Predators

Predators (2010)

64% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 162 reviews)

Runtime: 107 minutes

Directed by: Nimrod Antal (apparently pronounced “Neemrode”, not like how it looks)

Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne (happy birthday to him… although I doubt it’ll be too happy for him given the horrifying news involving his daughter and pornography!), Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (I mention him rather than any of his other co-stars mainly so that I could write out the name “Mahershalalhashbaz Ali“)

From: 20th Century Fox/Troublemaker Studios

I realize that this month of me reviewing films has become an unintended action month but that’s just how it worked out. I wasn’t even planning on reviewing this until early August, even though I finally saw it yesterday evening, as I realized the sameness to the past few reviews. It’s just that this got me fired up so I figured I should do it now, and I mean “fired up” in a negative way. As I mentioned when I reviewed Predator 2, I appreciate that more now and the first movie is a classic, and the two Alien vs. Predator films are abominations that should never be seen. Sad to say, I’d also put this movie in the “not to be seen” category, and I didn’t even have high expectations for it. Hell, that’s why I didn’t see it until last night.

Basically, the story is that some random badasses from various fields around the world are kidnapped somehow and are strapped to parachutes and are thrown out and land on an alien planet. It turns out that the Predators took those guys and did all that. I wish that we could have seen footage of a Predator raiding an Army/Navy surplus store for parachutes while he’s down there kidnapping people… and how exactly DID they know that those guys were badass soldier types or in some cases, serial killers? One of many stupid things with the movie, I say. Literally, the movie starts with Brody falling out of the plane. What a cold opening. It’s obvious to anyone who hasn’t even seen any advertising beforehand that those dudes were on an alien planet, but it takes an awful long time for the characters to figure it out, and it’s a boring process and that turned me off of the movie right then and there. They don’t even act like badasses nor are you given many reasons to care about them, which is drastically different from the first two movies, which are filled with memorable characters and dialogue that is still quoted in some circles today. Most of the dialogue here is turgid and boring, just like the movie.

To try and not to spoil anything, they’re on an alien planet and they’re being hunted by several different Predators. For various reasons that I can’t get into without spoiling anything, the Predators look like total incompetent bitches here. They’re far from the lethal hunters you saw in the first two films. Hardly any of their cool weapons are even used! I guess I expected too much from a Predator movie to want to see Predator action… and boy are there some real stupid plot twists in the last third of the movie and the movie stops rather than ends. Sure, the action we get to see is mostly shot well with no shaky-cam crap or quick editing nonsense, but when you don’t care about the characters and you’re mad that the Predators are made to look like buffoons, it doesn’t matter too much. The fact that much of it looks to be filmed in someone’s backyard in Hawaii (i.e. very cheap) definitely doesn’t help out. Finding out afterwards that producer Robert Rodriguez basically is planning all along to spend the big bucks and unveil the hottest shit for a possible sequel AND his dislike of Predator 2 (that movie totally got ignored here, while this movie was basically a crappy homage/remake of the Arnold classic…) just makes my blood boil. What a hack attitude! No wonder why many Hollywood movies are total wastes of time.

By the way, I do have to spoil one thing, but it’s to show what kind of movie this is. A Predator with a long retractable blade on his hand has a *sword duel* with a Yakuza guy! I kid you not. I could NOT believe I saw something that stupid, and it wasn’t even shot well and the end result was insulting.

So basically, it’s boring, you don’t care about the characters, it’s totally predictable, and the Predators are made to look awful. It’s not as bad as the Alien vs. Predator movies, sure, but it’s not much better. What a massive disappointment given some of the talent involved. They might as well give up on making any further Predator motion pictures given that they’ve screwed up the past three offerings, I say; the fact that this film is getting rave reviews and it's rated relatively highly on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes is totally baffling to me. It's incomprehensible as while there wasn't too much in the way of CGI (which is fine and all... although fire effects are laughable), there isn't too much to compliment and overall I think it's an awful film. Sigh...

