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Reviews
Phantoms (1998)
A Great 90's Atmospheric Horror-Thriller. A Real Gem.
Phantoms is pure 90's Nostalgia-filled, Horror-thriller entertainment with a real creepy atmosphere & a top 90's cast.
Phantoms comes outta Dimension films with following in the footsteps of hits Scream & Scream 2, with a hot cast of newish talent & in a Horror story.
Phantoms is also a fun monster movie, the likes of which the 90's did so well, with gems like, The Relic & Mimic & Virus.
Phantoms stars a young Ben Affleck (Justice League, Paycheck, Smokin' Aces, Daredevil) as a Sheriff of a small populated town Colorado, that teams up with two sisters who have just arrived in the town to discover its empty & very spooky. One of the sisters, the older one, is played by Joanna Going, who is a doctor coming to work in the small isolated town. The other sister is the younger & more outgoing sister played by the gorgeous Rose Mcgowan from Scream. We also get Liev Schreiber of Scream 2 fame as a weirdo police officer & old school Classic British actor Peter O'Toole as a writer for an eccentric paper of fantastical news. This group of mixed charities have to work together in order to fight against an ancient creature that has risen after thousands of years in hiding. This monster is a huge mass of black slime & tentacles & can morph into anything. I was reminded of John Carpenter's Cult Classic, Prince of Darkness (1987), which was very cool.
Phantoms is dark & very spooky, it's got a chilly winter setting & with a whole town that has vanished, it's often really unnerving. Something ancient & evil has risen & wants to terrify humankind. There's a really good story here & quite creepy when you think about how easy humankind can be attacked by a powerful force, there's always a real threat that we could be wiped-out by something.
The atmosphere, mood & cinematography is top notch 90's & almost cozy in a way. The town is beautifully isolated & very creepy & the small cast do really well surviving in this spooky place. There's an awesome scene with a big supernatural moth creature that attcks the group & it's so well done, & so damn cool. The score is suitably moody & the look & feel is very Carpenter, Very X-Files & with a little Silent Hill.
Phantoms is definitely a moody, supernatural Horror-thriller that took me right bk to the 90's. I miss those days, i miss the way the movies looked bk then & how they felt. You can always tell a 90's movie when you see one, or i can anyhow.
I love Phantoms.
Muzzle (2023)
A Nice Little Character Study Drama & Modern Cop Thriller With A Top Notch Performance From Eckhart.
First off i love the old 80's & 90's buddy-cop Dog movies like James Belushi's Classic K-9 (1989) (which is one of my all-time favorite films since the video days) & it's direct-to-video 90's sequel K-911. But I'm not bothered about Hanks' Turner & Hooch as i felt it was abit too sad. But i also really liked Chuck's go at it with his 90's Top Dog & then that little Cop & Dog sub-genre seemed to die out.
Of course K-9 (1989) is the greatest dog cop film of all-time.
Then i saw the dvd cover of MUZZLE & instantly i was excited to check it out because it looked like one of those buddy-cop dog films i grew up loving.
MUZZLE stars Aaron Eckhart (the guy that was excellent as Harvey Dent aka: Two Face in The Dark Knight) & has Starred in many films including Paycheck, Olympus has Fallen, London has Fallen, I, Frankenstein, Battle: Los Angeles, In The Line of Duty The Core & many more, as a very rough & ready K-9 unit cop named Rosser, that starts to uncover a mystery surrounding his dog partners death. His original partner Ace is shot dead & Rosser loses it & that's the start of this dark & moody movie about loss, loneliness, anger & vengeance. There's actually a lot under the surface of MUZZLE, maybe a bit too much as not all of it is fully explored.
At the heart of MUZZLE is the fact dogs are real partners to cops & they mean as much to them as a human partner & This movie definitely captured that.
Aaron Eckhart seems to be revitalising his Career as a B-movie Action Star with lots of action-thriller films being released straight to dvd with his rugged face on them.
Eckhart is a capable actor with intensity & a hurt & bitter look in his eyes like a man that's seen it all & lived. So Aaron is great in this role as a tormented man that seems very lonely & very lost. His character is Jake Rosser & is a Los Angeles K-9 cop with a past in Afghanistan as a soldier that has seen it all & lived.
PTSD & a very gritty & apocalyptic looking LA are on show here in this serious thriller. Eckhart is great as he navigates his way around skid row of a very downtrodden underbelly of Los Angeles where drugs & homelessness are everywhere. The film looks great for a lower budget production & Eckhart is great on screen (although the role could've easily have been played by Thomas Jane & been just as good as their both so similar & both good actors) & his new dog partner he gets named Socks is a good actor for a dog. You see Eckhart's bitter & angry cop gets a new dog partner that has been through hell too, so both cop partners are messed up emotionally & have to learn to trust each other & get on. But the mystery of the film is abit weird & not fully explored or explained, in detail anyway. There's a new drug on the dirty, gritty downtown streets of Los Angeles & apparently Socks the dog was the crime syndicates property for sniffing out drugs or something? Or for testing drugs on? I'm not totally sure but it wasn't good either way. The bad guys of MUZZLE are never fully explored or really seen so we don't get that cool old school cop genre trope of having an awesome bad guy that our hero cops are tracking down. Some of the scenes & dialogue feel disjointed & unfocused properly. I feel there's alot cut from the movie but it didn't speed things up because the film is a slow character drama most of the time & definitely doesn't have enough action in it. There's a cop character that is an asshole & really dislikes Eckhart's cop but suddenly & surprisingly decides to help him near the final showdown at the end? That's bizarre & unexplained.
There's a nurse that seems to really fancy Eckhart that lives in his building & the relationship feels weird & there's no real chemistry at all.
Stephen Lang (Don't Breath 1&2) has a nice little part as an LAPD K-9 trainer.
At times i got glimpses of that K-9 movie feel i love, like when Eckhart is chatting to his dog in his car whilst cruising around Los Angeles but again its never fully explored to be fun & doesn't last long. I think MUZZLE wanted to be a more very serious police drama about the relationship between a police man & his police dog & in that case the film does it well but its just missing some more action sequences & a proper bad guy & better supporting characters.
Aaron Eckhart does his best with a low-key grumpy & depressed performance & he does act well. It was good to see him have to go to a psychiatrist to sort his head out as tough men never really seem to open up so those scenes are actually very important in todays mental health awareness times. Eckhart is on a mission to find out who killed his partner dog at the beginning of the movie & why? But seems no one is interested in helping him & worse is his superiors think he's losing it so he sets out to investigate on his own terms & time. There's typical cop genre tropes scattered throughout but done in more serious tone & it's definitely Eckhart that keeps the whole thing together.
MUZZLE is a decent little cop drama/thriller but don't expect old school cop action like i did because its disappointing in that way but good as a dark character piece.
I will watch it again & hopefully pick up bits i might have missed.
MUZZLE is a good watch & a decent cop film & is the very rare type of buddy-cop dog film you don't see anymore, it's a K-9 movie updated to our modern times & yeah i did like it even if it wasn't as good as i thought it could've been.
Bronson (2008)
A Powerhouse Phenomenal Performance From Tom Hardy & Absolutely Mental & Hilarious.
Legendary British actor Tom Hardy is spectacular on screen in this very low-budget stylish Biography Drama of infamous British Criminal Charles Bronson.
Tom Hardy has definitely proved himself as one of today's greatest actors & can play pretty much any role like a chameleon. Hardy is phenomenal here.
Hardy is spectacular here as beefed up nutter prisoner Charles Bronson who Hardy makes such an interesting & wild character, spot on actually as a performance of a real person I've heard.
Bronson is Britain's most violent prisoner in real life & its something he's very proud about as he's put in all of Britain's prisons & keeps coming back like a force of violent nature. This is a based on true life story & it's a crazy story that is funny, tragic & action-packed. Bronson wants fame & will do anything to get it as he gets more popular & well known throughout the prison system & the in the news. Bronson is a man with a big ego & an even bigger appetite for brutal violence & his craziness is captured by Hardy here.
