The Warrior’s Way (2010)
42% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 24 reviews)
Runtime: 100 minutes
Directed by: Sngmoo Lee
Starring: Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush, Danny Huston
From: Rogue/Relativity Media
Here is a movie that I saw advertised on the sports channels last week and while I hadn’t heard too many good things about it and I knew it was made 3 years ago and sat on the shelf the entire time, I still wanted to return to Downtown Disney (and the wonderful Coca-Coca Freestyle machines they now have at the movie theatre there) and it sounded more interesting to me than anything else playing there that I hadn’t seen yet.
Also intriguing was the movie’s interesting cast, the plot of cowboys vs. samurai ninjas, and the odd cast. It being on the shelf for so long, the first-time director being a film professor at NYU (and boy does that show, once I saw the film), and that kind of movie getting a wide release made it a curio and I wanted to check it out. In hindsight I wish I would have seen some oddball releases, like that Korean movie D-Wars (the one with the dragons; you probably don’t remember it), which I saw on DVD later and what a strange and wacky film that is. One of these days I need to watch that again and do a review for it. You wouldn’t believe the story or some of the bad storytelling they do. Yet there’s some legit thrilling action.
But onto this movie. Despite it being more loony than I expected, I felt let down and I thought it should have been quite a bit better than it was. No wonder it spent time unreleased.
The plot is that a warrior assassin in a nameless Asian country in what I presume was in the late 19th century mows down the members of a rival clan. His clan is called… Sad Flutes. Honest. That’s because of the sound a slashed throat makes, or so they explain in a wacky way. He refuses to kill the last living member of the clan, as it’s a baby girl. He’s shamed so he keeps the cute little girl and they go to America to escape and visit a friend. They get to the town of Lode (Load would be more accurate) and they meet up with the townsfolk, many of whom are retired from the circus and still walk around in their costumes! I swear this is true. He gets to know Lynne (Bosworth), a troubled woman who is looking for revenge against the Colonel (Huston), a bad guy who is quite evil and for some reason before he violates a woman she must have good teeth. What a quirk. He’s also masked due to having part of his face burned. Meanwhile, Yang’s old master (Lung Ti) and his band of merry men are on the look for him and track him down to Lode. Yang and Lynne develop a relationship that revolves around knifeplay and throwing rocks at each other’s heads. Don’t ask.
I don’t know what impression you had of the movie before it came out via ads and trailers or what have you, but there isn’t a whole lot of action to see. I had heard this bit of news beforehand so I wasn’t too disappointed by it. Much of the story is Lynne looking for revenge and Yang trying to escape his past. Not all that exciting. The action stuff can be fun at times but the way it was shot usually turned me off. I mean, to expose the big secret or whatever you want to call it, but just about all of the movie is greenscreened. Meaning, things were filmed on a stage and everything was filled in via computer. That can lead to trouble when it looks phony. Heck, the most famous example to use that process, 300, didn’t blow me away the one time I saw it. Talk about an overrated film. Here, it lead to some nice visuals at times but it otherwise looks really phony and it’s distracting. The same with the CGI used. It’s just way too stylized and that seemed to be the focus rather than delivering on a good story or entertaining action.
Speaking of the action, what you saw of it was usually not that fun to watch. It wasn’t fancy swordplay that Yang uses by any means, and the other stuff usually didn’t capture my interest. That even applies to the final 20 minutes or so when the fit hits the shan and you finally get the ending action setpiece, and you see things like costumed circus freaks wielding guns! Like I said, despite its odd touches, it’s not as exciting as it may sound. The obvious (at least to me) homages to better things didn't help out matters either. I'd rather watch those better films instead.
And the ending… one conflict has a decent resolution but the other one did not appeal to me at all. Without giving too much away, not a lot is shown. They do something else instead and what could have been a cool showdown was ruined. After that, it gets really goofy and involves the Arctic (again, don’t ask) and wow, I wish I could have enjoyed this more than I did. It’s more dull than you’d expect and I wish it would have been done a more traditional way.