I'll be back on Monday night with a new film, and I promise it will be in another genre.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: John Hyams

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Andrei Arlovski, Mike Pyle, Dolph Lundgren

From: Foresight Unlimited/Signature Pictures

Here’s a movie that I’d never think of seeing, as on the surface it seems like just another cheap direct to video cash-in to a theatrical film. You’d be astounded as to how many there are, and just about all of them aren’t really worth seeing, and some of them I understand are awful beyond words. Sure, this has JCVD and Dolph returning, reprising their characters from the first movie (which I haven’t seen in full in years but I do remember it being good stuff for what it was), but Van Damme pretty much was forced to make this movie or else get sued, and Dolph only had a week to film his part. So, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?

Well, in this rare case, you’d be wrong.

Helmed by Hyams (whose father, Peter, has directed movies for the past few decades, such as Capricorn One, 2010, Running Scared, and the Van Damme starring Timecop and Sudden Death; he helped out his son with this movie by leading the cinematography, which explains why the movie looks so nice for its low cost), this proves to be a real gem that is good and is of such quality it could have gotten a theatrical release. No, really. Especially considering the circumstances I mentioned already, this far exceeds most people’s expectations.

This film is about rebel leaders in Russia who kidnap the teenaged children of the Prime Minister of Russia (in a great action-packed opening sequence) and they are held captive at Chernobyl, where a bomb is set up and if the leader’s demands are not met (mainly, releasing political prisoners), boom goes the dynamite and there’s a catastrophe. In their possession is a next generation Universal Soldier (in short, a Universal Soldier is a reanimated soldier which is given superhuman abilities via various chemicals and whatnot; it’s also emotionless and follows orders to the letter, or at least that is what is supposed to happen), played by MMA fighter Arlovski. This happens as a scientist in the program turns rogue and takes the model-the only one of its kind-to Russia in order to align himself with those rebels. The U.S. government sends in four original “UniSol” models, but they end up getting destroyed by the newer model. So, three things happen from there: the government tracks down Luc Deveraux (Van Damme) who is in Switzerland with a doctor trying to acclimate himself back into society… a tough special forces guy (Pyle, himself a renowned MMA fighter) goes in to try and rescue the hostages… then, one character has a “fail-safe” in case of emergency, and it’s a clone of Andrew Scott (Dolph, who JCVD battled against in the first movie), and while Scott isn’t in the movie for too long, his time in there is memorable, from beginning to end. So, there’s a lot going on.

It is a rather predictable movie, sure, but you knew going in not to expect Shakespeare or Hemingway in the writing and plot. It’s a blast to watch and besides the unexpected nods to such sources as Blade Runner, there’s also action that is shot VERY clearly and is easy to follow (contrast that with most action scenes this day and age, where you can barely figure out what’s going on at least half the time), and the musical score is pretty awesome; it sounds exactly like something John Carpenter would have composed in the 70’s, a la the original Assault on Precinct 13. It’s much better than the usual direct to video musical score that’s dreck. So trust me, this is a gem well worth trying to track down, especially if you’ve seen the first Universal Soldier and enjoyed it; you can also feel free to never see the two direct to video sequels that don’t have Van Damme in it (but for some reason does include the like of Burt Reynolds and Gary Busey!) or Universal Soldier: The Return, with JCVD, Michael-Jai White, and former pro wrestler Bill Goldberg. I haven’t seen any of those movies before aside from the first Universal Soldier, but I understand that all of the other sequels are pretty awful and are worth skipping.

I'll be back Friday night with a new review.

The Border

The Border (1979) (i.e. The Blood Barrier or Border Patrol USA)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Christopher Leitch

Starring: Telly Savalas, Eddie Albert, Michael V. Gazzo, Danny De La Paz, Cecilia Camacho

From: MGM

Here is a real obscure movie (at least judging by the low amount of votes it has on IMDb) that for some odd reason has been on MGMHD a few times in the past few weeks. Then again, given the whole situation going on in Arizona this year… maybe that’s why this has been put into rotation. I won’t say too much about the Arizona stuff except that unlike what the people there would like to believe, it’s clear to me that many Mexican immigrants go into this country not to “run drugs” or whatever, but rather because they want to make more money and send it to their poor families back south of the border by working awful jobs that no one in the U.S. wants to take. That is actually an important plot point in this film… it’s just a shame that overall this was middling and OK at best.

