"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Lili Taylor’

The Courier (2012)

Thursday, February 15th, 2024

For those who came in late: Yesterday I wanted to watch a movie from Palestine, and I picked OMAR (2013), a very good Oscar nominee that deals with the Israel-Palestine conflict in the form of a dramatic thriller. Afterwards I read about director Hany Abu-Assad and learned that he’d also done the similarly themed, also Oscar-nominated PARADISE NOW (2005), and I think I’m gonna watch that soon. But I also found out that the one movie he did in between those was the 2012 DTV action movie THE COURIER starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan. So… I’m sorry. I had to get to that first. I was too excited not to.

Morgan (WATCHMEN, THE RESIDENT) stars as The Courier. Similar to the Transporter, but with less emphasis on which car he’s driving, he’s the guy who it’s known is the absolute best at delivering a case of unknown contents to some nefarious character without asking questions. I think this was too early for there to be an app to use when you need to hire someone for that, so he really just gets jobs by word of mouth. Good for him. He lives in an old print shop with the name “Ed Smith” on the sign (one of Parker’s aliases, incidentally), and his friend calls him Eddie, but I don’t know him like that, so I call him The Courier, like the credits do. (read the rest of this shit…)

Leatherface

Monday, January 8th, 2018

Who will survive and what will be left of them and also will they grow up to be Leatherface?

As you are all aware, Tobe Hooper’s two TEXAS CHAIN SAW masterpieces are holy horror writ to me. But since Hooper’s second chapter more than thirty years ago a succession of copyright holders have given us LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE the remake and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING and by then I was able to have realistic enough expectations to let it go and enjoy TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D as just some stupid bullshit where yeah, the Leatherface looks fucking horrible, but at least Alexandra Daddario finds out she’s his cousin and decides to side with him and throw him his chainsaw. That was pretty funny.

With that standard in mind, the new prequel LEATHERFACE (the second prequel/premaquel in the series, and the second movie called LEATHERFACE in the series, but the first of the series that is both a prequel/premaquel and called LEATHERFACE) is a really impressive feat. It’s the first TEXAS CHAINSAW that doesn’t at all follow the template of the original. It’s a different subgenre – outlaws on the run – that happens to take place in some approximation of Hooper’s universe. No, I don’t want a backstory for Leatherface, but after accepting that they’re set on doing that task (again), I was glad they found a more clever way to do it this time. The screenplay is by somebody named Seth M. Sherwood, but it’s directed by France’s Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury, who did the excellent INSIDE and LIVID. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Conjuring

Sunday, July 21st, 2013

tn_conjuringI’m always open to a James Wan movie just because I love DEATH SENTENCE so much. But everything else he’s done (until FAST AND FURIOUS 7 next summer) is horror, so it’s pretty different. SAW was okay, I kinda liked INSIDIOUS, haven’t seen the other one (DEAD SILENCE) yet. I probly wouldn’t have rushed out to see this except I heard good word including from some of you commenters who I trust.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ed and Lorraine Warren, supernatural investigators or demonologists. They’re actually based on a real couple who famously investigated the cases that AMITYVILLE HORROR and A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT and I think GHOST DAD and CASPER MEETS WENDY were based on, and wrote several books about this type of shit. I guess this is kind of like CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND where the movie pretends to believe their story and tells it as they would tell it. (read the rest of this shit…)