So you not a PLAYAH?

Figures.

THE REPLACEMENTS (2000) - **1/2

Making fun of Keanu Reeves' acting skills, or the lack of them, is as old hat as mocking George W. Bush's dumbness, Bubba Clinton the whoremonger, and O.J. Simpson's murders. Thing is, I'm going to disagree and say that he isn't a bad actor.

No I'm not saying that he's good per say, since I haven't forgotten BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. But the guy seems competent as a presence in certain roles, which usually seem to be for action slammers and chick flicks, and since THE REPLACEMENTS is sort of a mix of both, he's workable here. Besides, the dude cut a big chunk out of his salary to get Gene Hackman booked for this flick, which apparently he did as well for Al Pacino with THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, so that's cool of him.

The players of a professional American Football league goes on strike during the middle of the season, and team owners replace the field ranks with "replacement" players. The Washington Sentinels wants former head coach Hackman to coach these scabs...and he agrees only if he coaches the players he wants.

If you haven't guessed it already, THE REPLACEMENTS is basically the NFL version of MAJOR LEAGUE, where has-beens and never-beens team up, blue collar misfits making use of their one real chance at glory, jam their thumbs in the eyes of the rich snobs.... and hilarity ensues.

So yeah you have the goofy gimmick players from the speedy convenient store working wide receiver (Orlando Jones), the psychotic linebacker that was previously a SWAT guy (future IRON MAN director Jon Favreau), the Hip-Hop bodyguards-turned-Offensive Linemen, the foul mouth Welsh kicker (Rhys Ifans) and a former college quarterback star (Reeves) who now scraps barnacles off boats.

Yet while REPLACEMENTS constructs the MAJOR LEAGUE blueprints to a T, it simply lacks the magic.

I think the immediate problem is that with the villains being the striking players, I just don't buy it. NFL players don't have guaranteed contracts, and only thing they're assured is their signing bonuses. Hell, the NFL players union is notoriously patsy to the NFL owners, and in fact their last strike was back in 1987, which not only was a spectacular failure, but also was the basis for this movie, for Head Coach Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins not only went 3-0 in those "replacement" games, but won the Super Bowl that same season.

My point is, sports fans would be more likely to buy pro baseball or basketball players, who have secured payments whatever they suck or not, being the baddies.

Hell, a better gang of bad guys would have been the New York Knicks. The NBA's highest payroll (about $130 million) and owner of the league's worst record, imagine the outcry from Manhattan if those expensive bums went into the picket lines. Too bad they fired their sexual harassing and fantastically awful Head Coach/General Manager Isiah Thomas. He would have been great as the top evil.

Anyway, do you really see NFL stars like Tom Brady and Brian Urlacher physically protesting stadiums in the flesh? I don't. The same when in THE REPLACEMENTS, the striking Washington players confront the title characters in a bar, and a brawl ensues. If anything, I would imagine it more likely that such pampered guys hire thugs to beat these scabs out of commission, or risk a serious lawsuit.

Then there is my problem with REPLACEMENTS using fake teams instead of real NFL clubs. Either Warner Bros. were too cheap to buy the license, or NFL refused to sell, but after several games when the people of Washington D.C. fully get behind these replacements...something about it just doesn't work for me. There is just something about using real teams that would make that whole fan-franchise connection a lot more credible.

I mean, look at MAJOR LEAGUE with the Cleveland Indians, who were what, basement dwellers for decades, and the city was in decay. But once that team-not-supposed-to-win actually start to win, the fans come back, and the area is revitalized with joy and optimism. I mean, the New Orleans Saints' success in the 2007 season didn't fix all the problems still lingering in that city after Katrina, but gave them something to be excited about.

That said, I'm not saying THE REPLACEMENTS is a bad movie. I laughed at the cheerleaders recruited from the local strip club, Ifans smoking a cigarette out in the field, Favreau beating the hell out of Reeves, and Jones early in the movie running full-sprint after a customer, just to retrieve a shoplifted Twinkie.

The romance subplot between Reeves and the head cheerleader didn't waste my time, though I groaned when Reeves goes all Emo when the striking Washington star Quarterback tries to make a play for her. Whatever.

I won't recommend this movie for you to check out, but if you happen to catch it on television while on vacation, suffering from a hangover, or in prison, you might find yourself watching a term which I created for Taylor Hackford's RAY.....a well-made average movie.

I like The Replacements. It's a chick flick with sports thrown in so that men can't completely object to it on date night.

THREE AMIGOS
(First Viewing)

A great cast with Steve Martin, Martin Short, Chevy Chase, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, and Joe Mantegna. The beginning of the film really captured my interest but by act three I was ready for it to be over. Not a lot of laughs were spread throughout the film.

PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981) ****

Okay, Ronnie. Let me know what you think.

There once was a kingdom ruled over by a fair and righteous king. One day, an evil witch descended upon the well from which the people drank, and poisoned the water. The very next day everyone but the righteous king drank the poisoned water. And they all went insane. All but the king that is. For several days after, the people wondered aloud, "What happened to our king," they shouted in the streets, "Has he gone insane?" So the king went and drank from the poisoned water, and everything was well again.

