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)”
Tag: Action Flick
Shitty Movie Sundays: Red Dawn (2012)
It’s been awhile, but Shitty Movie Sundays returns for the first time since last Halloween. What a doozy we have today. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Red Dawn (2012)”
The Empty Balcony: Skyfall
I never thought I would have to write this, but, spoilers ahead. For the first time, I’m writing a review of a film that’s more for readers who have already seen it. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Skyfall”
The Empty Balcony: End of Watch
Gritty New York City cop dramas are stylistically different from gritty Los Angeles cop dramas. It’s only partly due to setting. It would be hard for a film to ignore the differences between the coasts, but as far apart as the Eastern Seaboard and SoCal are, geographically and culturally, these differences are not what set cross-continental police flicks and television series apart. Just doing a loose word association, when I think NYC cop drama, my first thought is Law & Order and all of its iterations — police procedurals that follow detectives. After that I drift back to films from the past like The French Connection, Serpico, Fort Apache the Bronx, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Across 110th Street, even Bad Lieutenant. These films represent my own personal biases, but they all adhere to a palate of sorts that is broadly representative of New York City cop films.
Across the farmlands, the plains, the mountains and the deserts, Los Angeles has been building its own mythos regarding the LAPD on film. After decades following the cop as superman (think Lethal Weapon, Cobra, etc.), that model looks set to be replaced by episodes of Cops. I’m not joking. Some of the best work regarding LAPD officers of late hasn’t involved huge explosions and guns that never run out of ammo. It hasn’t been the lone detective doggedly pursuing the impossible murder case. It hasn’t been buddy movies. It’s been the uniformed officer. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: End of Watch”
The Empty Balcony: Dredd
“Let’s finish this.” Really? Still, it’s good. Trust me.
Blink and you would have missed it. Dredd, written by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis, went in and out of movie theaters so quickly this fall that by the time I realized it had been released, it was already gone. Maybe it was a failure of marketing, maybe it was a lack of interest in the characters, maybe it was just fatigue after a summer filled with overwrought comic book adaptations which kept viewers away. And, it has to be said, maybe it was the hard ‘R’ rating the film earned. Whatever the reasons, one or a combination of all of these and more, Dredd was a flop. Which is too bad, because it was the best of the comic book films released this year, and one of the best comic book films I’ve ever seen. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Dredd”
The Empty Balcony: Runaway Train
1985’s Runaway Train is a very unique film. It’s American made, filmed in the white wastes of Alaska, but in a blind taste test, cinephiles would swear it was a Russian film. The film stock, the cinematography, set designs, costumes, etc., all scream that the film was made on the other side of the Iron Curtain. That’s not by design, but a result of the film being helmed by Andrei Konchalovsky, who, until the 1980s, was a Soviet filmmaker. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Runaway Train”
October Horrorshow: Resident Evil
I’ve seen Resident Evil four times. Each time, it gets worse. Don’t ask me why I’ve dedicated five precious hours of my life to this dog. I have no answer. I wish I could swear this last viewing was the final viewing, but who knows? Maybe it will be, now I’ve bothered to write a review. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Resident Evil”
October Horrorshow: Dead Heat (1988)
“These caps[sic] are on the biggest murder case of their lives...their own.”
So declares the DVD box art for the 1988 zombie action flick Dead Heat. When searching for a shitty movie to idly pass an evening, a typo on box art is a pretty fair indication a viewer has found a winner. Any movie called Dead Heat and starring Joe Piscopo doesn’t need any extra hint that it’s a special film, but the fact the producers didn’t care enough to release the flick with a simple bit of copy editing on the box is just icing on the cake.
Directed by Mark Goldblatt, Dead Heat follows two 1980s Hollywood-style rogue cops, Detectives Mortis and Bigelow (Treat Williams and Piscopo, respectively), as they try to track down a ring of armed robbers that have an uncanny ability to absorb massive amounts of flying bullets and not die. The film opens with a shootout of ridiculous proportions to ram this point home, as a pair of robbers armed with Uzis take on half the police force in a shootout on the street. Cops are dropping left and right, but no matter how many times the perps are shot, they just won’t go down. It takes a grenade and a speeding car to do the trick. To start the film, this scene is a total howler, in the scale of its violence and its absurdity. It does wonders to set up the rest of the film for a viewer. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Dead Heat (1988)”
October Horrorshow: The Crazies (1973)
Is George Romero paranoid? It’s a possibility. At the very least, I would say he is mistrusting of authority. Night of the Living Dead, his seminal work, and all its follow-ups, showcase a horde of the undead rendering civilization waste. But it’s worth remembering that Romero’s zombies are not supernatural in origin. Rather, they are the result of government experiments gone wrong. Ergo, it’s not the zombies that are the greatest threat to civilization in Romero’s universe. It is the people who take our taxes. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Crazies (1973)”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Backdraft
Do NOT trust this trailer. This movie sucks.
Nothing is ever interesting enough for Hollywood. If you pitch them a movie about mountain climbers starring Sylvester Stallone, they follow that up by asking what the hook is. Alpine climbing in bad weather just isn’t compelling in their line of thinking, so the movie has to be augmented with a bunch of bad guys who robbed the Treasury Department. And that’s how we got the movie Cliffhanger. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Backdraft”