getting back on track, thought I'd do a Sly movie: Demolition Man (1993) A disarming, completely fun film for Stallone that offers a vision of the future that is (for once) not nasty and mean-spirited. It's almost an in-joke to have generic One-Man-Army Sly wake up in a future filled with poilte, articulate pussies. I mean, is there possibly a more awesome line in film than "What seems to be your boggle?" The cast is mostly second-rate, as Wesley Snipes is almost the caricature of a mad-dog bad guy, and Sandra Bullock though earnest comes off as mildly irritating. I enjoyed Stallone and Dennis Leary the most. The action is decent (with Hollywood's largest controlled explosion ever at the beginning), the humour is constant and the inventive production design for the film is staggering and a treat to look at, perhaps even believable (note there are NO flying cars). It must have been a blast to be an art director for this film. Lots of fun. A great double bill for True Lies if you ask me. Somebody STILL needs so come forward and explain Triple Sea Shell instructions to me, though. 7/10
Sticking with Crowns action theme, Total Recall Arnold is a construction worker married to Sharon Stone in her prime when he decides he wants to change up the mediocrity. He goes to a memory implant center to receive a fake vacation to Mars as a super agent. It turns out the procedure undos a previous Recall procedure to cover up the fact that he's working for a tyrannical business man from Mars, Velos Kohagen. He helps the rebels anyway via the baby from the Dinosaurs TV show who lives in another guys stomach, or something. He activates some alien technology and melts a giant glacier that terraforms Mars in a few minutes, which Arnold and the Latina lady go from their eyes popping out to their head back to normal without severe brain damage. They kiss on the mountain top and you're left to determine whether it really happened or not. This movie is classic Arnold during his heyday. It's got action, one-liners, and a chick with 3 tits. Its also actually a pretty decent sci-fi film, but thankfully it doesn't take itself too seriously. The acting is exactly what you'd expect and what it should be, and Ronny Cox and Michael Ironside are decent villains. It deeply saddens me that it's being remade with Colin Farrell with a more serious tone. 9/10
Sorry for the tangent, but there has been a lot of debate over whether the events in the film happened, or if it was just part of the 'holiday package' he paid for. Surely it had to happen, otherwise how would Recall's promise of the memory being just as real as any other hold up when he finds his wife is still alive, and Mars hasn't been terraformed? Anyone else?
Well, I'm sure that would cause him to "schizoid-embolism", but we don't see that part of the movie. Total Recall is being remade, perhaps they will make it clearer, but I like the ambiguity.
I mean this movie was from a guy who claimed to have had a alien laser beam shot into his head and caused all sorts of visions. Reality wasn't always in the cards. I watched this film this past summer and was surprised how poorly it stood up today. Though the subject material is interesting in that Philip K Dick mind fuck sort of way, it is cheesy Arnold, not awesome action Arnold. I hadn't seen it in years and when my friend and I were searching for a movie at Blockbuster he mentioned he hadn't seen it. I remember thinking it was classic and suggested it. But the dialogue is laughably bad and classic scenes, like the head removal scene or three boobed girl, didn't overcome the dated action movie delivery.
Paul Verehoven like most of his films presents them as hard-impact exploitation satires. With Total Recall and his other good movie, Robocop, he's a Dutch filmmaker painting the sterotypes of America with huge brush strokes. Read Phil K Dick's original version of this story called We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. As a movie, I think it stands up well (especially in terms of special effects) and eventually with said dialogue you mentioned it will become a camp/cult classic.
They shot some it not to far from me at a huge car chasis factory called Formet. A couple guys I knew got to meet Farrell. He stuck around to greet about 200 factory workers for photos and autographs even though it was only 1 or 2 minute scene. Pretty decent of him. They said he was awesome, short, and swore more than anybody they had ever met. I like him more already.
Not much. It will have flying fucking cars in it too (never gonna happen, people!!!), but Walter White is Cohagen (slight plus). Len Wiseman directed Live Free Or Die Hard which was good, and the first two Underworld movies which were painfully boring, colourless turds. Colin Farell IS a great actor who takes on shitty scripts impulsively. Beckinsale and Biel are eye candy par excellence (Sharon Stone in the original Recall was more gorgeous though) and have never given a good acting performance, and they never will. No Richter, though? They should have just hired Michael Ironside again. Who looks more sinister than that guy?
Starship Troopers(1997) Here we have it: the most violent children's movie ever made. I say that because if you take away the film's adult subject matter, you get lefg with a movie designed for little kids. Paul Verhoven decides to throw caution into the wind in every aspect, taking a one hundred million dollar budget and casting it with toys from Aaron Spelling's attic. The effects though slick become repeatitive and boring after the millionth or so bug is shot apart, and the film generally insults the cult book it is based on as Verhoven gives it his Western world-caricature treatement to great failure. In the end, you get soft-boiled characters mouthing laughable dialogue against a Backdrop of faceless rocks n' desert. Were it not for exceptional character actors like Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside adding some real grit and panache in their small roles, this film would have come with a toilet seat on top of it. And where's the fucking ending? The pits. 2/10 is generous.
This is a guy who said Live Free Or Die Hard was GOOD. I'm starting to think he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
Yeah, and YOU defend Varsity Blues which about as fun to watch as a pile of newborn babies being shovelled into a wood chipper. AH DUN'T WANT YUR LAFE!!!!!! Don't hate. And yes, it's satire. Stupid, wrongheaded, completely-insult-the-source satire that manages to be NOT entertaining, NOT faithful to the book and just NOT plain good. Did I mention it cost more than $100 million 15 years ago? Less than ten films total probably had that budget at that point. If a single fan of the book is anything by appalled by this film, then I am one shocked white boy.