Telly stars as Cooper, a veteran member of the Border Patrol, protecting the boundary between California and Baja California. Ironically, Cooper seems to prefer being in Baja and hanging out with his Hispanic pals there rather than deal with Americans or especially his fellow Border Patrol crew, especially the captain (Albert) who seems to be rather corrupt. He’d rather just complete the next few months, cash in and then retire. Things get complicated, though, when at the very beginning he gets into a car-bashing chase with a Ford Ranchero car (which has a pickup bed; it’s like an El Camino) with a pair of illegals hanging onto the undercarriage of the vehicle. As they go off-road and on those guys end up getting all torn up to hell (not to mention Cooper’s partner ends up getting killed during all that) and I thought that was the real highlight of the movie. That causes problems with the captain, as you might expect. From there, we see Cooper interacting with a young couple he knows, Benny and Leina (De La Paz and Camacho), who happen to live south of the border. They end up marrying, but they have to deal with Chico Suarez (believe it or not, Gazzo; I act incredulously as Gazzo was Frankie Pentangeli in The Godfather, Part II and is as Italian and raspy-voiced as you can get. His performance overall was fine here, if a little hammy by the end. It’s just that despite his usage of some Spanish words, he wasn’t Hispanic at all!), an evil man who profits from hauling illegals over the border to work in places like sweatshops or slaughterhouses in California. Chico has known Benny for awhile go and acts nice to him, but that’s to make it where Benny is in debt to him and without telling Cooper the truth-as despite the poor house he and Leina live in, with dirt floors and no electricity, Cooper doesn’t want him to go over the border as that’s trouble-Benny does become a coyote and then spends some time at a slaughterhouse, where we get to see graphic footage of what happens there, as if PETA or someone asked them to do it so that people would become vegetarians and not enjoy their quarter pounder or porterhouse steaks. Stuff happens and Telly has to kick some ass.

Like I said, this movie ends up being middling, sadly. I mean, it’s certainly interesting in that it’s mainly drama with some action in it and it almost feels like a documentary in that it shows people-long before books like Fast Food Nation-why job markets like that use illegals and why they would accept tough work like that, which is they want to try and support their families by having a job that pays much more than what they can find in Mexico, if they even can find a job. That’s all well and good and there’s a lot of drama and De La Paz & Camacho both do a great job with their roles. But, the story just doesn’t come together. In the second half it meanders around and starts to fall apart with it being rather ridiculous, and not in a good way. I mean, for example there’s one scene where Benny raises a lot of hell and clearly disrupts things, and yet the people that you’d think would punish him for being so disobedient… don’t really do anything. I didn’t quite get that, and that sort of thing happens more than one other time. And the ending… as others have said, it’s like they ran out of money so they needed to do something flashy to disguise the fact that there’s no proper ending, and what they came up with was rather laughable.

As for Telly, as I’ve also heard others say, maybe someone like Charles Bronson would have been better to play a bitter old cop. I thought he was fine-enough for the role, but he still had that “oh so cool” sort of style to him, as if he was playing his famous Kojak character. I mean, when most of his scenes have him wearing a shirt with most of its buttons unbuttoned so that everyone can check out his tanned buffed chest and his gold chains (even in uniform!)…

Criticisms aside, if this curio still sounds interesting to you warts and all-and really, I didn’t think it was a BAD movie; it just could have been more than it was-then you can see it a few more times in the next few weeks. You can check out MGMHD’s website and search for the movie there.

I'll be back Sunday night with a new review.

