Donomark

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About Donomark

  • Birthday 04/21/1989

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  1. X-Men '97 Mother Fuckaaaaa 🔥🔥🔥
  2. Ooof......... .......Catwoman. Catwoman sucks, but Cat in the Hat is fucking cringe. Catwoman at best is laughably bad, TCITH is practically unwatchable.
  3. Re-watched Roadhouse over the weekend. Perfectly sufficient B-movie actioner on its own that would've floated just fine if it were a Chuck Norris led movie, but Patrick Swayze makes this special. There's something about him that was far, Far FAR more believable as the stoic, peaceful, charming badass than many of the action icons of the era. And the movie is trying so hard to be obnoxiously masculine and toxic (it definitely achieves that in the eyes of a female friend in the viewing's attendance), but I think Swayze's softer approach and easier presence alters it enough where the bravado of these types of films doesn't land exactly the same as all the others. It's had its markings: Somewhat gratuitous sex and nudity, gratuitous violence, male characters who try to out-alpha the next guy in the room. But it's Patrick Swayze who both legitimizes and alleviates all the testosterone from crowding the film like smog. Plus, he does a straight-up Fatality on a guy before Mortal Kombat. I'm intrigued by the Jake Gyllenhaal remake, but this original movie is lightning in a bottle. There's no reason it should've worked as well as it did, but it did.
  4. I'd say Inception because Unbreakable, while good, is a whole helluva lot slower. Inception's pacing is better.
  5. Good episode fellows, and no sweat about and worrying on the release date. You ended 2023 hella consistent, so I personally wasn't clockwatching when this one came out. I remember pondering the then-"truth" of what you guys had said about Wil Smith being a reliable box-office smash star back in 2014, as I feel the bloom had begun to fall off the rose around then. At the same time though, I feel that can be said for a lot of big name stars. Even Robert Downey Jr. - one of the most respected actors of the modern era - hasn't really had a non-MCU hit aside from Tropic Thunder and most recently Oppenheimer. I think it's less of Smith's body of work (although that certainly isn't innocent in this discussion), and more that movie stars don't in and of themselves draw people to the theaters as they once did. Even before Covid, the era of the Movie Star really seemed to have faded in the last decade or so. The YouTuber Patrick Willems has a couple of videos on this topic that I found myself agreeing with his conclusions.
  6. Never Back Down 3: No Surrender a.k.a. The Fighters: No Surrender a.k.a. Never Back Down: Thailand: Once again starring and directed by Michael Jai White Six years after the second film, this series has no become totally wrenched away from the low-stakes college pretty boy antics and into a pure MJW franchise. As such, it's an automatically better film than NBD2 by a solid distance. It's not actively excellent, but the requirements for an acceptable and logical plot are all there. While there are some small contrivances for the needs of its plot, it's all reasonably grounded to where nothing feels missing, as opposed to the last movie. And MJW has a story credit, which explains the film's active interest in the fighting world. Some of it is silly, but you can really tell where the real man bleeds through his character when he is actively instructing people on the real life basics and essentials of fighting. That's where the film's heart at. Although he's playing a near-unbeatable badass who's stoicism is met with derision at every turn until it's not, in this film Case Walker mellows out a lot more, due in no small part to his wife Gillian White playing his love interest. They'd been married for a year by the time this film released, and she provides a real warm presence to the movie. Of course their chemistry is nice and easy, but as an actress she holds scenes together when she's paired up with anyone else not named MJW or Esai Morales. Because most of the acting in this is horrible, and majorly due to Josh Barnett who's essentially the second lead. I respect MJW's insistence to use real fighters, but this guy is worse than all of the kids in NBD2, which is saying something. When he's given dialogue, that's when you remember this is a DTV movie. On the other side of real life martial artists, we've got two fucking LEGENDS of the Muay Thai films era making appearances. Jeeja Yanin has a cameo throughout the movie as a silent badass who shows off her brutality in one welcome fight scene, and Tony Jaa cameos during the final fight as a wacky, howling version of himself. This is pure fanboyism on MJW's part, and it's fun to see them. If you're unfamiliar with either performer's work (Tony Jaa by this point has been in several American action films like Fast and Furious 7 and XXX-3) it may not play, but these two are the best of the best. Their presence reiterates how MJW uses his movies to just geek out about fighting, more than anything else and it's infectious fun.