Bronson tells the his story in through the 70's & 80s & how his love for uncontrollable violence keeps him from living a normal life. Bronson is unpredictable & can flip at any time anywhere & he's a scary bloke.
The film plays out his mental story in a very darkly funny way & done very theatrically & very stylish. The cinematography is excellent for such a low-budget movie & the score is awesome with it's 80s synthesiser style & suits the old school period feel of the film.
Bronson may be a brutal butter but he's still got a moral code as you see when his rage takes over for a vile pedo he can't wait to get his hands on. The guy is such an interesting & fascinating character & Hardy delivered it all in a powerhouse performance that explodes on screen.
I loved the black humour of the piece & the movie is never dull or depressing like many British drama films. Bronson is electrifying as a piece of Cult Classic entertainment & packs plenty into its short running time.
Tom Hardy totally committed to this role & is Excellent.
Bronson is compared to A Clockwork Orange often but Bronson is way, way better than that crap.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
TERRIBLE!!! HORRENDOUSLY BORING ANIMATED DRAMA.
The first film was ok but this sequel is so bad. This is one of the worst sequels of all-time!!!
This sequel is a very, very long bore fest that is basically a long animated drama that is ridiculously unfunny. There's nothing Fun about this stupid sequel at all.
The new characters are crap & add nothing.
I can't believe the cost of such terrible nonsense, I'm so glad i grew up watching the likes of The Land Before Time & The Rescuers Down Under & many other great animated films.
The Toy Story franchise is excellent & doesn't need to worry about the Inside Out crap taking over.
This film focused on Anxiety the new character but it's just annoying & way over the top to enjoy or even find funny.
Such a disappointing film, even my littlest daughter didn't laugh, i Don't think anyone laughed at all in the cinema.
I Don't know how kids will enjoy this? It's so long so boring & so unfunny.
The Eagle (2011)
An Excellent Gritty, Dark & Dangerous Warrior Survival Thriller
First off I've never been a fan of Channing Tatum as to me he was a bland typical pretty boy star that was a crafted to please the woman crowd with crap like his Magic Mike movies. I also wasn't bothered about his silly Jump Street cop comedy films & i had only ever actually watched him in one movie & that was his small role at the beginning of the G. I Joe sequel "Retaliation" & that was that & made no impact on me whatsoever.
The Eagle is the first Channing Tatum movie I've seen & i gotta admit he's really good here as Roman leader & warrior Marcus who is over in England to find out what happened to his father's legion that vanished years earlier. Also the Romans beloved symbolic artifact, The Golden Eagle of Ninth statue, went missing with his father's disappearance & the Roman superiors want it back.
Tatum does give a very good-hearted & strong willed performance as a young man trying to prove himself as a warrior like his father & to earn respect amongst his troops.
I really did like Channing Tatum in this role & he proved to me he's not just a typical bland Hollywood product of an actor.
I'm still not bothered about other Tatum films but The Eagle is atleast one he made that i was actually interested in seeing (can't stand his rom com flicks).
The best performance goes to the excellent British actor Jamie Bell (Death Watch, Skin) who plays brilliantly a slave to the Romans that becomes Tatums own personal slave when Marcus saves his life from a brutal Galaditor fight. Jamie Bell has absolutely proven he's an excellent actor before & he keeps delivering powerhouse performances with each movie. Here Bell plays Esca who is has the task of getting Marcus accross the British countryside that's full of rogue warriors & brutal tribes that want Roman Blood.
What i really liked about this gritty & tough warrior thriller was the buddy element that becomes the movies backbone with Roman leader Marcus & Warrior slave Esca working together undercover whilst travelling accross dangerous territory trying to find where Marcus's father's men died & where the Golden Eagle is.
The movie looks beautiful with gorgeous Cinematography & gritty punch with the swords & bloody action scenes.
I really did find that Tatum & Bell made a compelling team & i really enjoyed the story & dangerous mission they were on.
Because these were ancient warrior times everywhere feels dangerous & everyone seems deadly & our two heroes have to navigate their way around it all.
The Eagle is an excellent ancient warrior adventure with two damn good leads that create a friendship you love.
The Eagle is a kind of (or could be classed as) sequel to Neil Marshall's Centurion that came out a year earlier in 2010. The Eagle basically follows on years later from the events of Centurion & so would make a nice double bill.
I much prefer this type of Swords & Sandels adventure to the over bloated boring epics like Gladiator or Braveheart.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)
THERE'S STILL NO ONE COOLER THAN WILL SMITH.
Will Smith will always be a Legendary Star.
The first Bad Boys (1995) & Men in Black (1997) are two era defining movies to me from the beautiful 90's & both are in my all-time top 10 fave films list. Also i, Robot (2004) makes my top 10 list so as you can see 3 Will Smith movies are in my top 10, so the guy means alot to me.
I also loved Enemy of the State & Wild Wild West because in the 90's Will Smith was the biggest movie star in the world & everyone had his films on video & watched the hell outta them.
Bad Boys Ride or Die was an absolute blast of action-packed buddy-cop fun & a proper popcorn blockbuster.
This time around our beloved Miami cops become fugitives whilst trying to unravel a mystery & high up corruption within the police department. They gotta clear their late Captain's name (some nicely put together & smart cameos from Joe Pantoliano as Captain Howard once again) & have to deal with a new sadistic Mercenary villain.
Will Smith delivers a fantastic performance once again as Mike Lowry, but this time he's not as sure of himself & suffers with panic attacks due to feeling guilt that his son murdered his beloved Captain Howard. Mike is in constant fear of losing the ones he loves & Will gives the performance a powerhouse dramatic touch along with his hilarious banter stuff with Martin Lawrence.
Oh & Martin Lawrence is absolutely brilliant here, probably the best he's been since the first film. Martin's family man cop Marcus is on a spiritual ride throughout this movie & believes he's indestructible & becomes a super cop kinda switching roles with his partner Mike. The chemistry between Will & Martin is pure genius & the funniest they've ever been. That fun banter & strong chemistry is what holds these movies together & what keeps us coming back to watch these Bad Boys.
Ride or Die is full of characters from the Bad Boys franchise that add a nice connective cinematic tissue to the other films.
The movie looks fantastic with colourful neon-lit cinematography & the action is fast & furious with bloody kick-ass brutality. Some of the camera angles are excellent especially the first person camera perspective of Lowry & Burnett in the big final showdown action sequence.
There's so much jam packed into this fantastic sequel that i can't wait to watch it again.....& again as i have all the Bad Boys films.
Will Smith is still a LEGEND & Martin Lawrence is back better than EVER.
Greatest Buddy-cop duo ever.
Bad Boys (10/10)
Bad Boys 2 (9/10)
Bad Boys For Life (9/10)
Bad Boys Ride or Die (9/10) all great films.
Cleanskin (2012)
SEAN BEAN is Awesome As He Hunts & Kills Evil Extremists!!!
Excellent British Actor Sean Bean is on top ass-kicking form as a tough no-nonsense secret service agent named Ewan who is on a mission to hunt & eliminate an extremist terrorist group throughout London.
Cleanskin is drenched in gritty political realism & an interesting look at both sides of the Terror. We get a look at the corrupted government Conspiracy side & the sadistic mind-controling of radicalisation, but in the end you cannot feel sorry for the pathetic weak morons that let themselves become evil cowardly terrorists.
Sean Bean is awesome in these types of hard military roles, as he was equally excellent in the underrated British Vigilante Thriller OUTLAW (2007).
Sean also impressed me in the bleak medieval horror BLACK DEATH & he plays hurt looking, bitter, angry & sad all at the same time with his facial expressions & that is a talent of a fantastic powerhouse actor.
Cleanskin is a cracking hard edged Action Thriller with a story that feels so realistic & with it's violence shown brutally & realistic. London is the setting & is filmed in a slick but gritty way & the music is pure Thriller score & performances are all good but Bean is the best of course.
It's a pleasure to see Bean slaughter extremists without mercy.
