ON DEADLY GROUND (1994) - *1/2

Its amazing how far Steven Seagal's career has collapsed.

In the late 80s and early 90s, he was hot shit in the action film world. His debut-film ABOVE THE LAW was a sleeper profit-maker. HARD TO KILL, MARKED FOR DEATH, and OUT FOR JUSTICE all hit #1 in theatres. Then his peak came with 1992's UNDER SIEGE, a mega-hit that also was a pretty damn good action movie, in spite of being a DIE HARD knock-off.

What happens next with ON DEADLY GROUND is similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Remember folks when TERMINATOR 2 was the movie of summer 1991? Well, all that money and goodwill evaporated with the turkey LAST ACTION HERO.

Thing is, LAST ACTION HERO had a good premise, it just ends up being an Arnold ego-fest and going way way over-budget. Plus, JURASSIC PARK ate it like a lawyer on a toilet.

ON DEADLY GROUND is just a piece of shit action floater with a plot that Joel Silver and Jerry Bruckheimer would consider stupid, that Steven Seagal tried his best to be his ultra-statement on his pro-environment conservationist.

Worse, he tried to go Orson Welles on us as Director/Producer/Writer/Actor...with hilarious results.

Hilarious that is, to people that couldn't believe I wasted my time with this movie. They had a good deserved ha-ha over my folly. Someone has to take a bullet for them without money to spend.

The film has what you would expect from any Seagal picture of the time. The same zen/martial arts master that is always on top of things. The same master that also was a former Marine or Ranger or special forces hero or whatever(you know, to explain why he's such an amazing killing machine).

Which reminds me, its the same paradox that Billy Jack of the 1960s/70s presented. For such a man of peace and zen-philosophy, kicking ass and killing people is okay. Weird, isn't it?

Which I don't mind. You can't have an action hero that never was a super-soldier if they are to do incredible gunfighting feats...even if DIE HARD proved that you don't need it.

Back on track, Seagal finds out that in the Alaska wilderness, an Evil Oil Corporation and its unclean drillers is polluting the local Eskimo lands. Seagal gets pissed, he kills many people, and for some reason, he does alot of nut-kicks.

What is hilarious though is the movie's baddie, played by the great Michael Caine. Another Evil Oil Corporation CEO that pollutes for his money, but he's got a special gimmick: Like Seagal, he was a former U.S. special forces soldier.

Huh?

The action is lacking and starting to horribly repeat with the fight scenes, but its not the problem. Its just that Seagal is incompetent in shooting fighting sequences. With ABOVE THE LAW & UNDER SIEGE, Andrew Davis was able to helm Seagal believably without Seagal's ego-bullshit. Notice how in those two movies, Seagal gets his ass beaten alot. Other movies, he's punch-proof.

But the icing on this Fuck You cake is Seagal's finale speech, detailing why the environment must be saved, pollution sucks, and why corporations should all go to hell. Its agonizingly lame as it is, but rumor has it that it was originally 11 minutes long(!) to which it was chopped out because test screening audiences laughed at how silly it is.

Ouch.

HARD TO KILL (1990) - ***

You all know that RRA here is a sucker for pulp garbage revenge stories, and what a doozy.

Police officer Steven Seagal videotapes a crooked local city politicial official (William Sadler) cutting a drug deal with the Mafia. The baddie finds out, and has Seagal and his family shot and killed...

...except Seagal lives, but in a serious coma. His police buddies fake the records as if he had died, so to keep the vulnerable protagonist from getting whacked. Seven years later, Seagal lives, he finds out that the local politician is now a U.S. Senator with eyes on the White House. Safe to say, Seagal is sorta pissed, and naturally seeks what all male protagonists in the action genre do...go out for REEEEEEEEVENGE!

*cough* sorry.

Up to Seagal slipping into the coma, its a really good action-film, but then the energy from this provacative garbage-fun opening saps away. But, its still a solid action churner.

rrA, Regarding your question about the spoiler posted above, I have seen it discussed elsewhere.

Yes I know that.

Volver * 1/2
(First Viewing)

Raimunda lives in Madrid with her daughter Paula and her husband Paco, who is always drunk. Her sister, Sole, is separated and works clandestinely as a hairstylist for women. The two sisters lost their parents in a fire in La Mancha, their birth village, years ago. Their aunt, Paula, still lives in the village and continues to speak about her sister Irene, mother of the two sisters, as if she were still alive. When the old aunt dies the situation changes and the past returns(volver) in a twist of mystery and suspense.