The Punisher (the original version with Dolph Lundgren)

The Punisher (1989)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Mark Goldblatt

Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Lou Gossett, Jr., Jeroen Krabbe, Kim Miyori, Barry Otto

From: New World Pictures

I wasn’t originally going to write about this, but then I happened to watch it again with someone I know who has seen the 2004 version of the character starring Thomas Jane, but hasn’t seen the ’08 Punisher: War Zone (I doubt they’ll care for it due to how over the top it is in every which way) and didn’t even know that Dolph did his own version of the famous comic book character first. Me, I am not a comic book fan at all, I never want to be, and I don’t quite understand why it’s so popular amongst a large segment of the audience or how those fans can put up with all the alternate universe/killing off characters and bringing them back over and over again claptrap/and all that jazz. Sorry, but that scene is not for me at all. Point is, it doesn’t matter to me if any of the three Punisher movies follow the comic book character or not.

Now, with this movie it is definitely low-budget. I mean, it was filmed in Australia because it was cheaper that way (it was set in an unnamed “large U.S. city” in the movie) and it was from Roger Corman’s old cheap studio, New World Pictures. It wasn’t a big-budget extravaganza from one of the major studios. Hell, in the U.S. it wasn’t even theatrical and it instead went to home video two years later here. The person who I saw this with today prefers the ’04 version. I’ll have to respectfully disagree with them.

About this movie… it’s about police officer Frank Castle (the Dolph) who seeks revenge after a car bomb set up by the mob kills his family instead of him. He guns down 125 gangsters in the proceeding five years, weakening them to the point that they’re now only led by one figurehead (Krabbe). Seeing this, the Yakuza, led by one nasty woman (Miyori) swoops in to try and take over. They refuse her offers at first, but they quickly change their tune when she engineers the kidnapping of their children, planning on selling them to child slavery! Meanwhile, Castle, aided by an alcoholic bum who nevertheless is well-read and theatrical (Otto) decides to bust them out as hey, they’re children. Meanwhile, Jake Berkowitz (Gossett, Jr.; not to be stereotypical here, but old Lou here doesn’t look too Polish to me…), the ex-partner of Castle, tries to track him down.

I know, what a plot. It is goofy at times (although not as much so as the ’08 version) and you can tell it’s low-budget (to me, it looks like some parts of the movie were chopped out for whatever reason too; my point is proven if you look on YouTube, as you’ll find some deleted scenes that look like they’re from an old workprint), but it doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining. To me at least it’s a lot of fun. If the above description doesn’t entice you, that’s fine with me, but if it does sound appealing, it’s worth seeing. You get much in the way of violence, from guys getting mowed down with firearms to a harpoon attack to wild black spiked balls being used as weapons, and there’s even a hanging. The one big moment is when there’s an epic bus escape, with Frank as the driver.

I know that it’s sort of spoiling something, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that Castle would rescue the children. Plus, it has a moment that I’ll tell that I think will be a big sign of whether or not you’ll enjoy this. So, the bus escape happens and some henchmen chase after the bus. One of them jumps and has his hands on a partially open window. Two of the children-girls that look to be about 9 years old-pry off his fingers one by one and the henchmen falls off and ends up getting run over by accident by his buddies! If that gets a laugh out of you (as it does me) then you’ll probably enjoy this motion picture. If not… you can feel free to watch something else.

I’ll be back Thursday night with a new review.

Malone

Malone (1987)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by Harley Cokeliss (i.e. Cokliss; I’m not sure which spelling is more giggle-inducing)

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Cliff Robertson, Kenneth McMillan, Cynthia Gibb, Lauren Hutton

From: Orion

Here’s a movie that I randomly saw a few days ago when it was on the MGMHD channel. It’s also available on Hulu. If you click on the movie title at the top, you’ll be taken to its IMDb page (as always), and as long as you have a free IMDb account there to verify that you’re old enough to see this rated R movie, you can watch it on there.

Burt is known for not having the best tastes in the projects he wants to get involved with. That’s why many of his films are not that good, and some of them are really awful. I’ve seen one of those real stinkers before, The Cannonball Run II. I’ll talk about it one of these days, but there’s another brutally unfunny comedy. I’ll say that this one shouldn’t belong in the “bad” category. It’s middle of the road average but it does have its charms.

