Donomark

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Posts posted by Donomark

  1. 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. 

  2. 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.

  3. 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. 

  4. 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. 

  5. On 2/17/2024 at 9:05 AM, Professor said:

    Madame Web - But why?  Total crap, but in a very boring and uninteresting way.

    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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 3 hours ago, Missy said:

    During part of her tenure on Voyager, Jeri Ryan was married to Jack Ryan, an investment banker. They wound up getting divorced in 1999. Reports at the time were it was due, in part (more on this later), to Jeri's Voyager filming schedule. Jack was known to be a controlling man, after all.

    In 2004, Jack decides he wants to run for the US Senate. Because he's a political candidate and because everyone knew something was off about their divorce, the records are unsealed.

    What did they find in those records? Jack forced Jeri to visit sex clubs with him and made her perform sexual acts on other men.

    This revelation nukes all political aspirations for one Jack Ryan.

    So who should fill the vacuum left by Jack Ryan? Who should win the US Senate seat Ryan was after?

    Barack Obama.

    And thus begins the political career of the future POTUS.

    From there we all know how Trump treated Obama (RE: birtherism) and how Obama making one joke led to Trump finally deciding to run for POTUS himself.

    And here we fucking are.

    Addendum: Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is tied to this as well, because it was Obama's vacated Senate seat he tried to sell, which is what put him in jail.

    How did you come to learn all this?

  9. 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. 

  10. Fist of the North Star (1995): Directed by Tony Randel, starring Gary Daniels

    I've been reading the recent Fist of the North Star re-publications, having read up to volume 10 with the ultimate conflict of Kenshiro vs. Raoh/Kenoh, so I was more than read up to check this mid-90s DTV out. What I can say that's good about it is that the director and co-writer Tony Randel clearly loves the series. It reminds me of the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie, the director plainly has an eye on the source material and wants to faithfully adapt it. I think the script isn't good enough to fully explore the narrative, so even though they technically say it through Malcolm McDowell narration, unless you're familiar with this franchise you will not have any idea what is going on. 

    But I appreciate the effort, however incompetent. And I actually really liked Shin in this. I think the actor (dark hair notwithstanding) actually resembles the Tetsuo Hara illustrations in his face, and the way he's presented gave off a feeling of recognition. He was pretty well done. Also the girl who played Rin (in this movie she's Lynn) was spot-on. Dante Basco as Bat was 100% appropriate casting, even if he takes up more screentime than he needs. Ditto for Chris Penn, who essentially is playing Jagi - here called Jackal.

    But the script is cheesy. The music is real bad. The violence is touch and go, which I get. If every fight were like the manga or anime, this would be an NC-17 easily. So sometimes they actually fight with the famous brutality of the series, and sometimes it's just typical punches and kicks that don't kill anybody.

    But the deathknell of this film is straight up Gary Daniels as Kenshiro. This is one of the biggest examples of miscasting the main character killing the entire project I've seen in a while. I get why he was cast. From the neck-down he's physically perfect as Ken. He's also got the moves, and when he does a roundhouse kick, he looks exactly like the character. 
    Problem is the guy can't act. His face is all wrong, going for bug-eyes wariness rather than the typically cool, calm and totally in control facial expression of classic Ken. Think Chris Tucker playing Arnold from Hey Arnold. His voice is also way too distractingly bad to deal with. There's an exchange with an opponent where the guy says "Ah finally, a real fight!" and Ken replies with "Your last." Nice line, but his voice has the tenor of like the Mad Hatter. Too high of a pitch and British. It's horribly distracting. Shin was played by an Australian actor, but he made that work and didn't sound out of place. Daniels' voice however doesn't even look like it fits for him. I was begging for him to be dubbed by a tougher sounding voice. And it's doubly bad when he's getting impaled by Shin's fingers and making Jon Pertwee faces all over.

    It's too bad, I was rooting for it to have survivable charm, but this movie sucks. It's just too incompetent. It know what it needs to do but can't fully sell it. But like YYH on Netflix, the frustration lies in seeing the possibility of this working in live action. It can be done, just with better folks at the helm.

     

    And after seeing back-to-back Dante Basco performances with Blood and Bone in the rearview, I'm thinking Michael Jai White should've played Ken in a live action movie. I'm dead serious, he'd be perfect. 

  11. Blood and Bone: Directed by Ben "I wrote Dragonball Evolution" Ramsey, starring Michael Jai White

    Holy shit. I was not expecting this to be so awesome!