Penelope did a great job and deserved her Oscar nomination. And DAMN did she look good doing it

Armageddon ***
(First Viewing)

After a shuttle explosion in space and a meteor shower in New York, a retired navy officer, Karl (John Mahon) discovers an asteroid the size of Texas on a collision course with Earth. It will wipe out everything living including bacteria. There's only one thing to do - drill a hole in the asteroid, plant a nuke in it, and blow it away. To do the job, NASA administrator Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) calls upon the best deep core driller in the world, Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) who leads his team along with A.J. Frost (Ben Affleck). With only 18 days to destroy the asteroid, it's a race against time to save all creation and prevent Armageddon.

This might sound a little strange coming from me but I have a new found respect for Michael Bay. I own Bad Boys and Bad Boys II and will eventually own The Rock and Armageddon. Let it not be said that Michael Bay doesn't know how to blow sh*t up and make an entertaining movie. He's really showed me something with these last 2 movies and I'd even go so far as to consider giving Pearl Harbor another watch in the near future. I think I might officially retire as a Bay basher. However, getting back to the movie, this is easily Bay's funniest movie. Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Steve Buscemi were all great. Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler were tolerable. Overall a great and noticeable cast. The special FX's were awesome as well, especially when some of the asteroids hit New York City and Paris.

You know who actually knew how to blow stuff up without the same old orange keroscene fires? James Cameron. He exploded a bloody office building in TERMINATOR 2. Better yet, he had a wonderful one-take shot of a helicopter flying under a bridge. Now that is cool....Bay though, he would edit it with at least 40 different shot-choices and make this accomplish seem quaint.

If anyone wants to read a great review of ARMAGEDDON, read this epic review from the always funny Agony Booth website. They got that fucker dialed down to a zero...and its accurate.

http://www.agonybooth.com/armageddon/

"Somehow, some way, Michael Bay over-directed this movie to the point where it lost all trace of the one thing that all movies have taken great pains to cultivate since the dawn of cinema. You can call it a long music video. You can call it a two and a half hour commercial. Call it a 150-minute trailer if you like. But in my mind, Armageddon has no right to call itself a movie."

The Departed's love triangle could have been explored a lot more. The way it is, it's treated far too redundantly, though it does offer a chance for emotional complexity in the characters, which I'm always up for - especially when they're played by two good actors in DiCaprio and Damon.

Regarding Damon as the tragic protagonist or slime-ball villain: isn't that just ambiguity, or good writing?

Black Christmas (2006) **
(Second Viewing)

A remake of the 1974 horror movie Black Christmas. The movie tells the story about Billy, a young boy who was abused by his mother as a child. While his mother was cheating on Billy's father, she eventually killed his father and kept Billy in the attic - for good, while she was with her lover and starting a "new" family. As Billy's mother fell pregnant with a daughter and treated her with love, which Billy had never experienced with his mother, Billy came out of the attic after years and brutally murdered his mother and her lover. Cut to present day, a group of eight sorority sisters consisting of Kelli (Katie Cassidy), Dana (Lacey Chabert), Lauren (Crystal Lowe), Megan (Jessica Harmon), Claire (Leela Savasta), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Megan (Jessica Harmon) and Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg) and their house mother (Andrea Martin),who now live in Billy's childhood home, find themselves being harassed by threatening and intimidating mystery phone-calls during Christmas Break and as one of the girls goes missing, the girls begin being murdered one by one by no other than Billy.

Probably one of the most straight forward horror movies I've ever seen. There's no guessing game involved. You know who the murderer is from the start. It wasn't as good without the "theater commentary" the first time around although a heck of a sorority house with Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Leela Savasta, Crystal Lowe, Lacey Chabert, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Ahh, fair point Capo....fair point mate.

FIRE DOWN BELOW (1997) - **1/2

Anyone from the 60s and 70s remember those nutty BILLY JACK B-movies? You know, hippie-Zen loner comes to town, protect the downtrodden by beating the shit out of the evil conservative rednecks.

