Film review — Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal
The only scandal here is implying that Michael Larson cheated when all he did was be smarter than TV networks believed their daytime audiences to be. More…
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Category: Screen
The only scandal here is implying that Michael Larson cheated when all he did was be smarter than TV networks believed their daytime audiences to be. More…
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No way the Wachowskis didn’t take inspiration from this one. Also, there are so many fuckin’ guns here. Like, a preposterous number and variety of guns. Albert Pyun must have been at the prop warehouse yelling “Gimme all ya got!” More…
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The story goes that after the success of Death Race 2000, Roger Corman asked Paul Bartel to make another car picture, but this time more ‘real’. Bartel had no interest but he needed the money, hence this rehash that strips out the dystopian setting and vicious satire — as well as the gore and mean spirit — for a lighter action jape across America, loaded with cameos and familiar faces and one especially witty scene (Bartel’s favourite, as it happens) where the director plays a Cole Porter pastiche on the piano while Dick Miller gets the shit kicked out of him. More…
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Far too much being made here about the whole ‘they never mention climate change lol’ thing, as if no one knows the climate in which movies like this are made. The producers picked their battles and went with the unscrupulous developers angle, which in itself is fairly radical for a summer popcorn flick that’s meant to convince the denizens of flyover country to hand over their dollars. More…
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A ‘teen’ movie that only features two teens (played by 20-year-olds, so almost) and is mostly built around a cadre of military men of advancing age debating the ins and outs of computer-assisted warfare. Because that’s what the kids really want. Also, I can’t help but think about how Aaron Swartz got hounded to his suicide because he downloaded some journal articles, so just imagine what they’d do to the likes of Matthew Broderick’s phone-phreaking hacker today. More…
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Twenty-some-odd years ago, I ordered a Burmese CD from Andee’s label tUMULt and he included a very nice thank-you note, which he absolutely didn’t need to do but it meant so much that I still remember it now. That’s the kind of people these are, no bullshitting. (Shame about the Jef Whitehead bits, though.) More…
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I guess I’ve set my bar pretty low as I found this poorly reviewed French buddy-cop comedy to be perfectly fine. The plot’s as clichéd as anything but they’re all tried and tested tropes. The action is on the tame side yet with a few impressive moments. The humour is broad but just enough to translate internationally (I think anyone can get the joke about people from Marseille hating Paris) while only stooping once into scatology (the American version of this would’ve been done with surround-sound farts and you know it). Best of all, it’s all wrapped up in around 90 minutes. More…
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This early Charles Band production wouldn’t be out of place as a ’70s Doctor Who story, cheapo production values and all — though I feel the BBC camera operators and editors would take a little more pride in their work. More…
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Had a blast with this one. Michael Rooker gives Stallone a run for his money as a fellow mountain rescuer caught up in the gleefully evil John Lithgow’s plot to retrieve three suitcases full of cash dropped from an executive jet onto the rocky peaks below (in an awe-inspiring set piece of the kind they’d blandly previz in CGI today). Sly’s plugged into the ‘climber with a crisis of confidence’ role for the star power, but the film’s got its own energy to spare, not to mention some stunning matte paintings and composites that more than make up for some mildly ropey miniature work. More…
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“Special effects”? Steady on there, chief. This movie has effects, sure, but there’s nothing special about it. More…
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A near-perfect blockbuster: high concept, relentless pacing, thrilling effects where the practical stuff grounds the digital in reality, a game cast that really sells the mission, and the kind of orchestral score that makes you wish you had a bucket of popcorn in you lap. Points deducted only for the very dated ’90s radio tuneage. More…
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Let’s be honest, this one drags a lot when the fire takes hold and it puts much of the drama on pause to document the procedural aspects of fighting such a deadly blaze (and Newman and McQueen roll up their sleeves as the men in charge). That adds a lot of valuable verisimilitude, such that beyond the fashions and decor that are decidedly of the time, this hasn’t dated very much at all. But obviously what’s sacrificed there is spectacle: everything you see on the screen is technically impressive, but not all of it is particularly exciting. They wouldn’t make it like this today, that’s for sure. I’m not certain they’d make it any better, either. More…
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Big Trouble in the South China Sea, more or less. Mostly less. The action is appropriately silly, and the practical effects gloriously gloopy. The CGI, however, is rotten. More…
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I feel like this is one of those ‘the director wanted one thing but Golan and Globus wanted another’ Cannon flicks because the title and the main plot conceit are garbage but the production design and cinematography are actually fantastic. Nearly everyone looks like a junkyard New Romantic in an underground industrial nightmare shot in moody browns and blues, the kind of Brazil-nodding look that Jean-Pierre Jeunet would make his calling card a few years later. But this was Albert Pyun adapting a movie poster for lunch money so he was never going to get those flowers. More…
