Posts Tagged ‘Robert Patrick’
Friday, July 3rd, 2026
June 28, 1996
STRIPTEASE was one of the most derided movies of 1996, and the winner of six Razzies including Worst Picture. There is no question in my mind that that particular distinction can be attributed to the Razzie’s usual misogynistic and puritanical hatred of sexuality. The winners of the previous three years were INDECENT PROPOSAL, COLOR OF NIGHT and SHOWGIRLS. Hollywood could have listened to them, but instead here was Demi Moore briefly nude and showing off her body in tame but sexually provocative dances – this could not stand. She had to be punished. That’s what those fuckers were like back then, and much of society went along with it. (In fact, it also won top honors at the competing “Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.”)
I think when you look at Moore’s performance with today’s eyes it’s impressive: she clearly put alot of work into getting into ridiculous shape and learning to dance, similar to the dedication she would show a year later for a very different but also physically challenging role in G.I. JANE. (which the Razzies would also give her Worst Actress for, the absolute clowns). And she makes the character grounded and sincere. I like her in it. Unfortunately, the worst guy you know sometimes makes a good point, and I have to concede that STRIPTEASE is not a good movie.
Moore plays Erin Grant, who started working as an exotic dancer at the Eager Beaver in Miami after she was fired from her job as a secretary at the FBI. She’s trying to save up the money to appeal her child custody case because her ex Darrell (Robert Patrick, DOUBLE DRAGON) has their 7-year-old Angela (Rumer Willis in her second movie) and uses her as bait for his scam of stealing and reselling wheelchairs. But then some unrelated trouble falls into Erin’s lap. (I would make some kind of lapdance reference here, but I’m too proud. So forget it.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Bergman, Anne V. Coates, Armand Assante, Burt Reynolds, Carl Hiaasen, Demi Moore, Florida, Howard Shore, Pandora Peaks, Robert Patrick, Rumer Willis, strippers, Stuart Pankin, Ving Rhames
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025
August 17, 2005
I have honestly been curious about SUPERCROSS, a.k.a. SUPERCROSS: THE MOVIE, for twenty years now. My curiosity has been satiated. I am now SUPERCROSS: THE VIEWER.
I think I saw a trailer or two for it but I’m sure most people never heard it of it. I’d bet it was heavily advertised on relevant sports broadcasts and not as much for the rest of us. I noticed on the credits that it was a production of “Clear Channel Entertainment Motor Sports,” which I guess is part of the same Clear Channel then infamous for monopolizing the radio market. Most of us learned about them after September 11th when they released a list of songs for their stations not to play (including anything by Rage Against the Machine). I guess radio ads must not have been enough, because it only made $3.3 million toward its $30 million budget. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bart Baker, Cameron Richardson, Mike Vogel, motorcycles, Robert Carradine, Robert Patrick, Sophia Bush, Steve Boyum
Posted in Reviews, Sport | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2022
During this year’s October viewing I wanted to revisit a few things that I consider lesser movies from directors I like, that I haven’t seen since they came out decades ago. You know – just to be sure.
I started with a forgotten later one from George A. Romero – his last non-living-dead-related movie, BRUISER. I was disappointed in it at the time, but that was 22 years ago, and I’d had high expectations for it since he hadn’t had a movie in 7 years. There was that gap between his Hollywood stint in the early ‘90s and his return in the new millennium, and it was in the middle of that period that I became obsessed with DAWN OF THE DEAD and KNIGHTRIDERS and everything. So it was a big event when he finally came back with this odd French-American co-production starring a dude from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Tarbet, Beatriz Pizano, Bebe Neuwirth, Bernie Wrightson, Bruce Kimmel, Clea DuVall, David Wechter, Elijah Wood, Famke Janssen, George Romero, Jason Flemyng, Jon Stewart, Jordana Brewster, Josh Hartnett, Kevin Williamson, Laura Harris, Leslie Hope, Nina Garbiras, Peter Stormare, Robert Patrick, Robert Rodriguez, Salma Hayek, Shawn Hatosy, The Misfits, Tom Atkins
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 39 Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2021
I don’t know if Maggie Q thinks of herself as an action star. She’s a good actress, and in recent years she’s been in horror movies and thrillers and on Designated Survivor, and she has a new sitcom coming soon. Maybe one of her best known roles was the title character in Nikita, where I assume she kicked a multitude of asses every week, but it’s not like anybody puts the original TV Nikita Peta Wilson or the original movie Nikita Anne Parillaud or the second movie version Bridget Fonda in a category with Jean-Claude Van Damme and those guys. They’re just actors without much association to the genre.