I'll be back Sunday night with a new review.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
A Random Aside
I’ll mention quickly a pair of videos that I watched (more than once, at that). Both are from a Norwegian nostalgia show-I swear it’s true-called Gylne Tider. From looking online, every few years some random dudes look for celebrities and interview them about life after being at the top. I don’t want to use the team “has-been”, but… anyway, the first two shows they did, it was local celebrities. The last one and the new one, though, has faces that Americans and Europeans would recognize.
The first video became a viral hit just this past Friday. It’s because it’s what turned out to be a 6 minute long promo video (!) for the latest edition of the show, and it has the strangest collection of has-been celebrities you can imagine, lip-synching to a late 80’s charity recording of the Beatles hit Let It Be! Everyone’s green-screened on a beach and it’s like you just ingested shrooms from the moment that you see Roger Moore’s spoken word introduction at the beginning to seeing the likes of Tonya Harding, Jason Alexander, Bud Bundy from Married With Children, Philip Michael Thomas, Dolph Lundgren, Judd Nelson, Glenn Close, Dee Snider, Right Said Fred, and many others lip-synching. There are also brief appearances from the likes of Pam Anderson, Mickey Rourke and the recently departed Leslie Nielsen.
It’s no wonder it became a viral hit… and sadly, it’s no wonder that the producers of the show are idiots and are going around the Internet trying to have the video taken down all of the streaming sites! Doesn’t make much sense to me, the show gets by far the most amount of world publicity it has ever gotten, and they want people NOT to see what is causing all the buzz. What narrow-minded fools.
Anyhow, I hope that they don’t find the French site I’m linking to that still has the video up. You’ll get a wacky French ad right before the video starts, so you can enjoy that too.
Here it is.
The second video I found on my own, and it’s the same show plugging their previous season, which was back in ’06. The theme then was “80’s” so that’s why they have washed up people from the era lip-synching We Are The World! It’s not quite like the newer video, but then again what is? Besides a whole gaggle of singers (quite a few of whom I presume are European peeps that never made it big here) there’s also the likes of Lorenzo Lamas, Louis Gossett Jr., Rudy from The Cosby Show, Larry Hagman, and even Richard Kiel. You also get to see that some celebrities today look worse than they did back then. Limahl (The Neverending Story dude) has different hair… or rather, different atrocious hair. And, for some reason Bonnie Tyler now looks exactly like Wynonna Judd!
Here’s that video.
What wacky and great things they are.
I’ll be back Wednesday night, and there I’ll plan on reviewing a movie now out on the big screen.
The first video became a viral hit just this past Friday. It’s because it’s what turned out to be a 6 minute long promo video (!) for the latest edition of the show, and it has the strangest collection of has-been celebrities you can imagine, lip-synching to a late 80’s charity recording of the Beatles hit Let It Be! Everyone’s green-screened on a beach and it’s like you just ingested shrooms from the moment that you see Roger Moore’s spoken word introduction at the beginning to seeing the likes of Tonya Harding, Jason Alexander, Bud Bundy from Married With Children, Philip Michael Thomas, Dolph Lundgren, Judd Nelson, Glenn Close, Dee Snider, Right Said Fred, and many others lip-synching. There are also brief appearances from the likes of Pam Anderson, Mickey Rourke and the recently departed Leslie Nielsen.
It’s no wonder it became a viral hit… and sadly, it’s no wonder that the producers of the show are idiots and are going around the Internet trying to have the video taken down all of the streaming sites! Doesn’t make much sense to me, the show gets by far the most amount of world publicity it has ever gotten, and they want people NOT to see what is causing all the buzz. What narrow-minded fools.
Anyhow, I hope that they don’t find the French site I’m linking to that still has the video up. You’ll get a wacky French ad right before the video starts, so you can enjoy that too.
Here it is.