That is the story Al Pacino's girlfriend tells him late in SERPICO, Sidney Lumet's celebrated 1973 true-life tale about police corruption and one's man's obstinate stand against it. Apart from Pacino's performance as Frank Serpico, that film was a compromised moral drama, thrown haphazardly together to fit a commercial running time. The success of DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) and NETWORK (1976) then allowed Lumet to make PRINCE OF THE CITY, unquestionably his greatest work, and worthy of the story of the king. As a piece of narrative it ignores all the established rules: There are no acts (first, second or third). There are no heroes, and no villains. There are no gun battles or showdowns. This, for its entire three hour running time, is an account of a cop who decides to blow the whistle on corruption, and the legal repercussions that ensue. Unlike Serpico, Det. Daniel Ciello (Treat Williams) is no saint. He does what, in his view, needs to be done. And given the nature of power, a lot more. On his own accord, he heads to the Chase commission, where he decides to "do the right thing", and confess. His one condition? He won't rat on his partners. He knows them to be good men. We see them at his luxurious two-story house. They are cordial, pleasant, brotherly. When he states his condition to the government lawyers, he says, "I sleep with my wife. But I live with my partners."

Except the forces that be don't see things the way he does. Ciello and his partners are the Special Investigative Unit for Narcotics, the "Princes of the city". They have citywide jurisdiction and are virtually unsupervised. When they make a bust they A) Keep the drug dealer's money. B) Sell the drug dealer his freedom. Or C) Arrest him and take his money. They have reasons too. You see, a drug dealer without money would never be able to buy another cop, a DA or a judge. And if they don't have enough evidence to convict anyway, they may as well have the money. This group of cops, as they have no doubt explained to themselves, tens if not hundreds of times, have a moral right to scam the dealers. They have a moral imperative to keep their junkie stoolies (snitches) supplied with Heroin. Yes they do this for the information, but also because, "a junkie will break your heart." The practice of giving Heroin, according to the government lawyers, is exactly the same as dealing. Legally, they are as culpable as drug dealers. And the moral haze thickens.

No one joins the police force to become a bad guy. That is why Lumet, whose films are basically about the subjectivity of right and wrong, is fascinated with cops. They are not gangsters, who, as depicted in Scorsese's GOODFELLAS, are more about the money and "the life" than a mythical code of honor. For cops (even those who beat protestors or torture prisoners around the world) there has been, in most cases, a point where they justified their actions. In PRINCE OF THE CITY, Lumet affords all his characters, including the tens of government lawyers, an unfeigned authenticity that makes every scene in the film riveting. For every odious act performed against, or by a cop (or even a lawyer), there's an underlying moral position. The moral complexity of Lumet's best work lies in the assumption that pure evil does not exist.

What sets PRINCE OF THE CITY apart (and what earns it comparisons to the films of Martin Scorsese) is the unusual strength of its characters. Lumet, who co-wrote the screenplay, something he does not do often, employs a strangely effective technique. Instead of a narration, there are regular grim stills of the ID Cards of the characters involved accompanied by quotations such as "nobody cares about you but your partners", and "I'll be telling lies for the rest of my life". The whole film then takes a feel of a postmortem documentary. The stills are there because the characters involved, probably for calamitous reasons, need to be identified. The quotations are the leads character's regrets. And as Ciello, Treat Williams gives a forceful performance that requires him to be in every scene. His character's quest for absolution closely resembles that of Charlie in Scorsese's MEAN STREETS. Why did this successful "Prince of the City" decide to voluntarily confess his trespasses, throwing all his riches away? Maybe the sight of starved junkie, shivering in abandoned warehouse, begging him for drugs didn't seem like much of a kingdom.

In my opinion, this is the second best cop movie ever---after THE FRENCH CONNECTION. And I almost forgot, if you think that Lenny Briscoe was Jerry Orbach's best cop role, think again.

KATT WILLIAMS LIVE
(First Viewing)

Not a bad show but disappointing that the show wasn't as funny throughout. I'm really only familiar with Katt William's work in FRIDAY AFTER NEXT but was excited to see this because he is a funny individual. I might watch his AMERICAN HUSTLE MOVIE next if I can get a hold of it.

COMA (1978) - ***1/2

Everyone knows Michael Crichton for writing sci-fi thrillers from THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN to JURASSIC PARK, but people forget that once upon a time ago, he actually was a pretty decent filmmaker. His career directorial highlights sums up to the classic robots-go-killer-haywire WESTWORLD, the really fun heist flick THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, and this one.

What's really odd is that you have a Harvard Medical School graduate in Crichton adapting and shooting COMA, a best-selling novel that arguably invented the "medical thriller" literary genre, which was written by another Ivy League doctor-turned-author in Robin Cook. Unless I'm mistaken, I doubt anything like this has happened in Hollywood before or since.

