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Posts Tagged ‘Sharon Stone’

The Quick and the Dead

Wednesday, January 19th, 2022

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD has a very traditional western story, other than featuring a woman – Sharon Stone (ABOVE THE LAW) as Ellen – in the role of vengeance-seeking gunslinger. You’ve got your western town desperate to get out from under the yoke of a cruel ruler (Gene Hackman [THE SPLIT, PRIME CUT] as John Herod), and your mysterious drifter in town trying to get up the guts to shoot him for killing her father in front of her. All the shootists with the fastest guns and biggest mouths are coming in for a quick draw tournament, and she enters in hopes of getting a shot at her enemy.

But I think it’s truly distinct among ‘90s westerns, with two major things that make it stand out. One is the incredible cast. It includes great western icons: Woody Strode, Roberts Blossom, Pat Hingle, and of course Hackman in a performance arguably on par with UNFORGIVEN. It has colorful roles for genre favorites: Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Mark Boone Jr., Tobin Bell, Sven-Ole Thorsen. It has Gary Sinise immediately after his star-making, Oscar-nominated performance in FORREST GUMP. And it has two right-before-they-exploded co-stars: pre-L.A. CONFIDENTIAL Russell Crowe as former outlaw turned pacifist preacher Cort, and known-for-WHAT’S-EATING-GILBERT-GRAPE Leonardo DiCaprio as The Kid, the cocky, baby-faced son of Herod entering the contest just to get the attention of his asshole dad. We actually see The Kid mobbed by young women at one of the shooting matches, something that would become more familiar to DiCaprio a year later when ROMEO + JULIET came out. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Specialist

Sunday, August 12th, 2012

THE SPECIALIST was Sylvester Stallone’s 1994 offering, a present-day palate cleanser between the futuristic DEMOLITION MAN and JUDGE DREDD. It even says “present day” onscreen after a prologue taking place in Colombia in ’84.

That was when black ops explosives expert Ray Quick (Stallone) had a falling out with his partner-mentor Ned Trent (James Woods). They were trying to assassinate a drug lord but Quick tried to pull the plug when he saw that a little girl was going to get blown up with him. Trent of course doesn’t care, and he gets his way (drug lord and girl both blown to kingdom come) but then the two of them fight about it.
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Police Academy 1-4: The Carey Mahoney Cycle

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Sometimes, in a man’s ongoing journey toward a fuller understanding of his world, he must watch the POLICE ACADEMY series of films. That’s all I really have to say as far as an explanation.

If you are not familiar with the POLICE ACADEMY saga, I know it must sound like a very scholarly law enforcement procedural, but don’t expect THE FRENCH CONNECTION. Or even POLICE STORY. In my opinion this is more of a “comedy” type of series than a serious analysis of law and order. I guess it’s trying to be a version of ANIMAL HOUSE but with cops instead of non-cops, and more of a “not good at all” type of approach than what John Landis chose to do.
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Catwoman

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005

Well I picked this one up ’cause there was alot of hype, it just won a bunch of awards recently and they were making a big deal about Halle Berry showing up and making a tearful speech. Somebody warned me though, turns out “the razzies” are some kind of sarcastic or ironical type award where they give it to the WORST movies, or at least the ones that are not really the worst but that got a bad time in the media and they probaly haven’t even watched them but they pretend it’s the worst and everybody has a good time pretending that they have seen it and that they were surprised how bad it was.

So I realized this was actually a notorious movie, a legendarily bad movie, and I started to worry. What if I like this one? What if I’m the one guy? You know how I am, I tell it like it is. I say what’s what. I kind of liked The Punisher and I shouted it to and from the god damn roof tops. To this day I would die for the two Charlie’s Angels movies, or if not die, then at least admit that I enjoyed both of them alot. What if this is actually a misunderstood work of camp genius? Am I really ready to go to bat for Halle Berry wearing a big leather football with ears on top of her head? (read the rest of this shit…)

If These Walls Could Talk 2

Wednesday, October 11th, 2000

Sometimes at my age a fella has to admit he’s not exactly up on things. Not exactly with it. Specially when it seems like every other weekend I’m writing a review for a sequel to some movie where I never even saw the first one. Hell I never even HEARD of the first one half the time how the fuck I’m supposed to seen it already. Cut me some slack buddy.

But I picked up the dvd for this one because of a certain powerful force – the force of young Chloe Sevigny’s eyes staring out at me from the cover. I think most of you know how I feel about this gal, ever since I first spied her in the Last Days of Disco picture where her eyes were able to cut through seven layers of postmodern bullshit spewing out of the mouths of the pretentious yuppies in the movie. This girl is a hell of an actor but the main thing I’m talking about here is the presence. She has the presence of a real movie star. In my opinion. So I’ll see any movie she’s in even if it has her with her hair slicked back, wearing a tie, like in this one. (read the rest of this shit…)