The second video I found on my own, and it’s the same show plugging their previous season, which was back in ’06. The theme then was “80’s” so that’s why they have washed up people from the era lip-synching We Are The World! It’s not quite like the newer video, but then again what is? Besides a whole gaggle of singers (quite a few of whom I presume are European peeps that never made it big here) there’s also the likes of Lorenzo Lamas, Louis Gossett Jr., Rudy from The Cosby Show, Larry Hagman, and even Richard Kiel. You also get to see that some celebrities today look worse than they did back then. Limahl (The Neverending Story dude) has different hair… or rather, different atrocious hair. And, for some reason Bonnie Tyler now looks exactly like Wynonna Judd!
Here’s that video.
What wacky and great things they are.
I’ll be back Wednesday night, and there I’ll plan on reviewing a movie now out on the big screen.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Loose Cannons
Loose Cannons (1990)
Runtime: 94 minutes
Directed by: Bob Clark
Starring: Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, Dom DeLuise, Ronny Cox, Nancy Travis, Robert Prosky
From: Tristar
Here’s something a little unusual from me. A movie I disliked so much that I couldn’t watch more than a half hour of it. I’ll explain.
On a certain thread on a certain messageboard, some people have un-ironic love for this flick. I’ve known for a few years that a lot of people don’t like the film and find it to be off-putting (despite its very nice cast) so I was interested in finally seeing it. It wasn’t at my local Blockbuster and I am not a Netflixer (at least not yet) I had to wait until it showed up one night on Encore (yep, I’m still getting those channels for free for some reason) last month, and I watched it then… or rather, I watched it until I turned it off due to me disliking it so much.
In short, the movie is about a traditional down on his luck cop (Hackman, who wears a tremendous Washington Redskins Starter jacket; they’re a pro football team, if you don’t know) who teams up with a loony cop with multiple personalities (Aykroyd) to track down some criminals. I didn’t get to see much of the actual plan of the criminals (the opening had some guys dressed up in costume get gunned down in a boat in a horrible-looking and confusing scene) but the end result is that they’re looking for a long-lost sex tape of Hitler (!!!) That’s about all you need to know about the plot.
Now, the movie starts off OK-enough (aside from the aforementioned opening) with Hackman doing a decent job and there actually being some decent jokes. But then Aykroyd’s character comes in and things get derailed. It was an extremely off-putting character, obnoxious to the extreme and unbelievable how he was able to deduce what happened at the crimescene from the most random of clues. Not even Sherlock Holmes could have done such a thing. Hackman starts hating his new partner with an irrational anger (IMO) then what made me stop watching the film a half hour in was one scene set in an S&M club. I swear I’m not making any of the plot up, by the way. Stuff happens and one of Dan’s “wacky” personas come through to save the day, and that was WAY more off-putting and obnoxious than his usual character, I could take no more. To think that long-time veteran actor Gene hasn’t starred in too many comedies (aside from the very end of his career) and THIS was one of them. Totally baffling to me. Despite his awesome jacket*, the movie is downright horrible and should never be watched.
• In that same thread I’ve heard people say that they wish Gene would have worn that jacket in his earlier and later films, from the likes of Superman, The French Connection, and even Unforgiven. Sounds like a good idea to me.
My apologies for getting this up at this late hour, but I'll make a special post Tuesday morning where I will explain, and also post some odd videos.
Runtime: 94 minutes
Directed by: Bob Clark
Starring: Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, Dom DeLuise, Ronny Cox, Nancy Travis, Robert Prosky
From: Tristar
Here’s something a little unusual from me. A movie I disliked so much that I couldn’t watch more than a half hour of it. I’ll explain.
On a certain thread on a certain messageboard, some people have un-ironic love for this flick. I’ve known for a few years that a lot of people don’t like the film and find it to be off-putting (despite its very nice cast) so I was interested in finally seeing it. It wasn’t at my local Blockbuster and I am not a Netflixer (at least not yet) I had to wait until it showed up one night on Encore (yep, I’m still getting those channels for free for some reason) last month, and I watched it then… or rather, I watched it until I turned it off due to me disliking it so much.
