This is a revenge flick. But it isn’t your typical revenge flick. If you think you’ll know how the plot will turn out and how the characters will eventually fare, you’re basically wrong in every aspect as I was. “Oldboy” is and should be the demonstration of how to take such a tired genre and twist it and turn it until you have this freaky amalgam of this insane film. Garnering rave reviews at film festivals and attention from master Quentin Tarantino, “Oldboy” is that type of movie where you’ll ask yourself, “Are you sure this isn’t Tarantino?” because this has the look and feel of films like “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction” but it’s a lot more twisted. If that’s possible.
Tag Archives: Crime
Bad Santa (2003)
“Bad Santa” is crude, disgusting, violent, graphic, and has a lot of unsuitable content I wouldn’t recommend for a family out on Christmas, but it’s a great piece of comedy filmmaking by director Terry Zwigoff. There is a lot to like in this excellent character study, especially the two main characters Thurman and Willie, both of whom are opposites in every form of the word. Though their dichotomous relationship becomes something to watch with the highest regard allowing for comedy and warm moments.
Mean Creek (2004)
If you could snap your fingers and make your school bully disappear, would you? That is the question posed here in this chilling tale of revenge called “Mean Creek”. Sam is beaten by the school bully George one time too many, and now Sam’s brother and his friends are intent on seeking revenge on George by luring him out to the river and playing a nasty prank on him, but things go horribly wrong. Much like “Deliverance” being a tale of paranoia and the mind becoming the worst enemy after a tragedy, “Mean Creek” is a younger more contemporary tale of an incident spawning a tragedy which has dire consequences.
Starsky & Hutch (2004)
Unlike “The Brady Bunch”, “Starsky & Hutch” was a show that tried to be taken seriously, but clearly warranted spoofing. I mean seriously, how can you take a cop show seriously when it’s two inept cop characters ride around “undercover” in a very noticeable conspicuous large bright cherry red gran turino? It was a fact that caused many television viewers to make fun of, and it’s also very focused on here with an exaggerated sequence that brought the spirit of the show very well. Now, the teaming of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller would be very funny to see had it not been the thousandth time they’ve teamed up together as partners as seen in movies like “The Royal Tenenbaums”, and the awful “Zoolander”.
You Got Served (2004)
Well, it’s safe to say, that at no point in this review will you see the word “good” describing this movie, unless you see the sentence “Good god, what a piece of crap”, or “Good god, why?!” “You Got Served” tries to capitalize off of break dancing and free styling, while attempting to create its own moneymaking properties and crazes, case in point, the phrase “You Got Served.” What this film’s main problem is that everything about it is feels so artificial. It feels like an hour and forty minute infomercial for two really crappy music bands whose fifteen minutes ended years ago. Not even the mindless marketing tools MTV could fuel a film that had nothing to go by except a lot of flash and dash and no brains. It seems like casting agents just took a lot of the actors from the WB network and dropped them into the film and made it feel like it’s trying to get across that these characters are really from the ghetto.
Walking Tall (2004)
Chris Vaughn is an ex military veteran who has just returned to his home town. Back after eight years, he suddenly gets a crash course in learning the fact that you can never go home again, and now he walks tall and carries a big stick. Dwayne Johnson jumps into the seat of action hero yet again this time around, first with the crappy “Scorpion King”, the next with the wicked “The Rundown” and now with this very good action ride known as “Walking Tall”. A remake of the cult classic “Walking Tall”, and based on the true story of the utterly heroic feats of sheriff Buford Pusser, a man who was elected to sheriff after promising to clean up crime, and did so, taking down big time crime syndicates and corruption in his hometown of Tennessee with his giant wooden club.
Torque (2004)
Why anyone would want to rip off “The Matrix” is understandable; it was a very influential movie that paved the way for a lot of really bad, and mediocre rip-offs to come for years that I would inevitably have to suffer through, but why anyone would want to rip-off “The Fast and the Furious”, a mediocre action popcorn flick fueled (no pun intended) only by Vin Diesel’s pecks and some good effects is a stunner. Like many have said, dumb studio execs tend to confuse high grosses with film quality and what “The Fast and the Furious” had was not quality. Charisma? Yes. Good effects? Granted. But quality? I’m afraid not, my friend, so why do we have to suffer through these horrible rip-offs? Directed by Joseph Kahn, who is, surprise, surprise, a music video director, composes one really bad B movie that isn’t even worthy of being called a B movie because it’s so blatantly a really long drawn out music video sans the music ad nauseum.