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RoboCop is absolutely a film that’s greater than the sum of its parts. But its parts are pretty great too, and this four-part, five-hour docu does a pretty entertaining job of breaking it all down to discover how the magic was made. It also really benefits from having so many of those involved in the production giving their piece, warts and all. More…
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Jessica Rothe got in absolutely rock-hard shape for… this? More…
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I have zero recollection of previously watching this, six years ago. But I stand by what I apparently said before. More…
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A paint-by-numbers thriller where you’ll figure things out far too quickly, mostly remarkable for being unnecessarily misogynist towards Eva Longoria (as if many of the male characters had never seen a woman before) and, in fairness, making Michael Douglas’ advancing age somewhat of a character trait that works. More…
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Plays like two distinct concepts shoehorned into one, to the detriment of both. I guess that was Cannon trying to save a buck. More arm wrestling might’ve helped; as it is, Sly barely does any before the big finale, as he and Robert Loggia’s goons spend most of the running time kidnapping a young boy from each other. In other notes, the presence of not one but three workers (Reggie Bennett, Scott Norton and of course Terry Funk) makes this a wrestling movie in my book. More…
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This is just a nice time catching up with the ersatz leads of the Brucesploitation era. Looking back on their careers, their emotions run the gamut, but none were under any illusions as to who they were and what they were doing. If they’d done a round-table for this documentary, I’d have given it an extra star. More…
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Somehow never saw this one back in the day. I would have been just as annoyed then as I am now by the whole thing where Jean-Claude Van Timecop comes back from a timecopping mission clearly agitated by differences between what he left and what he returned to, but there’s no debrief or any inkling that anyone is bothered by it, despite everyone’s job ostensibly being, y’know, timecopping. More…
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It’s fitting that this documentary about pioneering culture jammers Negativland takes the form of a mesmerising audio-visual bricolage in their own fashion. (It’s also fitting that I happened upon it while clicking around YouTube on a Monday night, much like a teenage Wobbly randomly tuned his radio to Over the Edge and had his mind blown.) More…
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A curiously, distractingly anachronistic paranoia thriller, with a muddied message about mass surveillance, social conditioning via television, simulacra and simulation, etc but one that’s mostly undone by telegraphing its ‘shocking’ twist practically from the get-go. More…
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Wasn’t feeling this one. Andrew McCarthy centres himself in a conversation about the consequences of the ‘Brat Pack’ label placed on that group of young ’80s Hollywood actors. Not unreasonably, he has his own bitterness and neuroses about the branding, some of which are shared by fellow brats but notably those who didn’t quite parlay their potential and notoriety into a high-profile career. More…
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Has the distinct air of a short blown up to a feature — but making up for the absence of any additional plot or character development with stylish atmosphere, which only goes so far before it diffuses into nothing. The metaphors and more direct allusions (it’s far more text than subtext) are laid on too thick for my liking. But the overall sentiments are worth exploring. More…
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Alex Garland trolls us with a deliberate provocation that has nothing new or profound to say, and it’s proud of it. Is ‘war journalists are an odd bunch?’ a fascinating or unique observation? Not on this surface level, which leans into all the ‘adrenaline junkie one minute, dead-eyed and emotionless the next’ clichés. More…
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A twist on the typical slasher with too many ideas for its own good (the killers are both too smart and too dumb to make any sense of them at all) but one hell of a parting shot. More…
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The Tetsuo guy got studio backing for his follow-up flick, a sweaty teen adventure horror (adapted from a manga) that mashes up your favourite ’80s genre memories with Japanese folklore and results in something that’s much more my bag. Reportedly a troubled production where nobody wanted to work with a novice director, it’s a one-off in Shinya Tsukamoto’s oeuvre and it’s a shame he never revisited this kind of fare. More…
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It’s Jaws if the shark were a volcano (there’s even a character named “Dreyfus”, for crying out loud) but Pierce Brosnan doesn’t get to blow up the volcano at the end. More…
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Going into this documentary, I knew very little about the subject other than that they were on Touch & Go and met a premature end in a similar vein to the Minutemen. The film did a nice job of selling me on the band and their regional importance, it’s a fitting tribute in that respect, but it also wants me to believe that an act with a sound as oddball and abrasive as theirs had any chance of breaking out in the mainstream. Even in the post-Nirvana gold rush of the ’90s that was never going to happen. And some of the talking heads feel decidedly out of place. (Is Melissa Auf der Maur really a Brainiac fan? Her ‘making up her homework on the spot’ energy suggests not.) More…
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Most recent reviews of this Japanese faux-documentary are from Gen Z-ers and younger Millennials who found it via a horror YouTuber’s recent video essay on the subject and hey, I’ll celebrate anything that gets young people to engage with media on a critical level, especially if it’s something beyond the Western-dominated mainstream. More…