But I respect that Q specifically came out of Hong Kong martial arts films. She’s American, but as a young woman she worked as a model in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, where she was discovered and trained by Jackie Chan. Some of her Hong Kong films were Benny Chan’s GEN-X COPS 2, Ching Siu Tung’s NAKED WEAPON and Daniel Lee’s Seagal-produced DRAGON SQUAD, before coming to Hollywood for cool supporting parts in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III and LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. She’s been in a bunch of stuff since then, including the DIVERGENT series. A lesser known one I thought she was cool in was PRIEST. But I kinda thought she’d moved on from that, so as an action fan I was so thrilled when I first saw the trailer for THE PROTÉGÉ and realized she not only had a legit starring role action vehicle, but one that was made to be released in theaters! And it really happened! I saw it in one!
This was a few weeks ago, many of the reviews I saw were negative, and it’s probly pretty much gone already, but it’s on VOD now and on disc soon. So I want to put in a good word for it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Maggie Q, Martin Campbell, Michael Keaton, Richard Wenk, Robert Patrick, Samuel L. Jackson
Posted in Action, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Thursday, July 1st, 2021
July 3, 1991
There are a few interesting summer of ’91 movies – STONE COLD, THE ROCKETEER, HARLEY DAVIDSON & THE MARLBORO MAN – that I skipped in this series because I’d already reviewed them in a form I felt satisfied with. If I had more time I would’ve like to revisit them for completism, but you know how it is.
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY is one I wrote about in 2007 (with a pretty good comparison to E.T.) and more definitively in 2017 on the occasion of its 3D re-release. But when I decided to do a summer of ’91 series I knew it was the summer of T2 and it had to be included. So this is meant as a supplemental review about its place in 1991, but I think I’ve come up with some pretty meaty stuff to discuss (in addition to silly stuff about toys and video games and crap if you’re more interested in that).
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Fiedel, Edward Furlong, James Cameron, Jenette Goldstein, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Summer of 1991, William Wisher, Xander Berkeley
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 39 Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2021
DOUBLE DRAGON (1994), loosely based on the video game series, is a sci-fi fantasy action kids movie from the director of THE RETURN OF BRUNO and the producers of NATURAL BORN KILLERS. I do not personally consider it to be a good movie, but upon this rewatch I found it somewhat enjoyable on the strength of its specific only-in-the-‘90s strain of complete inexplicability.
It stars Mark Dacascos (a year after ONLY THE STRONG, a year before KICKBOXER 5 and CRYING FREEMAN) and Scott Wolf (the same year Party of Five started) as martial artist brothers, Alyssa Milano (in the window between Who’s the Boss? and EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE) as the leader of a vigilante group, and Robert Patrick (who had only done FIRE IN THE SKY and two T-1000 cameos since T2) as an evil gang leader/businessman obsessed with obtaining an ancient Chinese medallion that would give him super powers. It takes place in the cyberpunky post-The-Big-Quake New Angeles in the futuristic year of 2007, with all the satirical billboards and colorful street gangs that implies. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Al Leong, Alyssa Milano, Andy Dick, Chiodo Brothers, Don Murphy, George Hamilton, Imperial Entertainment, James Yukich, Jeff Imada, Julia Nickson, Leon Russom, Mark Dacascos, Michael Davis, Neal Shusterman, Nils Allen Stewart, Paul Dini, Peter Gould, Robert Patrick, Roger Yuan, Ron Yuan, Scott Wolf, Vanna White
Posted in Action, Reviews, Videogame | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, September 6th, 2017
In the part of my brain dedicated to Favorite Movies, James Cameron’s TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY sits on the top shelf with all the best and strongest. It was the definition of knock-you-through-the-back-of-the-theater summer blockbuster when it arrived in 1991, and my love for it has only deepened in the intervening quarter century.