    A very intentional spiritual throwback to the actioners of yesteryear, from the 70s to the late 80s with the most familiar film comparison being Jean Claude Van Dame's Lionheart, Blood and Bone is a more than solid action movie that had ZERO reason to go as hard as it did. MJW soars as the classically stoic, badass protag who never lets a fight down with his martial prowess, but equally awesome is the villain played by Eamonn Walker. I wasn't at all familiar with this man's game, but he took a typical bad guy archetype and made one of my favorite movie villains in a long time. He's essentially a pilot version for Sterling K. Brown, with every bit the emotional conviction, charm and powerhouse presence to go with it. It's the kind of performance where even when the villain is doing evil shit, you can't be mad at him because the performance is so captivating. That drives this film, which is ably enhanced by a script that's pitch perfect. It hits the exact right tone, especially in the dreck years of 2000s American action movies. The more it goes on, the more interested the plot is. Twists are revealed, and they feel helpful and revealing rather than out of nowhere. With the increased stakes come increased style. While most of the fights are entertaining but hardly dynamic (because MJW just steamrolls over everyone), the penultimate fight where he battles an actual master fighter is downright gripping, playing out like a manga fight with the two opponents gauging each other and taking their time before stepping up each attack. It is so cool. 

    I went in not asking for much from this, I really wasn't. A movie with MJW punching mother fuckers in the face, that's all I needed for 90 minutes. This movie delivers that in spades, but it's got style, it's got wit, and it's got Eamonn Walker and Julian Sands comparing dick sizes with the gravitas of a Shakespeare play. Incredible, deeply underseen and underrated film. Highly recommended. 

  12. In the last 24 hours I watched the entire 13 episode OVA of New Getter Robo, my introduction to this classic big robot anime and manga franchise. The name Getter Robo always made me laugh and I'd nearly bought a DVD of it at SDCC last year. 

    Too much history of the franchise goes into this 2004 adaptation which is darker and edgier than the majority of the anime series as I understand it, but closer in tone to the manga. It does feel a bit try-hard with the gore, with the first several episode just showing copious amounts of blood. It's pretty funny. There's a lot going on, from cutting out the dinosaur bad guys of the original series and the latter half prioritizing tributes to creator Ken Ishikawa by referencing his other works, that as an actual series it's definitely watchable but not *actually* all that good to be honest. The main characters are really tough to get into, with main guy Ryoma Nagare being a self-interested, obstinate asshole 100% of the time. There's barely any development with him, and the camaraderie he's meant to have with his fellow co-pilots is barely applied. Of course, he's not as bad as Hayato Jin - who starts off as a literal terrorist who we see murder innocent people and even his own men on a whim. He's a straight psychopath, who barely speaks between crazy laughter in his intro episode. After the third pilot is brought into the show, Hayato suddenly changes to a stoic, contemplative investigator who fills the archetype of the smart one on the team. Historically he's meant to be the series genius, but New Getter Robo does zero work to bring him to that point. Maybe it's homaging the original manga, but as it watches it's awful storytelling. 

    That's the main problem for me, that too much is happening in between frames of the story for me to actually like the characters as presented. I kinda like the world and want to look into Getter Robo Armageddon - which came out earlier but I understand is well regarded. Continuity in this franchise is basically non-existent, akin to comic book animated adaptations compared to their comic book counterparts - there is no continuity. My main criticisms is that New Getter Robo doesn't stand on its own, but is *just* interesting enough to pull a newbie into the franchise, providing that the other shows are more character driven. 

  13. For the first show completion of 2024, I capped off the last two episodes of the Netflix anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which I started at the end of 2023. I feel at this point in internet discourse, you either like the Scott Pilgrim franchise, story and characters or you don't. By now the particular nerd aesthetic it creates that once felt almost revolutionary in a "Clerks" kind of way now has become very dated. The art style and music are always fun, but it can't be the lightning in a bottle arbiter of pre-Millennial culture that probably peaked with the live action film. So its merits have to fall down to the story and world, which itself are dicey considering the iffy ways the original comic depicted Scott, Ramona, Knives etc.

    This is something that Bryan Lee O'Malley was more than aware of (reportedly he didn't even want to do Scott Pilgrim again and was approached to do this), and takes this show's opportunity to retell the story at a different angle. With the added element of all the live-action actors voicing the characters, the show starts off retelling the same story up until the fight with the first Evil Ex Matthew Patel. From then on, Scott is taken out of the series entirely and the story follows Ramona confronting her exes one by one, giving everyone much more exploration than initially shown. It's a fun, neat way to tell the story with new eyes and manages to make the Scott Pilgrim franchise about the cast of characters and not simply about him and Ramona. All the voice acting is great, and Michael Cera gives a way better performance as Scott than he did in the movie. His voice matches the illustrated design perfectly.

  14. Rebel Moon - Part 1: A Child of Fire:

    Yeah, this isn't good. Genre exercises are fine, and I'm not all that bothered by the tracing over Star Wars (Apparently this script was first brought to LucasFilm as a Star Wars idea), but the film's pretty lame. It's major problem are the characters. They're all archetypes without any nuance. Once they're brought into the film like a bad RPG, they've got nothing to do but stand by and watch the plot unfold with little to say about it. Some characters die to the tune of a god choir as though we're supposed to care when 90% of the cast has had 1-2 scenes of screentime. All of it has been done before with zero variation or innovation. One or two visual creations were kind of neat, but Snyder just cannot conjure up a story with fleshed out characterization to save his life. This is the flattest, more baseline cast in any of his films, I honestly feel bad for them. And I'm all for Sofia Boutella to be the main badass in any film, but she's rendered too generic in this movie to care about.