This movie is about a CIA dude (Reynolds) who retires from the force and he decides to randomly drive around, more or less. His car, a bitchin’ 69 Mustang, breaks down right by a tiny little town in the middle of Oregon (actually, this was filmed in British Columbia, and the scenery does look very pretty). He encounters the town’s resident mechanic/gas station owner and his young underaged daughter (the very cute Gibb, who was in her 20’s when this was filmed, don’t worry). It turns out that the town is just about deserted, as nefarious people have been buying up land-and also have bought off the town’s sheriff-as they’re actually right-wing extremists who are using the area as one of many bases to try and start their plan to rule the world! I’m not making any of this up, by the way. As Burt stays in the house of the mechanic while the car’s transmission gets fixed, he finds out what’s going on, and he eventually has to use his specially trained skills. Meanwhile, his old bosses find out that Burt is causing trouble, so they dispatch his old CIA pal (Hutton!) to track him down and “take care” of him.

This movie is pretty goofy and low-budget, but it’s still entertaining and it’s funny to see multiple people walking around in Member’s Only jackets… or one of the villain’s henchmen having braces (!) and sporting a rather hideous distracting faux combover hairstyle. I mean, it was really distracting. But, if you like goofy movies with action in them, it’s not the worst way to spend an hour and a half watching something for free on the Internet.

I do have to focus on one thing, though. As I mentioned, Gibb’s character is underaged in the movie. It’s proven right away when she states that she’s younger than Burt’s ’69 car, meaning that in the movie she’s at most 17… yet Burt seems to enjoy hanging out and talking to her. Then, later on she meets him in a nightie-where it's clear that she has on no bra underneath-and she's all teary-eyed around him and he gives her a hug... and he almost makes a move, but then realizes that he doesn't want to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Then, the last we see the two together, she tells him that in 5 years, "I'll be older", and he responds, "I'll be older too", as if he's bragging about being an old coot already and being an even older coot when he gets to legally bang her. They then kiss! I was not expecting Burt, playing an almost 50 year old dude in the movie, having a budding romance with a really cute but yet still jailbait girl.

Then again, let's be honest here; in the movie world, there were other (unseen) visits to Malone's room by that budding young teenager wearing a nightie with no bra! We all know he showed her the long barrel of his gun-and I don't mean that .44 Magnum he kept in that case and ended up using-more than once or twice. But anyway...

I'll be back Monday night with a new review.

Skidoo

Skidoo (1968)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: Otto Preminger

Starring: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Mickey Rooney, Peter Lawford, Groucho Marx

From: Paramount

Back when I talked about now extremely obscure (and hard to find on video, as it was never released in any home video format) movie The Phynx, I brought up Skidoo, another similarly minded film from the time period where Hollywood tried to appeal to the counterculture, and as you might expect, a bunch of old fogies trying to make something that they think would be enjoyed by young carefree and (probably) drug-ingesting audience… it doesn’t work very well at all. Casting old stars and trying to make them “hip” to those people didn’t work very well either.

This movie is from a famous director and besides the stars I’ve listed, there’s also appearances from the like of Frank Gorshin (The Riddler on the old 60’s Batman TV show, something that will likely never be released in any official format aside from airings on TV, but that’s a topic for another day), Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, Richard “Jaws” Kiel, Slim Pickens, and even Groucho Marx in his final film appearance! You’d think that with that kind of talent, this would be great. Oh man would you be wrong if you saw the movie and expected it in any way to be great, unless it was something like “great trainwreck” or “great waste of talent and everyone’s time”.

This film tells two different stories at the same time: Tony Banks (Gleason) and his wife Flo (Channing) live in a normal suburban neighborhood and seem to live a normal life with a teenage daughter. Well, Tony happens to be a retired gangster and he gets asked by a mob boss head named God (Marx!) to off someone so that they won’t testify at a U.S. Senate hearing. Tony has to go to jail to do this. Meanwhile, while Tony is away, the hippie daughter convinces mom to let in her equally beatnick boyfriend and his skeevy pals to stay at the house as they have nowhere else to go. These two plots intersect throughout the film.

