Note: as usual, I recommend reading this only after you’ve seen the movie.
How the hell do you follow a movie with a classic freeway cars vs. tank battle and a legendary 27.86 mile cars vs. planes gun/grappling hook/wrestling fight? Well, we already had a good idea from the trailers: with cars that skydive and jump from skyscraper to skyscraper and with Jason Statham. The day after my first viewing I feel like FURIOUS SEVEN is probly not as good as FAST FIVE or FURIOUS 6, but it’s in the same range at least, which is a feat. And due to real life this silly fictional world turns very emotional at the end. I suspect that despite all the effort put into automotive insanity this will primarily be remembered as the one that says goodbye to Paul Walker.
It’s a blessing because really, when has a tragically passed-on star been able to have such a meta farewell in a movie? The character of Brian O’Conner gets to drive off into the sunset and the public gets to share in the send off as a narrating Vin Diesel/Dominic Torretto pay tribute simultaneously in and out of character. Heath Ledger might’ve had a better last big performance, but he was left hanging on the side of a building.
(It’s a little unclear what it means on the movie level, though. Are Brian and Mia and the kids driving off to be far away from Dom so they can be sure to stay out of trouble? Or is Dom just not planning to visit his own sister, best friend, niece and nephew if he’s not shooting guns anymore? Maybe he’s just assuming that now that he’s a dad Brian’s not gonna hang out anymore?) (read the rest of this shit…)
PITCH BLACK put Vin Diesel on the radar, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS put him above the title. But it was his work as an independent filmmaker that got him into Hollywood in the first place. His short film MULTI-FACIAL (1995) shows what must’ve been his frustrations with auditioning for acting gigs. Like HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE‘s Bobby Taylor his character is an actor who keeps running into a brick wall in auditions, and the bricks are molded from the limited imaginations of casting directors chained to racial stereotypes and cliches.
But the Diesel version is a little different because he’s coming at it specifically from a mixed-race perspective. His character in the movie tries to pitch people’s inability to distinguish his race as an advantage, leaving his options open for playing many different ethnicities. It’s a strong point that doubles as an acting reel and calling card, but sometimes it’s embarrassing. The Al Pacino imitation I can let slide, but the freestyle rap is not cutting it in my opinion. Stick to breakdancing, Vin.
Peter “Star Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt, ZERO DARK THIRTY) is a wannabe legendary space outlaw, a good fighter with a cool breather mask and ship who takes gigs from unsavory characters retrieving rare objects and stuff. A Transporter, if you will. When he finds something called “the orb” for a scary space guy with the scary space name of Rhonan the Accuser, he learns that it endangers everybody in the galaxy, and he decides he’s against that. So he teams up with an alien lady trying to snatch it from him (Zoe Saldana, but green this time instead of AVATAR blue), two bounty hunters trying to capture him (Bradley Cooper [MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN] and Vin Diesel, both voicing cartoons), and a psycho they met in prison (Dave Bautista, RIDDICK) to try to get it somewhere safe, wherever the fuck that would be. I don’t think they discuss throwing it into a volcano like a lord of the rings would do. (read the rest of this shit…)
The first time we see Riddick in his new movie RIDDICK he’s buried under rocks, okie noodling a dumbass flying space lizard that mistakes him for a corpse. He’s been left for dead on the planet “not Furya” by the Necromongers from CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, just like the planet earth tried to leave the Riddick series for dead after they found out it was the type of movies that had bad guys called the Necromongers. But as he’s demonstrated before, Riddick and his series are survivors. (Don’t get him started about it though, he’ll narrate your ear off.)
Ever since CHRONICLES in 2004 some of us have wanted to see that sequel set up at the end, where (NINE YEAR OLD SPOILER) Riddick has accidentally become the king of the aforementioned death-worshipping, statue-shaped-spaceship-flying warrior race. This is not exactly that sequel. We just find out through some awkward narration and a brief Karl Urban cameo that they got rid of Riddick by pretending they’d bring him to his birth planet and then bringing him to a different planet and breaking off a cliff that he’s standing on. Ha ha! Riddick fell for a Wile E. Coyote.
The last third of this movie is a pretty fun, mildy anti-climactic rehash of PITCH BLACK – Riddick and mercenaries declare an unwieldy truce and earn each others’ begrudging respect while fighting CGI alien monsters on a dark rainy dirt planet. But the first 2/3 is easily the best of the series so far. (read the rest of this shit…)
Ladies and gentlemen, the title is FURIOUS 6. They’ve been advertising it as FAST & FURIOUS 6, and every time I see that I think “if the last one was FAST FIVE then why can’t this be FURIOUS SIX?” Well, the actual movie says FURIOUS 6. And this is not the first time that the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series has come through for me. We’re family.
