movies Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
John Woo's Mesmerizing <i>The Killer </i>Changed Action-Movie History Forever
The best John Woo movie, and the main reason action-movie dorks speak the guy’s name in hushed tones, is 1992’s Hard-Boiled. That’s the last one he made in Hong Kong before he came over to America and found ways to inject his bullet-riddled absurdism into Hollywood’s system, and it’s the one where h...
<i>Spy </i>Gives Us The Melissa McCarthy Comeback We've Been Waiting For
It’s rare that my reaction to a movie is to want to hug it. But with Spy, that was the sensation that washed over me both times I’ve seen it. It’s not just that it’s really funny and consistently entertaining—it’s that, for the first time since becoming a star, Melissa McCarthy finally is in a movie...
The <i>Entourage </i>Movie Is The Hate-Watching Event Of The Summer
I’m gonna forego all ceremony and just tell you the best part of the Entourage movie, which is Ronda Rousey’s reading of the line, “I think somebody’s fuckin’ in there.” I will be purchasing this film on Blu-Ray six months hence in hopes of viewing outtakes from this scene. I need variations. “I thi...
<i>Love & Mercy </i>Brings Brian Wilson's Legend To Life, Twice
The Brian Wilson myth lends itself easily to the biopic treatment—perhaps too easily. In clumsy hands, the Beach Boys co-founder could be reduced to his most infamous, sensationalistic qualities: genius! Recluse! Weirdo! Thankfully, the Wilson-approved Love & Mercy is several degrees smarter and mor...
<i>Payback</i> Is Mel Gibson At His Nastiest, And Therefore Best
After one viewing, I’m ready to call Mad Max: Fury Road the best English-language action flick since Terminator 2, if not Die Hard. It’s a motherfucker of a movie, a new benchmark in violent cinematic mayhem. I’ve you’ve ever read this column and you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading and go now. You...
The B-Roll Footage From <i>Mad Max: Fury Road </i>Is A Fun Time-Killer
For those who enjoy behind-the-scenes footage from action movies, here’s roughly 18 minutes of Mad Max: Fury Road B-roll footage. Obviously, the finished product is the most exciting, but watching various segments of the film and seeing how the insanity came to life is fun, too. Spoiler alert: The c...
Hyper-Violent Cartoon Westerns Don't Get Better (Or Weirder) Than This
If you get hopelessly lost watching the 2008 South Korean adventure The Good, the Bad, the Weird, don’t worry about it. You’re not alone. In fact, during the absurd and complicated horses-and-jeeps-and-motorcycles chase that ends the movie, some of the bandits ask each other, “Who’s that?” when anot...
<i>Pitch Perfect 2 </i>Is Bigger, Bawdier, And Substantially Worse
1. Pitch Perfect 2 is a total bummer, and it takes a while to figure out why. The 2012 original was such a pleasant, charming surprise, smart and clever and warm-hearted, but also pleasantly geeky; a cappella groups are not the centerpiece of the collegiate experience in the world we live in, but Pi...
<i>The Professional </i>Is Deeply Problematic, Profoundly Cool, And Very '90s
Imagine the elevator pitch for The Professional. “Okay, so we’ve got this hitman, right? Only he’s not a cool hitman: He’s great at killing, but he’s also childlike, off-kilter, possibly on the spectrum. He doesn’t really have any friends or talk to anyone outside of ‘work.’ We’ll make sure he doesn...
<i>The Way of the Dragon </i>Is A Stone-Cold Classic For That One Fight Alone
There used to be this DVD store in the Times Square subway station. Maybe it's still there. Probably not. Why was there ever a DVD store in the Times Square subway station? Some things just make no sense. But one day, maybe seven or eight years ago, I was walking through that hellmouth, and I saw ...
Summer Movies 2015: The Grierson & Leitch Preview
When Furious 7 came out last week, it was heralded by many as the kickoff to the 2015 Summer Movie Season, which was strange, considering it's still April. (And just barely April.) By that rationale, it’s also the start of Oscar Season, or the 2017 Fall Movie Season, or the 2019 Dawn of Human Aw...
<i>Skyfall</i> Isn't The Best Bond Flick, But It Does Kick The Most Ass
There's no good answer to the "What's the best James Bond movie?" question, since the best James Bond movie will always be the first one you saw when you were a kid. (I ride for Live and Let Die until death.) And there's no good answer as to which James Bond is the best James Bond, since everyone ...
Watching Rocky II With The Champ
Nice work by Longform hipping us to this 1979 article by Roger Ebert about watching Rocky II with Muhammad Ali:...
Not Minding That It Hurts
Little Boy Blues is Malcolm Jones’ beautiful memoir about growing up with his mother (and sometimes, his father) in North Carolina in the late Fifties and early Sixties. It’s my favorite kind of memoir—understated, succinct, honed. The prose is precise without being delicate: “My father was a quiet...
<i>Chocolate </i>Is A Martial-Arts Classic If You Just Focus On The Kicking
So Chocolate is not Chocolat, the 2000 Johnny Depp/Juliet Binoche movie where people eat chocolate from a particular shop and it somehow makes them fall in love with each other. Chocolat is the sort of movie where you know it takes place in France because people speak English in French accents. It w...
Lots Of Athletes Are Identically Excited About This Mediocre Movie
That Angelina Jolie-produced movie about Olympic runner and World War II P.O.W. Louis Zamperini comes out on Blu-ray today. Know how we know? The totally organic announcements from a whole mess of athletes (as noticed by Dave Lozo):...
<i>Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry </i>Is Acidic B-Movie Nihilism Done Right
The car-chase movies of the '70s really only had one plot: Someone drives a muscle car really fast, hoping to avoid police cars, some of which end up driving into streams or ponds. But each movie found a vastly different way to tell that one story. Vanishing Point, the genre's real masterpiece, to...
<i>Iron Monkey </i>Is An Underrated Goof From Hong Kong's '90s Golden Era
Somehow, in the early '90s, the Hong Kong film industry just had the action movie figured out. You'll see something like this every once in a while: A particular locale just going ham on some particular art form. It's like New York rap in the mid-'90s: All these classics coming out at a dizzying s...
Confusion Is Sex: <i>It Follows</i>, Reviewed
It's not unusual for a horror movie to connect sex with death: Scream even made a joke of the fact that the best way to stay alive in a slasher flick is to be a virgin, since the horny teens always get offed first. So there's not much novelty to the fact that the much-hyped indie It Follows draw...