DSL's Movie/TV Reviews and Discussion

[Dr. Strangelove]

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HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (2008)
d. Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Luke Goss, Doug Jones, Seth MacFarlne, Anna Walton, Jeffrey Tambor

All of mankind is threatened with extinction when Nuada, Prince of the Elves, seeks to activate a mythical mechanical army. Hellboy and the rest of the BPRD try and stop him. There you have it. There are elements of this movie I like and elements of the first one I like. Together they might've made one really solid film.

Unlike the first movie, I had never seen the sequel. That was a tough summer for this to compete in. The first as I described it was more steampunk and Lovecraftian. This one is more fantasy and folklore based (which is actually closer to the comics that I've seen). It's also funnier, which is truer to the comics too. They didn't bother to bring back Agent Myers, the one human on the team in the first movie that was original to the movie. Instead he's replaced by Johann Strauss, a character from the comics, who is basically a bodyless soul that survives in a containment suit. He's voiced by Seth MacFarlane and a lot of the attempts to make him funny are...bad. Everyone else is back although David Hyde-Pierce is no longer voicing Abe and it's just Doug Jones himself.

I like the goofier, more whimsical tone, but that comes at the cost of the movie's villain who is cliched and dull. This doesn't seem very high stakes despite all humanity being at risk. Not something I would feel like I need to see for another decade.

[Dr. Strangelove]

RIP to the great Christopher Plummer...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/05/christopher-plummer-sound-of-music-star-and-oldest-actor-to-win-an-oscar-dies-aged-91

[Dr. Strangelove]

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TROUBLE MAN (1972)
d. Ivan Dixon
Starring: Robert Hooks, Paul Winfield, Ralph Waite, Julius Harris, Paula Kelly, Bill Henderson, William Smithers

Mr. T, or just "T" most of the time, is a private detective, fixer, and vigilante in South Central LA who works out a billiards hall as a 'cover'. He's sort of the neighborhood's stern guardian angel but works for almost anyone if the price is right: cops, gangsters, whoever. One day an old acquaintance and rising gangster Chalky Price arrives with his partner Pete Cockrell. Chalky and Pete control most of the dice games in the city but have had several games broken up and robbed by masked men recently. They want to hire T to figure out who is doing it. Thus begins T's troubles.

Although T doesn't know it, the audience is made well aware that Chalky and Pete are double crossing him. The robbery is a setup designed to get T on the trail of even bigger gangster Mr. Big (Julius Harris) and frame him for murdering one of Big's men. Can T evade the cops, Big, and exact revenge on the mother suckers who set him up??

Beyond being a blaxplotaition film, there are film noir elements thrown in here too. A hard-boiled detective getting hired to do a job that's not all it appears to be is a staple of that genre. And Robert Hooks is just a cool and suave badass. Loved him in this. The rest of the cast is pretty strong too. They do good work to make the bad guys distinctive too, even if they don't say a lot of lines. There's a pimp that's usually wearing this outrageously ugly mustard-and-ketchup colored outfit. Another of Chalky's guys is played by Stack Pierce, who was in quite a lot of stuff in the 70's and 80's, usually looking mean and pissed.

Ivan Dixon, the director, would probably best be known for his time on Hogan's Heroes. Other than this movie, he directed almost nothing else film-wise, but went into tv instead and did a bunhc of work there. Finally, the score was composed by Marvin Gaye. As far as I can tell, it's the only movie he ever wrote music for. It's a pretty damn good 70's score.

Definitely recommended out of the blaxploitation genre. It's one of the best made ones that I've seen. I guess Michael Medved, when he wrote that "50 Worst Films" book decades ago that he's famous for, included this movie in it. I really don't get that at all. There's soooo many worse films just in the genre alone.

[Dr. Strangelove]

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ACTION JACKSON (1988)
d. Craig Baxley
Starring: Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone, Robert Davi, Bill Duke, and many, many more

This might be the greatest off-the-radar 80's action movie I've ever seen. I'd never heard of it till the past few years. A lot of it is enjoyable in its own right but what really makes it so fun to watch is that nearly every role, no matter how small, is played by some character actor that you'll recognize from a much more famous 80's movie. Thomas F. Wilson AKA Biff Tannen is here as a dumbass cop who keeps showing up. Al Leong, De'Vereaux White, and Dennis Hayden from Die Hard are all here. Bill Duke and Sonny Landham from Predator show up. Chino "Fats" Williams, a man with an extremely distinctive voice, had bit parts in Terminator, Weird Science, Road House, and a bunch of Rocky movies. I'm sure you'll recognize others.

