Roald Dahl was my favorite author when I was a little kid, but I didn’t know his book Matilda because it didn’t come out until ’88. Watching the movie version again the story seems kinda sweet and wholesome by his standards, even though it envisions the world as a place full of cruel, crude idiots. Its warmth lies in its heroine, a smart girl who finds an angelically supportive teacher to help her through her difficulties. Similar idea, but a little more pure than a poor boy winning a chocolate factory. (I wasn’t that surprised when I read that an editor had to talk Dahl out of his initial version where Matilda uses her psychokinetic powers to torment innocent parents and help her teacher gamble.)
Director Danny DeVito (THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN) must’ve still been concerned about MATILDA (adapted by Nicholas Kazan [MOBSTERS, DREAM LOVER] and Robin Swicord [SHAG]) being a little mean, because he cast himself as the kind-sounding narrator to balance out playing the asshole dad, Harry Wormwood. Harry and his wife Zinnia (Rhea Perlman, CLASS ACT) somehow raised their daughter Matilda (the precocious Mara Wilson, MRS. DOUBTFIRE) to the age of six without noticing – or at least not approving of – her brilliance. She loves to read, but has to sneak out to go to the library. Harry, an unethical used car salesman, forces her to watch TV junk and refuses to let her go to school, because “Who would sign for the packages?”
She’s delighted when he finally enrolls her at Crunchem Hall Elementary, but unfortunately it was just to help sell a car to principal Agatha Trunchbull (Pam Ferris, MEANTIME), an abusive monster who has a dartboard with pictures of students in her office and frequently locks kids in an iron maiden closet she calls “the Chokey.” A former shot putter, hammer and javelin thrower who competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics, she uses those skills to throw children long distances. Somebody should do something about this, but nobody’s up to it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Steven Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS (original review)(2013 Summer Flashback review) follows the BATMAN BEGINS pattern for me: loved it at the time, loved it on rewatches, but watched it now and still found myself thinking holy shit, I forgot how good this is. In the set up it’s almost JAWS-good – the beautiful look and sense of place, the natural and economical ways it sets up these people and their relationships, the dread about what horrors are coming even though honestly I wouldn’t mind hanging out longer in this normality that’s about to be interrupted.
Tom Cruise’s character Ray Ferrier kind of seems like the inevitable results of living as one of the charming dicks he played when he was younger – regular Yankees-hat-wearing, working class guy, pretty likable, but fucked up his marriage and now lives alone in a little place in New Jersey. Definitely a deadbeat in the parenting department, and isn’t disciplined enough to get his shit together (until now, when it really counts, during an alien invasion). (Spoiler.) We first see him operating a crane at the docks in Brooklyn, it looks pretty challenging and his boss (Peter Gerety, Homicide: Life on the Streets) seems to think he’s the best at it, but it’s still funny when he punches out and roars into traffic in his Mustang like he’s convinced he’s the coolest motherfucker who ever lived.
Turns out his reckless driving is for a different reason: he was supposed to be home at 8 when his ex-wife Mary Ann (Mirando Otto, HUMAN NATURE) drops off the kids to stay with him during her trip to Boston. He pretends he thought it was 8:30 and doesn’t even say he’s sorry, so it’s not that surprising his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin, TAKING LIVES) hates him, doesn’t acknowledge him, won’t take off his headphones for him. (read the rest of this shit…)
If there’s a universally agreed-upon absolute banger of a summer blockbuster type movie from 2005, it’s gotta be Christopher Nolan’s BATMAN BEGINS, right? I’ve watched it many more times over the years, it holds up completely, and also seems historically significant as, among other things, a transition point between the ‘90s era of comic book movies and the seemingly endless one we’re in now. It kind of blows my mind that I reviewed it early for The Ain’t It Cool News and here I am two decades later writing more thoughtfully about it for a much smaller (but better) audience. Like a memory cloth cape tailored to fit a rigid skeleton when a current is put through it, time flies.
