Dark Of The Sun

Dark of the Sun (1968)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Jack Cardiff

Starring: Rod Taylor, Peter Carsten, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Brown

From: MGM

Here is a movie I've heard about for awhile via a forum, but have never seen it despite it being on TCM once in a blue moon, as when it's on it's at weird times, like it was late Thursday night. I did not know it was on until about 40 minutes in, so I was disappointed by that. My mood lightened when I looked online and I saw it was on Veoh. You just download the free player and it allows you to watch anything on there.

I'll copy and paste the short plot description from its IMDb page:

A band of mercenaries led by Captain Curry travel through the Congo across deadly terrain, battling rival armies, to rescue $25 million in uncut diamonds.

Yep, that sums things up pretty well... except it was actually 50 million dollars in diamonds.

This movie (actually filmed in the UK and Jamaica instead of deepest darkest Africa) is pretty darn good. Things get started right away as you see Curry (Taylor) and Ruffo (Brown) arrive in the Congo as it's in the midst of the Simba Rebellion. In short, it's a real-life rebellion starting in '64 where some anti-government people tried to start a revolution. For the sake of this film, all you need to know is that the mercenaries are hired by the President of the country to go to a mine in Simba country to retrieve some diamonds so that the rebels don't have them in their possession. They find an alcoholic doctor and also an ex-Nazi (Carsten) who only gets hired for his military skill. Via train they travel there and back, and along the way they meet up with nice eye candy Mimieux.

I don't want to give too much away but even in 2012 the action you see here is satisfying. You have fire, explosions, big guns being fired-along with small ones-fights, and so on and so forth. There's even a moment where one guy gets his head forced onto a train track, as his enemy wants his head run over! That's pretty ruthless. Not to mention, all the people getting killed Also, there's the natural conflict with the damn Nazi, so that provides a lot of drama. And I mean that in a good way.

It's a grand aventure which I wish was more easily accessible as it deserves to be better known than it is, and I don't mean watching it on Veoh; I mean a nice Blu-Ray. Yeah, I enjoyed watching it that much. It's a good old manly time with enough action (it's graphic for the time), drama, and intrigue to entertain you and never leaving you feel bored or disappointed.

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

Red Tails

Red Tails (2012)

35% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 85 reviews)

Runtime: 121 minutes

Directed by: Anthony Hemingway

Starring: Nate Parker, David Oyelowo, Ne-Yo, Tristan Wilds

From: 20th Century Fox

Here's a movie that has sounded interesting to me for awhile, despite the aspect of it being executively produced by a certain George Lucas. After his last few films, it's natural to have at least some reservations about something with his name attached to it. But, then again it was a movie he had been looking to do since '88 and he put in many millions of dollars to have it made so it was a labor of love for him.

I was going to see it during this past weekend and then on Monday but things got in the way of that, so it wasn't until earlier tonight that I was able to go out to the local cineplex to check it out. To steal the plot synopsis from the official site of the film:

1944. To help win the war, the Pentagon brass has no choice but to consider the untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program. Just as the young Tuskegee men are about to be shut down and shipped back home, they are given the ultimate chance to show their courage. These intrepid young airmen take to the skies to fight for their country - and the fate of the free world.

That is a pretty accurate description of the movie's plot. Even though I'm a history guy I doesn't know as much as I should about the Tuskegee Airmen. After I watched this, I still am not sure how much more I learned about them. I just hope Hollywood didn't fabricate too much. Then again, I heard old George did a lot of research through the years on the subject so I guess I shouldn't worry about that too much.

As for the film, the story isn't always presented in the best way, the dialogue and situations seem straight out of a World War II film that was made while World War II was still going on (at least Lucas isn't still in the 1930's serials), and it's real cornball stuff at times. Yet, I can't say I hated the movie at all; in fact, I thought it was entertaining for what it was. The performances all around are nice (even from Ne-Yo, playing a character named Smokey who believe it or not did remind me of Smokey from Friday), with Oyelowo as the hotshot Lightning definitely being the most dynamic and intriguing character. You also have roles from Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard, with small roles from Bryan Cranston and Major Dad... whoops, I mean Gerald McRaney.

The flying scenes are cartoony but hell, they are exciting so you won't see me carp about that. As long as you know going in how cliché and cornball things can get, then you should probably enjoy this tale about some truly great men from history's past who deserve the attention for the contributions to the history of the United States. The cliches may be old and hoary, but some of them still work rather well. Oh, and this sort of movie with a predominantly African-American cast should do well as it would be nice for Hollywood to produce more films such as that; Lord knows this is far better than the gobshite you get from Tyler Perry!