Well, in this box-office dud, Steven Seagal effectively follows the BILLY JACK template, except instead of fighting Neo-Nazi bikers terrorizing hippies, its corporate rednecks who want to dump toxic waste in Appalachia. Effectively its Seagal being the bloody Tree-hugger savior like the quite bad ON DEADLY GROUND, but at least he's learned to make a passable, but forgettable, action fare. People that go to see action films don't go for the message.

FIRE DOWN BELOW is not a good movie, but its not bad either. Its just a shrug. Still, Kris Kristofferson has fun as the baddie, Marg Helgenberger(despite this movie flopping, she did find success as the female lead in the TV mega-hit C.S.I.) is decent, and hey criminally underrated southern acting legend Harry Dean Stanton is in the background.

Well, despite the rumors what Irish posted days earlier, looks like Watson is staying onboard with HARRY POTTER:

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2007/23/c6173.html

Death of a President **
(First Viewing)

One year after the assassination of President George W. Bush in Chicago, an investigative documentary examines that as-yet-unsolved crime.

A great fictional movie that really came across as authentic and made you think about things in a different light. I kinda felt from the movie that it was Pro-Bush but Anti-War.

Kill Bill 2 **
Stylish, innovative, entertaining, visually stunning and totally ludicrous.

This is off-topic, but years back M. Night Shymalan was temporarily involved with SUPERMAN. It didn't last long but he did write a script treatment for the movie he would have made.

Bruce Willis as Pa Kent, Haley Joel Osment as Jimmy Olsen, and other shit. Joaquin Phoenix was desired to play Superman.

Thing is, I read the treatment....its ok, but its got your typical Shymalan plot twist. Wanna know what it was?

PINK FLOYD THE WALL (1982) - ****

I reviewed this baby years back for RRA'S CULT MOVIE REVIEW, but I checked it out again and it still rocks(pun absolutely intended).

Like Rock Hudson's closet activities, its no secret that I'm a huge Floyd fan, especially with their landmark album THE WALL. Sometimes ambition and egomania room together in the same creative dormhouse, since thats what Alan Parker's THE WALL motion picture is.

While the idea of filming a dramatic narrative without exposition dialogue is pretentious, and the editing narrative energy itself is inconsistent from being outright genius to outright sluggish as hell, but when THE WALL movie's magic occurs, you forgive the faults.

All the music videos that roam the forbidden zone of MTV can trace their bastard ancestry to THE WALL, not TOMMY. That's a FACT.

That's hardly a plot twist. Even if Shyamalan made a biography of mother Theresa, she would be an A****.

Whats funny is I used that gag once to fool a real-life movie news website into thinking its legit.

You all know AINT IT COOL NEWS, right? Moriarty is the cheez-whiz prick that runs it. At the chat room I was able to tell him about this major scoop...and the fat chipmunk actually was falling for it, until I gave the "plot twist" punchline.

Subsequently, I'm still banned from the chat. It was worth it.

Children of Men ***
(First Viewing)

Set in 2027, when no child has been born for 18 years and science is at loss to explain the reason, African and East European societies collapse and their dwindling populations migrate to England and other wealthy nations. In a climate of nationalistic violence, a London peace activist turned bureaucrat Theo Faron, joins forces with his revolutionary ex-wife Julian in order to save mankind by protecting a woman who has mysteriously became pregnant.

Clive Owen delivers his usual great work and Alfonso Cuarón did a fine job directing. It was rather humerous seeing Michael Caine as a stoner with that long white hair

Rinne (aka Reincarnation)
(First Viewing)

The actress Nagisa Sugiura is selected for the cast of a horror movie about a professor that killed his family, guests and staff in the Ono Kanko Hotel to prove his theory that people's souls are reincarnated after death. When the director, cast and crew arrive in the hotel, Nagisa sees dead people moving around the place. Along the shootings, she has nightmares and visions of the killing and she realizes that the people involved in the movie are actually reincarnation of those killed in the hotel, and she was the killer professor in her previous life, ending absolutely insane.

From the few Japanese horror films I've seen I'm not a fan. The only one that I liked was Jigoku. I don't know if director Takashi Shimizu is a big stud in Japan but I've found his work to be totally weak. This movie sucked, The Grudge sucked, and I stayed WELL away from The Grudge 2.

Something to Talk About

False advertising.

