Philip K Dick – Missile Test

Shitty Movie Sundays: Next

Next movie poster Thank goodness for Nicolas Cage. He could have been like so many other best actor Oscar-winners and gone on to a lifetime of prestige roles and special appearances, but Cage decided to zig instead of zag. He’s a prolific worker, but a casual movie fan can be forgiven should they be unable to name anything he’s been in for the past ten years. He has fully, and without reservation it seems, given his life over to shitty movies. Just this year he has starred in a film about a former government assassin who runs a fleabag hotel in South America, another film about zoo animals running loose on a cargo ship, a neo-noir thriller, a drug wars action flick, an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, and a second neo-noir thriller. Six movies! And not one of them has been good enough to advertise during sporting events or primetime TV. But, I bet they’re all entertaining flicks.

This review steps back in time a little bit, to the tail end of Cage’s time as an A-lister.

From 2007, Next stars Cage as Cris Johnson, a smalltime Las Vegas stage magician who happens to have a real psychic talent. Johnson is able to see two minutes into his future and make decisions based off of those visions. It’s a pretty useful talent to have in a shitty magic act, and also makes him a buttload of cash at the blackjack tables. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Next”

Schwarzenegger Month: Total Recall

Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t in any movie released in the year following Twins. I would like to think that he had receded into isolation, that he took the time for some introspection, some reflection on just what it meant to be an action star in the 1980s. Explosions. Big guns. Massive body counts. He was a master of everything that made action flicks great, and just about all of it was discarded in Twins. I hope he found new purpose, a new center, in his life. But very probably, he was enjoying the new house all that Twins money bought him. Seriously, that movie was a smash hit. And so was his next film, Total Recall, which was released in 1990. Continue reading “Schwarzenegger Month: Total Recall”

The Empty Balcony: Total Recall (2012)

It’s no secret. Hollywood loves remakes. They love squeezing new cash out of old ideas. And why not? We’re a country that embraces the familiar. We find comfort in it. It’s this tendency of the public to seek out what it already knows that makes Applebee’s and the Olive Garden successful properties in Times Square. Who the hell would come all the way to New York City only to eat the same food they can get in Boise? Americans, that’s who. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Total Recall (2012)”

The Empty Balcony: The Adjustment Bureau, or, Angels Play Dirty

Mr. Dick has hit the silver screen again. The Adjustment Bureau, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, is a love story with a divine bent. Matt Damon plays David Norris, a young, very successful politician who discovers by accident that the world is not as it seems. Free will? No. There is none, unless one was to count the meaningless minutiae of daily life, such as what toothpaste to use in the morning. The big stuff, like wars and choosing the right insurance policy, is left up to ‘The Plan’ — a set of instructions for the direction of the entire human race penned by a mysterious figure called the Chairman. In the Chairman’s employ are an army of caseworkers who adjust the actions, and even impulses, of humans when they stray from THE PLAN. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: The Adjustment Bureau, or, Angels Play Dirty”