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

The Long Riders

The Long Riders (1980)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Walter Hill

Starring: The Carradine brothers, the Keach brothers, the Quaid brothers, and the Guest br others

From: United Artists

Due to me not feeling at 100% on Saturday and having football to watch on Sunday, that is why I'm going to talk about a movie that I first saw a few years ago, but it was before I started up this blog, so I might as well write about it, right? It's a western so it helps fill a genre that I don't give as much love to as I should.

The one big hook of this movie based on the lives of famous outlaws the James Brothers, the Younger Brothers, the Millers, and ultimately the Ford Brothers (given that a few years ago there was a movie which came out called The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, it sort of gives away what the ending of this film is; then again, if you've read up on the history of this gang then you'll know more than a little about the plot of this film, along with probably generally be entertained by their exploits) is that four sets of famous acting siblings were cast in those roles, thus you have James and Stacy Keach as the James Boys, David, Robert, and Keith Carradine as the Youngers, Dennis and Randy Quaid as the Millers, and Christopher and Guest as the Fords. It's a gimmick which works as every one of those brothers delivers a performance that is at least fine and is usually better than that.

This film-which I don't think is entirely accurate to the truth but hey, it's still fun-portrays the gang in a sympathetic light as they rob trains and banks to provide for their families while dealing with such things as some of the guys wanting to start families of their own and deal with the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who are on the hunt for them and the movie makes them look to be dicks, willing to kill innocent people to get their men.

Overall, it's an entertaining western and if you enjoy the real-life story then you should check this out. When you do see violence it's certainly bloody and visceral. I mean, when people get shot with a shotgun, they go flying backwars something like 20 feet through windows. It's not very realistic... but is it cool? I say yes. It's a manly movie directed by a manly man, and after the PG-13 crap news of last week, it was nice to see an R-rated film like this one.

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

Oh, What A Week

No review tonight; to me I have a good explanation. Would you want to do one after the events of the past few days, with all that SOPA/PIPA stuff (thankfully that is at least being postponed now, but that was just announced hours ago) Megaupload being shut down by the U.S. Government, because they apparently have nothing better to do or bigger problems to combat, three great R&B people passing away in Etta James, Johnny Otis and Jimmy Castor, some unfortunate news about a movie I was eagerly looking forward to... not to mention during one night I had a dream where one of my friends died? Not the best past few days.

The news I'm referring to is the whole controversy revolving around The Expendables 2 and its rating. Recently someone discovered Chuck Norris saying on a Polish TV show-of all things-that he only agreed to do it if it was PG-13, as he doesn't want to do something where people say a lot of bad words. I didn't really believe it, given that Chuck is rather loony at times so I figured it doesn't matter what he says, it's going to be rated R.

Then, Sly Stallone actually confirmed the news.

Needless to say, a lot of people online are not happy about this news, and I agree with them. It's pretty ridiculous to try and get teenagers to go and see a bunch of old action stars fighting against each other.

But, this profane video I found online explains my feelings pretty well. I don't agree with all of it but as one of the thousands of Hitler parody videos, it's pretty great.

In case it gets deleted sometime in the future, I'll say it's one of those videos with subtitles over a ranting and raving Hitler; that clip is from Downfall, a Eurpoean war movie which I understand is actually great but most people know it just for that one scene and how it's been used in thousands of different ways to laugh at such thing as in this case, the FAIL of Expendables 2 being PG-13.

With this strong backlash hopefully they'll change their mind, but at this time people are PISSED and hopefully you can see why I felt like doing this sort of writing instead of watching and reviewing a motion picture. Oh, and I also watched the rare Friday night UFC show, which for it having fighters that are almost all in the middle of the pack, was pretty darn good.

I will be back to review a flick on Monday as it is in my plans to watch one during the weekend.

Project A

Project A ('A' Gai Wak) (1983)

Runtime: 98 minutes (that's the length of the American version, anyhow; the original cut is a few minutes longer and edits out some minor stuff)

Directed by: Jackie Chan and an uncredited Sammo Hung

Starring: Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Biao Yuen, Dick Wei

From: Golden Harvest

It was recently that I realized not only do I need to talk about more foreign movies, that I hadn't actually talk about a Jackie Chan motion picture yet. That is quite the surprise to me; besides his American films that can vary wildly in quality, there are his Hong Kong movies, some of which are pretty awesome. That includes this one; I say that as someone who has only seen the American version, which cuts out a few minutes of scenes, has dubbing instead of subtitles, and even adds in a soundtrack that is more obtrusive than fitting for the film. While I wish I could see it more in its original format, you can find this movie, its sequel, and the two Operation Condor movies on one Blu-Ray disc for pretty cheap at places like Wal-Mart.