Now, if any of that sounds interesting to you, I’ll agree with you… at least on paper. In execution, though, it failed, oh does it fail. I have no idea why this has an average rating on IMDb or why some critics haven’t given it a low rating. To me it’s clear that this is an unfunny comedy, and there’s not much that is worse than a comedy with no laughs. Minutes go by here and you aren’t entertained or amused. It’s just THERE, wasting everyone’s time, including the viewer. It tries and it looks nice, but except for two moments, it fails. At least at times it fails in really bizarre ways. Carol Channing, a lady never known for being classically pretty, does a striptease and later dresses up like George Washington and sings a song! It’s not even as entertaining as it may sound. Even Groucho Marx doesn’t get any chortles or even a chuckle. I know this is sacrilegious to many, but to me The Marx Brothers movie aren’t really all that great. Sorry, but they didn’t do it for me. I’d much rather watch Three Stooges shorts myself. That said, I do realize that Groucho is a funny guy. Well, not here. They managed to find a way to waste him and make him not funny.

There are only two things to note in the movie that are interesting. First, there’s a scene where Gleason accidentally takes LSD and goes on a trip. It lasts for a few minutes, and it’s at least entertaining due to how strange it is. I’ve never tripped on acid before but I’m sure the trip that Gleason goes on isn’t too inaccurate.

Then, the end credits. I don’t know why, but all of them are sung by Harry Nilsson! You know, the “Put the Lime in the Coconut” dude. It’s done in an amusing style too. But besides those two things…

If you’re a brave soul, you can now watch the entire movie on Google Video. As it's never officially been released on video or DVD in any way, it's either that, trying to find a download of it online, or waiting until TCM Underground shows it again, as it has a few times before. It’s here. The first scene I describe is around the 51 minutes mark, and the end credits start at 93 minutes and 45 seconds. Trust me, though, the entire movie is a major chore to sit through, and I guess I can say that Hollywood movie execs back then are just about as dumb as the ones we have currently! Stuff like that, the fact that the movie got made in the first place, and that apparently both Preminger and even Marx himself took LSD to prepare for the movie is much more entertaining than the actual film itself.

I'll be back Saturday afternoon with another movie review.

A One Day Delay

Due to me unexpectedly having plans for today, I'll have to post my next review tomorrow instead of today. Sorry about that.

Predator 2

Predator 2 (1990)

Runtime: 108 minutes

Directed by: Stephen Hopkins

Starring: Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Maria Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton, Ruben Blades

From: 20th Century Fox

Given that Predators came out this past Friday, I figured it’d be appropriate to talk about this film. The first movie, from ’87, is still pretty great stuff. You have the manliest of men kicking ass, then they run into the title creature, an ugly mother****** who is an alien that hunts various creatures across the galaxy, including the xenomorphs from the Alien series (more on that in a bit) and takes skulls as trophies. Eventually, Arnold Schwarzenegger is able to kill it (as hey, it bleeds) and that’s that. This movie takes place in an “urban jungle” of LA in 1997 rather than an actual jungle. That and no Arnold is probably the reason why this movie gets a bad rap in some circles and even quite a few fans of the first don’t care for this one. Do I agree?

Well, this past weekend I saw this for the first time in a long while via a Blockbuster rental. After seeing it now, I fully appreciate this film and thinks it doesn’t deserve nearly all the criticism that it’s been given. I mean, I say that any and all criticism should be directed towards the two movies involving the xenomorphs vs. Predators, which is Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Never see those movies. Both are awful. One of these days I’ll have to talk about both movies and why they’re so bad. Trust me, they are awful and are a slap in the face to fans and the franchises themselves, which is filled with quality films; I rate Predator and Aliens extremely highly on the scale of movies I love to watch and can watch over and over again, which is not that large of a list. If you want to see the title creature in action, see this, the original, and from most accounts, the new Predators, which at least sounds much better than the films involving it and xenomorphs.

