Posts Tagged ‘Sven-Ole Thorsen’
Monday, March 21st, 2022
Would you believe I’d never seen NEMESIS (1992) before? I’d heard claims it was one of the better movies for director Albert Pyun and/or star Olivier Gruner, but I didn’t get around to it until now. From the cover I always thought it was gonna be kind of a TERMINATOR knock off, so I was very surprised and impressed when it opened seeming more like BLADE RUNNER in the style of THE KILLER.
It starts in Los Angeles, 2027 A.D., which does not look overly futuristic, but is covered in an eerie orangy brown haze. Alex Rain (Gruner, who had only been in ANGEL TOWN) is in a hotel for a liaison with a woman, but then he shoots her in the head, revealing a bunch of wires and electrodes. “God damn cop,” she says. “God damn terrorist” he replies. Though he very poorly delivers a one-liner to her exploded head, he looks very cool when he walks out of the hotel with a Chow Yun Fat style tie-overcoat-and-sunglasses look, passing a bunch of people in the hallway who take a minute to figure out he’s the cop who shot their friend. But then they follow him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Albert Pyun, Branscombe Richmond, Brion James, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, cyberpunk, Deborah Shelton, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Gatti, Marjean Holden, Marjorie Monaghan, Olivier Gruner, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Thomas Jane, Tim Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto
Posted in Reviews | 22 Comments »
Wednesday, January 19th, 2022
THE QUICK AND THE DEAD has a very traditional western story, other than featuring a woman – Sharon Stone (ABOVE THE LAW) as Ellen – in the role of vengeance-seeking gunslinger. You’ve got your western town desperate to get out from under the yoke of a cruel ruler (Gene Hackman [THE SPLIT, PRIME CUT] as John Herod), and your mysterious drifter in town trying to get up the guts to shoot him for killing her father in front of her. All the shootists with the fastest guns and biggest mouths are coming in for a quick draw tournament, and she enters in hopes of getting a shot at her enemy.
But I think it’s truly distinct among ‘90s westerns, with two major things that make it stand out. One is the incredible cast. It includes great western icons: Woody Strode, Roberts Blossom, Pat Hingle, and of course Hackman in a performance arguably on par with UNFORGIVEN. It has colorful roles for genre favorites: Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Mark Boone Jr., Tobin Bell, Sven-Ole Thorsen. It has Gary Sinise immediately after his star-making, Oscar-nominated performance in FORREST GUMP. And it has two right-before-they-exploded co-stars: pre-L.A. CONFIDENTIAL Russell Crowe as former outlaw turned pacifist preacher Cort, and known-for-WHAT’S-EATING-GILBERT-GRAPE Leonardo DiCaprio as The Kid, the cocky, baby-faced son of Herod entering the contest just to get the attention of his asshole dad. We actually see The Kid mobbed by young women at one of the shooting matches, something that would become more familiar to DiCaprio a year later when ROMEO + JULIET came out. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Silvestri, Dante Spinotti, Fay Masterson, Gary Sinise, Gene Hackman, John Sayles, Keith David, Kevin Conway, Lance Henriksen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Boone Jr., Olivia Burnette, Pat Hingle, Pietro Scalia, Roberts Blossom, Russell Crowe, Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, Sharon Stone, Simon Moore, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Tobin Bell, Woody Strode
Posted in Reviews, Western | 28 Comments »
Monday, January 2nd, 2017
In PINK CADILLAC, Clint Eastwood plays Tommy Nowak, a skip tracer who has to bring in a woman who jumped bail after getting blamed for her stupid husband’s stupid prison buddies’ counterfeiting scheme. Of course he catches her, but ends up protecting her and falling for her and what not. Do not get this confused with the one where he’s a cop who has to escort a mob trial witness from Vegas to Phoenix and falls for her. That’s THE GAUNTLET. That one has a bus, not a Cadillac.