Anyhow, this movie is set in the late 1800's in Hong Kong and has Jackie (as a dude named Dragon Ma!) as a member of the Hong Kong Marine Police. Apparently at the time those guys dressed like Donald Duck... although thankfully they had pants on. They have a rivalry going on with the regular Hong Kong Police Force. The Marine Police is a little wacky and goofy and apparently not all that successful, which is bad when they have to try and defend the area from pirates. Stuff happens and Jackie and the rest have to stick to land and join the Police Force. More stuff happens and... I won't spoil it, but it involves his friendemy-that's normally a hipster sort of term I'd never use; it happens to fit the relationship between the two characters perfectly-Fei (Hung) and they have to deal with such things as the pirates on the ground and double crosses. It's a cool plot that has depth to it but it's never a labyrinth of a mess.

Along the way you see what you expect from a typical Chan movie, which is a mix of comedy that's actually funny for the most part along with some eye-popping stunts and crazy action. This motion picture delivers on all fronts. It's great fun and it's never boring. Not only do you see some stuff that literally almost killed Jackie, but some of the stunt people took rather hard and awkward falls. It was interesting to see that in the days before CGI. I mean, I hope they didn't almost get killed themselves. No matter the case, if you're an action fan wanting to see something strong and virile instead of weak and flaccid (as you get too often these days) you should not be disappointed with this. Like I said, even the inferior American version can be found for real cheap and if you can track down the superior version then I imagine you'd have a superior time watching it compared to my still highly positive experience.

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

Happy MLK Day

Well, the past few days have been even more chaotic than I expected, so it won't be until around this time tomorrow that I post my next review. My apologies but that's how my schedule turned out.

Super 8

Super 8 (2011)

82% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 254 reviews)

Runtime: 111 minutes

Directed by: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Elle Fanning, Kyle Chanler, Joel Courtney, Gabriel Basso

From: Paramount

Before I get to talking about this movie that I finally got around to seeing, let me mention something quick:

A few days ago I purchased a portable Blu-Ray player with some Christmas cash and a gift card I got for the day from Best Buy. The portable DVD player I had (which was from a relative who didn't need the old thing anymore) crapped out recently so instead of getting a new thing to just play DVD, I figured I would make it easier for me to watch Blu-Rays so I splurged and got that.

Now, onto this movie. I never got to see it on the big screen. I thought it could be interesteing but despite strong praise I never made the plunge until I rented the Blu-Ray yesterday. After all, might as well watch a film having at least some scary moments for this day, right?

I think what may have been turned me off was the marketing for it, which at first made it sound like a Cloverfield 2, and generally either confused people or angered people who bought into the hype for Cloverfield itself and while I enjoyed the film, I know that most of the marketing was garbage and meant nothing. Plus, the name always made me laugh and for the longest time I've called it The Motel 6 Movie. I know, they got the name from the Super 8 camera used back in the day, but c'mon now, when most people hear Super 8, guess what they think of? That's right, a low-buget hotel chain!

Now, onto the movie. By now you should know what the basic plot is: some young kids in late 70's Ohio make a zombie movie using a Super 8 camera. They film by a train station at night when suddenly a train derails and it just so happened to be carrying an alien, so it gets loose. Stuff happens, then the end.

Overall... what an overrated movie. I'm surprised it's gotten as much love as it has. Sure, the kids were all great and believable in their roles. None of them annoyed me, which is a big bonus. Elle Fanning did a great job with her role. She was the best part of the entire film. It was just fun watching those kids put in the effort to make their little short.

Problem is, there's the other stuff. Whether it be the drama stuff with some of the kids and their parents (it involves them not relating to the kids and all that eye-rolling crap) or stuff with the military or adults griping at each other, it's just tiresome. Then there's the alien, which you never get a clear bright look at. From what I saw it was nothing original or special. There are various aspects to the creature which I won't discuss as it's spoilers, but various aspects of the alien and whether or not you're supposed to feel sympathetic to it... it's just incredibly confused and like I said, aside from the stuff with the kids being kids and trying to make that movie, I thought this was more a miss than a hit. And I wish they would have been a little more subtle with their idea of making it clear that this movie took place in 1979. You see an overabundance of crap to remind you of this.

