Tag: movie reviews

Battle of the Sexes (Women Won)

This new flick Battle of the Sexes, about the chauvinist gambler and former Wimbleton winner who took on female tennis pro Bill Jean King, is a good combination of humor and social commentary. The film is well balance in a way that few films are. Kind of reminds me of Rain Man in that regard. The sets and costumes really capture the era of the 70s very well.

Do you remember hearing about the tennis match in the 70s between them, in which Billie Jean King won? I remember HBO sports pushing documentaries about it really hard when I was like 5 years old, in between Mike Tyson boxing decapitations. This movie makes an interesting point: that women won the battle of the sexes, in terms of independence, pay, and social prestige. Billie Jean King becomes liberated from her husband by a dike lover to rub in the fact that she wins this charade of a tennis match. It is rather unsettling. The husband has to cuck. And that’s the problem. Don’t blame women for being misguided. Its the men who cucked societally and allowed this corrosion, where men get walked all over.

 

Steve Carell plays the male chauvinist very effectively. He is a dead look-alike in fact. At the time the guy was so past retirement that the match was a bogus litmus test for the make species. John McEnroe would have kicked Billie Jean’s ass. Anyhow, Carell brings a zeal and enthusiasm to the role which is unmatched in the film. He does manage to beat the #2 tennis star in the world at the time, who is the more traditional woman. Strangely and wrongly, the movie subtly hints that a traditional woman does not handle pressure as well as a gay one.

This is a hard film to review and grade so I would recommend you see it yourself and come to your own decision. Prepare to have a few laughs and possibly be outraged at dike scenes where you were not invited in as a threesome.

Bladerunner 2049 Review

As a sequel to perhaps the greatest science-fiction film of all time, “Blade Runner 2049” has a lot to live up to. And, surprisingly, it does, in one of the year’s best films. Ryan Gosling plays Agent K, a replicant blade runner who is assigned to track down and kill Deckard (Harrison Ford, returning from the original). He soon discovers that, through Deckard, he may hold the key to a secret that could change history forever.

This film cost $150 million and looks it. Society on Earth is barely surviving an environmental onslaught, but it is still recognizably a “Blade Runner” world. There is a big Sony presence in the future, and a gigantic hologram of a naked woman (which must look great in 3D). The line between human and androids has further blurred.

Harrison Ford is much better in this film than he was in the first one, exuding warmth, humanity, and purpose. I also really liked Jared Leto as the sinister, blind android manufacturer, and Robin Wright as K’s understanding superior. Besides being excellent science fiction, the film is also a mystery and a film noir. As with the first one, the ending is surprisingly moving and provides a real emotional catharsis. Hans Zimmer’s score (with an assist from Vangelis) is his best in years.

If I have a complaint, it is that the film, photographed by Roger Deakins, is not as aesthetically pleasing as the original. That’s a small gripe, though, for a film that accomplishes so much. “Blade Runner 2049” is a must-see.

Jeepers Creepers 3 Makes the Cut

“Jeepers Creepers 3” is a rip-roaring monster movie. Exuberant with its gore and humor, it concerns what happened with the creeper between the first and second films. It brings back three actors from the first one: Brandon Smith. Gina Philips, and, of course, Jonathan Breck as the Creeper. Also starring is the legendary, green-eyed Meg Foster, from such classics as “They Live,” “Leviathan,” (1989) and “The Emerald Forest,” as well as Stan Shaw, a character actor from “Rocky” and many others. The film concerns a massive attempt to hunt down the Creeper by law enforcement. As the hunt continues, many innocent people get caught in the cross-fire.

I enjoyed the film’s sense of humor and that it is an old-fashioned B-picture. Particularly amusing is a customized tank that is utilized to fight the creature, as well as the booby-trapped The Creeper vehicle (which two characters get stuck in). The special FX are not as impressive as in the first two, but the film is still a great deal of fun.