In short, the movie is about a traditional down on his luck cop (Hackman, who wears a tremendous Washington Redskins Starter jacket; they’re a pro football team, if you don’t know) who teams up with a loony cop with multiple personalities (Aykroyd) to track down some criminals. I didn’t get to see much of the actual plan of the criminals (the opening had some guys dressed up in costume get gunned down in a boat in a horrible-looking and confusing scene) but the end result is that they’re looking for a long-lost sex tape of Hitler (!!!) That’s about all you need to know about the plot.
Now, the movie starts off OK-enough (aside from the aforementioned opening) with Hackman doing a decent job and there actually being some decent jokes. But then Aykroyd’s character comes in and things get derailed. It was an extremely off-putting character, obnoxious to the extreme and unbelievable how he was able to deduce what happened at the crimescene from the most random of clues. Not even Sherlock Holmes could have done such a thing. Hackman starts hating his new partner with an irrational anger (IMO) then what made me stop watching the film a half hour in was one scene set in an S&M club. I swear I’m not making any of the plot up, by the way. Stuff happens and one of Dan’s “wacky” personas come through to save the day, and that was WAY more off-putting and obnoxious than his usual character, I could take no more. To think that long-time veteran actor Gene hasn’t starred in too many comedies (aside from the very end of his career) and THIS was one of them. Totally baffling to me. Despite his awesome jacket*, the movie is downright horrible and should never be watched.
• In that same thread I’ve heard people say that they wish Gene would have worn that jacket in his earlier and later films, from the likes of Superman, The French Connection, and even Unforgiven. Sounds like a good idea to me.
My apologies for getting this up at this late hour, but I'll make a special post Tuesday morning where I will explain, and also post some odd videos.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Faster
Faster (2010)
43% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 63 reviews)
Runtime: 95 minutes
Directed by: George Tillman Jr.
Starring: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Carla Gugino
From: CBS Films
Here is a movie I saw last Friday, but it’s just now that I’ve gotten around to writing a review of it. Like the last movie I reviewed, it revolves around getting revenge… before that, though, let me mention something new at the location I saw this at, Downtown Disney.
The AMC Theatres at Walt Disney World now have a special concession stand. The other one is the same as usual, but they have a new one and it’s cafeteria-style. I had heard online that something geeky and new (at least to Florida) would be there and I wanted to try it. They have some drink machines known as Coca Cola Freestyle. It’s a machine which offers 106 (!) different flavors of Coke products. It’s mainly flavors that you can’t get anywhere else (or are foreign) such as Coca Cola Orange, Grape Vault, and Peach Sprite. The latter two are delicious, as I can personally confirm. That machine alone is enough for me to want to go there and watch movies exclusively. What a dork I am, I know.
The movie was the only thing at that time in night that I was interested in seeing. I heard some strong reviews from some messageboards so I decided to pay money to see the tale of Driver get revenge on the people who double-crossed him and killed his brother.
Like I just said, it’s a revenge tale where Rock goes after the people who killed his brother. What happened was that he, his brother, and some others participated in a bank robbery. They got away but some people track down the gang and not only acquire their robbery dough, but the brother gets gunned down. Rock goes to jail for an amount of time. He gets released and immediately goes after those people as a means of revenge. It sounds simple, but there’s also a pair of cops (Thornton, Gugino) who goes after Rock for killing those people, and there’s also a guy known as Killer (I’m not joking with the names of Killer and Driver; that’s how they’re ID’ed in the movie!) who is a British dude that was sick as a child but got better and to a preposterous degree he is successful as an adult, with fancy exotic cars, an attractive lady (Maggie Grace), and he’s a great contract killer too.
As others online have said, the character of Killer just doesn’t work. It’s way too ridiculous to believe that Killer could ever exist in the real world, or even in the world of this movie, where Driver was able to elude capture despite gunning down a few people. No way could I believe that character was real. Not to mention, what bothered most people was that the character was just annoying and a whiny twit, which I do agree with. I was more turned off by how science fiction Killer was, but to each their own.
