Posts Tagged ‘Matt Dillon’
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020
“You know, this is what happens when people spend too much time in Florida.”
I can’t lie. Half of my interest in CAPONE was a curiosity about the legend of its writer/director/editor Josh Trank. If you know who that is, you probly know him for a meteoric rise and fall. The success of one found footage movie (CHRONICLE) led to coveted studio gigs – a giant super hero movie and a Star Wars spin-off. But FANTASTIC FOUR was drastically changed from his cut, he quit the Boba Fett movie before they could fire him, there was a weird story in the Hollywood Reporter about his dogs wrecking a house he rented, and he made the career-sabotaging faux pas of disavowing FANTASTIC FOUR on Twitter just before it was released to terrible reviews and box office.
Seemed like a cautionary tale, and I can’t deny a morbid fascination with it. I didn’t love CHRONICLE, save for its cleverness about fitting good camera moves into found footage, so I wondered how these powerful Hollywood people got, and then lost, so much faith in the guy. But when I saw FANTASTIC FOUR I actually found alot to like about it, especially in the discovering-their-powers scenes that I described at the time as “more inspired by THE FLY than SPIDER-MAN.” And I realized that he hadn’t come completely out of nowhere – he edited and co-produced BIG FAN, a dark comedy/drama I liked.
Five years after his fall into the Great Pit of Carkoon, Trank has resurfaced with a self-generated, independent project, not inspired by “geek properties,” but by one of those historical deep cut kind of stories some people get hooked on. CAPONE is about Al Capone not in his gang years, but the last year of his life, released from prison to live in a mansion in Florida as his mental and physical capacity deteriorate from syphilis and strokes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Al Capone, Al Sapienza, Edgar Arreola, El-P, Josh Trank, Kyle MacLachlan, Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon, Noel Fisher, Tom Hardy
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, August 1st, 2018
I forgot to mention in the SMALL SOLDIERS and PI reviews that LETHAL WEAPON 4 also came out that week. Then…
July 15, 1998
We all know the studios can be pretty cynical and obvious in the summer time. When you’re dumping millions upon millions of dollars into these cinematic behemoths that are gonna battle it out for supremacy of Blockbuster Island, you’re usually gonna lean toward easier bets – an old TV show or character people recognize, an easy to explain spectacle. Industrial light and mayhem. Disaster movies seemed like the thing after INDEPENDENCE DAY and TITANIC, so in Summer of ’98 we got the comet and the asteroid and the name brand giant monster, and it’s not that surprising that ARMAGEDDON would be the #1 grossing movie worldwide, or that GODZILLA would be #3. (That a war drama would be in between them was a little less predictable, but then again it was Steven Spielberg directing Tom Hanks.)
When an original comedy comes in at #4, though, that means something. That’s one that has to be earned. THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, the Farrelly Brothers’ followup to KINGPIN, was an R-rated comedy with dick and semen jokes that somehow seemed a little elevated by their audaciousness, and it fucked up the zeitgeist way harder than Godzilla did New York. Laughs do matter.
Ben Stiller (HIGHWAY TO HELL) plays the hapless male lead Ted Stroehmann, and I mean he is completely devoid of hap. Sure, in the 1985 prologue (adult Stiller playing a 16 year old with a wig and braces is a treat) he does hap into a prom date with radiant babe Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz [THE COUNSELOR], previously seen in FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS), but before they even leave her house a series of mishaps mishappen, and he misses the actual prom on account of public penis injury. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, Chris Elliott, Farrelly Brothers, Keith David, Lee Evans, Lin Shaye, Markie Post, Matt Dillon, Summer of '98, W. Earl Brown
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 34 Comments »
Monday, May 7th, 2018
WILD THINGS is the ultimate Sharon-Stone-meets-Brian-DePalma ’90s erotic thriller on swamp gas. It’s legitimately sleazy and provocative, but also clever and funny and audacious. It has a really game cast with grown ups played by men who are former young hotshots aging into respected veterans, and teens played by young women who were on a roll at the time but never got their proper due. And it’s usually grim and serious director John McNaughton (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, NORMAL LIFE) taking a rare dive into slick, multiplex-worthy entertainment.
