Reviews

"When I was your age, they would say you could become cops or criminals. What I'm saying is this: When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" If there is one bit of dialog that encapsulates what this movie is all about, it's this snippet that appears very early in the film. This movie is beyond great. It is the work of a master storyteller in complete control of his craft. While the excesses of the violence may turn off some (I heard more than a few gasps during the final 20 minutes alone), it shouldn't sway you from soaking in the film. Because if you just focus on that, you're cheating yourselves out of one of the most rewarding film experiences I've had in at least 10 years. I challenge anyone to walk out of this movie and not have it swirling around in your head for hours afterwards.

Michael Douglas has always been one of my favorite actors. He deserved his Oscar for Wall Street, commanded every second of screen time he had in Falling Down, and has given some of the most underrated comic performances in history in Romancing the Stone and War of the Roses. But I'd have to give his performance in Wonder Boys as his best. His turn as stoner college professor Grady Tripp is the model for the laid back, totally likeable and loveable protaginist. He's the kind of professor I dream of having in real life.

After watching this movie, I seriously wanted to go and write a book. For any of you blocked writers out there, just pop in Wonder Boys and you have your muse.

For some ungodly reason, I decided to watch this piece of crap on VH1 one uneventful night. I'm a huge fan of the VH1 network. I'm a Behind the Music junkie and the rest of their info-based music shows are pretty damn cool. But when it comes to making TV movies, they downright suck. Their movie on Meatloaf was pretty damn bad but compared to this one, it looks like Citizen Kane.

First off, they portray the band as working class heroes and the saviors of rock music. C'mon. I liked Pyromania as much the next guy, but when it boils down Def Leppard are hardly on the level of bands like Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, or even Ac/Dc. They were an alright band in a time when rock music pretty much sucked. To devote an entire movie to them is pretty insulting when you could have spent the exact amount of money telling the stories more deserving bands. How about a gritty behind the scenes look at bands like Black Flag or The Ramones. You know, bands that actually changed music instead of following trends.

But my biggest problem with this movie was the schmaltzy sentimentality of it all. They make Steve Clark look like Lou Gherig in Pride of the Yankees. The guy was a fall down drunk! You want me to feel sorry for a guy who knowingly drank himself to death? Not bloody likely. And they don't even show Steve Clark dying. If you wanted to go for emotion, then that would have been the logical place to go. But instead, they show him supposedly sober at the end of the movie ready to rock. It's not until the tidy epilouge that you find out the the soberness didn't take and he wound up dead in a pool of his own vomit a couple years later. Nice.

This movie, if you could call it that, was so terrible it should come with it's own plastic bag so when you throw it out it won't contaminate the rest of the garbage. What's next? A TV movie about Loverboy?

This is a flawless movie. Not a damn thing wrong with it. It's awfully hard for me to pick a favorite movie but if I had to, this one would be up there battling for the top spot. Martin Scorsese again proves to all doubters that he is the master. When it comes to making an urban saga, you can't top Scorsese. It's futile to even try. From the first frame of the movie, you're sucked in and vacum sealed until the credits are over. Everything is top notch. Joe Pesci gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history. He takes what could have been a cliched, one dimensional character and gives him life. Underneath all his boasts and jokes you can see a truly insane man waiting for something to set him off. It's scary just to watch him on the screen. You think he's gonna step out and smack you around. It's a damn shame that he hasn't made a movie since Leathal Weapon 4. This movie was so good that Scorsese practically remade it with Casino. To watch a master at work and see the best film of the 90's, watch Goodfellas.

The Goonies was one of the first movies my parents took me to go see when I was a little one. In fact, it was third behind Return of the Jedi and The Karate Kid. Since I was only 5 at the time, there are scant images remaining from that first showing. One being my Dad laughing his ass off during the interrogation scene between Chunk and the Fratelli's and a poster for Psycho II out in the lobby. It wasn't until this film came to video that I started fiending for it like a speedfreak on pay day.

From a one year period between 1987 and 1988 I must have seen this movie at least 2-3 times a week. I knew every line by heart and I even went out and bought as many packs of the Goonies Trading Cards I could get my grubby little hands on. I always kept on getting the card where they get attacked by the octopus. This always p***ed me off because there was never any scene with the octopus in any frame that I ever saw. I must have seen the flick about 75 times by then and still no frickin' octopus. Damn Richard Donner and his scissor happy editing.

Anyway, by the time I got to third grade I was so burned out on the movie that I refused to watch it for over ten years. But when I did finally see it again, the magic was still there. This has to rank as one of the best kid flicks of all time. I say that because it doesn't tone down on the swearing content. Some parents would argue with me on that point but it's time to face the truth. Unless you haven't been to a school playground since 1965, you know that little kids are capable of saying stuff that would make a Hells Angel blush. It's a kid flick for real kids.

And what the hell ever happend to Chunk? I know Mikey went on to become Rudy and he's gonna be in Lord of the Rings, Brand is now engaged to Minnie Driver, Martha Plimpton does mostly stage stuff, and Corey Feldman is...well...Corey Feldman. But Chunk fell off the face of the Earth. I thought that was him as the guy at the motel front desk in Memento but it turned out that it wasn't. Somebody help me find Chunk!