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My pitch for Running Out of Time 3 is just me slapping Inspector Wong as hard as I can for an hour and a half. I mean, it can’t be any sillier than this. More…
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A downtrodden police detective finds himself in a battle of wits with a terminally ill master criminal in a thriller that never really rises above being a jolly good time but that’s OK, because sometimes a jolly good time is all you need. More…
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The Mike Baldwin of Knots Landing goes ham on the outlaws who murdered his wife and son in a sweltering setting that makes me feel clammy just looking at it. The sombre character study of the first half is deeply affecting, but there’s some grade-A squib work here, too. I think we can all agree the cops in First Blood should’ve watched this one before deciding to pick on poor John Rambo. More…
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The animators should be very proud of the river rapids sequence; that hand-crafted, roughly hewn look to the rippling waves and rushing water is up there with Ghibli’s finest. If only the story were as finely crafted. More…
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Pretty much the platonic ideal of a musical comedy. (Restored original ending and all.) More…
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I admit I only half paid attention this one (the second film of Important Cinema Club’s 24-Hour Musical Movie Mind Melter on Twitch) as I was struck by a sudden headache and reading subtitles was out of the question. It’s a tale as old as showbiz: a star tap-dancer in his day is, decades later, largely forgotten but for the interest of one passionate upstart who seeks his mentorship. So far, so clichéd but it’s rendered with genuine feeling, not to mention that very Russian melancholy and end-of-the-Soviet-era sociopolitical subtext. More…
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I’m not a musicals guy, but I can appreciate a phenomenal production when I see it. More…
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An inept trash fantasy, shot in apartheid South Africa and starring a dubbed-over John Saxon who’s trying way too hard, the other one from Battlestar Galactica and a wrestler who supposedly faced off with both a pre-Nailz Kevin Wacholz and a pre-Undertaker Mark Calaway on cultural boycott-breaking tours. More…
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I had this occult/nunsploitation/body horror pegged as being wildly unhinged from the way people were talking about it. So imagine my disappointment… Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine for what it is, but if only it had leaned into its pulpier urges. More…
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It’s only taken, what, 25 years until they started making professionally produced documentaries about the weirdo music I got into at the turn of the century. And honestly the music and aesthetic of The Locust (and this is mostly about The Locust, despite all the other things Justin Pearson has done) is still so impactful to my brain today; so anti-orthodox in terms of conception, and intimidatingly so. Thirty-second songs with herky-jerky rhythms and blast beats and screaming and synths? Still very much my shit. More…
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Everyone else is all about the comparisons to Ozu, which are natural to make, but for me this is Wim Wenders’ Kikujiro. I can’t really explain why; it’s just a feeling. More…
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Suspension of disbelief immediately broken upon the appearance of John de Lancie — one of television’s most recognisable extraterrestrials — as a ‘field reporter’. Yeah, like I’m falling for that one. More…
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I go hot or cold on Fulci flicks and this one sits in the middle for me, albeit leaning towards the warmer side. I know that sounds like an odd thing to say about a film where one of the highlights is a crazed dad drilling through the skull of his daughter’s fancy man but there you go. More…
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Less a documentary than an extended music video, an aesthetic exercise as meditative as Earth’s latter-day music. I’d love to know if it would convert anyone unfamiliar with Dylan Carlson and his musical exploits over the decades, because as much as I enjoyed it (especially when Adrienne Davies carefully considers her approach to drumming), overall it feels like a hibernaculum, opaque and impenetrable — but rewarding if you have managed to crack it open. More…
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Having not yet seen the famed Branded to Kill, this was my introduction to hamster-cheeked Joe Shishido in a leading role. He’s got an oddball charm that reminds me a little of what Elliott Gould would bring to Philip Marlowe a decade later. But it’s tempered somewhat by everyone else around him being just as odd, which does not a tense gangster thriller make. More…
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An effectively spooky, twisty little horror thriller here, with shades of the greats (Hitchcock, Argento, Kubrick) but without getting completely lost to its influences. And not to mention a pulse-pounding synth score from Klaus Schulze that’s employed at just the right moments. More…
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I’ve put the 4K Blu-ray in my shopping basket because of this, for what it’s worth. More…
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Here’s a strange one, mostly played straight — talking heads, clips from films and interviews, you know the score — but partly staged, like an attempt to underline the kayfabe of the documentary form but done as ham-fistedly as the director’s latter filmography. More…
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I have a lot of time for Jason Statham, as you’d know if you know me well, but this… I’m not convinced it wasn’t ‘written’ by a large language model. More…
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