Director Justin Lin returns for his fourth and final installment, and I hope they gave him a hell of a gold watch. When he came along there was this one really enjoyable POINT BREAK ripoff and one ridiculous sequel and he had to follow up without the original cast or characters. The series was left for dead. But he did a great job with TOKYO DRIFT, then reunited Vin Diesel and Paul Walker for FAST AND FURIOUS, then brought back almost the entire team and added The Rock for FAST FIVE. With FURIOUS SIX he takes everything he learned from those movies and supercharges the engine and adds spoilers and shit. Having the whole team (minus Don Omar and Tego Calderon, plus Michelle Rodriguez) together isn’t a novelty the second time around, so to make up for that he kicks the action sequences into ridiculous new extremes. Which is saying alot in a FAST AND FURIOUS – have you seen these movies? (read the rest of this shit…)
No joke, I never saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN before. I’ve never been big on war movies and I think back when it was a recent movie I was real cynical and suspicious of any type of flagwaving. I thought movies like this were just brainwashing kids to join up in case they needed to blow up Iraq again.
But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wow, I never would’ve predicted this: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS has aged well. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready for it back when I first saw it. Skimming over my intentionally pretentious and off-topic original review I can see that I saw it as an attempt to exploit a fad. This is supported by all the old dvd extras (now on blu-ray) which make a huge deal about it being based on a Vibe article about street racing, and how they went to watch races and ran from the cops and all the cars and extras in the car show scenes are real racers who responded to a web posting. They wanted us to know this “street racing” was a real thing happening somewhere at night, and director Rob Cohen and friends are on the front lines ready to show us what’s going down. (read the rest of this shit…)
First of all, let’s take a moment to pause and reflect on the miracle of the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series. It started in 2000, a studio b-movie, a dumb subculture exploiter with hot up-and-coming stars, quite good for a Rob Cohen movie and with a star-making performance by Mr. Vin Diesel, but undeniably corny. I don’t think anybody could predict that 11 years later it would be Universal’s most valued franchise/trademark/anti-intellectualproperty or that a part 5 would be bigger and better than the previous ones. Especially when you consider that Diesel ditched out on part 2 and Paul Walker bailed before part 3 and that even the naming of the movies poses a challenge. You don’t see I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER still coming out with new chapters but they keep doing FASTs and FURIOUSes even after running out of sensible combinations of those words. (read the rest of this shit…)
In the popular song and cartoon RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, “reindeer games” are the fun group activities that all the popular reindeers enjoy but Rudolph is excluded from due to his low social caste. In the movie REINDEER GAMES the character “Monster” (Gary Sinise) uses it as a synonym for “funny business,” something that he threatens Rudy (Ben Affleck) not to participate in. This misuse of Christmas terminology doesn’t bother Rudy or probly occur to him, but it does bug him when Clarence Williams III keeps referring to “Santa’s dwarves.” So he does have a certain amount of respect for Christmas tradition.
REINDEER GAMES is not a Christmas movie in the sense that it’s about Christmas, or about somebody coming to a realization about the meaning of Christmas, at least not a very convincing one. But I can guarantee you this much: it takes place in December, with a heist planned for Christmas Eve, and with the participators all dressed as Santa Claus. So there are some discussions of cranberries and what not. Maybe a mention of sugar plums, I can’t remember for sure. (Have you ever had sugar plums? They’re actually really fuckin good. I wish I knew a place that sold them. I might have visions of them dancing in my head now that I remembered them.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Remember around the time you first heard about Vin Diesel, you would read all this shit about how he wasn’t just some dumb musclehead, he was a multi-talented enigma, he directed a short that caught Steve Spielberg’s eye, blah blah blah? But then he just did a bunch of action and action-like movies, many of them not very good, turned down the sequels, never got his HANNIBAL movie off the ground, then eventually had to stoop to the Hulk-Hogan-in-MR.-NANNY route to get a hit, and everybody wrote him off?
Well, I think he might get things rolling again, but we’ll see. And even if he doesn’t, it turns out he’s got one role under his belt that fits that “more than meets the eye” hype and shows that he’s got more range than just the differences between Riddick and Dominic Teretto (hint: Riddick wears goggles). (read the rest of this shit…)
WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHIT OUT OF VERN & OUTLAWVERN.COM
if that's your thing:
1. Patreon
Toss me a couple bucks a month, support the good shit, also get access to a bunch of exclusive writing. This is my primary source of writing money that has allowed me to cut down to part time at the day job. Thank you!
2. Buy my books from your local bookseller or somebody
(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.
3. If you ever buy from Amazon, go through my links or search engines
(you pay the same amount you were gonna pay anyway they cut me a little slice)
I also have an Amazon UK one:
(I can't get the search box widget to work anymore, so click on MOONWALKER and then search for what you want.)