I’ve never been to Florida, and when I finally go there, let’s face it, I’ll probly just go to Disney World. So my impression of the place comes from Charles Willeford novels, Miami Vice, and the storied misadventures of Florida Man. From that perspective, WILD THINGS seems like a perfect mythical charting of the frontier that would soon bring us the election of George W. Bush. For the opening credits, helicopter shots survey the land from the swamps to the ritzy coastal town of Blue Bay, a collection of estates, country clubs and future Mar-a-Lago members where people wear white and tropical prints and the school counselor and his girlfriend both drive Benzes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Denise Richards, Florida, George S. Clinton, John McNaughton, Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Summer of '98, Theresa Russell
Posted in Crime, Mystery, Reviews | 31 Comments »
Monday, September 10th, 2012
TAKERS is a heist movie that features Paul Walker (THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 1,2,4-present) and Hayden Christensen (STAR WARS 2-3) as thieves, Jay Hernandez (HOSTEL, CARLITO’S WAY: RISE TO POWER) as one of the cops that’s out to get them, and Johnathon Schaech as their fence. Holy shit, this is like the EXPENDABLES of likable but bland, inarticulate would-be leading men! I bet they’re looking at Chris Klein for part 2. Maybe Scott Speedman.
Nah, that’s a cheap shot. The truth is I sort of like all those guys, or at least root for them to prove everybody wrong. Walker seems too nice to hate, and he’s been in a bunch of movies that I’ve enjoyed, and even been good in some of them. Hernandez – I liked the HOSTEL movies. Schaech channeled Swayze well in ROAD HOUSE 2. Christensen is all right, he’s just going down a path I cannot follow.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: "Stranglin'" Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, heists, Idris Elba, Jay Hernandez, John Luessenhop, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Matt Dillon, Michael Ealy, Paul Walker, T.I., Zoe Saldana
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 36 Comments »
Monday, March 15th, 2010
Right now Nimrod Antal is a director-of-interest because they got him doing that PREDATORS movie. And I hadn’t seen his movies (like KONTROLL and VACANCY) but ARMORED is out on DVD this week so I decided to check it out. (And yes, every movie he’s directed so far has a one word title.)
I read somewhere that when Robert Rodriguez saw ARMORED it sealed the deal for Antal doing PREDATORS. I’m not sure what that says, because there’s nothing too wrong with ARMORED, but nothing too right, either. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Fred Ward, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Matt Dillon, Nimrod Antal, some guy from Lost
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 96 Comments »
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006
Unfortunately this is not the pervy Cronenberg movie I’ve never gotten around to seeing about the people getting off on car crashes. This is the race relations movie directed by Paul Haggis, writer of Clint’s MILLION DOLLAR BABY. I gotta be honest, my reason for seeing this was not that I thought I would like it, but that I was just real damn curious. Because it got so many rave reviews, and Roger Ebert chose it as the best of the year, but every single person I knew who had seen it said it was corny, overwrought bullshit.
I hate to be a centrist but I think it falls somewhere in the middle. It seems well intentioned. It’s trying to point out different kinds of subconscious racism, it’s trying to show that people are complicated, racists maybe have a chance of being redeemed, people who don’t think they are racists might end up shooting a black dude, etc. It’s one of those movies where there’s a bunch of different characters tangentally connected by coincidence and you find out as the story unfolds what they have to do with each other, which can be fun. And there’s some good little moments and whatnot. One of the best scenes actually involves a cop trying to save somebody from a flipped car before it blows up. In other words, a scene you can see in every single episode of CHiPs. But this is better directed so it’s pretty intense. Also Tony Danza has a cameo. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Best Picture winners, Brendan Fraser, Don Cheadle, Keith David, Larenz Tate, Matt Dillon, Paul Haggis, Ryan Phillippe, Sandra Bullock, Screen Actor's Guild Award Winner Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Terence Howard, Tony Danza
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, January 1st, 2001
If you want a good picture about junkies this is it. This is not a western like you may think it is the story of Matt Dillon, his lady and another couple who travel the Pacific Northwest region knocking down drugstores to score various pharmaceuticals. As someone who has known these type of people I can GUARANTEE you they do not have prescriptions for these items. They are addicts.
What I like about this one in my opinion is that it is an anti drug movie that doesn’t stack the deck. It makes it clear that drugs are fun when you are doing them, they make the world happy and the cowboy lifestyle as they call it is exciting. So then after being honest it goes on to deal with the negative side. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Gus Van Sant, James LeGros, James Remar, Kelly Lynch, Matt Dillon, William S. Burroughs
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