  7. Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown - Directed by Michael Jai White Unlike Blood and Bone which took a potentially middling premise and made it sufficiently awesome, this is far more in line with what I was originally expecting from the last MJW movie. Having not seen the original (and correctly presuming I didn't need to), I went into this movie blank. It's an amusing, almost nostalgic watch of a 2000s film even though it's 2010. The script is pretty lousy. Acting across the board is amateur and lame, save for MJW and Evan Peters who I understand returns from the first film. The movie has that DTV 2000s era feel with a real dudebro sentiment and homophobia that feels both part of the culture and also aging out. Like, the homophobia is vaguely part of a character's backstory and the movie ultimately disagrees with it, but it could've disavowed it harder than it did. On that point, it's also fairly unwittingly gay itself, which is always amusing. A lot of bare-chested rivalries that you swear to God is going to end with a vicious pounding to the tune of porno instrumentals until it doesn't. I actually was amused by the movie, badness and all. Michael Jai White is great as always, and there's a lot of him bleeding through the character he's playing when talking about actual fighting. Honestly whenever he's on-screen, the movie is perfectly fine. When he's off, it's a roll of the dice on how good or bad the actors will be. But nothing ruined the film for me, I'll check out the sequel.
  8. Yes, Spotify has been my Go-to when it comes to listening to old BOTI, EOF or Earth-2.
  9. I've not seen Madame Web and really don't expect to, but from all reports it sounds like we've got a real Catwoman 2004 on our hands. Not like Morbius, which was overrated in its badness, but truly especially lousy.
  10. Moneyball (2011): Starring Brad Pitt I dunno, it was good I guess. Maybe I've been in a funk or something, but while the cinematography was excellent and the acting is solid throughout, the energy of the film bothered me. I found Brad Pitt generally smug and obnoxious from start to finish. Save for his interactions with his daughter, he is a dick to every single person he encounters. It's one of those films (based on a book about real life events I know) that is really sold on Pitt, who is always watchable. But I wasn't in the mood for his "Everyone is stupid Except Me" act. Plus the film had a weird atmosphere about it. So many scenes of people awkwardly staring in silence. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was excellent however, practically disappearing in his role as the Oakland Athletics Art Howe. Chris Pratt also did a really good job as a naturally well meaning newbie First Baseman. I didn't dislike the movie, but I wasn't won over by it. On another day, I might be.
  11. It's wild to me that the guy cast as Ben Grimm was Micro in Season 1 of The Punisher. I'm optimistic, but save for Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm this isn't a hugely slam-dunk casted group to me, but we'll see.
  12. Warrior (2011): Starring Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy I thought this was alright. Well acted and well directed, but ultimately a sports movies with a number of tropes/cliches that I was surprised by. It felt like an older script that was held over from a decade previous. I enjoyed it, but it took it's sweet time in the first half. I liked how Tom Hardy was the veritable antagonist up through the very end and that this is Joel Edgerton's story. That made the film feel more unique. Otherwise, it's kinda like when I watched Tombstone last year in that it's solid but I was expecting a bit more than what I got.
  13. Action Jackson: Starring Carl Weathers A product reportedly based on Weathers talking with Joel Silver during the making of Predator and wanting a Blaxploitation throwback, that's exactly what this movie has its eye on. At the end of the day it's solidly average, with a few drafts short of solidifying a real keeper. Weathers is naturally charismatic, and handles the main role with ease. His character is also ultimately a pretty good guy, and less of a bullying dickhead than most macho characters of the era tend to be. Craig T. Nelson is a terrifically acted villain, with a somewhat convoluted plan but his evil burns through in every scene. And I thought Vanity was perfectly fine, I don't get why she was thrown a Razzie nomination. Of course the romance is a tad hard to buy considering the events of the film, but nothing to take me out of it. There's also a TON of "oh it's that guy" moments of random casting throughout. Bill Duke reteams with Weathers after Predator, as well as Sonny Landham. You've also got the "Dead Tired" black guy from Commando, Miguel Nunez Jr and Branscombe Richmond, the valet from Die Hard (same year), Robert Davi, Thomas F. Wilson, and Al Leong - who played the Asian henchman in virtually every late 80s action classic. What holds this movie back really are the limited drafts. For a movie and character titled "Action Jackson", Jackson himself isn't involved in an action scene until 30 minutes into the film, and it's over an hour before he proactively kicks ass. The sequences themselves are decent, they're passable. But what REALLY sucks are the quips. They are godawful, and just badly applied. It makes Weathers appear less charismatic, because they're just banal and stupid one-liners. Stuff like him saying "You lose." before running a guy over in a car, just huge misses. Certainly the most memorable line: "Barbeque, huh? HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR RIBS" is just stupid enough to pass the muster, because it's ridiculous, but it makes it the best quip in the movie. But the level of bad quips truly are tragic. Overall the movie is watchable for Weathers and Craig T. Nelson and is entertaining enough, but you wish it were better and can see how it could've been. It got raked over the coals critically, but did well financially, so it's definitely a cult film.