Busanhaeng 2: Bando (2020)
A Kick-ass Thrilling Action-packed Zombie Movie & Superior Sequel.
The first film, Train To Busan, was good & well made & exciting & thrilling right up until its stupid ending!!!
But with Peninsula we get much better characters & a much more exciting playground with the destroyed apocalyptic Peninsula land.
The over-dramatic ending ruined the movie for me. The father didn't need to die & really could've survived easily & that's what made that ending way too contrived for emotional effect. Just like the stupid ending of A Quiet Place, both movies ruined by a fathers stupidity.
Peninsula is such a better movie though all round.
Except for the over dramatic near ending scene with the cool Snake Pliskin type hero played by Gang-Dong Won & the heroic mother, that scene went on way too long, again for emotional effect, & becomes very corny & cheesy. But that's my only real complaint with this much superior sequel.
Set years later after the zombie outbreak of the first film we get a quarantined island Peninsula that's been left to rot with thousands of zombies still there.
Also everything was left as it was so that means there's big money there in trucks & that's what this flick is an adrenaline pumping zombie heist action thriller. Zack Snyder copied this films idea with his terrible Army of the Dead.
The main guy Seung played by Gang-Dong Won is a Snake Plisskin type who has lost his family at the beginning of the film on an infected boat & now is a loner without a cause. He is pulled in with a small crew of thieves to sneak onto the quarantined Peninsula & steal the trucks full of money.
But of course nothing goes to plan & we get a kick-ass action-packed thrilling & exciting survival Thriller as the Korean film goes full on Mad Max & Escape from New & Dawn of the Dead & I Am Legend & so on. The Destroyed city of Peninsula is created perfectly, really the fx & production design is excellent.
We get other survivors in the zombie filled city with mental soldiers & a nice family that has adapted to survive the Apocalypse. The little family are great with a war veteran old man & his tough no-nonsense daughter & her two girls, a brilliant driver of a teenage daughter & a super smart & funny little girl with custom made zombie distracting remote control cars. There's lots of fun in this ferocious zombie flick & so much glorious action & blood soaked violence. There's an awesome prison games sequence in an abandoned mall with human being hunted for sport by mutated zombies for the crazy soldiers enjoyment.
There's a vibe of Day of the Dead with the mental soldiers that are as dangerous as the zombies themselves.
There's ferociously fast car chases similar to Mad Max Fury Road & such a cool hero of this adventure that fights & handles guns like Chris Hemsworth in the Extraction films. The action is gritty & fast paced with so much shooting & fighting it's an action gem. Think a Korean mix of Escape from New York, Mad Max & Day of the Dead, that's kinda what Peninsula is & it delivers.
I loved Peninsula & it should be an action cult classic in the future.
Monsters: Dark Continent (2014)
TERRIBLE CRAP ABOUT IDIOT COCKY FRIENDS IN THE ARMY!!!!
One of the worst sequels of all-time!!!
The first Monsters movie was an interesting indie flick with bizarre creatures wondering around America but it was watchable, even if it wasn't amazing.
This sequel title Dark Continent is about a group of idiot friends from Detroit who are mouthy & cocky & all unlikeable. This is a war drama with monsters in the background, it sucked so badly.
This is a typical trying to be cool "America soldier hero" movie & it sucked so badly.
I didn't like any of the main cast of best friends at all.
I found the troopers to be absolute idiots & the type of mouthy types i wouldn't even want to talk to.
I had to turn it off before the friends even got in to the action because i couldn't stand them on screen. I saw some of the huge monsters moving in heards accross a desert & then was bombed & i felt sorry for the creatures.
If your going to have a group of friends as the main characters of your movie atleast have them likeable!!!
Such a waste of what could've been a sequel like say, Aliens or The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, where the soldiers or marines are a bunch you actually want to survive.
The Garfield Movie (2024)
5/10 Is Just Right For The Garfield Movie. Surprisingly Very Boring.
I grew up loving Garfield i had the books & the cartoon on video & soft toys & all sorts of Garfield stuff.
I enjoyed the Bill Murray voiced Garfield movie, but not the terrible sequel, but even that movie wasn't great but Garfield was done right especially with the voice of Bill Murray.
Now Chris Pratt is doing the voice of Garfield & to be honest he wasn't as bad as i thought he was gonna be. For some reason studios want Chris Pratt to voice iconic animated characters i don't know why? He voiced Mario too & he's bk as Garfield.
So Pratt wasn't too bad, not the voice ot should've been but he wasn't annoying anyway. The best voice & character wasn't Garfield in the movie it was his father perfectly voiced by the great Samuel L. Jackson as Vic. I loved the Vic character & Jackson has such a great voice he stole the show in my opinion. Surprisingly this animated adventure ended up being very boring & hard to get through even for small kids. How they can mess up Garfield is beyond me.
Anyway the first parts of the movie is done lovely with some touching moments & some fun & baby kitten Garfield was ridiculously cute but when the film gets its stupid villain, a female Cat that wants revenge on Garfield's father for something in the past, the film goes really OTT.
Yes this is obviously aimed at very little kids but it still goes too silly & becomes boring. The whole Milk heist is ridiculous & the big action sequence on the train near the end was overlong, boring & too silly.
The movie looks great with it's lovely colourful look & animation but it just goes too stupid like a Minion movie or something.
I saw it with my wife & kids & two of my girls enjoyed it & one of them got bored like myself.
It's a shame they can never get a Garfield movie right.
Demolition Man (1993)
Big Budget Nostalgic Sci-fi Action Spectacular From The Awesome 90's!!!
Demolition Man is a pure early 90's Big Budget sci-fi action Thriller spectacular starring two mega action stars of that era, Stallone & Snipes.
I grew up watching all the old school 80's & 90's action stars & Stallone is obviously one of the greatest of all of Action Cinema History. Schwarzenegger, Stallone & Van Damme are probably the three kings of the action genre but of course there's lots of greats like Statham, Snipes, Willis, Lundgren, Adkins, Norris, Seagal & more, but Stallone, Schwarzenegger & Van Damme are the most well liked & most loved of the era.
Demolition Man holds a very special place in my movie-loving-heart because i was young like 10 or 11 at the time of it's release & my older bro brought it on video with Stallone's Cliffhanger & we watched the hell outta those two videos.
Demolition Man feels comforting watching it today in 2024, i feel the movie was ahead of it's time with how the future will be. Everything is almost censored today & we live in a silly "Woke" era where everything & everyone is getting shut down due to "Cancel Culture" see times have gotten ridiculous like in Demolition Man.
Anyway as a movie Demolition Man is a spectacular piece of action-packed Sci-fi entertainment with amazing production design of a futuristic Los Angeles & with a stunning music score & a fun kick-ass humourous tone & two top notch performances from Stallone & Snipes.
I miss the 90's it was a beautiful time for movies at the cinema & on video in Blockbuster & many video stores, movies felt magical back then.
Demolition Man is a lovely piece of Nostalgia of those times of Big Budget Blockbusters starring mega action stars.
Here Stallone plays 20th century legendary cop John Spartan (one of Stallone's best characters along with Cobra) & he's excellent in the role with a real human side to his gruff no-nonsense violent action cop persona.
I love Stallone & many of his movies are some of my all-time favorites like Cobra, Tango & Cash, Demolition Man, Nighthawks, Judge Dredd & more.
The Demolition Man role feels tailor-made for Stallone & that's why the movie is great. Equally the movie is so great because it has one of the greatest movie villains ever with Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix, a sadistic brutal killing machine of a criminal with a sly sense of humour & Snipes nailed the part & is probably his greatest performance.
Stallone & Snipes facing off, like on the movie poster, felt huge for action movie fans bk in the 90's & the movie pretty much became an instant CLASSIC.
Our hero & villain from the 90's are released into a futuristic world of a new Los Angeles in 2032 (San Angeles) where everything is banned & everything is like a peaceful utopia but these two old school rivals will tear this new gentle world apart.
