"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Denise Richards’

Edmond

Wednesday, April 15th, 2020

When we lost the great Stuart Gordon recently, I realized there were a few of his films I still hadn’t seen. It’s kind of nice, actually, to still have something left to discover. There’s a particular one that happens in space that involves truckers that I honestly have wanted to see since before it even came out, and somehow never have. It’ll be a few weeks before I can finally change that, because I decided to order a UK Blu-Ray instead of pay Amazon to stream it in standard def. But I wanted to watch this one first anyway – the one based on the David Mamet play.

Gordon and Mamet, if you don’t know, go way back. Long before RE-ANIMATOR, Gordon was doing envelope-pushing theater work in Chicago. He directed, at his Organic Theater Company, the production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago credited with establishing Mamet as a playwright, although there was an earlier one starring William H. Macy, who also stars in this movie.

Here he plays Edmond Burke, a dude who works for some kind of financial firm called Stearns & Harrington. He’s apparently had a bad day (his meeting on Monday got pushed back to 1:15 – WHAT IN THE LIVING GOD DAMN FUCK!?) when he heads home and, on a whim, stops to get a tarot reading. She tells him “You don’t belong here.” (read the rest of this shit…)

Tammy and the T-Rex

Tuesday, January 28th, 2020

Everybody has that list of the movies they know they should’ve seen but just haven’t yet for some reason. For me right now it includes BARRY LYNDON, THE DEER HUNTER, the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series, KUNDUN, MASTER AND COMMANDER, THE INSIDER, and others. But it no longer includes TAMMY AND THE T-REX. Progress.

TAMMY is a movie from 1994 that I was vaguely aware of as a cheesy family comedy only released on VHS. I definitely confused it with THEODORE REX at times, but I knew it had young Denise Richards (her first starring role) and Paul Walker (his third movie, after MONSTER IN THE CLOSET and PROGRAMMED TO KILL) and was supposed to be pretty crazy. Then last year there was an important new development in film scholarship: somebody discovered a print of a “gory cut” of TAMMY. Turns out before it was released straight to video it was edited down from a very R-rated horror comedy (both terms used loosely). So it played Fantastic Fest and Vinegar Syndrome released a beautiful Blu-Ray special edition and now it’s playing on Shudder. (read the rest of this shit…)

Wild Things

Monday, May 7th, 2018

WILD THINGS is the ultimate Sharon-Stone-meets-Brian-DePalma ’90s erotic thriller on swamp gas. It’s legitimately sleazy and provocative, but also clever and funny and audacious. It has a really game cast with grown ups played by men who are former young hotshots aging into respected veterans, and teens played by young women who were on a roll at the time but never got their proper due. And it’s usually grim and serious director John McNaughton (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, NORMAL LIFE) taking a rare dive into slick, multiplex-worthy entertainment.

I’ve never been to Florida, and when I finally go there, let’s face it, I’ll probly just go to Disney World. So my impression of the place comes from Charles Willeford novels, Miami Vice, and the storied misadventures of Florida Man. From that perspective, WILD THINGS seems like a perfect mythical charting of the frontier that would soon bring us the election of George W. Bush. For the opening credits, helicopter shots survey the land from the swamps to the ritzy coastal town of Blue Bay, a collection of estates, country clubs and future Mar-a-Lago members where people wear white and tropical prints and the school counselor and his girlfriend both drive Benzes. (read the rest of this shit…)

Valentine

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

tn_valentineReleased in February of 2001, VALENTINE was one of the last of (the last of?) the post-SCREAM studio slasher movies. Its low box office totals, combined with the success of THE RING the next year, might’ve sealed the deal on that particular horror cycle. It’s directed by Jamie Blanks, who debuted with the similarly crappy URBAN LEGEND and later returned to his native Australia, where the spirit of the Tasmanian tiger or something blows in the wind, into his lungs, inspiring him to make much better movies (STORM WARNING, NATURE’S GRAVE). (read the rest of this shit…)

Undercover Brother

Saturday, June 1st, 2002

I’ve always been a man who enjoys this one kind of movie hero, let’s call it the counter-hero. The counter-hero is the type of hero who fits the usual mold of the action hero or super hero or what not, but who represents a set of values closer to yours or mine than of the assholes you usually see in movies.

For example you got Snake Plissken or Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE, who are sort of an anti-Rambo. They go around by themselves and take on armies and blow shit up but they aren’t doing it in the name of the american government or military conquest or nothing. Snake is the anarchist Rambo, Roddy is the anti-alien-republican Rambo. John Carpenter pictures are full of these type of characters. (read the rest of this shit…)