIFE, TOP GUN: MAVERICK) reworks Harold Faltermeyer’s beloved “Axel F Theme” and mimics some of his 1984 synth sounds.
Well, I’m afraid it seems my fellow people who write about movies were not open to a giant corporation treating an 80+ year old animation masterpiece as i.p. to remake in a modern style, especially coming from a once A-list director they’ve turned on in his later, weirder years. So they engaged in a hyperbole measuring contest to find out who could hate Robert Zemeckis’s PINOCCHIO (2022) most outlandishly.
Earlier this month when I reviewed 
I’m not saying I liked SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR exactly, but it wasn’t as bad as reported. Considering that its two directors’ last films were 
Do you ever notice the movie posters where it shows the faces of all the leads but then the names above their heads don’t match? You see that and you understand that it was some legal thing, they were required to list them in that order by contract, there’s alot of politics involved. But then you wonder why they don’t plan for that reality ahead of time and make a composition with that in mind. I know it can be done. And KILLSHOT, the long-delayed-then-poorly-received-then-put-off-seeing-by-me-until-now Elmore Leonard adaptation from the director of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, does something rarer. It introduces the characters in the actual movie in credits order so the actor’s names can appear over them on screen. I was really impressed by that extra effort. 
Wow, I must’ve really misread the ol’ zeitgeist. I thought for sure with that depressing new Ben Stiller indie drama having come out on DVD last Tuesday GREENBERG was gonna be all anybody had on their minds for weeks. But the comments thread there almost makes it seem like you guys are more interested in this “Inception” business.
I never heard of Lee Daniels before he got a best director nomination for PRECIOUS, BASED ON etc. Turns out PRECIOUS… is his third movie as a director, SHADOWBOXER is his first, and Kent M. Beeson insisted in the comments that I had to see it.