4. My exciting line of fashion and leisure products
(I get a couple bucks per item, you get a cool t-shirt, mug or lifestyle item)
5. Spread the word
Tell your friends about my reviews and my books and everything. Only cool people though please, we don't need a bunch of suckers and/or chumps around here.
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “@Fred, probably you’ve broken through to that next level of celebrity and have a fan account. Or maybe an evil…” Nov 17, 05:20
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Hi @GlaiveRobber – I think you raise good points here. I think Trump is pretty damn hardy for his age,…” Nov 17, 03:34
Franchise Fred on Man, I don’t know.: “Do I have a Letterboxd account? I never use it. Is there a fake Franchise Fred????” Nov 16, 20:49
Glaive Robber on Man, I don’t know.: “Skani, many thanks for the reply. I may have been a little misunderstood. I do honestly think there should have…” Nov 16, 20:24
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Hey Fred, I’m glad some of this nonsense has been helpful to someone. Other than a LinkedIn account under my…” Nov 16, 20:18
Franchise Fred on Man, I don’t know.: “Skani, I have appreciated your very level headed posts about some very volatile subjects in this thread and would even…” Nov 16, 17:16
Skani on Juror #2: “That’s pretty hilarious, Milton Friedman and Chomsky. No, yeah, that’s about right, as far as my read on Eastwood –…” Nov 16, 14:42
Miguel Hombre on Juror #2: “Man oh man, I do not want to start a war on another thread about politics – but since Eastwood…” Nov 16, 14:31
Skani on Juror #2: “Miguel, that’s all very well-said, and I did not know that shit. I am a more casual Clint fan, but…” Nov 16, 14:03
Miguel Hombre on Juror #2: “Skani: This is also in no way a defense of Zaslav either – but Warner Brothers has released a very…” Nov 16, 13:34
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Actually, I should say — a lot of my analysis of media is based on written news, and I can’t…” Nov 16, 13:25
Skani on Man, I don’t know.: “Hey, @GlaiveRobber – To your first point about masculinity. There definitely is a “there” there with the concept of “toxic…” Nov 16, 13:13
VERN on Juror #2: “The problem with that is that the investment of streaming movies is just promoting your streaming service, or your stock…” Nov 16, 09:52
Note: as usual, I recommend reading this only after you’ve seen the movie.
PITCH BLACK put Vin Diesel on the radar, 
Peter “Star Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt, 
The first time we see Riddick in his new movie RIDDICK he’s buried under rocks, okie noodling a dumbass flying space lizard that mistakes him for a corpse. He’s been left for dead on the planet “not Furya” by the Necromongers from 
Ladies and gentlemen, the title is FURIOUS 6. They’ve been advertising it as FAST & FURIOUS 6, and every time I see that I think “if the last one was FAST FIVE then why can’t this be FURIOUS SIX?” Well, the actual movie says FURIOUS 6. And this is not the first time that the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series has come through for me. We’re family.
No joke, I never saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN before. I’ve never been big on war movies and I think back when it was a recent movie I was real cynical and suspicious of any type of flagwaving. I thought movies like this were just brainwashing kids to join up in case they needed to blow up Iraq again.
released June 22nd, 2001
First of all, let’s take a moment to pause and reflect on the miracle of the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series. It started in 2000, a studio b-movie, a dumb subculture exploiter with hot up-and-coming stars, quite good for a Rob Cohen movie and with a star-making performance by Mr. Vin Diesel, but undeniably corny. I don’t think anybody could predict that 11 years later it would be Universal’s most valued franchise/trademark/anti-intellectualproperty or that a part 5 would be bigger and better than the previous ones. Especially when you consider that Diesel ditched out on part 2 and Paul Walker bailed before part 3 and that even the naming of the movies poses a challenge. You don’t see I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER still coming out with new chapters but they keep doing FASTs and FURIOUSes even after running out of sensible combinations of those words.
In the popular song and cartoon RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, “reindeer games” are the fun group activities that all the popular reindeers enjoy but Rudolph is excluded from due to his low social caste. In the movie REINDEER GAMES the character “Monster” (Gary Sinise) uses it as a synonym for “funny business,” something that he threatens Rudy (Ben Affleck) not to participate in. This misuse of Christmas terminology doesn’t bother Rudy or probly occur to him, but it does bug him when Clarence Williams III keeps referring to “Santa’s dwarves.” So he does have a certain amount of respect for Christmas tradition.
Remember around the time you first heard about Vin Diesel, you would read all this shit about how he wasn’t just some dumb musclehead, he was a multi-talented enigma, he directed a short that caught Steve Spielberg’s eye, blah blah blah? But then he just did a bunch of action and action-like movies, many of them not very good, turned down the sequels, never got his HANNIBAL movie off the ground, then eventually had to stoop to the Hulk-Hogan-in-MR.-NANNY route to get a hit, and everybody wrote him off?
