The Horseman: Australian for Revenge

Heard about this Australian movie a couple years ago but it is only recently reaching our shores.

Synopsis: A man finds out his runaway daughter has died from a heroin overdose, after being roughed up in a underground porn film. He decides to kill everyone he feels is responsible.

The Horseman may have the bare bones plot of your typical revenge film, but this one has much more pure rage and brutality than others of its genre. This is not the calm and focused dad from Taken. He has no plan. He just fights and tortures his way to the top The violence is pretty gruesome and bloody, even the off screen stuff. If you can stomach that then you will see some good performances by the cast and believably intense acting from Peter Marshall who plays the father.

B+

Similar movies: 8mm, The Limey, Death Sentence, Hardcore, Last House on the Left

Commandon't!

The latest movie to get shoved into the Hollywood remake meat grinder is the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Commando. This movie holds a special place in my heart. I have seen it at least twice a year since I was 10. If I'm flipping through channels and this movie is on I will stop and watch it no matter how far along it is. This travesty will be written/directed by David Ayer whose past work includes Street Kings, Harsh Times and Training Day. According to the article by  deadline.com Ayer will be making a more realistic version.

"Ayer's protagonist will be less brawny, but more skilled in covert tactics and weaponry."

You might as well call it Taken 2: electric boogaloo or the Bourne Tortada. Commando is the epitome of 80s action cinema, big muscles, big guns, big explosions, Rae Dawn Chong, Cheezy villains(The main guy looks like an overweight Freddy Mercury) and hilarious one liners. Why even use the Commando name? So far, this sounds like the opposite of Commando. I can already see it  PG13, CGI blood and they'll cast Adrien Brody to replace Arnold like they are doing in Predators.WTF.

Remakes?

I don't think a remake really ruins the original and some remakes are actually OK. Occasionally many pop up that have me asking "why?". Enough so that I will start doing (hopefully)weekly remake posts.

This week:The Toxic Avenger(1984)

Why this is a bad? Just watch the trailer...



 There is no way this can go well. The original is an awesome example of low budget filmaking and 80s cheez. Then there is this:

"The group(Endemol, who bought the rights to everything Toxic Avenger) intends to turn Toxie into a green superhero for these environmentally conscious times."

 Why not just make a Captain planet movie?

"The remake will be mounted as a family friendly PG-13 action comedy akin to The Mask..."

Seriously? Has anyone seen the movie? Blood, boobs, more blood, animal cruelty, vehicular homicide of a child, nazis, castration.

The only upside is that Lloyd Kaufman(President, Troma Entertainment, inc. and Creator of the Toxic Avenger) got paid, which means he can keep cranking out movies for Troma films.


Original article from deadline.com
Lloyds response to haters
troma.com

more remake news:
Fright Night

Bloggin' ain't easy

Seems that I have not kept my promise, I have some OK posts lined up though. But for now here are some things that distracted me from posting.

Drooling over the new Sprint Evo. Lack of keyboard is a downside, but depending the the price this may be my next phone.

Abusing Netflix. I just got it, mainly to stop me from buying Blu-rays, the real value is the  HiDef streaming. I'm watching Twilight Samurai right now.

Videogames.

Finally watching Mad Men I'm all caught up now.

Doing research on bikes, should be buying this one soon.

Actually reading, I'm still trying to finish Blood Meridian.

Trying to come up with a regular topics.

Catching up...

Ditching the longer form reviews in favor of multiple short reviews so I can post at least once a week. I will occasionally have non movie related stuff also.

Movies I've recently seen:

Red Cliff(2008) & Red Cliff 2(2009) - Think braveheart in Chinese but with epic LOTR battle scenes. ****

4bia(2008) - Thai ghost stories, really boring. *

Shinjuku Incident(2009) - Jackie Chan only does good movies overseas apparently. ****

House of the Devil (2009) - Classic 80s horror(non-slasher), excellent. *****

Carriers (2009) - Kinda like ZombieLand minus the zombies and laughs, not a bad thing. ***

Penn & Teller get Killed (1989) - umm... ***

Twisted Souls (1986) - Cheezy 80s horror, nothing special. *

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009) - This does for time travel what Shaun of the Dead did for Zombie movies, staring Chris Dowd from The IT crowd. geeky fun.***

Hawk Jones (1986) - Imagine a generic crime movie but all the actors are replaced with elementary school kids. Cute. **

Post-Apocalypse Now!

I promised one of my friends that I would make them a list of cool movies and since I'm reading The Road, I'm listing some of my favorite traditional post apocalyptic movies.

