It’s once again time for me to eat a metric ton of riboflavin, do 35 jumping jacks, and make up a song called “I’m a Tugboat, Call Me Mel,” and travel into the land of the not-real to have another interview with a fictional character. Today, I’ve decided to pretend I’m talking to Bryan Mills, the ex-CIA agent father in the Taken films. I caught up with Mr. Mills at a café in Brussels, where he’s been assigned to protect the Czarina of Tokyo. The events occur in real time. Read More »
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Marriage Equality Avatar Efficacy
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Mail Bag Wednesday – “Cheerleader”
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What Every Man Should Know
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Mail Bag Sick Day + Bonus Puppy Footage
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The “Gray Area” of Rape Culture
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The R-Word
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Misogyny’s Impact On Health
Posts Tagged “movies”
In 1982, Arnold Schwarzenegger hit the big screen in a pec-flexing way with the incredibly silly Conan the Barbarian. A year later, his Pumping Iron counterpart, Lou Ferrigno, made it to cinemas as another legendary strongman; in fact, it was perhaps the most famous strongman in historical fiction: Hercules. And while Ferrigno certainly had the physique – the veiny, lumpy physique – to play the Greek god, he didn’t have much else, certainly not from the production around him. Produced by Cannon Films honchos, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, and written and directed by Lewis Coates (nee Luigi Cozzi), the man behind our favorite piece of garbage, Starcrash, Hercules combined two of the filmmakers favorite genres: sword-and-sandal adventures and science fiction. Put ‘em both together and you get a huge pile of insanity in a bowlful of weirdness. Put it this way: it makes Conan look realistic and logical.
Kyle Anderson takes a look inside the terrible Chuck Norris flick Silent Rage in this week’s Awesomely Bad Movies.
Friday, finally, sees the wide US release of Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film and the 50th anniversary of the series. The new title song by Adele is actually very good, in comparison to some of the more recent Bond themes. Part of the reason it’s great, aside from Adele’s amazing voice, is that the lyrics don’t try to do too much. It’s basically about standing tall together, with the usual references to Bond’s name and number being basically all he has. It’s a good little tune. This is not the case for a fair amount of the Bond themes over the 50 years which, despite being largely very catchy, are complete nonsense in the lyrics department. Read More »
Buckle your safety belt! Kyle Anderson picks apart the 1977 killer-automobile movie “The Car.”
French director Jean Rollin made a name for himself doing super-low budget, nudity-filled, “erotic” vampire movies. They were usually light on gore, story, sense-making and really everything except mood and boobs. It can never be said, though, that Rollin didn’t at least try to make his films interesting, despite the perpetual theme of young nubile women and vampiric activity, and with his third vamp feature, he made something akin to an art film. 1971’s Requiem for a Vampire is as close to a French New Wave film as Rollin ever made, and he even puts some pathos and symbolism in as well. Read More »
Seeing as it’s nearly Halloween, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of my favorite horror movie series: Halloween. Despite a couple shitty entries, the original seven forays of Michael Myers and his love of murder is incredibly enjoyable. It also, inevitably, reminds me of the various knockoffs that came up as a result of John Carpenter’s original, namely my least favorite slasher series, Friday the 13th. Jason Voorhees gets all the fame and acclaim and Michael Myers gets shat on. Why? Because Jason’s been in more movies? Phooey and pshaw! I’m clearly biased, but I am willing to see the error of my ways. To that end, I’ve decided to pit these two horror heavies against each other in several categories and come to a logical “Who’s Better?” solution. It’ll be a hell of a lot more scientific than Freddy vs. Jason.
It really is staggering just how many Alien rip-offs there were in the early 80s. It’s possible there were more of this type of movie than there were rip-offs of Star Wars, if such a thing can be measured. The vast majority of them concern a crew of space-goers who come across a big, ugly, and usually crappily-made extraterrestrial and have to not die because of it. The monster is always a terrible, menacing force, but what if the monster could, say, manifest itself into the victim’s darkest fear? That’d be pretty scary, right? Provided, of course, that your darkest fear is some kind of tentacle-having or insectoid monster. This interesting yet ultimately misguided spin on the Alien formula belongs to 1981’s Galaxy of Terror.
We’re fast approaching Halloween (and Christmas, if Target store displays are to be believed) and that always puts me in the mind to watch horror movies. I love them, watch them by the hundreds. I can’t remember the last time I was actually frightened by a movie, though. I didn’t always like them, either. No, I didn’t start watching horror movies really until I was in college. Before that, I was a big ol’ scaredy cat. They’re just movies; why was I so petrified? Not even just movies, though; I was afraid of pretty much everything. Why was I so afraid? And why did it change? No better person to ask than my 8-year-old self, eh? Time to take another trip into my own psyche! Read More »
Recently, the trailer for the new horror film The Bay was released. Despite having a very eye-catching and effective poster, it immediately drew an eye-roll when I saw it was produced by the people who gave us Paranormal Activity. Sure enough, the trailer shows us yet another movie made up of footage supposedly suppressed by the government but is somehow leaked to the public, miraculously in a nice 90-minute package with all the unimportant bits removed. The trailer looks like a better-than-average one of these movies, but it’s still just found-footage. Then, the credit that really threw me for a loop: “From Academy-Award Winning Director Barry Levinson.” What? Surely he just produced it, right? But no; I checked the IMDb and the film was indeed directed by the guy who made Diner, Rain Man and Sleepers. Haven’t we gotten over this style of movie making? Aren’t we passed it yet?
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