It’s a shame as if it wasn’t for that, I would have enjoyed the movie quite a bit more. As is, even with a bad character, it wasn’t such a turn-off (like the one REALLY bad character in Iron Man 2, for example) that it completely tanked things for me. Then again, Iron Man 2 even without that one character was a wild disappointment. Anyhow, Faster still is a gritty and downbeat 70’s style movie filled with a bunch of characters that are dark and have many problems. The action is brutal, with several bullets to the head, shown in graphic detail. Rock doesn’t say too many words. The story is rather simplistic but still entertaining, if you enjoy that sort of thing. It’s just unfortunate that Killer was such a poor character. Still, I am glad that Rock has finally returned to action movies rather than dreck like The Tooth Fairy or that Escape From Witch Mountain flick.
I’ll be back Sunday night with a new review.
43% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 63 reviews)
Runtime: 95 minutes
Directed by: George Tillman Jr.
Starring: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Carla Gugino
From: CBS Films
Here is a movie I saw last Friday, but it’s just now that I’ve gotten around to writing a review of it. Like the last movie I reviewed, it revolves around getting revenge… before that, though, let me mention something new at the location I saw this at, Downtown Disney.
The AMC Theatres at Walt Disney World now have a special concession stand. The other one is the same as usual, but they have a new one and it’s cafeteria-style. I had heard online that something geeky and new (at least to Florida) would be there and I wanted to try it. They have some drink machines known as Coca Cola Freestyle. It’s a machine which offers 106 (!) different flavors of Coke products. It’s mainly flavors that you can’t get anywhere else (or are foreign) such as Coca Cola Orange, Grape Vault, and Peach Sprite. The latter two are delicious, as I can personally confirm. That machine alone is enough for me to want to go there and watch movies exclusively. What a dork I am, I know.
The movie was the only thing at that time in night that I was interested in seeing. I heard some strong reviews from some messageboards so I decided to pay money to see the tale of Driver get revenge on the people who double-crossed him and killed his brother.
Like I just said, it’s a revenge tale where Rock goes after the people who killed his brother. What happened was that he, his brother, and some others participated in a bank robbery. They got away but some people track down the gang and not only acquire their robbery dough, but the brother gets gunned down. Rock goes to jail for an amount of time. He gets released and immediately goes after those people as a means of revenge. It sounds simple, but there’s also a pair of cops (Thornton, Gugino) who goes after Rock for killing those people, and there’s also a guy known as Killer (I’m not joking with the names of Killer and Driver; that’s how they’re ID’ed in the movie!) who is a British dude that was sick as a child but got better and to a preposterous degree he is successful as an adult, with fancy exotic cars, an attractive lady (Maggie Grace), and he’s a great contract killer too.
As others online have said, the character of Killer just doesn’t work. It’s way too ridiculous to believe that Killer could ever exist in the real world, or even in the world of this movie, where Driver was able to elude capture despite gunning down a few people. No way could I believe that character was real. Not to mention, what bothered most people was that the character was just annoying and a whiny twit, which I do agree with. I was more turned off by how science fiction Killer was, but to each their own.
It’s a shame as if it wasn’t for that, I would have enjoyed the movie quite a bit more. As is, even with a bad character, it wasn’t such a turn-off (like the one REALLY bad character in Iron Man 2, for example) that it completely tanked things for me. Then again, Iron Man 2 even without that one character was a wild disappointment. Anyhow, Faster still is a gritty and downbeat 70’s style movie filled with a bunch of characters that are dark and have many problems. The action is brutal, with several bullets to the head, shown in graphic detail. Rock doesn’t say too many words. The story is rather simplistic but still entertaining, if you enjoy that sort of thing. It’s just unfortunate that Killer was such a poor character. Still, I am glad that Rock has finally returned to action movies rather than dreck like The Tooth Fairy or that Escape From Witch Mountain flick.
I’ll be back Sunday night with a new review.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Fighting Back
Fighting Back (1982)
Runtime: 98 minutes
Directed by: Lewis Teague
Starring: Tom Skerritt, Patti Lupone, Michael Sarrazin, Yaphet Kotto, David Rasche
From: Dino de Laurentiis Company
Unfortunately, this review will start off with death. Aside from Leslie Nielsen passing away yesterday, there’s also The Empire Strikes Back director Irwin Kirschner passing away today; now, besides Empire, the only movies I’ve seen from him are the James Bond movie that actually isn’t a part of the series called Never Say Never Again and the other is Robocop 2. Neither movie I think too highly of, to say the least, but I’m sure his other films are better than that and Empire will never not be awesome. So, RIP to him.
