Tag: Heist Flick

Shitty Movie Sundays: Money Plane

One would think that professional wrestlers are tailormade action stars. They are athletic, charismatic, decent at improv, and willing to do just about anything to put on a good show. Also, one of the most important weapons in a wrestler’s arsenal is the ability to play a character. These men and women spend months or years crafting characters to which roaring crowds respond, either favorably, in the case of faces, or with gleeful jeers, in the case of heels. These are people who know how to work crowds, but remove the crowds, leaving nothing but cameras and crew, and the vast majority of wrestlers turned actor seem a bit lost. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Money Plane”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Detention (2003), or, Die Hard at a High School

Yep, it’s another low-budget Die Hard at a… flick, something that Dolph Lundgren has excelled at during his long and prolific career in shitty movies. Some are bad, some are awful, some are passable. I have yet to see a Die Hard at a… flick from Dolph that is excellent. But, the man has a lane, and he stays in it.

Released direct-to-video in 2003, Detention follows Dolph as Sam Decker, a former soldier who got fed up with soldiering after he witnessed American bombs destroy a building full of bad guys and child hostages in Bosnia. Now, ten years on, he’s a teacher at a rough and tumble inner city high school. He’s fed up with that gig, too, and hands in his resignation early one morning. Because he is leaving his principal in the lurch, Decker is assigned to supervise after school detention on his last day. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Detention (2003), or, Die Hard at a High School”

October Horrorshow: Army of the Dead

I liked Zack Snyder’s 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. I thought it was a fine modern entry in the zombie subgenre of horror, helping make the creatures scary again. The heavy lifting may have been done by 28 Days Later a few years earlier, but it can’t be denied that Snyder’s film is one of the reasons zombie films and television shows remain popular today. Dawn of the Dead was also the last Zack Snyder film I’ve enjoyed. Every subsequent film he’s made since then, from 300 to this year’s Army of the Dead, has been a joyless slog — the knock from critics, and even fans, being that Snyder makes visually interesting, even gorgeous, films, but they suffer from too much length. The consensus is that Snyder’s lack of storytelling discipline is an issue, but not one that is fatal to his vision. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Army of the Dead”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Las Vegas Lady

Crown International Pictures is a repository of crap. For some, that’s a bad thing. For shitty movie fans, we misguided many, that makes Crown something heroic. It’s too bad they went belly up in 1992.

Many, many years before that happened, however, in 1975, they graced us with a cheap Ocean’s 11 ripoff, wherein a hooker, a waitress, and a trapeze artist plan and execute a casino heist. There are even shades of Charlie’s Angels, as the trio are given their marching orders by a mysterious man who lurks in the shadows. Although, this flick came out a year before Charlie’s Angels premiered. Does that make this film groundbreaking? Hell, no. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Las Vegas Lady”

Empty Balcony: Renegades, aka American Renegades

The Luc Besson action mill has turned out some of the most successful action flicks of this century, and also some of the genre’s most overwrought messes. Renegades (released in the States as American Renegades) lies somewhere in between. It has the grandiosity one would expect from a Besson-produced action flick, but the end product is something anonymous.

Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Renegades, aka American Renegades”

Empty Balcony: Triple Frontier

Netflix is in a battle with the Hollywood establishment. Hollywood patting itself on the back, in the form of endless awards shows in the winter, is more than just a glad-handing circle jerk. There is a lot of money at stake. Hollywood is a business, and the rules the establishment sets aren’t meant to maintain artistic integrity or anything else so noble. They are meant to protect the interests of the established players. The arcane rules of Hollywood state that a movie isn’t eligible for an award if it premiered in any other place than a movie theater. Should a movie premiere on something as ephemeral as the internet, it’s not a movie, apparently. That’s silly and stupid, and it’s only a matter of time before the powers that be are forced to reverse that decision. But the legitimacy of the movie theater is why Netflix, distributors of Triple Frontier, gave it a limited release in theaters before throwing it into their online catalogue. It doesn’t matter, though. If this flick gets nominated for any awards I’ll be shocked. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Triple Frontier”

Empty Balcony: Black Sea

Is Jude Law still famous? I ask because appearing in a film like 2014’s Black Sea is either the sign of a flagging career, or a sign it’s time to find a new agent. Every star eventually ends up doing marginal projects like this. Go ahead and peruse the output of Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage for a pair of prominent examples. And that’s good for the shitty movie fan. A little talent in a shitty movie can go a long way. Too bad this flick isn’t shitty. It’s just mediocre. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Black Sea”

Empty Balcony: Point Break

It’s somewhat amazing, but Point Break, the 1991 action flick from director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff, has become a classic. It’s a film that’s loaded with contemporary action tropes. It’s also one of the flicks that, despite its success, can be pointed to as partly responsible for the downfall of 1980s-style action films. It has aged well over time, but when it came out it was an eye-roller. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Point Break”

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”