The plot is absolutely nonsensical but it doesn't matter cuz ACTION. Craig T. Nelson plays Peter Dellaplane, a psychotic auto company magnate in Detroit, who is killing off a bunch of UAW officials (they're called something else but c'mon, it's the UAW). He later reveals his grandiose plan is simply to accumulate power. OK?!?? He's assembled a crew of dudes that are near-ninjas. He's also married to Sharon Stone (after his first wife died under mysterious circumstances) and is banging club singer Vanity, who he's also hooked on heroin for no apparent reason other than I ENJOY BEING EVIL. Only one man can stop him: Action fucking Jackson. The great Carl Weathers.

In some ways this is a blaxploitation film made in the late 80's. Carl Weathers has even described it as such. I failed to mention in my last film, Trouble Man, that unlike most blaxploitation films there was no nudity at all, and hardly any female characters. That's not an issue here where WARNING, if you can handle violence but not toplessness, be warned that Vanity and Sharon Stone may both appear sans vetements at points.

I don't know what else to say but highly recommend it. It's fun on an action movie level, fun on an 80's nostalgia level, and fun on a bad movie level.

[iam416]

Carl Weathers is Black Ned Beatty in terms of malignant underappreciation from the Academy. A timeless, superstar leading man and, yet, he'll always be second fiddle to the likes of Denzel, Eddie and Alfonso Ribeiro.

[crashcourse]

hes on the mandalorian these days

[Dr. Strangelove]

Emma Stone showing us she could've totally played Harley Quinn is good and all but I think we're all waiting for the standalone live action film that explains the origin story for that butler who tried to kill the Aristocats. You know, Disney's most popularist film ever.

[Dr. Strangelove]

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TRUCK TURNER (1974)
d. Jonathan Kaplan
Starring: Isaac Hayes, Yaphet Kotto, Alan Weeks, Nichelle Nichols, Sam Laws, Paul Harris

Mack "Truck" Turner (Isaac Hayes) is a former football star who didn't pan out in the pros and became a bounty hunter instead. Life seems good until he's hired to bring in a pimp named Leroy "Gator" Johnson. Things don't work out so well and in the end, Gator ends up dead, and Truck's partner Jerry gets stabbed in the shoulder by a drugged up hooker. Now the word goes out: Gator's stable of hookers, the best in LA, can be claimed by whichever pimp kills Truck Turner. Harvard Blue (Yaphet Kotto) is the boldest pimp of all, but can he actually end Turner's run of success?

This is a violent, sleazy movie, and unlike Trouble Man that I wrote about a few weeks ago, Truck Turner is a hotheaded slob, who either sleeps in his clothes or lets his cat Fred piss all over them. The film also revolves around pimping, so expect some outrageously dressed 70's pimps. I don't really have a lot to say about it other than it's pretty entertaining if you're in the mood for something like this, but please don't watch with grandma.

Couple other random things to point out. Nichelle Nichols is in this! I don't think I've ever seen her in anything but the Star Trek universe and here she's playing a foul-mouthed, absolutely pissed-off brothel madame. And secondly, Isaac Hayes did most or all of the soundtrack too. That title track is pretty fucking good.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Don't know if anyone watched WandaVision

I'll go with 6 out of 10. Overall decent and I applaud the concept for the show but this is probably the first time I have felt very strongly with any of the MCU stuff that had this been a non-Disney product, the end result could've been much better.

1) This was a PG show adapting a storyline from the comics (several, actually) that cries out for an R rating. You're fucking dealing with intense grief and psychological rape.

2) The need to connect everything to the 'greater Marvel Universe' forced the insertion of characters that ultimately served zero purpose but to tease other future Disney products.

More detailed complaints would spoil some stuff...

[froot loops]

Action Jackson is sweet. I remember when it came out, I believe the story was Carl Weathers made the pitch to movie execs based solely on the name.

[froot loops]

On Amazon Prime they have the BBC series The Musketeers. It was on for three seasons, I'm on season two, season one was really good, season two is promising.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Yaphet Kotto RIP. Never saw a bad performance from him

[CGVT]

Future Man on Hulu. Goofy, funny, ridiculous, and fun. A gamer travels through time with a couple of characters from the game to save the world. 3 seasons. Worth the time to watch it

[Dr. Strangelove]

I wouldn't have thought it possible but I've heard enough good word of mouth now that I may actually steel myself and watch the damn Snyder cut, 4+ hours and all.

For my moneythe version of Justice League that eventually got released is one of the worst superhero movies of the past 20 years (and there's been a lot) and it sounds like that's overwhelmingly the fault of the studio and Joss Whedon.

[froot loops]

I think he could have presented a large brown turd in 4:3 format and those people would have applauded it. The whole comic book movie phoenomenon is baffling to me, I used to be a big movie fan and any of the movies that I would watch back in the day are not made now at all because it is all comic book movies.