This is about a hellhole of a Los Angeles in the near future (at least at the time), with rampant gang warfare and utter chaos, all during a stifling heatwave. We experience the movie through the eyes of a few Los Angeles cops (Glover, Alonso, Paxton, Blades), which are led by Glover’s character, Mike Harrigan, who is a “John Wayne type” that-while a good cop-goes out and does things with his partners despite orders from superiors not to. The movie starts off with a massive shootout involving the cops, Jamaicans, and Columbians (the latter two of which are feuding with each other). In a building, some Colombians get slaughtered and the cops believe that it must have been the Jamaicans, but… and some mysterious government types, led by their crazed leader (Busey; of course, “crazed” and “Busey” go together like peanut butter and bananas) state that they are now running things, causing the expected conflict. The cops soon realize that the mysterious entity which is wiping out both the Jamaicans and Colombians is some outside force, and the Predator actually plays games with Harrigan and that causes the dappily-dressed Glover to sweat even more profusely. I think he sweats more here than any other lead character in motion picture history! I don’t think I’m giving too much away when I say that there’s a final showdown with Harrigan and the Predator.

I’ll admit that this isn’t awesome like the first Predator is. However, for what it is, it’s a good time. You had good performances from quality actors. There’s more than enough in terms of exciting action sequences. I mean, the Predator raises some hell, that’s for sure. As fan theory online says, the Predator here is apparently a young and inexperienced one, which is why it raises hell in LA rather than some hot place in the middle of nowhere and Danny Glover can do combat against it. Still, you get to see it use new weapons/technology that it didn’t use in the first film. Sure, some parts are dopey and not that believable. But, if you can ignore that, it’s an entertaining time and it’s not nearly as bad as the reputation would suggest.

I’ll be back Wednesday night with a new review.

Black Rain

Black Rain (1989)

Runtime: 125 minutes

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Starring: Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Ken Takakura, Yusaku Matsuda, Kate Capshaw

From: Paramount

Here’s a movie which I remember seeing a trailer for on some old Paramount videotape (maybe it was Crocodile Dundee 2 or Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, or maybe it was something else) but it wasn’t until about a year or two ago that I finally sat down and watched it. It’s because some people in an action movie thread on a forum had high praise for the film. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but…

This movie is about tough guy (hey, he races motorcycles) Nick Conklin (Douglas), a down on his luck NYC police officer who partners with cheerier Charlie Vincent (Garcia). They happen to be in a restaurant when a shootout involving shady Japanese figures happens, and they arrest Sato (Matsuda, who was ill with cancer when this was filmed, and died shortly thereafter; originally, they wanted none other than Jackie Chan to take this role, but they refused). The duo have to extradite him to Osaka, Japan, as he’s a member of the Yakuza. They get hoodwinked and Sato escapes. The duo have to work with Japanese cops-and Mas in particular (Takakura)-to capture him and try to solve what’s going on. Things happen and it results in an explosive finale.

Things aren’t too surprising throughout. It’s mainly a culture clash in tough New York City cops having to deal with an entirely different culture and totally different police procedures. But, as it’s a “buddy cop” sort of thing, they start to get along better throughout, despite some bumps in the road and even a scene at a karaoke bar (hey, it’s Japan). It’s not the greatest thing you’ll ever see but it’s a nice way to spend two hours. I don't quite know why some people are so in love with it; I guess they enjoyed the quality lead performances or dig Japan or are otaku or something. There’s some exciting action scenes but its mainly a moody and tough drama. So, if you enjoy “buddy cop” movies but want to see something a little different and a little exotic, then you should enjoy this film from a great director.

I'll be back Monday night with a new review.

It’s Random Movie Talk Day!

Well, the past few days were more busy/lazy for me than expected, so I will instead mention two quick things related to films that have been talked about in various places as of late.

