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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Eklund’

Welcome to Sudden Death

Monday, October 12th, 2020

WELCOME TO SUDDEN DEATH is Michael Jai White’s new… addition to the SUDDEN DEATH franchise? I had heard it was officially a sequel to the 1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme DIE-HARD-alike directed by Peter Hyams, but I didn’t notice any continuity connecting them. It’s just a rehash of the same premise. So you could call it a remake, but since it doesn’t use any of the same names I suppose it is in the spirit of rehash DTV sequels like HOLLOW MAN 2, THE MARINE 2, WILD THINGS 2, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT 2, KINDERGARTEN COP 2 and I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.

White plays Jesse Freeman, ex-special-ops guy who has a new job as a stadium security job after rehabilitating from some shrapnel he got after escaping torture and kung-fu-ing insurgents overseas. His wife (Sagine Sémajuste) thinks he’s away from the family too much, so he brings his worshipful daughter Mara (Nakai Takawira, Young Simone Biles, THE SIMONE BILES STORY: COURAGE TO SOAR) and unimpressed son Ryan (Lyric Justice) with him when he works the opening game for the Phoenix Falcons. You know, of the National Basketball League. (read the rest of this shit…)

Cold Pursuit

Monday, February 11th, 2019

COLD PURSUIT – which could be called HELLY HANSEN PRESENTS ‘COLD PURSUIT’ in my opinion – is an odd duck of a Liam Neeson vehicle. His character Nelson “Nels” Coxman is a man with a very particular set of skills, but they mostly involve driving a snow plow. He lives a simple life in a big house in a tiny ski resort town 3 and a quarter miles from Denver, Colorado. It’s one of those places where people have to be kinda rugged but they’re also laid back and individualistic. It’s always cold outside so they mostly just find ways to relax in their big houses. Nels’s wife Grace (Laura Dern, WILD AT HEART) smokes a joint while cooking up some meat from the reindeer that Nels and their son Kyle (Micheal Richardson, VOX LUX) hunted a while back.

Nels is a little nervous about having to make a speech after winning Citizen of the Year. Otherwise they seem to have a nice comfortable lifestyle going when all the sudden Kyle turns up dead – we know he was murdered by drug dealers, but the coroner (Jim Shield, SHANGHAI NOON, who looks like a more hard living Chris Pine) says it was a heroin overdose. Nels is so broken up he puts a shotgun in his mouth but when he’s interrupted by Kyle’s bloodied and apologetic friend Dante (Wesley MacInnes, POWER RANGERS) and learns what really happened, it’s not long before he’s sawing off said shotgun to fit in his jacket and go trying to find the people responsible. (read the rest of this shit…)

See No Evil 2

Monday, October 24th, 2016

tn_seenoevil2SEE NO EVIL was the flagship title for the prestigious WWE Films banner. Directed by porn industry legend Gregory Dark, it’s a trashy, ugly slasher movie about a big sexually repressed oaf (WWE Superstar Glenn “Kane” Jacobs) who lives in an abandoned hotel and collects the eyeballs of people he catches having sex. I enjoyed it in a FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel type of way and I have no excuse for why it took me this long to catch up with the 2014 sequel, especially since in my review I swore “on Jacob Goodnight’s piss-smelling grave that I would pay money to see him undead in a sequel.”

Though made eight years later, the sequel picks up immediately after the original as the bodies start arriving at the morgue. It’s not a 2006 period piece, though – there are up-to-date phones, and a mention of Twitter (which was launched about 2 months after part 1 was released). It would be interesting to watch them back to back and see if it works. I can’t really remember if the first one mentions MySpace or says “Gerald Ford is still alive” or anything dated like that.

This one is about Amy (Danielle Harris, MARKED FOR DEATH, THE LAST BOY SCOUT), a medical examiner working a long shift on her birthday. Geeky co-worker Seth (Kaj-Erik Eriksen) surprises her with a cake. I’m not sure about eating something that was put under a blanket on a slab in the morgue for a surprise, but I guess movie morticians are always eating big sloppy sandwiches while they work to show how over it they are. This is tame in comparison. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Call

Thursday, August 8th, 2013

tn_thecallWhen I saw the trailer, I thought THE CALL looked hilariously awful. Halle Berry, 911 operator who gets a girl killed by redialing her and giving up her location to her attacker, has to redeem herself when another victim calls from the trunk of the killer’s car. In context, though, I gotta say it’s not bad. A watchable if undistinguished suspense thriller.

The structure has a Larry Cohen-esque simplicity to it, which I respect.

Part 1: failed call and introduction of the spectacular call center where our heroine will spend 2/3 of the movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Marine 3: Homefront

Monday, April 29th, 2013

tn_marine3You guys know I’ve always rooted for the movies carrying the prestigious WWE Films banner. I gave the rare rave review of their dumb slasher movie SEE NO EVIL (9% on Rotten Tomatoes), even got quoted by the producer on a commentary track. I wrote that the Triple-H/Parker Posey team in INSIDE OUT might be “this generation’s William Powell and Myrna Loy”. I loved THE MARINE 2 and labelled it one of the few DTV sequels superior to a theatrical original. They were starting to have a really good track record there.

Now I’m a little concerned because it seems like WWE Films is trying to get out of the making-WWE-films business. First they started picking up non-wrestling, independent features to distribute (THE DAY), then they put out two wide theatrical releases, DEAD MAN DOWN and THE CALL, that star Oscar nominees/winners instead of wrestlers. I mean I want to see both movies – they’re from pretty interesting directors, the first looks good and the other looks funny-bad – but I don’t like it. Yeah, so what if Cartoon Network has live action shows and MTV doesn’t play M anymore? Other people will make movies starring Halle Berry, I promise you. WWE should only have her in a buddy cop movie with The Undertaker.

(read the rest of this shit…)