October is here. Rejoice! For this is the best month in which to watch horror films. Summer has just died and the month ends with Halloween. The chill that has suddenly arisen in the air portends the coming cold slumber of winter...or the passing whisper of a phantom. To celebrate, Missile Test once again dedicates the month to reviewing horror films. The good, the bad, or the putrid. It doesn’t matter. If there’s blood, it gets a watch. Welcome to the fifth annual October Horrorshow. First up is a real winner. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Resident Evil: Retribution, or, Story? We Don’t Need No Stinking Story!”
Tag: Action Flick
Shitty Movie Sundays: The Last Stand, or, Look! The New Chevys Are Out!
Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t starred in a movie in ten years, since Terminator 3. In The Last Stand, his first major foray onto the silver screen since he ended his time as governor of California, Arnold (normally I’d refer to a person by their last name in an article, but I’m not going to subject myself to typing out Arnold’s last name more than once) plays Ray Owens, the sheriff of a small border town in Arizona. He’s a former narcotics cop from the mean streets of Los Angeles, and the wistful gazes with which he paints his little town in the opening scenes are evidence that he prefers this life in small town America to the one he left behind in the LAPD. It’s either that, or Arnold was just thrilled to be back in a starring role. I can’t tell, but it’s easy to picture the film’s director, Kim Jee-Woon, instructing Arnold to express his real feelings of satisfaction at being back in the spotlight for these scenes, as getting Arnold to display any emotional range at all is more difficult than flying the space shuttle.
That’s not a knock on Arnold. Well, not much of one. After all, I never, not once, went into an Arnold Schwarzenegger (whoops, that’s two) flick expecting an Oscar worthy performance. Action flicks aren’t about nuance. They’re about violence and blowing shit up. Seeing Arnold in anything else is a waste of mine, and everybody else’s, time (I’m looking at you, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Junior, and Jingle All the Way. In fact, I’m not looking at you. I’m going to pretend those films never happened, like Michael Jordan playing for the Wizards or Miles Davis coming out of retirement in 1981. My goodness, did I just equate Arnold Schwarzenegger [that’s three] to the greatest basketball player of all time and the greatest jazz musician of all time? Yes. Yes, I did. And you know what? That’s okay, because while Arnold is not the greatest actor of all time, he has a solid case for being the greatest action star of all time, and that has to count for something, right?). Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Last Stand, or, Look! The New Chevys Are Out!”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Olympus Has Fallen
I’m heartened by the savviness shown by the audience members during a showing of Olympus Has Fallen this weekend. This was a crowd that was having none of director Antoine Fuqua’s shenanigans. It was clear from the moment the first commercials hit the airwaves that this film would be utter nonsense. It appeared that most of the people in the theater came with the knowledge they would be watching a total piece of shit, and they didn’t care. They were there for the shitty, for the schadenfreude, and for all the other reasons that bad movies entertain us. They were laughing and groaning in all the right places. It was my kind of crowd. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Olympus Has Fallen”
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)”
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”