First off, all across Twitter and elsewhere today, somehow the story started that in the first Back to the Future, the future date that Doc Brown enters into his DeLorean time machine was July 5, 2010. Of course, most people retweet it without trying to find out if it’s actually true or not. Well, it’s apparently not true at all, according to reliable sources. I don’t have those DVD’s anymore so I can’t check it out myself. The closest it comes to being true is that Doc says (during the time of the movie, late October 1985) that he wishes to go “25 years in the future” but that’d be late October of this year (which is when the Blu-Rays of those movies are coming out, by the way) and in the second movie, they go to 2015. So, I have no idea how that rumor started but while the first one was released in the U.S. on July 3, 25 years ago, the story about Doc Brown wanting to visit today is just poppycock.

Then, there’s The Last Airbender movie and it’s not just about how most critics think it’s hideously awful or how it still managed to make a lot of money at the box office. Rather, there’s a huge to-do about it due to how it’s based off of an Asian-flavored cartoon and yet most of the lead roles were given to Caucasian people. Not too surprisingly there’s more than a few people who are quite upset with that fact. You can read about the whole controversy here. It’s a pretty interesting article, but I think it's very sad that that sort of casting still goes on and minorities can't get a much bigger break in the entertainment industry.

Enough of me on my soapbox. I'll be back Friday night with an honest to goodness review.

Not Quite Hollywood

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

93% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 59 reviews)


Runtime: 103 minutes

Directed by: Mark Hartley

Starring: A bunch of interview clips with Australian actors, but also appearances by the likes of Dennis Hopper (RIP), Jamie Lee Curtis, and Stacy Keach

From: City Film Worldwide/Film Finance/Film Victoria

Let me say right away that I don’t plan on posting anything special for the Fourth of July on Sunday, or really see any sort of patriotic movies for my next review, for that matter. Sorry, but that’s how my schedule is. I do at least plan on posting some sort of review for Monday night, but in the meanwhile, here is a movie I found out about online awhile back and I recently saw that it was at the local Blockbuster, where I rented it for the night.

This is a documentary about the genre film scene in Australia and how it lasted from the early 70’s to the early 90’s, although it really petered out by the late 80’s. It’s broken into three parts: “nudie” comedies/dramas, horror, and action. Now, those types of genre films-but low-budget-were popular in the U.S. from about the early 60’s to the late 80’s, and of course those types of movies were popular with guys like Quentin Tarantino, which reflected in his works, and those types of movies were in grindhouses (and you got that experience in modern times in the should have been seen in theatres much more often by people film known as Grindhouse), and those Australian imports were in grindhouses over here too; many of those were seen by Tarantino and he was a big force in this documentary coming together. You see him often on screen too, along with the other actors that comment on the movies they were involved in.

I ended up enjoying the movie and how it recapped a scene that I had little knowledge of, aside from seeing the first two Mad Max motion pictures. The coverage of the nudie movies didn’t really appeal to me, but then again it wasn’t because of the movie and how it covered that scene, but rather because that scene looks to have “stupid humor” and I’m not usually appealed by that. The horror and action stuff, though, excited me. Some of it looks very off the wall odd. I guess because it’s a documentary it got an R rating, but note that you see graphic violence and blood and “graphic nudity” both male and female, which means yes you get to see all body parts, front and back from dudes and dudettes. As with the typical grindhouse movie faire, what you see brief clips from will look exciting and it will apparently be a movie full of mindless fun but more often than not the entire film is dull with small moments of lunacy. Take Tarantino using this formula-maybe too well-for his Death Proof part of Grindhouse, but that’s another topic for another day. Watching nutty moments from old genre faire is fun, which is why various companies have put out compilations of just trailers from old grindhouse movies, and why they have many fans, me included. That's why I marked out for seeing some gonzo footage from movies that I had little to no knowledge of.

So, if you enjoy documentaries on movies/the movie scene and you want to hear nutty tales of the old Australian film scene (for example, listening to how they did the craziest stunts or how live ammunition was used on film sets) then you should get a kick out of this.