I haven’t experienced an era when people weren’t complaining about there being too many sequels and remakes, but I do remember a time before people complained about reboots, because it wasn’t until this movie that I ever heard that term. Nolan’s co-writer David S. Goyer (KICKBOXER 2) used it to explain that they were completely starting the series over. Not a sequel, or a sort of sequel with the same actors playing Alfred and Commissioner Gordon, but a do-over, a totally different take on Batman. I wish that definition had stuck – it’s useless now that it can mean that or a sequel or a remake.
Nolan’s successful turning on and off of the bat-computer seemed revolutionary in part because his notion of a stripped down, quasi-realistic Batman was so unexpected for the character. The expressionisticmovies of former animator Tim Burton had birthed the mega-garish ones by former costume designer Joel Schumacher – the series was synonymous with lavish artifice. BATMAN & ROBIN made money in 1997, but it became so widely hated that many believed it would be the end of Batman movies, and maybe even super hero movies as a whole. Luckily that gave Warner Bros. an opening to consider acclaimed indie directors with drastically different approaches. They tried developing one with Darren Aronofsky (who had only done PI and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) before they settled on the guy who did FOLLOWING, MEMENTO and (at the recommendation of Steven Soderbergh) INSOMNIA. (read the rest of this shit…)
UNLEASHED (a.k.a. DANNY THE DOG) is a movie I reviewed when it came out 20 years ago, but unlike MINDHUNTERS I’ve rewatched it a few times over the years. In fact I found some notes and screengrabs from an unfinished review when I last watched it in 2021. It’s a truly international creation, an English-language Jet Li vehicle co-starring American Morgan Freeman, produced and directed by Frenchmen, choreographed by Hong Kong legend Yuen Woo-ping and filmed and set in Glasgow, Scotland, but it feels like it has a unified vision, a very specific take on how to make a 2005 action movie with a big heart.
Li plays Danny, a feral person raised in a cage by the cruel gangster Bart (Bob Hoskins, SUPER MARIO BROS.) and trained to be his attack dog. When Bart needs to intimidate debtors or enemies he simply removes Danny’s metal collar and he will go ape shit, destroying everyone in the room with blunt martial arts savagery. Danny is severely traumatized – is he also developmentally disabled in some way? This is never discussed, but for whatever reason he’s very childlike, and he doesn’t know to yearn for a better life until he happens to find one after Bart is attacked by rivals and seemingly killed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Watching Ryuhei Kitamura’s latest THE PRICE WE PAY this week reminded me to finally catch up with his previous one, THE DOORMAN (2020). I remember I was excited that he did a Ruby Rose action vehicle, but I heard some negative things and it scared me off. I shouldn’t listen to that stuff, because I like so many movies that normal humans hate, but I’m susceptible to rumors of poor action scenes.
That criticism is fair. Many of the action scenes are pretty choppy, they’re certainly not up to the state of the art in the 87Eleven era. And I do think this is a movie that could go over really well if it had a couple knockout fights. So that’s too bad. But I still enjoyed it on a story and character level like I would, say, a Liam Neeson movie where you’d have way less of the real shit than this. So if you’re okay with that, I recommend it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Summer of ’89 had the movie about Batman, summer of ’90 had the one about Dick Tracy, and summer of ’91 had a very good period-set super hero movie that I reviewed a few years ago in the Summer Flings series. But THE ROCKETEER, for whatever reason, was unable to capture the zeitgeist, and I would argue that the movie to fill that BATMAN/DICK TRACY slot in the summer of ’91 was actually ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES. It wasn’t based on a comic strip and didn’t have minimalist, symbol-based advertising art (not counting the silhouette logo on the merchandise), but it did fill that role of the well known old timey adventure hero repackaged as a thrilling modern popcorn movie.