The film is full of fun satires of a "Peaceful Utopia" but nothing is ever what it seems & like all governments there's corruption & John Spartan will take them all down whilst on his mission to finally destroy Simon Phone.
A hilarious script, beautifully designed sets, great performances from everyone (Sandra Bullock is great fun & best I've seen her & so is Rob Schneider who joined Stallone again in the Awesome Judge Dredd) there's so much to explore & Analyze in Demolition Man because its such a smarty made action movie but lets just say its hugely enjoyable & a stone cold 10/10 Classic.
Snipes is also great in Passenger 57, Murder at 1600, Money Train, Drop Zone, New Jack City, Blade 1&2, Boiling Point & more, he was a guy i loved on video back in the day too.
I watched the hell outta Passenger 57 on video.
Outlaw (2007)
A Very Gritty-as-hell Bone-crunching British Vigilante Thriller
Outlaw came out in 2007 when Britain was in a hell hole & even named Broken Britain & this gritty thriller was a reaction to the times.
I'm not a fan of mouthy blokey laddy Director Nick Love at all, i can't stand his crappy Chav flicks like "The Football Factory" or "The Business" & i have no interest in his later cop thriller "The Sweeney" but his product-of-it's-time angry revenge Thriller Outlaw is a movie i really liked.
From the horrendous Broken Britain era we had a bunch of movies that came out of that hoodie horror times such as: Harry Brown, Eden Lake, The Comedown, The Veteran, F, Shank & Kidulthood for an example. These films captured the fear of the times, the fear of the savage unprovoked attacks on innocent people by roaming feral Chavs. All of which was absolutely TRUE.
England had become a hell hole of police corruption, killer Chavs, free walking Paedophiles & non-stop horrendous crimes on the news & on every single front page of the papers.
The time was so dark & so depressing & absolutely hopeless. The anger of the victims & just people surviving in that sewer had to go somewhere & Nick Love cleverly captured it in his vigilante film. But there's also some very funny pure British humour in places & i laughed alot at certain bits.
In a place where the law doesn't help you & the most evil scum simply get a slap-on-the-wrist what would you do?
Outlaw is a violent movie that definitely doesn't glorify violence. The angry & hurt characters here use violence as their last option when they've lost everything.
Sean Bean gives an excellent performance as angry & lost soldier Bryant who has just returned to London from his tour in Afghanistan & turns up in a land he doesn't recognise. Britain/London is rubbish strewn shi#hole infested with mouthy violent moraless Chavs. These young thugs are everywhere & seem to be raised on hatred & violence & if that wasn't enough, the whole of England is a war zone where big Gangster thugs are protected by corrupted cops & criminals do what they want when they want & as usual (just like real life) they never pay the proper price for their crimes & are freed to do it all again. Outlaw almost feels like a true documentary of the time, its filmed with a jerky gritty & constantly moving style that works perfectly & the cinematography is dull, grim & depressing. Sean Beans Bryant has had enough & wants to do something about the state of his country that he has fought for & so bands together a bunch of victims of society & form a modern day posse.
Sean Bean is truly excellent & you agree with everything he says throughout the movie. Next best performance is from Sean Harris ('71, Harry Brown) as a very angry security guard that often goes OTT but has the real darkness to go through with what their mission is all about, Violent Revenge.
Danny Dyer is decent as a bullied city office worker, he is the voice of the real people & audience because he lives in fear of the thugs & violence that surrounds his everyday life & is full of anxiety & fear.
There's a judge that turns vigilante because his pregnant wife was murdered by a local crime boss & goes unpunished. There's a soft talking & well educated University guy that has been severely beaten & disfigured by a random attack from violent street thugs & wants to do something about it as his attackers are freed early, of course because the system is a joke.
We get a great powerhouse performance from legendary British actor Bob Hoskins as a bitter old cop fed-up of the police corruption & the scum walking the streets because of a bent justice system.
Nick Love definitely picked a cracking cast in this ensemble piece & tells his story as real as possible. In fact the film feels dark & very dangerous from how it's filmed & scored.
Not a Nick Love fan but i loved his best movie Outlaw.
Outlaw will ask a lot of hard questions & will put you in the shoes of the victims & ask what would you do?
I actually agree with the vigilante justice especially if the scum have taken everything from you but it's not glorified & you see both sides of the impact of violence & vigilante justice. What's interesting is the Outlaw posse really don't actually get hardly any scum that they want to because no everyone has that darkness to really do it so it's actually very realistic.
When there is violence is bone-crunching & impactful & horrible as it should be but also rewarding when some of the evil thugs get what they deserve.
Outlaw is like a grindhouse picture in how it's made, created on a small budget & is very shockingly violent a very dark subject matter, like The Exterminator (1980) & Taxi Driver (1976) & Death Wish (1974), Outlaw is crafted in the style of those old school 70's thriller's where they feel dangerous & unpredictable.
All in all Outlaw is a very thoughtful thriller & well made to make you think about society & where were heading.
Trancers II (1991)
Good Fantasy Fun. A Decent Sequel & Nice Seeing Tim Thomerson & Helen Hunt Again.
I really enjoyed Trancers (1984) & after that one i watched this sequel & it was a fun flick.
Trancers 2 is very low-budget like the first film but with a very early 90's cheesy charm & a cast of awesome B movie stars.
Both, Trancers & Trancers 2 are fantasy sci-fi B movie fun & both earned a solid 7/10 in my opinion.
I'm not bothered about all the other sequels as they look very bad in quality.
Anyway Trancers 2 is set six years after the original & hard-boiled future cop Jack Deth has been living in 80's turned 90's Los Angeles with his now wife Lena, played once again by a fun Helen Hunt. So nice having Helen Hunt back & a treat as she didn't have to at all as by the early 90's she was a fairly big star. This time old enemy Whistler is back, well his brother is. Yes Whistler had a bad brother know one knew about & he wants to continue his brothers evil plan to take over the world with his Trancers.
Things get complicated even more so for Jack when his wife (Megan Ward) returns to Los Angeles from a different time period before she was killed by Whistler. So we get some fun with Jack mixed up trying to please each wife whilst keeping everything cool. There's almost a fun cheesy situation comedy feel to the flick at times. The budget seems very low so we get more comic bits for our heroes. Like the first film Trancers 2 could've done with more action but for the low budgets of the films they are decent entertainment for what they are. I really enjoyed Trancers 1&2 but I'm not bothered about the rest of the sequels because the quality dropped massively.
Tim Thomerson is great once again as Jack Deth & his chemistry is still great with Helen Hunt.
This time the main base of evil is an insane asylum where the head of the place is Whistler's evil brother played by Villain expert Richard Lynch as Dr. Wardo. There's a bunch of B movie familiar faces scattered throughout the film, there's Jeffrey Combs, Megan Ward, Barbara Crampton & more, all game for some fun in this crazy cheesy fantasy action comedy.
Trancers 2 is simply a fun Video era B-movie piece entertainment with a nice Nostalgic feel to it with it's early 90's time period.
Charles Band made another good Trancers movie.
Trancers 2 really reminded me of the better times of the video stores & the gems you would discover there.
Trancers (1984)
Good Old School B Movie Sci-fi Adventure Fun From The Great Charles Band.
First off i love most stuff from the legendary B movie producer/director CHARLES BAND.
I grew up watching his, then Empire Pictures productions/ films like Troll, Dolls, Ghoulies 1,2 & 3, Robot Jox, Arena & then later onto his Full Moon Features like, Prehysteria, Demonic Toys & Puppet Master 1&2.
I always loved the fun fantasy worlds Band created & the wacky characters that existed in those worlds. Band created lots of fun & inventiveness on tiny budgets & created some loved Nostalgic B movies that thrived in the better video store days.
I finally watched TRANCERS!!! Well i double billed the first two TRANCERS films. I'm only interested in the first two because the others look so too silly & too cheap.
Trancers (1984) was a good low-budget sci-fi fun.
A nice mix of Terminator & Blade Runner with a dash of old fashioned Detective noir.