Anyway, with COMA you have a woman goes for a routine clinical abortion but ends up in a vegetative "coma" state. Her surgical resident friend, the beautilful Genevieve Bujold, finds out that there has been ten random unexplained comas (including a Tom Selleck cameo) occuring within the same Boston hospital in the past year, and discovers that they all have only one thing in common: They all happened in the same operating room. Nobody believes her, and on top of that, people are trying to kill her too.

If anything, Crichton is probably perfect for the material because for a movie set around a hospital, the guy sure knows his way around them, and the people who work there. Much like his later TV series ER, you have workers who throw around medical jargon that you the audience may not necessarily understand, but by watching them, you have a clear idea of what they're talking about. You have hospital politics where egos and ambitions clash brutally with truth and responsbility, you get the idea.

I enjoyed the scene when Bijold is asking Rip Torn the chief anesthesiologist for his files about the Coma patients, and forgetting Torn as one of the movie's villains, you sorta buy why Torn gives one of the more polite "screw you" movie rants I've seen in awhile. People generally don't like to be crticized at their own expertize.

What I really like is that, if my mother the former medical nurse is to be believed (and I have no reason to doubt her), COMA features two of the creepiest moments that can happen while working at a hospital:

(1) Walking all alone at the dead of night in the deadly silent hospital halls, hearing only your footsteps....then hearing other steps right behind you.
(2) Getting locked in the morgue, and the lights turned off.

That morgue scene in COMA is rather brilliant because the situation is already tense because the murdering henchman is chasing Bujold throughout the building, but on top of that, she's hiding among bodies, wrapped in plastic, and this piles on the suspense because lets admit it, that's probably one of the last places most of us would want to be, even if we're running for our lives.

What's interesting about COMA is the whole gender politics about it. For one, COMA was shot during the height of the "women's liberation" movement in the 70s, and Bujold is simpy a gal who wants to be taken seriously. When her friend dies, her co-workers expect her to go hysterical and emotional, but when she doesn't, they call her "cold." Let's admit it, there is a gender-bias against women in general regarding how they should feel. I did laugh when she told her hubby Michael Douglas to go get his own damn beer from the fridge. But then Crichton has a cheap shot up her skirt, and more than one (very nice) Bujold breast shot.

Quite frankly, I just don't get it.

Then there is her boyfriend, producer/co-star Douglas. He's the conservative and cautious of the pair, and really plays the "wife" role we see in every other thriller of this sort. It's Bujold, not him, who breaks into the ominous Jefferson Institute, and hides in the rafters high above the movie's most memorable visual, the infamous "floating" coma patients.

People will probably complain that about the ending, with Douglas racing to save Bujold from a coma-inducing surgery, of how its once again the man coming to rescue the damsel, and I would argue instead that he finally Man Up, and right on time. Good for you.

If anything, my only serious complaint against COMA is this whole horribly cheesy montage, where Douglas and Bujold away for the weekend, and you have them running down a beach, visit a small town, make love by a fireplace....is this a movie or a bad condom commercial?

That said, there is a cool if weird scene when Bujold oversees the autopsy of her pal, including the deli-like slicing of her brain. I'm reminded of the anecdote about Elvis Presley watching his friend's embalming, but like the King, she would do anything for a buddy, right? Plus, we see Ed Harris' film acting debut, back when he still had hair! :thumbsup:

Overall, Crichton directed a really good runner full of suspense and thrills, maybe his best, because how many other movies can make us perk up by the mere sound of an electrocardiogram? Too bad the guy's moviemaking career ended in the 1980s (why? One word: RUNAWAY) but while it lasted, he was good.

Plus, COMA was a rare film that had a great social impact, because both book and movie apparently caused a 60%(!) drop in organ donation to American hospitals.

Thanks alot Crichton and Cook!

I just saw "The Number 23" I like Jim Carrey in serious roles. A lot of people didn't like this movie, But I found it entertaining. It is a kind of rip off of about 10 movies, But definitely enjoyable.

i agree good film..

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER (1990) - ***

The terrific internet film critic The Outlaw Vern made an astute observation some years back of how while Bond uses gadgets, governmental-training, and aristocratic snobbery to save the day, Detective John McClane really is one of us, the "little people" of blue collar U.S.A. because he's a working class guy who uses his scant police knowledge to improvise his way out of surefire deathtraps and try to thwart the enemies.

Look at DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER, where he is trying to save a doomed airplane, he tears some rags, wrap them around some broken pipes, light them up with his cigarette lighter, and bang.....torches so the plane can use it as a ground visual reference. Better yet, when brawling with a henchman, McClane uses an icicle to stab him to death. Plus, he's an incredibly tough Irish-American brave (or stupid, your call) guy who's willing to jump from a helicopter onto the wing of an airliner on take-off, and then take a nasty bump off it this side of Mick Foley.

The DIE HARD movies are a lot like the DIRTY HARRY movies, the 007 franchise, and Donald Westlake's PARKER books in that you know what to expect in each installment: If Harry Callahan is always under suspension, James Bond always the man-whore, Parker's well-laid schemes always problematic in the execution, then Bruce Willis' McClane is always the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time.