Three Colors - Blue **
Similar to the other kieslowski movies, this one too is full of great shots and more significantly, amazing sounds. As there is no plot, the interest in the movie is purely a function of the visual content. I should be watching the other parts of this trilogy soon.

Ronin **
(First Viewing)

Ronin is the Japanese word used for Samurai without a master. In this case, the Ronin are outcast specialists of every kind, whose services are available to everyone - for money. Dierdre (undoubtedly from Ireland) hires several Ronin to form a team in order to retrieve an important suitcase from a man who is about to sell it to the Russians. After the mission has been completed successfully, the suitcase immediately gets switched by a member of the team who seems to work into his own pocket. The complex net of everyone tricking everyone begins to surface slowly, and deadly.

Robert De Niro and Jean Reno worked well together. Natascha McElhone & Stellan Skarsgård were enjoyable as well. The storline seemed interesting but I got bored of the case switching hands so many times. I was more interested in seeing the teams complete tasks. Overall a decent movie.

Monster-In-Law Zero stars
A predictable and mostly not humorous comedy about an evil mother in law(of a woman). The daughter in law is played by jenifer lopez. Silly stuff. Avoid it.

svsg, MONSTER-IN-LAW is a piece of shit. Whoever pitched that fucker must have had a quick and easy as hell pitch with the studio:

"Okay, we get our own MEET THE PARENTS....but switch the gender roles of Stiller and DeNiro!"

Exec: "Genius! That's the best damn creative idea since INDEPENDENCE DAY!"

MONSTER-IN-LAW (2003) - *1/2

I watched Ladder 49 on tv this weekend. I had never seen it in the movies because I didn't think it would be all that exciting of a movie. As a native Baltimorean seeing familiar sites in the movie might have made it somewhat enjoyable. But I can't really say the movie was two thumbs up. I think it was billed as a John Travolta film, when he is basically a bit actor. During the fire sequences I felt like I was watching the same theme over and over. I feel they pretty much stole the plot from Backdraft with having a friend die, and then the main character die at the end. But it was cool seeing shots of Looney's Pub. I used to live literally 5 blocks from the place.

Thats good to know Beth.

Supposedly, when LADDER 49 came out, the producers were making a big deal in the press that it was more "realistic" and "accurate" than BACKDRAFT. Whatever that is so or not, who knows.

Wellington Wolf

Theaters aren't exactly overgrown with werewolf movies (decent or otherwise) these days, and this isn't likely to make lycanthrope fans any happier...

Apparently a remake of the 80s "classic" TEEN WOLF is in the works, and Dark Horizons says SMALLVILLE's beefy Boy of Steel Tom Welling will have a part in the flick. But what's even more curious than Welling getting more movie parts after the tragic remake of THE FOG is that he's reportedly not the hirsute moon-howler -- word is this new TEEN WOLF is... a wolfette. We can only assume she'll play hoops, or at least cheerlead for the basketball team. Welling will probably play some sort of dreamy hunk, speculation mine.

For those who missed or conveniently forgot the more embarrassing chunks of the 80s, the TEEN WOLF "franchise" featured Michael J. Fox and Jason Bateman as students cursed with excess hair and a friend named Chubby (he was obese, y'see).

Source: JoBlo

OK, one word, WHY?

Depp want Sin

Is that title an incredible word play or what? He wants in... to Sin City... want Sin... Geddit?

Apparently, both Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp want into SIN CITY 2. As you know, both have been involved with Robert Rodriguez in the past, with ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO, and it transpires they both want some time in front of the green screen.

Wallace, a brooding artist, who after being drugged repeatedly finds himself hallucinating through much of the story 'Hell and Back' could be the role Depp plays, as Rodriguez says that "(Depp) was interested in doing the Jackie Boy character (played by Benicio Del Toro)... But there is a better role for him in ('Hell and Back'). I kept going, 'Gosh, Jackie Boy is a small part, he could be really good (as Wallace).' When he wasn't available, I thought maybe it was meant to be."

Banderas, also went on to say "I'll do anything in that. I'll be the hunchback. You have to bring me onboard, that looks amazing." Rodriguez and Miller are apparently now going through the characters to find one that Banderas can play.

Source: JoBlo

Woulda been had you not misspelled it.

Johnny Deep. Now that's funny.