Jason Eisener’s “Hobo with a Shotgun” was such a long time coming it’s ridiculous. With a movie that’s dared to defy all expectations, it’s very much a twisted balance between Troma and pure unadulterated Grindhouse madness that has the potential to reach mainstream audiences with a wider theatrical release. With “Grindhouse” flopping, and “Machete” floundering at the box office, “Hobo with a Shotgun” is a breath of fresh air, a movie so utterly filled with mind-blowing grindhouse tropes and a genuinely interesting story that you can almost feel the piss stained theater floor under your feet, while watching what essentially adds up to being a tongue in cheek and darkly disturbing take on the class warfare in America. This is Jason Eisener’s America, a world where the battle of rich and poor amounts to trips in to Scumtown USA where we lay our scene.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Hop (2011)
Unpleasant, unfunny and uninspiring, “Hop” is so much more awful than I’d originally predicted primarily because it took my rock bottom expectations and dashed them by delivering an even worse movie than my optimism would have allowed. I had hopes for “Hop” originally, and I’d opted on giving it a fair shake, but found myself genuinely annoyed by every inch of this disingenuous holiday commercial that is about as much about the holiday as Garry Marshall’s “Valentine’s Day” was in 2010. “Hop” is such a corporate tool that it feels like upon its original conception it was marketed to Hallmark and American Greetings for the sole sake of EB.
The Breakfast Club XXX (2009)
Currently the two best porn spoof directors working today is Axel Braun, who is the Hitchcock of the finely timed comic jab set to the fuck fest, and of course Lee Roy Myers who not only directed some fine porn spoofs like “The Big Lebowski XXX,” but also managed to take one of the finest teen dramas of all time and turned it in to a damn fine porn spoof of its very own entitled “The Breakfast Club XXX.” Not only is this a film that ponders on the bigger questions behind the original 1980’s masterpiece, but also manages to delve in to the finer aspects of said questions. For example, what happened when Estevez saw the Goth chick now an average beauty queen? Why, he took her in to the back and fucked the ever loving god out of her, that’s what he did.
Transporter 3 (2008)
Frank Martin is back and is in deep doo doo for the third go around in the “Transporter” series. Now retired and taking a long needed vacation, fate comes crashing down his doors as he’s confronted with a colleague who is killed in the middle of what was supposed to be his job all along. When Frank is taken off guard he awakens to learn that he and his car can not be separated or else he and the enigmatic women in his co-pilot seat will go up in a burst of flames. “The Transporter” series has been one of my favorite knock offs of “The Driver” this millennium and Jason Statham is a wonderful successor to Ryan O’Neal as this man with tones of gray allowed more breathing room this go around.
S.W.A.T.: Firefight (2011)
By now it’s a pretty quick assumption that we may never get a truly great movie about “SWAT” the television show. What was a gritty violent and often disturbing show about life on the business as a SWAT officer became a pretty high budget and meek blockbuster vehicle for a cast of B listers who were more GI Joe and less “Heat.” Now with “Firefight” the studio behind this star-less vehicle ups the ante by pretty much assuring we’ll never see a reboot ever again with a competent cast. Which is not to say “Firefight” is a bad movie. It’s not. In fact it’s a very well made and steadily paced “sequel” that takes every precaution to do what it can with the cast of D listers who take up spots that once belonged to up and comers like Colin Farrell and Jeremy Renner and veterans like Samuel L. Jackson.
Ninja Assassin (2009)
While I appreciate the inherent ambition behind the script written by Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski, any and all potential for absolute entertainment is wasted in the first fifteen minutes. Folks looking for a splatterific ninja quest will find the prologue to be one of the most grotesque and twisted openings to a ninja film. And then it goes downhill from there. It seems like the writers just aren’t happy enough with exploring the quest of ninja Raizo, but they instead want to focus on back story after meaningless back story.
Ninja Cheerleaders (2008)
You know what? “Ninja Cheerleaders” is trash but it’s trash you can admire. It’s a mixture of “3 Ninjas” with some “Bikini Carwash” for good measure, a veritable knock off of TMNT where director David Presley replaces teenage ninja turtles for teenage ninja cheerleaders. Starring three gorgeous and often cute young women, “Ninja Cheerleaders” tries for nothing more than pushing the limit upon with our actresses are willing to go. So while there is innuendo, there’s never any sex, and the women here are never sure if they want to be feminist icons or trashy slutty molds for what the movie begs. The plot is nothing you haven’t seen a thousand times before.