Considering that our politics couldn't be more different, it's amusing that Crown Royal and I agree completely about this. And he is spot-on about the reaction of fans of the book. In fact, I would take it a step further. Starship Troopers (1997) Paul Verhoeven has never read the original book. He has admitted as much in various interviews. However, he had someone summarize it to him as "something something military/patriotism/conservative", and decided to take a giant shit on it and author Robert Anson Heinlein. In the process, he made a film with the sensibilities and intelligence of an ADD-addled kindergartener. Purposely bad, purposely retarded. It was his way of sticking his middle finger to the source material. There are many people who make crappy, lazy adaptations of great books. Verhoeven is the only one who went out of his way to piss on it. While not the technically worst film ever made, it is my most hated. 0/100
'tis the season, so let's have some baseball fun: Bull Durham (1988) Different breed of comedy for Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. Sports/Sex comedy has Sarandon as the scorching cougar-groupie of a minor league team who lives with one player a season to show him the ropes, Kevin Costner as a crafty, vulgar baseball veteran and Robbins as the dumb-as-fuck supertalent they equally want to help, and thus begins the love triangle. The movie has surprising legs, and does so by being mature but still silly fun, with a great admiration for the actual sport of baseball. Costner has never been more appealing or charismatic. As Crash Davis, he's an embittered ex-star who can't be fooled. Susan Sarandon is ravishing as the aging southern belle and Robbins is perfectly cast in an atypical role as the idiot savant. Film has beautifully profane dialogue that crackles every minute, with all-too-believable situations and some seriously steamy stuff in the final reel. A solid sports comedy, and has stood the test of time well. 7.5/10 Major League (1989) So, do your yourself a favour: pretend any sequel to this movie does not exist. With that out of the way, you have a film here with an extremely pedestrian script but a dynamite cast that delivers knockout-hilarious one-liners again and again and AGAIN. The actors are chosen well: Tom Berenger is decent as the imperfect hero, but Charlie Sheen and Wesley Snipes as Willie Mays-Hayes (the role that made him a star) shine as the team's rag-tag rookies. Bit players that round out the Cleveland Indians are nothing short of sensational, and although the plot offers no surprises whatsoever-- the shitty team that rises to the occasion simply by trying hard-- this film is always lots of fun and ALWAYS generates tonnes of laughs in me. The movie is however hijacked by Bob Uecker as the team's acid-tongued, hard-drinking play-by-play man. It's a firebrand comic performance that should be echoed through the ages. Nothing special in orginality, but always a blast to watch with friends. "Look at THIS fuckin' guy!" 7/10
Piggybacking off of Crown Royal's review choices seems like fun. I agree with him on one of the films. Bull Durham (1988) The birth of the sports romance film, whose purpose was to sucker girlfriends and wives into watching sports films with their men as much as anything. Honestly, it might have worked, but the premise and script here is abysmal, idiotic, and the usual "women's literature" bullshit about bad boys, true love, and older whores finding redemption. I'll give the actors credit for doing their best with this material, but the movie is mediocre at its very best, and horrible at worst. A mostly poor piece of pandering shlock. 39/100 Major League (1989) As much as I hate baseball, this is a damn funny film. Lots of bizarre, hilarious characters, well-delivered dialogue, and plenty of solid gags. It's predictable, but then again, how many comedies aren't? A big key here is the acting; the entire cast does a good job selling the material. James Gammon as the grizzled manager was especially memorable. And David Ward is no slouch of a writer; one of his credits is "The Sting". "Major League" often has the same fun, relaxed feel to it. A very good, borderline top 20 comedy. 73/100 And I will say it; I didn't think Major League 2 was horrible. It wasn't good, but I would call it "average".
Sports Comedies it is.... Slap Shot (1977) Paul Newman and George Roy Hill once again team up and once again hit gold with this timeless, hilariously sexist and homophobic comedy (written by a woman!!!) about a shit smalltown team that gains a cult status (and winning success) overnight by unleashing three psychotic, foil-fisted brothers on the ice and then immedietly feeding off their ultra-dirty ways. Relentlessly funny,, bloody and mesmerizingly profane-- Newman strikes the bulls-eye with his vulgar player-coach Reggie Dunlop and the cast of mostly unknowns are all fantastic (with endlessly quotable dialogue). The Hanson Brothers and the iconic Charlestown Chiefs jersey have become pop-culture staples to this day (especially in Canada), and the film hasn't lost it's irresistable charm whatsoever. A joy to watch every time, certainly the best hockey movie ever made and most definetly one of the best sports comedies of all. In short, if you can't enjoy this film you don't have a soul. 9/10
Battle Royale (2000) I did indeed watch this, after saying in the Recent Movie Review Thread that I believed the possibility that the Hunger Games was written with no knowledge of it. I haven't read the book, so I'm not going to get that far into it, because I don't have the full facts. However, after watching BR, and if it is a faithful adaptation of the book, my opinion hasn't changed. I want to review this movie, but I'm not going to go in depth. This is because I have only watched four other Japanese movies in my life - three that star Godzilla back when I was a kid, and one Kurosawa's "Ran" back in college. Because of this, it's hard for me to review it without being thrown by the cultural differences in acting/filming/effects. I did like that it had almost an episodic quality to it - there was a main plot and characters to follow, with breakaways to the other students and their little fights and dramas. It made the supporting cast more interesting on their own and not just pieces to move around to advance the story for the main characters, which was different than the Hunger Games.