What are you watching?

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

BIG DRIVER (Mikael Salomon, 2014)

Writer has car trouble, gets revenge. It's another Stephen King autobiography, for Lifetime, but that desire to be liked & understood by everybody's always been a big part of King: mass ingratiation is one of his strengths, so this works well. Maria Bello plays Stephen King, gets SPOILED by a serial truck driver, and proceeds to get the bloody payback you've always known Stephen's sick heart needs. Leisurely, brightly-played intro plays up Bello's attractiveness; the tone's like a younger, Hawks-ingenue MURDER SHE WROTE, and it's working hard to win audience identification. When the graphic (for Lifetime?) SPOILAGE comes, the tone-shift is less dramatically effective than it is surprising: I thought Lifetime's demographic was mainly women, so the extended brutalization says something about how they see their viewers, maybe. Salomon has directed other King stuff, and a Dean Koontz miniseries; he's tv-movie fine, and even throws in a shout-out recreation of that ABSENTIA stock cover image. With Joan Jett cameo as an aging rocker (actually pretty resonant given recent Lita Fox/Kim Fowley stuff), Olympia Dukakis as grandmother's house, and another of King's portraits of his readers as hateful gorgons. (Love me! I hate you!) The driver isn't actually all that big; I guess John Goodman has call display.

The cover for the DVD is some masterpiece of understatement.





I liked everything about this.

[Bogart Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Bogart]

Im watching DON'T GO IN THE WOODS..ALONE

So far, 25 minutes in, its shit. And this was released on Blu Ray why?

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

Are you watching it alone? RTFM.

[Scott Intellectual Carrot Find all posts View Profile Close Scott]

That Steve King movie sounds amazing.

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

That's what Steeve said.

[The Silly Swede Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close The Silly Swede]

Pound of Flesh An old Van Damme kicks ass in asia, with the poorest supporting cast one can find, and looks really really tired. But hey, Van Damme is Van Damme!

[sukebanboy Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close sukebanboy]

Pound of Flesh An old Van Damme kicks ass in asia, with the poorest supporting cast one can find, and looks really really tired. But hey, Van Damme is Van Damme!

Is his son in it again????

[The Silly Swede Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close The Silly Swede]

Is his son in it again????

No, this time he opts for a canadian TV actor who has done nothing of note, Aki Aelong, AKA the vietnamese guy from every TV-series in the 80s and TWO actresses who besides this has nothing on their resume

[Nabonga Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nabonga]

War Pigs
Better made than I expected I have to admit. They manage to hide the low budget pretty well and most of the actors are decent. Even Dolph (kors i taket), though he relies on that stupid head nod of his way too much and absolutely massacres a french accent. Other than that he does ok in a more low key part but he gets to kick a little ass in the battle scenes. I've never been a big fan of WW movies but it could've been a lot worse. I expected it to be complete shit. It's not. Just kinda pointless. But I guess it's worth a watch for war movie afficionados.

[Jason C Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Jason C]

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE turned out to be good fun. Sylva Koscina and Elke Sommer are absolutely stunning. I enjoyed all of the spy bits and the main plot. It's a bit more violent than I expected (which is good). Love the exploding cigar gag. Nigel Green is an effective villain. Richard Johnson and Mike Connors (Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die) have made it clear to me just how amazing Sean Connery is as Bond. Those guys could have been replaced by any number of actors without much drop off.

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE is one of the worst songs I've ever heard. I was cringing and laughing at the same time.

[killer must kill again Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close killer must kill again]

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE turned out to be good fun. Sylva Koscina and Elke Sommer are absolutely stunning. I enjoyed all of the spy bits and the main plot. It's a bit more violent than I expected (which is good). Love the exploding cigar gag. Nigel Green is an effective villain. Richard Johnson and Mike Connors (Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die) have made it clear to me just how amazing Sean Connery is as Bond. Those guys could have been replaced by any number of actors without much drop off.

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE is one of the worst songs I've ever heard. I was cringing and laughing at the same time.

this movie seriously buried all my ambitions to dive deeper into the "euro spy" genre. literally bored me to death!
(and to top it all) the dvd had an eye-catching tarantino recommendation on the front cover - "one of tarantino's favorite films!" (of course).

[Clive Smith noodle doodle Find all posts View Profile Close Clive Smith]

literally bored me to death!

RIP. :(

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

ACROSS 110TH STREET

This is great. Three guys overreach in a mob heist massacre and now the mafia, Harlem gangsters and the cops are after them. Quinn's the dirty old cap'n, but Kotto's in charge: can they defeat racism to find a happy ending? (SPOILER: nope.) 1972 information infrastructure: push a button, shelves full of filefolders move -- info at your fingertips! Anthony Franciosa walking up through the camera like focus ain't shit. Antonio Fargas putting money in EVERY pocket before diving into the deep end of the whorehouse. The fuck-this look the gangsters share when Franciosa goes strange fruit. It's a tragedy 'cause the heroes climb to such heights before the fall, like Icarus and Roy Batty. Paul Benjamin throws a sack of money down for the schoolkids when it looks like he's not going to escape, suggesting Doc Johnson, with his office black-powered by Ali and Malcolm posters, maybe has it right: stay local, stay invested. The credits are in alphabetical order!

These Kino Lorber blu-rays are good.

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

Agreed about ACROSS 110TH STREET, Barry. I've always loved the film and the KL BD is spiffy. That film is sooo much more than another blaxploitation film. Simply one of the best crime films of any era.

I watched the documentary A BEAUTIFUL VACATION from Criterion's IL SORPASSO BD last night. It's a 2006 made for Italian television doc. on director Dino Risi. My only gripe is I didn't want it to end - interviews with Risi himself and tons of other film people including Trintignant, Ornella Muti (still looking stunning), Monica Bellucci, the sons of the late actors Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi, Catherine Spaak, and the late Armando Trovajoli among many others - even Scorsese! I wish more of this type of thing was available, if you love Italian cinema this is a must-see, and IL SORPASSO itself is a truly great film, a road movie that's part comedy and part tragedy and all wonderful.

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

THE PACKAGE (Andrew Davis, 1989). Gene Hackman,Tommy Lee Jones, Dennis Franz and Joanna Cassidy and a Pam Grier cameo. Conspiracy-theory plot samples & remixes the Warren Commission hook & chorus (what rhymes with Oswald?) and has its own rhythm, so even if it doesn't make a lot of sense, it's fun, and anyway it's all about the performances. With goose-stepping East Germans, euro-terrorists, secret government plotters and evil generals; bonus Illinois Nazis, and Davis insisted on enough Chicago locations to make Scott Ruhl homesick. RIP, Ciral's House of Tiki.