I loved B movie royalty TIM THOMERSON (Dollman, Nemesis, Dollman vs Demonic Toys) as the tough no-nonsense old school cop from the neon-lit Los Angeles of future of 2247. Thomerson plays Jack Deth, a trooper/cop/bounty hunter from Angel City (the future Los Angeles) who specialises in tracking down & eliminating Trancers. The Trancers are humans overtaken by an evil force that turns them into zombie-like killers. Trancers are created by an evil cultist warlord criminal known as Whistler. Whistler uses his psychic powers to control the weak minded of people as his violent soldiers. Trooper Jack Deth has a history with his arch Nemesis who killed his wife some time ago & now Jack is gonna track down Whistler by going bk in time to 1980's Los Angeles. I loved the sci-fi fantasy story & Tim Thomerson is awesome as the old fashioned hard boiled Detective that feels like he's straight out of an old black & white noir B movie.
Tim Thomerson owns the role & is a B movie legend in his own right & is awesome on screen.
The time travel is done smart & fun with future cops being able to transport their consciousness into an old ancestor of the time period they want, the 80's.
There's some fun gags with the ancestor stuff.
The spunky fun Helen Hunt (Twister) is great fun as Jack's girlfriend named Helena, she's a cool, punky girl who likes the adventure of the situation & Hunt is great in her role & works wonderfully with Thomerson.
The two race around 1980's LA trying to stop assassinations & to stop Whistler's evil plans. The Beginning of the movie used the best practical FX of the whole movie with its neon-lit nighttime futuristic opening sequence in a diner, great scene & introduction to the world & its characters.
There's a dark, punk tech-noir mood to the film & it's low-budget helps it feel trashy & rough around the edges in a good fun way.
The Trancers are ok for what they are, humans that turn quickly into Demonic faced killers in a few seconds & die just like any human would.
This first film could also be classed as a "Xmas movie" as its set over Christmas time in Los Angeles. We get some fun Xmas action scenes but it always feels weird & outta place when Xmas is portrayed in sunny LA.
Anyway Trancers is good fun, not Brilliant but damn good.
Trancers probably did need more action & stuff but for its very low-budget Charles Band did what he could with what he had & it's a definitely fun.
I liked the performances of Tim Thomerson & Helen Hunt as they keep movie fun & there's some good action & a good pure 80's synthesiser score.
The film looks decent enough for its time, like 40 years ago, & i really liked the Trancers universe that's created & directed by Charles Band. Trancers maybe the best film directed by Band.
Trancers 2 is good fun as well.
I love cult films & B movies & this is a damn good one.
Sanctum (2011)
Rhys Wakefield is a Horrendous "Actor" & Ruined The Film.
I love deep cave exploring films & underwater adventure flicks, my favourite is THE CAVE (2005).
I had been wanting to see this for a while, but i didn't know the movie cast one of the most bland, typical, leads ever!!! Rhys Wakefield.
Rhys Wakefield is horrendous, he's such a bland & boring & so typical actor it's painful to watch.
These typical Australian "Actors" or leading men are so bad, so bland & so the same it's ruining movies.
If you're blonde, muscular & have "Surf" style pretty-boy looks then you are guaranteed a movie career & to be the new Hot leading man. Hollywood has a conveyerbelt for these typical actors, we had the horrendous SAM WORTHINGTON given the lead role in James Cameron's Avatar, Funny thing is James Cameron is producer for this film lol, & then he was hot (totally bland) for a bit. Same for the horrendous JAI COURTNEY who was given numerous lead roles (Terminator Genissys, Suicide Squad, Die Hard 4) & yet he is one of the worst actors in cinema history. Even Chris Hemsworth is made by the same Conveyerbelt, but he's proven he's a damn good actor that can do it all, i like Chris lots.
These blonde, bland & wooden, soulless "actors" from Australia are ruining most movies. Fact.
Anyway this film has some suspense scenes & stuff but the blandness of the actors make you not care at all if they survive.
On the Yard (1978)
Decent 70's Prison Drama With A Top Notch Performance from Thomas G. Waites
RIP to John Heard, this guy i always remembered from Home Alone 1&2 as i grew up watching those on video, also John was great in the fun 80's cult horror favourite C. H. U. D
Here John plays a weirdo prisoner who wants to be alone constantly & is in for murdering his wife. It's hard to feel anything for John's character because he's so shut away emotionally & comes accross very weird & arrogant. His inmate character keeps to himself & doesn't abide by the prison codes. His character is annoying because everything that happens is his own fault, because he SMOKES!!!
IF he didn't smoke none of the films events with him wouldn't have happened, see Smoking is bad for your health...FACT.
Anyway John's weirdo inmate borrows a box of smokes & later can't pay his debt back to the head of a prison gang, the guy you go to when you want something, & it gets out of hand.
This go-to-guy is named Chilly & is played superbly by the underrated Thomas G. Waites (The Warriors, The Thing, McBain) this guy was excellent in those old school films & his best performance is right here as prison inmate go-to-guy. There's a small role for James Remar who would go on to be one of The Warriors with Waites in the 1979 Cult Classic.
Chilly is a fair dude, if you owe him he will collect & he does use violence, but if your cool with him & pay on time then he's a friendly dude actually & likeable.
Thomas Waites had an intensity in his eyes & should've been a much bigger a actor in my opinion. Waites would've made a great Serpico (yes Pacino was excellent but seeing Waites here with his long hair & beard he looks every bit Serpico) & should've been cast in much more dramas & thriller's.
On The Yard is a well made gritty prison drama with bunch of odd-ball characters who shuffle about in prison doing inmate stuff. There's a little side story of some of Chilly's pals who are building a big air balloon to escape but that part feels abit out of place to be honest.
I loved the gorgeous saxophone music score throughout the movie, it had a sad softness to it that contrasts the gritty harshness of the prison.
At the heart of On The Yard is how rules & codes are life in prison & this story is about two inmates butting heads over something so trivial as a carton of cigarettes. Small things mean so much in a prison environment & that is played out well here. The refreshing thing about this prison film is there's no horrific rape scenes, i was happy about that as the story didn't need that sort of vile stuff included.
All in all, On The Yard is very well acted gritty, sometimes violent story of inmate life in a 1970's prison. A reminder: Do Not Smoke.
Cidade de Deus (2002)
Definitely Worthy Of All The Praise It's Gotten Over The Years.
I would call CITY OF GOD the best gangster film I've ever seen. Miles ahead, & better, than overrated gang films such as Goodfellas (i found that film ridiculously overrated & boring) better than Casino (again boring & overrated) & City of God is better than Menace To Society & Boys N the Hood, in my opinion.
Also this movie is better than any Tarantino crime film, yep beats his Fiction & Dogs.
City of God is fantastically & ferociously directed for maximum impact, excitement & power. The cinematography is outstanding-all-time & the music is just awesome, with it's 70's funk flavour.
The cast of unknowns was a masterful move & to get powerhouse performances from non professionals was lightning in a bottle greatness.
Such memorable characters like "Knockout Ned" & Rocket & Lil' Z & Benny & The Tender Three & The Runts, i remember all these & I've only seen it once!!! That's how great the characters were & what an impact the story has on a viewer.
Yeah the story is the basic good kid growing up in the tough ghetto & trying to break free, but few have done it this mesmerising before.
I can't wait to watch it again!!!
The movie is full of very colourful characters that often you can't help but like. Yes there's still some that you hate (Lil, Z) but most are just innocent kids with no way out of their desperate situation & so turn to selling or using drugs. It ain't pretty but the film shows it how it is, with the good times & the bad times like in real life.
The City of God is the ghetto slum city & that place is a constant dark entity of a character too.
The film discovered a fantastic actress in Alice Braga, she went to be in I AM LEGEND with Will Smith & PREDATORS.
A Brazilian Masterworks of a Gang land drama/ thriller. The opening chicken chase is a superb sequence into a movie that is drenched in clever camera work, editing & back stories galore that all create a single full story structure of the city & its people.
