"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Jason Flemyng’

Double feature: Bruiser (2000) / The Faculty (1998)

Tuesday, October 25th, 2022

During this year’s October viewing I wanted to revisit a few things that I consider lesser movies from directors I like, that I haven’t seen since they came out decades ago. You know – just to be sure.

I started with a forgotten later one from George A. Romero – his last non-living-dead-related movie, BRUISER. I was disappointed in it at the time, but that was 22 years ago, and I’d had high expectations for it since he hadn’t had a movie in 7 years. There was that gap between his Hollywood stint in the early ‘90s and his return in the new millennium, and it was in the middle of that period that I became obsessed with DAWN OF THE DEAD and KNIGHTRIDERS and everything. So it was a big event when he finally came back with this odd French-American co-production starring a dude from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. (read the rest of this shit…)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Wednesday, August 16th, 2017

a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on

July 11, 2003

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN is a cool fucking premise: a sort of Victorian era Justice League made of literary characters with unique talents or abilities. In this world, the famous stories of English literature (plus Mark Twain) really happened, and the Queen puts together a super-team to try to stop an attack on Venice. So James Bond’s M (Richard Roxburgh, VAN HELSING, STEALTH) recruits the adventurer hunter Alan Quatermain (Sean Connery, FIRST KNIGHT), Dracula’s Mina Harker (Peta Wilson, SUPERMAN RETURNS), the Invisible Man (but actually not the same H.G. Wells one, for legal reasons)(Tony Curran, Priest from BLADE II), Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng, BRUISER), Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend, director of BATTLE IN SEATTLE) and Captain Nemo (veteran Bollywood star Naseeruddin Shah).

Sort of like MYSTERY MEN, this is based on a comic that’s a riff on the super hero team stories, but made when X-MEN was the only straight up movie version of that sort of thing. The comic, written by Alan Moore, is apparently very different, thicker in obscure literary allusions and lighter in summer movie type spectacle (sword fights, shoot outs, flying CGI machinery, explosions). The adaptation is credited to another comic book writer, James Robinson, who wrote alot of Superman. His previous screenwriting work was CYBER BANDITS, COMIC BOOK VILLAINS and a swing and a miss in the long line of writers trying to figure out how to do FREDDY VS. JASON. (read the rest of this shit…)

Mean Machine

Wednesday, February 5th, 2003

Vinnie Jones was the highlight of LOCK, STOCK, AND ETC. ETC., playing the shotgun carrying thug who brings his son with him on the job (SEE: theory of badass juxtaposition; Vern, author). He had a very convincing tough guy, take no shit presence, and I’ve enjoyed seeing him in motion pictures since then, even though most of the british crime pictures that have come my way have been self conscious garbage trying to imitate that earlier picture. I know alot of you liked SNATCH but, I mean, jesus people. Let’s have some standards, is all I’m saying, in my opinion.

According to the british, Mr. Jones was already a famous soccer player known for grabbing a guy in the nutsack during a game. Not in a loving and consensual way either, from what I understand. I guess that’s how people knew he was tough even though he was running around in little shorts bouncing a rubber ball on his head. (read the rest of this shit…)

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Tuesday, November 5th, 2002

Nobody told me the Brits knew how to make a crime picture. I mean I know the Limey is a limey and all but that one is American made on American soil. Here’s one those Brits can be proud of in my opinion.

People probaly compare this to Pulp Fiction and what not and I do believe it’s somewhere up there. It uses an even greater mastery of cinematismic languaging with maybe a little less substance as far as most people are concerned but then what the hell do those bitches know. Anyway it’s a fun as hell movie about four Londonese dudes about 30 years old each who invest in a big card game. They come out in the red for $500,000 and have one week to pay it back if they don’t want to start losing fingers. They owe the money to a guy named Harry the Hatchet and this motherfucker means business so they will stop at nothing to get the money they need. What follows is a complex game between these four kids, two other gangs, a house of pot dealers, and Harry the Hatchets horrific henchmen. (read the rest of this shit…)