I read recently that Christopher Walken may be getting his own cooking show. It was on the internet, so it must be true. Fact or fiction, that got me thinking about Mr. Walken, and when considering his career arc, those thoughts inevitably turned to Abel Ferrara’s 1990 crime flick, King of New York. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: King of New York”
Author: capcom
The Empty Balcony: Man of Steel, or, Church
You can save her, Kal. You can save all of them.
So says the ghostly avatar of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) in Team Nolan’s Man of Steel, right before the Man himself, Superman (Henry Cavill), falls backwards out of a spacecraft, arms spread wide, mimicking the posture of Christ on the cross. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Man of Steel, or, Church”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Riddick
I was really hoping this movie would have been appropriate for the October Horrorshow. Alas, it was not. Sure, there is some exotic, overly aggressive wildlife to be found, and they do devour a good amount of the cast, but this movie is more a straight action flick than anything else. Too bad. I was looking forward to featuring this review right after Pitch Black. Well, at least it’s shitty!
Riddick, of course, is the second sequel to Pitch Black, featuring the eponymous character played by Vin Diesel. In this flick, Riddick has abandoned the burdens of galactic leadership and returned to his animal nature, a sly acknowledgment by writer/director David Twohy that the second movie in the series, The Chronicles of Riddick, was a stupidly overwrought idea that never should have been put to film. Riddick isn’t a fucking politician. He’s a badass. No one wants to see him speechifying or fending off the knives of palace assassins. The world, this world, needs Riddick to get in gunfights with mercenaries and fight creatures with big pointy teeth. Message received. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Riddick”
October Horrorshow: Halloween 5
What a putrid mess. Halloween 5 is a shameless cash grab. (The full title is Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, but that full title seems only to exist on posters and other promotional material. The title card of the actual movie has no subtitle.) Halloween 4 was a cheap b-movie that sought to bring a recognizable brand to heel after the failure that was Halloween III. And it worked. Audiences didn’t like the fact that Michael Myers wasn’t the villain in the third flick, and producer Moustapha Akkad took notice. He brought back the slasher icon for the fourth installment, and saw a tidy return on investment, so it was inevitable that there would be a fifth. Of course, since abject cheapness didn’t hurt the bottom line with Halloween 4, there was no incentive to produce a quality product with Halloween 5.
Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween 5″
October Horrorshow: The Changeling
John Russell (George C. Scott) just had the worst day of his life. While on a winter vacation in upstate New York, he watched his wife and child get run down in the street by an out of control dump truck. A few months go by, and John, a composer of classical music, decides it is time to begin his life again, and takes a job teaching at his alma mater. The new job is across the country in Seattle, and John needs to find a new place to live. At the suggestion of a friend, John locates a house through the local historical society. It’s quite the place. Victorian, high ceilings — it even has a music room. Any house or apartment with a music room resides firmly in the 1%.
The house had been unoccupied ever since it was willed to the historical society, and for good reason. The place is haunted. In fact, John would never have been able to secure a lease were it not for Claire (Trish Van Devere), the member of the society that showed John the house. She’s relatively new to her job, and thus didn’t know about the issues with the house. Also, she’s smitten with the gruff old composer with the surprisingly soft smile and history of personal tragedy. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Changeling”
October Horrorshow: Shutter (2004)
Shutter was a new experience for me. As far as I can remember, I’ve never seen a movie from Thailand before. If there were a line in Vegas on whether or not the first Thai movie I chose to watch would be horror or shitty, what would that line be? Or would that be a sucker bet? It is October, after all. The month of blood and death. Of course I’m watching horror. So the only question is, is it shitty horror? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shutter (2004)”
October Horrorshow: I Sell the Dead
I never thought I would see anything personally familiar in a film that takes place in 1850s Ireland. I have never been to Ireland. I have never been to the 1850s. But I have been to Staten Island. If that makes no sense to you, dear reader, don’t worry. It will. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: I Sell the Dead”
October Horrorshow: Tremors
I’ve written about this before, but my old man had an affinity for bad cinema. Especially the sci-fi variety. It didn’t matter what it was or how bad it was. If it had something to do with space or monsters, he had a hard time looking away. Good sci-fi got the wheels turning, while bad sci-fi brought out his guttural chuckling and whooping. If it was too bad to be funny, then came groans and profanity. Hmm...kind of like me. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Tremors”
October Horrorshow: Pontypool, or, Sydney Briar…is Alive
I’ve seen plenty of bottle episodes in television, but not a lot of bottle movies. Enter Pontypool, a horror film out of Canada from 2008. In this movie, some type of outbreak is ravaging the town of Pontypool, Ontario in the middle of a raging snowstorm. The infected are murderous, making them zombie-like. They shuffle around and infect others, but they’re not after a meal, making these poor people more new-wave infected not-zombies than the traditional Romero undead. Anyway, that is what is going on in the town of Pontypool, but a viewer sees barely any of this, as the movie takes place almost entirely within the confines of a darkened radio studio. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Pontypool, or, Sydney Briar...is Alive”
October Horrorshow: Apartment 143
Oh, look. Another found footage horror flick. What is going on? Are these things breeding? Seriously, something has to be done about this or filmmakers are going to stop making horror films that look like, you know, actual movies. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Apartment 143″