It's said that the West was built on legends. Tall tales that help us make sense of things too great or too terrifying to believe. This is the legend of the Ghost Rider. Nicholas Cage has done a lot of movies – some good, some pretty bad – over the years. Of all his movies I've seen, my favorite remains Ghost Rider. Part of the first new wave of superhero movies (which was sparked by the success of Spider-Man), Ghost Rider tells the story of Johnny Blaze, a son of a stunt motorcycle driver (and a good stunt [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
February 7, 2014 By Leave a Comment
"Well, ain't we a pair… raggedy man?" Back in 1979, a then-little known actor named Mel Gibson did a pretty cheap little action flick, in which a policeman in an Australia suffering slow social breakdown falls afoul of local motorcycle gangs who, after several encounters, kill his wife and child, thereby sending him on a classic Roaring Rampage of Revenge. The name of this movie was Mad Max. The movie, with dramatic combat sequences despite low budget, did astoundingly well (making over ninety-nine [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The _Alien_ Franchise
January 29, 2014 By Leave a Comment
In the late 1970s, Ridley Scott released what became one of his two most recognizable and famous movies, and inarguably his most successful: Alien. Alien was and is the quintessential "haunted house" horror movie, transplanted into space and given a coat of SF paint. The crew of the space freighter Nostromo picks up what they believe is a distress call and discover a crashed alien vessel. Within the vessel is a strange room containing what appear to be giant eggs; when a crewman approaches one of these too [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Man of Steel
January 13, 2014 By Leave a Comment
The second of the two major motion pictures I had missed in theaters which ended up under my Christmas tree, Man of Steel shares with Into Darkness one other thing: both are parts of a reboot of an old and respected property, reboots which have drawn considerable fire from the older fandom of their respective sources. Man of Steel is the latest attempt to revive the Superman movie franchise, which died after the execrable Superman IV: Quest for Peace in 1987 and took even longer to be revived because – to put it [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Star Trek: Into Darkness
January 6, 2014 By Leave a Comment
One of two movies I missed in the theaters which I got as Christmas gifts, Star Trek: Into Darkness is the second in the rebooted Star Trek franchise which kicks the past of the Trekverse slightly in order to give the filmmakers the ability to re-use – or not – any element of the original without having to justify it through prior canon. As I thought when first seeing Star Trek 2009, this was the precisely correct choice. Trying to reboot and adhere to prior nonsensically inconsistent "canon" would be a fool's game, and NOT [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Desolation of Smaug
December 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Well, technically, this is something that WILL be On My Shelves, but isn't yet since it can't be purchased for quite a while – movie still being in the theaters and all. Overall, all four of us who went to see it a few days ago *loved* it. I'll discuss details farther below after some more general remarks. The short-short summary: purists will **HATE** it. But those who realize that movies aren't books and can ignore diversions from the original will mostly have a hell of a time. "The Desolation of Smaug" is a [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Equilibrium
December 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment
"In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel." Equilibrium is a 2002 action-adventure set in a dystopic future in which humanity (or at least a large portion of it) has decided that the passions [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Bulletproof Monk
December 11, 2013 By 1 Comment
"An enlightened man would offer a weary traveler a bed for the night, and invite him to share a quiet conversation over a bowl of… Cocoa Puffs." A martial arts action-comedy film starring Chow Yun Fat in a rare comedic role, Bulletproof Monk belongs in the same general category as Big Trouble in Little China and Galaxy Quest – comedies that rely on making affectionate fun of the genre they are in, while taking their story seriously in the context of the film itself. As such, it is a tremendously fun movie, with [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Unbreakable
December 4, 2013 By 4 Comments
Capsule summary: Bruce Willis plays an ordinary man who does security work. After a train accident somehow leaves him miraculously untouched, he is contacted by a mysterious man who tells him he may not be ordinary at all, but so extraordinary that he can no longer lead an ordinary life. The truth is even stranger, and more frightening, than it seems at first. It is a rare thing to come across anything NEW in either the thriller OR superhero genres. This combination, produced by M. Night Shamalyan before his decline, manages to [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: TERMINATOR
October 28, 2013 By 1 Comment
"Come with me if you want to live." --Kyle Reese/The T-800 One of the most iconic cinematic inventions of our time was born from a nightmare. James Cameron, fevered and ill, dreamed of a metallic skull with glowing eyes emerging from flames… and from this image came The Terminator. Most people know the basic story: sometime in the future, the computer called Skynet is given control of America's nuclear defenses… and becomes self aware. Partly out of fear of its own destruction, Skynet then initiates [ Continue reading... ]
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