The Incredible Hulk is my favorite comic book character. Ever since I was a little one the Hulk has kind of transfixed me. The idea of a wimpy scientist turning into a green ball of muscle whenever he gets mad was always a cool concept to me. That's why I woke up every morning before school to watch this show on WGN. It used to come on after Bozo was over. I always knew I had to leave for school after Banner turned into the Hulk for the first time in the episode. This meant the show was half over. Each episode was like clockwork. Banner would stumble into a new town, meet the nice new locals, go to a bar and get his ass kicked, turn into the Hulk and flex for a little while and then run away, emerge back in town where the locals act as if nothing had happened, have a final showdown with that episode's particular main bad guy, turn back into the Hulk once more, foil the bad guy by throwing him fifty yards, flex a little and then run away again, and at the end say his goodbye's to the nice locals before hitching a ride to his new adventure to the music of a sad piano. Sure, some episodes mixed it up a little, but it was all pretty much the same. The routine doesn't take away from the fond childhood memories, though. It's just a damn shame that I can't find the show anywhere anymore.

Watching this movie, you have no choice but to kick back and just enjoy the show. The movie is so laid back and cool, even in the shootout sequences, that you feel like you've just gotten out of an Asian massage parlor after watching it. George Clooney proves that he is the only NBC TV actor (from the Must See TV Days) who can move to the big screen and become even better. The guy smacks of movie star. Jennifer Lopez is downright sizzling in this flick. She hasn't been in a movie since that has done her beauty justice. And the chemistry between her and Clooney almost melts away the celluloid. Dennis Farina is awesome as always, Ving Rhames proves he's an actor of all seasons, Don Cheadle puts just the right mixture of comedy and menace into his role, and Steve Zahn is highly overlooked as an actor. He was the best thing about That Thing You Do and almost steals the show here. Plus, putting in Micheal Keaton as the same character he played in Jackie Brown is a stroke of genius. And the pace that Steven Soderburgh keeps the film at is masterful. After all is said and done, he'll be looked at as one of the great filmmakers in history. If you haven't seen this movie yet, you are missing out on pure cinema gold. Go see it.

I was flipping through the channels one unproductive day and I happened upon this flick on Showtime. I don't know why I stopped flipping when I came to it. It was just one of those crazy things that happens. But I'm glad I stopped because I witnessed one of the absolute worst movies I've ever seen in my life.

From what I got out of it, the plot is a Karate Kid retread involving a Bad News Bears type of karate school and the big and mean kids from the evil school. Why is there always an evil school? Anyway, if you've seen any teen sports movie since 1985 you pretty much know how this one turns out.

The thing that caught me was the acting. It was so astonishingly bad that I was wondering if they were doing it on purpose. I think the kids they hired were the children of the crew because by the looks of things they couldn't afford real child actors. And there was one truly shocking thing in this whole mess. Steven Bauer! How the hell did Manny from Scarface get himself into this. Did he owe a life debt to the director. My God!

Anyway, if you're truly in the mood for a god awful movie, and we all get in that mood sometime, then by all means check out Kickboxing Academy. You won't be disapointed.

The fact that Titanic won best picture for 1997 and that this movie wasn't even nominated just goes to show that the Academy Awards are the biggest sham since the Cable ACE Awards.

P. T. Anderson did a masterful job with this thing. If you ask me, he borrowed a little too much from the Scorsese book of filmmaking but he pulled it off none the less. I was blown away when I saw for the first time 4 years ago (damn, it's been that long?) and it still blows me away now.

The entire cast was terrific. This was the movie that made people forget that Mark Whalburg used to dance around in his Calvins for a living...Ok, maybe not totally forget. His performance as Dirk Diggler was beautiful. Not in a million years did I think that Marky Mark was capible of that kind of Acting. Burt Reynolds did his best work since his cameo in Smokey and the Bandit III and truly deserved the Oscar. And the list of great acting goes on: Jullianne Moore, Don Cheadle, Phillip Seymore Hoffman, Heather Graham, and most notably John C. Reiley. They all shined.

And to the people who complained that the movie turned into a downer once the action hit the 80's, that was the point. Life isn't all a bowl cherries or even mandarin oranges. There are times of depression and despair. And if you can't handle that, take your money and go see the latest Freddie Prinze Jr. flick. But for those of you who appreciate true movie making at it's most original and inventive, by all means check out Boogie Nights.

Make no mistake, I think James Cameron is a great filmmaker. Anybody who can make Aliens and The Terminator is ok in my book. But to say Titanic is a great movie is overstepping the line. The effects were awesome and the attention to detail was great but the story was nothing but All My Children on a cruise ship. If I said it once, I'll say it a thousand times more. Boogie Nights was the best movie of 97, not Titanic.

That's all I got to say. Romerro is a genius and I hope he makes another dead movie really soon. The fact that this movie is so effective while looking like it was made for $25 just adds to it's greatness. Anybody who says it's a cheap drive-in hack job doesn't know what they're talking about.