The movie is extremely gritty, grimy & brutal, but with purpose & a pure cinematic visual style.
A coming of age story set in the darkest slum city of Rio.
Troll (1986)
I've Always Remembered TROLL!!! A Childhood Fantasy Favourite.
From the deepest recesses of my movie obsessed mind I've always remembered the little Empire Pictures movie TROLL. Thank you Charles Band for producing these fun fantasy films of my childhood.
TROLL was a movie I've always known, or it feels like I always have, as it's a film we had on video when i was little. Troll always stayed with me because of how scary i thought the little Troll was back in my little years. I always remembered the Troll's magic ring & the glowing green light it had & the apartments full of forests & Puppet creatures lol, aaawww Nostalgia.
Troll was one of a bunch of rubbery creature features i grew up watching on video. I have such warm, fond memories of the old 80's rubbery monster flicks & i always loved them. We had Troll 1&2, Ghoulies 2, Ghoulies Go To College, Critters 1,2,3 & 4, Gremlins 1&2, Ghostbusters 1&2, The Gate, Puppet Master 1&2, Tremors, Poltergeist 1&2, Demonic Toys & more. I'm so glad i grew up on these types of weird, freaky & fun fantasy horror flicks.
So yeah i find comfort in these old B movies & the fun fantasy worlds they create, my comfort zone.
Troll is about the "Harry Potter" family (yes really) that have just moved into a tenement building in San Francisco. The apartment building has a bunch of odd characters that keep it interesting. The little girl of the Potter family in captured by a menacing Troll & keeps her in his forestry universe while he takes her place with magic. It's all very weird & fantastical, & lots of bizarre fun. Only the little girls big brother can see she's different & makes friends with one of the tenants, an old lady who lives in an awesome ancient looking apartment full of historic fantasy stuff. I remember Troll being very scary when i was tiny (probably shouldn't have watched it at a young age but i did, as i did many horror's) but now i see Troll as much more a fantasy adventure with comedy & some horror mixed in. The boy named Harry Potter Jr has to find his sister & save our world from the Troll. The little menace is turning each apartment into a fantastic world of little magical creatures (great fun Puppets) & wants to take over the whole complex. I could see the roots, ideas & story elements or the seed that helped create Del Toro's Hellboy: The Golden Army, come from Troll & it's bizarrely bad but fun, non-related sequel Troll 2 (NILBOG).
There's magical happenings going on in the apartment building & it's up to the boy & the ancient warrior princess of the old Troll world/universe to battle Torok the Troll & his army of creatures. Troll is very cheesy, corny & very 80's & that's awesome to me. Although probably low-budget the movie looks good, has decent production (the Apartment building & it's rooms look great) & a magical music score. The Puppets look awesome, slimy & rubbery & again, so of it's time the 80's. Thinking about it i love Troll & could watch it over & over.
A decent little cast with B movie regular, Michael Moriarty (The Stuff, Dark Tower) & Julia Louis- Dreyfus (Seinfeld, Christmas Vacation) & Phil Fondacaro (Ghoulies 2, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie) & June Lockhart (A fantastic veteran actress, & plays a great character in Troll as Miss St. Clair, A good witch with a rich history & back story, that could've been explored in a prequel or sequel.
Really fun special effects & a nice tone of magic & fantasy make Troll fun, easy entertainment that isn't scary lol.
The standout performance of Troll goes to the great little actor PHIL FONDACARO. This, yes very small actor has a very big heart & he gives a very sweet & touching performance as a professor (also plays Torok the Troll) that lives in the apartment & is very sick. This little guy was great in 80's movies & Empire Pictures used him again in the excellent GHOULIES 2 (1987) & stole the show there too. A little dude with a big heart that gave touching performances to his characters.
Anyway i really enjoy Troll, it's definitely a small film of it's time, the 80's but if you remember it from the better times on video then it will hold a special little place in your movie-loving-heart too.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Fixed Most of the Problems i had with the Awful AFTERLIFE. A Fantastic Superior Sequel.
First off I'm a Ghostbusters fan, I'm one of the originals from that era as i was born in 1984 (when Ghostbusters First came out) & the first movie i ever saw at the Cinema was Ghostbusters 2 in 1989 when i was 5 years old & that Cinema experience stayed with me all my life. I have major history with Ghostbusters, i also grew up watching the Real Ghostbusters animated series & then the excellent underrated Extreme Ghostbusters in the 90's. I had Ghostbusters 1&2 on video & growing up & watched them constantly i also had all the Real Ghostbusters toys. I'm a real proper Ghostbusters fan who literally grew up with the Ghostbusters.
Silly unpopular opinion is i absolutely loved the female lead 2016 Ghostbusters.
I saw the ladies Ghostbusters at the cinema with my wife & daughter & we loved it. The 2016 movie is a fantastic 8/10 in my opinion & that Ghostbusters I'm proud to say is my daughters Ghostbusters, a Ghostbusters for them & it was GREAT. The ladies were fantastic together & so funny. The gadgets & new proton packs were better than the originals in my opinion. Also the 2016 Ghostbusters remains the actually funniest of the whole franchise!!! Also the old 1970's Times Square big battle final action sequence is probably the best Ghostbusters action scene of the franchise. There's so much great stuff in the ladies version & the only reason it was hated was because of Misogynistic idiots. But hey i felt the 2016 Ghostbusters fingerprints on Frozen Empire like Ganine Melnitz small hand proton blaster is practically the same as used in the Ladies version!!!
Another unpopular opinion from me is i couldn't stand GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE!!! I had huge problems with it as it was like an indie film mixed with a kids Nickelodeon version of Ghostbusters. Also the awful Afterlife ruined the main characters. The fact the Ghostbusters fell apart because Egon (Harold Ramis) believed a new supernatural Apocalypse with Gozer returning was NOT believed by his buddies & other Ghostbusters is ridiculous!!! The fact that Egon stole Ghostbusters equipment & done a runner to live in a small desolate town is ridiculous. Why would the Ghostbusters, that have Been through Gozer & Vigo & the River of slime & Mr. Staypuft Marshmallow man & everything else would suddenly not believe in Egon Spengler is insulting to the characters & the fans. Also Afterlife ignored the fact Ghostbusters 2 even happened? Thankfully the Awesome FROZEN EMPIRE fixed most of these problems.
Anyway Afterlife was garbage in my opinion.
Ghostbusters: FROZEN EMPIRE was a real blast of creativity with the franchise, we had strong Nostalgia & our old team that are like old friends by now were given bigger roles, especially Dan Aykroyd as Ray Stantz (my all-time favorite Ghostbuster) he was a the heart of this superior sequel. I pretended that Afterlife didn't exist & this movie was simply the old Ghostbusters that have recruited a new younger team like the 90's Extreme Ghostbusters. Afterlife doesn't exist.
We're back in New York City where the Ghostbusters should be for FROZEN EMPIRE. This is a big fun popcorn blockbuster & for that it's on point.
Major shout out for letting us know that GHOSTBUSTERS 2 (my fave) did happen & is definitely Cannon (the awful Afterlife ignored it) by a news report at the beginning of this superior sequel that shows the Statue of Liberty walking!!! I had a huge smile. Still there's stuff that's not great like how they never seem to really give us character depth, we never know if the old gang have families or have wives or husbands or kids???? Do they all live near each other? Do they meet up regularly? No real insight at all with our beloved characters but to be honest even the old films never dug into the characters at all.
Paul Rudd was awesome & really is a perfect choice to be a new GHOSTBUSTER.
The kids/teens were really great & are very gifted actors & very likeable.
In fact the whole cast was great in their roles. It was nice seeing Walter Peck back again, this time as the Mayor of New York & still with a bone-to-pick with the Ghostbusters. Thank you William Atherton for returning for his iconic character, a good sport.
There's new faces that are all fun & likable in parts. The humour is actually funny but it's not over silly & the spooky factor is done in the style of Ghostbusters 1&2.
