Revisit: Nighthawks Nighthawks is a thoroughly entertaining product of what now seems a more innocent time. Read More
Reach Me [xrr rating=1.0/5]Okay, I’ll be honest. I’m not really sure what to do with this one. Some movies are bad, but have redeeming virtues like a premise that was clearly lost in the translation to the screen, or a fine acting performance buried somewhere in a mess of a plot. Some at least struggle by with solid film foundations, like a … Read More
Criminally Underrated: Demolition Man It’s 1996 and Los Angeles is a hellhole of the first order, alight like a perpetually-burning tire fire but with half the whimsy. Supercop John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) and professional psychopath Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) are in a standoff in an abandoned warehouse, but Spartan botches the operation and dozens of hostages are killed. Both Spartan and Phoenix are sentenced … Read More
Year by Year: Worst Summer Movies (1985-1994) Summer at the box office is the season of promise, a time when loud trailers proudly herald the latest special effects bonanza. This year is no different than the others: the Enterprise will fly again, Brad Pitt will fight zombies, the Wolfpack is back and that’s not even mentioning the slew of superhero movies the studios are asking us to … Read More
Re-Make/Re-Model: Judge Dredd (1995) vs. Dredd (2012) Beyond basic issues of quality, there’s a lot of distance between 1995’s Judge Dredd and 2012’s Dredd, two very different takes on the same rough-hewn comic book character. This space can be contextualized by the wildly dissimilar cultural climates which produced each film, the product of a shifting attitude toward this type of material, which peaked with the grave sanctimoniousness … Read More
Re-Make/Re-Model: Get Carter (1971) vs. Get Carter (2000) Get Carter is one of the all time great gangster flicks, a masterpiece of crime cinema that could have never been made any earlier than it was. By the beginning of the 1970s, the infamously rigorous British censorship system had begun to buckle under the experimentalism of the previous decade and changing social mores. Suddenly, what was acceptable to be … Read More
In Defense Of: Tango & Cash In Defense Of. When bad movies go good. Rotten Tomatoes: 39% Fresh A bespectacled, well-dressed Sly Stallone stands quietly in the middle of a long, deserted highway, aiming his police-issue revolver at the tanker truck speeding towards him. The truck slams on the squealing brakes, stopping several feet before liquefying our hero. The force of the stop sends the driver … Read More