This is a very controversial film because director Victor Salva is a convicted sex offender in a 1988 case involving a boy in his film “Clownhouse.” His crime was quite heinous and he was lucky to receive only a 3-year prison sentence. That said, does that have any bearing on his films? No. Victor Salva makes entertaining films. “The Nature of the Beast,” “Powder,” and “Jeepers Creepers” are good films. So, to a lesser extent, is “Jeepers Creepers 3.”

I saw the film at a special one-time only show. A lot of people went to see this film, so they added a special show for Wednesday, Oct. 4. If you’re a fan of the series, go see it!

One last thing: after the film, they showed an interview with Jonathan Breck, the actor who plays the Creeper. His warm memories of making the films combined with his enthusiasm for his fans and the series in general sent those remaining in the audience out on an up note.

Kingsman 2: A Violent Masterpiece

You want action? You want fun? “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” delivers! More entertaining and less nasty than the first entry, this movie involves Julianne Moore trying to take over the world with a drug that incapacitates and eventually kills anyone who has ever used drugs. Only the Kingsmen can stop her. OK, so the plot is as silly as a “Naked Gun” movie. That doesn’t matter. The exuberance with which this film is made and acted is what matters. For example, there is a great gag about turning people into edible sausages that is a great reference to the classic exploitation film “The Exterminator.”

Another great thing is the way Elton John is used; playing himself, he is genuinely funny. Basically, though a little long, this film is one riotous scene after another. Star Taylor Edgerton is more convincing than he was the first time and it is great to see Colin Firth back. Basically, it’s a film you can turn your brain off and enjoy. The action is non-stop and the gags are fast and furious. If you like action and off-color humor, don’t miss this one!

Birth of Dragon : Good Action / Bad Plot

I am reviewing this film as a martial artist and a fan of Bruce Lee’s. Having trained Kajukenbo 4 years or so, and having met grandmasters there who told first hand accounts of having trained with him, I can attest that this film has a somewhat inaccurate depiction of Lee. I also read Lee’s street fighting technique books and his book Tao of Jeet Kune Do. The martial arts kicked ass in this movie. There are killer stunts throughout, and awesome fight choreography. The actors deserve credit for their techniques. Lee was much more spiritual than what was depicted in the film. This film makes him look like megalomaniac. and a thug.

Nobody cares about the middle aged, abused white guy who wants to get with the human trafficked Chinese restaurant worker. Therein lies the problem with this film. Had it just relied on the story of Bruce Lee, and been more respectful to him, and would have been solid. But the subplot involving Lee’s annoying student kills the film’s credibility, and makes it not as watchable.

One bright spot of the film was the part where Lee’s challenger, a Shaolin monk from China, shows him a point about not knowing his own limitations and capabilities well enough. Know thyself, and know thy enemy is a concept the film embraces. The monk also brings a theme of humbleness to the film. There are some positive attributes to the film.

If you are a martial artist , see the film strictly for the action scenes involving the Lee and the monk character. You will see some really good Wing Chung and Jeet Kune Do. Their respective acting performances were pretty strong as well. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is a bit hokey.

St. Ives: A Bronson Classic

Whenever you’re looking for quick action fix, you can’t do any better than a 1970’s or a 1980’s Charles Bronson film, but for different reasons. The 1970’s films like “Death Wish,” “The Mechanic,” and “Hard Times” are genuine classics, whereas the 1980’s films like “Death Wish 2,” “Death Wish 3” and “Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects” are so-bad-they’re-good. “St. Ives,” a 1976 film I just watched, falls into the former category. It has a “Chinatown” film noir feeling that I really like, and the music is appropriate for the time.

The cast includes John Houseman, Jacqueline Bisset, Maximallian Schell, and also Jeff Goldblum and Robert Englund as hoods. Bronson plays Raymond St. Ives, a crime reporter and ex-policeman who is hired by the nefarious John Houseman to retrieve five stolen ledgers. Many deaths ensue, and Bronson ends up spear-heading a robbery to get revenge for a job gone wrong. My favorite scene in the movie is the first, in which Bronson is being confronted and accused at gunpoint, which throws us into the narrative right away because we want to know why he’s in trouble. This film is classic 1970’s cinema because it combines action, conspiracy, and a detective story. The director, J. Lee Thompson, made “Cape Fear” and “The Guns of Navarone,” as well as 8 other Charles Bronson films. This is probably the best one. If you’re looking for a classic 1970’s Charles Bronson experience look no further than “St. Ives”!