And like those other two movies, its hero was played by a major movie star who was far from the obvious choice: Kevin Costner (MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE), who was universally mocked for only barely trying a vague English accent. (Costner wanted to do one, director Kevin Reynolds didn’t want him to, and Reynolds mostly won.) But he was near the peak of his stardom, having done THE UNTOUCHABLES, BULL DURHAM and FIELD OF DREAMS in the last four years and coming immediately off of best picture winner DANCES WITH WOLVES. His antagonist, the Sheriff of Nottingham, was played by Alan Rickman, only a few years removed from the glory of Hans Grueber. And for the appreciators of locker pinups they threw in young Will Scarlett played by Christian Slater fresh off of YOUNG GUNS II and PUMP UP THE VOLUME. (read the rest of this shit…)
HARD RAIN is a very enjoyable ‘90s studio action movie (with a side order of disaster) that it turns out I must never have seen. I thought I had, but I would’ve remembered how good it is!
It starts, like many good films, by pulling out of the Paramount logo and using the logo’s mountain as part of its scenery. I was thinking it would be cool if it continued to be in the background of shots throughout the movie, but no dice.
Anyway, a very cool shot that I think combines live action, digital and miniature models establishes the geography of the small town of Huntingburg, Indiana, where the Sheriff (Randy Quaid, VEGAS VACATION) is trying to evacuate the locals as the titular aggressive precipitation causes flooding that will soon be worsened by trouble with levees and dams.
Meanwhile this dude Tom (Christian Slater, THE WIZARD) and his uncle Charlie (Edward Asner, voice of Jabba the Hutt, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – The Original Radio Drama) are working their shitty job driving an armored car, and they get stuck on a flooded road, unable to move further. Suddenly they’re blinded by floodlights and some guys pretend they’re going to help, but of course they really intend to rob the car. Uncle Charlie is mistakenly shot to death in the hubbub and Charlie runs away with the money. (read the rest of this shit…)
If you enjoy the HAS FALLEN saga, now in its third chapter, you don’t need to read me disrespecting it in this review. I have no quarrel with you. But as much as I appreciate the existence of any ongoing theatrically released rated-R action series in this day and age, I have never achieved a worthwhile level of enjoyment from these fucking things.
What I remember from the first one, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, is that the action was messy enough to inspire me to invent the action comprehensibility rating (ACR) system, but there was one part where Melissa Leo defiantly recited the Pledge of Allegiance to terrorists about to execute her, and I liked that. What I remember about the second one, LONDON HAS FALLEN, is that the action scene that people claim was good made no impression on me and I was disgusted by its moronic jingoism and casual murder of civilians (which some tried to convince me was supposed to be sarcastic, but I couldn’t see it).
The first two were location-based premises (the White House is attacked, London is attacked), this one makes the fair assumption that if we’re still watching these we’re okay just following legendarily amazing Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, DRACULA 2000) whether he goes to a new city that gets attacked or not. “ANGEL” refers to him, a “guardian angel” who has “fallen” by being blamed for an attempted assassination of the president and having to go on one of those old fashioned fugitive runs to prove his innocence. (read the rest of this shit…)
For many, the 1998 summer movie season will always be remembered as the comet vs. the asteroid (or the dueling asteroid movies, if they forget that one was a comet). DEEP IMPACT is the first released, the less popular, and the more grown up of the two movies. It’s way less stupid, less hectic, less hateful, and more forgotten by society. But that’s not necessarily undeserved. It’s not all that exciting.
The story begins with high school lovebirds Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood, THE TRUST) and Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski, THE WICKER MAN) enjoying some amateur astronomy when Leo discovers a comet headed for the earth. His teacher sends the evidence to a pro (Charles Martin Smith, MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI) who verifies it but is immediately killed in a car accident.
(Summer of ’98 note: Like BLACK DOG it’s a sleepy-truck-driver accident that sets everything up.)