Also passing away recently was producer Dino de Laurentiis, who produced a variety of films from the 70’s up to recent times. His name became infamous as it got connected to such schlock as the first King Kong remake in the 70’s, a killer whale movie called Orca, the Flash Gordon remake, and some others. Yet, he also produced serious things, like Serpico, Death Wish, and Conan the Barbarian. So, his name shouldn’t be looked down upon if it’s attached to a movie.
This film, Fighting Back, is from him and released by Paramount. Now, Dino didn’t produce any of the Death Wish sequels, so it’s not a surprise that the same year the first sequel came out, he’d go back to the well himself and do something similar. This has never been released on even DVD, but it was on Netflix Instant. I don’t have that service but I was still able to track it down and watch the film.
The movie is about a typical Italian family, headed by patriarch John D’Angelo (Skerritt) who runs a deli in Philadelphia and sad to say for them, their neighborhood has turned to crap, with crime and other bad things ruling the day. He decides to live up to the title of the movie after having a ridiculously bad set of circumstances happen to him one after another. He and his wife were driving around one day when they interfered with a pimp slapping his ho! I kid you not. That lead to a car chase and an accident results in a miscarriage. Then, his mother walks in on a robbery and the robbers try to pry a ring off of her finger; it was stuck, so the entire finger gets cut off with shears! This all happens in the span of a day or two at the most. Reminds me of the Daniel Powter song Bad Day.
So, after all that John gets mad and he forms a neighborhood watch group that patrols the area and calls the cops in case they find something illegal happening. What ends up happening is that John and his group act more like vigilantes (especially when John sees the guy who ran him off the road), which gets the ire of the likes of local politicians, the police, and even a local African-American activist (Kotto), as the watch gets noticed as being a racist thing. Yep, the movie is button-pushing to the max. It's manipulative.
Yet, it's still very entertaining. It's a drama and there's drama things that go on. For example, a classmate of their son (who looks like around 12) is a user of heroin! But, there's also action that you see throughout, from barfights to a brawl in a chicken shack, and arms getting broken with baseball bats. It's audience-pleasing. So, it's not technically great, the story throws a lot out there in a "let's see what sticks on the wall" sort of thing, some things should not be looked at too closely... that said, it's still fun and if you enjoy movies like the first Death Wish or other stories concerning vigilantes getting revenge on their own when the law can't help them out, then it is a movie worth tracking down. I have no idea if it's still on Netflix Instant or not, but I'm sure that "less ethical" sites also have it available for download.
I'll be back tomorrow night.
Runtime: 98 minutes
Directed by: Lewis Teague
Starring: Tom Skerritt, Patti Lupone, Michael Sarrazin, Yaphet Kotto, David Rasche
From: Dino de Laurentiis Company
Unfortunately, this review will start off with death. Aside from Leslie Nielsen passing away yesterday, there’s also The Empire Strikes Back director Irwin Kirschner passing away today; now, besides Empire, the only movies I’ve seen from him are the James Bond movie that actually isn’t a part of the series called Never Say Never Again and the other is Robocop 2. Neither movie I think too highly of, to say the least, but I’m sure his other films are better than that and Empire will never not be awesome. So, RIP to him.
Also passing away recently was producer Dino de Laurentiis, who produced a variety of films from the 70’s up to recent times. His name became infamous as it got connected to such schlock as the first King Kong remake in the 70’s, a killer whale movie called Orca, the Flash Gordon remake, and some others. Yet, he also produced serious things, like Serpico, Death Wish, and Conan the Barbarian. So, his name shouldn’t be looked down upon if it’s attached to a movie.
This film, Fighting Back, is from him and released by Paramount. Now, Dino didn’t produce any of the Death Wish sequels, so it’s not a surprise that the same year the first sequel came out, he’d go back to the well himself and do something similar. This has never been released on even DVD, but it was on Netflix Instant. I don’t have that service but I was still able to track it down and watch the film.