Kidnap : Soccer Mom Fury

Usually when I go to see a Halle Berry starring role film, I am just hoping to see some tits. Usually I don’t get to see any tits, and going into this – yes I had a hunch this movie might stink. So I went next door to the pub and had a 9 percent Imperial Stout first and told the ticket seller I was hoping to make it through the whole film but was had my doubts it would be possible. I was surprised though. Kidnap is better than you would think. Here’s the short version of plot, its not that complicated, so see if you can follow. You will see why its not going to be Oscar nominated, though it may win some razzies:

a) man steals kid b) mom chases man to get kid back c) mom kills perps. one by one and takes kid back.

Not to be redundant but for more insight, here is the long version of the plot:

Someone messes with her kid, trying to kidnap him. Halle Berry goes vigilante style on the white trash couple perps in her red mini-van. The whole movie is basically one big long high-way cat-and-mouse car chase. It compares to a badass black momma version of Taken. Get drunk and go see it!

 

Anabelle Sucks

 

OK, so the original “Annabelle” sucked pond water, but “Annabelle: Creation” got good reviews, so I decided to check out. It fucking sucks too! With a lame poster like this, who could go wrong:

They could not think of a better cliché , so instead the opening scenes were the only good scenes in the picture, as they detail the sad (and based on fact) story of a family that has a tragic accident involving a little girl named Annabelle. Where have I seen this before? Well like a thousand other movies (because its supposedly based on a true thing!). Well -so far, so good. But then we get this “Little Orphan Annie” bullshit about the bereaved family letting an orphanage of little Catholoc girls shack up in their luxurious (and creepy) estate which makes no sense. We also get a plot that exploits the disability (polio) of a little girl, including a creepy lift to the upstairs of the house. The little girl unlocks a door she’s not supposed to and soon the jump scares and “Exorcist” and “Conjuring” rip-offs begin. At no point is the orphanage, led by a nun who’s not very bright, ready to pack up and leave despite many terrible things happening. Geez. What’s wrong with the nuns these days??

If you’ve been following this review, you’ll notice that this film is not content with putting little girls in jeopardy, but has decided to double down and put a little disabled girl in jeopardy. Its a movie about whatever it will take to fill seats and sell popcorn basically. After a while, it becomes simply a succession of jump scares. You can go take a leak at any point in this film and you won’t miss anything. Go refill that $7 soda. When this happened, the packed audience became more entertaining than the movie. Dozens of cries of “aw hell no!” as well as predictions of what was going to happen provided the entertainment the film itself was lacking. It was one of those crowds where there is a really low IQ going on, and you have to duck and hide on the way out.

So although the film is slightly better than the first “Annabelle,” it still comes down on pandering to the audience rather than telling a good story. Its like sex with a fat chick, not very good!

Horror fans are advised to skip it and wait for “Stephen King’s It,” which generated more creepiness and atmosphere in a two-minute clip before the film than both “Annabelle” films combined. I have no idea why the crowd applauded loudly at the end. My cash would have been better spent at the racetrack frankly.

Instant Justice = Instant Fun

Ready for an hilarious bad action movie experience? Check out “Instant Justice” starring Michael Pare and Tommy Kiitaen. Neither of these actors need a huge introduction because Pare starred in “Eddie and the Cruisers,” “Streets of Fire,” “The Philadelphia Experiment,” and “Bad Moon,” while Kitaen was in “Bachelor Party” and “Witchboard.” Pare plays a Marine named Younglood (shades of the Rob Lowe classic from around the same time) whose sister is killed as part of a modeling/prostitution scam run by drug dealers.