I don’t understand that turn of events. It skips over a year, so for a second I assumed the accident prevented them from finding out about the comet in time, but no. Actually the government found his information and named the comet after him and Leo. What’s the story purpose of killing him off? Not wanting to keep checking back in on a guy that knows about stars and shit? I’m not sure. (read the rest of this shit…)
a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on
For the momentous conclusion of the Summer Flings series, please join me on a journey down Memory Lane. Actually, just turn with me onto Memory Lane and then stop immediately, because it’s right there on the right – August 9, 2016. That’s when Paramount Pictures and MGM admitted that they had spent $100 million for Timur Bekmambetov (WANTED) to remake BEN-HUR, and that if anyone was interested it would be briefly available for public viewing.
Believe it or not I was interested, but limited showings prevented me from being able to see it in the 3D I felt would be crucial for the full ludicrousness of the director of ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER‘s take on one of old Hollywood’s greatest epics, so I gave up and didn’t see it until now.
On its own merits, this BEN-HUR is fine. It’s light on the Bekmambetovian shamelessness that I was excited for, but it’s a solid enough retelling of Lew Wallace’s stirring 1880 tale of fictional Jewish elite Judah Ben-Hur, who is enslaved, freed, and returns to confront his childhood friend turned Roman Prefect Messala. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Mr. Subtlety on Society: “Needs to be said that “Faust” looks like a gritty Todd MacFarlane reimagining of The ‘Noid. See for yourself! https://imgur.com/gallery/why-you-should-avoid-noid-0yel2vD” Sep 21, 08:08
Dreadguacamole on The Trigger Effect: “I don’t think I’ve seen this one, but people not acting like human beings is to me a Koepp trademark…” Sep 21, 03:59
CJ Holden on Society: “Let’s say I appreciate it as fascinating for being a grimey, uncomfortable and (unintentionally) hilariously edgy superhero movie. It’s basically…” Sep 20, 22:30
August 2, 1996
Director Danny DeVito (THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN) must’ve still been concerned about MATILDA (adapted by Nicholas Kazan [MOBSTERS, DREAM LOVER] and Robin Swicord [SHAG]) being a little mean, because he cast himself as the kind-sounding narrator to balance out playing the asshole dad, Harry Wormwood. Harry and his wife Zinnia (Rhea Perlman, CLASS ACT) somehow raised their daughter Matilda (the precocious Mara Wilson, MRS. DOUBTFIRE) to the age of six without noticing – or at least not approving of – her brilliance. She loves to read, but has to sneak out to go to the library. Harry, an unethical used car salesman, forces her to watch TV junk and refuses to let her go to school, because “Who would sign for the packages?”
June 29, 2005
Tom Cruise’s character Ray Ferrier kind of seems like the inevitable results of living as one of the charming dicks he played when he was younger – regular Yankees-hat-wearing, working class guy, pretty likable, but fucked up his marriage and now lives alone in a little place in New Jersey. Definitely a deadbeat in the parenting department, and isn’t disciplined enough to get his shit together (until now, when it really counts, during an alien invasion). (Spoiler.) We first see him operating a crane at the docks in Brooklyn, it looks pretty challenging and his boss (Peter Gerety, Homicide: Life on the Streets) seems to think he’s the best at it, but it’s still funny when he punches out and roars into traffic in his Mustang like he’s convinced he’s the coolest motherfucker who ever lived.
June 15, 2005
May 13, 2005
Watching Ryuhei Kitamura’s latest 
June 14, 1991
Summer of ’89 had 
And like those other two movies, its hero was played by a major movie star who was far from the obvious choice: Kevin Costner (
HARD RAIN is a very enjoyable ‘90s studio action movie (with a side order of disaster) that it turns out I must never have seen. I thought I had, but I would’ve remembered how good it is!
If you enjoy the HAS FALLEN saga, now in its third chapter, you don’t need to read me disrespecting it in this review. I have no quarrel with you. But as much as I appreciate the existence of any ongoing theatrically released rated-R action series in this day and age, I have never achieved a worthwhile level of enjoyment from these fucking things.
May 8, 1998