I’d say this qualifies as an action comedy. It takes itself seriously, it’s not broad like the EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE movies, but Clint goes further than his usual wry one-liners, because Nowak loves to wear disguises and play characters. In the opening he catches a guy by making him think he won a date with Dolly Parton from a country radio station. Just for this he does a “Crazy Carl Cummings” DJ persona and a briefly-British-accented limo driver. Since he later quibbles with his boss over gas mileage I really wonder how he paid for the limo and costume. I guess he just thinks it’s worth the expense to fuck with people. During the drive back to Sacramento he asks the guy what kind of music he wants to listen to, and when he doesn’t make a choice, Tommy puts on some Dolly Parton. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernadette Peters, Bill Moseley, Bryan Adams, Buddy Van Horn, Clint Eastwood, Frances Fisher, Geoffrey Lewis, James Cromwell, John Dennis Johnston, John Eskrow, Michael Des Barres, Paul Benjamin, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Timothy Carhart, white supremacists
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Monday, September 12th, 2011
KULL THE CONQUEROR is the story of Kull (Kevin Sorbo) but in my opinion it is kind of unfair to call him a conqueror. Honestly it’s more of a right-place-at-the-right-time kind of deal, like the end of CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK or like winning on Cash Cab. Let me explain how it all goes down.
At the beginning Kull is in a big battle with a bunch of knights. But it turns out to be a test. He’s trying to earn his way into the king’s elite army. He almost passes the test of a blindfolded flaming-sword duel with Thomas Ian Griffith (EXCESSIVE FORCE, Valek in JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES) but then Griffith finds out Kull’s from Atlantis and says forget it, we don’t work with barbarians. Destroyers maybe, barbarians – no fucking way. And this was the Hyborian age, so it was before they had laws about employment discrimination. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Atlantis, barbarians, Charles Edward Pogue, Kevin Sorbo, Robert E. Howard, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Thomas Ian Griffith, Tia Carrere
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 48 Comments »
Friday, July 30th, 2010
BEST OF THE BEST 4: WITHOUT WARNING finds our hero Tommy Lee (still Phillip Rhee, also directing again) wandering into yet another action movie subgenre – this time he’s the reluctant badass who gets stuck trying to stop a plot by heavily armed, highly organized commandos. So it’s DIE HARD in a BEST OF THE BEST. In the three years since part 3 Tommy’s had a daughter and had a wife pass away. All he wants to do is bake his daughter a cake for her birthday, but coincidentally his friend at the mini-mart who he asks for baking advice has a computer expert daughter who’s fleeing from Russian counterfeiters with a disc they just stole. And of course Tommy ends up stuck with the disc and everybody trying to kill him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, DTV sequels, Ernie Hudson, Phillip Rhee, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Tobin Bell
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Monday, October 14th, 2002
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Wow. Bob and David are everywhere right now, and it sounds like they’re having a great time. I still don’t know if I’m going to be able to get into the insane benefit show they’re part of in a few weeks, and I missed this. Still, if we had to have anyone cover it for us, thank god Vern was the one who went. You’ll see why when you read this…
Boys–
I know how you feel about film festivals. You’re for them, right? I think one of you said you were. I’ve seen a couple good pictures at the Seattle International Film Festival but that’s about it for me. Until today, when I decided to venture south to the Olympia Film Festival. And I’m real glad I did.
Usually I avoid Olympia. I know it’s our state capital, it once had a fine brewery and they got lots of college kids who brag because the rock band Sleater-Kinney was named after a street they still have near there. But I mean come on. The street isn’t even that good. In the downtown area the buildings are too far apart, and everything is closed. At least on Sunday. Anyway today they finally got a reason for me to go there: ON DEADLY GROUND. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Bob Thornton, Joan Chen, John C. McGinley, Michael Caine, Mike Starr, R. Lee Ermey, Seagalogy, Steven Seagal, Sven-Ole Thorsen
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Seagal, Thriller | 9 Comments »