You have terrorists, whatever Euro trash, mercenaries or hackers, who lay out a grand scheme and 3-D thinking to outsmart and dominate the hapless authorities, and plan their operation upon their predictable 2-D thinking this side of Khan. They use deception to reveal their true motives, which is revealed in a big plot twist, but by then the underestimated McClane uses his wits and bullets to even out the odds for the good guys. And of course, he always gets the shit beaten out of him.

After the runaway blockbuster success of the original masterpiece DIE HARD, Fox quickly fast-tracked this sequel and as a result, director John McTiernan and Director of Photography Jan De Bont were replaced by Finnish import Renny Harlin and Oliver Wood. I think Harlin is for the most part a hack auteur (and his career shows it), but much like Brett Ratner, he's capable at aping the colorful style of better filmmakers, and delivering a forgettable if serviceable black & white Xerox knock-off narrative, or to use a better analogy, he's the cheap store-brand cereal to McTiernan's Kellogg’s. I would almost call this the best DIE HARD knock-off ever shot, but that honor goes to Andrew Davis' superior UNDER SIEGE.

I do think its odd is how steady and calm Wood's camerawork is, considering how he would later cinematograph the BOURNE movies. Go figure.

What makes DIE HARD 2 the lesser of the franchise is simply because of the approach with McClane, and the story itself.

There is a charm for me in the other DIE HARD movies of how despite being charming with his ballsyness and one-liners, he is the same guy who drove away his wife (DIE HARD), made his co-workers ashamed to be around him despite his heroics (DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE) and is still stuck as a low-paid copper while alienating his daughter (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD). He's an alcoholic, chain-smoking bastard.... a likeable one, but only for 2 hours. In real life, would you really want to work or live with such a guy? What really redeems him though is that, who you gonna call when shit hits the fan?

But with DIE HARD 2, this McClane reconciled with his beau, transferred from New York City over to Los Angeles (where she works), apparently looks healthier than we last saw him at the Nakatomi Building, and....this just rings hollow for me. I don't really buy McClane, because the dude is fire & ice. He might as well be a McClane clone like Willis was in THE LAST BOY SCOUT. To put this another way, imagine a DIRTY HARRY movie where Clint Eastwood respected a suspect's civil rights.

Yeah exactly my point.

Aside from that, we have the whole weak villain scheme, where you have a Oliver North-esque Army Colonel (William Sadler) who leads a renegade gang of American Special Ops troops to free a Manuel Noriega-esque Latin American dictator, who's being extradited to USA for drug trafficking, because he harshly engaged the communist guerillas within his lands. Look, the plot device of the other DIE HARD flicks may be simplistic, but you must admit, greed is enough reason for evil men to do evil things. But is an Anti-Moscow ideology enough motivation enough for these soldiers to kill hundreds of their own people?

Maybe that's just me, but maybe the problem is Sadler himself. Mind you, he is cool. He's a great underused actor, and I guess the producers probably wanted an Anti-Hans Gruber for the sequel, but goddamn I wished he had a better scripted role, or at least be as intriguingly different for the whole movie as he was in his introduction when he's nude yoga exercising in his hotel room. Don't be a throwaway Direct-to-DVD nemesis like Timothy Olymphant was in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD.

Then there is the wife subplot. She's on one of the airplanes in the blizzard skies, not able to land because the terrorists have shut down the airport runways, and her scenes trying to deal with this ordeal feels reminds me of the melodramatic AIRPORT disaster flicks which AIRPLANE! so richly mocked. That and you have William Atherton the prick reporter back from the first movie...and who cares?

So yes, you have Willis trying to beat the terrorists so that her plane won't crash and burn from an empty gas tank...and that doesn't bother me really. What bugs me is that you have a great scene when Sadler crashes a British Airways plane, and standing between the burning wreckage and remains of the passengers, Willis seems really lost, tasting failure despite his best efforts, and maybe even unable to beat these pros. Then he picks up a burned doll, and is more determined now to send Sadler to the local morgue.

OK, you say so what? Well, that whole crash sequence is simply throwaway simply to add jeopardy to Willis' mission to save his wife. What if instead there was no wife around? What if Willis does go balls-to-the-wall simply to do the right thing in saving people, like he did in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE? I mean, talk about a great scene wasted.

But perhaps what nearly kills DIE HARD 2 for me is Dennis Franz. Perhaps I'm post-9/11-biased, but wouldn't most such airport security bureaucrats do everything to at least act like they have everything secured and investigated, instead of disbelieving Willis despite everything that happens in DIE HARD 2? I mean, if you want the authorities to doubt the hero, make it credible. Don't waste my time with such lazy "conflict" screenwriting. If I wanted that, I would watch 24.

But despite my whining, I sort of like DIE HARD 2, if only as a decent passable action ticket. Besides, when you have that shot of Willis escaping a bombed jet by using the ejector seat, and he fires up into the air, a mere inch away from our screen, and yells "Oh shiiiiiiiiiiit!" as he rapidly descends.....how can I not help but smile?

