A group of bank thieves has come onto the radar of the LA Sheriff’s special unit. As they plan an audacious heist, the Sheriff and his men are doing all they can to stop them.
Tag Archives: Action
Proud Mary (2018)
More “Leon: The Professional” than “Atomic Blonde,” Babak Najafi’s “Proud Mary” is a classic tribute to the blaxploitation films of the seventies that wears its intentions on its sleeves. It’s a film that feels like it would have been made in 1978 with Pam Grier as Mary, Bernie Casey as her ex-lover mobster boss. I wouldn’t be quick to call it a masterpiece, but through and through, it’s a sweet tribute, with some well drawn characters that’s almost brought down by its flaws in storytelling and editing.
One Million B.C. (1940) [Blu-Ray]
At one time One Million BC was considered a real hit at the box office and even earned some Academy Award nominations. Today it’s a pretty clunky albeit ambitious movie that predates Roland Emerich’s “10,000 B.C.” by decades where it tells the tale of a group of cavemen and cavewomen with perfect hair and make up, trying to survive in the wastelands. Said wastelands include dogs dressed as elephants, giant badgers fighting giant snakes, and a lot of stunt animals over a flat screen blown up to look like dinosaurs. Saving the effort of claymation and stop motion, the effect is a major dud most times, as the animals never really look all too menacing.
Five Reasons Why “Cloverfield” is still Pretty Fantastic
Yesterday marked the decade anniversary of the release of “Cloverfield.” It was in 2007 that Bad Robot unleashed an amazing and painfully addictive viral campaign for what was essentially a modern giant monster movie. Taking to the internet as the primary tool, fans speculated for over a year what “Cloverfield” was from theories about a Cthulhu apocalypse film to “Voltron,” and fans even created their own monster designs for what the monster would and should logically look like.
There was even a mysterious online game that had zero to do with the movie but capitalized on the mystery, nonetheless. “Cloverfield” ended up being a wonderful film, and the start of an anthology movie series that involved human struggle, a mysterious marketing campaign and a giant behemoth of some kind. With “Cloverfield” now a decade old and two more mysterious movies from the series coming very soon, I look at five reasons why the movie is still so fantastic.
Mom and Dad (2018)
When a disease sweeps the area, all parents become crazed killers going after their offspring. In one house, a teenage girl and her little brother try to survive while their parents do all in their powers to kill them.
Mom and Dad (2018)
Brian Taylor’s “Mom and Dad” has a really good idea on its hands and sometimes he doesn’t really know what to do with it. “Mom and Dad” best sums up the whole of its premise in the opening where Taylor stages the film like the opening to Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead.” A mom looks back at her toddler sitting in its seat, gets out of the car and walks away calmly as a train barrels down on it. We then flicker to a small suburb from top view where carnage is about to ensue. Granted, “Mom and Dad” begins very tensely and starts off with a lot of mounting suspense that kept me glued to the screen.
Mary and The Witch’s Flower (2018)
Based on Mary Stewart’s classic children’s book “The Little Broomstick,” we meet frizzy haired Mary, a young girl sent to live with her great aunt Charlotte by her parents as they prepare to move. Overcome by boredom, she ventures out in to the wilderness and follows a mysterious black cat in to the nearby forest. There she finds an old broomstick embedded in an old tree, as well as a mysterious glowing flower called the “Fly-by-Night.” The influences of Studio Ghibli are all over the place in Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s animated adventure “Mary and the Witch’s Flower.” From “Whisper of the Heart,” “Spirited Away,” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” there are so many nods and winks to the aforementioned properties that it becomes kind of a treat to see it all unfold.