We have a new demonic spirit that is Unleashed from an ancient artifact that ends up in Ray's supernatural store. The creature is eventually Unleashed & New York City is frozen over & evil spirit are on the rampage. I loved the creepy look of Garakka the Ice Demon that has a nice backstory & mythology. I felt this Ghostbusters dug into rich old mythology & ancient cursed & possessed artifacts. Ghostbusters could go the Conjuring universe way if it wanted with each cursed artifact getting a spooky movie about it. The drath chill created by the evil Garraka is done fantastically with super special fx that turns a hot & sweaty New York summer into a new ice age. This new villain is fantastically scary & taken seriously. I got vibes of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon which was obviously an inspiration for this movie. Also a nice use of the original '84 music score scattered throughout the movie, a nice Nostalgic touch.
I loved how the movie went into proper horror territory towards the end that made film actually feel threatening.
There's amazing special effects throughout & lots of awesome ghosts & new fun technology & traps.
Ernie Hudson is great in a bigger role (finally) as Winston Zeddemore.
I was nice seeing Annie Potts as Ganine Melnitz back in action & as a Ghostbuster, i love her character.
It was actually Bill Murray as Venkman that had the smallest part but was nice when he's there. The old team are great on screen.
There's some very nice little touching moments sprinkled throughout like when Ray & Winston are talking about how old they are & how these are their golden years.
Also nice little cameos from classic ghosts like the Library Ghost & Slimer, both done beautifully. So glad Dan Aykroyd had a main part back as Ray Stantz, he's older as they all are but still has that big excited heart for all things supernatural.
There's a nice sweet warm touch of Nostalgia sprinkled throughout the movie that makes you smile.
FROZEN EMPIRE has heart & Nostalgia for us old school fans who grew up loving these movies & characters.
Ghostbusters were a huge part of our childhoods.
Gil Kenan was a great choice of director & I'm a fsn of his excellent animated horror fantasy comedy MONSTER HOUSE, it's a Halloween staple in my house. Also he did a decent & fun remake of POLTERGEIST, the guy is great at family friendly scares.
All in all i had a blast watching this new Ghostbusters movie, fun & full of heart.
FOR IVAN (Just beautiful)
My Ratings of the franchise:
Ghostbusters (1984) 10/10
Ghostbusters 2 (1989) 10/10
Ghostbusters: Answer The Call (2016) 8/10
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) 2/10
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) 8/10.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
A Thrilling Remake & The Best Film Zack Snyder Has Ever Made.
I grew up watching the classic original 1978 zombie epic DAWN OF THE DEAD, so i was so excited when i heard a remake was coming out. That was way back in 2004, twenty years ago!!!
So i saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead at the cinema & loved it.
This is the only movie i like that director Zack Snyder has made. Let's be honest Zack is a crappy director that relies too much on messy expensive CGI action scenes. Dawn of the Dead was a gritty, raw & ferocious Horror movie with little need for OTT CGI nonsense.
I was blown away by how cool this new version of Dawn of the Dead was, it's exciting, darkly funny & upgraded the Zombies to running ones which i much prefer to the silly shuffling ones that are easy to get away from. I loved the fact Dawn took note from how terrifying running Zombies can be after the success of the Masterpiece 28 DAYS LATER.
This Dawn is so much fun & has an ensemble cast of wacky characters that are all hiding out in a shopping mall. Sarah Polley as Ana steals the show, although Ving Rhaymes comes 2nd) a nurse who has to escape her way out of her suburban neighbourhood as it descends into chaos with a zombie invasion. The first 10 mins or so are ferociously bloody, intense as hell & exciting. The early 2000's Zombie films are some of the best of the genre with 28 Days Later & Resident Evil & Dawn of the Dead.
The action is exciting & suspenseful & edge-of-the-seat at times.
It's an exciting & thrilling wild ride as we follow this group of misfits as they try to survive a Zombie Apocalypse.
The greatest visual in this movie is when you actually see how many Zombies have surrounded the area when our group try to escape from the mall in battle ready trucks, there's hundreds & it's shockingly scary.
Showtime (2002)
The Most Underrated Buddy-cop Movie Ever!!! Hilarious & So Much Fun I Loved It.
I first saw Showtime on video way back when it was first released to buy (on video) that was over 20 years ago. I liked Showtime then & laughed my ass-off but then just completely forgot about it for ages & ages until i started re-watching the buddy-cop genre again, as the buddy-cop genre is my favourite sub-genre of Cinema.
Now watching Showtime with fresh & older eyes as of now in 2024 i can honestly say that this gem of a movie is nearly a forgotten Classic.
No one ever mentioned Showtime like ever & yet it starred two of the biggest stars of Cinema History. Eddie Murphy is a childhood hero of mine i grew up watching him in the Beverly Hills Cop films & Trading Places & The Nutty Professor & Metro & so many more. By the 2000's Eddie Murphy had stepped into more family friendly films like Dr. Dolittle 2, The Haunted Mansion, I Spy, Pluto Nash, Meet Dave & more. Eddie's is a king of comedy & is absolutely hilarious in this buddy-cop action comedy gem.
Also we have the legendary titan & veteran Robert De Niro, the legend that gave us Masterpieces such as Taxi Driver & The Deer Hunter & Cape Fear & many, many more.
Also by the late 90's & early 2000's Robert De Niro himself had taken on more Comedy roles & family
fun with hits like Analyze This & Meet The Parents & Meet The Fockers & Shark Tale, to name a few.
The teaming of Eddie Murphy & Robert De Niro is absolutely brilliant & is one of the greatest team ups of the buddy-cop genre.
Eddie Murphy stars as fast-talking, smooth & cocky LAPD Rookie officer Trey Sellers, a uniformed cop on the beat that is so a wannabe actor & gets a chance at a "Reality" TV show about Cops when he's partnered up with veteran no-nonsense grumpy LAPD Detective Mitch Preston (Robert De Niro) who is pretty much a modern day Dirty Harry type. The ridiculously beautiful Rene Russo (Lethal Weapon 3&4) plays the show's excited producer, Chase Rensi. Together the mismatched pair of cops are poised to big the next big hit reality-based show.
For Mitch it's an embarrassing nightmare but for Trey it's a dream come true & hilarious situations become the norm for the pair.
Honestly the chemistry is perfectly done, you can tell De Niro is loving it & Murphy is in his element bouncing off of the legend. These two legends of Cinema are so much fun together & the there's also a hilarious part for William Shatner playing himself!!!
Honestly Showtime is such a blast, such a fun ride & is deserving of Cult Classic status in my opinion.
Every buddy-cop cliché is sprinkled throughout the film in a very knowing & funny way. The cameras are everywhere & Murphy's Trey loves it & shows off & De Niro's Mitch has to go along with it all & he's so funny.
There's loads of action, shootouts & car chases & everything that makes a buddy-cop movie & buddy-cop movie is in Showtime.
A top notch exciting score by the great Alan Silvestri (Predator 1&2, Judgment Night, i, Robot, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? & many many more) & with gorgeous Cinematography & produced by WILL SMITH, all the ingredients are here & work perfectly to create a fun Action-packed cop comedy.
Imperium (2016)
Daniel Radcliffe Is Excellent. An Excellent Undercover Tension-Filled Thriller.
Daniel Radcliffe has come along way from his magical Harry Potter days & here gives his greatest performance (best I've seen him anyway) as nerdy FBI agent Nate Foster who is recruited to go deep undercover in the scary world of white supremacists to uncover future terrorist plans.
Imperium treads similar territory to The Departed & American History X, both excellent gritty films & Imperium felt like a nice mix of them both. Daniel Radcliffe is helped on the superb acting front by the always excellent Toni Collette who plays Nates superior FBI boss that chose him for this particular mission. Nate is picked because of his smarts he's super smart & quick thinking in situations & that helps him big time when he's undercover. Nate is always the smartest guy in the room & is an excellent FBI agent but this is his first time out in the field doing real dangerous work rather than doing it behind a computer screen sat at a desk.