P*U*L*S*E (1995) - ****

I forgot which music critic it was who said it, so I'll steal it for myself. Pink Floyd is an Aristotle of rock music in that their albums are re-discovered by each succeeding generation, and their work, especially from MEDDLE in 1971 towards the end of the decade with THE WALL, is still as good as any rocker puts out these days. Either that's great praise, or simply the sorry state of the genre these days. Your call.

But like every other great British rock band not named the Rolling Stones, philosophies conflicted and egos clashed, and they imploded. In 1985, bassist/chief lyricist Roger Waters quit the act, and tried to retire the "Pink Floyd" moniker, which ensued quite a nasty and bitter artistic divorce with his band mates. By 1987, a settlement was reached out of court and lead guitarist David Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason regrouped and subsequently recorded two albums: A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON and THE DIVISION BELL.

P*U*L*S*E is a breathtaking and exhilarating recording of a concert at Earl's Court in London on October 20, 1994, as part of Pink Floyd's DIVISION BELL tour. If Pink Floyd had been legendary for decades for their live performances, from their infamous gigs at psychedelic nightclubs in swinging '60s London to their theatrically ambitious THE WALL tour, then this incarnation of Floyd were willing to break the bank (at about $30 million).

Not only does P*U*L*S*E look expensive, what with an exploding airplane, film clips, a laser light show that'll give you a seizure, and one giant-ass crystal ball, but the audience (back then and now at home) sure get theirs Money's worth from what became the most successful rock tour for its time.

If anything, I think Sony and EMI should get this sucker slapped onto Blu-Ray pronto because its a perfect demonstration of that video system's audio capacity, and give strong incentive to people, especially home entertainment system aficionados, to upgrade into the future from DVD.

I mean, while the dry and intellectual vocals of Waters are really really missed, Gilmour/Wright/Mason still perform one hell of a kick ass show, starting with their epic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Even if I thought REASON and BELL were for the most part mediocre studio recordings, there is something thrilling as Gilmour's deep voice goes into "High Hopes," and you must see the insane-as-hell synch work between the laser effects and his (extraordinary as always) guitar work on "Sorrow."

Yet these Limeys sure know what is Pink Floyd's bread and butter with the masses, and with the concert's second-half they perform the entirety of their immortal DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. I do hate that MOON has almost overshadowed everything else awesome that Pink Floyd had recorded in the 60s (THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN) and 70s (ANIMALS), to the point that reformed Floyd and solo Waters have made MOON the lynchpin of their concerts, but with P*U*L*S*E, you forget that and revel in the likes of "Time." That song not only owns you, me, and everyone else reading this review, but it also retroactively and owned our parents too as well. Heck, It even trashed your ancestors' cave homes.

By the triumphant encore renditions of the haunting "Wish You Were Here," the mesmerizing "Comfortably Numb," and balls-to-the-wall "Run Like Hell," you are just exhausted, mostly from the constant stomping of your feet on your floor. Despite teases of a new tour since the Waters/Floyd reunion at Live 8 in summer 2005, I fear this will probably will be the closest I'll ever get to attending a Floyd concert in the flesh, unless that lost magical footage of the WALL concerts are discovered and properly restored.

But I'll take what I can.

I just watched Die Hard 4. One reason out of very few: Maggie Q!
Yum!!

THE WANDERERS (1979) ****

Where do I start? This film is one of the most underrated films of the 70s, maybe ever. And not just because it's set in the Fordham section of the Bronx, where Pizzaboy grew up. It's just that good.

THE WANDERERS is many things...an urban gang drama, juvenile comedy, changing of the times study and more. It works on all these levels and has become a certified cult classic. At it's core, the Wanderers is about the final death of the innocence of the 1950's. The Wanderers are an Italian gang in NY, still clinging to the last vestiges of the 1950's with their matching satin jackets and grease-backed hair. Early on several members run afoul of another gang, the notorious Baldies (Baldies footnote---They were a real gang; Dion DiMucci, of Dion and the Belmonts fame was a member, but chickened out of shaving his head, so he was thrown out). The Wanderers find themselves trapped until a newcomer, the huge Perry saves them and is immediately welcomed into the gang by their leader Richie (Ken Wahl).

The various members of the Wanderers have problems to deal with on their own. Richie has gotten his girlfriend, Despie, pregnant, Perry's mother is an Alcoholic, Turkey wants to join the Baldies and Joey has an abusive father who thinks his son doesn't measure up. The Wanderers have a verbal war with a black gang, the Del Bombers, in school and decide to settle things with an old-fashioned rumble.

When the Wanderers cannot get any other gangs to back them up, Despie's father (Dolph Sweet) a neighborhood mob boss steps in and decides to stop the rumble and have the gangs settle their differences with a football game instead...with a lot of mob money riding on the outcome. The game climaxes when the two gangs, along with the rest in attendance, must join together to fight The Ducky Boys, a group of vicious, seemingly Irish homosexuals (although their ethnicity is never mentioned), who have crashed the game with hundreds of members. The location filming of the football game, at French Charlie's field on Webster Avenue is fantastic. I played ball there religiously when I was growing up.