Some big budget FX movies arguably get by on technological gimmicks that lose power as years pass, but not this one. It matters nothing that the groundbreaking, reality melting digital effects of the liquid metal T-1000 (Robert Patrick, THE MARINE) no longer cause jaws to drop, because in fact T2 is more impressive as a document of the time before computer imagery largely replaced old school stunts and sets and locations. No matter how many times and ways people and vehicles and buildings and cities and countries and planets have been elaborately destroyed by computers in the summers since, the thrill of T2 is not gone. For example the semi vs. motorcycles, helicopter vs. truck and other attempts to quash the relentless pursuit of the T-1000 are still exhilarating.
Rewatching every few years doesn’t wear out T2’s spectacle. Instead it amplifies the themes that animate the movie’s soul. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward Furlong, James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, William Wisher
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 74 Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
aka D-TOX
Here’s a movie that brings a new angle to my Badass Auteur Theory. If this starred Ben Affleck or Ewan McGregor or somebody it would just be a mediocre stalker thriller from the director of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. But since it stars Sylvester Stallone we can only see it in the context of his body of work. It forces us to look at it as a Sylvester Stallone vehicle and compare it to CLIFFHANGER and stuff. So it has the advantage of being an interesting tangent in his filmography.
Stallone plays Jake Malloy, former city cop turned FBI agent. The wikipedia entry makes me think he was supposed to be a Seattle cop, but I didn’t pick up on that from the movie and it wasn’t filmed here. Anyway, he’s on the trail of a serial killer who targets cops. He’s been chasing this guy for 6 months but he’s not in so deep he doesn’t have a personal life. He buys an expensive ring so he can propose to his girl (Dina Meyer), so I think you know what that means. He better own a black suit.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charles S. Dutton, Courtney B. Vance, Dina Meyer, Jeffrey Wright, Jim Gillespie, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Patrick, Sean Patrick Flanery, Stephen Lang, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Berenger
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2013
I don’t know if this is true but I heard it’s good luck for movie critics to start a year with a Clint Eastwood review. So I saved TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE for the occasion.
It’s a pretty standard mainstream feel-good-about-everything-at-the-end father-daughter relationship drama, but I couldn’t resist it because Clint plays the stubborn old grump dad and Amy Adams plays the daughter. She’s pissed off and sarcastic through half the movie but I’m still powerless in the face of her charms. I’m sorry.
Here’s the situation: Gus (Clint) is a veteran scout for the Braves baseball team, sent to evaluate some young hot shot out in North Carolina (Scott Eastwood). But Gus is secretly losing his eyesight and openly losing favor in the organization to a young douchebag (Matthew Lillard) who prefers modern methods involving computers and statistics. Gus’s best friend (John Goodman with an impressive mustache) worries they’re gonna drop him if something goes wrong, so he begs Gus’s estranged lawyer daughter Mickey (Adams) to come keep an eye on him. Meanwhile, a young pitching-phenom-turned-scout who Gus likes (Justin Timberlake) helps out and tries to woo Mickey.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Adams, baseball, Clint Eastwood, Ed Lauter, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, Robert Lorenz, Robert Patrick, Scott Eastwood
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 23 Comments »
Monday, September 17th, 2012
I always thought COP LAND was a sequel to WESTWORLD, but I guess it’s actually a police drama about a small town in New Jersey set up by the mob to shelter corrupt New York cops outside of the city limits. Could use some out of control robots obviously but otherwise it’s a good movie.
As the movie opens Freddie (Sylvester Stallone) is in a small diner where cops hang out, playing a cop-themed pinball machine. That’s how he spends his birthday. He’s drunk and can’t stop playing, is so into it he takes his sheriff keys to go open up a parking meter and get more quarters. This is him, playing a game at being a cop, watching the city cops talk, they get mad that he’s looking at them. And he can’t even hear what they’re saying anyway because he went deaf in one ear saving a drowning girl when he was young. It keeps him off the NYPD and makes him have to keep having people repeat things to him.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Annabella Sciorra, Debbie Harry, Edie Falco, Harvey Keitel, James Mangold, Janeane Garofalo, Malik Yoba, Method Man, Michael Rapaport, Paul Calderon, Peter Berg, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Robert Patrick, Sylvester Stallone
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 99 Comments »