At least there is something I can compliment: during the end credits you actually get to see the short the kids made. That was pretty dope. Otherwise, though, I say this was disappointing to me. Attack the Block did a similar thing SO much better.

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

The Devil Inside

The Devil Inside (2012)

7% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 44 reviews)

Runtime: 87 minutes (although it seems like the final 10 of those are comprised of the slowest-moving end credits you'll ever see)

Directed by: William Brent Bell

Starring: Fernandina Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth, Ionut Grama

From: Paramount Insurge (a new sub-studio which will release movies just like this; yep, the found footage thing isn't going away anytime soon)

Oh boy, this movie... it may be the worst of 2012 that I see! I don't do worst-of lists as I don't seek out current bad movies like I do current good ones. However, if I see one worse this year, I'll be surprised. Thank goodness I saw this at the Silver Moone Drive-In, located in Lakeland. If it was located closer to where I live I'd go there more often. You can watch two movies for a grand total of only $4! That is an amazing deal. After hearing all the toxic reviews I figured that would be the best way to see this movie; I was correct. I saw it and then watched Paranormal Activity 3 again. PA3 is SO much better in comparison.

Now, onto this movie; to use a popular joke, the INXS song of the same name is quite a bit better than the movie. In fact, I think I'd rather commit autoerotic asphyxiation than watch the film again! Here's the reason why:

As the marketing for the movie has explained (it worked rather well, given this actually earned over 30 million bucks at the box office, shocking everyone; starting today, though, I imagine the auditoriums will be rather barren for screenings of this), there's a woman named Maria Rossi who went crazy one night in 1989. She killed three members of the clergy who were trying to exorcise her. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and she ended up at a mental hospital in Rome, Italy, because... well, that's what the script said they should do. Note that from the fake news footage you see (the best part of the movie, you could argue) the murders were committed in Connecticut. Anyhow, 20 years later her daughter Isabella (Andrade) takes a documentary dude (Grama) and go to Italy to meet up with old mom. They end up being buddies with two renegade priests (yes, you read that right; they were played by Helmuth and Quarterman) who perform exorcisms outside the realm of the Church. From there than fantastic foursome do some exorcisms and try to get old mom right.

The main problem is that this movie just isn't all that scary or terrifying. I mean, not at all. The exorcism scenes you see, for example, are pathetic in comparison to The Exorcist, to list the most famous example in the possessed genre. Everything, from the actual scares to the rites performed, are amateur hour and don't get the heart rate raised. You also get a bunch of not so greatly performances and a lot of arguing and characters acting stupid and doing the wrong things. Shockingly, this did not make me enjoy watching this claptrap or wondering what would happen next.

Some “shocking” plot twists happen and then suddenly, the movie stops rather than ends. THAT is what gotten so many people upset with the film. I mean, there have been reports of people booing, throwing stuff at the screen, and what have you. I didn't get quite that reaction at the drive-in but I imagine a lot of those people weren't happy. I know I wasn't delighted! This movie is just a waste of time; don't even bother ever trying to watch it, even if it's on The Movie Channel by this time next year.

I'll spend the rest of this giving out some SPOILERS as I have to in order to talk about something involving the end of the film. If you don't want to read that, you can stop reading and I'll tell you I'll be back Friday night.

Now, onto the spoilers. The ending is that three of the characters end up in a car and they have to drive somewhere. Suddenly, something happens to the driver and the car gets crashed. Then... that is where the movie ends, and you are asked to go to this website for further details. That seemed to imply that the rest of the story would be finished there.

Problem is, the story does NOT get finished there! I couldn't believe what I saw instead. What you got was an incredibly amateurish website (why they went that route, I'll never understand) filled with misspellings and a blatant continuity error involving a big detail of where the documentary filmmaker filmed his first flick. It's just ridiculous and makes the middle finger ending a double bird once you know the website is a giant waste of time. I mean, the videos you see on the site look to be the first few results that they got when someone searched “exorcisms” on YouTube and they pasted the results on there!

Showdown in Little Tokyo

Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991)

Runtime: 79 minutes

Directed by: Mark L. Lester

Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Brandon Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Tia Carrere

From: Warner Brothers

Here's a movie I'm basically writing about as I watched it earlier in the week on Encore HD. A big draw for me was that as of now you can only get the movie on DVD, and unless it's been re-released it was only put out in the early days of the format and the picture is full screen and doesn't look that great. While the movie was show 1.85:1 and thus it's not that big of a tragedy the DVD is full screen, needless to say the picture was quite a bit nicer on Encore HD.