Mixed in with the drama and action is a liberal amount of juvenile buddy comedy as the Wanderers "accidentally" bump into women on the street in order to touch their breasts. This is how the meet Nina (Karen Allen) a bohemian girl who Richie becomes infatuated with. There there are drunken parties, games of strip poker, etc. In one memorable scene, the drunken Baldies join the marines.

Through all of this is the theme of the changing of the times. The doo-wop of the 1950's is now being replaced by folk music. A poignant scene has Richie following Nina until she enters a club where (in sound anyway) Bob Dylan is playing. Richie doesn't enter as he seems to know that it's just not his world. The film also covers the assasination of John Kennedy as the symbolic death of innocence. It is this moment the galvanizes the strained relationship between Despie and Richie.

One wishes that the Ducky Boys had been better explained. They are a creepy group of men..older than the other gangs...who never speak and were actually seen taking Holy Communion in one part where Turkey enters their turf by mistake and his killed. What were the Ducky Boys representing? It's the one mystery of the film.

THE WANDERERS has a fantastic soundtrack of early 1960's hits including "Soldier Boy", "Walk Like a Man", "Runaround Sue", "Shout", "Big Girls don't Cry" and of course the title track.

This is a movie that holds up still after 25 years because it works well on so many different levels. This was mostly a cast of unknowns with Karen Allen perhaps being the most notable star a year after she did ANIMAL HOUSE. An enjoyable movie from beginning to end.

DON'T FUCK WITH THE WONGS!

LEAVE THE KID ALONE!

Don't know what the hell Pizzaboy is talking about?

Watch this underrated classic and find out.

The Wanderers was a great movie, and i haven't seen it in close to 20 years.

what I remember most is that the film takes a sudden and dramatic change of mood where some of the Wanderers are travelling in a car, upbeat an optimistic, and immediately the sky becomes dark and the mood becomes threating and suspenseful. I believe this marks the moment they arrived on Duckie territory.

The Duckies were strange and eerie from what I can remember.

how 'bout dem Wongs!

ANOTHER very good review, pb. I'm gonna have to start calling you "Gene Shalit".

I love "The Wanderers" and have always sung it's praises here on the boards.

I've always thought the "theme" of it was summed up by the end when Dylan was singing "The Times They Are a Changin'". The innocence of the 50's was ending and the 60's were bringing all the changes that divided us. The Ducky Boys represented that change and it was interesting to see the coalitions formed to fight against them.

BTW - It always bothered me how Dylan was singing in the Village (and Richie looked through the window to see it) and then, all of sudden, he was back in The Bronx...

It was adapted from the Richard Price novel, SC. He's long been a hero of mine---A Bronx Jewish boy made good. He grew up in the Olinville projects just a bit north of my old neighborhood (Belmont), and he proves my point once again with his great ear for dialogue, that Jews and Italians are exactly the same. If you didn't know it, you'd think his books were written by a Bronx Italian guy, like Chazz Palminteri. If you've never read the book, you should. It's much darker than the film.

Can you elaborate a bit on why you think of 50's as a time of innocence?

*Runs from Italian-American mob with torches and bats*

Edited to remove racially offensive material. - SC

SC, that was a genuine question with no malicious intent. I would really like to hear you views.

I forgot about that with the joking.

The 50's, here in America anyway, were generally thought to be a quiet, conservative time. After the Korean war was done we still had the Cold War escalating, but domestically it was a quiet time. The economy was good, couples were having lots of babies, the suburbs were growing, there was no real political unrest, and "family values" were at their peak. It was a generally peaceful time here and a time of innocence.

You're a movie buff.... look at most of the movies that depict 50's life. Sure, some focused on changing issues ("Rebel Without a Cause" comes to mind) but they were mostly tame. The youth of most countries/cultures are the revolutionaries. The American youth of this time was very quiet.

Rebel Without a Cause was excellent!

EXTREME PREJUDICE (1987) - ***1/2

You know a great badass film scene is one that seems mundane, even silly on paper....until its executed. With EXTREME PREJUDICE, take the scene when the villain Powers Boothe wants to knock off a Texas sheriff who's become "unreliable to depend upon," so Boothe sends him a present: A cute fluffy pet rabbit. The corrupt cop loves such a random gift, and opens the cage...which triggers off a bomb that blows him and his SUBWAY restaurant up. Take that Jared!

I tell ya, I can't believe I didn't see this back in my days at High School where I was cherry-popping into full-fledged cinephilia. I am certain I would have loved EXTREME PREJUDICE as that sort of great little movie that nobody around me had seen, much less even know of, much like I was late one night when I saw THE WARRIORS on television. No coincidence then that both films were directed by the great Walter Hill, who's increasingly proving to me that he is one of the more criminally underrated American filmmakers of the last 40 years.

Most of his movies are pseudo-westerns, but like his THE LONG RIDERS this is a full-fledged-western, except its set in contemporary times like the Coens' NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The difference being though that instead of philosophical musings about fate and mortality, EXTREME PREJUDICE is a classic genre action set-up in that two larger-than-life macho badass men, one good (Nick Nolte) and one bad (Boothe), fight for supremacy of a land....and the heart of a woman (Maria Alonso). They were the best of friends as children, but Boothe's drug trade from Mexico has sort of pissed off Nolte the Texas Ranger.