Pare infiltrates the criminal underworld in the movie and will stop at nothing to avenge his sister’s death. Tawny Kitaen plays the love interest and potential victim, who apparently showers fully clothed and wants to run off with Youngblood if he’ll stop thinking about vengeance. All of this involves all little gratuitous nudity (not Tawny), drug use, car chases, shootouts, and bad acting. Pare is a poor man’s Stallone, but he has his moments, Tawny is hot with priceless bad ’80’s hair, but she’s not a great actress. The director used a fake name and was never heard from again. This film is definitely so-bad-it’s-good.If you enjoy bad ’80’s action, be sure to get “Instant Justice” from 1986 on VHS!

Dark Tower – A Solid Fantasy Film

Our other staff writer underestimated how good this film is. The film adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark tower is a towering masterpiece. Elba is awesome as the gunslinger and takes the role seriously. Also, he does some good dead-pan humor. He plays a fantasy western version of a Knights Templar. His guns were ‘forged from Exacalibur’.

McConaughey is also strong as the man in black, who can be thought of as the false prophet in a Biblical sense. The man in black bears a striking resemblance to the Randall Flagg character in the Stand, another apocalyptic Stephen King masterpiece. Unlike other modern hits like Harry Potter, this movie the Dark Tower warns against the use of occultist magic.

The most obvious occult symbols in the film are the dark tower itself (Tower of Babel/ WTC parallels are obvious from the NYC skyline shots being ominously shown over and over again), and the portal itself (CERN parallels). Just as in the stories Firestarter, there are tons of insinuations to the MK Ultra program (unveiled by the Church committee in the 70s in Congress and the victims were paid reparations), in which the government takes kids who have psychic abilities and abuses them and does experiments on them. In the Dark Tower the government keeps trying to seize the kid character in the film to do just that.

This movie is considered a fantasy. But it is not. It is Stephen King’s coded way of warning us of several things:
a) magic and occultism are dangerous and help to bring about the Anti-Christ (the Man in Black), by opening portals for demons to enter our world through.
b) the government kidnaps and experiments on people who are psychic (Firestarter with Drew Berrymore this occurs throughout the film, also in this film they try and get the kid for his psychic abilities, and its done through mental health or foster care)
c) The falling and rebuilding of the World Trade Center has some sort of strong connection to the occult, and King quite possibly predicted the fall of the Twin Towers in his first volume from 1982.

King started writing in the early 1970’s. At that time there was a strong mistrust of government. From the Gulf of Tonkin, to the Church committee, to Cointelprolo Operation, the government had gone and lied to the public while doing some really evil things. Stephen King clearly picked up on this. Many of his works exhibit an anti government paranoia. Not just Firestarter (where George C. Scott acts super creepy almost sexual intonations towards Drew Berrymore), but in the Dead Zone the Martin Sheen character was set to become a fascist dictator set on nuking the world. Lawnmower Man had ‘the Shop’ too. Or in the Stand, where small pox virus breaks out of a government lab, killing off most of the globe’s population. Only to be saved by the ‘Hand of God’ at the end. Stephen King himself is the visionary, and much of what he warns us about is directly from the bible.

This newest film of Stephen King’s is the clearest indication and proof yet that King believes (and is right) that Christian prophecies are fulfilled beyond anything that could be considered coincidence. The fact that the book dealt with apocalyptic towers in NYC way back in 1982 is a blatant example of how human history and future has been coded into biblical prophecy, and cleverly deciphered, reinterpreted, and laid bare for keen observers of pop culture to use as a tool to heighten their intellectual awareness.

Another notable simulacra throughout the film and the book the characters say ‘I shoot with my mind not my hand’. This echoes Infowars.com slogan ‘there is a war for your mind’ just a little to closely to be coincidence. There is also a line that repeats throughout regarding virtue (or lack thereof) about ‘Having forgotten the face of your father(s)’, which likely relates to the Founding Fathers and how America has abandoned its original principles.  As you watch the film see what examples you can find as a viewer in terms of occultism. They are plentiful.