(in no particular order)

A Boy and His Dog
Hell Comes To Frogtown
The Road Warrior/Mad Max
The Ultimate Warrior
The Day After
The Omega Man/The Last Man on Earth/I am Legend(The book, not the movie)
Salute of the Jugger

Paranormal Activity

Hype backlash will kill Paranormal Activity, listening to the post-movie chatter made this evident. This really should have been a straight to DVD movie. If you come into it believing the commercials, you will be sorely disappointed.
The movie cues the audience with low rumbling noises(even during the daytime), which creates suspense but doesn't go with the premise. The acting is not very good especially with the boyfriend micah. Micah seems not too affected by the by all the strange happenings. The ending could be the worst part of the movie, which comes as no suprise when I found out it was studio "Inspired".

All in all I would pass on this one, watch [REC] instead. 5/10

Day of the Animals (1977)

IMDB Link

The short of it: Due to the depletion of the ozone layer Solar radiation make the creatures of the forest attack all humans.

Seriously?

Another movie from the 70's warning us of the dangers of pollution. A group of hikers go...hiking in the mountains of Long Barn, CA. Unbeknown to them, all the animals have gone crazy. After running out of food and being attacked a second time, Paul(Leslie Nielsen) decides that the guides don't know what the hell they are doing. He convinces half the group to follow him.

Leslie Nielsen is the only reason to watch this movie. Shortly after forming his own group he goes lord of the flies kills a man, tries to rape the guys girlfriend, gets interrupted by a bear, FIGHTS THE BEAR and dies. the movie is pretty much over after that. Some people live, some don't and for some BS reason all the animals die.

points of interest

• Dramatic zooming in on the animal eyes, a la shifty-eyed dog
• Vultures throwing a woman off a cliff
• Rat decapitation
• Guy gets double teamed by a dog and rattlesnake
• Tarantulas in the forest?
• A Native American man punching dogs

3 Caution bears just for this scene:
Note to self: be careful when searching for Bears on google image search.

El Rito De Santa Muerte (2007)

IMDB

The short of it: While in prison, a cholo(Diego) learns of a briefcase buried in the mountains containing 1 million pesos($73,599). He gets it.

What set this movie apart from all the other DVDs in the bargain bin for me is the mythology of the Santa Muerte. In Segal's marked for death you get the jamaican/Voodoo/crime combo, so I was expecting something like a Cholo/Santa Muerte/crime combo. The movie gets into it a little, in the beginning the cholo's cellmate (Tijuano) talks to him about the spirit world, Santa Muerte and the rules it's worshipers follow. When the Diego gets out there is a one-sided shoot out between his and a rival gang. Later, he does one of rituals and thats it. There is also a reoccurring dream that doesn't pay off. There was a lot to work with and combining the spiritual with the crime part would have made this a decent B-movie, but before the halfway point it's all forgotten about. At the very end Diego talks about going to the other world but by then who cares. What you are left with is your cliche crime movie with drug deals gone bad, girlfriend hostages and a Reservoir Dogs-style mexican standoff(or just standoff in this case).

This movie gets at least 1 santa muerte square because I actually sat through the whole thing.

New Police Story AKA How Jackie got his groove back.

Some filler until I get some new content. This is an old, but still relevant review I did for the cult back in 10/04.



I have always been a fan of Jackie Chan's older movies. From Fearless Hyena to Project A Jackie Chan had captivated me with his amazing stunts and great stories. His American movies are hit and miss to me, more misses than hits. Shanghai Noon, The Tuxedo, Shanghai Knights, The Medallion and Around the world in 80 days all have a special place in my heart right next to the health films in high school featuring diseased genitalia. In my opinion the original police story is the best movie Jackie has stared in. This Is why I was so thrilled to hear that Jackie would be making New Police Story and it would be a Hong Kong production. (Even though it has no connection story-wise to the original)

Here is a rundown of the movie. Inspector Wing (Chan) is one of Hong Kong's top cops, very confident and capable. So when a highly organized gang of bank robbers challenges the police to catch them, Wing and his specialized team go right after them. What Wing and his team don't know is that the gang's hideout is setup to be a big game of cat and mouse. When all of the team is captured except Wing they decide to challenge his abilities and wager with his men's lives. Wing is confident, but this is a game that he can't win. Flash forward some months later; Wing spends his days drinking himself away. He believes it was his overconfidence that killed his team, so do his fellow officers. He wants nothing to do with the police force. Then a young officer named Frank literally picks Wing up out of the gutter and convinces him that the only way he can redeem himself in the eyes of his fallen men is to join him and catch the robbers.

This is the best movie Jackie Chan Has made since 1988.
I'm going to let that marinate for a minute. It completely blows away any movie he has recently done, including both Rush Hour movies. All of the Fight sequences and stunts were excellent and then some. The acting was impressive; this film has Jackie at his most dramatic. The other actors were great too, even cute little Charlene Choi from Twins Effect. My only beef is that the humor that had been a staple of Police story 1 & 2 has been toned down much in this chapter of the series. Otherwise, New Police Story is a great story with action and emotion.

It is great to see the Jackie Chan we all know and love.




4½ out of 5. The Best from the best.