Radcliffe really is excellent on screen & puts his all into his performance as he's constantly on edge & has to think quickly in many nerve-wracking moments. This is basically an undercover cop thriller that deals with real American problems of Neo-Nazi terrorist attacks & the gritty approach to the film feels even more real considering this is based on a true story.
Imperium doesn't show the constant vile racist action you would expect, it's not on the scarily seething scale of say American History X, this film concentrates more on the inner workings of the White supremacists groups. What was eye opening was the fact that most of the Neo-Nazi high up leaders are actually normal type family men without skinheads!!! I say "normal" because they are hidden in plain site as they're not streets thug skinheads who you can see coming a mile off oh no these are well respected, educated & unexpected. The evil of racism reaches high & goes to places that's unexpected & Nate is right in the middle of this bizarre Whites only society.
All the performances are top notch here & the film is tightly directed & filled with tension & a terrific moody score that compliments the movie.
I totally dug Imperium & could watch it over & over.
Daniel Radcliffe was truly excellent.
Toni Collette was equally excellent.
Imperium is a moody, suspenseful thriller that keeps you on the edge throughout.
Green Room (2015)
A Thrilling Survival Shocker With Powerhouse Performances.
Green Room was a big surprise, a small budget movie made with a passion for low-budget gritty & violent grindhouse cinema of the 70's & early 80's for its influence, & even some early 90's genre flicks.
A simple setup story about an indie rock group travelling around America trying to get any gigs they can anywhere they can. This leads the grungy rock group the "Aint-Rights" to an isolated club full of Nazi-skinheads & hostility. The Ain't-Rights are a decent bunch of early 20's rockers that consists of three guys & one girl & all very likeable characters. Anton Yelchin (Rest In Peace to an excellent actor) is excellent as Pat, the deep thinker of the band, dude was truly a great actor that could've gone on to do so much amazing work in movies (He did a lot in the time he had though) & the others of the band are all damn fine a actors that each deliver strong performances & as said are all likeable (which is very rare in ensemble films).
The Aint-Rights perform some songs in the dingy Nazi bar & after they head to the Green Room (a chillout waiting area for bands & staff) & walk in on a murder scene. From here the film gets extremely tense as our band teams up with a local girl to escape from the Green Room & get out the Club alive. The Nazi members want to Silence the band for what they've seen & so an intense battle of wits begins but who will out smart who? & will anyone survive the night.
A creepily in-control & cold as ice performance from Patrick Stewart as the main villain of the piece, he's excellent as the head leader of the Nazi movement, he controls everything that happens & waits patiently for his victims.
There's a slight feel of that 70's grit & grime here like say Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter's original) & other cult flicks of that type. Green Room is a survival Thriller that's a low-budget B-movie at heart & loved that about it. Great cinematography, especially the rich greens of the surrounding forests & the dark moody interiors of the dingy club. Think From Dusk Till Dawn (1995) but without Vampires, Killer Nazi nutters instead. Green Room fits in with genre films like Judgment Night (1993) & Trespass (1992), survival thriller's that take place over one night.
The standout star (& character: Amber ) of the movie was Imogen Poots, she's one bad-ass smart-thinking & cool character here, she's excellent.
Who will survive this night? There's plenty of blood-soaked realistic violence that's often shocking & ferocious. Each gun shot is impactful with special practical effects that are beautifully shot, violence never looked cooler. Green Room is grounded in its gritty realism that's totally helped by the superb practical effects.
Truly an exciting, thrilling late-night survival flick. This is one ultra-violent ulta-cool thriller.
Red State (2011)
MASTERWORKS. RELIGION IS EVIL. OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY MICHAEL PARKS.
I'm not a Kevin Smith fan & i Don't like his weird indie stoner comedies but i absolutely loved his anti-religious horror thriller RED STATE. But Kevin Smith is a smart dude & says it as it is & i totally respect him for that & what he pulled off here with a tiny budget is pure Awesomeness & he should be so proud of this movie. This is Kevin Smith putting a middle finger up to critics & haters & making something totally different & experimental in a way & it worked.
Made low-budget gritty, ferocious & darkly funny, Smith finally made a movie really worth checking out.
I'm an Atheist so i loved all the undertones of religion causing chaos & how evil breeds within it.
Red State is about three horny American teens meeting up with an older lady through Internet chats & end up captured in a church compound full of religious fanatics.
Felt like a mix of Eli Roth's Hostel & a police thriller & with the ferocious frantic camera movements used in 28 Days Later & it's sequel & used extremely well to create a panicked state.
Veteran character actor legend MICHAEL PARKS gives the performance of his Career here as a psycho preacher hellbent on delivering holy justice to his victims. Parks is outstanding & Oscar worthy here. What a blistering, outrageous & hilarious performance by Parks!!!
Equally the great John Goodman packs a powerhouse performance as a ATF officer who lays seige to the religious compound with orders to kill all inside.
Two powerhouse performances that lift the film to a higher level of Cinema quality that defies its small budget.
Red State is better than most major studio Big Budget films!!!
All performances are top notch, intense & powerful, everyone is so game to deliver a power punch of a film.
Yep with it's gritty cinematography, no music score, blood-soaked action & a quality mix of Horror & Police Thriller Red State delivers.
Action, shocks, dark humour & knockout performances made Red State a cult survival Thriller.
Expend4bles (2023)
STATHAM solely saves the film from being unwatchable!!!
I've enjoyed The Expendables films so far, the first two being the best, & part 3 being fairly good but we really didn't need a new younger team.
Anyway the really BAD with Expendables 4 is the whole damn THING!!!
IF it wasn't for the always great Jason Statham Expendables 4 would be unwatchable!!!
Statham was always the most likeable of all the Expendables & was always my favourite so the one good thing this scrappy franchise film did was focus on Statham's Christmas character for a majority of the movie.
Statham was great on screen once again & seemed to be the ONLY actor giving a damn about his character or giving an little bit of depth.
When Barney (Stallone) was "Killed" off no one gave a damn, none of The Expendables really cared that their long time friend & leader had died, the whole thing was emotionless?
ONLY Statham seemed to really be bothered by his buddies death.
Most of the Expendables from the previous films are missing?
We got an annoying & pointless new Expendable that is supposed to be the son of Banderas's non-stop talking character from part 3. He's a terrible new addition & adds NOTHING.
The worst actress in cinema history Megan Fox joins the team & is ONLY here because some people think she's hot but she isn't unless you like really orange looking Aliens.
The Awesome addition of rapper actor 50 Cent is completely wasted & does nothing. 50 Cent was so perfect for the franchise & they wasted him? He should've Been the main new focus & a new team member but nope, they cared for about the sickly horrendous actress Megan Fox!!! Gutted for 50
The villain is Iko Uwais & he's good for the little he has but is wasted. Tony Jaa is decent for the little he has to do but again is wasted.
Dolph Lundgren looked fed-up & they gave him a scraggy scarecrow wig? Bizarre!!!!
This was not a well directed film.
Expendables 4 felt weird & so Bizarre, thankfully Statham was there to completely save the film. Statham singlehandedly saved Expendables 4.
The legendary Andy Garcia is totally wasted.
The cinematography or c.g.i looks like a cheap video game.
JASON STATHAM kept me watching & his scenes are good but the dialogue is so bad & forced, there is no chemistry except the little bits with Statham & Stallone.
I can't hate the film because there's bits & pieces that are good or fun, i liked the bit where Statham beats down a cocky YouTube'er brat & the whole big boat main action scenes where Statham is there to rescue his crappy team is very good. This movie was made with today's stupid culture in mind as we get (as said) cocky YouTube idiots & we get silly people at a party all sucking on pathetic Vapes & we get a scene where the terrible Megan Fox just gets home from the gym, all stuff that's totally the "now" that's fashionable & is our stupid culture craze. The Gym, Vapes & YouTube influencer lol its all here in this bizarre mess of an action film.
Thank goodness for the dependable Expendable STATHAM!!!