The movie is about a typical Italian family, headed by patriarch John D’Angelo (Skerritt) who runs a deli in Philadelphia and sad to say for them, their neighborhood has turned to crap, with crime and other bad things ruling the day. He decides to live up to the title of the movie after having a ridiculously bad set of circumstances happen to him one after another. He and his wife were driving around one day when they interfered with a pimp slapping his ho! I kid you not. That lead to a car chase and an accident results in a miscarriage. Then, his mother walks in on a robbery and the robbers try to pry a ring off of her finger; it was stuck, so the entire finger gets cut off with shears! This all happens in the span of a day or two at the most. Reminds me of the Daniel Powter song Bad Day.
So, after all that John gets mad and he forms a neighborhood watch group that patrols the area and calls the cops in case they find something illegal happening. What ends up happening is that John and his group act more like vigilantes (especially when John sees the guy who ran him off the road), which gets the ire of the likes of local politicians, the police, and even a local African-American activist (Kotto), as the watch gets noticed as being a racist thing. Yep, the movie is button-pushing to the max. It's manipulative.
Yet, it's still very entertaining. It's a drama and there's drama things that go on. For example, a classmate of their son (who looks like around 12) is a user of heroin! But, there's also action that you see throughout, from barfights to a brawl in a chicken shack, and arms getting broken with baseball bats. It's audience-pleasing. So, it's not technically great, the story throws a lot out there in a "let's see what sticks on the wall" sort of thing, some things should not be looked at too closely... that said, it's still fun and if you enjoy movies like the first Death Wish or other stories concerning vigilantes getting revenge on their own when the law can't help them out, then it is a movie worth tracking down. I have no idea if it's still on Netflix Instant or not, but I'm sure that "less ethical" sites also have it available for download.
I'll be back tomorrow night.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
RIP Leslie Nielsen
Instead of doing a review tonight, I'll note this sad bit of news. Rest In Peace. I'll have a review up tomorrow night, and also Tuesday night.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Lords of Dogtown
Lords of Dogtown (2005)
Runtime: 107 minutes
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: John Robinson, Emile Hirsch, Heath Ledger, Nikki Reed, Rebecca de Mornay
From: Columbia
Here is a random movie that actually has to deal with the surfing scene also, and is a feature film version of a popular documentary concerning some surfer boys who went into skateboarding and did a lot to change it from a fad thing to a now popular sport that has many fans and is a staple of such things as the X-Games.
Way back when I saw the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, which I guess was fine but for whatever reasons wasn’t as great as I was hoping it would be. Strangely (especially for me) I was more entertained by this movie version of the same story. To sum things up, you get to see the lives of young kids Stacy Peralta (who put together Dogtown And Z-Boys and wrote this movie), Jay Adams, and Tony Alva, who enjoy skating and surfing alongside a board designer named Skip Engblom (Ledger; I thought he delivered a very memorable performance here. Remember, this was long before The Dark Knight and around the same time as Brokeback Mountain; back in those days his acting skills didn’t always receive a lot of praise, fair or not). Skip polyurethane wheels for skateboards, which manage to greatly improve their usage. From that and the usage of emptied swimming pools one summer, those boys become great at that craft and forming a team called Z-Boys, representing Dogtown (an area of Santa Monica, California); they win competitions and all the boys receive a fair amount of fame. Not too surprisingly, jealousy and cash drive them apart, but various events cause them to patch things up.
I am not quite sure how accurate the movie is to real life (I’d hope so given that one of the boys wrote it), but it’s an entertaining tale about the history of a hip sport and how some teenage males managed to play a role in the 70’s to make it the success it is today; there’d be no guys like Tony Hawk, Chad Muska, or Bob Burnquist (yep, back in the day I enjoyed playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on my Nintendo64. Other than that I don’t watch skateboarding and I sure as heck don’t try to do it myself, me with my little to none athletic ability) and it wouldn’t be an X-Games staple. The movie is well-made and not only do you get to see some drama, but also of course there’s the skateboarding action and there’s a soundtrack filled with cool 70’s tunes.
