Blood Money Review: A Flaming Trainwreck Of Gun Fights And Wire-Fu
CHOO CHOO HERE COMES THE GARBAGE TRAIN
Kelly and I were about seven hours into XLRatr Media’s new film Blood Money (on their “Turbo” vanity marque, no less) when I picked up the box and realized the film was only 108 minutes long. I suffered through all 108 of them and I still couldn’t tell you anything about the plot or much of anything that occurred of any substance. A hazy mess of cheap After Effects compositions, gun fights, and genuinely ugly and unlikable protagonists, Blood Money is exactly where your money doesn’t need to go.
Headhunters Review: A Heist Flick With Consequences
…bloody consequences.
I confess that I’m not a big fan of the heist subgenre of movies, wherein a cast of handsome, smug movie stars smooth talk and joke their way into wealth and luxury. And while I understand and respect the enthusiasm my fellow writers here at FleshEatingZipper have shown for movies like Ocean’s Eleven, I’m typically left cold by such movies. The characters in The Sting and Ocean’s Eleven never face any real consequences for their actions, and that tends to leave these movies lacking in the tension I think is necessary to sustain any sort of crime picture. I just find myself wondering how these guys can simply talk their way out of the clutches of vicious gangsters without a scratch. Thankfully, the filmmakers behind Headhunters, a Norwegian crime thriller hitting Blu-ray this week, share my assessment of the heist subgenre. Headhunters is the anti-Ocean’s Eleven.
V/H/S Review: A Mystery Box Of Scares
The movie could’ve used a deeper cut-, uh, edit.
V/H/S is a pleasant surprise. In this futuristic world we live in, it makes sense that more and more of us are capturing even the most pointless stories of our lives on video. Of course, unlike this futuristic world we live in, I’m not sure which poor soul still records with VHS, or has the patience to convert a bunch of this violent footage to VHS for home viewing. Well, a gang of violent profiteers (who are about to step up to ‘upskirts’ on the enterprising scale) know who: the old dead guy in the house they’re trying to steal a specific tape from. It’s in this frame story that we’re presented an anthology of assorted, scary found-footage tales, which both serves and penalizes the film.
Lawless Review: Mostly By-The-Book
Blood, bullets, and moonshine
It’s been seven years since director Jeff Hillcoat, actor Guy Pearce, and singer/songwriter/screenwriter Nick Cave united to make The Proposition, one of the ballsiest, trippiest, awesomest Westerns (yeah, I know it was set in Australia) to come along since the 1960’s. With Lawless, the trio reunites to provide their take on the American gangster genre, with Hillcoat assembling a talented cast that includes Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, and Jessica Chastain. Surely this movie will be the greatest Depression-era gangster picture since Bonnie and Clyde, right? Right?
HBO Streaming Only Plan Coming to Parts of Europe
I want this in the US
Slaughterhouse “Welcome To: Our House” Review
SLAUGHTERHOUSE! If you have listened to any hip-hop station in the last 4 years you’ve probably heard that screamed at the beginning, middle and/or end of a song. The group consists of Crooked I, Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz & Royce da 5’9″. Welcome To: Our House is the groups second studio album but the first since being signed to Shady records. I had to listen to this album a few times before I actually started liking it. Maybe it’s because most of the hot tracks have been singles, out before the album release. Read the rest of this article…
Star Wars: Detours Looks Dumb And Stupid And I Want To Watch All Of It
Anyone else remember that Star Wars: Lo Mein Flash cartoon? Exactly what this reminds me of.
I love Star Wars. I enjoy Robot Chicken. So I don’t understand why these things can’t exist in perfect harmony. Not far removed from Seth Green and Matt Senreich’s stop-motion comedy show is a new series produced by Lucasfilm called Star Wars: Detours that provides all of Robot Chicken’s quirk in a thoroughly-researched Star Wars setting. I want it. All of it.
Assassin’s Bullet Review: Christian Slater Is All You Need
Waking Up Captain Sulu to Pistol Model: The Life Of Christian Slater
Despite what the cover would have you believe, American actors Christian Slater and Donald Sutherland are actually secondary characters in this film about a Neo-themed assassin. Look, I’m just going to spoil the whole thing for you: the story is really about the split personalities of said assassin, who is at other times a belly dancer and still others a fragile English teacher. The title also doesn’t pay credit to the premise either. The original marque, Sofia, was ditched to, I guess, appeal to us Westerners who need their Daily Dose of Slater-Sutherland, but it doesn’t really pay much tribute to the premise of the film. I only say this up front because Assassin’s Bullet isn’t a bad movie at all, it’s just not a good one. It just hovers there.
The Newsroom, First Season Review: Needs More Fair, Balanced
I was tempted to crop this shot to just Allison Pill, but decided against it. Only at the last minute, though.
24-hour news networks are evil at their core. For my part, I was glued to MSNBC throughout Clinton’s last years through the Lewinsky scandal, the shootings at Columbine, and concluding with Y2K. What happens when you don’t have content? You have to fill that space somehow. Aaron Sorkin, no stranger to behind-the-scenes affairs, and scribe of Facebook ‘show-all’ The Social Network, wants to bring the back end of this kind of news show to light with episodes set to recent events. Here, we witness the transformation of Jeff Daniels’ anchor/producer Will McAvoy and the team that supports him. So does it work?
The Mindy Project Review: Does it Live Up to the Hype?
The love interests.