Hill doesn't avoid cliches, as much as play them by casting two giants of masculine charisma in Nolte and Boothe. Nolte is perfect as the stone-face hero, the only one in Texas apparently willing to stand up to his buddy-turned-enemy, and won't take any of his bribes.

"You can buy me, Cash. Hell, you always could. But you can't buy the badge, and one without the other ain't no goddamn good."

Boothe is equally awesome as the devil's advocate for his career, and in their first confrontation, even sneers that his massive monetary donations to charity make a bigger difference for the better than Nolte can in trying to play John Wayne. Then Boothe shows off his well-equipped private army, along with his own helicopter airfleet, in contrast to Nolte's out-gunned and understaffed police force...which doesn't deter Nolte at all.

PREJUDICE may be set in the 1980s, but the main storyline up to even the epic finale gunfight at Boothe's Mexican fortress, could have been set a hundred years earlier and we wouldn't have seen the difference. What does clearly stick out though from the Reagan Decade is the film's subplot in a mysterious U.S. government special ops squad of "dead" soldiers who orchestrate a grand bank robbery just to rob Boothe's accounting books...and what a cool gang of guys you have here. They include Clancy Brown (villain of HIGHLANDER and the great HBO television series CARNIVALE), William Forsythe (baddie of THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and John Goodman's fellow escapee in RAISING ARIZONA), and their leader in goddamn Michael Ironside (a nemesis from TOTAL RECALL.)

You gotta dig how two of the soldiers stage a fight against each other in the Unemployment Office of the same town as the bank, just so they could be jailed up in the local police precinct and scope out Nolte's manpower and capacity. Plus when the robbery is partly-botched and one of them gets killed, another teammate is greatly upset. Brown tries to tell him that at least they accomplished the objective, and the teammate utters a wonderful line of despair:

"Yeah, it still doesn't change the fact that my buddy's in a body bag. And he ain't in Lebanon or Honduras, but in fuckin' Texas."

If anything, I just dig that Hill and his writers (including the mad genius John Milius) have these high-tech spooks, trained for insane commando shit overseas, be at a tactical disadvantage when performing a similar military domestic operation. Plus, there is something Hill and Milius trademark in how Nolte the lowly redneck cop goes all ballsy in apprehending two of the soldiers....and they don't hate him, but actually respect him for pulling that off.

Also, unlike every other platoon or heist flick which have the obligatory electronics nerd expert, the black nerd for PREJUDICE actually fires a gun, and damn good at it.

We need more of that at the movies.

So eventually in PREJUDICE, the two plotlines converge when Nolte and the troops go down to Mexico to take out Boothe...and this is a pure genre western when Nolte goes into Boothe's joint, his army raising their guns at Nolte, and Nolte says anyway that he's dragging Boothe back over the border. He calls Boothe out as a coward, and they start their duel...and I just laughed my ass off when Alonso starts crying, and Boothe bitches at her for ruining the mood. Then a massive blood and bullet bath this side of THE WILD BUNCH interrupts them.....but afterwards, they resume the stances for their death game.

OK, that's just awesome, having adversaries that are so keen on having their ritualistic man-to-man fight. It may sound goofy and ridiculous, but just watch EXTREME PREJUDICE, and see how Nolte/Boothe/Hill just pull it off.

What perhaps keeps PREJUDICE from being a great movie, and not simply just a pretty good kickass flicker, is how poorly written Alonso's character is. I know her character is supposed to be a glorified object with arms and legs that Boothe and Nolte keep fighting over, but Jesus Christ couldn't they have given her a bigger and better dramatic bone to chew on? Compare that with Deborah Van Valkenburgh in THE WARRIORS, and you'll see why that movie has the slight edge.

But otherwise, go see EXTREME PREJUDICE, if simply for Nolte's sidekick deputy sheriff in Rip Torn delivers some memorable lines like: "Hell, Jack...the only thing worse than a politician is a child molester!"

VIRUS (1999) - **1/2

Ever see a movie in theatres that you know you saw, but don't remember anything else?

Well, that's my story with VIRUS back in the day, a major box-office flop that star Jamie Lee Curtis once called the worst movie she ever acted in, which considering that she also did z-slasher TERROR TRAIN, the feel-bad holiday flick CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS, and that horrific cameo in HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION....wow.

But having bought this at the DVD Bargain Bin at Ingles for $3, I think she's totally wrong. Unlike those pictures I've just mentioned, VIRUS is actually sort of competent. I'm not saying that its good or even decent but its perhaps as good of a "creature feature" can be in ripping off better films like John Carpenter's THE THING, James Cameron's ALIENS, and Ridley Scott's ALIEN in dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s of the formula from those flicks without bringing anything new to the table.