As for the movie, it's just like something goofy and slight yet extremely entertaining too. And this is despite Warner Brothers obviously editing things down to such a short runtime. For the most part that doesn't hamper the movie too much. The story is that American cop Chris Kenner (the great Dolph) happened to grow up in Japan; he also happened to see his parents get murdered by a member of the Yakuza. Early on he is teamed up with fellow cop Johnny Murata (Lee), who is partially Japanese and yet dislikes that part of his heritage. They go against Yoshida, a member of the Yakuza who started up a drug ring disguised as a brewery. As this is a movie, of course Yoshida was the guy who killed Kenner's parents.

The movie itself was obviously shot on the cheap and some moments are incredibly fake. Despite that, the film still works as it's like something from the 80's that bled over into the 90's. It's an action-comedy buddy-cop sort of thing so there's a lot of cheesy dialogue and one-liners, which makes it never boring. There's also a lot of nudity, which I'll never complain about. Funnily enough, there's also quite a bit of homoerotic moments, and not just the infamous moment where after seeing Kenner fight in the nude, Johnny out of the blue compliments Chris on his penis size! I'll say that's also an element of the 80's action genre but that's another topic for another time. If you enjoy that sort of thing then I recommend trying to track this down. There are various uploads of it on YouTube so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

I'll be back Monday night and this time I won't review an action movie. It'll be in a different genre, I promise.

No Holds Barred

No Holds Barred (1989)

Runtime: 93 minutes

Directed by: Thomas J. Wright

Starring: Hulk Hogan, Kurt Fuller, Joan Severance, Tiny Lister Jr.

From: New Line Cinema

I figured that the first review of 2012 should be something interesting, so why not go with finding a popular amongst many people my age pro wrestling film that has never even made it to DVD? Nevermind how I found it (oh OK, I downloaded it from here; it's rather clear it was a VHS rip from the old RCA Columbia Home Video tape, as the first thing you see in the file is the RCA Columbia Home Video logo); this was the first time in what had to be almost 20 years I had watched the movie.

To steal the plot from the site I got the download from: “Hulk Hogan, in an inarguably appropriate casting choice, plays a professional wrestler in this action-packed drama. Rip (Hogan) is a grappling star who is approached by Brell (Kurt Fuller), the new head of the World Television Network. Brell wants Rip to wrestle on his network, but Rip insists on honoring his commitment to another outlet. Brell responds by launching a show called "Battle of the Tough Guys," in which the beefy regulars of a particularly rough drinking establishment fight each other on camera. Zeus (Tommy "Tiny" Lister) soon emerges as the bad guy champion on this new show, and Brell uses Rip's friendship with his assistant Samantha (Joan Severance) to arrange a bout between Zeus and Rip. Rip is not at all interested until Zeus injures his brother and makes the fight a matter of personal pride.”

Yeah, that sums things up pretty well.

As for the movie and what I thought of it... it's about what you'd expect from a movie produced by Hogan and Vince McMahon. Despite it technically not being a good film, oh it's great in how ridiculous and cheesy in its 80'sness. Besides the star, there's also such things as the 80's saxophone-heavy soundtrack, for starters. Then there's the fashion...

Here are some of my other highlights:

* Fuller's performance. He was Snidely Whiplash in terms of subtlety. But it was so over the top he was great as the bad guy.
* Fuller's constant use of the term jock-ass, which was one of the things I remembered from watching the movie way back when.
* Hogan's near-constant growling, which goes with how many people in the cast growled.
* Hogan wearing an orange Speedo in one scene; also during the scene, it's seemingly implied at one point that he is furiously pleasuring himself! Only it's a gag as he's doing something else.
* Rip apparently owns a Lamborghini LM002, an SUV (!) the company made back then.
* In 2012, the comments about the Battle of the Tough Guys show being filth but yet Brell being fine with the negative publicity as it's still publicity... that sounds about right in this day and age given how much crap is on TV (usually “reality” television) and despite how much bad press it can get, it's still popular and that alone seems to be fine for the people who put that garbage on the air, Jersey Shore and most everything on TruTV now as prime examples.

It's that kind of movie. Sure it's not good but it was nice as a bit of nostalgia and as cheesy fun. It's certainly better than watching Zeus wresttle in the WWF in “real life”. Lister is awesome and all and even now he'd rip out my spine, but as a pro wrestler he was pretty bad.

I'll be back Friday night with another review.