Credit: Brad Gregg Either the Oklahoma-born martial artist-cum-actor is embarrassed about his prediction or he’s just been busy tackling a “honey-do” list to get a house ready for sale. Holes don’t patch themselves, you know. According to The Los Angeles Times, a Dallas home co-owned by Norris and his brother is on the market. If […]
action
Posted inArts & Culture
Olympus Has Fallen
I’m talking about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, just to be clear. In Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen, Aaron Eckhart grows angry and Morgan Freeman pulls strings from the sidelines, while a possibly crazy but altogether decent man dishes out some superheroic justice to save the city, yet the result is a terrible movie, arguably […]
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The Guillotines
Not necessarily. The guillotines of The Guillotines are of the shimmering CGI kind, and so obvious as to be cartoons. Still, this Hong Kong pic is at its best when the guillotines spin on their scooped launchers like rabid dogs waiting to be unleashed, then zoom around the place looking for a head to latch […]
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
In his first live-action directorial outing since 2005’s Angel-A, Besson adapts the first story from Jacques Tardi’s acclaimed comics, which began in 1976. The titular heroine (played by Louise Bourgoin, Black Heaven) is a professional tomb raider in early 20th-century Paris, like Lara Croft but sporting frilly outfits and feathers. This grandiose dose of […]
Posted inMusic
Gallowwalkers
And Snipes’ signature character of Blade will come to mind. As that Marvel Comics hero was cursed with vampirism, this film’s hero harbors a curse that turns the dead into the undead. Therefore, High Noon of the Living Dead would not be an inaccurate title for Gallowwalkers. Not to overpraise the film, but with its […]
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Welcome to the Punch
James McAvoy (Trance) is all frowns and glares as Max Lewinsky (kin to Monica?), a cop still pining three years later for the One Who Got Away — not a girl, but a criminal. Fleeing from the scene of a big score on motorcycle, robber Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong, Zero Dark Thirty) managed to miss […]
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RED 2
Its inevitable successor, RED 2 (the acronym stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous,” per the comic-book source material), is, instead, a caricature of a caricature, one that revels in its lack of substance to the point of phlegmatic disinterest. The film revisits retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard), who, […]
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The Naked Jungle
Back in print through Warner Archive, the meat-and-taters adventure is based on Carl Stephenson’s classic short story “Leiningen Versus the Ants” of two decades prior. Heston is the clenched-jaw Leiningen, owner of a cocoa plantation in South America, and so lonely and away from civilization that he has to mail-order a wife, played by Parker. […]
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Enter the Dragon: 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition
With this, director Robert Clouse made what is easily Bruce Lee’s finest film (and then proceeded to follow it up with a never-ending string of schlock). While Lee is technically one point of a heroic triangle — with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon and blaxploitation icon Jim Kelly being the others — let’s […]
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The Call
Halle Berry (Cloud Atlas) leads the show as Jordan Turner, a veteran 911 operator in Los Angeles. (If anything, she should dial 911 for help with her distracting hairdo.) In the prologue, she’s giving questionable advice to a girl who calls about a prowler, resulting in the teen’s death. Six months later, Jordan is still […]