It's like a well-written plagiarized term paper. It's the SUDDEN DEATH for the Hollywood monster movie. It's that nice knock-off Rolex you bought on the street for $30. It's a good Sci-Fi Channel Movie of the Week in another dimension, but in ours it escaped television and someone at Universal Pictures was stupid enough to sink $75 million into it.

VIRUS opens with an electric storm from space getting transmitted to a Russian scientific ship in the south Pacific, and the comrades don't fare well. Cut to a week later, and a shipping barge happens upon the ship, dead in the water and deserted (ALIEN). Since this crew lost their cargo, they figure they can salvage a payday from this ghost boat. Though I doubt Russia will want to buy back a ship infested with killer robots. I mean even if they wanted to, could they afford it? Go ask China for a loan.

They get jumped by an mentally-squared survivor (ALIENS), but they all try to get the hell of the boat and stop this alien "virus" from spreading to the rest of Earth (THE THING). Captain Donald Sutherland though is the douchebag who impedes the heroes on both goals (ALIEN/ALIENS) and the heroine has a one-on-one confrontation with the head robot (ALIENS) and there's a giant-ass explosion by the end (All 3 movies).

Again, if you seen those movies, you've seen this one already....but I must say that I sort of feel bad for director John Bruno. With such material, some filmmakers just don't bother in trying to even create tension or fear. For example, DEEP RISING was released a year earlier and has practically the exact same plot, ripped off the same great films, which also involves a giant ship in the seas, except its sea creatures instead of robots. Perhaps a reason why some geeks like RISING is that Stephen Sommers (yes, director of VAN HELSING) simply Kraft Cheese the whole thing, i.e. "We know its stupid, and you're stupid for liking it."

But I give VIRUS the edge of RISING in that career FX-worker Bruno really tries his best to make us jump in spite of the fact that a filmphile like me could practically predict when they would happen, and you know what? He succeeded once, and I won't say in which scene, but its one of three reasons why VIRUS is watchable.

The second is how Bruno actually relies for the most part on animatronics and old school FX for the deadly electronic creatures, which was nice in the late 1990s when CGI was already greatly abused this side of Elizabeth Smart. Too bad the few CGI shots we get in this flick is the worst effects Hollywood money could be wasted on. It's not unfortunate I guess that Bruno hasn't directed a studio movie since then, but there are much worse shooters still employed. Right Rob Cohen?

Third.....actually, I was wrong about VIRUS in having any new ideas. A nice concept wasted is.....get ready for it.....Zombie Robots.

Zombie Robots!

To be fair, even this isn't original. The z-schlock MOONTRAP produced a decade earlier did this too, though technically those bodies retooled by evil machines as cyborgs are simply glorified jackets, so I guess VIRUS did this one first....maybe. Funny enough, the guy who wrote VIRUS also wrote another forgettable by-the-numbers flop involving stalking robots in RED PLANET.

There are many things I could complain and nitpick this movie over. If the virus itself is electronic in nature, why the hell does it need to type on a computer keyboard to design the robots? Couldn't it simply get inside that comp and do it without a keyboard? Better yet...what about the Internet? Maybe this film was produced before Wi-Fi, I'm not sure, but I sure know that cell phones were. Yeah Mr. Virus, you sure are incredibly backwards for an electronic life form. Retard.

Also, when the virus tortures Curtis for information, why not simply kill her? I mean, they already absorbed data from the other dead converted into zombie robots, so why bother asking her? Why didn't the writers give crazy Sutherland something to have fun to work with for the paycheck instead of looking like he would rather watch paint dry? Why is the lead male hero is William "Offered after Alec and Stephen declined" Baldwin? Why did VIRUS have to resort to the lamest hack horror trick of them all in ending with a jump scare? Name the last movie besides CARRIE that made that gimmick work.

Yet with 3 dollars, I could have donated it to help fund literacy programs or get food for starving children in Africa, but instead I bought VIRUS. Sorry hungry kids who can't read, but it was worth the money...but that's about it.

Can anyone provide me with a quote of Optimus Prime's last statement in the movie Transformers?

Optimus Prime: Were we so different? They're a young species. They have much to learn. But I've seen goodness in them. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. You all know there's only one way to end this war. We must destroy the cube. If all else fails, I will unite it with the spark in my chest.

Ratchet: That's suicide. The cube is raw power. It could destroy you both.

Optimus Prime: A necessary sacrifice to bring peace to this planet. We cannot let the humans pay for our mistakes. It's been an honor serving with you all. Autobots, ROLL OUT!

"Fuck You for paying to watch this movie. OHHHH YEEEEEAH!"

Thanks. But I'm referring to the one he states as the final words of the movie which I recall end with "We are here. We are waiting."

"With the Allspark gone, we cannot return life to our planet. And fate has yielded its reward: a new world to call home. We live among its people now in plain sight, but watching over them in secret, waiting, protecting. I have witnessed their capacity for courage, and though we are worlds apart, like us, there's more to them than meets the eye. I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars: we are here, we are waiting."

Grazie. It's going to be an exam question.

Does anyone here like Resident Evil 3?

I thought it was very good, especially the ending, very suspenseful - I was jumping round the room with that revelation!