By the way, I didn’t mind that there were some attractive ladies in the cast, including Nikki Reed (director Hardwicke directed her in the great Thirteen in ’03 and I’m sure that connection is why she was cast in the Twilight series, the first one helmed by Catherine) and America Ferrara. Speaking of her, it reminds me of when I saw the movie on the big screen back in ’05. It wasn’t a crowded screening by any means, but a group of young teenage girls were there along with one “father figure” type. I presume they wanted to see it because the lead boys in the movie were “cute” or what have you. There’s a scene where Ferrara’s character (a minor one) takes off her shirt and a boy gets to see her large breasts encased in a bra. This was back when America wasn’t so thin. I thought she looked fine back then, but maybe that’s just me. Anyway, a girl went, “Whoa!” to the sight of a shirtless Ferrara. I thought a similar thing!
I'll be back a week from today with a new review. Things may be hectic with Thanksgiving coming up and all that, but I'll still have a new review then.
Runtime: 107 minutes
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: John Robinson, Emile Hirsch, Heath Ledger, Nikki Reed, Rebecca de Mornay
From: Columbia
Here is a random movie that actually has to deal with the surfing scene also, and is a feature film version of a popular documentary concerning some surfer boys who went into skateboarding and did a lot to change it from a fad thing to a now popular sport that has many fans and is a staple of such things as the X-Games.
Way back when I saw the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, which I guess was fine but for whatever reasons wasn’t as great as I was hoping it would be. Strangely (especially for me) I was more entertained by this movie version of the same story. To sum things up, you get to see the lives of young kids Stacy Peralta (who put together Dogtown And Z-Boys and wrote this movie), Jay Adams, and Tony Alva, who enjoy skating and surfing alongside a board designer named Skip Engblom (Ledger; I thought he delivered a very memorable performance here. Remember, this was long before The Dark Knight and around the same time as Brokeback Mountain; back in those days his acting skills didn’t always receive a lot of praise, fair or not). Skip polyurethane wheels for skateboards, which manage to greatly improve their usage. From that and the usage of emptied swimming pools one summer, those boys become great at that craft and forming a team called Z-Boys, representing Dogtown (an area of Santa Monica, California); they win competitions and all the boys receive a fair amount of fame. Not too surprisingly, jealousy and cash drive them apart, but various events cause them to patch things up.
I am not quite sure how accurate the movie is to real life (I’d hope so given that one of the boys wrote it), but it’s an entertaining tale about the history of a hip sport and how some teenage males managed to play a role in the 70’s to make it the success it is today; there’d be no guys like Tony Hawk, Chad Muska, or Bob Burnquist (yep, back in the day I enjoyed playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on my Nintendo64. Other than that I don’t watch skateboarding and I sure as heck don’t try to do it myself, me with my little to none athletic ability) and it wouldn’t be an X-Games staple. The movie is well-made and not only do you get to see some drama, but also of course there’s the skateboarding action and there’s a soundtrack filled with cool 70’s tunes.
By the way, I didn’t mind that there were some attractive ladies in the cast, including Nikki Reed (director Hardwicke directed her in the great Thirteen in ’03 and I’m sure that connection is why she was cast in the Twilight series, the first one helmed by Catherine) and America Ferrara. Speaking of her, it reminds me of when I saw the movie on the big screen back in ’05. It wasn’t a crowded screening by any means, but a group of young teenage girls were there along with one “father figure” type. I presume they wanted to see it because the lead boys in the movie were “cute” or what have you. There’s a scene where Ferrara’s character (a minor one) takes off her shirt and a boy gets to see her large breasts encased in a bra. This was back when America wasn’t so thin. I thought she looked fine back then, but maybe that’s just me. Anyway, a girl went, “Whoa!” to the sight of a shirtless Ferrara. I thought a similar thing!
I'll be back a week from today with a new review. Things may be hectic with Thanksgiving coming up and all that, but I'll still have a new review then.
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